The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding and a Selection of Entrées is a short story collection written by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 24 October 1960.

Poirot had given the ruby to Bridget for safekeeping on the night that Lee-Wortley tried to drug him, then switched it for a paste copy he had brought with him while arranging the "murder" scene.

Upon meeting Clayton's widow, Marguerite, he is struck by her beautiful innocence and realises quickly that she is attracted to Major Rich although she denies having an affair with him.

Inspecting the chest, Poirot finds some holes in the back and side and asks Burgess if anything in the room is noticeably different from the night of the party.

He had made numerous subtle suggestions to Clayton about his wife's infidelity to the point where the man himself hatched a plan to fake a summons to Scotland and then found a reason to get into Rich's flat where he hid in the chest to observe what happened in his absence during the party.

[3] Sir Reuben Astwell was murdered ten days previously at his country house, Mon Repos, when he was violently hit on the back of the head with a club, and his nephew Charles Leverson has been arrested.

Sir Reuben's wife, Lady Astwell, is convinced that the true criminal is the late man's secretary, Owen Trefusis, although she does not have a shred of evidence to back up this claim, relying instead on "intuition".

Arriving at Mon Repos Poirot speaks with the daunting and domineering Lady Astwell who tells him that Sir Reuben's brother and business partner, Victor, is also a guest in the house.

Both brothers were equally as hot-tempered as the other and there were many rows and disagreements in the house, quite often involving Charles Leverson, with Sir Reuben often taking his temper out on the servants.

Sir Reuben was writing late at night and Parsons was asleep when he was awakened by the sound of Leverson returning home near midnight and letting himself in.

Trefusis shows Poirot the scene of the crime and the detective is puzzled as to why there is a bloodstain on the writing desk but Sir Reuben's body was found on the floor.

He finds such a man – Captain Humphrey Naylor – and convinced there is a link with Lily sets a trap by putting his own blood on a scrap of the dress that she was wearing that night and telling her he found it in the Tower Room.

She confirms what she has already told the police – that she argued with her husband in the Tower Room some ten minutes prior to Leverson coming back home.

She also manages to recall a subliminal memory of the normally-controlled Trefusis breaking a paper knife in anger earlier in the evening when again being shouted at by Sir Reuben (thus triggering her suspicions of the man) and a strange bulge in the curtain which covered the spiral staircase to the upper portion of the tower room.

He also claims to find something on the spiral staircase which will seal the murderer's fate and leaves it in a box in his room while he makes a quick trip to London.

The secretary had left something in the upper portion of the Tower Room and was fetching it when he found himself to be an unwilling witness to the row between Sir Reuben and Lady Astwell.

There is surprise on the part of some members of the party, but Mrs Farley was told by her husband of the dreams, and she confirms that he kept a revolver in his desk drawer.

Cornworthy wore a spare pair of Farley's glasses, which left him unable to see that Poirot had initially returned the wrong letter.

He and Mrs Farley had conspired to commit the murder so that she would inherit £250,000 and the two could be together; she was the only other person who claimed the dreams were real and who knew about the revolver in her husband's desk.

Writer Raymond West, the nephew of Miss Marple, shows Horace Bindler, a literary critic, round the grounds of a local hall popularly known as "Greenshaw's Folly".

It was built in the 1860s or 1870s by a man who had made an immense fortune but had little idea of architectural style, the house being a strange mish mash of buildings from around the world.

Although strictly speaking they are trespassing, they are nevertheless welcomed by Miss Greenshaw, the elderly granddaughter of the man who built the house, when they come across her in her garden.

She says that she leaves everything to Mrs Cresswell in lieu of unpaid wages, as Miss Greenshaw is determined that nothing go to her last living relative, her nephew, the son of a roguish man called Harry Fletcher who ran away with one of her sisters.

They sign the will in the library where Miss Greenshaw shows them the copious diaries of her grandfather and expresses a wish to have them edited and published, but says she has not the time to undertake such a task.

She is working on the diaries at midday in her first-floor room when she hears a scream from the garden, and sees Miss Greenshaw staggering towards the house with an arrow embedded in her breast.

The companion had been briefly locked in her room from which Fletcher freed her; prior to that moment, Mrs Cresswell had been free to impersonate her employer and position Louise as a witness to the "crime".

The entire family, including the thieves, discovers the ruby in the pudding during Christmas dinner, and Poirot, pretending that it is a fake, takes it to safeguard it in his room.

The two thieves try to make their getaway in a private plane which crashes into a field after a pursuit from David (who mistakenly believes Sarah is running off with Lee-Wortley).

The adaptation is quite faithful to the short story except adding flashback to how Maclaren—now renamed Colonel Curtiss—got a scar on his face and an end duel between him and Major Rich.

[6] "The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding" and "Four and Twenty Blackbirds" have been turned into anime, in the series Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple (2004), episode 19 and 20.