RIFLE RANGE BOY: When you see the light, you may wish you did not!

Agatha Christie's Poirot (S13E05) Curtain: Poirot's Last Case
(Final Episode, 2013)

This must easily be the saddest of all of Hercule Poirot's episodes. Throughout this episode, the tone set is sombre, and a tinge of melancholy hung around every scene. Times have changed. Poirot is quite ill, arthritic and is wheelchair-bound. He is physically challenged, but his mind is not. His sidekick, Captain Arthur Hastings, is aged, recently widowed and has an adult daughter.

Hastings is invited to the Styles, the place they had solved their first case together. Poirot needs Hastings to be his ears, eyes and legs to complement his razor-sharp 'grey cell' to 'prevent' an imminent murder. The identity of the murderer is only known to Poirot but is kept away from a frustrated Hastings.

David Suchet

Many deaths still happen during their stay, and together the identity is known only much later, after Poirot's demise! Yes, this is the last case of Poirot, and the fictional detective dies in a way that can be construed as suicide.

Agatha Christie wrote this story during World War II and kept it safe for thirty years and was published in 1975. It was the last novel published before her death. The book was both anticipated and dreaded by fans for it contained Poirot's death. Many of Agatha Christie's fans refused to read it. For old time sake, this 2013 TV adaption brought in the initial duo of David Suchet and Hugh Fraser, who appeared as Poirot and Hastings respectively, when the first episode of the series came out on ITV in 1989.

This episode is heart wrenching one. Here, we see Poirot using his grey cells to crack the case and trying to answer some philosophical questions about life, death, and doing the right thing as he approaches the tail-end of his career and his life, which we will see at the end. Poirot puts himself in a precarious position in the end, but with the hope of forgiveness from the Almighty. In the end, he realises that a wrong must be done for the greater good.

Au revoir, Poirot. Goodbye, till we meet again!