Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case by Agatha Christie. Short summary

5 seconds

The last novel of the little Belgian. At the end of his life, Poirot finally meets the perfect killer. The cunning and cruel manipulator kills his victims with other people’s hands, but Poirot manages to track him down and disarm him.

1 minute

A novel in the Hercule Poirot series. Old and suffering from arthritis, Poirot invites Stiles, his old friend Hastings, to the estate to spend the summer together. The famous detective tells Hastings that one of the boarding house residents is a serial killer with at least five victims to his credit. The mysterious Mr. X is very clever and commits murders by the hands of other people, very skillfully manipulating them. Poirot suggests that a friend find the murderer.

Hastings talks to the inhabitants of the boarding house, trying to figure out the murderer — but he does not succeed. He suspects one or the other of the boarding house residents, but without Poirot he cannot cope.

In the epilogue, Hastings receives a letter from the late Poirot in which he reveals the secret — Mr. X was Stephen Norton. The murderer did not kill himself, but encouraged others to do so. Poirot killed Norton himself, presenting his death as a suicide. After that, the elderly detective stops taking the pills that saved him during his heart attacks.