Description

 

 

Christie, Agatha (1890 – 1976)

‘Mr. Fogg K.C. polished his glasses and replied to the questions Hercule Poirot had asked him’

An exceptionally rare pair of autograph quotations signed by Agatha Christie from Five Little Pigs. Together with the letter of transmittal, signed by Christie.

The author has signed her name at the top of a 4″ X 6″ card, writing ‘2 extracts from my book FIVE LITTLE PIGS’. She then writes out two quotations. The first reads, ‘Mr. Fogg K.C. polished his glasses and replied to the questions Hercule Poirot had asked him about his memories of the trial of Caroline Crale.’ Christies then writes out the second extract: ‘”I admired Elsa Greer because she had guts, because she could fight, stood up to the tormentors and never quailed. But I admired Caroline Crale because she didn’t fight, because she retreated into her world of half light and shadows. She was never defeated because she never gave battle. But I’m sure of one thing. She loved the man she killed. Loved him so much that half of her died with him.”‘

Accompanied by a typed letter signed by Agatha Christie, 13th March 1974 on her letterhead. She writes to ‘Madame’, thanking her for a letter, and refusing to sign a photograph ‘for I do not like doing this.’ She goes on, ‘But I have at your request copied out a short passage from Five Little Pigs.’

In very fine condition. The first autograph quotation by Agatha Christie that we have encountered.

Five Little Pigs was published in 1942, a story in which Hercule Poirot investigates a murder, committed sixteen years earlier, apparently by Caroline Crale — her husband. But Crale has died in prison, and in her final letter from prison has proclaimed her innocence. Her daughter Carla Lemarchant asks Poirot to investigate the cold case…