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Encyclopedia > Elephants Can Remember
Elephants Can Remember
"Cover of "Elephants Can Remember""
Author Agatha Christie
Country England
Language English
Series Hercule Poirot
Genre(s) Detective fiction
Publisher Collins
Released 1972
Media Type Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Preceded by Hallowe'en Party
Followed by Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case

Elephants Can Remember (published in 1972) is a detective fiction novel by Agatha Christie, featuring 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 late 1930s. The novel is notable for its concentration on memory and oral testimony. Image File history File links Elephants_Can_Remember. ... Agatha Mary Clarissa, Lady Mallowan, DBE (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976), also known as Dame Agatha Christie, was an English crime fiction writer. ... Motto: (French for God and my right) Anthem: God Save the King/Queen Capital London (de facto) Largest city London Official language(s) English (de facto) Unification    - by Athelstan AD 927  Area    - Total 130,395 km² (1st in UK)   50,346 sq mi  Population    - 2006 est. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... David Suchet as Hercule Poirot in The Dream Hercule Poirot (pronounced ) is a fictional Belgian detective who featured in the novels of Agatha Christie. ... Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes Detective fiction is a branch of crime fiction that centers upon the investigation of a crime, usually murder, by a detective, either professional or amateur. ... Collins was a Scottish printing company founded by a Presbyterian schoolmaster, William Collins, in Glasgow in 1819, in partnership with Charles Chalmers, the younger brother of Thomas Chalmers, minister of Tron Church, Glasgow. ... See also: 1971 in literature, other events of 1972, 1973 in literature, list of years in literature. ... A hardcover (or hardback or hardbound) book is bound with rigid protective covers (typically of cardboard covered with cloth or heavy paper) and a stitched spine. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... Halloween Party is a 1969 murder mystery by Agatha Christie. ... Curtain is a novel by Agatha Christie, written in the 1930s but published posthumously in 1975. ... See also: 1971 in literature, other events of 1972, 1973 in literature, list of years in literature. ... Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes Detective fiction is a branch of crime fiction that centers upon the investigation of a crime, usually murder, by a detective, either professional or amateur. ... A novel (from French nouvelle Italian novella, new) is an extended, generally fictional narrative, typically in prose. ... Agatha Mary Clarissa, Lady Mallowan, DBE (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976), also known as Dame Agatha Christie, was an English crime fiction writer. ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ... David Suchet as Hercule Poirot in The Dream Hercule Poirot (pronounced ) is a fictional Belgian detective who featured in the novels of Agatha Christie. ... Ariadne Oliver is a fictional character in the novels of Agatha Christie. ... Curtain is a novel by Agatha Christie, written in the 1930s but published posthumously in 1975. ...

Contents

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

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details about the murderer’s identity follow.

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. Misdirection is a form of deception, where one feints in a particular course, and then exploits the misled pursuers mistake to escape, or remain undetected. ...


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. Map of Peninsular Malaysia Peninsular Malaysia (or Semenanjung Malaysia in the Malay language) is the part of Malaysia which lies on the Malay Peninsula, and shares a land border with Thailand in the north. ...


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. Lausanne (pronounced ) is a city in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, situated on the shores of Lake Geneva (French: Lac Léman), and facing Évian-les-Bains (France) and with the Jura mountains to its north. ...


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. Five Little Pigs (published in 1942), also known as Murder in Retrospect, is one of Agatha Christies Hercule Poirot mysteries. ... Deus ex machina is a Latin phrase that is used to describe an unexpected, artificial, or improbable character, device, or event introduced suddenly in a work of fiction or drama to resolve a situation or untangle a plot (e. ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ...


Trivia

  • 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.[1]
  • 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".[2]

There is a Tide - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... Mrs. ... Halloween Party is a 1969 murder mystery by Agatha Christie. ... ENQUIRE wMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMan early project (in the second half of 1980) of Tim Berners-Lee, who went on to create the World Wide Web in 1989. ... Sir Tim Berners-Lee Sir Tim (Timothy John) Berners-Lee, KBE (TimBL or TBL) (b. ... For other uses, see Wiki (disambiguation). ...

References

  1. ^ http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=13784&ch=infotech Retrieved 10-10-2006
  2. ^ A Murder is Announced, Chapter 23
Agatha Christie
Detectives: Hercule Poirot • Miss Marple • Tommy and Tuppence • Ariadne Oliver • Arthur Hastings • Superintendent Battle • Chief Inspector Japp • Parker Pyne
Novels: The Mysterious Affair at Styles • The Secret Adversary • Murder on the Links • The Man in the Brown Suit • The Secret of Chimneys • The Murder of Roger Ackroyd • The Big Four • The Mystery of the Blue Train • The Seven Dials Mystery • The Murder at the Vicarage • The Sittaford Mystery • Peril at End House • Lord Edgware Dies • Murder on the Orient Express • Three Act Tragedy • Why Didn't They Ask Evans? • Death in the Clouds • The A.B.C. Murders • Murder in Mesopotamia • Cards on the Table • Death on the Nile • Dumb Witness • Appointment with Death • And Then There Were None • Murder is Easy • Hercule Poirot's Christmas • Sad Cypress • Evil Under the Sun • N or M? • One, Two, Buckle My Shoe • The Body in the Library • Five Little Pigs • The Moving Finger • Towards Zero • Sparkling Cyanide • Death Comes as the End • The Hollow • Taken at the Flood • Crooked House • A Murder is Announced • They Came to Baghdad • Mrs McGinty's Dead • They Do It with Mirrors • A Pocket Full of Rye • After the Funeral • Hickory Dickory Dock • Destination Unknown • Dead Man's Folly • 4.50 From Paddington • Ordeal by Innocence • Cat Among the Pigeons • The Pale Horse • The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side • The Clocks • A Caribbean Mystery • At Bertram's Hotel • Third Girl • Endless Night • By the Pricking of My Thumbs • Hallowe'en Party • Passenger to Frankfurt • Nemesis • Elephants Can Remember • Postern of Fate • Curtain • Sleeping Murder
As Mary Westmacott: Giant's Bread • Unfinished Portrait • Absent in the Spring • The Rose and the Yew Tree • A Daughter's a Daughter • The Burden
Short story collections: Poirot Investigates • Partners in Crime • The Mysterious Mr. Quin • The Hound of Death • The Thirteen Problems • Parker Pyne Investigates • The Listerdale Mystery • Murder in the Mews • The Regatta Mystery • The Labours of Hercules • Poirot's Early Cases • The Harlequin Tea Set
Plays: Akhnaton • The Mousetrap • Witness for the Prosecution • Verdict • Rule of Three • Fiddlers Three

  Results from FactBites:
 
Elephants Can Remember - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (221 words)
Elephants Can Remember (published in 1972) is a detective fiction novel by Agatha Christie, featuring her detectives Hercule Poirot and Ariadne Oliver.
The novel is Oliver's last appearance in Christie's canon, and the last novel she wrote featuring Poirot, although not the last published.
This article about a mystery novel is a stub.
Education | Elephants never forget (515 words)
The myth of the elephants' graveyard is one of the most enduring in natural history.
But although there was lots of empirical evidence of elephants showing interest in their dead, McComb found that all the theories were speculative, so she set out to investigate more thoroughly.
The final group was three elephant skulls, each belonging to a matriarch, one of which was the matriarch of the group of elephants looking at the objects.
  More results at FactBites »


 
 

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