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 Nevertheless, he regards the 1893 case in "The Chocolate Box", as his only actual failure of detection. Again, Poirot is not reliable as a narrator of his personal history and there is no evidence that Christie sketched it out in any depth. During his police career Poirot shot a man who was firing from a roof into the public below. In "Lord Edgware Dies", Poirot reveals that he learned to read writing upside down during his police career. Around that time he met Xavier Bouc, director of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. Poirot also became a uniformed director, working on