Elephants Can Remember

Plot summary

At a literary luncheon, Mrs Burton-Cox, to whose son Celia Ravenscroft is engaged, approaches Mrs Ariadne Oliver, a school friend of the late Margaret Ravenscroft and godmother to her daughter. Mrs Burton-Cox asks Mrs Oliver what she believes is an important question: which of Celia's parents was the murderer, and which was murdered?

Ten years earlier, the bodies of General Alistair Ravenscroft and his wife Margaret were found near their manor house in Overcliffe. Both had bullet wounds, and a revolver with only their fingerprints left between them. In the original investigation, no one was able to prove whether the case was a double suicide or murder/suicide and, if the latter, who killed whom. Left behind are the couple's two children, including daughter Celia. Mrs Ariadne Oliver is initially put off by Mrs Burton-Cox's attitude; but, after consulting with Celia, Oliver agrees to try to resolve the issue. She invites her friend Hercule Poirot to solve the disquieting puzzle. Together, they conduct interviews with several elderly witnesses whom they term “elephants”, based on the assumption that, like the proverbial elephants, they may have long memories. Each "elephant" remembers (or mis-remembers) a very different set of circumstances, but Poirot notes two items of significance: Margaret Ravenscroft owned four wigs at the time of her death; and, a few days before her death, she was seriously bitten by the otherwise devoted family dog.

Poirot decides to investigate more deeply into the past. He and Mrs Oliver learn that Dolly (Dorothea) and Molly (Margaret) Preston-Grey were identical twin sisters, both of whom died within the space of a few weeks. While Molly led an ordinary life, Dolly had previously been connected with two violent incidents and had spent protracted periods of her life in psychiatric nursing homes. Dolly had married a Major Jarrow and, shortly after his death in India, was strongly suspected of drowning her infant son, which she blamed on his Indian ayah. A second murder was committed in Malaya while Dolly was staying with the Ravenscrofts; it was an attack on the child of a neighbour. While staying with the Ravenscrofts, this time at Overcliffe, Dolly apparently sleep-walked off a cliff and died on the evening of 15 September 1960. Molly and her husband died less than a month later, on 3 October.

Desmond Burton-Cox, Celia's fiancé, gives Poirot the names of two governesses who had served the Ravenscroft family. Turning an investigative light on the Burton-Cox family, Poirot's agent, Mr Goby, discovers that Desmond (who knows that he is adopted, but has no details about the adoption or his origins) is the illegitimate son of a now-deceased actress, Kathleen Fenn, with whom Mrs Burton-Cox's husband had conducted an affair. Fenn had bequeathed Desmond a considerable personal fortune, which would, under the terms of his will, be left to his adoptive mother were he to die. Mrs Burton-Cox's attempt to prevent Desmond's marriage to Celia Ravenscroft is thus an attempt to obtain the use of his money, although there is no suggestion that she plans to kill him for the money.

Poirot suspects the truth but can substantiate it only after 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 a psychotic episode; but, such was Molly's love for her sister that she made her husband promise to protect Dolly from arrest. 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, playing the role of Molly to the servants. Only the Ravenscrofts' dog knew the difference, and this is why it bit her. Alistair committed suicide after killing Dolly to prevent her from injuring anyone else. Desmond and Celia recognise the sadness of the true events, but now knowing the facts are able to face a future together.

Characters

The "Elephants"

Literary significance and reception

Maurice Richardson in The Observer of 5 November 1972 said, "A quiet but consistently interesting whodunnit with ingenious monozygotic solution. Any young elephant would be proud to have written it."

Other critics were less kind. Robert Barnard wrote "Another murder-in-the-past case, with nobody able to remember anything clearly, including, alas, the author. At one time we are told that General Ravenscroft and his wife (the dead pair) were respectively sixty and thirty-five; later we are told he had fallen in love with his wife's twin sister 'as a young man'. The murder/suicide is once said to have taken place ten to twelve years before, elsewhere fifteen, or twenty. Acres of meandering conversations, hundreds of speeches beginning with 'Well, …' That sort of thing may happen in life, but one doesn't want to read it." 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".

Elephants Can Remember was cited in a study done in 2009 using computer science to compare Christie's earlier works to her later ones. The sharp drops in vocabulary size and increases in repeated phrases and indefinite nouns suggested Christie may have been suffering from some form of onset dementia, perhaps what later became known as Alzheimer's disease. The subject of the book being memory may be another clue.

Television

The novel was adapted into a TV film with David Suchet as Poirot, as part of the final series of Agatha Christie's Poirot. It was broadcast on ITV on 9 June 2013, and later on the Acorn TV website on 11 August 2014, over a year later. Zoë Wanamaker returned to the role of Ariadne Oliver, marking her fifth out of six appearances on the show in total. Greta Scacchi (Mrs Burton-Cox), Vanessa Kirby (Celia Ravenscroft), Iain Glen (Dr Willoughby) and Ferdinand Kingsley (Desmond Burton-Cox) were also among the cast.

The adaptation is generally faithful to the novel, but includes some significant additions to the plot. Most notably, there is a gruesome present day murder for Poirot to solve, which raises the tension and allows for a suspenseful ending. The plot of the novel, involving delving into the past, is reduced to background information leading to the present day murder. Characters such as Mr Goby, Miss Lemon, George, Marlene Buckle (whose mother becomes Mrs Matcham's housekeeper) and ex-Chief Superintendent Spence were removed from the story (Spence's character is replaced with an original character named Beale), whilst the characters of Zélie Meauhourat and Mme Rouselle were combined.

Instead of immediately helping Mrs Oliver with the Ravenscroft case, Poirot instead chooses to investigate the murder of Dr Willoughby's father, which is a subplot that is not in the novel; as a consequence, Dr Willoughby's character is greatly expanded. When Poirot realises that Dr Willoughby and his institute have a connection to the Ravenscrofts, Poirot decides to solve both mysteries. This subplot also includes an original character named Marie McDermott, an Irish-American girl who works as Dr Willoughby's filing clerk and turns out to be his mistress. The character is ultimately revealed to be Dorothea Jarrow's daughter, who is avenging her mother for the cruel treatments she experienced at the hands of Professor Willoughby (an entirely fictional version of hydrotherapy), and also for her mother's murder (as she was at Overcliffe on the day of the tragedy and overheard General Ravenscroft make his plans) by trying to kill both Celia and Desmond. Zélie spirited her away to Canada after the tragedy, and she had to wait thirteen years before she could earn enough money to travel to England and exact her revenge. Also, in keeping with the other episodes, the story is moved from the early 1970s to the late 1930s.

Radio

Elephants Can Remember was adapted for radio by BBC Radio 4, featuring John Moffatt as Poirot and Julia Mackenzie as Ariadne Oliver, Joan Hickson appeared as Oliver's former governess.

Film adaptations

Publication history

The novel was serialised in the Star Weekly Novel, a Toronto newspaper supplement, in two abridged instalments from 10 to 17 February 1973 with each issue containing the same cover illustration by Laszlo Gal.