‘Marriage is an extraordinary thing – and I doubt if any outsider – even a child of the marriage – has the right to judge.’
(Hilda Lee, Chapter 4)

George Lee was solemn and correct. ‘A terrible business,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘A terrible, terrible business. I can only believe that it must – er – have been the work of a lunatic!’
(In almost all the books the villain is repeatedly made out to be a fiend, a demon etc, Chapter 9)

‘I myself am quite convinced that this crime was done by a maniac who somehow or other gained admittance to the house.’
(Ditto)

Sugden said: ‘Then you think someone is lying?’
Poirot sighed.
‘Mon cher, everyone lies – in parts like the egg of the English curate. It is profitable to separate the harmless lies from the vital ones.’
(Chapter 15)

Lydia said, almost impatiently: ‘It’s like a nightmare – so fantastic – I can’t believe it’s real!’
(The stock standard sentiment someone expresses in every Christie novel, Part 4)

‘There is in this crime such a restricted circle that it cannot possibly take long to arrive at the truth.’
(Handy expression of the ‘closed circle’ sub-genre of murder mystery, Part 5)

‘It is the quietest and meekest people who are often capable of the most sudden and unexpected violence for the reason that when their control does snap, it does so entirely!
(Daytime TV-level psychology, Part 6)

Background

‘Appointment with Death’ centred on a monstrously controlling old mother, Mrs Boynton. ‘Hercule Poirot’s Christmas’ circles round a horribly manipulative father, the Dickensian figure of old Simeon Lee.

In a big grandfather armchair, the biggest and most imposing of all the chairs, sat the thin, shrivelled figure of an old man. His long claw‐like hands rested on the arms of the chair. A gold‐mounted stick was by his side. He wore an old shabby blue dressing‐gown. On his feet were carpet slippers. His hair was white and the skin of his face was yellow. A shabby, insignificant figure, one might have thought. But the nose, aquiline and proud, and the eyes, dark and intensely alive, might cause an observer to alter his opinion. Here was fire and life and vigour. (Chapter 6)

Old Mr Lee made his fortune in South African mining (diamonds) where, it is strongly hinted, he was a ruthless operator who made bitter enemies. Having made his fortune he returned to Blighty and started a business in the Midlands based on a mining gadget of his own design, and doubled or trebled his money. He built himself a fine country house – Gorston Hall, Longdale, Addlesfield, ‘a good solid mass of red brick, unimaginative but solid’ – and married a wife, Adelaide.

She gave him four sons – Alfred, Harry, David and George – and a daughter, Jennifer. But as they grew up, they all watched old Simeon bully his wife, boasting about his numerous affairs, mocking her for her timidity and conventionality. The result was that his sons grew up hating their childhood and the family home which was filled with such unhappiness, and loathed their father for driving their mother to a sick room and then to an early death.

In revenge, none of the children turned out as their father intended. Harry was meant to go into the family firm but stole some money and ran off to have adventures. David ran off to London to become an artist, despite his father threatening to cut him off without a penny. He married Hilda.

Pompous, conventional George Lee, ‘a somewhat corpulent gentleman of forty‐one’, became an MP as his father had intended, and married Magdalene, 20 years his junior.

And Alfred stayed at home, managing the house and its servants with his wife, Lydia.

The plot follows a very conventional course, not only in terms of Christie’s own novels, but those of the scores of other detective story writers who flourished between the wars. First we meet the cast; then there is the murder; then the long, drawn-out investigation, then the totally unexpected reveal.

Key personnel

It is Christmas and grasping old multimillionaire Simeon Lee, holed up in his ugly old mansion, surprises his scattered sons and spouses by inviting them all to come and spend Christmas at the house. With various degrees of reluctance, the couples converge, being: Alfred and Lydia (already living with him); David and Hilda, up from London; George and young Magdalene, up from his rural constituency.

In addition, to everyone’s surprise, Simeon has managed to invite the black sheep of the family, David, who ran off to London to make his own way in the world.

In another surprise, Simeon has managed to track down and invite his grand-daughter, Pilar Estravados. She has a Spanish name because Simeon’s one daughter, Jennifer, ran off with a Spaniard, Juan Estravados (a Bohemian friend of David’s down in London), went to Spain, married, had this daughter, then died just a year ago. So Simeon has invited this classically Spanish, good-looking firebrand to the Christmas party, too.

Reading the novels, you are continually reminded how much Christie deals in stereotypes and stock types. Thus Pilar couldn’t be more flashing-eyed, Latin and hot-blooded if she tried.

The curve of Pilar’s red mouth curved upwards. It was suddenly cruel, that mouth. Cruel and greedy – like the mouth of a child or a kitten – a mouth that knew only its own desires and that was as yet unaware of pity.

‘She’s a beautiful creature, Pilar – with the lovely warmth of the South – and its cruelty.’
(Harry Lee, Chapter 10)

A faint smile came to Colonel Johnson’s lips, as his eyes took in the black gloss of her hair, the proud dark eyes, and the curling red lips. Very English! An incongruous term to apply to Pilar Estravados.
(Chapter 13)

And there is one more surprise which is that, back in South Africa in his youth, Simeon had a business partner, old Ebenezer Farr. Ebenezer is long gone but to Simeon’s own surprise his son, handsome, virile, outdoorsy Stephen Farr, has travelled all the way from South Africa, and arrives unexpectedly on their doorstep just before Christmas, claiming to be ‘just passing by’ – obviously suspicious behaviour.

It is an important fact that none of the family have met either Pilar or Stephen before. So one or both of them might be imposters.

As to the household staff, there is the ancient butler, Tressilian, who has been with the family for 40 years. And a new arrival, a personal nurse to old Simeon called Sydney Horbury. The narrative goes out of its way to describe the creepily silent way that Horbury creeps up on everybody. When he hears that a police inspector has been to visit the house, Horbury drops the (old and valuable) cup he is holding and turns pale. Well, he’s obviously got a dodgy past then.

The murder

After dinner on Christmas Eve the various members of the household scatter to different rooms, make phone calls, play the piano (David, playing Mendelssohn), are reading magazines, when suddenly everyone hears a violent commotion coming from Simeon’s room overhead (directly above the dining room, to one side of the drawing room) – bangs and thumps and what-have-you – followed by a blood-curdling scream.

They all rush up to the first floor only to find the door to Simeon’s room locked from the inside. The two most virile men, Harry and Stephen, have to use a big piece of furniture to batter the door down, and all the guests tumble into the room to discover: 1) a scene of amazing destruction, with furniture, vases and whatnot shattered and strewn everywhere, and 2) the body of wasted old Simeon lying in a pool of blood which has poured from his slashed throat. Someone has murdered him!

Motives

So, as always happens, a very bright light is suddenly shone on 1) circumstances leading up to the murder 2) everybody’s possible motives to commit the murder 3) a very detailed examination of everyone’s precise location in the minutes before the scream was heard, who was in which room and heard what etc.

But I need to back up and tell you about some additional facts which are highly relevant.

1) The new will On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, Simeon had called his family together about 3.30, and they – and we – expected some kind of grand announcement, but instead it was to hear Simeon make a call to the family lawyer, Charlton, and tell him he intended to write a new will. Obviously, some or all of the sons and grand-daughter might have feared they would miss out in a new will.

In case I haven’t made it clear, Simeon actively enjoyed teasing and tormenting and occasionally straight out insulting all four of his sons, generating a lot of anger and resentment…

2) The angry sons Specifically, Simone had announced two new son-related facts: one was to tell an outraged Alfred that he has invited the brother he really dislikes, freewheeling Harry, to come and stay at the house, permanently. Alfred is ‘livid with rage’ (p.107). The other was to tell George the pompous MP that he is living beyond his means and that he intends to reduce his (already miserly) allowance, prompting George to say he doesn’t know how he’ll be able to make ends meet.

Add this to the fact that the narrative goes out of its way to describe the burning sense of grievance nurses by the artist son, David, against his father’s cruel treatment of his poor wife, and you have three angry sons, each with a clear motive.

3) The diamonds Several times we are shown the old miser in his inner sanctum opening his safe and taking out a bag of ordinary looking pebbles. Only he knows that they are all rough, uncut diamonds, worth up to £10,000 (according to the internet, worth something like £860,000 today). On the most significant occasion, he calls Pilar into his sanctum, partly because he appreciates her youth and beauty, partly to discover more about her life story. But during this interview he is prompted to take the diamonds out of the safe and show them to her. a) She initially doesn’t understand that these ordinary looking pebbles are in fact uncut diamonds but, when she does, is visibly impressed and, maybe, greedy. b) Their conversation is interrupted by Horbury knocking on the door to announce that tea is ready, so Simeon tells Pilar to ‘Put ’em back in the safe and bang it to.’ But the narrative carefully omits to tell us whether she does or not. Did she steal them?

4) An inspector calls Somebody did, because the last big fact relevant to the case is that later the same afternoon, old Simeon realised the diamonds were missing from the safe and contacted the local police. He rang the local police station at around 5.10pm and asked the local top officer, Superintendent Sugden, to call round later, say around 8pm. So at around 8pm Sugden arrives, tells the butler an anodyne story that he’s calling for contributions to some police charity – but goes up to his room to see Simeon who tells him the diamonds are missing and that it is either someone in his family, or an outsider.

Simeon tells the inspector to come back later, in an hour’s time, around 9.15, because he himself will first hold a family conference and see whether he can deal with the theft just within the family.

So the inspector promises to do this and does, indeed, return to the house at 9.15, and knocks on the door just as the horrible scream and supposed murder of Simeon takes place. Thus he is on the spot immediately and is among the crowd round the door to Simeon’s room when it is broken down, and observes very closely everyone’s words and actions on the spot, at the scene, in the immediate minutes following the discovery of the body.

Enter Poirot

Guess what? World famous detective Hercule Poirot just happens to be taking a holiday in the neighbourhood (in the fictional county of ‘Middleshire’) so the Chief Constable of Middleshire, Colonel Johnson, invites him to the station to ask if would be prepared to help with the investigation. It would be a shorter, different book if he said no but Poirot, of course, says yes – although he tactfully realises he must work closely with and not step on the toes of the chief investigating officer, Superintendent Sugden.

The interview board

Things proceed in the familiar way, with Poirot, Inspector Sugden and Chief Constable Johnson setting up a kind of interview board in a small study of the big house (p.91), and calling all the family members in, one by one, to interview them about their backstories, their resentments against the murdered man, and their precise actions and locations at the time of the murder.

And once the formal interviews are over Poirot, of course, moves to the next stage of his process, which is to contrive to have more informal chats with each member, on the tried and trusted basis that:

‘In conversation, points arise! If a human being converses much, it is impossible for him to avoid the truth!’ (Chapter 15)

Cast

Lee family

• Mr Simeon Lee – owner of Gorston Hall, Longdale, Addlesfield, an invalid, mostly confined to his room with rheumatoid arthritis
• Alfred Lee – son, married to Lydia and still living at home
• Lydia Lee – Alfred’s practical wife – ‘an energetic, lean greyhound of a woman. She was amazingly thin, but all her movements had a swift, startled grace about them’
• David Lee – ran away to London to become an artist and married…
• Hilda Lee – ‘An over‐stout dumpy middle‐aged woman—not clever—not brilliant—but with something about her that you couldn’t pass over’ – ‘solid comfortable strength’
• George Lee – MP for Westeringham, ‘a somewhat corpulent gentleman of forty‐one. His eyes were pale blue and slightly prominent with a suspicious expression, he had a heavy jowl, and a slow pedantic utterance’
• Magdalene Lee – George’s wife, 20 years younger, ‘a slender creature, a platinum blonde with plucked eyebrows and a smooth egg‐like face. It could, on occasions, look quite blank and devoid of any expression whatever’ – ‘meretricious airs and graces’
• Pilar Estravados – daughter of Lee’s daughter Jennifer i.e. his grand-daughter
• Stephen Farr – ‘very handsome. She liked his deeply bronzed face and his high‐bridged nose and his square shoulders’
• Tressilian – elderly butler, white‐haired and slightly bowed, been with the family 40 years
• Sydney Horbury – male nurse attendant to Mr Lee

Outsiders

• Colonel Johnson – Chief Constable of Middleshire
• Superintendent Sugden – ‘a large handsome man. He wore a tightly buttoned blue suit and moved with a sense of his own importance’
• Police doctor
• Mr Charlton – the family lawyer, ‘an old‐fashioned type of solicitor with a cautious blue eye’
• Doris Buckle – young lady Horbury took to the cinema on the fatal evening i.e. his alibi

Bored old people

In ‘Appointment with Death’, old Mrs Boynton is described as bored with her total control over her terrified step-children, and so having come on holiday to the Holy Land as it was risky, to take a chance and play with her control over them.

In exactly the same way, old Simeon Lee is described as being bored and wanting to amuse himself by messing with his family.

‘The poor old one, he sits in his chair and he has lost the diversions of his younger days. So he invents a new diversion for himself. He amuses himself by playing upon the cupidity and the greed of human nature—yes, and on its emotions and its passions, too!’ (Poirot, Chapter 10)

Stereotyping

All Agatha Christie’s stories are made out of clichés and stereotypes (the miserly old man, the devoted family retainer, the dutiful son, the wild son, the glamorous young wife etc etc) – it’s just that they’re handled with enough style and brio to lull you into accepting them.

Obviously it applies to gender stereotypes as well: the characters are all recognisable types, as obvious in their way as types in restoration comedy – a couple of strapping young chaps, a weak artistic man, a pompous male MP, contrasted with a platinum blonde, a plump mumsy woman, a practical efficient woman, and the Spanish firebrand.

And this brings us to national and ethnic stereotypes. The figure of Pilar can’t be mentioned without one or other character adding their tuppence to the pile of national stereotypes. If you like cartoons and caricatures, they’re very amusing.

Magdalene said: ‘I can’t help feeling that the manner of my father‐in‐law’s death was somehow significant. It – it was so very unEnglish.’
Hercule Poirot turned slowly. His grave eyes met hers in innocent inquiry.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘The Spanish touch, you think?’
‘Well, they are cruel, aren’t they?’ Magdalene spoke with an effect of childish appeal. ‘All those bull fights and things!’
(Part 4, Chapter 1)

Bookishness

All Christie’s novels contain characters comparing their events and characters to events and characters in detective stories. This has puzzled me a bit – I think it’s in order to emphasise their artificiality which, in a funny way, ends up making you suspend disbelief and accept their preposterous plots and outrageous explanations more readily.

Colonel Johnson stared at Sugden for some minutes before he spluttered: ‘Do you mean to tell me, Superintendent, that this is one of those damned cases you get in detective stories where a man is killed in a locked room by some apparently supernatural agency?’ (Chapter 8)

What was it that the señorita picked up?’
Sugden sighed.
‘I could give you three hundred guesses! I’ll show it to you. It’s the sort of thing that solves the whole mystery in detective stories! If you can make anything out of it, I’ll retire from the police force!’ (Part 4, II)

This is a very rare example of a Christie novel which doesn’t namecheck Sherlock Holmes at least once.

Poirot’s OCD

Considering it’s so famous, there are remarkable few instances in each novel of Poirot’s symmetry obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) i.e. his compulsion to rearrange household objects until they are just so. Only one or two in each novel. They’re one of the score or so stock phrases, moments or clichés which she knows she has to include in each novel but learned to deploy at just the right moment, crystallising a mood or scene. Thus after they’ve interviewed half a dozen of the family, the Chief Constable turns to Poirot and asks his opinion, triggering a moment while Poirot fiddles with the stuff in front of him while he, in parallel, arranges his thoughts into a similar order and symmetry.

Hercule Poirot leaned forward. He straightened the blotter in front of him and flicked a minute speck of dust from a candlestick. (Chapter 10)

Poirot and Wittgenstein

In his later philosophy, the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein concluded that many problems of philosophy were caused by taking the wrong view or perspective. If you could only find the right perspective, if you viewed them from the correct angle, the problem wasn’t so much solved as simply disappeared. Same with Poirot. Thus, having called the family together to make the Big Reveal, Poirot first enumerates all the facts surrounding the murder which come to looked, even to Poirot, more and more fantastical and improbable – until, as so often, he realised that he was approaching the entire thing from the wrong angle.

‘So now we arrive at the point where not only the behaviour of the murderer is extraordinary, but the behaviour of Simeon Lee also is extraordinary! And I say to myself: “This thing is all wrong!” Why? Because we are looking at it from the wrong angle. We are looking at it from the angle that the murderer wants us to look at it…’ (Part 6)

Change your vantage point, move your ground, think the same evidence through from a completely different position, perspective or angle and… all the problems disappear: the mystery is solved. Just as Wittgenstein thought most philosophical problems simply evaporated, if you view them from the correct perspective.

Comedy

In my opinion the most important thing about Agatha Christie’s novels is that they are comedies. The psychology is paper thin, the characters teeter on being caricatures, the plots are cunning at the expense of being wildly improbable. The one ordinary. non-ridiculous thing about them is the warmth and good humour and occasional downright funniness of many of the characters.

Poirot may be a great sleuthing genius but his real significance is as a wonderful comic creation. Here he is comparing moustaches with the superintendent, in a little scene designed to play his vanity and foreign foppishness off against another of Christie’s caricature bluff, no-nonsense English officials (cf Inspector Battle, Colonel Race, Colonel Carbury et al).

He said, and there was a wistful note in his voice: ‘It is true that your moustache is superb… Tell me, do you use for it a special pomade?’
‘Pomade? Good lord, no!’
‘What do you use?’
‘Use? Nothing at all. It – it just grows.’
Poirot sighed.
‘You are favoured by nature.’ He caressed his own luxuriant black moustache, then sighed.
‘However expensive the preparation,’ he murmured, ‘to restore the natural colour does somewhat impoverish the quality of the hair.’
Superintendent Sugden, uninterested in hair‐dressing problems, was continuing in a stolid manner…

Marriage

According to the internet:

Shakespearean comedies frequently conclude with multiple marriages, symbolizing resolution and happiness. Plays like As You Like It, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Much Ado About Nothing feature several couples tying the knot, often after overcoming obstacles and misunderstandings.

Over three hundred years later this is just as true of Agatha Christie’s detective novels / comedies.

I know that real aficionados revel in the very complicated plots, the intricate interlocking of multiple characters all with plausible motives etc. But to someone raised on Shakespeare, what’s really noticeable is how – like comedies from the ancient Greeks, the Romans, through Shakespeare into 18th sentimental comedy, Victorian novels and beyond – in a sense all of that detective stuff is just fol-de-rol, stuff, padding designed to deliver a good old-fashioned marriage of the bright young heroes and heroines.

This was true of the endings of:

1. ‘Death on the Nile’: wherein Cornelia Robson announces her engagement to Dr Bessner (much to the chagrin of rival suitor Ferguson and Cornelia’s cousin, Miss Van Schuyler) while sweet Rosalie Otterbourne and hapless Tim Allerton become engaged.

2. ‘Appointment with Death’: wherein the psychologist Sarah King marries Raymond Boynton, Carol Boynton marries Jefferson Cope, and Ginevra Boynton marries Dr Gerard, a festival of weddings!

3. Same here: the two young people we met right at the start, on a train to Middleshire – Pilar and Stephen – have all along been attracted and, in the last few pages, we learn are going to get married and move back to South Africa.

And even the bickering siblings and bad-tempered couples are reconciled exactly as in a Shakespearian comedy. Alfred and Lydia agree they’ll sell the house where so much unhappiness has happened and he, tentatively, apologises for being such a heel.

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…’

Sweet and lovely happy endings all round. Well, it was Christmas :).

Credit

‘Hercule Poirot’s Christmas’ by Agatha Christie was published by the Collins Crime Club in 1938.

Related links

• Hercule Poirot’s Christmas online (PDF)
• Agatha Christie website

Related reviews

• Agatha Christie reviews
• 1930s reviews