Elephants Can Remember
Hercule Poirot is determined to solve an old husband and wife double murder that is still an open verdict…Hercule Poirot stood on the cliff-top. Here, many years earlier, there had been a tragic accident. This was followed by the grisly discovery of two more bodies – a husband and wife – shot dead.But who had killed whom? Was it a suicide pact? A crime of passion? Or cold-blooded murder? Poirot delves back into the past and discovers that ‘old sin leave long shadows’.
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Elephants Can Remember
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Collins 1972
Agatha Christie® Poirot® Elephants Can Rememberâ¢
Copyright © 1972 Agatha Christie Limited. All rights reserved.
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Title lettering by Ghost Design
Cover photograph © Henry Steadman/Getty Images
Agatha Christie asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authorâs imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008164973
Ebook Edition © September 2016 ISBN: 9780007422319
Version: 2017-04-12
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: A Literary Luncheon
Chapter 2: First Mention of Elephants
Chapter 3: Great Aunt Aliceâs Guide to Knowledge
Chapter 5: Old Sins Have Long Shadows
Chapter 6: An Old Friend Remembers
Chapter 7: Back to the Nursery
Chapter 9: Results of Elephantine Research
Chapter 11: Superintendent Garroway and Poirot Compare Notes
Chapter 12: Celia Meets Hercule Poirot
Chapter 15: Eugene and Rosentelle, Hair Stylists and Beauticians
Mrs Oliver looked at herself in the glass. She gave a brief, sideways look towards the clock on the mantel-piece, which she had some idea was twenty minutes slow. Then she resumed her study of her coiffure. The trouble with Mrs Oliver wasâand she admitted it freelyâthat her styles of hairdressing were always being changed. She had tried almost everything in turn. A severe pompadour at one time, then a wind-swept style where you brushed back your locks to display an intellectual brow, at least she hoped the brow was intellectual. She had tried tightly arranged curls, she had tried a kind of artistic disarray. She had to admit that it did not matter very much today what her type of hairdressing was, because today she was going to do what she very seldom did, wear a hat.
On the top shelf of Mrs Oliverâs wardrobe there reposed four hats. One was definitely allotted to weddings. When you went to a wedding, a hat was a âmustâ. But even then Mrs Oliver kept two. One, in a round bandbox, was of feathers. It fitted closely to the head and stood up very well to sudden squalls of rain if they should overtake one unexpectedly as one passed from a car to the interior of the sacred edifice, or as so often now a days, a registrarâs office.
The other, and more elaborate, hat was definitely for attending a wedding held on a Saturday afternoon in summer. It had flowers and chiffon and a covering of yellow net attached with mimosa.
The other two hats on the shelf were of a more all-purpose character. One was what Mrs Oliver called her âcountry house hatâ, made of tan felt suitable for wearing with tweeds of almost any pattern, with a becoming brim that you could turn up or turn down.
Mrs Oliver had a cashmere pullover for warmth and a thin pullover for hot days, either of which was suitable in colour to go with this. However, though the pullovers were frequently worn, the hat was practically never worn. Because, really, why put on a hat just to go to the country and have a meal with your friends?
The fourth hat was the most expensive of the lot and it had extraordinarily durable advantages about it. Possibly, Mrs Oliver sometimes thought, because it was so expensive. It consisted of a kind of turban of various layers of contrasting velvets, all of rather becoming pastel shades which would go with anything.
Mrs Oliver paused in doubt and then called for assistance.
âMaria,â she said, then louder, âMaria. Come here a minute.â
Maria came. She was used to being asked to give advice on what Mrs Oliver was thinking of wearing.
âGoing to wear your lovely smart hat, are you?â said Maria.
