in London. Evans's Jules Poiret "was small and rather heavyset, hardly more than five feet, but moved with his head held high. The most remarkable features of his head were the stiff military moustache. His apparel was neat to perfection, a little quaint and frankly dandified." He was accompanied by Captain Harry Haven, who had returned to London from a Colombian business venture ended by a civil war.

A more obvious influence on the early Poirot stories is that of Arthur Conan Doyle. In An Autobiography