Hercule Poirot's Christmas Read online

  ‘Now why did he have that feeling? Look at Harry Lee and Stephen Farr and you will see why. They are astoundingly alike! That was why opening the door to Stephen Farr was just like opening the door to Harry Lee. It might almost have been the same man standing there. And then, only today, Tressilian mentioned that he was always getting muddled between people. No wonder! Stephen Farr has a high-bridged nose, a habit of throwing his head back when he laughs, and a trick of stroking his jaw with his forefinger. Look long and earnestly at the portrait of Simeon Lee as a young man and you see not only Harry Lee, but Stephen Farr…’

  Stephen moved. His chair creaked. Poirot said:

  ‘Remember that outburst of Simeon Lee, his tirade against his family. He said, you remember it, that he would swear he had better sons born the wrong side of the blanket. We are back again at the character of Simeon Lee. Simeon Lee, who was successful with women and who broke his wife’s heart! Simeon Lee, who boasted to Pilar that he might have a bodyguard of sons almost the same age! So I came to this conclusion: Simeon Lee had not only his legitimate family in the house, but an unacknowledged and unrecognized son of his own blood.’

  Stephen got to his feet. Poirot said:

  ‘That was your real reason, wasn’t it? Not that pretty romance of the girl you met in the train! You were coming here before you met her. Coming to see what kind of a man your father was…’

  Stephen had gone dead white. He said, and his voice was broken and husky:

  ‘Yes, I’ve always wondered…Mother spoke about him sometimes. It grew into a kind of obsession with me—to see what he was like! I made a bit of money and I came to England. I wasn’t going to let him know who I was. I pretended to be old Eb’s son. I came here for one reason only—to see the man who was my father…’

  Superintendent Sugden said in almost a whisper:

  ‘Lord, I’ve been blind…I can see it now. Twice I’ve taken you for Mr Harry Lee and then seen my mistake, and yet I never guessed!’

  He turned on Pilar.

  ‘That was it, wasn’t it? It was Stephen Farr you saw standing outside that door? You hesitated, I remember, and looked at him before you said it was a woman. It was Farr you saw, and you weren’t going to give him away.’

  There was a gentle rustle. Hilda Lee’s deep voice spoke:

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re wrong. It was I whom Pilar saw…’

  Poirot said:

  ‘You, madame? Yes, I thought so…’

  Hilda said quietly:

  ‘Self-preservation is a curious thing. I wouldn’t believe I could be such a coward. To keep silence just because I was afraid!’

  Poirot said:

  ‘You will tell us now?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I was with David in the music-room. He was playing. He was in a very queer mood. I was a little frightened and I felt my responsibility very keenly because it was I who had insisted on coming here. David began to play the “Dead March”, and suddenly I made up my mind. However odd it might seem, I determined that we would both leave at once—that night. I went quietly out of the music-room and upstairs. I meant to go to old Mr Lee and tell him quite plainly why we were going. I went along the corridor to his room and knocked on the door. There was no answer. I knocked again a little louder. There was still no answer. Then I tried the door handle. The door was locked. And then, as I stood hesitating, I heard a sound inside the room—’

  She stopped.

  ‘You won’t believe me, but it’s true! Someone was in there—assaulting Mr Lee. I heard tables and chairs overturned and the crash of glass and china, and then I heard that one last horrible cry that died away to nothing—and then silence.

  ‘I stood there paralysed! I couldn’t move! And then Mr Farr came running along and Magdalene and all the others and Mr Farr and Harry began to batter on the door. It went down and we saw the room, and there was no one in it—except Mr Lee lying dead in all that blood.’

  Her quiet voice rose higher. She cried:

  ‘There was no one else there—no one, you understand! And no one had come out of the room…’

  VII

  Superintendent Sugden drew a deep breath. He said:

  ‘Either I’m going mad or everybody else is! What you’ve said, Mrs Lee, is just plumb impossible. It’s crazy!’

  Hilda Lee cried:

  ‘I tell you I heard them fighting in there, and I heard the old man scream when his throat was cut—and no one came out and no one was in the room!’

  Hercule Poirot said:

  ‘And all this time you have said nothing.’

  Hilda Lee’s face was white, but she said steadily:

  ‘No, because if I told you what had happened, there’s only one thing you could say or think—that it was I who killed him…’

  Poirot shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘You did not kill him. His son killed him.’

  Stephen Farr said:

  ‘I swear before God I never touched him!’

  ‘Not you,’ said Poirot. ‘He had other sons!’

  Harry said:

  ‘What the hell—’

  George stared. David drew his hand across his eyes. Alfred blinked twice.

  Poirot said:

  ‘The very first night I was here—the night of the murder—I saw a ghost. It was the ghost of the dead man. When I first saw Harry Lee I was puzzled. I felt I had seen him before. Then I noted his features carefully and I realized how like his father he was, and I told myself that that was what caused the feeling of familiarity.

  ‘But yesterday a man sitting opposite me threw back his head and laughed—and I knew who it was Harry Lee reminded me of. And I traced again, in another face, the features of the dead man.

  ‘No wonder poor old Tressilian felt confused when he had answered the door not to two, but to three men who resembled each other closely. No wonder he confessed to getting muddled about people when there were three men in the house who, at a little distance, could pass for each other! The same build, the same gestures (one in particular, a trick of stroking the jaw), the same habit of laughing with the head thrown back, the same distinctive high-bridged nose. Yet the similarity was not always easy to see—for the third man had a moustache.’

  He leaned forward.

  ‘One forgets sometimes that police officers are men, that they have wives and children, mothers’—he paused—‘and fathers…Remember Simeon Lee’s local reputation: a man who broke his wife’s heart because of his affairs with women. A son born the wrong side of the blanket may inherit many things. He may inherit his father’s features and even his gestures. He may inherit his pride and his patience and his revengeful spirit!’

  His voice rose.

  ‘All your life, Sugden, you’ve resented the wrong your father did you. I think you determined long ago to kill him. You come from the next county, not very far away. Doubtless your mother, with the money Simeon Lee so generously gave her, was able to find a husband who would stand father to her child. Easy for you to enter the Middleshire Police Force and wait your opportunity. A police superintendent has a grand opportunity of committing a murder and getting away with it.’

  Sugden’s face had gone white as paper.

  He said:

  ‘You’re mad! I was outside the house when he was killed.’

  Poirot shook his head.

  ‘No, you killed him before you left the house the first time. No one saw him alive after you left. It was all so easy for you. Simeon Lee expected you, yes, but he never sent for you. It was you who rang him up and spoke vaguely about an attempt at robbery. You said you would call upon him just before eight that night and would pretend to be collecting for a police charity. Simeon Lee had no suspicions. He did not know you were his son. You came and told him a tale of substituted diamonds. He opened the safe to show you that the real diamonds were safe in his possession. You apologized, came back to the hearth with him and, catching him unawares, you cut his throat, holding your hand over
his mouth so that he shouldn’t cry out. Child’s play to a man of your powerful physique.

  ‘Then you set the scene. You took the diamonds. You piled up tables and chairs, lamps and glasses, and twined a very thin rope or cord which you had brought in coiled round your body, in and out between them. You had with you a bottle of some freshly killed animal’s blood to which you had added a quantity of sodium citrate. You sprinkled this about freely and added more sodium citrate to the pool of blood which flowed from Simeon Lee’s wound. You made up up the fire so that the body should keep its warmth. Then you passed the two ends of the cord out through the narrow slit at the bottom of the window and let them hang down the wall. You left the room and turned the key from the outside. That was vital, since no one must, by any chance, enter that room.

  ‘Then you went out and hid the diamonds in the stone sink garden. If, sooner or later, they were discovered there, they would only focus suspicion more strongly where you wanted it: on the members of Simeon Lee’s legitimate family. A little before nine-fifteen you returned and, going up to the wall underneath the window, you pulled on the cord. That dislodged the carefully piled-up structure you had arranged. Furniture and china fell with a crash. You pulled on one end of the cord and re-wound it round your body under your coat and waistcoat.

  ‘You had one further device!’

  He turned to the others.

  ‘Do you remember, all of you, how each of you described the dying scream of Mr Lee in a different way? You, Mr Lee, described it as the cry of a man in mortal agony. Your wife and David Lee both used the expression: a soul in hell. Mrs David Lee, on the contrary, said it was the cry of someone who had no soul. She said it was inhuman, like a beast. It was Harry Lee who came nearest to the truth. He said it sounded like killing a pig.

  ‘Do you know those long pink bladders that are sold at fairs with faces painted on them called “Dying Pigs”? As the air rushes out they give forth an inhuman wail. That, Sugden, was your final touch. You arranged one of those in the room. The mouth of it was stopped up with a peg, but that peg was connected to the cord. When you pulled on the cord the peg came out and the pig began to deflate. On top of the falling furniture came the scream of the “Dying Pig”.’

  He turned once more to the others.

  ‘You see now what it was that Pilar Estravados picked up? The superintendent had hoped to get there in time to retrieve that little wisp of rubber before anyone noticed it. However, he took it from Pilar quickly enough in his most official manner. But remember he never mentioned that incident to anyone. In itself, that was a singularly suspicious fact. I heard of it from Magdalene Lee and tackled him about it. He was prepared for that eventuality. He had snipped a piece from Mr Lee’s rubber spongebag and produced that, together with a wooden peg. Superficially it answered to the same description—a fragment of rubber and a piece of wood. It meant, as I realized at the time, absolutely nothing! But, fool that I was, I did not at once say; “This means nothing, so it cannot have been there, and Superintendent Sugden is lying…” No, I foolishly went on trying to find an explanation for it. It was not until Mademoiselle Estravados was playing with a balloon that burst, and she cried out that it must have been a burst balloon she picked up in Simeon Lee’s room, that I saw the truth.

  ‘You see now how everything fits in? The improbable struggle, which is necessary to establish a false time of death; the locked door—so that nobody shall find the body too soon; the dying man’s scream. The crime is now logical and reasonable.

  ‘But from the moment that Pilar Estravados cried aloud her discovery about the balloon, she was a source of danger to the murderer. And if that remark had been heard by him from the house (which it well might, for her voice was high and clear and the windows were open), she herself was in considerable danger. Already she had given the murderer one very nasty moment. She had said, speaking of old Mr Lee, “He must have been very good-looking when he was young.” And had added, speaking directly to Sugden: “Like you.” She meant that literally, and Sugden knew it. No wonder Sugden went purple in the face and nearly choked. It was so unexpected and so deadly dangerous. He hoped, after that, to fix the guilt on her, but it proved unexpectedly difficult, since, as the old man’s portionless granddaughter, she had obviously no motive for the crime. Later, when he overheard from the house her clear, high voice calling out its remark about the balloon, he decided on desperate measures. He set that booby trap when we were at lunch. Luckily, almost by a miracle, it failed…’

  There was dead silence. Then Sugden said quietly:

  ‘When were you sure?’

  Poirot said:

  ‘I was not quite sure till I brought home a false moustache and tried it on Simeon Lee’s picture. Then—the face that looked at me was yours.’

  Sugden said:

  ‘God rot his soul in hell! I’m glad I did it!’

  Part 7

  December 28th

  Lydia Lee said:

  ‘Pilar, I think you had better stay with us until we can arrange something definite for you.’

  Pilar said meekly:

  ‘You are very good, Lydia. You are nice. You forgive people quite easily without making a fuss about it.’

  Lydia said, smiling:

  ‘I still call you Pilar, though I suppose your name is something else.’

  ‘Yes, I am really Conchita Lopez.’

  ‘Conchita is a pretty name too.’

  ‘You are really almost too nice, Lydia. But you don’t need to be bothered by me. I am going to marry Stephen, and we are going to South Africa.’

  Lydia said, smiling:

  ‘Well, that rounds off things very nicely.’

  Pilar said timidly:

  ‘Since you have been so kind, do you think, Lydia, that one day we might come back and stay with you—perhaps for Christmas—and then we could have the crackers and the burning raisins and those shiny things on a tree and the little snowmen?’

  ‘Certainly, you shall come and have a real English Christmas.’

  ‘That will be lovely. You see, Lydia, I feel that this year it was not a nice Christmas at all.’

  Lydia caught her breath. She said:

  ‘No, it was not a nice Christmas…’

  II

  Harry said:

  ‘Well, goodbye, Alfred. Don’t suppose you’ll be troubled by seeing much of me. I’m off to Hawaii. Always meant to live there if I had a bit of money.’

  Alfred said:

  ‘Goodbye, Harry. I expect you’ll enjoy yourself. I hope so.’

  Harry said rather awkwardly:

  ‘Sorry I riled you so much, old man. Rotten sense of humour I’ve got. Can’t help trying to pull a fellow’s leg.’

  Alfred said with an effort:

  ‘Suppose I must learn to take a joke.’

  Harry said with relief:

  ‘Well—so-long.’

  III

  Alfred said:

  ‘David, Lydia and I have decided to sell up this place. I thought perhaps you’d like some of the things that were our mother’s—her chair and that footstool. You were always her favourite.’

  David hesitated a minute. Then he said slowly:

  ‘Thanks for the thought, Alfred, but do you know, I don’t think I will. I don’t want anything out of the house. I feel it’s better to break with the past altogether.’

  Alfred said:

  ‘Yes, I understand. Maybe you’re right.’

  IV

  George said:

  ‘Well, goodbye, Alfred. Goodbye, Lydia. What a terrible time we have been through. There’s the trial coming on, too. I suppose the whole disgraceful story is bound to come out—Sugden being—er—my father’s son. One couldn’t arrange for it to be put to him, I suppose, that it would be better if he pleaded advanced Communist views and dislike of my father as a capitalist—something of that kind?’

  Lydia said:

  ‘My dear George, do you really imagine that a man like Sugden would tell lies
to soothe our feelings?’

  George said:

  ‘Er—perhaps not. No, I see your point. All the same, the man must be mad. Well, goodbye again.’

  Magdalene said:

  ‘Good bye. Next year do let’s all go to the Riviera or somewhere for Christmas and be really gay.’

  George said:

  ‘Depends on the Exchange.’