MURDER AT CHRISTMAS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23273, 16 February 1939, Page 7

MURDER AT CHRISTMAS

By AGATHA CHRISTIE

INSTALMENT twenty-three— Poirot bowed to Lydia. He said: "Your motive, madanie, I pass over. It is sufficiently obvious. "As to the rest, you were wearing last night a Huwered taffeta dress of a V ery distinctive pattern with a cape. I will remind you of the fact that Tressilian, the butler, is short-sighted. Objects at a distance are dim and vague to him. "J will also point out that your drawing-room is' big, and lighted by heavily shaded lamps. On that night, and a minute or two before the cries were heard. Tressilian came into the drawing-room to take away the coffee cu ps. He saw you, as lie thought, in a familiar attitude by the far window, •half concealed by the heavy curtains. Lydia Loo said: "He did see me." Poirot went on,; "I suggest that it is possible that •what Tressilian saw was the capo of Tour dress, arranged to show by the window curtain, as though you yourself were standing there." Lydia said: "I was standing there . , . Alfred said: "How dare you suggest-—" Harry interrupted hiin. "Let him go on, Alfred. It's our turn next. How do you suggest that dear Alfred killed his beloved father, since we were both together in the din-ing-room at the time?" Poirot beamed at him. "That," he said, ''is very simple. An alibi gains in force according as it is unwillingly given. You and your brother are on bad terms. It is well known. You jibe at him in public. He has not a good word to say for you! But supposing that were all part of a very clever plot. Supposing that Alfred Lee is tired of dancing attendance upon an exaGting taskmaster. Supposing that you and he have got together some time ago. your plan is laid. You come home. Alfred appears to resent your presence. He shows jealousy and dislike of you. You show contempt for him. And then comes the night of the murder you have so cleverly planned together. One of you remains in ' the dining-room, ; talking, and perhaps quarreling aloud, as though two people were there. The other goes upstairs and commits the crime . . . Alfred sprang ; to his. feet. "l r oii devil,': he said. His voice was inarticulate. "You inhuman devil . . ." 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. . . . "We must come back, as I said before, to the character of Simeon Lee himself .... "What had Simeon Lee to bequeath to his sons and , daughter ? Pride, to begin with —a pride which in ihe 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 some one who had done Yvm an. injury. We .see that that aspect of Hs temperament was inherited by the son who resembled him least in fare. Da rid 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 resemb- ; lance is quite striking when we examine the portrait of Simeon Lee as a young man. "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 tho Hue 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. 1 did not- think they had the temperament to take a risk. 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 1 hesitated. He had a certain coarse truculence of aspect, but 1 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 the two people 1 have already mentioned. Alfred Lee was a person capable of a great deal of selfless devotion. He was a man who had controlled and j subordinated himsejf to the will of another person for many long years. It ,-is always possible under these conditions for something to snap. Moreover, lie might quite possibly have, harboured a secret grudge against his father, which might gradually have grown in force through Sever being expressed in any way. "It is the quietest and meekest people who are often capable of the most sudden and , unexpected violences the reason that when their control does snap, it goes entirely! "The other person 1 considered was capable of the crime, was Hilda Lee. She is the kind of individual who is capabte on occasions of taking the law 'nto her own hands —though never through .selfish j/iotivcs. Such people judge and also execute. Many Old Testament characters are of this type, vac! and Judith, for example. "And now. having got so far, I examined the circumstances of the crime ; And the first thing that arises—- ! mat strike* one in the f;iee, as it were — | ls the extraordinary conditions under ™ch that crime took place! Take £?» r minds bark to that room where "'moon Lee lay dead.. If you -Jfijnember, there was both a heavy J a »le and a , heavy chair overturned, a lamp, crockery, glasses, etc. B "t the chair and th<* table were specially surprising. They were of j solid mahogany. It .was hard to see how any struggle between that frail olt ) in a n and his opponent could re--sl|lt in s( , much solid furniture being Overturned and knocked down. Ihe "'hole thing seemed unreal. And yet surely no one in their senses would Eta ee such an effect, if it had not really Occurred—unless possibly Simeon Lee "art boon killed by a powerful man, and ® idea was to suggest that the assnilwas a woman', or somebody of weak Physique. • "hut such an ' idea was uncoilvincVS Hi the extreme, since the noise of ? e furniture falling would give the v arm and the mOrderer would thereby r?T® yei\v little time to make lus exit. would surely be to anyone's advantS? to cut Simeon Lee's throat as as possible. Another extraordinary point was turning of the key in the lock . the outside* Again there seemed I - reason for such a proceeding. J-t

A mystery story in which Hercule Poirot appears again.

(COPYIUGUT)

could not suggest, suicide, since nothing in the death itself accorded with suicide. lb 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 bo precious to the murderer!

'"There was one other incomprehensible thing—a piece of rubber cut from Simeon Leo'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 that 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. ft 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 ail hour and a half later. Why? If it is because Simeon Lee suspected his grand-daughter or some other member of his family, why does lie not asked Superintendent Sugden to wait downstairs while ho has his interview straightaway 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 tho point where not only the behaviour of the murderer is extraordinary, but the behaviour of Simotn Lee also is extraordinary 1

"And 1 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 some one in? To keep some one 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 fill!" "So you would say there is nothing there —and vet that is not strictly true, for three impressions remain. Noise —seclusion —blankness .... "Do they fit with either of my two possibles? No, they do not. To both Alfred Lee and Hilda Lee a quiet murder would have been infinitely preferable, to have wasted time in locking the door from the outside is absurd, and the [little piece of spongebag means yet once more —nothing at all!

"And yet I linvo very strongly the feeling that there is nothing absurd about this crimo—that it is on the contrary very well planned and admirably executed. That it lias, in fact, succeeded! Therefore, that everything that has happened was meant ....

[ "And then, going over it again, 1 got my first glimmer'of light .... "8100d —so much blood —blood everywhere .... An insistence on bloodfresh, wet, gleaming blood .... So much blood —too much blood .... "And a second thought comes with that. This is a crime of blood — it is in tlie blood. It is Simeon Lee's own blood that rises up against him .... Hercule Poirot leaned forward. "The two most valuable clues in this case were uttered quite unconsciously by two different people. The first was when Airs. Alfred Lee quoted a line from 'Macbeth': 'Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?' The other was a phrase- uttered bj' Tressilian, the butler. He described how he felt dazed, and things seemed to be happening that had happened before. It was a very simple occurrence that gave him that strange feeling- He heard a ring at the bell and went to open the door to Harry Lee, and -the next day ho did the same thing to Stephen Fair. - "Now why did he have that feeling? Look at Hairrv Lee and Stephen Farr and you will see why. They are astoundingly alike! That was why opening tins door to Stephen Farr was just like opening the door to Harry Lee. It; might almost have been the same man standing there. And then, only to-day, Tressilian mentioned that lie was always getting muddled between people. No wonder! Stephen Farr has a high-bridged nose, a habit of throwing his head back when lie laughs, and a trick of stroking his jaw with his forefinger. Look long and earnestly at the portrait of Simeon Lee as a young man and you see not only Harry Lee, tint Stephen Farr." Stephen moved. His chair creaked. Poirot said: "Remember that outburst of Simoon Lee's, his; tirade against his family. He said, if you remember, that he would swear he had better sons born the wrong side of the blanket. We are back again at the character of Simeon Lee. Simeon Lee, who was successful with women and who broke his wife's heart! Simeon Lee, who boasted to Pilar that he might have a bodyguard of sons almost the same age! So I came to this conclusion. Simeon Lee had not only his legitimate family in the house, but an unacknowledged and unrecognised son of his own blood." Stephen got to his feet. Poirot said: "That was your real reason, wasn't it? Not that pretty romance of the girl you met in the train! You were coming here before you met her. Coming to see what kind of a man your father was. . . ." (To h<- continued daily.)