Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie #ReadChristie2025

Hercule Poirot excels at cold cases so he is intrigued when Carla Lemarchant turns up for an appointment with a murder from the past. When she was 21, she learned that her mother had murdered her father, Amyas Crale, a well-known painter. Caroline Crale was convicted and died in prison, a year later.

She left her daughter a letter proclaiming her innocence and now that Carla is engaged, she wants to clear her mother’s name so she can start married life without anyone (such as her fiancé) wondering if she too might poison her husband. This is a variation of the same plot as the last Christie I read, Elephants Can Remember, another case involving a young woman's murdered parents.

Poirot quickly learns there were five key witnesses to the events leading up to Amyas Crale’s death, all staying or living nearby: Philip and Meredith Blake, lifelong friends of Amyas and Caroline; Elsa Greer, a beautiful young woman in the middle of an affair with Crale, visiting so he could finish her portrait; Angela Warren, Caroline’s half-sister, just 15; and Angela’s governess, Miss Williams.

I doubt a Belgian detective would have been familiar with English nursery rhymes but Christie certainly was and has him compare these five with the pigs in the rhyme and they fit pretty well.  He visits each witness in turn, as well as some of the law enforcement who handled the case, asking them to share their recollections, marveling at the descriptions of Caroline:

Each person had seen her differently. Montague Depleach had despised her as a defeatist – a quitter. To young Fogg, she had represented Romance. Edmunds saw her simply as a “lady.” Mr. Jonathan had called her a stormy, turbulent creature.

How would he, Hercule Poirot, have seen her?

On the answer to that question depended, he felt, the success of his quest.

So far, not one of the people he had seen had doubted that whatever else she was, Caroline Crale was also a murderess.

I think this is one of Christie’s best because the main characters are vividly drawn and, for the most part, their recollections of the events surrounding Amyas’ death are fairly accurate. The reader does not have to depend on maps or complicated logistics to identify the murderer but on the depiction of an acrimonious summer day by those who were there. Poirot skillfully draws them out to reveal new information, then assembles them for the grand reveal. There is enough information for the reader to figure out what happened: I got most of the way there but not quite! This is the way I think a mystery should be – clues for the alert reader, including a twist that might not be readily guessed.

I read this for Read Christie 2025 and Carol’s Cloak and Dagger Reading Challenge.

Title: Five Little Pigs aka Murder in Retrospect
Author: Agatha Christie
Publication: Morrow, trade paperback, originally published in 1942
Genre: Mystery/Series
Source: Library