David Lee

In the novel Hercule Poirot's Christmas, David Lee is the husband of Hilda. he is an artist and the son of Simeon Lee.

David has fair hair, which is "practically untouched by grey", and one lock of it tends to stray down over his forehead. His eyes are blue, and he is "strangely boyish-looking". His face has "the mild quality of a Burne Jones knight". He closely resembles his mother, Adelaide Lee.

At the beginning of the novel, David has received a letter from his father, asking him to bring his wife home for Christmas. David asks Hilda what they should do about it. He tells her that he hates Gorston Hall, and that he hated every minute he spent there.

David had been devoted to his mother, and he mentions that his mother told him things, and that she knew how he loved her.

David believed that his mother had died because his father had broken her heart. He then decided that he would not go on living at home. His father had intended for him to go into the family business, but that would have meant living at home, and he felt that he would not have been able to stand it.

David went to London and studied painting, and Simeon warned him that if he did so, he would receive a small allowance while he was alive, and nothing when he died. David said that he did not care, and that was the last time he had seen his father, before the events of the novel.

David tells Hilda that he realises that he will never be a great artist, but that they are happy enough in the cottage in which they live.

David tells Hilda that he cannot forget the past, and she points out that he will not. He tells her that the Lees are like that, tending to remember and brood about things for years. Hilda tells him that it is not natural to do so, and tells him that she wants him to go to Gorston Hall to see his father for Christmas.

When David is at Gorston Hall, he sees the chair his mother used to sit in, and remembers that he used to sit on a stool while she read Jack the Giant Killer to him. He was about six years old at the time.

David finds the piano in the music room, and plays one of Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, which he remembers his mother playing.

Simeon later calls the family up to his room, and mentions that his late wife was a good woman, but was "deadly dull", and that she "had the brains of a louse". This greatly angers David.

David is in the music room, playing the "Dead March", when the sound of furniture being overturned and a scream is heard from Simeon's room upstairs. Hilda later tells Poirot that this showed that the wish to kill was in David's heart. However, she tells him that David did not kill his father.

After Simeon is found dead, David quotes, "The mills of God grind slowly..." After Poirot finds out about this, he explains that David could not forgie his father's treatment of his mother, and when he stood by his father's dead body, some part of him was appeased and satsfied.

Hilda later recalls David telling her that he can forgive his father now, not because he is dead, but because his childish hate of him is dead. He mentioned that he felt like a great load had been lifted off his back.

At the end of the novel, Alfred tells David that he and Lydia have decided to sell the house, and asks David if he would like some of the things that had belonged to their mother, such as her chair and footstool. David says that he does not want anything out of the house, as he feels it is better to break with the past altogether.

Agatha Christie's Poirot
David is not featured in the simplified family tree in 1995 ITV adaptation of Hercule Poirot's Christmas. Aspects of his character, such as his affection for his mother are incorporated into Alfred Lee.

Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie
In Meurtes en solde, the France Televisions adaptation of the novel done during season 2 of Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie, the parallel character is David Krepps.