Superintendent Battle

Superintendent Battle is a fictional character created by Agatha Christie who appeared in five of her novels.

Battle is notable for his stolid good sense and careful management of information as a case proceeds. 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.^[1]: 220 His moustache is impressive, even to Hercule Poirot.^[1]: 221 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. In the Hercule Poirot novel The Clocks, the pseudonymous secret agent Colin Lamb is heavily implied to be the son of the now-retired Battle.

Battle also has a secret professional life that is revealed in the dénouement to The Seven Dials Mystery, but this is never referred to again. In this novel he states, that "half the people who spent their lives avoiding being run over buses had much better be run over and put safely out of the way. They're no good."

Similar statements are given by Major Despard in Cards on the Table and Michael Rodgers in Endless Night and might be approved by Mrs Christie as well.^[2]

Battle is in many respects typical of Christie's police officers, being (like Inspector Japp), more careful and intelligent than the police officers of early detective fiction, who had served only as foils for the brilliance of the amateur sleuth.

He appears as a detective in the following novels:

• The Secret of Chimneys (1925)
• The Seven Dials Mystery (1929 – including some of the same characters, notably Lady Eileen "Bundle" Brent)
• Cards on the Table (1936, with Hercule Poirot, Ariadne Oliver and Colonel Race)
• Murder Is Easy (1939 - cameo) – titled as Easy to Kill in the US.
• Towards Zero (1944)

The 1956 play Towards Zero at the St James's Theatre in the West End featured William Kendall as Battle.^[3] A 1981 version of Cards on the Table starred Gordon Jackson as Battle.^[4]

Christie had penned a stage version of The Secret of Chimneys in 1931, but it went unproduced until 2003. The 2006 UK premiere featured Ronald Simon as Battle.

A French film version of Towards Zero starred François Morel as "Inspector Martin Bataille".

A 1981 version of The Seven Dials Mystery from London Weekend Television starred Harry Andrews as the Superintendent.

Murder is Easy has been adapted for television three times (1982, 2008, 2023), with each one omitting the character of Battle given his minor role in the plot.

The Secret of Chimneys was adapted as a 2010 episode of the series Agatha Christie's Marple, which added Christie's detective Miss Marple into the plot, and left out Battle. The same series had earlier dramatised Towards Zero and Murder is Easy without Battle, although the former replaced him with the new character of Superintendent Mallard, portrayed by Alan Davies.

Cards on the Table was adapted as a 2005 episode of Agatha Christie's Poirot. David Westhead played the Battle character, renamed Superintendent Jim Wheeler.

An upcoming Netflix miniseries dramatising The Seven Dials Mystery will star Martin Freeman as Battle.^[5]

In 2002, Card on the Table was done as part of a series of Poirot adaptations starring John Moffatt. Ioan Meredith voiced Battle.

• Barnard, Robert (1980): A Talent to Deceive, Fontana/Collins

• Superintendent Battle at Hercule Poirot Central