В 1930 году, путешествуя по Ираку, на раскопках в Уре она познакомилась со своим будущим супругом – археологом Максом Маллоуэном. С тех пор она периодически проводила несколько месяцев в году на Ближнем Востоке в экспедициях вместе с мужем. «Мой муж археолог, – сказала как-то писательница, – а археологи – это детективы прошлого».
В 1971 году за достижения в области литературы Агата Кристи была удостоена ордена Британской Империи, обладательницы которого также приобретают дворянский титул «дама» (англ. dame), употребляющийся перед именем.
Писательница умерла 12 января 1976 года у себя дома в городе Уоллингфорд, графство Оксфордшир, и была похоронена в деревне Чолси.
«Королева детектива» принадлежит к числу писателей, для творчества которых острая наблюдательность и цепкая память играют роль более важную, чем для других. Она блестяще владеет умением заинтриговать читателя, не отпускает его внимания до самой развязки, которая почти всегда бывает неожиданной, но тем не менее психологически убедительной. В лучших произведениях она старается следовать традициям детективной школы Эдгара По и Гилберта Кийта Честертона, однако сама писательница не раз говорила о своей зависимости от «шерлок-холмсовского построения сюжета». Читателя она заставляет «думать, а не бегать, словно ищейка», и возможность поразмышлять над разгадкой преступления привлекает не меньше, чем неизменно занимательный сюжет.
События романа «Рождество Эркюля Пуаро» разворачиваются накануне и после Рождества, с 22 по 27 декабря, в загородном доме Горстон-холл в вымышленном городе Лонгдейле на границе Англии и Шотландии. В центре повествования – убийство хозяина дома, престарелого миллионера Симеона Ли, который впервые за двадцать лет решил собрать на Рождество всех своих детей. Убийство происходит непосредственно в вечер перед Рождеством после большого семейного скандала. Основное расследование ведет талантливый инспектор Сагден при поддержке полковника Джонсона, начальника местной полиции. Поскольку в вечер убийства в доме Джонсона гостил его друг Эркюль Пуаро, полковник приглашает знаменитого детектива помочь в раскрытии убийства в качестве неофициального консультанта.
My dear James
You have always been one of the most faithful and kindly of my readers, and I was therefore seriously perturbed when I received from you a word of criticism.
You complained that my murders were getting too refined – anaemic, in fact. You yearned for a ‘good violent murder with lots of blood’. A murder where there was no doubt about its being murder!
So this is your special story – written for you. I hope it may please.
Your affectionate sister-in-law
Part 1
December 22nd
I
Stephen pulled up the collar of his coat as he walked briskly along the platform. Overhead a dim fog clouded the station. Large engines hissed superbly, throwing off clouds of steam into the cold raw air. Everything was dirty and smoke-grimed.
Stephen thought with revulsion: ‘What a foul country – what a foul city!’
His first excited reaction to London, its shops, its restaurants, its well-dressed, attractive women, had faded. He saw it now as a glittering rhinestone set in a dingy setting.
Supposing he were back in South Africa now… He felt a quick pang of homesickness. Sunshine – blue skies – gardens of flowers – cool blue flowers – hedges of plumbago – blue convolvulus clinging to every little shanty.
And here – dirt, grime, and endless, incessant crowds – moving, hurrying – jostling. Busy ants running industriously about their ant-hill.
For a moment he thought, ‘I wish I hadn’t come…[1]’
Then he remembered his purpose and his lips set back in a grim line. No, by hell, he’d go on with it! He’d planned this for years. He’d always meant to do – what he was going to do. Yes, he’d go on with it!
That momentary reluctance, that sudden questioning of himself: ‘Why? Is it worth it?[2] Why dwell on the past? Why not wipe out the whole thing?’ – all that was only weakness. He was not a boy – to be turned this way and that by the whim of the moment. He was a man of forty, assured, purposeful. He would go on with it. He would do what he had come to England to do.
He got on the train and passed along the corridor looking for a place. He had waved aside a porter and was carrying his own raw-hide suitcase. He looked into carriage after carriage. The train was full. It was only three days before Christmas. Stephen Farr looked distastefully at the crowded carriages.
People! Incessant, innumerable people! And all so – so – what was the word – so drab-looking! So alike, so horribly alike! Those that hadn’t got faces like sheep had faces like rabbits, he thought. Some of them chattered and fussed. Some, heavily middle-aged men, grunted. More like pigs, those. Even the girls, slender, egg-faced, scarlet-lipped, were of a depressing uniformity.
He thought with a sudden longing of open veldt, sun-baked and lonely…
And then, suddenly, he caught his breath, looking into a carriage. This girl was different. Black hair, rich creamy pallor – eyes with the depth and darkness of night in them. The sad proud eyes of the South… It was all wrong that this girl should be sitting in this train among these dull, drab-looking people – all wrong that she should be going into the dreary midlands of England. She should have been on a balcony, a rose between her lips, a piece of black lace draping her proud head, and there should have been dust and heat and the smell of blood – the smell of the bull-ring[3] – in the air… She should be somewhere splendid, not squeezed into the corner of a third-class carriage.
He was an observant man. He did not fail to note the shabbiness of her little black coat and skirt, the cheap quality of her fabric gloves, the flimsy shoes and the defiant note of a flame-red handbag. Nevertheless splendour was the quality he associated with her. She was splendid, fine, exotic…
What the hell was she doing in this country of fogs and chills and hurrying industrious ants?
He thought, ‘I’ve