Five Little Pigs characters

Appears from the start

The Belgian detective, older now and asked to investigate a murder sixteen years after it was tried and closed. He has no scene to examine, no witnesses to surprise, and nothing to work with but the memories of five people, which suits him: he has always maintained that character and psychology matter more than cigarette ash. Chapter positions in this entry run straight through the book's introduction and three parts.

Appears from the start

A young woman of twenty-one, brought up in Canada under another name, who has just learned that she is the daughter of the painter Amyas Crale and of Caroline Crale, convicted of poisoning him. Direct, courageous and entirely unwilling to live with an unanswered question, she brings Poirot a letter written by her mother before her death, swearing that she was innocent, and asks him to find out what really happened.

Appears from the start

Carla's fiance, a steady young man who supports her but would rather the past were left alone, since an unresolved question is easier to live with than a proved answer.

Appears from the start

A well-known painter, handsome, loud, greedy for life and wholly absorbed in his work, who lived at Alderbury in Devon with his wife and small daughter. He had a history of affairs with the women he painted, quarrelled magnificently and forgot about it an hour later, and was at work on a portrait when he died of poisoning sixteen years before the story opens.

Appears from the start

Amyas Crale's wife, a woman of strong feelings and a violent temper who had endured his infidelities for years, and Carla's mother. As a girl she injured her baby half-sister in a fit of rage and never forgave herself for it. She was tried for her husband's murder, convicted, and died in prison a year later.

First appears in chapter 2

The young woman Amyas Crale was painting in the summer he died, twenty years old at the time, rich, beautiful and entirely unembarrassed about being his lover. She is now Lady Dittisham, several times married, famous, and to all appearances untouched by anything. She speaks of that summer without apparent feeling.

First appears in chapter 2

Amyas Crale's oldest friend, a stockbroker who was staying at Alderbury that summer. Prosperous and hearty, he has never wavered in his conviction that Caroline Crale poisoned her husband, and he says so with an energy that has not cooled in sixteen years.

First appears in chapter 2

Philip Blake's elder brother, a shy, gentle country gentleman who lived next door to Alderbury and amused himself brewing preparations from herbs in a small laboratory. It was from his store that the poison was taken. He was quietly devoted to Caroline Crale and has never been sure of anything since.

First appears in chapter 2

The governess at Alderbury, now elderly and living in a single rented room, upright, poor and entirely composed. She was devoted to Caroline Crale and had a governess's low opinion of Amyas. Her evidence at the trial was among the most damaging.

First appears in chapter 2

Caroline Crale's younger half-sister, fifteen at the time of the murder and disfigured on one side of her face by an injury inflicted in infancy. Rebellious and hostile to her brother-in-law that summer, she is now a distinguished archaeologist who travels and works and refuses to be pitied.