Elephants Can Remember
Dust-jacket illustration of the first UK edition
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| Author | Agatha Christie |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Not known |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Crime novel |
| Publisher | Collins Crime Club |
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Publication date
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November 1972 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 256 pp (first edition, hardcover) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 694646 |
| 823/.9/12 | |
| LC Class | PZ3.C4637 El4 PR6005.H66 |
| Preceded by | The Golden Ball and Other Stories |
| Followed by | Postern of Fate |
Elephants Can Remember is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie, first published in 1972
It features her Belgian detective Hercule Poirot and the recurring character Ariadne Oliver. This was the last Christie novel to feature either character, although in terms of publication it was succeeded by Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, which had been written in the early 1940s but published last. The novel is notable for its concentration on memory and oral testimony.
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.
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