Curtain

Hercule Poirot, now crippled by arthritis and unable to move freely, asks his old companion Captain Hastings to join him at Styles. Hastings will serve as the detective's eyes and ears, reporting what he sees to a mind that is still sharp. Poirot knows who the killer is but will not tell Hastings, referring to the culprit only as 'X'. X has already committed several murders and is ready to strike again, so the two men must act quickly.

This is Poirot's final case, and it brings him and Hastings back to Styles, where they first solved a crime together. Christie's readers around the world looked forward to it with both excitement and dread, and many still avoid it because it is known to end Poirot's story.

Christie wrote the book during the Second World War as a gift for her daughter, in case she did not survive the bombing, and it stayed in a safe for more than thirty years. The family agreed it would be published in 1975 by Collins, Christie's longtime publisher, with Sleeping Murder, a Miss Marple story she had written during the war for her husband Max, to follow.

Poirot's death drew international attention, and The New York Times published an obituary for him, an honour no other fictional character has received. David Suchet, who had played Poirot for twenty-five years, took on the role in the detective's final hours in the last episode of Agatha Christie's Poirot, which was adapted in 2013.