Description

Hercule Poirot's Christmas - Agatha Christie

It is Christmas Eve and everyone in the house hears the crashing of furniture, followed by a wailing and hideous scream. When they get to Simeon Lee's room, they find it locked and they have to break the door down. When they finally get through the door, they find heavy furniture overturned and Simeon Lee dead, his throat slit, in a great pool of blood. Superintendent Sugden notices Pilar Estravados pick up something from the floor. She tries to conceal it, but when pressed, opens her hand to show a small bit of rubber and a small object made of wood.

Superintendent Sugden explains that he is in the house by prior arrangement with the victim, who confided to him the theft of a substantial quantity of uncut diamonds from his safe. When Poirot is called in to investigate, there are therefore several main problems: who killed the victim? How was the victim killed inside a locked room? Was the murder connected to the theft of the diamonds? And what is the significance of the small triangle of rubber and the peg that Sugden provides Poirot after being reminded of the clue picked up by Pilar?

Poirot's investigation explores the victim's nature (he was methodical and vengeful) and the way these characteristics come out in his children. When the butler mentions his confusion about the identities of the house guests, Poirot realises that the four legitimate sons may not be Simeon's only sons. The final major clue is dropped by Pilar, who, while playing with balloons and one bursts, lets slip that what she found on the floor must also have been a balloon. She knows more than she realises, as Poirot warns her. She later is almost killed in a crude but effective gambit by the killer.

The killer is Superintendent Sugden. Sugden was an illegitimate child of Simeon Lee (as was Stephen Farr). Sugden hated the man who abandoned his mother (who was never named) and took his revenge. The diamonds had nothing to do with the motive for the murder. The "small bit of rubber and a small object made of wood" found by Pilar, which were part of the murder designed to distort the true time of death, which occurred before the noises which alerted the family, were not the same as the "small triangle of rubber and the peg" that Sugden reluctantly showed Poirot later, as Sugden had switched them to muddy the waters.