Hercule Poirot's Christmas
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| Author | Agatha Christie |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | Hercule Poirot |
| Genre(s) | Crime |
| Publisher | HarperCollins |
| Released | 1939 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 251 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-425-17741-6 |
| Preceded by | Appointment with Death |
| Followed by | Sad Cypress |
Hercule Poirot's Christmas (published in 1938), also known as Murder for Christmas and A Holiday for Murder, is an Agatha Christie mystery novel featuring the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. The novel features a locked room mystery.
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[edit] Plot introduction
When multi-millionaire Simeon Lee unexpectedly invites his family to gather at his home for Christmas, the gesture is met with suspicion by many of the guests. Simeon is not given to family sentiment, and not all of the family are on good terms with one another. To make things worse, he has invited the black sheep of the family, Harry, and Simeon’s granddaughter, Pilar, whom none of them has ever met before. Simeon is intent on playing a deadly and sadistic game with his family. An uninvited guest – Stephen Farr – means that the house is fully of potential suspects when the game turns deadly.
[edit] Plot summary
Simeon warms rapidly to his grand-daughter, and ensures that he is heard by the family arranging the writing of a new will, which everyone supposes will favour Harry and Pilar. He then insults all of his sons and their spouses, giving them all a motive to kill him. On Christmas Eve, some time after Superintendent Sugden has called around, apparently to secure a charitable donation, everyone in the house hears the noise of a fight, followed by a hideous scream. When they get to Simeon’s room, they find it locked and have to break the door down. His throat has been slit, there is blood and broken furniture everywhere and a small object of rubber and wood that Pilar picks up and seems keen to conceal.
Fortunately, Sugden arrives on the scene in order to force Pilar to hand over the object. He has returned to the house by prior arrangement with the victim, who has 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 peg that Sugden is able to provide when reminded by Poirot of the clue that had been picked up by Pilar?
Poirot’s investigation explores the nature of the victim – a methodical and vengeful man – and the way that these characteristics come out in his children. He seems focused on the idea that one of the immediate family is the murderer. When the butler mentions his confusion about the identities of the houseguests, Poirot realises that the four legitimate sons may not be the only heirs of Simeon’s temperament.
The final major clue is dropped by Pilar, who while playing with balloons lets slip that what she found on the floor must also have been a balloon. She knows more than she realises, not least because she was hiding outside the room in which the murder was committed. Poirot warns her to be careful, but it is only by chance that she is not killed by a cannon ball trap set above her bedroom door.
In the denouement of the novel Poirot is able to unmask several characters: Pilar is an imposter who was with Simeon’s granddaughter when she died and Stephen Farr is revealed to be an illegitimate son. Neither, however, is the murderer. The real murderer committed the murder earlier and prepared the room with all the furniture piled up and a long cord hanging out of the window. The final touch was a “Dying Pig” toy: a rubber bladder that was rigged to provide the apparent death-scream as the furniture fell. The room had to be locked in order that the carefully staged room would not be entered and discovered.
The only person able to release the piled furniture from outside the house was also the last person supposed to have seen the victim alive: Superintendent Sugden. He was yet another illegitimate son of the victim, who used a fictitious theft of the diamonds to trick Simeon into opening the safe, and then killed him. A bottle of animal blood, prevented from clotting by the addition of sodium citrate, was used to dress the scene and create the impression that the murder had taken place much later. Crucially, Sugden had intended to recover the incriminating “Dying Pig” toy before it was noticed, but once Poirot had learnt of it, he had to provide a faked clue, physically similar, in order to protect the means by which the murder was committed.
At the end of the book two of the imposters - Pilar and Stephen – marry. Colonel Johnson, stunned by the loss of his best policeman, perhaps speaks for the reader when he asks “What’s the police coming to?”.
[edit] Characters in “Hercule Poirot’s Christmas”
- Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective
- Colonel Johnson, Chief Constable
- Superintendent Sugden, the investigating police officer
- Simeon Lee, a diamond millionaire
- Alfred Lee, Simeon’s son
- Lydia Lee, Alfred’s wife
- George Lee, M. P., Simeon’s son
- Magdalene Lee, George’s wife
- David Lee, Simeon’s son
- Hilda Lee, David’s wife
- Harry Lee, Simeon’s son
- Pilar Estravados, Simeon’s grand-daughter
- Stephen Farr, Son of Simeon’s former business partner
- Horbury, Simeon’s valet
- Tressilian, the butler
[edit] Theme
Like Appointment with Death before it, this is a novel in which the victim is depicted as a sadistic tyrant whose characteristics are mirrored or distorted in the next generation. This theme arises in Christie’s work at the end of the 1930s, enabling her characters to explore the psychology of inheritance in such works of the 1940s as Crooked House and Ordeal by Innocence.
[edit] Trivia
- In some editions, the novel is headed by an epigraph from Macbeth that appears repeatedly in the novel itself: "Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?"
- The character of Colonel Johnson previously appeared in Three Act Tragedy and here he mentions that case in Part 3, section v of the novel.
[edit] 1995 television adaptation
The story was adapted for television in a special episode of Agatha Christie's Poirot starring David Suchet as Hercule Poirot. The adaptation is generally faithful to the novel, although some characters have been left out. Chief Constable Colonel Johnson, who features in the novel, is replaced in the television adaptation by regular Poirot character Chief Inspector Japp. Stephen Farr is also missing.
The cast included:
- David Suchet as Hercule Poirot
- Philip Jackson as Chief Inspector Japp
- Mark Tandy as Superintendent Sugden
- Vernon Dobtcheff as Simeon Lee
- Simon Roberts as Alfred Lee
- Catherine Rabett as Lydia Lee
- Eric Carte as George Lee
- Andrée Bernard as Magdalene Lee
- Brian Gwaspari as Harry Lee
- Sasha Behar as Pilar Estravados
- Olga Lowe as Stella
- Ayub Khan-Din as Horbury
- John Horsley as Tressilian
- Scott Handy as Young Simeon
- Liese Benjamin as Young Stella
[edit] ISBN
- ISBN 0-425-17741-6 (Paperback; 2000)
- ISBN 0-396-06963-0 (Hardcover; 1985)
