Agatha Christie's Poirot Episode Guide - inaf iasf bologna

Agatha Christie’s Poirot Episode Guide
Five Little Pigs
Season 9
Episode Number: 55
Season Episode: 1
Originally aired: Sunday December 14, 2003
Writer:
Agatha Christie, Kevin Elyot
Director: Paul Unwin
Show Stars: Hugh Fraser (Captain Arthur Hastings), David Suchet (Hercule Poirot)
Guest Stars: Richard Teverson (Hollinghurst), Lottie Unwin (Young Caroline),
Darien Smith (Young Amyas), Jacek Bilinski (Young Philip), Joel de
Temperley (Young Meredith), Toby Stephens (Philip Blake), Sophie
Winkleman (Angela), Gemma Jones (Cynthia Williams), Julie Cox (Elsa
Greer), Rachael Stirling (Caroline Crale), Aidan Gillen (Amyas Crale),
Marc Warren (Meredith), Patrick Malahide (Sir Montague Depleach),
Aimee Mullins (Lucy Crale), Annette Badland (Mrs Spriggs)
Summary: Sixteen years before the action opens, Caroline Crale was charged with
killing her husband, Amyas Crale, and no one doubted her guilt. She
was duly tried and convicted, and died in prison while serving life,
so the case was looked on as closed. But then, in the present day,
Caroline’s daughter Lucy Crale (who has been living overseas) receives
a letter her mother wrote her before her death, claiming to be innocent.
Anxious to know the truth, Lucy hires Poirot to solve the murder of
her father sixteen years before, and Poirot finds a number of possible
suspects who are still alive. The late lamented Amyas was well-known
for having affairs with his models. Does Elsa Greer, his lover at the
time of his death, hold the key to unravelling the case?
Carla is engaged to be married but she is afraid that the fact that her mother killed her
father will poison her husband’s love for her, as he may fear that she has inherited a husbandkilling
tendency. Moreover, Carla remembers that her mother would never lie to her to hide an
unpleasant truth and her mother told her she was innocent through a letter. That is enough for
Carla but she wants Poirot to prove her mother’s innocence to her husband to be.
Carla’s father, painter Amyas Crale, was murdered with a poison, coniine, which had been
extracted from poison hemlock by Meredith Blake but subsequently apparently stolen from him
by Carla’s mother, Caroline Crale. Caroline confessed to having stolen the poison, claiming that
she had intended to use it to commit suicide. This poison ended up, however, in a glass from
which Amyas had drunk cold beer, after complaining that ’everything tastes foul today’. Both
the glass and the bottle of cold beer had been brought to him by Caroline. Her motive was
clear: Amyas’s young model, and latest mistress Elsa Greer, had revealed that he was planning
to divorce Caroline and marry her instead. This was a new development; though Amyas had
frequently had mistresses and affairs, he had never before shown any sign of wanting to leave
Caroline.
Poirot labels the five alternative suspects ’the five little pigs’: they comprise Phillip Blake
(”went to the market”); Philip’s brother, Meredith Blake (”stayed at home”); Elsa Greer (now Lady
Dittisham, ”had roast beef”); Cecilia Williams, the governess (”had none”); and Angela Warren,
Caroline’s younger half-sister (”went ’Wee! Wee! Wee!’ all the way home”). As Poirot learns from
speaking to them during the first half of the novel, none of the quintet has an obvious motive,
and while their views of the original case differ in some respects there is no immediate reason to
suppose that the verdict in the case was wrong.
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