Four of these suspects have subsequently died (one of them hanged), but in the case of Freda Clay, who gave her aunt an overdose of morphine, there was considered to be too little evidence to prosecute. The murderer, identified by Poirot simply by the letter X, has been completely unsuspected of involvement in five previous murders, in all of which there was a clear suspect.

But Poirot is aware that he alone must work quickly before the murderer strikes again, even if it means putting his life on the line. However, after the great detective brands one of the seemingly harmless guests, whom he will only identify as 'X', a ruthless serial killer, people begin having doubts about the capability of his once renowned 'little grey cells'. When they receive a letter from Styles Court, the place where they solved their first murder together, it seems like fate and they readily accept. It was the last of her books to be published during her lifetime.Īfter a year apart Hercule Poirot, now crippled with arthritis, is reunited with his old companion Captain Hastings, who has since become a widower. Knowing that she could no longer write any novels, the elderly Christie authorised Curtain's removal from the vault and subsequent publication. The final Poirot novel that Christie wrote, Elephants Can Remember, was published in 1972, followed by Christie's last novel, Postern of Fate.

Partly fearing for her own survival, and partly wanting to have a fitting end to Poirot's series of novels, Christie had the novel locked away in a bank vault for over thirty years. The novel also returns the characters to the setting of Christie's first published work, The Mysterious Affair at Styles.Ĭhristie wrote the novel in the early 1940s, during World War II.

The novel features Hercule Poirot and Arthur Hastings (who had not appeared together since Dumb Witness in 1937) in their final appearances in Christie's works. Curtain: Poirot's Last Case is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in September 1975 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in the same year, probably also in September.

Christie curtain