Hercule Poirot's Christmas

‘Mr Lee has always been an open-handed gentleman.’

Horbury nodded.

‘It’s the best thing about him! Well, I’ll be off now.’

‘Going to the pictures?’

‘I expect so. Ta-ta, Mr Tressilian.’

He went through the door that led to the servants’ hall.

Tressilian looked up at the clock hanging on the wall.

He went into the dining-room and laid the rolls in the napkins.

Then, after assuring himself that everything was as it should be, he sounded the gong in the hall. 

As the last note died away the police superintendent came down the stairs. Superintendent Sugden was a large handsome man. He wore a tightly buttoned blue suit and moved with a sense of his own importance.

He said affably: ‘I rather think we shall have a frost tonight. Good thing: the weather’s been very unseasonable lately.’

Tressilian said, shaking his head:

‘The damp affects my rheumatism.’

The superintendent said that the rheumatism was a painful complaint, and Tressilian let him out by the front door.

The old butler refastened the door and came back slowly into the hall. He passed his hand over his eyes and sighed. Then he straightened his back as he saw Lydia pass into the drawing-room. George Lee was just coming down the stairs.

Tressilian hovered ready. When the last guest, Magdalene, had entered the drawing-room, he made his own appearance, murmuring:

‘Dinner is served.’

In his way Tressilian was a connoisseur of ladies’ dress. He always noted and criticized the gowns of the ladies as he circled round the table, decanter in hand.

Mrs Alfred, he noted, had got on her new flowered black and white taffeta. A bold design, very striking, but she could carry it off, though many ladies couldn’t. The dress Mrs George had on was a model, he was pretty sure of that. Must have cost a pretty penny. He wondered how Mr George would like paying for it! Mr George didn’t like spending money – he never had. Mrs David now: a nice lady, but didn’t have any idea of how to dress. For her figure, plain black velvet would have been the best. Figured velvet, and crimson at that, was a bad choice. Miss Pilar, now, it didn’t matter what she wore, with her figure and her hair she looked well in anything. A flimsy cheap little white gown it was, though. Still, Mr Lee would soon see to that! Taken to her wonderful, he had. Always was the same way when a gentleman was elderly. A young face could do anything with him!

‘Hock or claret?’ murmured Tressilian in a deferential whisper in Mrs George’s ear. Out of the tail of his eye he noted that Walter, the footman, was handing the vegetables before the gravy again – after all he had been told!

Tressilian went round with the souffle. It struck him, now that his interest in the ladies’ toilettes and his misgivings over Walter’s deficiencies were a thing of the past, that everyone was very silent tonight. At least, not exactlysilent: Mr Harry was talking enough for twenty – no, not Mr Harry, the South African gentleman. And the others were talking too, but only, as it were, in spasms. There was something a little – queer about them.

Mr Alfred, for instance, he looked downright ill. As though he had had a shock or something. Quite dazed he looked and just turning over the food on his plate without eating it. The mistress, she was worried about him. Tressilian could see that. Kept looking down the table towards him – not noticeably, of course, just quietly. Mr George was very red in the face – gobbling his food, he was, without tasting it. He’d get a stroke one day if he wasn’t careful. Mrs George wasn’t eating. Slimming, as likely as not. Miss Pilar seemed to be enjoying her food all right and talking and laughing up at the South African gentleman. Properly taken with her, he was. Didn’t seem to be anything on their minds!

Mr David? Tressilian felt worried about Mr David. Just like his mother, he was, to look at. And remarkably young-looking still. But nervy; there, he’d knocked over his glass.

Tressilian whisked it away, mopped up the stream deftly. It was all over. Mr David hardly seemed to notice what he had done, just sat staring in front of him with a white face.

Thinking of white faces, funny the way Horbury had looked in the pantry just now when he’d heard a police officer had come to the house…almost as though –

Tressilian’s mind stopped with a jerk. Walter had dropped a pear off the dish he was handing. Footmen were no good nowadays! They might be stable-boys, the way they went on!

He went round with the port. Mr Harry seemed a bit distrait tonight. Kept looking at Mr Alfred. Never had been any love lost between those two, not even as boys. Mr Harry, of course, had always been his father’s favourite, and that had rankled with Mr Alfred. Mr Lee had never cared for Mr Alfred much. A pity, when Mr Alfred always seemed so devoted to his father.

There, Mrs Alfred was getting up now. She swept round the table. Very nice that design on the taffeta; that cape suited her. A very graceful lady.