Hercule Poirot Archives - Page 4 of 4

After the Funeral by Agatha Christie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a wonderful diversion during a very full schedule of meetings in this past week. Agatha Christie always seems good for that and why I chose her for a break from serious reading during some serious discussions.

Leaving aside the personal stuff, the relatives of deceased estate owner Richard Abernethy are gathered for the reading of his will following his funeral. He had been ill but nevertheless had died rather suddenly in his sleep. Entwhistle, the family lawyer has just announced that the proceeds will be divided in six equal shares among the family when Cora Lansquenet, a daffy niece known for saying what she thinks, pipes up and asks, “But he was murdered, wasn’t he?” The fuss dies down until the next day when Cora is brutally hatcheted to death, in what appears to be a break-in. At this point, Entwhistle’s suspicions are aroused and his informal discussions with family members only deepen the impression that any of them could be involved in this murder, and presumably Richard’s. And so he calls in Poirot, an old friend.

Tension deepens when Mrs. Gilchrist, Cora’s housekeeper and companion, suffers a serious poisoning incident with an arsenic-laced piece of wedding cake. It appears there is a desperate killer set on wiping out anyone who might have a notion of who committed the murder. When Helen Abernethy realizes who is responsible, she is struck on the head and knocked out, just on the point of revealing the truth to Entwhistle.

Poirot deduces the true killer from what she did say and reveals the killer in one of those typical library scenes where the whole family is gathered. Of course, I will leave the fun of discovering the murderer to your reading. Having read some Christie, I would say that it was a bit of a surprise, and yet not a surprise at all. Have fun with that!

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Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An attractive young women walks into Poirot’s office seeking to hire him for a case. How many mystery or crime novels begin that way? This one has some unexpected twists. Carla Lemarchant believes her mother innocent of murdering her father. The murder took place sixteen years earlier, when Carla was a young girl. Her mother was convicted of poisoning her father with a hemlock derivative, coniine, which her mother had stolen from the home laboratory of a family friend, ostensibly to kill herself because her husband, famous artist Amyas Crale, was having an affair with a young model, one in a series and was planning to divorce her. The mother, Caroline Crale, died in prison shortly after, but before dying had written a letter, to be given her daughter when she reached adulthood, stating her innocence.

Agatha Christie

What makes this more compelling for Poirot is that Carla is engaged but the couple is apprehensive of having a husband poisoner in their background. So Poirot takes the case. His initial investigations turn up two basic facts, the case was open and shut, the poison being in a glass brought by the wife with a cold beer, and the lack of any real defense on her part during the trial apart from the claim that her husband must have committed suicide.

The plot then moves forward with interviews with the five people present at the time of the murder–the five little pigs! This is followed by five written accounts from each of these people, then the denouement, in the room where the poison was compounded. In all this, Poirot is not only looking for the discrepancies in accounts but also to understand the character of Caroline, as well as the others present. In this, he believes, the real answer lies.

From all accounts, it looks as if the wife is guilty, but Poirot thinks otherwise and the fun is seeing how he reaches that conclusion and exposes the real killer!

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