PASTOR DAVE’S MUSINGS FROM THE HEARTLAND

April 16, 2025

HELL: A LIVING DEATH

In Agatha Christie’s murder mystery Five Little Pigs twenty year old Elsa Greer kills Amyas Crale with whom she is having an affair on the day that he tells her he is not going to leave his wife, Caroline, and marry her.  Caroline is arrested, convicted of murder, and sent to prison where she dies after just a year and a half.  The matter seemed to be closed.

Sixteen years later Caroline’s daughter, Carla, asks Hercule Poirot to investigated the case because on her twenty-first birthday she had received a letter written by her mother fourteen years earlier in which she declares her innocence.

At the end of the story Poirot gathers all those who were present when Amyas was killed and reveals what really happened.  He is convinced that he has enough evidence to show that Caroline was innocent, but is not sure he has sufficient proof to convict Ella who is now Lady Dittisham.

In the closing scene Elsa tells Poirot the following: “I found the stuff (poison) and I gave it to him and I sat there watching him die.  I’ve never felt so alive, so exultant, so full of power.  I watched him

 die …”

“I didn’t understand that I was killing myself – not him.  Afterward I saw her caught in a trop – and that was no good either.  I couldn’t hurt her – she didn’t care – she escaped from it all – half the time she wasn’t there.  She and Amyas both escaped – they went somewhere where I couldn’t get at them.  But they didn’t die.  I died.”  (Five Little Pigs, Berkley Books, p. 216)

One moment Elsa Greer had never felt so alive in her life.  The next she was dead: emotionally, spiritually, and relationally.  Even though she was physically alive, she found herself unable to experience any joy or pleasure.  As a result of her action to poison Amays Carale, she descended into a living hell here on earth.

In the Book of Genesis God tells Adam and Eve that on the day that they eat from the true of the knowledge of good and evil they shall surely die (Gen. 2:17).  When the serpent questions this, the couple partakes of the forbidden fruit and low and behold they do not physically die.  However, they do lose their innocence and find themselves estranged from each other and God and at odds with the world which God had created for them.

When Cain kills Abel in the fourth chapter of Genesis because he is upset that God has not accepted his offering, he loses the very thing he desired, God’s approval.  By contrast in death Abel would seem to have gained the very thing that Cain sought.

(This article was originally published April 15, 2012.  Comments may be sent to davidh15503@embarqmail.com.)