Talk:Curtain: Poirot's Last Case

Date setting

Can anyone add when the novel is set? Is it ever made explicit or can it be calculated? LookingGlass (talk) 17:32, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

It appears to be set twenty-some years after Styles (explicitly said in this book to have occurred in 1916), which restricts it to between 1937 and 1946. Most likely around 1941–42. The evidence for this is:

1. In Chapter 15, an old woman recognizes Hastings from the last murder at Styles, "Twenty years ago and over."
2. Hastings appears to be in his fifties, because in Chapter 8: III he describes Elizabeth Cole as "a woman of between thirty and forty" and shortly afterwards he observes that "Unconsciously I had spoken as though she and I were contemporaries – but I realized suddenly that she was well over ten years my junior." If Hastings is about 30 in Styles (itself an estimate relying on some rough calculations) and say 55 in Curtain (and so rather flattering himself in his comparison to Miss Cole, she being at least 16 years younger), that makes it about 25 years later, c. 1941.

It also was Agatha Christie's usual practice to set her novels at the time they were written or would be published, although she may have pushed this one a little into the future to allow for the end of the war, which is mentioned and implied to be over. (Any allusion at all to WWII is unusual among her wartime novels; I believe only N or M? acknowledges the ongoing war, otherwise she seems to have aimed for escapism.) Of course, she could not know when the war would actually end, so this is not necessarily inconsistent with a 1941 or 1942 date, if she wrote it in 1940.

On the other hand, this estimate is inconsistent with The Murder on the Links (1923, presumably written 1922) being set contemporaneously, given that Judith Hastings has yet to be conceived in that book and is 21 in Curtain.

I think a plausible interpretation is that the Poirot novels written during the war were intended as tacitly back-dated to just before it, with the 1939-written stories later collected in The Labours of Hercules meant to represent Poirot's definitive retirement, followed by his death in Curtain (in a hypothetical post-war early-1940s) ending the series. When Christie picked Poirot up again after four years with The Hollow (1946), that plan was shelved, with the post-war stories rendering any attempt at chronological consistency hopeless. --Snarkibartfast (talk) 11:56, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

There is discussion of the time the novel is set in the section References to other works. It was written during the second World War, meant to be published after the war ended, to close the Poirot series. Demand for Poirot stories continued, perhaps beyond what the author could have known. The war is over, if one calculates the time of Hastings's marriage in the early 1920s, and time to have four children born, the youngest age 21 in the story. There is no mention of war time activity or limitations, no mention of rationing, or anything that would pin the year exactly.

The year cannot be made explicit, as the author did not make revisions to keep every detail in tune with changing laws and mores. I hope that is enough guess work on that, for a book published about 30 years after it was written, with a main character whose age is never given, he is simply old. In fact, I suggest that any further analysis of the ages of Poirot and Hastings be moved to the articles on each character, rather than as part of the article for this last-published novel. --Prairieplant (talk) 07:30, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

I think the date of curtain would have been about 1946--30 years after Hastings and Piorot met in "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" which takes place in 1916. Also it would have been timeline--Piorot retries 1905 [say age 45/50] from the Belgium police; 1916 he would have been about 56/61; in 1946 he would have been 86/91--his gray hair.... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.49.242.65 (talk) 22:23, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

"Elephants Can Remember" makes specific reference to Ariadne Oliver's address books from 1968-1971, and this book obviously has to take place after that one. I have updated the page. 207.231.67.187 (talk) 21:47, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

That assumes that there is a consistent chronology within the series, while there is every reason to believe there is not. Snarkibartfast (talk) 20:29, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women writers § Reliable sources for a plot detail

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Women writers § Reliable sources for a plot detail. Airbornemihir (talk) 18:04, 2 October 2020 (UTC)