Plot Summary

Go Back for Murder, Christie's adaptationof her earlier novel Five Little Pigs, skillfully blends murder and romance.  Carla

Le Marchant, on her twenty-first birthday, discovers through a letter from her mother that her mother, CarolineCrale, was

sentenced to prison for the murder of her artisthusband, Amyas Crale, and died there three years later.  In the letter written

just before her death, her mother proclaims her innocence.  Carla, who remembers from childhood that her mother always told

the truth, is convinced of her mother's innocence and feels that she has to 'go back' to the murder before she can 'go forward'

in life (she is engaged to be married).  Carla wins the support of Justin Fogg, a lawyer, who witnessed the trial and the two

reinvestigate the murder that took place sixteen years ago.
 

In the following scenes of Act I, Carla meets the five people present on the day of the murder:  Philip and Meredith Blake, two

close friends of her parents; Elsa Greer, the model for a painting; Miss Williams, the governess; and Angela Warren, the

younger sister of Caroline.  She begins to understand the parents she could hardly remember and forms impressions of the five

from what they tell her.  Each of the five reveals something that might have been a motive for the murder.  In the interviews

Carla is puzzled by one detail: why her mother who said she was innocent and was a spirited woman put up such a poor

defense for herself at her trial.
 

The setting of Act II is Alderbury, the Crale home, where the murder took place.  The five have agreed for different reasons to

return to Alderbury and to take part in the reconstruction of what happened arranged by Justin.  Through the recollections the

audience sees what happened the day before the murder and the day of the murder.  And through the recollections Justin

discovers the murderer and Carla understands her mother's behavior at her trial.  Now, Carla can 'go forward,' but in a

different direction from what she had thought.
 

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