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

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  About the Publisher

  Australia

  HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

  25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)

  Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au

  Canada

  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

  55 Avenue Road, Suite 2900

  Toronto, ON, M5R, 3L2, Canada

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca

  New Zealand

  HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited

  P.O. Box 1

  Auckland, New Zealand

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz

  United Kingdom

  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

  77-85 Fulham Palace Road

  London, W6 8JB, UK

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk

  United States

  HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  10 East 53rd Street

  New York, NY 10022

  http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com

 


 

  Agatha Christie, Hercule Poirot's Christmas: A Hercule Poirot Mystery

  (Series: Hercule Poirot # 20)

 

 


 

 
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net

Share this book with friends