employer and dupe Louise into being a witness to the "crime". The pair aimed to pin the blame on Alfred, not realising he had gone to the pub for his lunch earlier than usual and, therefore, had an alibi. When Miss Marple sees the rockery on which the fake Miss Greenshaw had been working has had plants pulled up as well as weeds, something a skilled gardener would never do, she realises her guess was correct. Alfred inherits "Greenshaw's Folly". Literary significance and reception Maurice Richardson of The Observer on 18 December 1960 said, "She has never been at her best in the short form. These six are exceedingly far from masterpieces. Yet they engender a ghost of the old Christmas number euphoria, still, and may ease you during a plethora, or one of those Stations of the Cross on wheels, called railway journeys." Robert Barnard: "A late collection, with several of the 'long-short' stories which suit Christie well. Less rigorous than her best, however, and the last story, Greenshaw's Folly, has a notable example of Miss Marple's habit of drawing solutions from a hat, with hardly a trace of why or wherefore." References to other works Dr Stillingfleet who plays a role in "The Dream" later appears in the full-length Hercule Poirot mystery, Third Girl. Poirot's reference to believing "six impossible things before breakfast" in The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding is a quotation from chapter 5 of Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll when Alice says that she cannot believe in impossible things and the White Queen replies that she has not had enough practice and that she, "always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast". Adaptations Television All five of the Poirot stories were adapted for television as part of the series Agatha Christie's Poirot. "The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding" was adapted under the American name "The Theft of the Royal Ruby". The story was slightly altered. 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. When Bridget is apparently murdered, Poirot places the real ruby, not a paste one, in the supposedly dead girl's hand. Lee-Wortley makes off with it, together with Iris Moffat, a girlfriend who has been pretending to be