Mystery express

THE transition from debonair, classicallytrained actor to eccentric detective involves all manner of props and padding. But David Suchet confesses there’s one simple act which transforms him into Agatha Christie’s most famous creation, Hercule Poirot.

“The thing that really tips me into the character, where I feel I can’t be David Suchet any longer, is putting on the moustache,” explains the 64-year-old actor.

“Poirot’s moustache is not intrusive, but it does restrict a certain movement of the top lip and that changes the way I sound and how I move my face.”

In the 21 years since he first took on the role, Suchet has tackled many of Christie’s stories, but this Christmas sees the longawaited adaptation of the most celebrated whodunit of them all – Murder On The Orient Express.

“I can’t give too much away, but suffice to say it takes Poirot to the very depths of his own world view and his own sense of right and wrong at a time when he’s already suffering from a sense of his own blood guilt,”

says Suchet. The feature-length episode, which co-stars Dame Eileen Atkins, David Morrissey, Toby Jones and Hugh Bonneville, sees Poirot travelling home from Istanbul on the famous train after a challenging case.

Asked to protect a ruthless American businessman, Poirot turns him down, only for the man to be murdered in his compartment in the middle of the night. “The story is iconic because it’s the journey of Poirot, as much as the journey of the Orient Express,” stresses Suchet.

This version of the story is far darker than the well-known Seventies version and, Suchet adds, reveals more about the inner workings of Poirot’s psyche.

“After 21 years, I have to say I’m still as passionate and enthusiastic as ever. I think that’s because for every story that I film, I learn a little bit more about the man I play.”

This case, he says, forces the detective to question his firmly held views on justice and retribution.

In person, Suchet cuts a slight, elegantly dressed figure.

Each time he returns to the role of Poirot, he dons a fat suit he fondly refers to as an “armadillo”, as well as that famous moustache.

“I’m not, thankfully, as fat as my character,” he laughs. “The suit is layered, so that when I sit down it will concertina into itself, and when it’s hanging up on its own little coat hanger it looks like plates – like an armadillo.”

Before accepting the role of Poirot, Suchet spent 15 years at the Royal Shakespeare Company, and he still returns to the stage regularly – most recently in a hit West End production of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons.

But he cheerfully admits that in every audience he can spot a few dedicated Poirot enthusiasts, and he’s used to being stopped in the street by fans.

“I will find myself being recognised now wherever I go in the world,” he says. “We’re in over 100 territories and viewed by, I’m told, over 500m people. It makes me feel very daunted. I have a huge responsibility never to slack, never to take the easy road, but to do the best job I possibly can.”

So what is the enduring appeal of the detective story, and more particularly of Agatha Christie’s best-known character?

Suchet thinks the answer lies both in Poirot’s old-fashioned eccentricities and in the stark differences between Christie’s characters and the modern detectives portrayed in most TV dramas.

“He’s certainly not the modern detective. I mean you can’t put him with Wallander or any of these hard, gritty detectives.

“He’s unique – and not like Marple, who is not a professional detective. He’s in a world and class of his own, with his own little genre, his own funny little way of living and his own particular way of looking at life. I think people have latched on to that, and find him very good company.”

■ Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Murder On The Orient Express, ITV1, Christmas Day, 9pm