Gregory Banks

In the novel After the Funeral, Gregory Banks is a chemist's assistant and Susan’s husband. Banks has a complex history and for a while was a suspect in the murder of Cora Lansquenet.

After the murder of Cora Lansquenet, Poirot had asked Mr Goby to investigate the background of the key suspects. According to Goby, some four months before the murder, before Banks had married Susan Abernethie, he had been working at a pharmacy in Mayfair when there had been a slip up and he had dispensed the wrong medication to a woman. The woman had recovered, and there was no prosecution and the firm did not dismiss Banks. Nonetheless he had resigned because he said he had been shaken and overcome by guilt. When treated by doctors for a nervous breakdown, he told a story that the customer had been overbearing and rude to him to him. She had complained that her last prescription had been badly made up. He said he resented her rudeness and had deliberately added a near lethal dose of medication to "punish her". The doctors dismissed the story and treated it as a sort of "guilt complex"and believe he was making it up to make himself appear more important.

Banks was treated at Forsdyke House, a Mental Home in Bury St. Edmunds by one Dr Penrith. Subsequently, Banks was discharged as cured and then met Susan and married her. He then got another job at a pharmacy, lying about his background. After the death of Cora Lansquenet, he asked for a few days off for the funeral and thereafter quit his job suddenly, which annoyed his firm very much. A fellow dispenser said he had a very queer temper and was odd in his manner.

Banks had no alibi for the day that Cora Lansquenet was killed. Susan, his wife, siad he was in his flat all day but Poirot showed that she could not know because she herself had been away. Banks' movements for that day were never established nor revealed in the book. In the late part of the investigations though, Banks told Poirot that he was the one who had killed Richard Abernethie. This was because he had to punish Richard as a snob, one who despised him and opposed his marriage to Susan. To Poirot, however, this was further evidence of his "punishment complex". In this interview, Poirot probed a little into his feelings for Susan. He insisted that his wife was wonderful, but Poirort sensed that Susan's great love for him was itself a burden. When Poirot asked him how much he felt he needed to get away from his wife, he blurted out, "Why couldn't she let me alone?"

Susan Banks had married Gregory in the face of opposition from her family. In their view Gregory was below her. As Mr Entwhistle, the family solicitor observed, girls of the Abernethie family did not marry men who "served behind a counter". Despite Gregory's background and despite his condition, Susan remained fiercely loyal to her husband even when Poirot told her about Banks' latest "confession" about Richard Abernethie. His admittance to the mental home had been voluntary, she insisted. And all he needed was some money to set himself up, to be somebody. To Poirot, however, this gave Susan a strong motive in the various murders. For the sake of Gregory, Susan would be prepared to be unscrupulous.

Entwhistle observed that Banks was a thin, pale, nondescript young man with reddish sandy hair. He was so overshadowed by his wife's personality that it was difficult to see what he was really like. He was quite pleasant, a "yes" man but yet there was something disquieting in him.

The outcome between Banks and Susan is not known. Poirot had remarked that Susan was "about to lose a husband". At the end of the story, all we are told is that Susan had set herself up quite successfully in a cosmetics business. All she would say about Gregory was that he was "away somewhere", having a rest cure.

Gregory Banks is not featured in the film adaptation of the book in Season 10 of ITV's Agatha Christie's Poirot series. Susan in that adaptation is not married.