Poirot realizes that the death could only be the result of murder and that the murderer was a family member.įirst published in 1938 and published in the US as Murder for Christmas (1939) and again as A Holiday for Murder (1947), Hercule Poirot’s Christmas is another one of author Agatha Christie’s famed locked-door mysteries. Sugden appears on the scene almost immediately and begins an investigation. After the family breaks his locked door down, they discover furniture, ceramics and all sorts of bric-a-brac scattered through the room and Simeon Lee lying dead, his throat cut and blood everywhere. Shortly after the policeman leaves, a terrible commotion and a loud scream emits from Simeon Lee’s room. On the night before Christmas (it’s a different night in the film), Police Superintendent Sugden appears at the house collecting for the police charity and Simeon Lee permits him to his quarters. When the family questions the decisions he has made, he angrily dismisses them all as worthless wastrels that he has no time for. It turns out that Simeon Lee has gathered the family only to anger everyone about changes he wants to make about living arrangements at Gorston Hall and, more importantly, to his will.

Lee, who made his fortune mining diamonds in South Africa years before, has long had strained relationships with every member of his family, which includes eldest son Alfred and his wife Lydia, both of whom live at Gorston Hall with old Simeon son George, an M.P., and his wife, Magdalene, who benefit by an allowance provided by old Simeon son Harry, who long ago left the family home to travel the world and granddaughter Pilar, the adult child of Simeon’s deceased daughter, Jennifer, a young lady no one in the family has ever met (estranged son David, a painter, and his wife Hilda are left out of the film version as well as Stephen Farr, the alleged son of Simeon Lee’s former business partner). Hercule Poirot’s Christmas (first broadcast January 1, 1995): The wealthy and tyrannical invalid Simeon Lee reunites his family for a “grand” Christmas get together at his manor home of Gorston Hall.

Agatha Christie’s Poirot – An Introductionġ.

Leonard bateson poirot