The unfinished portrait (novel)
The unfinished portrait (original title Five Little Pigs ) is the 32nd detective novel by Agatha Christie . It first appeared in the United States in May 1942 with Dodd, Mead and Company under the title Murder in Retrospect and in November 1942 in the United Kingdom in the Collins Crime Club . The Scherz Verlag (Bern; Stuttgart; Vienna) published the German first edition in 1957.
It determines Hercule Poirot in his 21st novel. The novel is remarkable in that Poirot proves that a case can be resolved simply by questioning those involved, without going to the scene of the crime. Christie is linked here to the tradition of armchair detective ( Armchair Detective ) in the British crime fiction.
This is the last novel of a particularly fruitful phase of Agatha Christie's with her character Poirot. From 1935 to 1942 she wrote thirteen novels with Poirot and only five with other main characters. This contrasts with the next eight years, during which she wrote only two novels with her most famous detective - a clear sign of the growing frustration with this character, which, however, secured large chunks of her income.
Explanation of the title of the novel
As before in The Secret of Buckle Shoes and And Then There Were None, and later in The Secret of the Goldmine and The Kleptomaniac , Christie uses a theme from a nursery rhyme - here "This little Pig".
- This little piggy went to market.
- This little piggy stayed at home.
- This little piggy has roast beef,
- This little piggy had none.
- And this little piggy cried "Wee! Wee! Wee!" all the way home.
The five little pigs help Poirot to organize his thoughts during the investigation.
action
Carla Lemarchant is engaged. But she fears that the fact that her mother, who died in custody, killed her father could dissuade her fiancé from the wedding. Since she is convinced that her mother is innocent, she turns to Poirot.
Carla's father, Amyas Crale, a painter, had been poisoned with coniin , a poison distilled from spotted hemlock by Meredith Blake . Carla's mother, Caroline Crale had previously stolen the poison of Meredith to suicide to commit, as it claimed itself. The poison was in a glass of beer that Caroline gave her husband to drink. He had noticed that the beer tasted bad, but drank it anyway. The wife's motive was immediately clear: her husband's new lover who was his model - Elsa Greer. And although he has often had affairs, Amyas is now said to have planned a divorce from Caroline.
Poirot works out five suspects ( the five little pigs ): Elsa Greer (now Lady Dittisham); Meredith Blake; Meredith's brother, Phillip Blake; Cecilia Williams, the governess, and Angela Warren, Caroline's younger half-sister. In the conversations that Poirot conducts with the five independently of one another, the first part of the novel (although the statements differ a little from the original ones) does not reveal any motives for the suspects or any new indications that there were errors in the trial of Caroline Crale were committed. In Poirot, doubts even arise about Caroline's innocence.
In the second part of the novel, all five come under suspicion. Philip Blake because he loved Caroline and felt repulsed, Meredith's long friendship with Caroline was over, Angela is disfigured by an accident that Caroline had caused and could have avenged herself, Cecilia could have been caught in a theft and eventually could Elsa discovered that she was just another lover of Amya and that he didn't want a divorce.
This last suspicion turns out to be correct - the murderer was Elsa. Poirot can clearly prove it to Carla and especially to her fiancé, but is not sure whether it would lead to a conviction. Whether Elsa escapes punishment or not remains to be seen in the end, because the novel ends with the sentence: "I watched him die ... But I did not understand that I was killing myself, not him!" Imminent execution , possible suicide or simply to indicate the lifelong internal condition of the perpetrator after the murder, which is punishment enough, a kind of mental death. In the end Elsa drives away in the car after her servant has put a warm fur blanket over her legs.
people
- Hercule Poirot, the famous Belgian detective
- Carla (Caroline) Lemarchant, the daughter of Caroline Crale
- Sir Montague Depleach, defense counsel in the first trial
- Quentin Fogg, KC, first trial prosecutor
- George Mayhew, son of Caroline's lawyer
- Caleb Jonathan, Crales family lawyer
- Superintendent Hale, investigating officer in the first case
The "Five Little Pigs":
- Phillip Blake, a stock trader ( went to market )
- Meredith Blake, a withdrawn botanist ( stayed at home )
- Elsa Greer (Lady Dittisham), a spoiled lady of society ( had roast beef )
- Cecilia Williams, a submissive governess ( had none )
- Angela Warren, a disfigured archaeologist ( cried 'wee wee wee' all the way home )
covers
Hercule Poirot mentions the case of Dr. Crippen as an example of a crime reinterpreted to satisfy the popular craze for psychology.
The painting that hangs on the wall in Miss Cecilia Williams' room is described as "a blind girl sitting on an orange". It's from George Frederic Watts and it's called Hope .
References to other works
When Poirot contacts Meredith Blake, he introduces himself as a friend of Lady Mary Lytton-Gore, a person from the novel Nicotine .
This is the only novel in Agatha Christie's work in which it is not clear to the end what the further fate of the perpetrator will look like. A certain sympathy with the perpetrator and motive shimmers through - as always in her works, when Christie cannot resolve to prosecute the murderer. Such an attitude is found only in Poirot novels.
Plays and film adaptations
Go Back For Murder
In 1960 Christie himself adapted the novel for the stage and gave the play the title Go Back for Murder , only she wrote Poirot out of the play. His role in the play is taken over by the young lawyer Justin Fogg, the son of the lawyer who defended Caroline Crale in her trial. In the play, Carla's fiancé turns out to be a criminal American, whom she leaves for Fogg in the end.
The Unfinished Portrait (2003)
David Suchet played Poirot in an episode of the British television series Agatha Christie's Poirot from 2003. There are some serious changes compared to the novel. The most important is that Philip Blake's unfulfilled love is not directed towards Caroline, but towards Amyas. The film tells of Caroline's execution, which does not appear in the book. Also Carla's name was changed to Lucy and she has no fiancé.
Important publications
- 1942, Dodd Mead and Company (New York), May 1942
- 1943, Collins Crime Club (London), January 1943,
- 1957, Scherz Verlag (Bern; Stuttgart; Vienna)
- 2015, new translation by Cornelia Stoll, Hamburg: Atlantik
The first publication of the novel was the ten sequels in the American magazine Collier’s from September 20, 1941 (volume 108, number 12) to November 22, 1941 (volume 108, number 21) under the deviating title Murder in Retrospect with illustrations by Mario Cooper .
Web links
- Five Little Pigs on the official Agatha Christie website
- Five Little Pigs (2003) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ American Tribute to Agatha Christie
- ↑ Chris Peers, Ralph Spurrier and Jamie Sturgeon. Collins Crime Club - A checklist of First Editions . Dragonby Press (Second Edition) March 1999 (Page 15)
- ↑ a b German first edition in the catalog of the German National Library
- ↑ http://www.poirot.us/poirot.php
- ^ Wentworth, Work and Play with Numbers , p. 14th
- ^ D. Herman, The Cambridge Companion to Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 9.