With an extravagant foreign gesture he raised his hand to his lips, kissed it, and wafted the kiss to the ceiling. „I am glad to hear you enjoyed it, sir,” she said graciously. Mrs Ross was the queen of the kitchen quarters. Two lean grey-haired women were beyond in the scullery washing up and a tow-haired girl was moving to and fro between the scullery and the kitchen. She was a large woman, nobly built with all the dignity of a stage duchess. There was a moment's pause and then Mrs Ross came forward in a stately manner to meet him. „It is permitted,” he asked, looking round and beaming, „that I congratulate the cook on this marvellous meal that I have just eaten?” Instead, he made his way to the enormous old-fashioned kitchen. Hercule Poirot, however, did not take a siesta. The older members of the party then retired for a welcome siesta before the tea-time ceremony of the lighting of the Christmas tree. Mince-pies and Christmas dessert followed the pudding.

A large football of a pudding, a piece of holly stuck in it like a triumphant flag and glorious flames of blue and red rising round it. On a silver dish the Christmas pudding reposed in its glory. Having either to take the risk of letting him fall down dead or of hurting his feelings to such an extent that he would probably prefer to be dead than alive, she had so far chosen the former alternative. One Christmas, she felt sure, Peverell would fall down dead. Mrs Lacey sat, her hands pressed together in nervous apprehension. Now, the supreme moment, the Christmas pudding was brought in, in state! Old Peverell, his hands and his knees shaking with the weakness of eighty years, permitted no one but himself to bear it in. Oyster soup had been consumed, two enormous turkeys had come and gone, mere carcasses of their former selves. Enormous logs crackled merrily in the wide fireplace and above their crackling rose the babel of many tongues talking together.

Agatha christie the christmas pudding