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Elephants can remember - Agatha Christie

During a literary luncheon she is attending, Mrs Ariadne Oliver finds herself approached by a woman called Mrs Burton-Cox, whose son is engaged to Oliver's godchild, Celia Ravenscroft. During their conversation, Mrs Burton-Cox askes her an important question regarding the deaths of Celia's parents - was one of them murdered, and if so, who killed who? Ten years earlier, the bodies of Magaret Ravenscroft, a close school friend of Oliver, and General Alistair Ravenscroft, Margaret's husband, were found near their manor house in Overcliffe. The original investigation into their deaths revealed that both had bullet wounds, and that a revolver found between their bodies bore the fingerprints of the married couples, making it impossible to prove whether it was a case of double suicide or if it was a murder/suicide and who then was the victim and the other the murderer. The death of the Ravenscroft left both Celia and another child of the Ravenscroft orphaned.

Although initially put off by Mrs Burton-Cox's attitude, Mrs Oliver decides to resolve the issue after consulting with Celia about her parents' death, and invites her friend Hercule Poirot to solve the disquieting puzzle. Together, they conduct interviews with several elderly witnesses associated to the case, whom they term “elephants”, based on the assumption that, like the proverbial elephants, they may have long memories. Each individual witness recalls a different set of circumstances, but Poirot notes two items of significance - the first being that Magaret Ravenscroft was seriously bitten by the otherwise devoted family dog a few days before her death, and that she had four wigs in her possession at the time of her death. Further investigation by himself and Mrs Oliver soon reveals that her maiden name was Preston-Grey, and that she had an identical twin sister called Dorothea. While Margaret led a fairly ordinary life, her sister spent protracted periods of her life in psychiatric nursing homes, after she was strongly suspected of being involved in two violent incidents: the first occurred in India when following the death of her husband, Major Jarrow, Dorothea drowned their infant son and blamed it on an Indian ayah; the second occurred in Malaya when she was with the Ravenscrofts, in which she attacked the child of a neighbor of theirs. She soon joined them at their home in Overcliffe, whereupon she apparently sleep-walked off a cliff one evening and died; the deaths of Alistair and Magaret occurred less than a month after this.

Desmond Burton-Cox, Celia's fiancé, soon 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, through the investigation into her parents' deaths, 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 about the deaths of the Ravenscroft, but can substantiate it only after contacting Zélie Meauhourat, the governess employed by them at the time of their death. She returns with him from Lausanne to England, where she explains the truth to Desmond and Celia.

The body found beside Alistair in the original investigation was not that of his wife, but that of Dorothea; Magaret had died a month earlier at the hands of her sister, who fatally injured her as part of a psychotic episode. Before she died, she made her husband promise to protect her sister from arrest, to which both he and Zélie concealed the truth by planting Magaret's body at the foot of a cliff and fabricating the story that it was Dorothea who had died. Dorothea then took her sister's place; while she fooled the servants easily, she could not fool the Ravenscrofts' dog, which could distinguish between the sister, thus explaining why it bit her. A month later, Alistair murdered her to prevent her from injuring anyone else, making certain she held the revolver before she was killed, and then committed suicide afterwards. Desmond and Celia recognise the sadness of the true events, but now knowing the facts are able to face a future together.