Michael Phillips: The greatest Hercule Poirot of all? Mystery solved: The clues are with these 10 actors

First, last and forever, there is the mustache. It’s spelled “mustache” according to the Associated Press and therefore also to the Chicago Tribune. But in Agatha Christie’s stories featuring her most famous and fastidious creation, the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, now 103 years old, the spelling favors “moustache” and very often “moustaches,” plural.

This is not a story about facial hair, at least not entirely. (For that, you can go to for a delightfully obsessive account titled “Great Moments of Poirot’s Moustache.”) The landmark a few inches south of the detective’s cherished “little gray cells” was introduced in Christie’s 1920 debut novel, “The Mysterious Affair at Styles,” not as a flamboyant grabber of a mustache, but as a “stiff and military” thing.