Hercule Poirot’s Christmas

‘What about this war business?’ asked Stephen.

‘It is very terrible, yes—very sad. There has been damage done, quite a lot—yes.’

‘Which side are you on?’

Pilar’s politics seemed to be rather vague. In the village where she came from, she explained, nobody had paid very much attention to the war. ‘It has not been near us, you understand. The Mayor, he is, of course, an officer of the Government, so he is for the Government, and the priest is for General Franco—but most of the people are busy with the vines and the land, they have not time to go into these questions.’

‘So there wasn’t any fighting round you?’

Pilar said that there had not been. ‘But then I drove in a car,’ she explained, ‘all across the country and there was much destruction. And I saw a bomb drop and it blew up a car—yes, and another destroyed a house. It was very exciting!’

Stephen Farr smiled a faintly twisted smile.

‘So that’s how it seemed to you?’

‘It was a nuisance, too,’ explained Pilar. ‘Because I wanted to get on, and the driver of my car, he was killed.’

Stephen said, watching her:

‘That didn’t upset you?’

Pilar’s great dark eyes opened very wide.

‘Everyone must die! That is so, is it not? If it comes quickly from the sky—bouff—like that, it is as well as any other way. One is alive for a time—yes, and then one is dead. That is what happens in this world.’

Stephen Farr laughed.

‘I don’t think you are a pacifist.’

‘You do not think I am what?’ Pilar seemed puzzled by a word which had not previously entered her vocabulary.

‘Do you forgive your enemies, señorita?’

Pilar shook her head.

‘I have no enemies. But if I had—’

‘Well?’

He was watching her, fascinated anew by the sweet, cruel upward-curving mouth.

Pilar said gravely:

‘If I had an enemy—if anyone hated me and I hated them—then I would cut my enemy’s throat like this…’

She made a graphic gesture.

It was so swift and so crude that Stephen Farr was momentarily taken aback. He said:

‘You are a bloodthirsty young woman!’

Pilar asked in a matter-of-fact tone:

‘What would you do to your enemy?’

He started—stared at her, then laughed aloud.

‘I wonder—’ he said. ‘I wonder!’

Pilar said disapprovingly:

‘But surely—you know.’

He checked his laughter, drew in his breath and said in a low voice:

‘Yes. I know…’

Then with a rapid change of manner, he asked:

‘What made you come to England?’

Pilar replied with a certain demureness.

‘I am going to stay with my relations—with my English relations.’

‘I see.’

He leaned back in his seat, studying her—wondering what these English relations of whom she spoke were like—wondering what they would make of this Spanish stranger…trying to picture her in the midst of some sober British family at Christmas time.

Pilar asked: ‘Is it nice, South Africa, yes?’

He began to talk to her about South Africa. She listened with the pleased attention of a child hearing a story. He enjoyed her naïve but shrewd questions and amused himself by making a kind of exaggerated fairy story of it all.

The return of the proper occupants of the carriage put an end to this diversion. He rose, smiled into her eyes, and made his way out again into the corridor.

As he stood back for a minute in the doorway, to allow an elderly lady to come in, his eyes fell on the label of Pilar’s obviously foreign straw case. He read the name with interest—Miss Pilar Estravados—then as his eye caught the address it widened to incredulity and some other feeling—Gorston Hall, Longdale, Addlesfield.

He half turned, staring at the girl with a new expression—puzzled, resentful, suspicious…He went out into the corridor and stood there smoking a cigarette and frowning to himself…

III

In the big blue and gold drawing-room at Gorston Hall Alfred Lee and Lydia, his wife, sat discussing their plans for Christmas. Alfred was a squarely built man of middle age with a gentle face and mild brown eyes. His voice when he spoke was quiet and precise with a very clear enunciation. His head was sunk into his shoulders and he gave a curious impression of inertia. Lydia, his wife, was an energetic, lean greyhound of a woman. She was amazingly thin, but all her movements had a swift, startled grace about them.

There was no beauty in her careless, haggard face, but it had distinction. Her voice was charming.

Alfred said:

‘Father insists! There’s nothing else to it.’