Agatha Christie's Poirot Episode Guide - inaf iasf bologna

Agatha Christie’s Poirot Episode Guide
The differences are subtle. Phillip Blake’s hostility to
Caroline is overt enough to draw suspicion. Meredith
Blake mistrusts him, and has a very much more sympathetic
view of her. Elsa seems emotionally stunted, as
though her original passion for Amyas has left her prematurely
devoid of emotion, except for hatred for Caroline
Crale. Cecilia, the governess, gives some insight
into both Caroline and Angela, but claims to have definite
reason for believing Caroline guilty. Finally, Angela
believes her sister to be innocent, but a letter that Caroline
wrote to her after the murder contains no protestation
of innocence, and makes Poirot doubt Caroline’s
innocence for perhaps the first time.
In the second half of the novel, Poirot considers five
accounts of the case that he has asked the suspects to
write for him. These establish the succession of events
on the day of the murder, and establish a small number
of facts that are important to the solution of the puzzle.
In the first place, there is a degree of circumstantial evidence
incriminating Angela. Secondly, Cecilia has seen
Caroline frantically wiping fingerprints off the bottle of
beer as she waited by Amyas’s corpse. Thirdly, there
has been a conversation between Caroline and Amyas,
apparently about Amyas ’seeing to her packing’ for Angela’s
return to school. Fourthly, Elsa overheard a heated argument between Caroline and Amyas
in which he swore that he would divorce her and Caroline said bitterly ’you and your women’.
In the denouement, Poirot reveals the main emotional undercurrents of the story. Philip Blake
has loved Caroline but his rejection by her has turned this to hatred. Meredith Blake, wearied
by his long affection for Caroline, has formed an attachment to Elsa Greer, that is also unreciprocated.
These are mere red herrings, though. Putting together the case that would incriminate
Angela (she had the opportunity to steal the poison on the morning of the crime, she had previously
put salt in Amyas’s glass as a prank and she was seen fiddling with the bottle of beer before
Caroline took it down to him; she was very angry with Amyas), he demonstrates that Caroline
herself would have thought that Angela was guilty. Her letter to Angela did not speak of innocence,
because Caroline believed that Angela must know for a fact that Caroline was innocent.
This explains why, if Caroline was innocent, she made no move to defend herself in court. Moreover,
many years ago Caroline had thrown a paperweight at Angela in a jealous rage, which had
left a permanent disfiguring scar on Angela’s face. Caroline had always felt deeply guilty about
this and therefore felt that, by taking the blame for what she thought was Angela’s crime, she
could earn redemption.
Caroline’s actions, however, unwittingly proved her innocence. By wiping the fingerprints off
the bottle, she showed that she believed that the poison had been placed in it, rather than in the
glass. Moreover, seen to handle the bottle there was no reason to remove her own fingerprints;
she can only have been removing those of a third party.
Angela, however, was not guilty. All the evidence incriminating Angela can be explained by
the fact that she had stolen valerian from Meredith’s laboratory that morning in preparation for
playing another prank on Amyas. (Because she described the theft of the valerian in the future
tense Poirot realised that she had never carried out this trick; Angela had completely forgotten
that she had stolen the valerian on the morning of that fateful day).
The true murderer was Elsa. Far from being about to finish with Caroline, Amyas was entirely
focused on completing his portrait of Elsa. Because Elsa was young she did not realize she was
just another mistress, to be left as soon as she was painted. She took the promises ’to leave my
wife’ seriously. Amyas went along with her false belief, to the short term distress of his wife, so
that Elsa wouldn’t leave before the painting was finished. Thus the half overheard ’see to her
packing’ did not refer to Angela’s packing (why should Amyas do her packing with a wife and
governess to see to such ’woman’s work’?), but to sending Elsa packing. Caroline, reassured that
Amyas had no intention of leaving her, was distressed at such cruelty to Elsa. She remonstrated
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