Рождество Эркюля Пуаро

УДК 
821.111

ББК 
81.2 Англ-93

 
К82

ISBN 978-5-9925-1692-0

Кристи, Агата.

К82 
Рождество Эркюля Пуаро : книга для чтения на 

английском языке / А. Кристи. – Санкт-Петербург : 
КАРО, 2023. – 352 с. – (Detective Story).

ISBN 978-5-9925-1692-0.

События романа «Рождество Эркюля Пуаро» разворачи-

ваются накануне и после Рождества. 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.

Неадаптированный текст романа снабжен коммента риями 

и словарем. Книга предназначена для студентов языковых вузов 
и всех любителей детективного жанра.

УДК 821.111 

ББК 81.2 Англ-93

AGATHA CHRISTIE

HERCULE POIROT'S CHRISTMAS

В оформлении обложки использован  

фрагмент орнамента Уильяма Морриса.

Hercule Poirot's Christmas Copyright © 1938  
Agatha Christie Limited. All rights reserved.
AGATHA CHRISTIE, POIROT аnd the Agatha 
Christie Signature аre registered trade marks  
of Agatha Christie Limited in the UK and  
elsewhere. All rights reserved.
© КАРО, 2023
Все права защищены

Agatha Christie is known throughout the world 

as the Queen of Crime. Her books have sold over a 
billion copies in English with another billion in 100 
foreign countries. She is the most widely published 
author of all time and in any language, outsold only 
by the Bible and Shakespeare. She is the author of 
80 crime novels and short story collections, 19 plays, 
and six novels written under the name of Mary 
Westmacott.

Agatha Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair 

at Styles, was written towards the end of the First 
World War, in which she served as a VAD. In it she 
created Hercule Poirot, the little Belgian detective 
who was destined to become the most popular 
detective in crime fiction since Sherlock Holmes. It 
was eventually published by The Bodley Head 
in 1920.

HERCULE POIROT’S CHRISTMAS

In 1926, after averaging a book a year, Agatha 

Christie wrote her masterpiece. The Murder of Roger 
Ackroyd was the first of her books to be published 
by Collins and marked the beginning of an author-
publisher relationship which lasted for 50 years and 
well over 70 books. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd 
was also the first of Agatha Christie’s books to be 
dramatised – under the name Alibi – and to have a 
successful run in London’s West End. The Mousetrap, 
her most famous play of all, opened in 1952 and is 
the longest-running play in history.

Agatha Christie was made a Dame in 1971. She 

died in 1976, since when a number of books have 
been published posthumously: the bestselling novel 
Sleeping Murder appeared later that year, followed 
by her autobiography and the short story collections 
Miss Marple’s Final Cases, Problem at Pollensa Bay 
and While the Light Lasts. In 1998 Black Coffee was 
the first of her plays to be novelised by another 
author, Charles Osborne.

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

Agatha

PART 1

December 22nd

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 ques-

tioning 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 his 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.

1 I wish I hadn’t come… – (разг.) Лучше бы я не 

возвращался...

2 Is it worth it? – (разг.) А стоит ли?

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-ring1 – 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 

1 the smell of the bull-ring – (зд.) запах корриды

10

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 got to know who she is and what 

she’s doing here... I’ve got to know...’

II

Pilar sat squeezed up against the window and 

thought how very odd the English smelt... It was 
what had struck her so far most forcibly about 
England – the difference of smell. There was no 
garlic and no dust and very little perfume. In this 
carriage now there was a smell of cold stuffiness – 
the sulphur smell of the trains – the smell of soap 
and another very unpleasant smell – it came, she 
thought, from the fur collar of the stout woman 
sitting beside her. Pilar sniffed delicately, imbibing 
the odour of mothballs reluctantly. It was a funny 
scent to choose to put on yourself, she thought.

A whistle blew, a stentorian voice cried out 

something and the train jerked slowly out of the 
station. They had started. She was on her way...

Her heart beat a little faster. Would it be all right? 

Would she be able to accomplish what she had set