Hercule Poirot's Christmas

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 sadistic game with his family's emotions. An unexpected guest – Stephen Farr, son of Simeon Lee's former partner in the diamond mines – means that the house is full of potential suspects when the game turns deadly.

Summary

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 another illegitimate child of Simeon Lee, from the latter's days in Southern Africa. 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.

Characters

Major themes

Like Appointment with Death (1938) before it, this is a novel in which the parent/victim was a sadistic tyrant, whose nature leads directly to his/her murder. This theme arises in later Christie works, such as Crooked House (1949) and Ordeal by Innocence (1958).

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?", a statement made by Simeon Lee's daughter-in-law, Lydia, after Simeon's corpse is found by his family.

Literary significance and reception

Maurice Percy Ashley in the Times Literary Supplement (17 December 1938) had a complaint to make after summarising the plot: "Mrs Christie's detective stories tend to follow a pattern. First, there is always a group of suspects each of whom has something to conceal about his or her past; second, there is a generous use of coincidence in the circumstances of the crime; third, there is a concession to sentiment which does not necessarily simplify the solution. Mrs Christie makes one departure here from her recent practice, as she explains in her dedicatory foreword. The complaint had been uttered that her murders were getting too refined – anaemic, in fact. So this is 'a good violent murder with lots of blood.' But there is, on the other hand, another departure from Mrs Christie's earlier stories which must be regretted. M. Poirot in his retirement is becoming too much of a colourless expert. One feels a nostalgic longing for the days when he baited his 'good friend' and butt, Hastings, when he spoke malaprop English and astonished strangers by his intellectual arrogance."

In The New York Times Book Review (12 February 1939), Isaac Anderson concluded, "Poirot has solved some puzzling mysteries in his time, but never has his mighty brain functioned more brilliantly than in Murder for Christmas".

In The Observer of 18 December 1938, "Torquemada" (Edward Powys Mathers) finished his review by stating defensively, "'Is Hercule Poirot's Christmas' a major Christie? I think it is, and that in spite of a piece of quite irrelevant tortuosity in the matter of the bewitching Pilar Estravados, and in spite of the fact that the business of the appalling shriek will probably make no mystery for the average reader. The main thing, is, surely that Agatha Christie once more abandonedly dangles the murderer before our eyes and successfully defies us to see him. I am sure that some purists will reverse my decision on the ground that the author to get her effect, has broken what they consider to be one of the major rules of detective writing; but I hold that in a Poirot tale it should be a case of caveat lector, and that the rules were not made for Agatha Christie."

E.R. Punshon of The Guardian, in his 13 January 1939 review wrote that Poirot, "by careful and acute reasoning is able to show that a convincing case can be made out against all the members of the family till the baffled reader is ready to believe them all guilty in turn and till Poirot in one of his famous confrontation scenes indicates who is, in fact, the culprit. In this kind of detective novel, depending almost entirely for its interest on accuracy of logical deduction from recorded fact and yet with the drama played out by recognisable human beings, Mrs. Christie remains supreme. One may grumble…that she depends a little too much upon coincidence and manufactured effect…but how small are such blemishes compared with the brilliance of the whole conception!"

Robert Barnard: "Welcome interruption to the festive season as mischievous old patriarch, tyrant and sinner gets his desserts. [sic] Magnificently clued."

Television

The story was adapted for television in 1994 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, and his romantic interests in Pilar are given to Harry. Hilda and David Lee were also deleted in the movie. The exterior scenes were filmed in Chilham, Kent and the Chilham Castle was used as Gorston Hall. A small backstory is given explaining Poirot's reluctance to go, due to the fact that he stays at home at Christmas and prefers central heating. But his radiator gave out and the attendants at Whitehaven Mansions won't repair it until after Christmas. Before he leaves, he asked Simeon Lee if they have central heating.

Cast:

The story was also adapted for the French television in a four-parts series entitled "Petits Meurtres en famille", broadcast by France 2 in 2006 and 2009, with the notable replacement of Poirot by a duet of newly created characters. Mathew Prichard himself, grandson of Agatha Christie, was quoted by Télérama as calling it the best TV adaptation he had seen.

Radio

Hercule Poirot's Christmas was adapted for radio by BBC Radio 4, featuring Peter Sallis as Poirot. This was the second adaptation of a Poirot story for radio, aired 24 December 1986.

Publication history

The book was first serialised in the US in Collier's Weekly in ten parts from 12 November 1938 (Volume 102, Number 20) to 14 January 1939 (Volume 103, Number 2) under the title Murder For Christmas with illustrations by Mario Cooper.

The UK serialisation was in twenty parts in the Daily Express from Monday, 14 November to Saturday, 10 December 1938 under the title of Murder at Christmas. Most of the instalments carried an uncredited illustration. This version did not contain any chapter divisions.