Five Little Pigs recap

Carla Lemarchant, twenty-one, asks Poirot to reopen a case sixteen years old: her mother, Caroline Crale, was convicted of poisoning her father, the painter Amyas Crale, and died in prison, leaving a letter swearing her innocence. Poirot consults the lawyers and the police officer who worked the case, then interviews the five other people present at Alderbury that summer: Philip Blake, his brother Meredith, from whose laboratory the poison was taken, Elsa Greer, the girl Amyas was painting and sleeping with, the governess Cecilia Williams, and Caroline's disfigured young half-sister Angela Warren. He asks each to write an account of what they remember, and the five narratives contradict one another in small, revealing ways. Poirot concludes that Amyas never meant to leave his wife, only to finish the portrait, and that Elsa Greer, having overheard him say so, put coniine in his beer and afterwards planted Caroline's fingerprints on the bottle. Caroline, believing that Angela was responsible and owing her an old debt of guilt, let herself be convicted. Elsa admits it, and Carla is freed of the shadow.

Carla Lemarchant comes to Poirot with a request he has never had before. She is twenty-one, brought up abroad under another name, and has just been told that her father was the painter Amyas Crale, poisoned sixteen years ago, and that her mother, Caroline Crale, was convicted of the murder and died in prison a year later. On her twenty-first birthday Carla was given a letter written by her mother before her death, stating plainly that she was innocent. Carla is engaged to be married and will not go into that marriage, or bring up children, with the question unanswered. She asks Poirot to establish the truth about a crime with no scene left to examine, no fresh witnesses, and nothing surviving but memory. Poirot accepts, on the ground that people remember what they saw, whatever they may have made of it.

Poirot works first through the professionals: defending counsel, the prosecuting side, the solicitors and the police superintendent who handled the case. The facts are agreed. That summer Amyas Crale was at his house, Alderbury in Devon, painting a portrait of Elsa Greer, a rich girl of twenty who was openly his lover and who announced to his wife that they were to marry. Caroline Crale had endured his affairs before but not this. She was seen taking coniine from the laboratory of the neighbour Meredith Blake, who noticed the loss the next day; she said she had taken it to end her own life. The following afternoon Amyas drank iced beer carried down to him where he was painting and died of coniine poisoning. Caroline's fingerprints were on the bottle, and no one else's. Five other people were on the property that day: Philip Blake, Meredith Blake, Elsa Greer, the governess Cecilia Williams, and Caroline's fifteen-year-old half-sister Angela Warren. Every one of the men Poirot consults believes Caroline was guilty, and several of them liked her.

Poirot visits the five in turn. Philip Blake, a prosperous stockbroker and Amyas's oldest friend, is certain of Caroline's guilt and vehement about it. Meredith Blake, gentle and diffident, is racked by the fact that the poison came from his own shelves, and remembers Caroline with affection. Elsa Greer, now Lady Dittisham, married repeatedly since and famous, describes the summer in a flat voice as though it happened to somebody else. Cecilia Williams, the old governess, now poor and living in one room, is loyal to Caroline's memory and quite certain she did it. Angela Warren, disfigured in infancy by an injury Caroline inflicted in a fit of temper and now an archaeologist of standing, insists that her sister was incapable of the murder. Each remembers a different Alderbury, and each has a version of the last two days that does not quite match the others. Poirot asks all five to write him an account of everything they can recall.

The five written narratives arrive, and the discrepancies in them are more useful than the agreements. They cover the quarrel overheard on the last evening, in which Amyas told his wife that a woman would be going, and Caroline's reply that she would kill him rather than let him go; the beer carried down to the Battery garden the next morning; Angela's schoolgirl feud with her brother-in-law, including her habit of putting things into his drink to spoil it; Amyas's insistence on finishing the portrait at all costs; and Elsa's announcement of the coming marriage. Miss Williams records that she saw Caroline by the body, wiping the beer bottle and then closing her husband's dead fingers round it, which she took to be the act of a guilty woman covering her traces. Nobody's account of who went where and when quite fits with anybody else's.

Poirot draws his conclusions from the narratives and puts five questions, one to each witness, that test a specific point of memory rather than of opinion. He arranges a reconstruction with all of them present. Two things become central: the exact words of the quarrel, which everyone reports slightly differently, and the finished painting itself, which Amyas worked on to the end and which survives. Poirot asks what kind of man works steadily at a picture on the last morning of his life, and which woman the disputed sentence in the quarrel actually referred to. He also raises the question of what Caroline Crale's near-silence at her trial was for, since a woman who wipes a bottle and then makes no serious defence is behaving inconsistently unless she has a second reason.

Poirot names Elsa Greer. Amyas Crale had never intended to leave his wife; he wanted the portrait finished and meant to send Elsa away when it was done, and he said so to Caroline in the quarrel that Elsa overheard. Elsa took the coniine that Caroline had already removed from Meredith Blake's laboratory, put it into the iced beer she carried down, and afterwards wiped the bottle and pressed the dead man's fingers to it so that the death would read as suicide. Caroline believed her young half-sister Angela had done it, since Angela had been tampering with Amyas's drinks out of spite and had talked wildly about killing him, and Caroline, who had disfigured the child as a baby and never stopped paying for it, chose to be convicted rather than let the girl be suspected. The governess's evidence about the wiped bottle, which convicted Caroline, was an accurate observation of an act of protection. The portrait itself is the proof: it shows a girl watching a man die and the painter recording her face while she does it. Elsa acknowledges it without emotion, remarking that she died that afternoon herself. Carla Lemarchant is left with her mother's name cleared and her own life free to begin.

Poirot brings the five together and states what happened. Elsa Greer poisoned Amyas Crale. She had believed his assurances that he would leave his wife and marry her, and she overheard him telling Caroline that Elsa would be sent away as soon as the portrait was finished, because the picture mattered and the girl did not. She took the coniine that Caroline had already taken from Meredith Blake's laboratory, put it in the iced beer she carried down to the Battery, and later wiped the bottle and pressed the dead man's fingers on it so that the poison would appear self-administered. Caroline, meanwhile, believed that her half-sister Angela had done it, since Angela had been tampering with Amyas's drinks in revenge and had said wild things about killing him. Carrying an old and unpayable debt of guilt for the injury she had done Angela as a baby, Caroline made no defence worth the name and allowed herself to be convicted. Miss Williams, who saw Caroline wiping the bottle, had understood the gesture as guilt rather than concealment and had said so on oath. The proof is in the painting itself, which shows a girl watching a man die and painting on regardless of what her face records. Elsa admits it with indifference, saying that she died herself that afternoon and that the years since have been nothing to her. Carla Lemarchant has her mother's name back and marries John Rattery.