While the Light Lasts - Agatha Christie [27]
Annie paused breathless. Poirot surveyed her gravely for some minutes.
‘You read too many novelettes, Annie,’ he said at last. ‘But you have the good heart, and a certain amount of intelligence. When I return to London I will send you an excellent book upon le ménage, also the Lives of the Saints, and a work upon the economic position of woman.’
Leaving Annie gasping anew, he turned and crossed the hall. He had meant to go into the library, but through the open door he saw a dark head and a fair one, very close together, and he paused where he stood. Suddenly a pair of arms slipped round his neck.
‘If you will stand just under the mistletoe!’ said Jean.
‘Me too,’ said Nancy. M. Poirot enjoyed it all–he enjoyed it very much indeed.
Afterword
‘Christmas Adventure’ was first published as The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding in The Sketch on 12 December 1923 as the last in the second series of stories published under the heading The Grey Cells of M. Poirot. The story reappeared in the 1940s under the title ‘Christmas Adventure’ in two short-lived collections, Problem at Pollensa Bay and Christmas Adventure and Poirot Knows the Murderer before, many years later, being extended by Christie to a novella. As such, it was included in The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding and a Selection of Entrées (1960).
In the foreword to that collection, Christie described how the story recalled the Christmases of her youth which she and her mother had spent, after her father’s death in 1901, at Abney Hall in Stockport. Abney had been built by Sir James Watts, one-time Lord Mayor of Manchester and grandfather of James Watts, the husband of Christie’s elder sister, Madge. In her autobiography, published in 1977, Christie described Abney as ‘a wonderful house to have Christmas in as a child. Not only was it enormous Victorian Gothic with quantities of rooms, passages, unexpected steps, back staircases, front staircases, alcoves, niches–everything in the world that a child could want–but it also had three different pianos that you could play, as well as an organ.’ Elsewhere, she described ‘the tables groaning with food and the lavish hospitality…there was an open storeroom in which everyone could partake of chocolates and all sorts of delicacies whenever they liked.’ And, when Agatha wasn’t eating–usually in competition with James Watts’ younger brother Humphrey–she was playing with him and his brothers Lionel and Miles and their sister Nan. Perhaps she had them in mind when writing about the children in the story and the fun they had one snowy Christmas with ‘a real-live detective in the house’.
The Lonely God
I
He stood on a shelf in the British Museum, alone and forlorn amongst a company of obviously more important deities. Ranged round the four walls, these greater personages all seemed to display an overwhelming sense of their own superiority. The pedestal of each was duly inscribed with the land and race that had been proud to possess him. There was no doubt of their position; they were divinities of importance and recognized as such.
Only the little god in the corner was aloof and remote from their company. Roughly hewn out of grey stone, his features almost totally obliterated by time and exposure, he sat there in isolation, his elbows on his knees, and his head buried in his hands; a lonely little god in a strange country.
There was no inscription to tell the land whence he came. He was indeed lost, without honour or renown, a pathetic little figure very far from home. No one noticed him, no one stopped to look at him. Why should they? He was so insignificant, a block of grey stone in a corner. On either side of him were two Mexican