My thoughts on the depiction of justice in "Murder on the Orient Express" and "Curtain"
This is something I've wanted to write for a while, the thoughts just kept rotating in my mind.
SPOILERS FOR THE FOLLOWING AGATHA CHRISTIE'S POIROT EPISODES "MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS" AND "CURTAIN". If you haven't seen one/any of these, turn back now.
I would like to introduce this by saying that it is about justice, but not in a broad sense. On the contrary, it is about two different concepts of the term, present in two works by Agatha Christie. These two works are Murder on the Orient Express (book published in 1934; episode first aired in 2010) and Curtain (book published in 1975; episode first aired in 2013).
In the first one, 12 people come together to murder a man named Cassetti, who kidnapped and killed a young girl they all had a link to. They stabbed him, one by one. When the truth was discovered (and this is way more visible in the episode), some if not most of them spoke about God's justice — Cassetti had to die because of what he had done.
Poirot, however, as a Catholic, tells them that it was not God's justice, and that they did not have the power to make that decision; only God does. He lets the murderers go, and does not tell the authorities about them.
In Curtain, it's different. The stakes are higher. Poirot knows it will be his last case. He is dying, even if his situation is not as dire as it seems. He knows it will come to a final battle between him and X.
He, then, does the unthinkable. Or what seems unthinkable, at least. He kills X, and leaves Hastings the clues needed to find out the truth, before passing away after removing the medicine that could have saved him. He entrusts himself to his God's mercy, and hopes it may be swift.
Here, we have justice done by a man's own hand. This decision of life and death, that Poirot was so vehemently against in Murder on the Orient Express, is the one he now makes. Saving innocent lives is put forth as the reason for it.
Did it have to come to it? There was no evidence of X's involvement in any of the cases… and yet he was the mastermind, the thread-puller behind them. Would bringing him to justice have been possible, or would Poirot have to sacrifice his soul for justice, as he did?
As Poirot himself says in his last letter to Hastings, "No—I do not know. I do not believe that a man should take the law into his own hands... [...] I have saved other lives—innocent lives. But still I do not know... It is perhaps right that I should not know. I have always been so sure—too sure... But now I am very humble and I say like a little child ‘I do not know...’"
