Agatha Christie her service in September 1918. After the war, Agatha and Archie Christie settled in a flat at 5 Northwick Terrace in St. John's Wood, northwest London. Christie had long been a fan of detective novels, having enjoyed Wilkie Collins's "The Woman in White" and "The Moonstone", as well as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's early Sherlock Holmes stories. She wrote her own detective novel, "The Mysterious Affair at Styles", featuring Hercule Poirot, a former Belgian police officer noted for his twirly large "magnificent moustaches" and egg-shaped head. Poirot had taken refuge in Britain after Germany invaded Belgium. Christie's inspiration for the
Hercule Poirot 1960, she felt that he was a "detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep". Yet the public loved him and Christie refused to kill him off, claiming that it was her duty to produce what the public liked. Captain Arthur Hastings's first description of Poirot: Agatha Christie's initial description of Poirot in "The Murder on the Orient Express": In the later books, his limp is not mentioned, suggesting it may have been a temporary wartime injury. (In "", Poirot admits he was wounded when he first came to England.) Poirot has green eyes that are repeatedly described as shining "like a