 He relies in part on the public notion that police detectives are stupid or unimaginative, when he has a good idea of just what is happening.His moustache is impressive, even to Hercule Poirot.Until "Towards Zero" the reader knows nothing of his domestic arrangements (with exception to a comment in "Chimneys", when he mentions that he is "very attached of Mrs Battle"), but in this novel we learn that he has a wife and five children, the youngest of whom (Sylvia) unwittingly provides a key clue to the mystery.