Five Little Pigs   ::   Christie Agatha

I knew then, beyond any possible doubt, that Caroline Crale had poisoned her husband. And I, for one, do not blame her. He drove her to a point beyond human endurance, and he brought his fate upon himself.

I never mentioned the incident to Mrs Crale and she never knew that I had seen it.

Caroline Crale’s daughter must not bolster up her life with a lie. However much it may pain her to know the truth, truth is the only thing that matters.

Tell her, from me, that her mother is not to be judged. She was driven beyond what a loving woman can endure. It is for her daughter to understand and forgive.



Narrative of Angela Warren



Dear M. Poirot,

I am keeping my promise to you and have written down all I can remember of that terrible time sixteen years ago. But it was not until I started that I realized how very little Idid remember. Until the thing actually happened, you see, there is nothing to fix anything by.

I’ve just a vague memory of summer days-and isolated incidents, but I couldn’t say for certain what summer they happened even! Amyas’s death was just a thunderclap coming out of the blue. I’d had no warning of it, and I seem to have missed everything that led up to it.

I’ve been trying to think whether that was to be expected or not. Are most girls of fifteen as blind and deaf and obtuse as I seem to have been? Perhaps they are. I was quick, I think, to gauge people’s moods, but I never bothered my head about whatcaused those moods.

Besides, just at that time, I’d suddenly begun to discover the intoxication of words. Things that I read, straps of poetry-of Shakespeare-would echo in my head. I remember now walking along the kitchen garden path repeating to myself in a kind of ecstatic delirium ‘under the glassy green translucent wave’…It was just so lovely I had to say it over and over again.

And mixed up with these new discoveries and excitements there were all the things I’d liked doing ever since I could remember. Swimming and climbing trees and eating fruit and playing tricks on the stable boy and feeding the horses.

Caroline and Amyas I took for granted. They were the central figures in my world, but I neverthought about them or about their affairs or what they thought and felt.

I didn’t notice Elsa Greer’s coming particularly. I thought she was stupid and I didn’t even think she was good-looking. I accepted her as someone rich but tiresome, whom Amyas was painting.