Fresh and confident (read: cocky) from my recent victory over the Queen of Crime, I decided I was in the mood to tackle yet another Agatha Christie mystery. This time, I went for the Hercule Poirot classic Five Little Pigs. I remember having read this years ago, and absolutely loving it, but fortunately, it’s been so long since I last read it (this copy was purchased in 2007, and my Goodreads rating is dated 2012) that I no longer remembered whodunnit.

Five Little Pigs is a Rashomon-style mystery. A young woman, Carla, asks Poirot for help: 16 years ago, her father, artist Amyas Crale, was killed by poison, and her mother Caroline was convicted for the crime. Caroline was the one who served Amyas the beer that killed him; traces of coniine were found in his glass, and a bottle of coniine was later found in Caroline’s drawer.

Caroline’s defence was that Amyas must have taken the coniine himself, but everyone who knew Amyas felt he was too in love with life to die by suicide. Worse, despite her lawyer’s best efforts, Caroline herself barely put up a fight in the courtroom, and she was quickly found guity. She died in prison a year later, leaving behind a note to her daughter that she’s innocent. Now engaged to be married, Carla wants Poirot to find out what really happened, so she can go to the next stage of her life with a clear mind.

This is such a perfect case for the Belgian detective! Unlike similar detective superstar Sherlock Holmes, Poirot doesn’t rely so much on forensics or physical clues, but rather on the psychology of the people involved. And for a crime that occurred 16 years ago, all physical evidence is gone, and there is only the psychology to rely on. (Side note: I realized I bought my copy of this book in 2007, which is coincidentally also 16 years ago, so I felt a nice little frisson of rightness in my quest to solve this alongside Poirot.)

The clues lie with five people on the estate the day Amyas was killed:

• Philip Blake – Amyas’ long-time friend, now a successful stockbroker
• Meredith Blake – Philip’s older brother, a country squire and a chemist who held a torch for Caroline. The coniine that killed Amyas came from his laboratory.
• Elsa Greer – a beautiful 20-year-old woman whose portrait Amyas was painting. It’s widely known that she’s having an affair with Amyas, and that Amyas planned to leave Caroline for her. Caroline was overheard telling Amyas she’d rather kill him than let him marry Elsa.
• Angela Warren – Caroline’s 15-year-old half-sister. She has a scar on her face from a childhood accident caused by Caroline, and has been spoiled by her older sister since. She and Amyas fought over Amyas’ plan to send her to boarding school.
• Cecilia Williams – Angela’s governess, a serious middle-aged woman with strong feminist beliefs and a deep disdain for Amyas’ relationship with Elsa.

Poirot goes to each of the five in turn, and gets five slightly differing accounts of what happened on the day Amyas died. Who’s telling the truth? Who’s lying? And who gave Amyas the poison that killed him? I have my theory, and we’ll see how I do!

Did I Solve the Case? (No Spoilers)

Boo-freaking-YES!!! I guessed it! AND I picked up on a couple of key clues that pointed to the answer. And so, this makes 2 wins, and (ahem) I forget how many losses… 🙂

***SPOILERS BELOW***

My Theory

I think Elsa Greer killed Amyas Crale.

First, I don’t think Amyas was actually in love with Elsa like everyone thinks. Whenever he speaks of her, it’s not actually her that he’s talking about, but rather how incredible his painting of her is turning out, the “best painting of his life.” I can imagine she’s in love with him, but I think he’s simply using her to get a good painting. My guess is that Elsa found this out, likely during the argument between Amyas and Caroline that Elsa overheard while in the terrace, and killed him because of it.

Yes, Caroline did say she’d kill him rather than let him go to Elsa. She also told Meredith that she wanted to take a hatchet to Elsa. But:

• According to Angela, Caroline says those violent things precisely because she doesn’t want to do violent acts. She was so traumatized by injuring her half-sister when they were kids that she now channels all her temper into words.
• Caroline is also super impulsive and mercurial; if she did kill Amyas, I’d imagine she’d be more likely to throw things at him or beat him up, not use a method so cool and calculating as poison.
• And Caroline knows her husband very well. If I’m right and Amyas was actually interested in Elsa only as a muse for his artwork, then I think Caroline would have known that.

The Clues

• After Amyas died, Miss Williams saw Caroline wiping off the beer bottle with a handkerchief, and then pressing Amyas’ fingerprints to the bottle. Caroline is clearly covering up evidence, but the coniine was never in the bottle! It was found only in Amyas’ beer glass. By wiping the bottle, Caroline actually proves she doesn’t know how the poison was administered.
• When Amyas drinks the beer Caroline brings him, he says, “Everything tastes foul to me today.” Coniine has a strong and terrible taste, but Amyas saying “everything tastes foul” makes me think maybe he ate or drank something that also tasted bad. And maybe he actually ingested the coniine from something else. Elsa responds to Amyas by joking, “Liver!” which I guess could mean he’s drinking too much alcohol, but (random tidbit) Philip remembers having deviled kidneys and bacon for breakfast that morning, so maybe Amyas had previously complained the breakfast tasted off?

The Other Suspects

• Angela Warren

Angela was my number one suspect for most of the book. She’s the only one that Caroline would willingly go to prison for, and covering up for Angela fits in with how Caroline sent her out of England before the trial, and how Caroline refused to let Angela visit her in prison.

But what’s her motive? She was angry at Amyas for sending her away to boarding school, but I don’t think she was angry enough to kill him. Miss Williams said Angela was resigned to going away, and honestly, I can’t imagine Caroline agreeing to it unless she could tell Angela was going to be okay about it.

However, I think Caroline thought Angela put the coniine in Amyas’ beer. That’s why she tried to cover up by wiping down the beer bottle, and that’s why she was so willing to take the fall. And the reason she suspected Angela came from Miss Williams’ account: when Miss Williams and Caroline went to the kitchen to fetch Amyas’ drink, they saw Angela at the refrigerator taking out a bottle of beer, and Miss Williams said Angela looked red and rather guilty. Angela has a history of tampering with Amyas’ food when she’s unhappy with him, like adding lots of salt to his drink, so I can imagine Caroline thought this incident was one of Angela’s pranks gone terribly wrong.

Then again, maybe Amyas’ comment that “everything tastes foul” suggests that Angela already took her revenge with a harmless prank during breakfast?

• Meredith Blake.

It was his coniine, and he was in love with Caroline, so I can imagine he’d want to kill Amyas on Caroline’s behalf. But I can’t imagine he’d let Caroline go to prison and potentially hang for something he did. Plus, it would be easier for him to just let Amyas leave Caroline for Elsa, and then he could provide comfort and love to help Caroline heal.

• Philip Blake

Angela saw Caroline coming out of his bedroom one night, so maybe they were having an affair, and he was also in love with Caroline? Possibly, and he’s a bit more self-centred than Meredith, so I can imagine him throwing Caroline under the bus to save his own neck. But also because of that self-centredness, I can’t imagine him killing Amyas in some misguided knight in shining armour attempt. And I can’t see any other motive he may have.

• Cecilia Williams

She clearly disapproved of Amyas and Elsa, but I don’t really see her as a murderer? If anything, I think she’d be more likely to kill Elsa.

The Actual Reveal

I got it. 🙂 Elsa Greer did kill Amyas Crale. I was also right that Amyas had no plans of actually leaving Caroline for her. And I was right that Caroline thought she was covering for Angela.

The comment that “everything tastes foul” is because Elsa had given Amyas a beer laced with coniine before Caroline offered to get him an iced beer.

I totally missed that Caroline did take the coniine from Meredith’s lab. She was the last in the lab, and Elsa had been talking to Meredith at the time, and facing the door, so Elsa saw Caroline take the coniine with her. I don’t know why Caroline took it; possibly, she did think Amyas was going to leave her for Elsa and wanted to die by suicide.

I also missed that Meredith wasn’t actually in love with Caroline anymore; his affections had transferred to Elsa. That had no bearing on the case, but it’s an interesting tidbit.

And I totally missed that Angela did in fact plan to prank Amyas that day. She’d taken valerian from Meredith’s lab, and was about to put it into Amyas’ beer when Caroline and Miss Williams walked into the kitchen and interrupted her plans. She totally forgot about it because she didn’t make the connection with Caroline being arrested for Amyas’ poisoning, but that was the reason she’d looked red-faced and guilty when Caroline and Miss Williams had seen her.