Pierre Lansquenet

In the novel After the Funeral, Pierre Lansquenet was an artist and husband of Cora Lansquenet. The young Cora had enrolled in an art school to learn to paint flowers and water colours but then got into still life class and there met the half-French Pierre and soon married him. For Cora, this meant going against the wishes of her family, especially her elder brother Richard Abernethie and resulted in Pierre and Cora being cut off from the family.

As an artist, Pierre was not considered very good. Mr Entwhistle, the family solicitor, observed that his paintings were mostly nudes "executed with a singular lack of draughtsmanship but with much fidelity to detail." Cora's friend and art critic Alexander Guthrie was even more critical. Asked to look at Pierre's paintings, he said: "Do not force me to look at those again. Life classes have much to answer for!"

For all that, however, Guthrie thought that Pierre didn't make Cora too bad a husband. Cora was devoted to him and took Pierre and his art seriously. He did "stray" but Cora accepted that as part of the artistic temperament. Even Richard Abernethie was overheard saying (or so Miss Gilchrist reported) that Pierre seemed to have made Cora very happy, and so he admitted his objection was in the wrong.

Pierre died some years before the events in the book so does not appear in the story in person.

In the film adaptation of the book in ITV's Agatha Christie's Poirot series, the character of Pierre is replaced by the non-canonical character Giovanni Gallacio, an Italian art critic, who also replaced the character of Alexander Guthrie. Unlike Pierre in the novel, Giovanni is still alive, although estranged from Cora.