The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding

This collection brings together six mystery stories, five featuring the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot and one featuring the elderly amateur sleuth Miss Marple. The stories range from a festive country-house caper to cases of jealousy, inheritance fraud, and elaborately staged murders.

In "The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding," a government official named Mr. Jesmond and a young foreign prince visit Poirot in London. The prince brought family jewels to London for resetting, including a celebrated ruby of political significance. He allowed a woman he was seeing to wear it, and she vanished with the stone. Jesmond persuades the reluctant Poirot to spend Christmas at Kings Lacey, a manor house where the suspected thief and her accomplice, Desmond Lee-Wortley, are staying; the thief poses as Desmond's sister. At Kings Lacey, hostess Mrs. Lacey confides that her granddaughter Sarah has become infatuated with Desmond, who preys on wealthy young women. Poirot finds a warning note on his pillow urging him not to eat the plum pudding. At Christmas dinner, an accidental switch of puddings reveals the ruby hidden inside: Desmond's supposed sister panicked upon hearing a detective was coming and pressed the ruby into a pudding she expected to retrieve later. That night, Desmond drugs the coffee and searches Poirot's room but fails to find the ruby. On Boxing Day, the day after Christmas, Poirot co-opts a mock murder the younger children have planned, staging a death scene with the help of Bridget, Mrs. Lacey's great-niece. When Poirot shows that footprints match Desmond's shoes and reveals a ruby in the "victim's" hand, Desmond snatches the stone and flees. The ruby is a paste replica; the real one remains safe in Poirot's pocket. Sarah is freed from her infatuation.

In "The Mystery of the Spanish Chest," Major Charles Rich hosts an evening party. His friend Arnold Clayton is supposedly called away to Scotland by telegram and does not attend, but the next morning Rich's manservant discovers Clayton's body inside an ornamental Spanish chest, stabbed through the neck with a stiletto. Rich is arrested. Poirot meets Margharita Clayton, the victim's beautiful wife, who insists Rich is innocent and admits she loves him. He also interviews Commander Jock McLaren, devoted to Margharita since childhood; Linda Spence, Jeremy Spence's wife, who suggests the telegram was fabricated; and Rich himself, who refuses Poirot's help. At Rich's flat, Poirot notices air holes bored in the chest and a screen repositioned to conceal it. He deduces that Clayton faked the Scottish trip and hid inside the chest to spy on his wife. The real killer is McLaren, whom Poirot compares to Iago in Shakespeare's Othello: Over months, McLaren poisoned Clayton's mind with jealousy, likely suggested the hiding plan, drugged Clayton's drink at their club, and stabbed him during the party. McLaren's motive is his own obsessive love for Margharita; by killing Clayton and framing Rich, he eliminates both rivals.

"The Under Dog" begins when Lily Margrave visits Poirot on behalf of Lady Astwell, whose husband Sir Reuben Astwell has been murdered in the Tower room of their home. Sir Reuben was struck from behind with a heavy club, and his nephew Charles Leverson has been arrested on strong evidence, including bloodstained fingerprints and an overheard quarrel. Lady Astwell insists Leverson is innocent and suspects the secretary Owen Trefusis, based on intuition alone. Poirot discovers that Lily used forged references to investigate whether Sir Reuben swindled her brother; on the murder night, she found Sir Reuben already dead. Poirot arranges for Lady Astwell to be hypnotized, and she recalls a bulge in the curtain concealing a spiral staircase. He conducts a psychological campaign, baiting Trefusis into stealing a box Poirot claims contains incriminating evidence. The truth emerges: Trefusis, returning down the spiral staircase, was trapped behind the curtain during a quarrel between the Astwells. When Sir Reuben discovered him and unleashed abuse, the meek secretary, after nine years of enduring his employer's bullying, snapped and struck Sir Reuben down. Poirot emphasizes that the most dangerous person is not the one with a violent temper but the quiet, self-controlled person pushed beyond endurance.

In "Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds," Poirot dines with his friend Henry Bonnington at the Gallant Endeavour restaurant in Chelsea. Bonnington describes an elderly regular known as "Old Father Time" who recently broke a decade of routine by coming on the wrong day and ordering foods he normally avoids. Poirot reasons that a person under stress would cling to habits, not reverse them. When the old man vanishes, Poirot identifies him as Henry Gascoigne, found dead at the bottom of his stairs. Henry's twin brother Anthony, a wealthy recluse, died the same day, and their only surviving relative is Henry's nephew, Dr. George Lorrimer, who has a bridge-game alibi. Poirot deduces that Lorrimer killed Henry after lunch, then disguised himself as the old man and dined at the restaurant to establish that Henry was alive that evening, ordering his own preferred foods rather than Henry's. The inheritance passes from Anthony's wealthy wife through both brothers to Lorrimer.

"The Dream" opens with Poirot summoned to the London mansion of Benedict Farley, an eccentric millionaire. Farley describes a recurring dream in which he shoots himself at exactly twenty-eight minutes past three each night. As Poirot leaves, he accidentally hands Farley the wrong letter, and Farley, despite wearing glasses, fails to notice. A week later, Farley is found dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. Poirot realizes the man he met was not Farley but his secretary Hugo Cornworthy in disguise: The real Farley was virtually blind without his powerful glasses, but the impersonator's normal eyesight was muddled by those same lenses. Cornworthy and Farley's second wife are lovers who conspired to murder the millionaire. Cornworthy planted the "dream" story to make the death look like suicide. On the murder day, Cornworthy used lazy-tongs, an extendable mechanical grabber, to dangle a stuffed black cat outside Farley's window, exploiting the millionaire's famous hatred of cats, and shot the near-blind Farley when he approached.

The final story, "Greenshaw's Folly," features Miss Marple. Raymond West, a novelist and Miss Marple's nephew, visits Greenshaw's Folly, a spectacularly ugly Victorian mansion, and meets Miss Greenshaw, the eccentric elderly owner. She has Raymond and a guest witness a will leaving everything to her housekeeper, Mrs. Cresswell, in lieu of wages. Lou Oxley, the niece of Raymond's wife, begins cataloging the library. One day, Lou witnesses Miss Greenshaw stagger from the garden with an arrow in her chest and collapse. Both women are locked in separate rooms. A police constable arrives, followed by the real police and Miss Greenshaw's nephew, Nat Fletcher, an actor. The will actually leaves everything to Alfred Pollock, the gardener, whose grandfather was an illegitimate son of the house's original builder. Miss Marple deduces that Mrs. Cresswell drugged the real Miss Greenshaw and impersonated her outdoors, staging the arrow attack before running upstairs to reappear as the housekeeper. Nat Fletcher, whose current play includes a policeman role, arrived in his stage costume as the "constable," locked Mrs. Cresswell's door to complete her alibi, and killed the unconscious Miss Greenshaw. Miss Marple concludes that Mrs. Cresswell and Fletcher are likely mother and son. She confirms her deduction by examining the rockery, where plants were pulled up alongside the weeds, something no real gardener would do.