Five Little Pigs

A young woman named Carla Lemarchant visits the renowned Belgian detective Hercule Poirot at his London office. She reveals that her real name is Caroline Crale, named after her mother, who was tried and convicted sixteen years earlier for poisoning her husband, the celebrated painter Amyas Crale. Caroline's death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, but she died only a year after the trial. Carla, who was five at the time, was sent to Canada and raised by relatives under the name Lemarchant. Upon turning twenty-one, she received a letter her mother had written before dying, in which Caroline solemnly declared her innocence. Now engaged to John Rattery, Carla fears the shadow of her mother's conviction will haunt their marriage and future children. She hires Poirot to prove her mother's innocence. Poirot agrees to investigate but warns that he will seek the truth, whatever it may be.

Poirot begins by interviewing the legal figures involved in the case. Sir Montague Depleach, the barrister who defended Caroline, describes her as attractive but unbalanced. The defense argued suicide, but this was unconvincing: Amyas was a vigorous, pleasure-loving man unlikely to kill himself. The motive was clear. Amyas had fallen in love with Elsa Greer, a wealthy young woman of about twenty whom he was painting, and intended to divorce Caroline and marry Elsa. Caroline had been overheard threatening to kill Amyas. The day before the murder, the household visited their neighbor Meredith Blake, an amateur herbalist who showed them his laboratory and discussed coniine, a poisonous alkaloid derived from spotted hemlock. The next morning, Meredith discovered the coniine bottle was nearly empty. An empty scent bottle containing traces of coniine and jasmine was found in Caroline's room bearing only her fingerprints. She admitted taking the coniine but claimed she intended to use it on herself. The poison was found in the beer glass beside Amyas's body but not in the bottle. The fingerprints on the beer bottle were Amyas's alone, but they were placed in positions impossible for a living hand, suggesting Caroline had pressed his dead fingers onto the bottle to fake suicide. Five people present at the time form the core of the investigation: Philip Blake, Amyas's best friend and a stockbroker; Meredith Blake, Philip's elder brother; Elsa Greer; a governess named Miss Cecilia Williams; and Angela Warren, Caroline's teenage half sister.

Quentin Fogg, the junior counsel for the prosecution, offers a more complex portrait of Caroline, describing her as docile and unconvincing in the witness box, yet so helpless that the jury recommended mercy. The retired solicitor Mr. Caleb Jonathan, who knew the Crale family intimately, reveals crucial background: As a jealous adolescent, Caroline threw a paperweight at her baby half sister Angela, permanently disfiguring her face and destroying the sight of one eye. Retired Superintendent Hale provides a detailed chronological account. On the evening before the murder, Caroline told Elsa, "Over my dead body," and later said, "I'll kill Amyas before I give him up to you" (53). The next morning, another quarrel erupted in the library. Later that morning, Caroline brought iced beer to Amyas at the Battery garden, an enclosed cliff-side plateau where he was painting Elsa's portrait. He complained the beer tasted foul and was found dead after lunch. Poirot announces he will visit each of the five eyewitnesses and collect their personal accounts.

Poirot approaches each witness in turn. Philip Blake is vehement in his hatred of Caroline, calling her a cold, calculating woman who killed out of possessive vindictiveness. Meredith Blake, a gentler man who once hoped to marry Caroline, describes Amyas as consumed by his art and recalls Caroline's desperation. He takes Poirot to the Alderbury estate and shows him the Battery garden, then reveals the painting Amyas was working on when he died: a stunning portrait of Elsa blazing with life and vitality. Elsa Greer, now Lady Dittisham after two subsequent marriages, is beautiful but emotionally hollow. She tells Poirot frankly that the tragedy killed her: Since Amyas's death she has felt nothing. Miss Williams reveals something she has never told anyone: After the body was discovered, she returned to the scene and witnessed Caroline wiping the beer bottle clean with a handkerchief, then pressing Amyas's dead fingers onto it. She states with absolute conviction that Caroline was guilty. Angela Warren, now a distinguished archaeologist, is the only person who declares without hesitation that Caroline was innocent. She argues that the childhood attack produced lifelong guilt in Caroline, making her pathologically averse to violence, and that Caroline's extravagant verbal threats were a deliberate safety valve. Angela shares the letter Caroline wrote her from prison, which includes the phrase "One has to pay one's debts" (153) but notably does not protest innocence. Angela also reveals that she once saw Caroline leaving Philip Blake's bedroom at night, suggesting a hidden relationship that contradicts Philip's professed animosity.

Each witness writes a detailed narrative of the events. Philip's account portrays Caroline as a cold-blooded murderess. Meredith's reconsiders the suicide theory. Elsa's recounts her passionate love affair with Amyas. Miss Williams's repeats her eyewitness evidence of the fingerprint tampering. Angela's is the most fragmentary but maintains that Caroline could not have done it.

After reading all five accounts, Carla is discouraged and ready to accept her mother's guilt, but Poirot stops her. He declares that Miss Williams's eyewitness account is precisely the detail that proves Caroline's innocence: Caroline pressed Amyas's fingerprints onto the beer bottle, but the coniine was found in the glass, not the bottle. Caroline did not know how the poison was administered. She was not the killer; she was covering for someone else.

Poirot visits each witness with a final, targeted question. He forces Philip to admit he was always in love with Caroline. He confirms with Meredith the exact order in which people left the laboratory, establishing that Elsa, facing Meredith in the doorway, could see over his shoulder what Caroline was doing inside. He asks Miss Williams to clarify the nature of the childhood attack on Angela, confirming it was a paperweight. He poses a seemingly unrelated question to Angela about her reading at the time.

Poirot assembles all five witnesses at Meredith's laboratory and methodically dismantles the accepted narrative. He identifies a key anomaly: Amyas was overheard saying he would "see to her packing" (189), which everyone assumed referred to Angela. Poirot argues the conversation was actually about sending Elsa away. Amyas had told Caroline that his infatuation with Elsa was over and he would end it after the painting was finished. Elsa, sitting outside the library window that morning, overheard this truth: Amyas never intended to leave his wife. Her account of that conversation was fabricated. Devastated and enraged, Elsa recalled seeing Caroline take the coniine from the laboratory the day before. She went to Caroline's room, found the hidden bottle, and drew off the coniine with a fountain-pen filler, careful not to disturb Caroline's fingerprints. She then poisoned Amyas during the morning sitting, before Caroline brought the iced beer. This explains Amyas's complaint that "Everything tastes foul to me today!" (51), evidence the poison was already working.

Caroline, finding Amyas dead, immediately suspected Angela, remembering her own violent adolescence and having seen Angela looking guilty near the beer that morning. Caroline desperately wiped the bottle and faked Amyas's fingerprints to support a suicide theory, sacrificing herself to protect her sister. Her passivity at trial was deliberate self-sacrifice, driven by lifelong guilt over disfiguring Angela. Angela, however, had only come to the laboratory to steal valerian, a foul-smelling but harmless substance, for a prank on Amyas. She never put it in the beer because Caroline interrupted her. Angela confirms this, shocked to realize what her sister believed. Poirot points to the painting as final proof: It is a portrait of a murderess painted by her victim, a girl watching her lover die.

After the others leave, Elsa remains alone with Poirot and effectively confesses, though she refuses to admit anything formally. She describes how she took the poison, gave it to Amyas, and sat watching him die. But the act destroyed her rather than him: Amyas and Caroline both escaped into death while she was left with nothing. "I died," she says (266), and departs. Poirot declares he will seek a posthumous free pardon for Caroline Crale, though he acknowledges there is likely insufficient evidence to prosecute Elsa. In the hall, Elsa passes Carla and John Rattery, two young people whose life together is just beginning.