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.’
Magdalene said:
‘Darling, don’t be mean.’
V
Alfred came out on the terrace. Lydia was bending over a stone sink. She straightened up when she saw him.
He said with a sigh:
‘Well—they’ve all gone.’
Lydia said:
‘Yes—what a blessing.’
‘It is, rather.’
Alfred said:
‘You’ll be glad to leave here.’
She asked:
‘Will you mind very much?’
‘No, I shall be glad. There are so many interesting things we can do together. To live on here would be to be constantly reminded of that nightmare. Thank God it’s all over!’
Lydia said:
‘Thanks to Hercule Poirot.’
‘Yes. You know, it was really amazing the way everything fell into place when he explained it.’
‘I know. Like when you finish a jig-saw puzzle and all the queer-shaped bits you swear won’t fit in anywhere find their places quite naturally.’
Alfred said:
‘There’s one little thing that never fitted in. What was George doing after he telephoned? Why wouldn’t he say?’
‘Don’t you know? I knew all the time. He was having a look through your papers on your desk.’
‘Oh! No, Lydia, no one would do a thing like that!’
‘George would. He’s frightfully curious about money matters. But of course he couldn’t say so. He’d have had to be actually in the dock before he’d have owned up to that.’
Alfred said:
‘Are you making another garden?’
‘Yes.’
‘What is it this time?’
‘I think,’ said Lydia, ‘it’s an attempt at the Garden of Eden. A new version—without any serpent—and Adam and Eve are definitely middle-aged.’
Alfred said gently:
‘Dear Lydia, how patient you have been all these years. You have been very good to me.’
Lydia said:
‘But, you see, Alfred, I love you…’
VI
Colonel Johnson said:
‘God bless my soul!’ Then he said:
‘Upon my word!’ And finally, once more: ‘God bless my soul!
He leaned back in his chair and stared at Poirot. He said plaintively:
‘My best man! What’s the police coming to?’
Poirot said:
‘Even policemen have private lives! Sugden was a very proud man.’
Colonel Johnson shook his head.
To relieve his feelings he kicked at the logs in the grate. He said jerkily:
‘I always say—nothing like a wood fire.’
Hercule Poirot, conscious of the draughts round his neck, thought to himself:
‘Pour moi, every time the central heating…’
About Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie is known throughout the world as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a billion copies in English and another billion in 100 foreign languages. She is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Mrs Christie is the author of eighty crime novels and short story collections, nineteen plays, and six novels written under the name of Mary Westmacott.
Agatha Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was written towards the end of World War I (during which she served in the Voluntary Aid Detachments). In it she created Hercule Poirot, the little Belgian investigator who was destined to become the most popular detective in crime fiction since Sherlock Holmes. After having been rejected by a number of houses, The Mysterious Affair at Styles was eventually published by The Bodley Head in 1920.
In 1926, now averaging a book a year, Agatha Christie wrote her masterpiece. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was the first of her books to be published by William Collins and marked the beginning of an author-publisher relationship that lasted for fifty years and produced over seventy books. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was also the first of Agatha Christie’s works to be dramatised—as Alibi—and to have a successful run in London’s West End. The Mousetrap, her most famous play, opened in 1952 and runs to this day at St Martin’s Theatre in the West End; it is the longest-running play in history.
Agatha Christie was made a Dame in 1971. She died in 1976, since when a number of her books have been published: the bestselling novel Sleeping Murder appeared in 1976, followed by An Autobiography and the short story collections Miss Marple’s Final Cases; Problem at Pollensa Bay; and While the Light Lasts. In 1998, Black Coffee was the first of her plays to be novelised by Charles Osborne, Mrs Christie’s biographer.
Credits
Cover by�Nick Castle © HarperCollins/Agatha Christie Ltd 2007
The Agatha Christie Collection
Christie Crime Classics
The Man in the Brown Suit
The Secret of Chimneys
The Seven Dials Mystery
The Mysterious Mr Quin
The Sittaford Mystery
The Hound of Death
The Listerdale Mystery
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?
Parker Pyne Investigates
Murder Is Easy
And Then There Were None
Towards Zero
Death Comes as the End
Sparkling Cyanide
Crooked House
They Came to Baghdad
Destination Unknown
Spider’s Web *
The Unexpected Guest *
Ordeal by Innocence
The Pale Horse
Endless Night
Passenger To Frankfurt
Problem at Pollensa Bay
While the Light Lasts
Hercule Poirot Investigates
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
The Murder on the Links
Poirot Investigates
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The Big Four
The Mystery of the Blue Train
Black Coffee *
Peril at End House
Lord Edgware Dies
Murder on the Orient Express
Three-Act Tragedy
Death in the Clouds
The ABC Murders
Murder in Mesopotamia
Cards on the Table
Murder in th
e Mews
Dumb Witness
Death on the Nile
Appointment with Death
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas
Sad Cypress
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe
Evil Under the Sun
Five Little Pigs
The Hollow
The Labours of Hercules
Taken at the Flood
Mrs McGinty’s Dead
After the Funeral
Hickory Dickory Dock
Dead Man’s Folly
Cat Among the Pigeons
The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
The Clocks
Third Girl
Hallowe’en Party
Elephants Can Remember
Poirot’s Early Cases
Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case
Miss Marple Mysteries
The Murder at the Vicarage
The Thirteen Problems
The Body in the Library
The Moving Finger
A Murder Is Announced
They Do It with Mirrors
A Pocket Full of Rye
4.50 from Paddington
The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side
A Caribbean Mystery
At Bertram’s Hotel
Nemesis
Sleeping Murder
Miss Marple’s Final Cases
Tommy & Tuppence
The Secret Adversary
Partners in Crime
Nor M?
By the Pricking of My Thumbs
Postern of Fate
Published as Mary Westmacott
Giant’s Bread
Unfinished Portrait
Absent in the Spring
The Rose and the Yew Tree
A Daughter’s a Daughter
The Burden
Memoirs
An Autobiography
Come, Tell Me How You Live
Play Collections
The Mousetrap and Selected Plays
Witness for the Prosecution and Selected Plays
* novelised by Charles Osborne
www.agathachristie.com
For more information about Agatha Christie, please visit the official website.
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the authors’ imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
HERCULE POIROT’S CHRISTMAS. Copyright © 1939 Agatha Christie Limited (a Chorion company). All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub edition March 2008 ISBN 9780061746697
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