Thomas Godfrey (Ed) (9 page)

The
Adventure of the Christmas Pudding is an indulgence of my own, since it recalls
to me, very pleasurably, the Christmases of my youth. After my father s death,
my mother and I always spent Christmas with my brother-in-law’s family in the
north of England — and what superb Christmases they were for a child to
remember! Abney Hall had everything! The garden boasted a waterfall, a stream,
and a tunnel under the drive! The Christmas fare was of gargantuan proportions.
I was a skinny child, appearing delicate, but actually of robust health and
perpetually hungry! The boys of the family and I used to vie with each other as
to who could eat most on Christmas Day. Oyster Soup and Turbot went down
without undue zest, but then came Roast Turkey, Boiled Turkey and an enormous
Sirloin of Beef. The boys and I had two helpings of all three! We then had Plum
Pudding, Mince-pies, Trifle and every kind of dessert. During the afternoon we
ate chocolates solidly. We neither felt, nor were, sick! How lovely to be
eleven years old and greedy!

What
a day of delight, from “Stockings “ in bed in the morning, Church and all the Christmas
hymns, Christmas dinner, Presents, and the final Lighting of the Christmas
Tree!

And
how deep my gratitude to the kind and hospitable hostess who must have worked
so hard to make Christmas Day a wonderful memory to me still in my old age.

So
let me dedicate this to the memory of Abney Hall — its kindness and its
hospitality.

And
a happy Christmas to all who read (it).

Agatha Christie

“I
regret exceedingly—”
said M. Hercule Poirot.

He was interrupted. Not rudely
interrupted. The interruption was suave, dexterous, persuasive rather than
contradictory.

“Please don’t refuse offhand, M.
Poirot. There are grave issues of State. Your co-operation will be appreciated
in the highest quarters.”

“You are too kind,” Hercule Poirot
waved a hand, “but I really cannot undertake to do as you ask. At this season
of the year—”

Again Mr. Jesmond interrupted. “Christmas
time,” he said, persuasively. “An old-fashioned Christmas in the English
countryside.”

Hercule Poirot shivered. The thought
of the English countryside at this season of the year did not attract him.

“A good old-fashioned Christmas!”
Mr. Jesmond stressed it.

“Me—I am not an Englishman,” said
Hercule Poirot. “In my country, Christmas, it is for the children. The New
Year, that is what we celebrate.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Jesmond, “but
Christmas in England is a great institution and I assure you at Kings Lacey you
would see it at its best. It’s a wonderful old house, you know. Why, one wing
of it dates from the fourteenth century.”

Again Poirot shivered. The thought
of a fourteenth-century English manor house filled him with apprehension. He
had suffered too often in the historic country houses of England. He looked
round appreciatively at his comfortable modern flat with its radiators and the
latest patent devices for excluding any kind of draught.

“In the winter,” he said firmly, “I
do not leave London.”

“I don’t think you quite appreciate,
M. Poirot, what a very serious matter this is.” Mr. Jesmond glanced at his
companion and then back at Poirot.

Poirot’s second visitor had up to
now said nothing but a polite and formal “How do you do.” He sat now, gazing
down at his well-polished shoes, with an air of the utmost dejection on his
coffee-coloured face. He was a young man, not more than twenty-three, and he was
clearly in a state of complete misery.

“Yes, yes,” said Hercule Poirot. “Of
course the matter is serious. I do appreciate that. His Highness has my
heartfelt sympathy.”

“The position is one of the utmost
delicacy,” said Mr. Jesmond.

Poirot transferred his gaze from the
young man to his older companion. If one wanted to sum up Mr. Jesmond in a
word, the word would have been discretion. Everything about Mr. Jesmond was
discreet. His well-cut but inconspicuous clothes, his pleasant, well-bred voice
which rarely soared out of an agreeable monotone, his light-brown hair just
thinning a little at the temples, his pale serious face. It seemed to Hercule
Poirot that he had known not one Mr. Jesmond but a dozen Mr. Jesmonds in his
time, all using sooner or later the same phrase—”A position of the utmost
delicacy.”

“The police,” said Hercule Poirot, “can
be very discreet, you know.”

Mr. Jesmond shook his head firmly.

“Not the police,” he said. “To
recover the—er—what we want to recover will almost inevitably invoke taking
proceedings in the law courts and we know so little. We
suspect,
but we do not
know.”

“You have my sympathy,” said Hercule
Poirot again.

If he imagined that his sympathy was
going to mean anything to his two visitors, he was wrong. They did not want
sympathy, they wanted practiced help. Mr. Jesmond began once more to talk about
the delights of an English Christmas.

“It’s dying out, you know,” he said,
“the real old-fashioned type of Christmas. People spend it at hotels nowadays.
But an English Christmas with all the family gathered round, the children and
their stockings, the Christmas tree, the turkey and plum pudding, the crackers.
The snowman outside the window—”

In the interests of exactitude,
Hercule Poirot intervened.

“To make a snow-man one has to have
the snow,” he remarked severely. “And one cannot have snow to order, even for
an English Christmas.”

“I was talking to a friend of mine
in the meteorological office only today,” said Mr. Jesmond, “and he tells me
that it is highly probable there
will
be snow this
Christmas.”

It was the wrong thing to have said.
Hercule Poirot shuddered more forcefully than ever.

“Snow in the country!” he said. “That
would be still more abominable. A large, cold, stone manor house.”

“Not at all,” said Mr. Jesmond. “Things
have changed very much in the last ten years or so. Oil-fired central heating.”

“They have oil-fired central heating
at Kings Lacey?” asked Poirot. For the first time he seemed to waver.

Mr. Jesmond seized his opportunity. “Yes,
indeed,” he said, “and a splendid hot water system. Radiators in every bedroom.
I assure you, my dear M. Poirot, Kings Lacey is comfort itself in the winter
time. You might even find the house
too
warm.”

“That is most unlikely,” said
Hercule Poirot.

With practised dexterity Mr. Jesmond
shifted his ground a little.

“You can appreciate the terrible
dilemma we are in,” he said, in a confidential manner.

Hercule Poirot nodded. The problem
was, indeed, not a happy one. A young potentate-to-be, the only son of the
ruler of a rich and important native State had arrived in London a few weeks
ago. His country had been passing through a period of restlessness and
discontent. Though loyal to the father whose way of life had remained
persistently Eastern, popular opinion was somewhat dubious of the younger
generation. His follies had been Western ones and as such looked upon with
disapproval.

Recently, however, his betrothal had
been announced. He was to marry a cousin of the same blood, a young woman who,
though educated at Cambridge, was careful to display no Western influence in
her own country. The wedding day was announced and the young prince had made a
journey to England, bringing with him some of the famous jewels of his house to
be reset in appropriate modern settings by Cartier. These had included a very
famous ruby which had been removed from its cumbersome old-fashioned necklace
and had been given a new look by the famous jewellers. So far so good, but
after this came the snag. It was not to be supposed that a young man possessed
of much wealth and convivial tastes, should not commit a few follies of the
pleasanter type. As to that there would have been no censure. Young princes
were supposed to amuse themselves in this fashion. For the prince to take the
girl friend of the moment for a walk down Bond Street and bestow upon her an
emerald bracelet or a diamond clip as a reward for the pleasure she had
afforded him would have been regarded as quite natural and suitable,
corresponding in fact to the Cadillac cars which his father invariably
presented to his favourite dancing girl of the moment.

But the prince had been far more
indiscreet than that. Flattered by the lady’s interest, he had displayed to her
the famous ruby in its new setting, and had finally been so unwise as to accede
to her request to be allowed to wear it—just for one evening!

The sequel was short and sad. The
lady had retired from their supper table to powder her nose. Time passed. She
did not return. She had left the establishment by another door and since then
had disappeared into space. The important and distressing thing was that the
ruby in its new setting had disappeared with her.

These were the facts that could not
possibly be made public without the most dire consequences. The ruby was
something more than a ruby, it was a historical possession of great
significance, and the circumstances of its disappearance were such that any
undue publicity about them might result in the most serious political
consequences.

Mr. Jesmond was not the man to put
these facts into simple language. He wrapped them up, as it were, in a great
deal of verbiage. Who exactly Mr. Jesmond was, Hercule Poirot did not know. He
had met other Mr. Jesmonds in the course of his career. Whether he was
connected with the Home Office, the Foreign Secretary or some more discreet
branch of public service was not specified. He was acting in the interests of
the Commonwealth. The ruby must be recovered.

M. Poirot, so Mr. Jesmond delicately
insisted, was the man to recover it. “Perhaps—yes,” Hercule Poirot admitted, “but
you can tell me so little. Suggestion—suspicion—all that is not very much to go
upon.”

“Come now, Monsieur Poirot, surely
it is not beyond your powers. Ah, come now.”

“I do not always succeed.”

But this was mock modesty. It was
clear enough from Poirot’s tone that for him to undertake a mission was almost
synonymous with succeeding in it.

“His Highness is very young,” Mr.
Jesmond said. “It will be sad if his whole life is to be blighted for a mere
youthful indiscretion.”

Poirot looked kindly at the downcast
young man. “It is the time for follies, when one is young,” he said
encouragingly, “and for the ordinary young man it does not matter so much. The
good papa, he pays up; the family lawyer, he helps to disentagle the
inconvenience; the young man, he learns by experience and all ends for the
best. In a position such as yours, it is hard indeed. Your approaching
marriage—”

“That is it. That is it exactly.” For
the first time words poured from the young man. “You see she is very, very
serious. She takes life very seriously. She has acquired at Cambridge many very
serious ideas. There is to be education in my country. There are to be schools.
There are to be many things. All in the name of progress, you understand, of
democracy. It will not be, she says, like it was in my father’s time. Naturally
she knows that I will have diversions in London, but not the scandal. No! It is
the scandal that matters. You see it is very, very famous, this ruby. There is
a long trail behind it, a history. Much bloodshed—many deaths!”

“Deaths,” said Hercule Poirot
thoughtfully. He looked at Mr. Jesmond. “One hopes,” he said, “it will not come
to that?”

Mr. Jesmond made a peculiar noise
rather like a hen who has decided to lay an egg and then thought better of it.

“No, no indeed,” he said, sounding
rather prim. “There is no question, I am sure, of anything of
that
kind.”

“You cannot be sure,” said Hercule
Poirot. “Whoever has the ruby now, there may be others who want to gain
possession of it, and who will not stick at a trifle, my friend.”

“I really don’t think,” said Mr.
Jesmond, sounding more prim than ever, “that we need enter into speculation of
that kind. Quite unprofitable.”