Levering seemed taken aback; but at that moment the big gong pealed out, and everybody went in to Christmas dinner. The curtains were drawn in the dining-room, and the lights on, illuminating the long table piled high with crackers and other decorations. It was a real old-fashioned Christmas dinner. At one end of the table was the Squire, red-faced and jovial; his sister faced him at the other. M. Poirot, in honour of the occasion, had donned a red waistcoat, and his plumpness, and the way he carried his head on one side, reminded one irresistibly of a robin redbreast.
The Squire carved rapidly, and everyone fell to on turkey. The carcasses of two turkeys were removed, and there fell a breathless hush. Then Graves, the butler, appeared in state, bearing the plum-pudding aloft—a gigantic pudding wreathed in flames. A hullabaloo broke out.
‘Quick. Oh! my piece is going out. Buck up, Graves; unless it’s still burning, I shan’t get my wish.’
Nobody had leisure to notice a curious expression on the face of M. Poirot as he surveyed the portion of pudding on his plate. Nobody observed the lightning glance he sent round the table. With a faint, puzzled frown he began to eat his pudding. Everybody began to eat pudding. The conversation was more subdued. Suddenly the Squire uttered an exclamation. His face became purple and his hand went to his mouth.
‘Confound it, Emily!’ he roared. ‘Why do you let the cook put glass in the puddings?’
‘Glass?’ cried Miss Endicott, astonished.
The Squire withdrew the offending substance from his mouth.
‘Might have broken a tooth,’ he grumbled. ‘Or swallowed it and had appendicitis.’
In front of each person was a small finger-bowl of water, designed to receive the sixpences and other matters found in the trifle. Mr Endicott dropped the piece of glass into this, rinsed it and held it up.
‘God bless my soul!’ he ejaculated. ‘It’s a red stone out of one of the cracker brooches.’
‘You permit?’ Very deftly, M. Poirot took it from his fingers and examined it attentively. As the Squire had said, it was a big red stone, the colour of a ruby. The light gleamed from its facets as he turned it about.
‘Gee!’ cried Eric. ‘Suppose it’s real.’
‘Silly boy!’ said Jean scornfully. ‘A ruby that size would be worth thousands and thousands and thousands—wouldn’t it, M. Poirot?’
‘Extraordinary how well they get up these cracker things,’ murmured Miss Endicott. ‘But how did it get into the pudding?‘
Undoubtedly that was the question of the hour. Every hypothesis was exhausted. Only M. Poirot said nothing, but carelessly, as though thinking of something else, he dropped the stone into his pocket.
After dinner he paid a visit to the kitchen.
The cook was rather flustered. To be questioned by a member of the house-party, and the foreign gentleman too! But she did her best to answer his questions. The puddings had been made three days ago—‘The day you arrived, Sir.’ Everyone had come out into the kitchen to have a stir and wish. An old custom—perhaps they didn’t have it abroad? After that the puddings were boiled, and then they were put in a row on the top shelf in the larder. Was there anything special to distinguish this pudding from the others? No, she didn’t think so. Except that it was in an aluminium pudding-basin, and the others were in china ones. Was it the pudding originally intended for Christmas Day? It was funny that he should ask that. No, indeed! The Christmas pudding was always boiled in a big white china mould with a pattern of holly-leaves. But this very morning (the cook’s red face became wrathful) Gladys, the kitchen-maid, sent to fetch it down for the final boiling, had managed to drop and break it. ‘And of course, seeing that there might be splinters in it, I wouldn’t send it to table, but took the big aluminium one instead.’
M. Poirot thanked her for her information. He went out of the kitchen, smiling a little to himself, as though satisfied with the information he had obtained. And the fingers of his right hand played with something in his pocket.
‘M. Poirot! M. Poirot! Do wake up! Something dreadful’s happened!’
Thus Johnnie in the early hours of the following morning. M. Poirot sat up in bed. He wore a night-cap. The contrast between the dignity of his countenance and the rakish tilt of the night-cap was certainly droll; but its effect on Johnnie seemed disproportionate. But for his words, one might have fancied that the boy was violently amused about something. Curious sounds came from outside the door, too, suggesting soda-water syphons in difficulty.
‘Come down at once, please,’ continued Johnnie, his voice shaking slightly. ‘Someone’s been killed.’ He turned away.
‘Aha, that is serious!’ said M. Poirot.
He arose, and, without unduly hurrying himself, made a partial toilet. Then he followed Johnnie down the stairs. The house-party was clustered round the door into the garden. Their countenances all expressed intense emotion. At sight of him Eric was seized with a violent choking fit.
Jean came forward and laid her hand on M. Poirot’s arm.
‘Look!’ she said, and pointed dramatically through the open door.
‘Mon Dieu!’ ejaculated M. Poirot. ‘It is like a scene on the stage.’
His remark was not inapposite. More snow had fallen during the night, the world looked white and ghostly in the faint light of the early dawn. The expanse of white lay unbroken save for what looked like on splash of vivid scarlet.
Nancy Cardell lay motionless on the snow. She was clad in scarlet silk pyjamas, her small feet were bare, her arms were spread wide. Her head was turned aside and hidden by the mass of her clustering black hair. Deadly still she lay, and from her left side rose up the hilt of a dagger, whilst on the snow there was an ever-widening patch of crimson.
Poirot went out into the snow. He did not go to where the girl’s body lay, but kept to the path. Two tracks of
