ELEPHANTS CAN REMEMBER

'''Elephants Can Remember''' is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in November 1972 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. The UK edition retailed for £1.60.
It features her Belgian detective Hercule Poirot and the recurring character Ariadne Oliver. This was the last of Christie's novels to feature either of these characters, although in terms of publication it was succeeded by ''Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case'', which had been written in the early 1940's. The novel is notable for its concentration on memory and oral testimony.

Contents

Plot introduction

Plot summary

Characters in “Elephants Can Remember”

The “Elephants”

Theme

Criticism

Trivia

References

Plot introduction

At a literary luncheon, the celebrated author Ariadne Oliver is asked a blunt question by a complete stranger: Mrs. Burton-Cox. Mrs. Burton-Cox’s son is considering marriage to one of Mrs. Oliver’s god-daughters, Celia Ravenscroft. The question is: did Celia’s mother murder her father, or was it the other way around? Disturbed but curious, Mrs. Oliver enlists Poirot’s help as she attempts to discover the truth about two deaths that had occurred many years earlier.

Plot summary

The deaths of General Alistair and Mrs. Molly Ravenscroft had taken place at Overcliffe. They were found by the cliff, both dead of bullet wounds, and a revolver between their bodies with their fingerprints (and only their fingerprints) upon it. In the original investigation it had proved impossible to determine whether the case was a double suicide or murder/suicide committed by one or other of the two.
Mrs. Oliver interviews several elderly witnesses whom she terms “elephants” based on the assumption that they will not have forgotten the events of the past. In a piece of misdirection on Christie’s part, each remembers (or misremembers) a very different set of circumstances, but Poirot notes one fact that he suggests has particular significance: Margaret Ravenscroft owned four wigs. He also decides that the investigation must search further into the past in order to unearth the truth.
Dolly (Dorothea) and Molly (Margaret) Preston-Grey were identical twin sisters, but Dolly’s connection with two violent incidents had led to her spending protracted periods in psychiatric nursing homes. She had married a soldier called Jarrow and, shortly after his death, was strongly suspected of drowning her son: something that she herself had tried to blame on the little boy’s older sister. The second murder was apparently committed in Malaya while Dolly was staying with the Ravenscrofts; it was an attack on the child of a neighbour.
It was again while staying with the Ravenscrofts, this time at Overcliffe, that Dolly apparently sleep-walked off the cliff and died on September 15, 1960. Molly and her husband died less than a month later, on October 3rd.
Poirot is contacted by Desmond Burton-Cox, Celia’s boyfriend, who gives him the names of two governesses who may be able to explain what happened. Turning to the Burton-Cox family, Poirot’s investigative agent, Mr. Goby, discovers that Desmond (who knows that he is adopted) was originally the illegitimate son of a deceased actress, Kathleen Fenn, with whom Mrs. Burton-Cox’s husband had conducted an affair. Kathleen Fenn had left Desmond a considerable personal fortune, which would under the terms of his will be left to his adopted mother were he to die unmarried. Mrs. Burton-Cox’s attempt to prevent Desmond getting married to Celia Ravenscroft is thus an unlovely attempt to obtain the use of his money (there is no suggestion that she plans to kill him and ''inherit'' the money).
Poirot suspects the truth, but uncovers it only by contacting Zélie Meauhourat, the governess employed by the Ravenscrofts at the time of their death. She returns with him from Lausanne to England, where she explains the truth to Desmond and Celia. Dolly had fatally injured Molly as part of her psychotic jealousy, but such was Molly’s love for her sister that she made Alistair promise to protect her from the police. Accordingly, Zélie and Alistair made it appear that Dolly’s was the corpse found at the foot of the cliff. Dolly took her sister’s place, and adopted her wigs. Only the Ravenscrofts’ dog knew the difference, and bit the false mistress. Ultimately, Alistair knew that he would be forced to kill Dolly in order to prevent further murders, after which he committed suicide.
Desmond and Celia recognise the sadness of the true events, but now knowing the facts are able to face a future together.

Characters in “Elephants Can Remember”

★ Hercule Poirot, the Belgian Detective

★ Ariadne Oliver, the celebrated author

★ Chief Superintendent Garroway, the investigating officer, now retired

★ ex-Superintendent Spence, a retired police officer

★ Mr. Goby, a private investigator

★ Celia Ravenscroft, daughter of the victims

★ Desmond Burton-Cox, Celia’s boyfriend

★ Mrs. Burton-Cox, Desmond’s adopted mother

★ Dr. Willoughby, a psychiatrist specialising in twins

★ Mademoiselle Rouselle, a governess to the Ravenscrofts

★ Zélie Meauhourat, a governess to the Ravenscrofts

The “Elephants”

★ The Honourable Julia Carstairs, a social acquaintance of the Ravenscrofts

★ Mrs. Matcham, a former Nursemaid to the Ravenscrofts

★ Mrs. Buckle, a former cleaner to the Ravenscrofts

★ Mrs. Rosentelle, a hair stylist and former wig-maker

Theme

Although nearly all the Poirot novels are concerned with the recollection of the past by witnesses, ''Elephants Can Remember'' is highly unusual in that the witnesses described as ''elephants'' in the narrative, and whom Mrs. Oliver interviews, provide very little evidence of any substance. The title – which is logically distinct from the more obvious title “Elephants Never Forget” – implies that the witnesses can remember the truth but in fact remember very little of the truth, substituting for it conjecture and misremembered detail. The novel is in this sense a reverse of Five Little Pigs (a case repeatedly mentioned here) in that the oral, and later written, accounts given in the earlier Poirot novel are almost meticulously accurate. In ''Elephants Can Remember'' Christie calls into question the assumption central to detective fiction that the sifting of witnesses’ statements will ultimately reveal the truth. It is only by the Deus ex machina of discovering an eye-witness that Poirot can demonstrate his solution of the mystery at all. The novel is therefore an interesting exploration of the epistemology of the mystery novel.

Criticism

''Elephants Can Remember'' has been criticized as of lower quality than the bulk of Christie's output. According to ''The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English'', this novel is one of the "execrable last novels" where Christie "loses her grip altogether".^[1]

Trivia

★ The character of Superintendent Spence had previously appeared in Taken at the Flood, Mrs. McGinty's Dead and Hallowe'en Party. The last two of these cases are discussed in Chapter 5 of the novel, along with the case retold in ''Five Little Pigs''.

★ Mr. Goby is a recurring character in many of the later Poirot novels. Although he had not appeared personally in the previous novel, ''Hallowe'en Party'' he is mentioned as having contributed to that investigation in Chapter 21 of that novel.

★ In Chapter 3, Mrs. Oliver fondly recalls a book called ''Enquire Within About Everything'' that had been owned by her Aunt Alice. This is also the book in a copy of which a will had been concealed in ''Hallowe’en Party''. The book is best remembered today, however, as the inspiration for a program called ENQUIRE written in 1980 by Tim Berners-Lee and which anticipated the functionality of wikis.^[2]

★ In the Miss Marple story ''A Murder is Announced'', the character Patrick Simmons, a budding writer, mentions a play he intends to write after the murder is solved, similarly titled ''Elephants Do Forget''. Its author described it as "a roaring farce in three acts".^[3]

References

1. The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English, , Lorna, Sage, Cambridge University Press, ,
2. http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=13784&ch=infotech Retrieved 10-10-2006
3. ''A Murder is Announced'', Chapter 23