Agatha Christie: Hercule Poirot's Christmas

Alfred sprang to his feet.

‘You devil!’ he said. His voice was inarticulate.

Sugden was staring at Poirot. He said:

‘Do you really mean– ?’

Poirot said, with a sudden ring of authority in his voice:

‘I have had to show you the possibilities! These are the things that might have happened! Which of them actually did happen we can only tell by passing from the outside appearance to the inside reality…’

He paused and then said slowly:

‘We must come back, as I said before, to the character of Simeon Lee himself…’

There was a momentary pause. Strangely enough, all indignation and all rancour had died down. Hercule Poirot held his audience under the spell of his personality. They watched him, fascinated, as he began slowly to speak.

‘It is all there, you see. The dead man is the focus and centre of the mystery! We must probe deep into the heart and mind of Simeon Lee and see what we find there. For a man does not live and die to himself alone. That which he has, he hands on – to those who come after him…

‘What had Simeon Lee to bequeath to his sons and daughter? Pride, to begin with – a pride which, in the old man, was frustrated in his disappointment over his children. Then there was the quality of patience. We have been told that Simeon Lee waited patiently for years in order to revenge himself upon someone who had done him an injury. We see that that aspect of his temperament was inherited by the son who resembled him least in face. David Lee also could remember and continue to harbour resentment through long years. In face, Harry Lee was the only one of his children who closely resembled him. That resemblance is quite striking when we examine the portrait of Simeon Lee as a young man. There is the same high-bridged aquiline nose, the long sharp line of the jaw, the backward poise of the head. I think, too, that Harry inherited many of his father’s mannerisms – that habit, for instance, of throwing back his head and laughing, and another habit of drawing his finger along the line of his jaw.

‘Bearing all these things in mind, and being convinced that the murder was committed by a person closely connected with the dead man, I studied the family from the psychological standpoint. That is, I tried to decide which of them were psychologically possible criminals. And, in my judgment, only two persons qualified in that respect. They were Alfred Lee and Hilda Lee, David’s wife. David himself I rejected as a possible murderer. I do not think a person of his delicate susceptibilities could have faced the actual bloodshed of a cut throat. George Lee and his wife I likewise rejected. Whatever their desires, I did not think they had the temperament to take a risk. They were both essentially cautious. Mrs Alfred Lee I felt sure was quite incapable of an act of violence. She has too much irony in her nature. About Harry Lee I hesitated. He had a certain coarse truculence of aspect, but I was nearly sure that Harry Lee, in spite of his bluff and his bluster, was essentially a weakling. That, I now know, was also his father’s opinion. Harry, he said, was worth no more than the rest. That left me with two people I have already mentioned. Alfred Lee was a person capable of a great deal of selfless devotion. He was a man who had controlled and subordinated himself to the will of another for many years. It was always possible under these conditions for something to snap. Moreover, he might quite possibly have harboured a secret grudge against his father which might gradually have grown in force through never being expressed in any way. 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! The other person I considered was capable of the crime was Hilda Lee. She is the kind of individual who is capable, on occasions, of taking the law into her own hands – though never through selfish motives. Such people judge and also execute. Many Old Testament characters are of this type. Jael and Judith, for example.

‘And now having got so far I examined the circumstances of the crime itself. And the first thing that arises – that strikes one in the face, as it were – is the extraordinary conditions under which that crime took place! Take your minds back to that room where Simeon Lee lay dead. If you remember, there was both a heavy table and a heavy chair overturned, a lamp, crockery, glasses, etc. But the chair and the table were especially surprising. They were of solid mahogany. It was hard to see how any struggle between that frail old man and his opponent could result in so much solid furniture being overturned and knocked down. The whole thing seemed unreal. And yet surely no one in their senses would stage such an effect if it had not really occurred – unless possibly Simeon Lee had been killed by a powerful man and the idea was to suggest that the assailant was a woman or somebody of weak physique.

‘But such an idea was unconvincing in the extreme, since the noise of the furniture would give the alarm and the murderer would thereby have very little time to make his exit. It would surely be to anyone’s advantage to cut Simeon Lee’s throat asquietly as possible.

‘Another extraordinary point was the turning of the key in the lock from the outside. Again, there seemed no reason for such a proceeding. It could not suggest suicide, since nothing in the death itself accorded with suicide. It was not to suggest escape through the windows – for those windows were so arranged that escape that way was impossible! Moreover, once again, it involved time. Time which must be precious to the murderer!

‘There was one other incomprehensible thing – a piece of rubber cut from Simeon Lee’s spongebag and a small wooden peg shown to me by Superintendent Sugden. These had been picked up from the floor by one of the persons who first entered the room. There again – these things did not make sense! They meant exactly nothing at all! Yet they had been there.

‘The crime, you perceive, is becoming increasingly incomprehensible. It has no order, no method – enfin, it is not reasonable.

‘And now we come to a further difficulty. Superintendent Sugden was sent for by the dead man; a robbery was reported to him, and he was asked to return an hour and a half later.Why? If it is because Simeon Lee suspected his granddaughter or some other member of the family, why does he not ask Superintendent Sugden to wait downstairs while he has his interview straight away with the suspected party? With the superintendent actually in the house, his lever over the guilty person would have been much stronger.

‘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…

‘We have three things that do not make sense: the struggle, the turned key, and the snip of rubber. But there must be some way of looking at those three things which would make sense! And I empty my mind blank and forget the circumstances of the crime and take these things on their own merits. I say – a struggle. What does that suggest? Violence – breakage – noise… The key? Why does one turn a key? So that no one shall enter? But the key did not prevent that, since the door was broken down almost immediately. To keep someone in? To keep someone out? A snip of rubber? I say to myself: “A little piece of a spongebag is a little piece of a spongebag, and that is all!”

‘So you would say there is nothing there – and yet that is not strictly true, for three impressions remain: noise – seclusion – blankness…