(WORKING ON) Five Little Pigs | Hercule Poirot #25 (Agatha Christie)

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CONTENTS.

Book One

1. Counsel For The Defense
2. Counsel For The Prosecution
3. The Young Solicitor
4. The Old Solicitor
5. The Police Superintendent
6. This Little Pig Went to Market
7. This Little Pig Stayed Home
8. This Little Pig Had Roast Beef
9. This Little Pig Had None
10. This Little Pig Cried "Wee Wee Wee"

Book Two

• Narrative of Philip Blake
• Narrative of Meredith Blake
• Narrative of Lady Dittisham
• Narrative of Cecilia Williams
• Narrative of Angela Warren

Book Three

1. Conclusions
2. Poirot Asks Five Questions
3. Reconstruction
4. Truth
5. Aftermath

FIVE LITTLE PIGS.

Chapter 1

Hercule Poirot looked with interest and appreciation at the young woman who was being ushered into the room.

There had been nothing distinctive in the letter she had written. It had been a mere request for an appointment, with no hint of what lay behind that request. It had been brief and businesslike. Only the firmness of the handwriting had indicated that Carla Lemarchant was a young woman.

And now here she was in the flesh - a tall, slender young woman in the early twenties. The kind of young woman that one definitely looked at twice. Her clothes were good: an expensive, well-cut coat and skirt and luxurious furs. Her head was well poised on her shoulders, she had a square brow, a sensitively cut nose, and a determined chin. She looked very much alive. It was her aliveness more than her beauty that struck the predominant note.

Before her entrance, Hercule Poirot had been feeling old - now he felt rejuvenated, alive - keen!

As he came forward to greet her, he was aware of her dark-gray eyes studying him attentively. She was very earnest in that scrutiny.

She sat down and accepted the cigarette that he offered her. After it was lit she sat for a minute or two smoking, still looking at him with that earnest, thoughtful scrutiny.

Poirot said gently, "Yes, it has to be decided, does it not?"

She started. "I beg your pardon?"

Her voice was attractive, with a faint, agreeable huskiness in it.

"You are making up your mind - are you not? - whether I am a mere mountebank or the man you need."

She smiled. She said, "Well, yes - something of that kind. You see, M. Poirot, you - you don't look exactly the way I pictured you."

"And I am old, am I not? Older than you imagined?"

"Yes, that, too." She hesitated. "I'm being frank, you see. I want - I've got to have - the best."

"Rest assured," said Hercule Poirot, "I am the best!"

Carla said, "You're not modest... All the same, I'm inclined to take you at your word."

Poirot said placidly, "One does not, you know, employ merely the muscles. I do not need to bend and measure the footprints and pick up the cigarette ends and examine the bent blades of grass. It is enough for me to sit back in my chair and think. It is this - " he tapped his egg-shaped head - "this, that functions!"

"I know," said Carla Lemarchant. "That's why I've come to you. I want you, you see, to do something fantastic!"

"That," said Hercule Poirot, "promises well!"

He looked at her in encouragement.

Carla Lemarchant drew a deep breath. "My name," she said, "isn't Carla. It's Caroline. The same as my mother's. I was called after her." She paused. "And though I've always gone by the name of Lemarchant - ever since I can remember almost - that isn't my real name. My real name is Crale."

Hercule Poirot's forehead creased a moment perplexedly. He murmured, "Crale - I seem to remember..."

She said, "My father was a painter - rather a well-known painter. Some people say he was a great painter. I think he was."

"Amyas Crale?"

"Yes."

She paused, then she went on.

"And my mother, Caroline Crale, was tried for murdering him!"

"Aha," said Poirot. "I remember now - but only vaguely. I was abroad at the time. It was a long time ago."

"Sixteen years," said the girl. Her face was very white now and her eyes were two burning lights. "Do you understand? She was tried and convicted. . . .She wasn't hanged because they felt that there were extenuating circumstances, so the sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life. But she died only a year after the trial. You see? It's all over - done - finished with."

Poirot said quietly, "And so?"

The girl called Carla Lemarchant pressed her hands together. She spoke slowly and haltingly but with an odd, pointed emphasis.

"You've got to understand - exactly - where I come in. I was five years old at the time it - happened. Too young to know anything about it. I remember my mother and my father, of course, and I remember leaving home suddenly - being taken to the country. I remember the pigs and a nice fat farmer's wife - and everybody being very kind - and I remember, quite clearly, the funny way they used to look at me - everybody - a sort of furtive look. I knew, of course, children do, that there was something wrong - but I didn't know what.

"And then I went on a ship - it was exciting - it went on for days and then I was in Canada and Uncle Simon met me, and I lived in Montreal with him and with Aunt Louise, and when I asked about Mummy and Daddy they said they'd be coming soon. And then - and then I think I forgot - only I sort of knew that they were dead without remembering anyone actually telling me so. Because by that time, you see, I didn't think about them any more. I was very happy, you know. Uncle Simon and Aunt Louise were sweet to me, and I went to school and had a lot of friends, and I'd quite forgotten that I'd ever had another name, not Lemarchant. Aunt Louise, you see, told me that that was my name in Canada and that seemed quite sensible to me at the time - it was just my Canadian name - but as I say I forgot in the end that I'd ever had any other."

She flung up her defiant chin. She said, "Look at me. You'd say - wouldn't you? - if you met me: 'There goes a girl who's got nothing to worry about!' I'm well off, I've got splendid health, I'm sufficiently good to look at, I can enjoy life. At twenty, there wasn't a girl anywhere I'd have changed places with.

"But already, you know, I'd begun to ask questions. About my own mother and father. Who they were and what they did. I'd have been bound to find out in the end.

"As it was, they told me the truth. When I was twenty-one. They had to then, because for one thing I came into my own money. And then, you see, there was the letter. The letter my mother left for me when she died."

Her expression changed, dimmed. Her eyes were no longer two burning points - they were dark, dim pools. She said, "That's when I learned the truth. That my mother had been convicted of murder. It was - rather horrible." She paused. "There's something else I must tell you. I was engaged to be married. They said we must wait - that we couldn't be married until I was twenty-one. When I knew, I understood why."

Poirot stirred and spoke for the first time. He said, "And what was your fiancé's reaction?"

"John? John didn't care. He said it made no difference to him. He and I were John and Carla - and the past didn't matter." She leaned forward. "We're still engaged. But all the same, you know, it does matter. It matters to me. And it matters to John, too. . . .It isn't the past that matters to us - it's the future." She clenched her hands. "We want children, you see. We both want children. And we don't want to watch our children growing up and be afraid."

"Do you not realize," Poirot said, "that among everyone's ancestors there has been violence and evil?"

"You don't understand. That's so, of course. But, then, one doesn't usually know about it. We do. It's very near to us. And - sometimes - I've seen John just - look at me. Such a quick glance - just a flash. Supposing we were married and we'd quarreled - and I saw him look at me and - and wonder?"

Hercule Poirot said, "How was your father killed?"

Carla's voice came clear and firm. "He was poisoned."

Hercule Poirot said, "I see."

There was a silence.

Then the girl said in a calm, matter-of-fact voice, "Thank goodness, you're sensible. You see that it does matter - and what it involves. You don't try to patch it up and trot out consoling phrases."

"I understand very well," said Poirot. "What I do not understand is what you want of me?"

"I want to marry John!" Carla Lemarchant said simply. "And I mean to marry John! And I want to have at least two girls and two boys. And you're going to make that possible!"

"You mean - you want me to talk to your fiancé? Ah, no, it is idiocy what I say there! It is something quite different that you are suggesting. Tell me what is in your mind."

"Listen, M. Poirot. Get this - and get it clearly. I'm hiring you to investigate a case of murder."

"Do you mean - "

"Yes, I do mean. A case of murder is a case of murder whether it happened yesterday or sixteen years ago."

"But, my dear young lady - "

"Wait, M. Poirot You haven't got it all yet. There's a very important point."

"Yes?"

"My mother was innocent," said Carla Lemarchant.

Hercule Poirot rubbed his nose. He murmured, "Well, naturally - I comprehend that - "

"It isn't sentiment. There's her letter. She left it for me before she died. It was to be given to me when I was twenty-one. She left it for that one reason - that I should be quite sure. That's all that was in it. That she hadn't done it - that she was innocent - that I could be sure of that always."

Hercule Poirot looked thoughtfully at the young, vital face staring so earnestly at him. He said slowly, "Tout de même - "

Carla smiled. "No, Mother wasn't like that! You're thinking that it might be a lie - a sentimental lie." She leaned forward earnestly. "Listen, M. Poirot, there are some things that children know quite well. I can remember my mother - a patchy remembrance, of course, but I remember quite well the sort of person she was. She didn't tell lies - kind lies. If a thing was going to hurt she always told you so. Dentists, or thorns in your finger - all that sort of thing. Truth was a - a natural impulse to her. I wasn't, I don't think, specially fond of her - but I trusted her. I still trust her! If she says she didn't kill my father, then she didn't kill him! She wasn't the sort of person who would solemnly write down a lie when she knew she was dying."

Slowly, almost reluctantly, Hercule Poirot bowed his head.

Carla went on. "That's why it's all right for me to marry John. I know it's all right. But he doesn't. He feels that naturally I would think my mother was innocent. It's got to be cleared up, M. Poirot. And you're going to do it!"

Hercule Poirot said slowly, "Granted that what you say is true, mademoiselle, sixteen years have gone by!"

Carla Lemarchant said, "Oh, of course it's going to be difficult! Nobody but you could do it!"

Hercule Poirot's eyes twinkled slightly. "You give me the best butter - hein?" he said.

"I've heard about you," Carla said. "The things you've done. The way you have done them. It's psychology that interests you, isn't it? Well, that doesn't change with time. The tangible things are gone - the cigarette end and the footprints and the bent blades of grass. You can't look for those any more. But you can go over all the facts of the case, and perhaps talk to the people who were there at the time - they're all alive still - and then - and then, as you said just now, you can lie back in your chair and think. And you'll know what really happened. . . ."

Hercule Poirot rose to his feet. One hand caressed his mustache. He said, "Mademoiselle, I am honored! I will justify your faith in me. I will investigate your case of murder. I will search back into the events of sixteen years ago and I will find out the truth."

Carla got up. Her eyes were shining. But she only said, "Good."

Hercule Poirot shook an eloquent forefinger. "One little moment. I have said I will find out the truth. I do not, you understand, have the bias. I do not accept your assurance of your mother's innocence. If she was guilty - eh bien, what then?"

Carla's head went back. "I'm her daughter," she said. "I want the truth!" Hercule Poirot said, "En avant, then. Though it is not that, that I should say. On the contrary. En arrière!"

"Do I remember the Crale case?" asked Sir Montague Depleach. "Certainly I do. Remember it very well. Most attractive woman. But unbalanced, of course. No self-control." He glanced sideways at Poirot. "What makes you ask me about it?"

"I am interested."

"Not really tactful of you, my dear man," said Depleach, showing his teeth in his sudden famous 'wolf's smile,' which had been reputed to have such a terrifying effect upon witnesses. "Not one of my successes, you know. I didn't get her off."

"I know that."

Sir Montague shrugged his shoulders. He said:

"Of course, I hadn't quite as much experience then as I have now. All the same, I think I did all that could humanly be done. One can't do much without co-operation. We did get it commuted to penal servitude. Provocation, you know. Lots of respectable wives and mothers got up a petition. There was a lot of sympathy for her."

He leaned back, stretching out his long legs. His face took on a judicial, appraising look.

"If she'd shot him, you know, or even knifed him - I'd have gone all out for manslaughter. But poison - no, you can't play tricks with that. It's tricky - very tricky."

"What was the defense?" asked Hercule Poirot.

He knew because he had already read the newspaper files but he saw no harm in playing completely ignorant to Sir Montague.

"Oh, suicide. Only thing you could go for. But it didn't go down well. Crale simply wasn't that kind of man! You never met him, I suppose? No? Well, he was a great, blustering, vivid sort of chap. Great beer drinker. Went in for the lusts of the flesh and enjoyed them. You can't persuade a jury that a man like that is going to sit down and quietly do away with himself. It just doesn't fit. No, I was afraid I was up against a losing proposition from the first. And she wouldn't play up! I knew we'd lost as soon as she went into the box. No fight in her at all. But there it is - if you don't put your client into the box, the jury draw their own conclusions."

Poirot said, "Is that what you meant when you said just now that one cannot do much without co-operation?"

"Absolutely, my dear fellow. We're not magicians, you know. Half the battle is the impression the accused makes on the jury. I've known juries time and again bring in verdicts dead against the judge's summing up. 'He did it, all right' - that's the point of view. Or 'He never did a thing like that - don't tell me.' Caroline Crale didn't even try to put up a fight."

"Why was that?"

Sir Montague shrugged his shoulders. "Don't ask me. Of course, she was fond of the fellow. Broke her awful up when she came to and realized what she'd done. Don't believe she ever rallied from the shock."

"So in your opinion she was guilty?"

Depleach looked rather startled. He said, "Er - well, I thought we were taking that for granted."

"Did she ever admit to you that she was guilty?"

Depleach looked shocked. "Of course not - of course not. We have our code, you know. Innocence is always - er - assumed. If you're so interested it's a pity you can't get hold of old Mayhew. Mayhews were the solicitors who briefed me. Old Mayhew could have told you more than I can. But there - he's joined the great majority. There's young George Mayhew, of course, but he was only a boy at the time. It's a long time ago, you know."

"Yes, I know. It is fortunate for me that you remember so much. You have a remarkable memory."

Depleach looked pleased. He murmured, "Oh, well, one remembers the main headings, you know. Especially when it's a capital charge. And, of course, the Crale case got a lot of publicity from the press. Lot of sex interest and all that. The girl in the case was pretty striking. Hard-boiled piece of goods, I thought."

"You will forgive me if I seem too insistent," said Poirot, "but I repeat once more, you had no doubt of Caroline Crale's guilt?"

Depleach shrugged his shoulders. "Frankly, as man to man," he said, "I don't think there's much doubt about it. Oh, yes, she did it, all right."

"What was the evidence against her?"

"Very damning indeed. First of all, there was motive. She and Crale had led a kind of cat-and-dog life for years with interminable rows. He was always getting mixed up with some woman or other. Couldn't help it. He was that kind of man. She stood it pretty well on the whole. Made allowances for him on the score of temperament - and the man really was a first-class painter, you know. His stuff's gone up enormously in price - enormously. Don't care for that style of painting myself - ugly, forceful stuff, but it's good - no doubt of that.

"Well, as I say, there had been trouble about women from time to time. Mrs Crale wasn't the meek kind who suffers in silence. There were rows, all right. But he always came back to her in the end. These affairs of his blew over. But this final affair was rather different. It was a girl, you see - and quite a young girl. She was only twenty.

"Elsa Greer, that was her name. She was the only daughter of some Yorkshire manufacturer. She had money and determination and she knew what she wanted. What she wanted was Amyas Crale. She got him to paint her - he didn't paint regular society portraits, 'Mrs Blinkety Blank in pink satin and pearls', but he painted figures. I don't know that most women would have cared to be painted by him - he didn't spare them! But he painted the Greer girl, by falling for her good and proper. He was getting on for forty, you know, and he'd been married a good many years. He was just ripe for making a fool of himself over some chit of a girl. Elsa Greer was the girl. He was crazy about her and his idea was to get a divorce from his wife and marry Elsa.

"Caroline Crale wasn't standing for that. She threatened him. She was overheard by two people to say that if he didn't give the girl up she'd kill him. And she meant it all right! The day before it happened, they'd been having tea with a neighbor. He was by way of dabbling in herbs and home-brewed medicines. Among his patent brews was one of coniine - spotted hemlock. There was some talk about it and its deadly properties.

"The next day he noticed that half the contents of the bottle were gone. Got the wind up about it. They found an almost empty bottle of it in Mrs Crale's room, hidden away at the bottom of a drawer."

Hercule Poirot moved uncomfortably. He said, "Somebody else might have put it there."

"Oh, she admitted it to the police. Very unwise, of course, but she didn't have a solicitor to advise her at that stage. When they asked her about it, she admitted quite frankly that she had taken it."

"For what reason?"

"She made out that she'd taken it with the idea of doing herself in. She couldn't explain how the bottle came to be empty - nor how it was that there were only her fingerprints on it. That part of it was pretty damning. She contended, you see, that Amyas Crale had committed suicide. But if he'd taken the coniine from the bottle she'd hidden in her room, his fingerprints would have been on the bottle as well as hers."

"It was given him in beer, was it not?"

"Yes. She got out the bottle from the refrigerator and took it down herself to where he was painting in the garden. She poured it out and gave it to him and watched him drink it. Everyone went up to lunch and left him - he often didn't come in to meals. Afterward she and the governess found him there dead. Her story was that the beer she gave him was all right. Our theory was that he suddenly felt so worried and remorseful that he slipped the poison in himself. All poppycock - he wasn't that kind of man! And the fingerprint evidence was the most damning of all."

"They found her fingerprints on the beer bottle?"

"No, they didn't - they found only his - and they were phony ones. She was alone with the body, you see, while the governess went to call up a doctor. And what she must have done was to wipe the bottle and glass and then press his fingers on them. She wanted to pretend, you see, that she'd never even handled the stuff. Well, that didn't work. Old Rudolph, who was prosecuting, had a lot of fun with that - proved quite definitely by demonstration in court that a man couldn't hold a bottle with his fingers in that position! Of course, we did our best to prove that he could - that his hands would take up a contorted attitude when he was dying - but frankly our stuff wasn't very convincing."

"The coniine in the beer bottle," Poirot said, "must have been put there before she took it down to the garden."

"There was no coniine in the bottle at all. Only in the glass."

Depleach paused - his large, handsome face suddenly altered - he turned his head sharply.

"Hullo," he said. "Now, then, Poirot, what are you driving at?"

Poirot said, "If Caroline Crale was innocent, how did that coniine get into the beer? The defense said at the time that Amyas Crale himself put it there. But you say to me that that was in the highest degree unlikely - and for my part I agree with you. He was not that kind of man. Then, if Caroline Crale did not do it, someone else did."

Depleach said with almost a splutter, "Oh, damn it all, man, you can't flog a dead horse. It's all over and done with years ago. Of course she did it. You'd know that well enough if you'd seen her at the time. It was written all over her! I even fancy that the verdict was a relief to her. She wasn't frightened. No nerves at all. Just wanted to get through the trial and have it over. A very brave woman, really..."

"And yet," said Hercule Poirot, "when she died she left a letter to be given to her daughter in which she swore solemnly that she was innocent. Now her daughter wants the truth."

"H'm - I'm afraid she'll find the truth unpalatable. Honestly, Poirot, I don't think there's any doubt about it. She killed him."

"You will forgive me, my friend, but I must satisfy myself on that point."

"Well, I don't know what more you can do. You can read up the newspaper accounts of the trial. Humphrey Rudolph appeared for the Crown. He's dead - let me see, who was his junior? Young Fogg, I think. Yes, Fogg. You can have a chat with him. And then there are the people who were there at the time. Don't suppose they'll enjoy your butting in and raking the whole thing up, but I dare say you'll get what you want out of them. You're a plausible devil."

"Ah, yes, the people concerned. That is very important. You remember, perhaps, who they were?"

Depleach considered. "Let me see - it's a long time ago. There were only five people who were really in it, so to speak - I'm not counting the servants - a couple of faithful old things, scared-looking creatures - they didn't know anything about anything. No one could suspect them."

"There are five people, you say. Tell me about them."

"Well, there was Philip Blake. He was Crale's greatest friend - had known him all his life. He was staying in the house at the time. He's alive. I see him now and again on the links. Lives at St George's Hill. Stockbroker. Plays the markets and gets away with it. Successful man, running to fat a bit."

"Yes. And who next?"

"Then there was Blake's elder brother. Country squire - stay-at-home sort of chap."

A jingle ran through Poirot's head. He repressed it. He must not always be thinking of nursery rhymes. It seemed an obsession with him lately. And yet the jingle persisted:

"This little pig went to market, this little pig stayed at home..."

He murmured, "He stayed at home - yes?"

"He's the fellow I was telling you about - messed about with drugs - and herbs - bit of a chemist. His hobby. What was his name, now? Literary sort of name - I've got it. Meredith. Meredith Blake. Don't know whether he's alive or not."

"And who next?"

"Next? Well, there's the cause of all the trouble. The girl in the case: Elsa Greer."

"This little pig ate roast beef," murmured Poirot.

Depleach stared at him. "They've fed her meat, all right," he said. "She's been a go-getter. She's had three husbands since then. In and out of the divorce court as easy as you please. And every time she makes a change, it's for the better. Lady Dittisham - that's who she is now. Open any Tatler and you're sure to find her."

"And the other two?"

"There was the governess woman. I don't remember her name. Nice, capable woman. Thompson - Jones - something like that. And there was the child. Caroline Crale's half sister. She must have been about fifteen. She's made rather a name for herself. Digs up things and goes trekking to the back of beyond. Warren - that's her name. Angela Warren. Rather an alarming young woman nowadays. I met her the other day."

"She is not, then, the little pig who cried, 'Wee-wee-wee'...?"

Sir Montague Depleach looked at him rather oddly. He said dryly, "She's had something to cry wee-wee about in her life! She's disfigured, you know. Got a bad scar down one side of her face. She - oh, well, you'll hear all about it, I dare say."

Poirot stood up. He said, "I thank you. You have been very kind. If Mrs Crale did not kill her husband - "

Depleach interrupted him. "But she did, old boy, she did. Take my word for it."

Poirot continued without taking any notice of the interruption. "Then it seems logical to suppose that one of these five people must have done so."

"One of them could have done it, I suppose," said Depleach doubtfully. "But I don't see why any of them should. No reason at all! In fact, I'm quite sure none of them did do it. Do get this bee out of your bonnet, old boy!"

But Hercule Poirot only smiled and shook his head.

"Guilty as hell," said Mr Fogg succinctly.

Hercule Poirot looked meditatively at the thin, clear-cut face of the barrister.

Quentin Fogg, K.C., was a very different type from Montague Depleach. Depleach had force, magnetism, an overbearing and slightly bullying personality. He got his effects by a rapid and dramatic change of manner. Handsome, urbane, charming, one minute - then an almost magical transformation, lips back, snarling smile - out for your blood.

Quentin Fogg was thin, pale, singularly lacking in what is called personality. His questions were quiet and unemotional, but they were steadily persistent.

Hercule Poirot eyed him meditatively. "So that," he said, "was how it struck you?"

Fogg nodded. He said, "You should have seen her in the box. Old Humpie Rudolph (he was leading, you know) simply made mincemeat of her. Mincemeat!" He paused and then said unexpectedly, "On the whole, you know, it was rather too much of a good thing."

"I am not sure," said Hercule Poirot, "that I quite understand you."

Fogg drew his delicately marked brows together. His sensitive hand stroked his bare upper lip. "How shall I put it?" he said. "It's a very English point of view. 'Shooting the sitting bird' describes it best. Is that intelligible to you?"

"It is, as you say, a very English point of view, but I think I understand you. In the Assize Court, as on the playing fields of Eton, and in the hunting country, the Englishman likes the victim to have a sporting chance."

"That's it, exactly. Well, in this case, the accused didn't have a chance. Humpie Rudolph did as he liked with her. It started with her examination by Depleach. She stood up there, you know - as docile as a little girl at a party, answering Depleach's questions with the answers she'd learned off by heart. Quite docile, word-perfect - and absolutely unconvincing! She'd been told what to say, and she said it. It wasn't Depleach's fault. That old mountebank played his part perfectly - but in any scene that needs two actors, one alone can't carry it. She didn't play up to him. It made the worst possible effect on the jury. And then old Humpie got up. I expect you've seen him? He's a great loss. Hitching his gown up, swaying back on his feet, and then - straight off the mark!

"As I tell you, he made mincemeat of her! Led up to this and that - and she fell into the pitfall every time. He got her to admit the absurdities of her own statements, he got her to contradict herself, she floundered in deeper and deeper. And then he wound up with his usual stuff. Very compelling - very convinced: 'I suggest to you, Mrs Crale, that this story of yours about stealing coniine in order to commit suicide is a tissue of falsehood. I suggest that you took it in order to administer it to your husband, who was about to leave you for another woman, and that you did deliberately administer it to him.' And she looked at him - such a pretty creature, graceful, delicate - and she said, 'Oh, no - no, I didn't.' It was the flattest thing you ever heard, the most unconvincing. I saw old Depleach squirm in his seat. He knew it was all up then."

Fogg paused a minute, then he went on. "The jury were only out just over half an hour. They brought her in: Guilty with a recommendation to mercy.

"Actually, you know, she made a good contrast to the other woman in the case. The girl. The jury were unsympathetic to her from the start. She never turned a hair. Very good-looking, hard-boiled, modern. To the women in the court she stood for a type - type of the home breaker. Homes weren't safe when girls like that were wandering abroad. Girls full of sex and contemptuous of the rights of wives and mothers. She didn't spare herself, I will say. She was honest. Admirably honest. She'd fallen in love with Amyas Crale and he with her and she'd no scruples at all about taking him away from his wife and child.

"I admired her in a way. She had guts. Depleach put in some nasty stuff in cross-examination and she stood up well to it. But the court was unsympathetic. And the judge didn't like her. Old Avis, it was. Been a bit of a rip himself when young - but he's very hot on morality when he's presiding in his robes. His summing up against Caroline Crale was mildness itself. He couldn't deny the facts but he threw out pretty strong hints as to provocation and all that."

Hercule Poirot asked, "He did not support the suicide theory of the defense?"

Fogg shook his head. "That never really had a leg to stand upon. Mind you, I don't say Depleach didn't do his best with it. He was magnificent. He painted a most moving picture of a great-hearted, pleasure-loving, temperamental man, suddenly overtaken by a passion for a lovely young girl, conscience-stricken, yet unable to resist. Then his recoil, his disgust with himself, his remorse for the way he was treating his wife and child and his sudden decision to end it all! The honorable way out.

"I can tell you, it was a most moving performance; Depleach's voice brought tears to your eyes. You saw the poor wretch torn by his passions and his essential decency. The effect was terrific. Only - when it was all over - and the spell was broken, you couldn't quite square that mythical figure with Amyas Crale.

"Everybody knew too much about Crale. He wasn't at all that kind of man. And Depleach hadn't been able to get hold of any evidence to show that he was. I should say Crale came as near as possible to being a man without even a rudimentary conscience. He was a ruthless, selfish, good-tempered, happy egoist. Any ethics he had would have applied to painting. He wouldn't, I'm convinced, have painted a sloppy, bad picture - no matter what the inducement. But for the rest, he was a full-blooded man and he loved life - he had a zest for it. Suicide? Not he!"

"Not, perhaps, a very good defense to have chosen?"

Fogg shrugged his thin shoulders. "What else was there?" he said. "Couldn't sit back and plead that there was no case for the jury - that the prosecution had got to prove their case against the accused. There was a great deal too much proof. She'd handled the poison - admitted pinching it, in fact. There were means, motive, opportunity - everything."

"One might have attempted to show that these things were artificially arranged?"

Fogg said bluntly, "She admitted most of them. And in any case, it's too farfetched. You're implying, I presume, that somebody else murdered him and fixed it up to look as though she had done it."

"You think that quite untenable?"

"I'm afraid I do," Fogg said slowly. "You're suggesting the mysterious X. Where do we look for him?"

Poirot said, "Obviously in a close circle. There were five people - were there not? - who could have been concerned."

"Five? Let me see. There was the old duffer who messed about with his herb brewing. A dangerous hobby - but an amiable creature. Vague sort of person. Don't see him as X. There was the girl - she might have polished off Caroline, but certainly not Amyas. Then there was the stockbroker - Crale's best friend. That's popular in detective stories, but I don't believe in it in real life. There's no one else - oh, yes, the kid sister, but one doesn't seriously consider her. That's four."

Hercule Poirot said, "You forget the governess."

"Yes, that's true. Wretched people, governesses, one never does remember them. I do remember her dimly though. Middle-aged, plain, competent. I suppose a psychologist would say that she had a guilty passion for Crale and therefore killed him. The repressed spinster! It's no good - I just don't believe it. As far as my dim remembrance goes she wasn't the neurotic type."

"It is a long time ago."

"Fifteen or sixteen years, I suppose. Yes, quite that. You can't expect my memories of the case to be very acute."

Hercule Poirot said, "But on the contrary, you remember it amazingly well. That astounds me. You can see it, can you not? When you talk, the picture is there before your eyes."

"Yes, you're right," Fogg said slowly. "I do see it - quite plainly."

Poirot said, "It would interest me very much if you would tell me why?"

"Why?" Fogg considered the question. His thin, intelectual face was alert and interested. "Yes, now, why?"

Poirot asked, "What do you see so plainly? The witnesses? The counsel? The judge? The accused standing in they dock?"

Fogg said quietly, "That's the reason, of course! You've put your finger on it. I shall always see her. . . .Funny thing, romance. She had the quality of it. I don't know if she was really beautiful. . . .She wasn't very young - tired-looking - circles under her eyes. But it all centered round her. This interest, the drama. And yet, half the time, she wasn't there. She'd gone away somewhere, quite far away - just left her body there, quiescent, attentive, with the little polite smile on her lips. She was all half-tones - you know lights and shades. And yet, with it all, she was more there than the other - that girl with the perfect body and this beautiful face and the crude young strength.

"I admired Elsa Greer because she had guts, because she could fight, because she stood up to her tormentors and never quailed! But I admired Caroline Crale because she didn't fight, because she retreated into her world of half-lights and shadows. She was never defeated because she never gave battle."

He paused. "I'm only sure of one thing. She loved the man she killed. Loved him so much that half of her died with him. . . ."

Mr Fogg, K.C., paused again and polished his glasses. "Dear me," he said. "I seem to be saying some very strange things! I was quite a young man at the time, you know. Just an ambitious youngster. These things make an impression. But all the same I'm sure that Caroline Crale was a very remarkable woman. I shall never forget her. No - I shall never forget her..."

George Mayhew was cautious and noncommittal. He remembered the case, of course, but not at all clearly. His father had been in charge of the case - he himself had been only nineteen at the time.

Yes, the case had made a great stir. Because of Crale's being such a well-known man. His pictures were very fine, fine indeed. Two of them were in the Tate. Not that that meant anything.

M. Poirot would excuse him, but he didn't see quite what M. Poirot's interest was in the matter - Oh, the daughter! Really? Indeed? Canada? He had always heard it was New Zealand.

George Mayhew became less rigid. He unbent.

A shocking thing in a girl's life. He had the deepest sympathy for her. Really it would have been better if she had never learned the truth. Still, it was no use saying that now.

She wanted to know? Yes, but what was there to know? There were the reports of the trial, of course. He himself didn't really know anything.

No, he was afraid there wasn't much doubt as to Mrs Crale's being guilty. There was a certain amount of excuse for her. These artists - difficult people to live with. With Crale, he understood, it had always been some woman or other.

And she herself had probably been the possessive type of woman. Unable to accept facts. Nowadays she'd simply have divorced him and got over it. He added cautiously, "Let me see - er - Lady Dittisham, I believe, was the girl in the case."

Poirot said he believed that that was so.

"The newspapers bring it up from time to time," said Mayhew. "She's been in the divorce court a good deal. She's a very rich woman, as I expect you know. She was married to that explorer fellow before Dittisham. She's always more or less in the public eye. The kind of woman who likes notoriety, I should imagine."

"Or possibly a hero worshiper," suggested Poirot.

The idea was upsetting to George Mayhew. He accepted it dubiously. "Well, possibly - yes, I suppose that might be be."

Poirot said, "Had your firm acted for Mrs Crale for a long period of years?"

George Mayhew shook his head. "On the contrary. Johnathan and Johnathan were the Crale solicitors. Under the circumstances, however, Mr Johnathan felt that he could not very well act for Mrs Crale and he arranged with us - with my father - to take over her case. You would do well, I think, M. Poirot, to arrange a meeting with old Mr Johnathan. He has retired from active work - he is over seventy - but he knew the Crale family intimately, and he could tell you far more than I can. Indeed, I myself can tell you nothing at all. I was a boy at the time. I don't think I was even in court."

Poirot rose, and George Mayhew, rising, too, added, "You might like to have a word with Edmunds, our managing clerk. He was with the firm then and took a great interest in the case."

Chapter 2

Edmunds was a man of slow speech. His eyes gleamed with legal caution. He took his time in sizing up Poirot, before he let himself be betrayed into speech. He said, "Aye, I mind the Crale case." He added severely, "It was a disgraceful business."

His shrewd eyes rested appraisingly on Hercule Poirot. He said, "It's a long time since to be raking things up again."

"A court verdict is not always an ending."

Edmunds's square head nodded slowly. "I'd not say that you weren't in the right of it there."

Hercule Poirot went on. "Mrs Crale left a daughter."

"Aye, I mind there was a child. Sent abroad to relatives, was she not?"

"That daughter believes firmly in her mother's innocence."

The bushy eyebrows of Mr Edmunds rose. "That's the way of it, is it?"

Poirot asked, "Is there anything you can tell me to support that belief?"

Edmunds reflected. Then, slowly, he shook his head. "I could not conscientiously say there was. I admired Mrs Crale. Whatever else she was, she was a lady! Not like the other. A hussy - no more, no less. Bold as brass! Jumped-up trash - that's what she was - and showed it! Mrs Crale was quality."

"But none the less a murderess?"

Edmunds frowned. He said, with more spontaneity than he had yet shown, "That's what I used to ask myself, day after day. Sitting there in the dock so calm and gentle. 'I'll not believe it,' I used to say to myself. But, if you take my meaning, Mr Poirot, there wasn't anything else to believe. That hemlock didn't get into Mr Crale's beer by accident. It was put there. And if Mrs Crale didn't put it there, who did?"

"That is the question," said Poirot. "Who did?"

Again that shrewd eyes studied his face.

"So that's your idea?" said Mr Edmunds.

"What do you think yourself?"

There was a pause before the other answered. Then he said, "There was nothing that pointed that way - nothing at all."

Poirot said, "You were in court during the hearing of the case?"

"Every day."

"You heard the witnesses give evidence?"

"I did."

"Did anything strike you about them - any abnormality, and insincerity?"

"Was one of them lying, do you mean?" Edmunds said bluntly. "Had one of them a reason to wish Mr Crale dead? If you'll excuse me, Mr Poirot, that's a very melodramatic idea."

"At least consider it," Poirot urged.

He watched the shrewd face, the screwed-up, thoughtful eyes. Slowly, regretfully, Edmunds shook his head.

"That Miss Greer," he said, "she was bitter enough, and vindictive! I'd say she overstepped the mark in a good deal she said, but it was Mr Crale alive she wanted. He was no use to her dead. She wanted Mrs Crale hanged, all right - but that was because death had snatched her man away from her. Like a balked tigress she was! But, as I say, it was Mr Crale alive she'd wanted. Mr Philip Blake, he was against Mrs Crale, too. Prejudiced. Got his knife into her whenever he could. But I'd say he was honest according to his lights. He'd been Mr Crale's great friend. His brother, Mr Meredith Blake, a bad witness he was - vague, hesitating, never seemed sure of his answers.

"I've seen many witnesses like that. Look as though they're lying when all the time they're telling the truth. Didn't want to say anything more than he could help, Mr Meredith Blake didn't. Counsel got all the more out of him on that account. One of those quiet gentlemen who get easily flustered. The governess, now, she stood up well to them. Didn't waste words and answered pat and to the point. You couldn't have told, listening to her, which side she was on. Got all her wits about her, she had. The brisk kind." He paused. "Knew a lot more than she ever let on about the whole thing, I shouldn't wonder."

"I, too, should not wonder," said Hercule Poirot.

He looked sharply at the wrinkled, shrewd face of Mr Alfred Edmunds. It was quite bland and impassive. But Hercule Poirot wondered if he had been vouchsafed a hint.

Mr Caleb Johnathan lived in Essex. After a courteous exchange of letters, Hercule Poirot received an invitation, almost royal in its character, to dine and sleep. The old gentleman was decidedly a character. After the insipidity of young George Mayhew, Mr Johnathan was like a glass of his own vintage port.

He had his own methods of approach to a subject, and it was not until well on toward midnight, when sipping a glass of fragrant old brandy, that Mr Johnathan really unbent. In Oriental fashion he had appreciated Hercule Poirot's courteous refusal to rush him in any way. Now, in his own good time, he was willing to elaborate the theme of the Crale family.

"Our firm, of course, has known many generations of the Crales. I knew Amyas Crale and his father, Richard Crale, and I can remember Enoch Crale - the grandfather. Country squires, all of them, thought more of horses than human beings. They rode straight, liked women, and had no truck with ideas. They distrusted ideas. But Richard Crale's wife was cram full of ideas - more ideas than sense. She was poetical and musical - she played the harp, you know. She enjoyed poor health and looked very picturesque on her sofa. She was an admirer of Kingsley. That's why she called her son Amyas. His father scoffed at the name - but he gave in.

"Amyas Crale profited by this mixed inheritance. He got his artistic trend from his weakly mother, and his driving power and ruthless egoism from his father. All the Crales were egoists. They never by any chance saw any point of view but their own."

Tapping with a delicate finger on the arm of his chair, the old man shot a shrewd glance at Poirot. "Correct me if I am wrong, M. Poirot, but I think you are interested in - character, shall we say?"

"That, to me," Poirot replied, "is the principal interest of all my cases."

"I can conceive of it. To get under the skin, as it were, of your criminal. How interesting! How absorbing! Our firm, of course, has never had a criminal practice. We should not have been competent to act for Mrs Crale, even if taste had allowed. Mayhews, however, were a very adequate firm. They briefed Depleach - they didn't, perhaps, show much imagination there - still, he was very expensive, and, of course, exceedingly dramatic! What they hadn't the wits to see was that Caroline would never play up in the way he wanted her to. She wasn't a very dramatic woman."

"What was she?" asked Poirot. "It is that that I am chiefly anxious to know."

"Yes, yes - of course. How did she come to do what she did? That is the really vital question. I knew her, you know, before she married. Caroline Spalding, she was. A turbulent, unhappy creature. Very alive. Her mother was left a widow early in life and Caroline was devoted to her mother. Then the mother married again - there was another child. Yes - yes, very sad, very painful. These young, ardent, adolescent jealousies."

"She was jealous?"

"Passionately so. There was a regrettable incident. Poor child, she blamed herself bitterly afterward. But you know, M. Poirot, these things happen. There is an inability to put on the brakes. It comes - it comes with maturity."

"But what really happened?" asked Poirot.

"She struck the child - the baby - flung a paperweight at her. The child lost the sight of one eye and was permanently disfigured."

Mr Johnathan sighed. He said, "You can imagine the effect a simple question on that point had at the trial." He shook his head. "It gave the impression that Caroline Crale as a woman of ungovernable temper. That was not true. No, that was not true."

He paused and then resumed.

"Caroline Spalding came often to stay at Alderbury. She rode well, and was keen. Richard Crale was fond of her. She waited on Mrs Crale and was deft and gentle - Mrs Crale also liked her. The girl was not happy at home. She was happy at Alderbury. Diana Crale, Amyas's sister, and she were by way of being friends. Philip and Meredith Blake, boys from the adjoining estate, were frequently at Alderbury. Philip was always nasty, money-grubbing little brute. I must confess I have always had a distaste for him. But I am told that he tells very good a story and that he has the reputation of being a staunch friend.

"Meredith was what my contemporaries used to call a namby-pamby. Liked botany and butterflies and observing birds and beasts. Nature study, they call it nowadays. Ah, disappointment - all the young people were a disappointment to their parents. None of them ran true to type - huntin', shootin', fishin'. Meredith preferred watching birds and animals to shootin' or huntin' them. Philip definitely preferred town to country and went into the business of money-making. Diana married a fellow who wasn't a gentleman - one of the temporary officers in the war. And Amyas, strong, handsome, virile Amyas, blossomed into being a painter, of all things in the world. It's my opinion that Richard Crale died of the shock.

"And in due course Amyas married Caroline Spalding. They'd always fought and sparred, but it was a love match, all right. They were both crazy about each other. And they continued to care. But Amyas was like all the Crales, a ruthless egoist. He loved Caroline but he never once considered her in any way. He did as he pleased. It's my opinion that he was as fond of her as he could be of anybody - but she came a long way behind his art. That came first. And I should say at no time did his art give place to a woman.

"He had affairs with women - they stimulated him - but he left them high and dry when he'd finished with them. He wasn't a sentimental man, nor a romantic one. And he wasn't entirely a sensualist, either. The only woman he cared a button for was his own wife. And because she knew that, she put up with a lot. He was a very fine painter, you know. She realized that, and respected it. He chased off on his amorous pursuits and came back again - usually with a picture to show for it.

"It might have gone on like that if it hadn't come to Elsa Greer. Elsa Greer - "

Mr Johnathan shook his head.

Poirot said, "What of Elsa Greer?"

"She was, I believe, a crude young woman - with a crude outlook on life. Not, I think, an interesting character. Rose-white youth, passionate, pale, etc. Take that away and what remains? Only a somewhat mediocre young woman seeking for another life-sized hero to put on an empty pedestal."

Poirot said, "If Amyas Crale had not been a famous painter - "

Mr Johnathan agreed quickly:

"Quite - quite. You have taken the point admirably. The Elsas of this world are hero worshipers. A man must have done something, must be somebody. Caroline Crale, now, could have recognized quality in a bank clerk or an insurance agent! Caroline loved Amyas Crale the man, not Amyas Crale the painter. Caroline Crale was not crude - Elsa Greer was." He added, "But she was young and beautiful and to my mind infinitely pathetic."

Ex-Superintendent Hale pulled thoughtfully at his pipe. He said, "This is a funny fancy of yours, M. Poirot."

"It is, perhaps, a little unusual," Poirot agreed cautiously.

"You see," said Hale, "it's all such a long time ago."

Hercule Poirot foresaw that he was going to get a little tired of that particular phrase. He said mildly, "That adds to the difficulty, of course."

"Raking up the past," mused the other. "If there were an object in it, now..."

"There is an object."

"What is it?"

"One can enjoy the pursuit of truth for its own sake. I do. And you must not forget the young lady."

Hale nodded. "Yes, I see her side of it. But - you'll excuse me, M. Poirot - you're an ingenious man. You could cook her up a tale."

Poirot replied, "You do not know the young lady."

"Oh, come, now - a man of your experience!"

Poirot drew himself up. "I may be, mon cher, an artistic and competent liar - you seem to think so. But it is not my idea of ethical conduct. I have my standards."

"Sorry, M. Poirot. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. But it would be all in a good cause, so to speak."

"Oh, I wonder, would it really?"

Hale said slowly: "It's tough luck on a happy, innocent girl who's just going to get married to find that her mother was a murderess. If I were you I'd go to her and say that, after all, suicide was what it was. Say the case was mishandled by Depleach. Say that there's no doubt in your mind that Crale killed himself."

"But there is every doubt in my mind! I do not believe for one minute that Crale killed himself. Do you consider it even reasonably possible yourself?"

Slowly Hale shook his head.

"You see? No, it is the truth I must have - not a plausible or not very plausible lie."

Hale turned and looked at Poirot. He said, "You talk about the truth. I'd like to make it plain to you that we think we got the truth in the Crale case."

"That pronouncement from you means a great deal," Poirot said quickly. "I know you for what you are - an honest and capable man. Now tell me this, was there no doubt at any time in your mind as to the guilt of Mrs Crale?"

The superintendent's answer came promptly: "No doubt at all, M. Poirot. The circumstances pointed to her straight away, and every single fact that we uncovered supported that view."

"You can give me an outline of the evidence against her?"

"I can. When I received your letter I looked up the case." He picked up a small notebook. "I've jotted down all the salient facts here."

"Thank you, my friend. I am all eagerness to hear."

Hale cleared his throat. A slight official intonation made itself heard in his voice. He said: "At two forty-five on the afternoon of September eighteenth, Inspector Conway was rung up by Dr Andrew Faussett. Dr Faussett stated that Mr Amyas Crale of Alderbury had died suddenly and that in consequence of the circumstances of that death and also of a statement made to him by a Mr Blake, a guest staying in the house, he considered that it was a case for the police.

"Inspector Conway, in company with a sergeant and the police surgeon, came over to Alderbury straight away. Dr Faussett was there and took him to where the body of Mr Crale had not been disturbed.

"Mr Crale had been painting in a small enclosed garden, known as the Battery Garden, from the fact that it overlooked the sea, and had some miniature cannon placements in embattlements. It was situated at about four minutes walk from the house. Mr Crale had not come up to the house for lunch, as he wanted to get certain effects of light on the stone - and the sun would have been wrong for this later. He had therefore remained alone in the Batter Garden painting. This was stated not to be an unusual occurrence. Mr Crale took very little notice of mealtime. Sometimes a sandwich would be sent down to him, but more often he preferred to remain undisturbed.

"The last people to see him alive were Miss Elsa Greer (staying in the house) and Mr Meredith Blake (a near neighbor). These two went up together to the house and went with the rest of the household in to lunch. After lunch, coffee was served on the terrace. Mrs Crale finished drinking her coffee and then observed that she would 'go down and see how Amyas was getting on.' Miss Cecilia Williams, governess, got up and accompanied her. She was looking for a pull-over belonging to her pupil, Miss Angela Warren, sister of Mrs Crale, which the latter had mislaid, and she thought it possible it might have been left down on the beach.

"These two started off together. The path led downward, through some woods until it emerged at the door leading into the Battery Garden. You could either go into the Battery Garden or you could continue on the same path which led down to the seashore.

"Miss Williams continued on down, and Mrs Crale went into the Battery Garden. Almost at once, however, Mrs Crale screamed, and Miss Williams hurried back. Mr Crale was reclining on a seat and he was dead.

"At Mrs Crale's urgent request Miss Williams left the Battery Garden and hurried up to the house to telephone for a doctor. On her way, however, she met Mr Meredith Blake and entrusted her errand to him, herself returning to Mrs Crale, who she felt might be in need of someone. Dr Faussett arrived on the scene a quarter of an hour later. He saw at once that Mr Crale had been dead for some time - he placed the probable time of death at between one and two o'clock. There was nothing to show what had caused death. There was no sign of any wound and Mr Crale's attitude was a perfectly natural one. Nevertheless, Dr Faussett, who was well acquainted with Mr Crale's state of health, and who knew positively that there was no disease or weakness of any kind, was inclined to take a grave view of the situation. It was at this point that Mr Blake made a certain statement to Dr Faussett."

Inspector Hale paused, drew a deep breath, and passed, as it were, to Chapter Two:

"Subsequently Mr Blake repeated this statement to Inspector Conway. It was to this effect: He had that morning received a telephone message from his brother, Mr Meredith Blake (who lived at Handcross Manor, a mile and a half away). Mr Meredith Blake was an amateur chemist - or perhaps herbalist would describe it best. On entering his laboratory that morning, Mr Meredith Blake had been startled to note that a bottle containing a distillation of hemlock, which had been quite full the day before, was now nearly empty.

"Worried and alarmed by this fact he had rung up his brother to ask his advice as to what he should do about it. Mr Philip Blake had urged his brother to come over to Alderbury at once and they would talk the matter over. He himself walked part way to meet his brother and they had come up to the house together. They had come to no decision as to what course to adopt and had left the matter in order to consult again after lunch.

"As a result of further inquiries, Inspector Conway ascertained the following facts: On the preceding afternoon, five people had walked over from Alderbury to tea at Handcross Manor. There were Mr and Mrs Crale, Miss Angela Warren, Miss Elsa Greer, and Mr Philip Blake. During the time spent there, Mr Meredith Blake had given quite a dissertation on his hobby and had taken the party into his little laboratory and shown them around. In the course of this tour, he had mentioned certain specific drugs - one of which was coniine, the active principle of the spotted hemlock. He had explained its properties, had lamented the fact that it had now disappeared from the pharmacopoeia and boasted that he had known small doses of it to be very efficacious in whooping cough and asthma. Later he had mentioned its lethal properties and had actually read to his guests some passage from a Greek author describing its effects."

Superintendent Hale paused, refilled his pipe and passed on to Chapter Three:

"Colonel Frère, the chief constable, put the case into my hands. The result of the autopsy put the matter beyond any doubt. Coniine, I understand, leaves no definite post-mortem appearances, but the doctors knew what to look for and an ample amount of the drug was recovered. The doctor was of the opinion that it had been administered two or three hours before death. In front of Mr Crale, on the table, there had been an empty glass and an empty beer bottle. The dregs of both were analyzed. There was no coniine in the bottle, but there was in the glass. I made inquiries and learned that, although a case of beer and glasses were kept in a small summerhouse in the Battery Garden in case Mr Crale should feel thirsty when painting, on this particular morning Mrs Crale had brought down from the house a bottle of freshly iced beer. Mr Crale was busy painting when she arrived and Miss Greer was posing for him, sitting on one of the battlements.

"Mrs Crale opened the beer, poured it out, and put the glass into her husband's hand as he was standing before the easel. He tossed it off in one draught - a habit of his, I learned. Then he made a grimace, set down the glass on the table, and said, 'Everything tastes foul to me today!' Miss Greer, upon that, laughed and said, 'Liver!' Mr Crale said, 'Well, at any rate it was cold.'"

Hale paused.

"At what time did this take place?" Poirot asked.

"At about a quarter past eleven. Mr Crale continued to paint. According to Miss Greer, he later complained of stiffness in the limbs and grumbled that he must have got a touch of rheumatism. But he was the type of man who hates to admit to illness of any kind and he undoubtedly tried not to admit that he was feeling ill. His irritable demand that he should be left alone and the others go up to lunch was quite characteristic of the man, I should say."

Poirot nodded.

Hale continued. "So Crale was left alone in the Battery Garden. No doubt he dropped down on the seat and relaxed as soon as he was alone. Muscular paralysis would then set in. No help was at hand, and death supervened."

Again Poirot nodded.

Hale said: "Well, I proceeded according to routine. There wasn't much difficulty in getting down to the facts. On the preceding day there had been a set-to between Mrs Crale and Miss Greer. The latter had pretty insolently described some change in the arrangement of the furniture 'when I am living here.' Mrs Crale took her up and said, 'What do you mean? When you are living here.' Miss Greer replied, 'Don't pretend you don't know what I mean, Caroline. You're just like an ostrich that buries its head in the sand. You know perfectly well that Amyas and I care for each other and are going to be married.' Mrs Crale said, 'I know nothing of the kind.' Miss Greer then said, 'Well, you know it now.' Whereupon, it seems, Mrs Crale turned to her husband, who had just come into the room, and said, 'Is it true, Amyas, that you are going to marry Elsa?'"

Poirot said with interest, "And what did Mr Crale say to that?"

"Apparently he turned on Miss Greer and shouted at her, 'What the devil do you mean by blurting that out? Haven't you got the sense to hold your tongue?'

"Miss Greer said, 'I think Caroline ought to recognize the truth.'

"Mrs Crale said to her husband, 'Is it true, Amyas?'

"He wouldn't look at her, it seems, turned his face away and mumbled something.

"She said, 'Speak out. I've got to know.' Whereupon he said, 'Oh, it's true enough - but I don't want to discuss it now.'

"Then he flounced out of the room again, and Miss Greer said: "'You see!' and went on with something about its being no good for Mrs Crale to adopt a dog-in-the-manger attitude about it. They must all behave like rational people. She herself hoped that Caroline and Amyas would always remain good friends."

"And what did Mrs Crale say to that?" asked Poirot curiously.

"According to the witnesses she laughed. She said, 'Over my, dead body, Elsa.' She went to the door, and Miss Greer called after her, 'What do you mean?' Mrs Crale looked back and said, 'I'll kill Amyas before I give him up to you.'"

Hale paused.

"Pretty damning - eh?"

"Yes." Poirot seemed thoughtful. "Who overheard this scene?"

"Miss Williams was in the room, and Philip Blake. Very awkward for them."

"Their accounts of the scene agree?"

"Near enough - you never get two witnesses to remember a thing exactly alike. You know that as well as I do, M. Poirot."

Poirot nodded. He said thoughtfully, "Yes, it will be interesting to see - " He stopped with the sentence unfinished.

Hale went on: "I instituted a search of the house. In Mrs. Crale's bedroom I found in a bottom drawer, tucked way underneath some winter stockings, a small bottle labeled jasmine scent. It was empty. I fingerprinted it. The only prints on it were those of Mrs Crale. On analysis it was found to contain faint traces of oil of jasmine and a strong solution of coniine.

"I cautioned Mrs Crale and showed her the bottle. She replied readily. She had, she said, been in a very unhappy state of mind. After listening to Mr Meredith Blake's description of the drug she had slipped back to the laboratory, had emptied out a bottle of jasmine scent which was in her bag, and had filled the bottle up with coniine solution. I asked her why she had done this and she said, 'I don't want to speak of certain things more than I can help, but I had received a had shock. My husband was proposing to leave me for another woman. If that was so, I didn't want to live. That is why I took it.'"

Hale paused.

Poirot said, "After all, it is likely enough."

"Perhaps, M. Poirot. But it doesn't square with what she was overheard to say. And then there was a further scene on the following morning. Mr Philip Blake overheard a portion of it. Miss Greer overheard a different portion of it. It took place in the library between Mr and Mrs Crale. Mr Blake was in the hall and caught a fragment or two. Miss Greer was sitting outside near the open library window and heard a good deal more."

"And what did they hear?"

"Mr Blake heard Mrs Crale say, 'You and your women. I'd like to kill you. Some day I will kill you.'"

"No mention of suicide?"

"Exactly. None at all. No words like 'If you do this thing, I'll kill myself.' Miss Greer's evidence was much the same. According to her, Mr Crale said, 'Do try and be reasonable about this, Caroline. I'm fond of you and will always wish you well - you and the child. But I'm going to marry Elsa. We've always agreed to leave each other free.' Mrs Crale answered to that, 'Very well, don't, say I haven't warned you.' He said, 'What do you mean?' And she said, 'I mean that I love you and I'm not going to lose you. I'd rather kill you than let you go to that girl.'"

Poirot made a slight gesture. "It occurs to me," he murmured, "that Miss Greer was singularly unwise to raise this issue. Mrs Crale could easily have refused her husband a divorce."

"We had some evidence bearing on that point," said Hale. "Mrs Crale, it seems, confided partly, in Mr Meredith Blake. He was an old and trusted friend. He was very distressed and managed to get a word with Mr Crale about it. This, I may say, was on the preceding afternoon. Mr Blake remonstrated delicately with his friend, said how distressed he would be if the marriage between Mr and Mrs Crale was to break up so disastrously. He also stressed the point that Miss Greer was a very young girl and that it was a very serious thing to drag a young girl through the divorce court. To this Mr Crale replied, with a chuckle (callous sort of brute he must have been), 'That isn't Elsa's idea at all. She isn't going to appear. We shall fix it up in the usual way.'"

"Therefore," Poirot said, "even more imprudent of Miss Greer to have broken out the way she did."

Superintendent Hale said, "Oh, you know what women are! Have to get at one another's throats. It must have been a difficult situation anyhow. I can't understand Mr Crale allowing it to happen. According to Mr Meredith Blake he wanted to finish his picture. Does that make sense to you?"

"Yes, my friend, I think it does."

"It doesn't to me. The man was asking for trouble!"

"He was probably seriously annoyed with his young woman for breaking out the way she did."

"Oh, he was. Meredith Blake said so. If he had to finish the picture I don't see why he couldn't have taken some photographs and worked from them. I know a chap - does water colors of places - he does that."

Poirot shook his head. "No - I can understand Crale the artist. You must realize, my friend, that at that moment, probably, his picture was all that mattered to Crale. However much he wanted to marry the girl, the picture came first. That's why he hoped to get through her visit without its coming to an open issue. The girl, of course, didn't see it that way. With women, love always comes first."

"Don't I know it," said Superintendent Hale with feeling.

"Men," continued Poirot, "and especially artists, are different."

"Art!" said the superintendent with scorn. "All this talk about art! I never have understood it and I never shall! You should have seen that picture Crale was painting. All lopsided. He'd made the girl look as though she had toothache and the battlements were all cockeyed. Unpleasant-looking, the whole thing. I couldn't get it out of my mind for a long time afterward. I even dreamed about it. And, what's more, it affected my eyesight - I began to see battlements and walls and things all out of drawing. Yes, and women, too!"

Poirot smiled. He said, "Although you do not know it, you are paying a tribute to the greatness of Amyas Crale's art."

"Nonsense. Why can't a painter paint something nice and cheerful to look at? Why go out of your way to look for ugliness?"

"Some of us, mon cher, see beauty in curious places."

"The girl was a good-looker, all right," said Hale. "Lots of make-up and next to no clothes on. It isn't decent the way these girls go about. And that was sixteen years ago, mind you. Nowadays one wouldn't think anything of it. But then - well, it shocked me. Trousers and one of those sports shirts, open at the neck - and not another thing, I should say!"

"You seem to remember these points very well," murmured Poirot slyly.

Superintendent Hale blushed. "I'm just passing on the impression I got," he said austerely.

"Quite - quite," said Poirot soothingly. He went on: "So it would seem that the principal witnesses against Mrs Crale were Philip Blake and Elsa Greer?"

"Yes. Vehement, they were, both of them. But the governess was called by the prosecution, too, and what she said carried more weight than the other two. She was on Mrs Crale's side entirely, you see. Up in arms for her. But she was an honest woman and gave her evidence truthfully, without trying to minimize it in any way."

"And Meredith Blake?"

"He was very distressed by the whole thing, poor gentleman. As well he might be! Blamed himself for his drug brewing - and the chief constable blamed him for it, too. Coniine, I understand, was in Schedule I of the Poison Act. He was a friend of both parties, and it hit him very hard - besides being the kind of country gentleman who shrinks from notoriety and being in the public eye."

"Did not Mrs Crale's young sister give evidence?"

"No. It wasn't necessary. She wasn't there when Mrs Crale threatened her husband, and there was nothing she could tell us that we couldn't get from someone else equally well. She saw Mrs Crale go to the refrigerator and get the iced beer out and, of course, the defense could have subpoenaed her to say that Mrs Crale took it straight down without tampering with it in any way. But that point wasn't relevant because we never claimed that the coniine was in the beer bottle."

"How did she manage to put it in the glass with those two looking on?"

"Well, first of all, they weren't looking on. That is to say, Mr Crale was painting - looking at his canvas and at the sitter. And Miss Greer was posed, sitting with her back almost to where Mrs Crale was standing and her eyes looking over Mr Crale's shoulder."

Poirot nodded.

"As I say, neither of the two was looking at Mrs Crale. She had the stuff in one of those pipette things - one used to fill fountain pens with them. We found it crushed to splinters on the path up to the house."

"You have an answer to everything," Poirot murmured.

"Well, come, now, M. Poirot! Without prejudice. She threatens to kill him. She takes the stuff from the laboratory. The empty bottle is found in her room and nobody has handled it but her. She deliberately takes down iced beer to him - a funny thing, anyway, when you realize that they weren't on speaking terms - "

"A very curious thing. I had already remarked on it."

"Yes. Bit of a giveaway. Why was she so amiable all of a sudden? He complains of the taste of the stuff - and coniine has a nasty taste. She arranges to find the body and sends the other woman off to telephone. Why? So that she can wipe that bottle and glass and then press his fingers on it. After that she can pipe up and say that it was remorse and that he committed suicide. A likely story."

"It was certainly not very well imagined."

"No. If you ask me, she didn't take the trouble to think. She was so eaten up with hate and jealousy. All she thought of was doing him in. And then, when it's over, when she sees him there dead - well, then, I should say, she suddenly comes to herself and realizes that what she's done is murder - and that you get hanged for murder. And desperately she goes bald-headed for the only thing she can think of - which is suicide."

Poirot said, "It is very sound what you say there - yes. Her mind might work that way."

"In a way it was a premeditated crime and in a way it wasn't," said Superintendent Hale. "I don't believe she really thought it out, you know. Just went on with it blindly."

Poirot murmured, "I wonder . . . "

Chapter 3

Hale looked at Poirot curiously. "Have I convinced you that it was a straightforward case?" he said.

"Almost. Not quite. There are one or two peculiar points."

"Can you suggest an alternative solution that will hold water?"

Poirot said, "What were the movements of the other people on that morning?"

"We went into them, I can assure you. We checked up on everybody. Nobody had what you could call an alibi - you can't have with poisoning. Why, there's nothing to prevent a would-be murderer from handing his victim some poison in a capsule the day before, telling him it's a specific cure for indigestion and he must take it just before lunch - and then going away to the other end of England."

"But you don't think that happened in this case?"

"Mr Crale didn't suffer from indigestion. And in any case I can't see that kind of thing happening. It's true that Mr Meredith Blake was given to recommending quack nostrums of his own concocting, but I don't see Mr Crale trying any of them. And if he did he'd probably talk and joke about it. Besides, why should Mr Meredith Blake want to kill Mr Crale? Everything goes to show that he was on very good terms with him. They all were.

"Mr Philip Blake was his best friend. Miss Greer was in love with him. Miss Williams disapproved of him, I imagine, very strongly - but moral disapprobation doesn't lead to poisoning. Little Miss Warren scrapped with him a lot, she was at a tiresome age - just off to school, I believe - but he was quite fond of her and she of him. She was treated, you know, with particular tenderness and consideration in that house. You may have heard why. She was badly injured when she was a child - injured by Mrs Crale in a kind of maniacal fit of rage. That rather shows - doesn't it? - that she was a pretty uncontrolled sort of person. To go for a child - and maim her for life!"

"It might show," said Poirot, "that Angela Warren had good reason to bear a grudge against Caroline Crale."

"Perhaps, but not against Amyas Crale. And, anyway, Mrs Crale was devoted to her young sister - gave her a home when her parents died and, as I say, treated her with special affection - spoiled her badly, so they say. The girl was obviously very fond of Mrs Crale. She was kept away from the trial and sheltered from it all as far as possible - Mrs Crale was very insistent about that, I believe. But the child was terribly upset and longed to be taken to see her sister in prison. Caroline Crale wouldn't agree. She said that sort of thing might injure a girl's mentality for life. She arranged for her to go to school abroad."

He added, "Miss Warren turned out to be a very distinguished woman. Traveler to weird places. Lectures at the Royal Geographical - all that sort of thing."

"And no one remembers the trial?"

"Well, it's a different name for one thing. They hadn't even the same maiden name. They had the same mother but different fathers. Mrs Crale's name was Spalding."

"This Miss Williams, was she the child's governess or Angela Warren's?"

"Angela's. There was a nurse for the child, but she used to do a few little lessons with Miss Williams every day, I believe."

"Where was the child at the time?"

"She'd gone with the nurse to pay a visit to her godmother. A Lady Tressillian. A widow lady who'd lost her own two little girls and who was devoted to this kid."

Poirot nodded. "I see."

Hale continued. "As to the movements of the other people on the day of the murder, I can give them to you. Miss Greer sat on the terrace near the library window after breakfast. There, as I say, she overheard the quarrel between Crale and his wife. After that she accompanied Crale down to the Battery and sat for him until lunchtime, with a couple of breaks to ease her muscles.

"Philip Blake was in the house after breakfast and overheard part of the quarrel. After Crale and Miss Greer went off, he read the paper until his brother telephoned him. Thereupon, he went down to the shore to meet his brother. They walked together up the path again past the Battery Garden. Miss Greer had just gone up to the house to fetch a pull-over, as she felt chilly, and Mrs Crale was with her husband discussing arrangements for Angela's departure to school."

"Ah, an amicable interview," said Poirot.

"Well, no, not amicable. Crale was fairly shouting at her, I understand. Annoyed at being bothered with domestic details. I suppose she wanted to get things straightened up if there was going to be a break."

Poirot nodded.

Hale went on:

"The two brothers exchanged a few words with Amyas Crale. Then Miss Greer reappeared and took up her position, and Crale picked up his brush again, obviously wanting to get rid of them. They took the hint and went up to the house. It was when they were at the Battery, by the way, that Amyas Crale complained that all the beer down there was hot, and his wife promised to send him down some iced beer."

"Aha!"

"Exactly - aha! Sweet as sugar she was about it. They went up to the house and sat on the terrace outside. Mrs Crale and Angela Warren brought them beer out there.

"Later, Angela Warren went down to bathe and Philip Blake went with her.

"Meredith Blake went down to a clearing with a seat just above the Battery Garden. He could just see Miss Greer as she posed on the battlements, and could hear her voice and Crale's as they talked. He sat there and thought over the coniine business. He was still very worried about it and didn't know quite what to do. Elsa Greer saw him and waved her hand to him. When the bell went for lunch he came down to the battery, and Elsa Greer and he went back to the house together. He noticed then that Crale was looking, as he put it, very queer, but he didn't really think anything of it at the time. Crale was the kind of man who is never ill - and so one didn't imagine he would be. On the other hand, he did have moods of fury and despondency according as to whether his painting was not going as he liked it. On those occasions one left him alone and said as little as possible to him. That's what these two did on this occasion.

"As to the others, the servants were busy with housework and cooking lunch. Miss Williams was in the schoolroom part of the morning, correcting some exercise books. Afterward, she took some household mending to the terrace. Angela Warren spent most of the morning wandering about the garden, climbing trees and eating things - you know what a girl of fifteen is - plums, sour apples, hard pears, etc. After that she came back to the house and, as I say, went down with Philip Blake to the beach and had a swim before lunch."

Superintendent Hale paused. "Now, then," he said belligerently, "do you find anything phony about that?"

"Nothing at all," Poirot said.

"Well, then!" The two words expressed volumes.

"But all the same," said Hercule Poirot, "I am going to satisfy myself. I - "

"What are you going to do?"

"I am going to visit these five people - and from each one I am going to get his or her own story."

Superintendent Hale sighed with a deep melancholy. He said, "Man, you're nuts! None of their stories are going to agree. Don't you grasp that elementary fact? No two people remember a thing in the same order anyway. And after all this time! Why, you'll hear five accounts of five separate murders!"

"That," said Poirot, "is what I am counting upon. It will be very instructive."

Philip Blake was recognizably like the description given of him by Depleach - a prosperous, shrewd, jovial-looking man - slightly running to fat.

Hercule Poirot had timed his appointment for half past six on a Saturday afternoon. Philip Blake had just finished his eighteen holes, and he had been on his game - winning a fiver from his opponent. He was in the mood to be friendly and expansive.

Hercule Poirot explained himself and his errand. On this occasion at least, he showed no undue passion for unsullied truth. It was a question, Blake gathered, of a series of books dealing with famous crimes.

Philip Blake frowned. He said, "Why rake up these things?"

Hercule Poirot shrugged his shoulders. He was at his most foreign today. He was out to be despised but patronized. "It is the public," he murmured. "They eat it up - yes, eat it up."

"Ghouls," said Philip Blake. But he said it good-humoredly - not with the fastidiousness and the distaste that a more sensitive man might have displayed.

Hercule Poirot said with a shrug of the shoulders, "It is human nature. You and I, Mr Blake, who know the world, have no illusions about our fellow human beings. Not bad people, most of them, but certainly not to be idealized."

Blake said heartily, "I've parted with my illusions long ago."

"Instead, you tell a very good story, so I have been told."

Philip Blake's eyes twinkled. "Heard this one?"

Poirot's laugh came at the right place. It was not an edifying story, but it was funny.

Philip Blake lay back in his chair, his muscles relaxed, his eyes creased with good humor. Hercule Poirot thought suddenly that he looked rather like a contented pig. A pig. This little pig went to market . . .

What was he like, this man, this Philip Blake A man, it would seem, without cares. Prosperous, contented. No remorseful thoughts, no uneasy twinges of conscience from the past, no haunting memories here. No, a well-fed pig who had gone to market - and fetched the full price. . . .

But once, perhaps, there had been more to Philip Blake. He must have been, when young, a handsome man. Eyes always a shade too small, a fraction too near together, perhaps - but otherwise a well-made, well-set-up young man. How old was he now? At a guess between fifty and sixty. Nearing forty, then, at the time of Crale's death. Less stultified, then, less sunk in the gratifications of the minute. Asking more of life, perhaps, and receiving less. . . .

Poirot murmured as a mere catch phrase, "You comprehend my position."

"No, really, you know, I'm hanged if I do." The stockbroker sat upright again; his glance was once more shrewd. "Why you? You're not a writer."

"Not precisely - no. Actually I am a detective."

The modesty of this remark had probably not been equaled before in Poirot's conversation.

"Of course you are. We all know that. The famous Hercule Poirot!"

But his tone held a subtly mocking note. Intrinsically, Philip Blake was too much of an Englishman to take the pretensions of a foreigner seriously. To his cronies he would have said, "Quaint little mountebank. Oh, well, I expect his stuff goes down with the women, all right."

And although that derisive, patronizing attitude was exactly the one which Hercule Poirot had aimed at inducing, nevertheless he found himself annoyed by it.

This man, this successful man of affairs, was unimpressed by Hercule Poirot! It was a scandal.

"I am gratified," said Poirot untruly, "that I am so well known to you. My success, let me tell you, has been founded on the psychology - the eternal why of human behavior. That, M. Blake, is what interests the world in crime today. It used to be romance. Famous crimes were retold from one angle only - the love story connected with them. Nowadays it is very different. People read with interest that Dr Crippen murdered his wife because she was a big, bouncing woman and he was little and insignificant and therefore she made him feel inferior. They read of some famous woman criminal that she killed because she'd been snubbed by her father when she was three years old. It is, as I say, the why of crime that interests nowadays."

Philip Blake said, with a slight yawn, "The why of most crimes is obvious enough, I should say. Usually money."

"Ah, but, my dear sir," Poirot cried, "the why must never be obvious. That is the whole point!"

"And that's where you come in?"

"And that, as you say, is where I come in! It is proposed to rewrite the stories of certain bygone crimes - from the psychological angle. Psychology in crime, it is my specialty. I have accepted the commission."

Philip Blake grinned. "Pretty lucrative, I suppose?"

"I hope so; I certainly hope so."

"Congratulations. Now, perhaps, you'll tell me where I come in?"

"Most certainly. The Crale case, monsieur."

Philip Blake did not look startled. But he looked thoughtful. He said, "Yes, of course, the Crale case..."

Hercule Poirot said anxiously, "It is not displeasing to you, Mr Blake?"

"Oh, as to that." Philip Blake shrugged his shoulders. "It's no use resenting a thing that you've no power to stop. The trial of Caroline Crale is public property. Anyone can go ahead and write it up. It's no use my objecting. In a way - I don't mind telling you - I do dislike it a good deal. Amyas Crale was one of my best friends. I'm sorry the whole unsavory business has to be raked up again. But these things happen."

"You are a philosopher, Mr Blake."

"No, no. I just know enough not to start kicking against the pricks. I daresay, you'll do it less offensively than many others."

"I hope, at least, to write with delicacy and good taste," said Poirot.

Philip Blake gave a loud guffaw but without any real amusement. "Makes me chuckle to hear you say that."

"I assure you, Mr Blake, I am really interested. It is not just a matter of money with me. I genuinely want to recreate the past - to feel and see the events that took place, to see behind the obvious and to visualize the thoughts and feelings of the actors in the drama."

"I don't know that there was much subtlety about it," Philip Blake said. "It was a pretty obvious business. Crude female jealousy, that was all there was to it."

"It would interest me enormously, Mr Blake, if I could have your own reactions to the affair."

Philip Blake said with sudden heat, his face deepening in color, "Reactions! Reactions! Don't speak so pedantically. I didn't just stand there and react! You don't seem to understand that my friend - my friend, I tell you - had been killed - poisoned! And that if I'd acted quicker I could have saved him."

"How do you make that out, Mr Blake?"

"Like this. I take it that you've already read up the facts of the case?" Poirot nodded. "Very well. Now on that morning my brother Meredith called me up. He was in a pretty good stew. One of his hell brews was missing, and it was a fairly deadly hell brew. What did I do? I told him to come along and we'd talk it over. Decide what was best to be done. 'Decide what was best.' It beats me now how I could have been such a hesitating fool! I ought to have gone to Amyas straight away and warned him. I ought to have said, 'Caroline's pinched one of Meredith's patent poisons, and you and Elsa had better look out for yourselves.'"

Blake got up. He strode up and down in his excitement.

"Do you suppose I haven't gone over it in my mind again again? I knew. I had the chance to save him and I dallied about - waiting for Meredith! Why hadn't I the sense to realize that Caroline wasn't going to have any qualms or hesitancies? She'd taken that stuff to use - and she'd use it at the very first opportunity. She wouldn't wait till Meredith discovered his loss. I knew - of course I knew that Amyas was in deadly danger and I did nothing!"

"I think you reproach yourself unduly, monsieur. You had not much time - "

The other interrupted him. "Time? I had plenty of time. Any amount of courses were open to me. I could have gone to Amyas, as I say; but there was the chance, of course, that he wouldn't believe me. Amyas wasn't the sort of man who'd believe easily in his own danger. He'd have scoffed at the notion. And he never thoroughly understood the sort of devil Caroline was. But I could have gone to her. I could have said, 'I know what you're up to. I know what you're planning to do. But if Amyas or Elsa dies of coniine poisoning, you'll be hanged by your neck!' That would have stopped her. Or I might have rung up the police. Oh, there were things that could have been done - and, instead, I let myself be influenced by Meredith's slow, cautious methods! 'We must be sure - talk it over - make quite certain who could have taken it...' Old fool - never made a quick decision in his life! A good thing for him he was the eldest son and has an estate to live on. If he'd ever tried to make money he'd have lost every penny he had."

"You had no doubt yourself who had taken the poison?" Poirot asked.

"Of course not. I knew at once it must be Caroline. You see, I knew Caroline very well."

"That is very interesting," Poirot said. "I want to know, Mr Blake, what kind of a woman Caroline Crale was."

Philip Blake said sharply, "She wasn't the injured innocent people thought she was at the time of the trial!"

"What was she, then?"

Blake sat down again. He said seriously, "Would you really like to know?"

"I would like to know very much indeed."

"Caroline was a rotter. She was a rotter through and through. Mind you, she had charm. She had that kind of sweetness of manner that deceives people utterly. She had a frail, helpless look about her that appealed to people's chivalry. Sometimes, when I've read a bit of history, I think Mary Queen of Scots must have been a bit like her. Always sweet and unfortunate and magnetic - and actually a cold, calculating woman, a scheming woman who planned the murder of Darnley and got away with it. Caroline was like that - a cold, calculating planner. And she, had a wicked temper.

"I don't know whether they've told you - it isn't a vital point of the trial, but it shows her up - what she did to her baby sister? She was jealous, you know. Her mother had married again, and all the notice and affection went to little Angela. Caroline couldn't stand that. She tried to kill the baby - smash its head in. Luckily the blow wasn't fatal. But it was a pretty ghastly thing to do."

"Yes, indeed!"

"Well, that was the real Caroline. She had to be first. That was the thing she simply could not stand - not being first. And there was a cold, egotistical devil in her that was capable of being stirred to murderous lengths."

He paused.

(pg 56 contintue)

(edit)

“She appeared impulsive, you know, but she was really calculating. When she stayed at Alderbury as a girl, she gave us all the once over and made her plans. She’d no money of her own. I was never in the running—a younger son with his way to make. (Funny, that, I could probably buy up Meredith and Crale, if he’d lived, nowadays!) She considered Meredith for a bit, but she finally fixed on Amyas. Amyas would have Alderbury, and though he wouldn’t have much money with it, she realized that his talent as a painter was something quite out of the way. She gambled on his being not only a genius but a financial success as well.

“And she won. Recognition came to Amyas early. He wasn’t a fashionable painter exactly—but his genius was recognized and his pictures were bought. Have you seen any of his paintings? There’s one here. Come and look at it.”

He led the way into the dining room and pointed to the left-hand wall.

“There you are. That’s Amyas.”

Poirot looked in silence. It came to him with fresh amazement that a man could so imbue a conventional subject with his own particular magic. A vase of roses on a polished mahogany table. That hoary old set piece. How then did Amyas Crale contrive to make his roses flame and burn with a riotous almost obscene life. The polished wood of the table trembled and took on sentient life. How explain the excitement the picture roused? For it was exciting. The proportions of the table would have distressed Superintendent Hale, he would have complained that no known roses were precisely of that shape or colour. And afterwards he would have gone about wondering vaguely why the roses he saw were unsatisfactory, and round mahogany tables would have annoyed him for no known reason.

Poirot gave a little sigh. He murmured: “Yes—it is all there.”

Blake led the way back. He mumbled: “Never have understood anything about art myself. Don’t know why I like looking at that thing so much, but I do. It’s—oh, damn it all, it’s good.”

Poirot nodded emphatically.

Blake offered his guest a cigarette and lit one himself. He said:

“And that’s the man—the man who painted those roses—the man who painted the ‘Woman with a Cocktail Shaker’—the man who painted that amazing painful ‘Nativity,’ that’s the man who was cut short in his prime, deprived of his vivid forceful life all because of a vindictive mean-natured woman!” He paused. "You'll say that I'm bitter - that I'm unduly prejudiced against Caroline. She had charm - I've felt it. But I knew - I always knew - the real woman behind. And that woman, M. Poirot, was evil. She was cruel and malignant and a grabber!"

"And yet it has been told me that Mrs Crale put up with many hard things in her married life."

"Yes, and didn't she let everybody know about it? Always the martyr! Poor old Amyas. His married life was one long hell - or rather it would have been if it hadn't been for his exceptional quality. His art, you see - he always had that. It was an escape. When he was painting he didn't care; he shook off Caroline and her nagging and all the ceaseless rows and quarrels. They were endless, you know. Not a week passed without a thundering row over one thing or another.

"She enjoyed it. Having rows stimulated her, I believe. It was an outlet. She could say all the hard, bitter, stinging things she wanted to say. She'd positively purr after one of those set-tos - go off looking as sleek and well-fed as a cat. But it took it out of him. He wanted peace, rest, a quiet life. Of course, a man like that ought never to marry; he isn't cut out for domesticity. A man like Crale should have affairs but no binding ties. They're bound to chafe him."

"He confided in you?"

"Well - he knew that I was a pretty devoted pal. He let me see things. He didn't complain. He wasn't that kind of man. Sometimes he'd say, 'Damn all women.' Or he'd say, 'Never get married, old boy. Wait for hell till after this life.'"

"You knew about his attachment to Miss Greer?"

"Oh, yes - at least I saw it coming on. He told me he'd met a marvelous girl. She was different, he said, from anything or anyone he'd ever met before. Not that I paid much attention to that. Amyas was always meeting one woman or other who was 'different.' Usually, a month later, he'd stare at you if you mentioned them, and wonder who you were talking about! But this Elsa Greer really was different. I realized that when I came down to Alderbury to stay. She'd got him, you know - hooked him good and proper. The poor mutt fairly ate out of her hand."

"You did not like Elsa Greer either?"

"No, I didn't like her. She was definitely a predatory creature. She, too, wanted to own Crale body and soul. But I think, all the same, that she'd have been better for him than Caroline. She might conceivably have let him alone once she was sure of him. Or she might have got tired of him and moved on to someone else. The best thing for Amyas would have been to be quite free of female entanglements."

"But that, it would seem, was not to his taste."

Philip Blake said with a sigh, "The fool was always getting himself involved with some woman or other. And yet, in a way, women really meant very little to him. The only two women who really made any impression on him at all in his life were Caroline and Elsa."

"Was he fond of the child?" Poirot asked.

"Angela? Oh, we all liked Angela. She was such a sport. She was always game for anything. What a life she led that wretched governess of hers! Yes, Amyas liked Angela all right; but sometimes she went too far, and then he used to get really mad with her, and then Caroline would step in - Caro was always on Angela's side and that would finish Amyas altogether. He hated it when Caro sided with Angela against him. There was a bit of jealousy all round, you know. Amyas was jealous of the way Caro always put Angela first and would do anything for her. And Angela was jealous of Amyas and rebelled against his overbearing ways."

He paused.

"In the interests of truth, Mr Blake," Poirot said, "I am going to ask you to do something."

"What is it?"

"I am going to beg that you will write me out an exact account of what happened on those days at Alderbury. That is to say, I am going to ask you to write me out a full account of the murder and its attendant circumstances."

"But, my dear fellow, after all this time? I should be hopelessly inaccurate."

"Not necessarily."

"Surely."

"No, Mr Blake; for one thing, with the passage of time, the mind retains a hold on essentials and rejects superficial matters."

"Oh, you mean a mere broad outline?"

"Not at all. I mean a detailed, conscientious account of each event as it occurred and every conversation you can remember."

"And supposing I remember them wrong?"

"You can give the wording at least to the best of your recollection. There may be gaps, but that cannot be helped."

Blake looked at him curiously. "But what's the idea? The police files will give you the whole thing far more accurately."

"No, Mr Blake. We are speaking now from the psychological point of view. I do not want bare facts. I want your own selection of facts. Time and your memory are responsible for that selection. There may have been things done, words spoken, that I should seek for in vain in the police files. Things and words that you never mentioned because, maybe, you judged them irrelevant, or because you preferred not to repeat them."

Blake said sharply, "Is this account of mine for publication?"

"Certainly not. It is for my eye only. To assist me to draw my own deductions."

"And you won't quote from it without my consent?"

"Certainly not."

"H'm," said Philip Blake. "I'm a very busy man, M. Poirot."

"I appreciate that there will be time and trouble involved. I should be happy to agree to a - reasonable fee."

There was a moment's pause. Then Philip Blake said suddenly, "No, if I do it I'll do it for nothing."

"And you will do it?"

Philip Blake said warningly, "Remember, I can't vouch for the accuracy of my memory."

"That is perfectly understood."

"Then I think," said Philip Blake, "that I should like to do it. I feel I owe it - in a way - to Amyas Crale."

Hercule Poirot was not a man to neglect details.

His advance toward Meredith Blake was carefully thought out. Meredith Blake was, he already felt sure, a very different proposition from Philip Blake. Rush tactics would not succeed here. The assault must be leisurely.

Hercule Poirot knew that there was only one way to penetrate the stronghold. He must approach Meredith Blake with the proper credentials. Those credentials must be social, not professional. Fortunately, in the course of his career, Hercule Poirot had made friends in many counties. Devonshire was no exception. He sat down to review what resources he had in Devonshire. As a result he discovered two people who were acquaintances or friends of Mr Meredith Blake. He descended upon him, therefore, armed with two letters - one from Lady Mary Lytton-Gore, a gentle widow lady of restricted means, the most retiring of creatures; and the other from a retired admiral, whose family had been settled in the county for four generations.

Meredith Blake received Poirot in a state of some perplexity.

As he had often felt lately, things were not what they used to be. Dash it all, private detectives used to be private detectives - fellows you got to guard wedding presents at country receptions, fellows you went to, rather shamefacedly, when there was some dirty business afoot and you had to get the hang of it.

But here was Lady Mary Lytton-Gore writing: "Hercule Poirot is a very old and valued friend of mine. Please do all you can to help him, won't you?" And Mary Lytton-Gore wasn't - no, decidedly she wasn't - the sort of woman you associate with private detectives and all that they stand for. And Admiral Cronshaw wrote: "Very good chap - absolutely sound. Grateful if you will do what you can for him. Most entertaining fellow - can tell you lots of good stories."

And now here was the man himself. Really a most impossible person - the wrong clothes, button boots, an incredible mustache! Not his, Meredith Blake's, kind of fellow at all. Didn't look as though he'd ever hunted or shot - or even played a decent game. A foreigner.

Slightly amused, Hercule Poirot read accurately these thoughts passing through the other's head. He had felt his own interest rising considerably as the train brought him into the west country. He would see now, with his eyes, the actual place where these long-past events happened.

It was here, at Handcross Manor, that two young brothers had lived and gone over to Alderbury and joked and played tennis and fraternized with a young Amyas Crale and a girl called Caroline. It was from here that Meredith had started out to Alderbury on that fatal morning. That had been sixteen years ago. Hercule Poirot looked with interest at the man who was confronting him with somewhat uneasy politeness.

Very much what he had expected. Meredith Blake resembled superficially every other English country gentleman of straitened means and outdoor tastes.

A shabby old coat of tweed, a weather-beaten, pleasant, middle-aged face with somewhat faded blue eyes, rather a weak mouth, half hidden by a rather straggly mustache. Poirot found Meredith Blake a great contrast to his brother. He had a hesitating manner; his mental processes were obviously leisurely. It was as though his tempo had slowed down with the years just as his brother Philip's had been accelerated.

As Poirot had already guessed, he was a man whom you could not hurry. The leisurely life of the English countryside was in his bones.

He looked, the detective thought, a good deal older than his brother, though, from what Mr Johnathan had said, it would seem that only a couple of years separated them.

Hercule Poirot prided himself on knowing how to handle an "old-school tie." It was no moment for trying to seem English. No, one must be a foreigner - frankly a foreigner - and be magnanimously forgiven for the fact. "Of course these foreigners don't quite know the ropes. Will shake hands at breakfast. Still, a decent fellow really..."

Poirot set about creating this impression of himself. The two men talked, cautiously, of Lady Mary Lytton-Gore and of Admiral Cronshaw. Other names were mentioned. Fortunately, Poirot knew someone's cousin and had met somebody else's sister-in-law. He could see a kind of warmth dawning in the squire's eyes. The fellow seemed to know the right people.

Gracefully, insidiously, Poirot slid into the purpose of his visit. He was quick to counteract the inevitable recoil. This book was, alas, going to be written. Miss Crale - Miss Lemarchant, as she was now called - was anxious for him to exercise a judicious editorship. The facts, unfortunately, were public property. But much could be done in their presentation to avoid wounding susceptibilities. Poirot murmured that before now he had been able to use discreet influence to avoid certain sensational passages in a book of memoirs.

Meredith Blake flushed angrily. His hand shook a little as he filled a pipe. He said, a slight stammer in his voice, "It's - it's g-ghoulish the way they dig these things up. S-Sixteen years ago. Why can't they let it be?"

Poirot shrugged his shoulders. "I agree with you," he said. "But what will you? There is a demand for such things. And anyone is at liberty to reconstruct a proved crime and to comment on it."

"Seems disgraceful to me."

Poirot murmured, "Alas, we do not live in a delicate age. You would be surprised, Mr Blake, if you knew the unpleasant publications I have succeeded in - shall we say - softening? I am anxious to do all I can to save Miss Crale's feeling in the matter."

Blake murmured, "Little Carla! That child! A grownup woman. One can hardly believe it."

"I know. Time flies swiftly, does it not?"

Meredith Blake sighed. He said, "Too quickly."

Poirot said, "As you will have seen in the letter I handed you from Miss Crale, she is very anxious to know everything possible about the sad events of the past."

"Why?" Meredith Blake said with a touch of irritation. "Why rake up everything again? How much better to let it all be forgotten."

"You say that, Mr Blake, because you know all the past too well. Miss Crale, remember, knows nothing. That is to say, she knows only the story as she has learned it from official accounts."

Meredith Blake winced. He said, "Yes, I forgot. Poor child! What a detestable position for her. The shock of learning the truth. And then - those soulless, callous reports of the trial."

"The truth," said Hercule Poirot, "can never be done justice to in a mere legal recital. It is the things that are left out that are the things that matter. The emotions, the feelings, the characters of the actors in the drama, the extenuating circumstances - "

He paused, and the other man spoke eagerly, like an actor who had received his cue. "Extenuating circumstances! That's just it. If ever there were extenuating circumstances, there were in this case. Amyas Crale was an old friend - his family and mine had been friends for generations, but one has to admit that his conduct was, frankly, outrageous. He was an artist, of course, and presumably that explains it. But there it is - he allowed a most extraordinary set of affairs to arise. The position was one that no ordinary decent man could have contemplated for a moment."

Hercule Poirot said, "I am interested that you should say that. It had puzzled me - that situation. Not so does a well-bred man, a man of the world, go about his affairs."

Blake's thin, hesitating face had lit up with animation. He said: "Yes, but the whole point is that Amyas never was an ordinary man! He was a painter, you see, and with him painting came first - really, sometimes, in the most extraordinary way! I don't understand these so-called artistic people myself - never have. I understood Crale a little because, of course, I'd known him all my life. His people were the same sort as my people. And in many ways Crale ran true to type - it was only where art came in that he didn't conform to the usual standards. He wasn't, you see, an amateur in any way. He was first class - really first class.

"Some people say he was a genius. They may be right. But, as a result, he was always what I should describe as unbalanced. When he was painting a picture, nothing else mattered, nothing could be allowed to get in the way. He was like a man in a dream - completely obsessed by what he was doing. Not till the canvas was finished did he come out of this absorption and start to pick up the threads of ordinary life again."

He looked questioningly at Poirot and the latter nodded.

"You understand, I see. Well, that explains, I think, why this particular situation arose. He was in love with this girl. He wanted to marry her. He was prepared to leave his wife and child for her. But he'd started painting her down here, and he wanted to finish that picture. Nothing else mattered to him. He didn't see anything else. And the fact that the situation was a perfectly impossible one for the two women concerned didn't seem to have occurred to him."

"Did either of them understand his point of view?"

"Oh, yes - in a way. Elsa did, I suppose. She was terrifically enthusiastic about his painting. But it was a difficult position for her - naturally. And as for Caroline - "

He stopped. Poirot said, "For Caroline - yes?"

Chapter 4

Meredith Blake said, speaking with a little difficulty, "Caroline - I had always - well, I had always been very fond of Caroline. There was a time when - when I hoped to marry her. But that was soon nipped in the bud. Still, I remained, if I may say so, devoted to - to her service."

Poirot nodded thoughtfully. That slightly old-fashioned phrase expressed, he felt, the man before him very typically. Meredith Blake was the kind of man who would devote himself readily to a romantic and honourable devotion. He would serve his lady faithfully and without hope of reward. Yes, it was all very much in character.

He said, carefully weighing the words: “You must have resented this—attitude—on her behalf?”

“I did. Oh, I did. I—I actually remonstrated with Crale on the subject.”

“When was this?”

“Actually the day before—before it all happened. They came over to tea here, you know. I got Crale aside and I—I put it to him. I even said, I remember, that it wasn’t fair on either of them.”

“Ah, you said that?”

“Yes. I didn’t think—you see, that he realized.”

“Possibly not.”

“I said to him that it was putting Caroline in a perfectly unendurable position. If he meant to marry this girl, he ought not to have her staying in the house and—well—more or less flaunt her in Caroline’s face. It was, I said, an unendurable insult.”

Poirot asked curiously: “What did he answer?”

Meredith Blake replied with distaste: “He said: ‘Caroline must lump it.’”

Hercule Poirot’s eyebrows rose.

“Not,” he said, “a very sympathetic reply.”

“I thought it abominable. I lost my temper. I said that no doubt, not caring for his wife, he didn’t mind how much he made her suffer, but what, I said, about the girl? Hadn’t he realized it was a pretty rotten position for her? His reply to that was that Elsa must lump it too!

“Then he went on: ‘You don’t seem to understand, Meredith, that this thing I’m painting is the best thing I’ve done. It’s good, I tell you. And a couple of jealous quarrelling women aren’t going to upset it—no, by hell, they’re not.’

“It was hopeless talking to him. I said he seemed to have taken leave of all ordinary decency. Painting, I said, wasn’t everything. He interrupted there. He said: ‘Ah, but it is to me.’

“I was still very angry. I said it was perfectly disgraceful the way he had always treated Caroline. She had had a miserable life with him. He said he knew that and he was sorry about it. Sorry! He said: ‘I know, Merry, you don’t believe that—but it’s the truth. I’ve given Caroline the hell of a life and she’s been a saint about it. But she did know, I think, what she might be letting herself in for. I told her candidly the sort of damnable egoistic, loose-living kind of chap I was.’

“I put it to him then very strongly that he ought not to break up his married life. There was the child to be considered and everything. I said that I could understand that a girl like Elsa could bowl a man over, but that even for her sake he ought to break off the whole thing. She was very young. She was going into this baldheaded, but she might regret it bitterly afterwards. I said couldn’t he pull himself together, make a clean break and go back to his wife?

“And what did he say?”

Blake said: “He just looked—embarrassed. He patted me on the shoulder and said: ‘You’re a good chap, Merry. But you’re too sentimental. You wait till the picture’s finished and you’ll admit that I was right.’

“I said: ‘Damn your picture.’ And he grinned and said all the neurotic women in England couldn’t do that. Then I said that it would have been more decent to have kept the whole thing from Caroline until after the picture was finished. He said that that wasn’t his fault. It was Elsa who had insisted on spilling the beans. I said, Why? And he said that she had had some idea that it wasn’t straight otherwise. She wanted everything to be clear and above board. Well, of course, in a way, one could understand that and respect the girl for it. However badly she was behaving, she did at least want to be honest.”

“A lot of additional pain and grief is caused by honesty,” remarked Hercule Poirot.

Meredith Blake looked at him doubtfully. He did not quite like the sentiment. He sighed: “It was a—a most unhappy time for us all.”

“The only person who does not seem to have been affected by it was Amyas Crale,” said Poirot.

“And why? Because he was a rank egoist. I remember him now. Grinning at me as he went off saying: ‘Don’t worry, Merry. Everything’s going to pan out all right!’”

“The incurable optimist,” murmured Poirot.

Meredith Blake said: “He was the kind of man who didn’t take women seriously. I could have told him that Caroline was desperate.”

“Did she tell you so?”

“Not in so many words. But I shall always see her face as it was that afternoon. White and strained with a kind of desperate gaiety. She talked and laughed a lot. But her eyes—there was a kind of anguished grief in them that was the most moving thing I have ever known. Such a gentle creature, too.”

Hercule Poirot looked at him for a minute or two without speaking. Clearly the man in front of him felt no incongruity in speaking thus of a woman who on the day after had deliberately killed her husband.

Meredith Blake went on. He had by now quite overcome his first suspicious hostility. Hercule Poirot had the gift of listening. To men such as Meredith Blake, the reliving of the past has a definite attraction. He spoke now almost more to himself than to his guest.

“I ought to have suspected something, I suppose. It was Caroline who turned the conversation to—to my little hobby. It was, I must confess, an enthusiasm of mine. The old English herbalists, you know, are a very interesting study. There are so many plants that were formerly used in medicine and which have now disappeared from the official Pharmacopœia. And it’s astonishing, really, how a simple decoction of something or other will really work wonders. No need for doctors half the time. The French understand these things—some of their tisanes are first rate.” He was well away now on his hobby.

“Dandelion tea, for instance; marvellous stuff. And a decoction of hips—I saw the other day somewhere that that’s coming into fashion with the medical profession again. Oh yes, I must confess, I got a lot of pleasure out of my brews. Gathering the plants at the right time, drying them—macerating them—all the rest of it. I’ve even dropped to superstition sometimes and gathered my roots at the full of the moon or whatever it was the ancients advised. On that day I gave my guests, I remember, a special disquisition on the spotted hemlock. It flowers biennially. You gather the fruits when they’re ripening, just before they turn yellow. Coniine, you know, is a drug that’s dropped out—I don’t believe there’s any official preparation of it in the last Pharmacopœia—but I’ve proved the usefulness of it in whooping cough—and in asthma too, for that matter—”

“You talked of all this in your laboratory?”

“Yes, I showed them round—explained the various drugs to them—valerian and the way it attracts cats—one sniff at that was enough for them! Then they asked about deadly nightshade and I told them about belladonna and atropine. They were very much interested.”

“They? What is comprised in that word?”

Meredith Blake looked faintly surprised as though he had forgotten that his listener had no first-hand knowledge of the scene. “Oh, the whole party. Let me see, Philip was there and Amyas, and Caroline, of course. Angela. And Elsa Greer.”

“That was all?”

“Yes—I think so. Yes, I am sure of it,” Blake looked at him curiously. “Who else should there be?”

“I thought perhaps the governess—”

“Oh, I see. No, she wasn’t there that afternoon. I believe I’ve forgotten her name now. Nice woman. Took her duties very seriously. Angela worried her a good deal I think.”

“Why was that?”

“Well, she was a nice kid, but she was inclined to run wild. Always up to something or other. Put a slug or something down Amyas’s back one day when he was hard at work painting. He went up in smoke. Cursed her up and down dale. It was after that that he insisted on this school idea.”

“Sending her to school?”

“Yes. I don’t mean he wasn’t fond of her, but he found her a bit of a nuisance sometimes. And I think—I’ve always thought—”

“Yes?”

“That he was a bit jealous. Caroline, you see, was a slave to Angela. In a way, perhaps, Angela came first with her—and Amyas didn’t like that. There was a reason for it of course. I won’t go into that, but—”

Poirot interrupted. “The reason being that Caroline Crale reproached herself for an action that had disfigured the girl?”

Blake exclaimed: “Oh, you know that? I wasn’t going to mention it. All over and done with. But yes, that was the cause of her attitude I think. She always seemed to feel that there was nothing too much she could do—to make up, as it were.”

Poirot nodded thoughtfully. He asked: “And Angela? Did she bear a grudge against her half sister?”

“Oh no, don’t run away with that idea. Angela was devoted to Caroline. She never gave that old business a thought, I’m sure. It was just Caroline who couldn’t forgive herself.”

“Did Angela take kindly to the idea of boarding school?”

“No, she didn’t. She was furious with Amyas. Caroline took her side, but Amyas had absolutely made his mind up about it. In spite of a hot temper, Amyas was an easy man in most respects, but when he really got his back up, everyone had to give in. Both Caroline and Angela knuckled under.”

“She was to go to school—when?”

“The autumn term—they were getting her kit together, I remember. I suppose, if it hadn’t been for the tragedy, she would have gone off a few days later. There was some talk of her packing on the morning of that day.”

Poirot said: “And the governess?”

“What do you mean—the governess?”

“How did she like the idea? It deprived her of a job, did it not?”

“Yes—well, I suppose it did in a way. Little Carla used to do a few lessons, but of course she was only—what? Six or thereabouts. She had a nurse. They wouldn’t have kept Miss Williams on for her. Yes, that’s the name—Williams. Funny how things come back to you when you talk them over.”

“Yes, indeed. You are back now, are you not, in the past? You relive the scenes—the words that people said, their gestures—the expressions on their faces?”

Meredith Blake said slowly: “In a way—yes…But there are gaps, you know…Great chunks missed out. I remember, for instance, the shock it was to me when I first learned that Amyas was going to leave Caroline—but I can’t remember whether it was he who told me or Elsa. I do remember arguing with Elsa on the subject—trying to show her, I mean, that it was a pretty rotten thing to do. And she only laughed at me in that cool way of hers and said I was old fashioned. Well, I dare say I am old fashioned, but I still think I was right. Amyas had a wife and child—he ought to have stuck to them.”

“But Miss Greer thought that point of view out of date?”

“Yes. Mind you, sixteen years ago, divorce wasn’t looked on quite so much as a matter of course as it is now. But Elsa was the kind of girl who went in for being modern. Her point of view was that when two people weren’t happy together it was better to make a break. She said that Amyas and Caroline never stopped having rows and that it was far better for the child that she shouldn’t be brought up in an atmosphere of disharmony.”

“And her argument did not impress you?”

Meredith Blake said slowly: “I felt, all the time, that she didn’t really know what she was talking about. She was rattling these things off—things she’d read in books or heard from her friends—it was like a parrot. She was—it’s a queer thing to say—pathetic somehow. So young and so self-confident.” He paused. “There is something about youth, Mr. Poirot, that is—that can be—terribly moving.”

Hercule Poirot said, looking at him with some interest: “I know what you mean….”

Blake went on, speaking more to himself than to Poirot. “That’s partly, I think, why I tackled Crale. He was nearly twenty years older than the girl. It didn’t seem fair.”

Poirot murmured: “Alas—how seldom one makes any effect. When a person has determined on a certain course—it is not easy to turn them from it.”

Meredith Blake said: “That is true enough.” His tone was a shade bitter. “I certainly did no good by my interference. But then, I am not a very convincing person. I never have been.”

Poirot threw him a quick glance. He read into that slight acerbity of tone the dissatisfaction of a sensitive man with his own lack of personality. And he acknowledged to himself the truth of what Blake had just said. Meredith Blake was not the man to persuade anyone into or out of any course. His well-meaning attempts would always be set aside—indulgently usually, without anger, but definitely set aside. They would not carry weight. He was essentially an ineffective man.

Poirot said, with an appearance of changing a painful subject: “You still have your laboratory of medicines and cordials, yes?”

“No.”

The word came sharply—with an almost anguished rapidity Meridith Blake said, his face flushing: “I abandoned the whole thing—dismantled it. I couldn’t go on with it—how could I?—after what had happened. The whole thing, you see, might have been said to be my fault.”

“No, no, Mr. Blake, you are too sensitive.”

“But don’t you see? If I hadn’t collected those damned drugs? If I hadn’t laid stress on them—boasted about them—forced them on those people’s notice that afternoon? But I never thought—I never dreamed—how could I—”

“How indeed.”

“But I went bumbling on about them. Pleased with my little bit of knowledge. Blind, conceited fool. I pointed out that damned coniine. I even, fool that I was, took them back into the library and read them out that passage from the Phaedo describing Socrates’ death. A beautiful piece of writing—I’ve always admired it. But it’s haunted me ever since.”

Poirot said: “Did they find any fingerprints on the coniine bottle?”

“Hers.”

“Caroline Crale’s?”

“Yes.”

“Not yours?”

“No. I didn’t handle the bottle, you see. Only pointed to it.”

“But at the same time, surely, you had handled it?”

“Oh, of course, but I gave the bottles a periodic dusting from time to time—I never allowed the servants in there, of course—and I had done that about four or five days previously.”

“You kept the room locked up?”

“Invariably.”

“When did Caroline Crale take the coniine from the bottle?”

Meredith Blake replied reluctantly: “She was the last to leave the room. I called her, I remember, and she came hurrying out. Her cheeks were just a little pink—and her eyes wide and excited. Oh, God, I can see her now.”

Poirot said: “Did you have any conversation with her at all that afternoon? I mean by that, did you discuss the situation as between her and her husband at all?”

Blake said slowly in a low voice: “Not directly. She was looking as I’ve told you—very upset. I said to her at a moment when we were more or less by ourselves: ‘Is anything the matter, my dear?’ she said: ‘Everything’s the matter…’ I wish you could have heard the desperation in her voice. Those words were the absolute literal truth. There’s no getting away from it—Amyas Crale was Caroline’s whole world. She said, ‘Everything’s gone—finished. I’m finished, Meredith.’ And then she laughed and turned to the others and was suddenly wildly and very unnaturally gay.”

Hercule Poirot nodded his head slowly. He looked very like a china mandarin. He said: “Yes—I see—it was like that….”

Meredith Blake pounded suddenly with his fist. His voice rose. It was almost a shout. “And I’ll tell you this Mr. Poirot—when Caroline Crale said at the trial that she took the stuff for herself, I’ll swear she was speaking the truth! There was no thought in her mind of murder at that time. I swear there wasn’t. That came later.”

Hercule Poirot asked: “Are you sure that it did come later?”

Blake stared. He said: “I beg your pardon? I don’t quite understand—”

Poirot said: “I ask you whether you are sure that the thought of murder ever did come? Are you perfectly convinced in your own mind that Caroline Crale did deliberately commit murder?”

Meredith Blake’s breath came unevenly. He said: “But if not—if not—are you suggesting an—well, accident of some kind?”

“Not necessarily.”

“That’s a very extraordinary thing to say.”

“Is it? You have called Caroline Crale a gentle creature. Do gentle creatures commit murder?”

“She was a gentle creature—but all the same—well, there were very violent quarrels, you know.”

“Not such a gentle creature, then?”

“But she was—Oh, how difficult these things are to explain.”

“I am trying to understand.”

“Caroline had a quick tongue—a vehement way of speaking. She might say ‘I hate you. I wish you were dead.’ But it wouldn’t mean—it wouldn’t entail—action.”

“So in your opinion, it was highly uncharacteristic of Mrs. Crale to commit murder?”

“You have the most extraordinary ways of putting things, Mr. Poirot. I can only say that—yes—it does seem to me uncharacteristic of her. I can only explain it by realizing that the provocation was extreme. She adored her husband. Under those circumstances a woman might—well—kill.”

Poirot nodded. “Yes, I agree….”

“I was dumbfounded at first. I didn’t feel it could be true. And it wasn’t true—if you know what I mean—it wasn’t the real Caroline who did that.”

“But you are quite sure that—in the legal sense—Caroline Crale did do it?”

Again Meredith Blake stared at him.

“My dear man—if she didn’t—”

“Well, if she didn’t?”

“I can’t imagine any alternative solution. Accident? Surely impossible.”

“Quite impossible, I should say.”

“And I can’t believe in the suicide theory. It had to be brought forward, but it was quite unconvincing to anyone who knew Crale.”

“Quite.”

“So what remains?” asked Meredith Blake.

Poirot said coolly: “There remains the possibility of Amyas Crale having been killed by somebody else.”

“But that’s absurd!”

“You think so?”

“I’m sure of it. Who would have wanted to kill him? Who could have killed him?”

“You are more likely to know than I am.”

“But you don’t seriously believe—”

“Perhaps not. It interests me to examine the possibility. Give it your serious consideration. Tell me what you think.”

Meredith stared at him for a minute or two. Then he lowered his eyes. After a minute or two he shook his head. He said: “I can’t imagine any possible alternative. I should like to do so. If there were any reason for suspecting anybody else I would readily believe Caroline innocent. I don’t want to think she did it. I couldn’t believe it at first. But who else is there? Who else was there. Philip? Crale’s best friend. Elsa? Ridiculous. Myself? Do I look like a murderer? A respectable governess? A couple of old faithful servants? Perhaps you’d suggest that the child Angela did it? No, Mr. Poirot, there’s no alternative. Nobody could have killed Amyas Crale but his wife. But he drove her to it. And so, in a way, it was suicide after all, I suppose.”

“Meaning that he died by the result of his own actions, though not by his own hand?”

“Yes, it’s a fanciful point of view, perhaps. But—well—cause and effect, you know.”

Hercule Poirot said: “Have you ever reflected, Mr. Blake, that the reason for murder is nearly always to be found by a study of the person murdered?”

“I hadn’t exactly—yes, I suppose I see what you mean.”

Poirot said: “Until you know exactly what sort of a person the victim was, you cannot begin to see the circumstances of a crime clearly.” He added: “That is what I am seeking for—and what you and your brother have helped to give me—a reconstruction of the man Amyas Crale.”

Meredith Blake passed the main point of the remark over. His attention had been attracted by a single word. He said quickly: “Philip?”

“Yes.”

“You have talked with him also?”

“Certainly.”

Meredith Blake said sharply: “You should have come to me first.”

Smiling a little, Poirot made a courteous gesture. “According to the laws of primogenitude, that is so,” he said. “I am aware that you are the elder. But you comprehend that as your brother lives near London, it was easier to visit him first.”

Meredith Blake was still frowning. He pulled uneasily at his lip. He repeated: “You should have come to me first.”

This time, Poirot did not answer. He waited. And presently Meredith Blake went on: “Philip,” he said, “is prejudiced.”

“Yes?”

“As a matter of fact he’s a mass of prejudices—always has been.” He shot a quick uneasy glance at Poirot. “He’ll have tried to put you against Caroline.”

“Does that matter, so long—after?”

Meredith Blake gave a sharp sigh. “I know. I forget that it’s so long ago—that it’s all over. Caroline is beyond being harmed. But all the same I shouldn’t like you to get a false impression.”

“And you think your brother might give me a false impression?”

“Frankly, I do. You see, there was always a certain—how shall I put it?—antagonism between him and Caroline.”

“Why?”

The question seemed to irritate Blake. He said: “Why? How should I know why? These things are so. Philip always crabbed her whenever he could. He was annoyed, I think, when Amyas married her. He never went near them for over a year. And yet Amyas was almost his best friend. That was the reason really, I suppose. He didn’t feel that any woman was good enough. And he probably felt that Caroline’s influence would spoil their friendship.”

“And did it?”

“No, of course it didn’t. Amyas was always just as fond of Philip—right up to the end. Used to twit him with being a money grabber and with growing a corporation and being a Philistine generally. Philip didn’t care. He just used to grin and say it was a good thing Amyas had one respectable friend.”

“How did your brother react to the Elsa Greer affair?”

“Do you know, I find it rather difficult to say. His attitude wasn’t really easy to define. He was annoyed, I think, with Amyas for making a fool of himself over the girl. He said more than once that it wouldn’t work and that Amyas would live to regret it. At the same time I have a feeling—yes, very definitely I have a feeling that he was just faintly pleased at seeing Caroline let down.”

Poirot’s eyebrows rose. He said: “He really felt like that?”

“Oh, don’t misunderstand me. I wouldn’t go further than to say that I believe that feeling was at the back of his mind. I don’t know that he ever quite realized himself that that is what he felt. Philip and I have nothing much in common, but there is a link, you know, between people of the same blood. One brother often knows what the other brother is thinking.”

“And after the tragedy?”

Meredith Blake shook his head. A spasm of pain crossed his face. He said: “Poor Phil. He was terribly cut up. Just broken up by it. He’d always been devoted to Amyas, you see. There was an element of hero worship about it, I think. Amyas Crale and I are the same age. Philip was two years younger. And he looked up to Amyas always. Yes—it was a great blow to him. He was—he was terribly bitter against Caroline.”

“He, at least, had no doubts, then?”

Meredith Blake said: “None of us had any doubts….”

There was a silence. Then Blake said with the irritable plaintiveness of a weak man: “It was all over—forgotten—and now you come—raking it all up….”

“Not I. Caroline Crale.”

Meredith stared at him: “Caroline? What do you mean?”

Poirot said, watching him: “Caroline Crale the second.”

Meredith's face relaxed. “Ah yes, the child. Little Carla. I—I misunderstood you for a moment.”

“You thought I meant the original Caroline Crale? You thought that it was she who would not—how shall I say it—rest easy in her grave?”

Meredith Blake shivered. “Don’t, man.”

“You know that she wrote to her daughter—the last words she ever wrote—that she was innocent?”

Meredith stared at him. He said—and his voice sounded utterly incredulous: “Caroline wrote that?”

“Yes.” Poirot paused and said: “It surprises you?”

“It would surprise you if you’d seen her in court. Poor, hunted, defenceless creature. Not even struggling.”

“A defeatist?”

“No, no. She wasn’t that. It was, I think, the knowledge that she’d killed the man she loved—or I thought it was that.”

“You are not so sure now?”

“To write a thing like that—solemnly—when she was dying.”

Poirot suggested: “A pious lie, perhaps.”

“Perhaps.” But Meredith was dubious. “That’s not—that’s not like Caroline….”

Hercule Poirot nodded. Carla Lemarchant had said that. Carla had only a child’s obstinate memory. But Meredith Blake had known Caroline well. It was the first confirmation Poirot had got that Carla’s belief was to be depended upon.

Meredith Blake looked up at him. He said slowly: “If—if Caroline was innocent—why, the whole thing’s madness! I don’t see—any other possible solution….”

He turned sharply on Poirot. “And you? What do you think?”

There was a silence.

“As yet,” said Poirot at last, “I think nothing. I collect only the impressions. What Caroline Crale was like. What Amyas Crale was like. What the other people who were there at the time were like. What happened exactly on those two days. That is what I need. To go over the facts laboriously one by one. Your brother is going to help me there. He is sending me an account of the events as he remembers them.”

Meredith Blake said sharply: “You won’t get much from that. Philip’s a busy man. Things slip his memory once they’re past and done with. Probably he’ll remember things all wrong.”

“There will be gaps, of course. I realize that.”

“I tell you what—” Meredith paused abruptly, then went on, reddening a little as he spoke. “If you like, I—I could do the same. I mean, it would be a kind of check, wouldn’t it?”

Hercule Poirot said warmly: “It would be most valuable. An idea of the first excellence!”

“Right. I will. I’ve got some old diaries somewhere. Mind you,” he laughed awkwardly. “I’m not much of a hand at literary language. Even my spelling’s not too good. You—you won’t expect too much?”

“Ah, it is not the style I demand. Just a plain recital of everything you can remember. What every one said, how they looked—just what happened. Never mind if it doesn’t seem relevant. It all helps with the atmosphere, so to speak.”

“Yes, I can see that. It must be difficult visualizing people and places you have never seen.”

Poirot nodded. “There is another thing I wanted to ask you. Alderbury is the adjoining property to this, is it not? Would it be possible to go there—to see with my own eyes where the tragedy occurred?”

Meredith Blake said slowly: “I can take you over there right away. But, of course, it is a good deal changed.”

“It has not been built over?”

“No, thank goodness—not quite so bad as that. But it’s a kind of hostel now—it was bought by some society. Hordes of young people come down to it in the summer, and of course all the rooms have been cut up and partitioned into cubicles, and the grounds have been altered a good deal.”

“You must reconstruct it for me by your explanations.”

“I’ll do my best. I wish you could have seen it in the old days. It was one of the loveliest properties I know.”

He led the way out through the window and began walking down a slope of lawn.

“Who was responsible for selling it?”

“The executors on behalf of the child. Everything Crale had came to her. He hadn’t made a will, so I imagine that it would be divided automatically between his wife and the child. Caroline’s will left what she had to the child also.”

“Nothing to her half sister?”

“Angela had a certain amount of money of her own left her by her father.”

Poirot nodded. “I see.” Then he uttered an exclamation: “But where is it that you take me? This is the seashore ahead of us!”

“Ah, I must explain our geography to you. You’ll see for yourself in a minute. There’s a creek, you see, Camel Creek, they call it, runs inland—looks almost like a river mouth, but it isn’t—it’s just sea. To get to Alderbury by land you have to go right inland and round the creek, but the shortest way from one house to the other is to row across this narrow bit of the creek. Alderbury is just opposite—there, you can see the house through the trees.”

They had come out on a little beach. Opposite them was a wooded headland and a white house could just be distinguished high up amongst the trees.

Two boats were drawn up on the beach. Meredith Blake, with Poirot’s somewhat awkward assistance, dragged one of them down to the water and presently they were rowing across to the other side.

“We always went this way in the old days,” Meredith explained. “Unless, of course, there was a storm or it was raining, and then we’d take the car. But it’s nearly three miles if you go round that way.”

He ran the boat neatly alongside a stone quay on the other side. He cast a disparaging eye on a collection of wooden huts and some concrete terraces.

“All new, this. Used to be a boathouse—tumbledown old place—and nothing else. And one walked along the shore and bathed off those rocks over there.”

He assisted his guest to alight, made fast the boat, and led the way up a steep path.

“Don’t suppose we’ll meet anyone,” he said over his shoulder. “Nobody here in April—except for Easter. Doesn’t matter if we do. I’m on good terms with my neighbours. Sun’s glorious today. Might be summer. It was a wonderful day then. More like July than September. Brilliant sun—but a chilly little wind.”

The path came out of the trees and skirted an outcrop of rock. Meredith pointed up with his hand. “That’s what they called the Battery. We’re more or less underneath it now—skirting round it.”

They plunged into trees again and then the path took another sharp turn and they emerged by a door set in a high wall. The path itself continued to zigzag upwards, but Meredith opened the door and the two men passed through it.

For a moment Poirot was dazzled coming in from the shade outside. The Battery was an artificially cleared plateau with battlements set with cannon. It gave one the impression of overhanging the sea. There were trees above it and behind it, but on the sea side there was nothing but the dazzling blue water below.

“Attractive spot,” said Meredith. He nodded contemptuously towards a kind of pavilion set back against the back wall. “That wasn’t there, of course—only an old tumbledown shed where Amyas kept his painting muck and some bottled beer and a few deck chairs. It wasn’t concreted then, either. There used to be a bench and a table—painted iron ones. That was all. Still—it hasn’t changed much.” His voice held an unsteady note.

Poirot said: “And it was here that it happened?”

Meredith nodded. “The bench was there—up against the shed. He was sprawled on that. He used to sprawl there sometimes when he was painting—just fling himself down and stare and stare—and then suddenly up he’d jump and start laying the paint on the canvas like mad.” He paused. “That’s why, you know, he looked—almost natural. As though he might be asleep—just have dropped off. But his eyes were open—and he’d—just stiffened up. Stuff sort of paralyses you, you know. There isn’t any pain…I’ve—I’ve always been glad of that….”

Poirot asked a thing that he already knew. “Who found him?”

“She did. Caroline. After lunch. I and Elsa, I suppose, were the last ones to see him alive. It must have been coming on then. He—looked queer. I’d rather not talk about it. I’ll write it to you. Easier that way.”

He turned abruptly and went out of the Battery. Poirot followed him without speaking.

The two men went on up the zigzag path. At a higher level than the Battery there was another small plateau. It was overshadowed with trees and there was a bench there and a table.

Meredith said: “They haven’t changed this much. But the bench used not to be Ye Olde Rustic. It was just a painted iron business. A bit hard for sitting, but a lovely view.”

Poirot agreed. Through a framework of trees one looked down over the Battery to the creek mouth.

“I sat up here part of the morning,” Meredith explained. “Trees weren’t quite so overgrown then. One could see the battlements of the Battery quite plainly. That’s where Elsa was posing, you know. Sitting on one with her head twisted round.”

He gave a slight twitch of his shoulders.

“Trees grow faster than one thinks,” he muttered. “Oh well, suppose I’m getting old. Come on up to the house.”

They continued to follow the path till it emerged near the house. It had been a fine old house, Georgian in style. It had been added to and on a green lawn near it were set some fifty little wooden bathing hutches.

“Young men sleep there, girls in the house,” Meredith explained. “I don’t suppose there’s anything you want to see here. All the rooms have been cut about. Used to be a little conservatory tacked on here. These people have built a loggia. Oh well—I suppose they enjoy their holidays. Can’t keep everything as it used to be—more’s the pity.”

He turned away abruptly.

“We’ll go down another way. It—it all comes back to me, you know. Ghosts. Ghosts everywhere!”

Chapter 5

They returned to the quay by a somewhat longer and more rambling route. Neither of them spoke. Poirot respected his companion’s mood.

When they reached Handcross Manor once more, Meredith Blake said abruptly: “I bought that picture, you know. The one that Amyas was painting. I just couldn’t stand the idea of its being sold for—well—publicity value—a lot of dirty-minded brutes gaping at it. It was a fine piece of work. Amyas said it was the best thing he’d ever done. I shouldn’t be surprised if he was right. It was practically finished. He only wanted to work on it another day or so. Would—would you care to see it?”

Hercule Poirot said quickly: “Yes, indeed.”

Blake led the way across the hall and took a key from his pocket. He unlocked a door and they went into a fair-sized, dusty smelling room. It was closely shuttered. Blake went across to the windows and opened the wooden shutters. Then, with a little difficulty, he flung up a window and a breath of fragrant spring air came wafting into the room.

Meredith said: “That’s better.”

He stood by the window inhaling the air and Poirot joined him. There was no need to ask what the room had been. The shelves were empty but there were marks upon them where bottles had stood. Against one wall was some derelict chemical apparatus and a sink. The room was thick in dust.

Meredith Blake was looking out of the window. He said: “How easily it all comes back. Standing here, smelling the jasmine—and talking—talking—like the damned fool I was—about my precious potions and distillations!”

Absently, Poirot stretched a hand through the window. He pulled off a spray of jasmine leaves just breaking from their woody stem.

Meredith Blake moved resolutely across the floor. On the wall was a picture covered with a dust sheet. He jerked the dust sheet away.

Poirot caught his breath. He had seen so far, four pictures of Amyas Crale’s: two at the Tate, one at a London dealer’s, one, the still life of roses. But now he was looking at what the artist himself had called his best picture, and Poirot realized at once what a superb artist the man had been.

The painting had an old superficial smoothness. At first sight it might have been a poster, so seemingly crude were its contrasts. A girl, a girl in a canary-yellow shirt and dark-blue slacks, sitting on a grey wall in full sunlight against a background of violent blue sea. Just the kind of subject for a poster.

But the first appearance was deceptive; there was a subtle distortion—an amazing brilliance and clarity in the light. And the girl—

Yes, here was life. All there was, all there could be of life, of youth, of sheer blazing vitality. The face was alive and the eyes….

So much life! Such passionate youth! That, then, was what Amyas Crale had seen in Elsa Greer, which had made him blind and deaf to the gentle creature, his wife. Elsa was life. Elsa was youth.

A superb, slim, straight creature, arrogant, her head turned, her eyes insolent with triumph. Looking at you, watching you—waiting….

Hercule Poirot spread out his hands. He said: “It is a great—yes, it is great—”

Meredith Blake said, a catch in his voice: “She was so young—”

Poirot nodded. He thought to himself, “What do most people mean when they say that? So young. Something innocent, something appealing, something helpless. But youth is not that! Youth is crude, youth is strong, youth is powerful—yes, and cruel! And one thing more—youth is vulnerable.”

He followed his host to the door. His interest was quickened now in Elsa Greer whom he was to visit next. What would the years have done to that passionate, triumphant crude child?

He looked back at the picture.

Those eyes. Watching him…watching him…Telling him something….

Supposing he couldn’t understand what they were telling him? Would the real woman be able to tell him? Or were those eyes saying something that the real woman did not know?

Such arrogance, such triumphant anticipation.

And then Death had stepped in and taken the prey out of those eager, clutching young hands….

And the light had gone out of those passionately anticipating eyes. What were the eyes of Elsa Greer like now?

He went out of the room with one last look.

He thought: “She was too much alive.”

He felt—a little—frightened….

The house in Brook Street had Darwin tulips in the window boxes. Inside the hall a great vase of white lilac sent eddies of perfume towards the open front door.

A middle-aged butler relieved Poirot of his hat and stick. A footman appeared to take them and the butler murmured deferentially: “Will you come this way, sir?”

Poirot followed him along the hall and down three steps. A door was opened, the butler pronounced his name with every syllable correct.

Then the door closed behind him and a tall thin man got up from a chair by the fire and came towards him.

Lord Dittisham was a man just under forty. He was not only a Peer of the Realm, he was a poet. Two of his fantastical poetic dramas had been staged at vast expense and had had a succès d’estime. His forehead was rather prominent, his chin was eager, and his eyes and his mouth unexpectedly beautiful.

He said: “Sit down, Mr. Poirot.”

Poirot sat down and accepted a cigarette from his host. Lord Dittisham shut the box, struck a match and held it for Poirot to light his cigarette, then he himself sat down and looked thoughtfully at his visitor.

Then he said: “It is my wife you have come to see, I know.”

Poirot answered: “Lady Dittisham was so kind as to give me an appointment.”

“Yes.”

There was a pause. Poirot hazarded: “You do not, I hope, object, Lord Dittisham?”

The thin dreamy face was transformed by a sudden quick smile. “The objections of husbands, Mr. Poirot, are never taken seriously in these days.”

“Then you do object?”

“No. I cannot say that. But I am, I must confess it, a little fearful of the effect upon my wife. Let me be quite frank. A great many years ago, when my wife was only a young girl, she passed through a terrible ordeal. She has, I hope, recovered from the shock. I have come to believe that she has forgotten it. Now you appear and necessarily your questions will reawaken these old memories.”

“It is regrettable,” said Hercule Poirot politely.

“I do not know quite what the result will be.”

“I can only assure you, Lord Dittisham, that I shall be as discreet as possible, and do all I can not to distress Lady Dittisham. She is, no doubt, of a delicate and nervous temperament.”

Then, suddenly and surprisingly, the other laughed. He said: “Elsa? Elsa’s as strong as a horse!”

“Then—” Poirot paused diplomatically. The situation intrigued him.

Lord Dittisham said: “My wife is equal to any amount of shocks. I wonder if you know her reason for seeing you?”

Poirot replied placidly: “Curiosity?”

A kind of respect showed in the other man’s eyes. “Ah, you realize that?”

Poirot said: “It is inevitable. Women will always see a private detective! Men will tell him to go to the devil.”

“Some women might tell him to go to the devil too.”

“After they have seen him—not before.”

“Perhaps.” Lord Dittisham paused. “What is the idea behind this book?”

Hercule Poirot shrugged his shoulders. “One resurrects the old tunes, the old stage turns, the old costumes. One resurrects, too, the old murders.”

“Faugh!” said Lord Dittisham.

“Faugh! If you like. But you will not alter human nature by saying Faugh. Murder is a drama. The desire for drama is very strong in the human race.”

Lord Dittisham murmured: “I know—I know….”

“So you see,” said Poirot, “the book will be written. It is my part to make sure that there shall be no gross misstatements, no tampering with the known facts.”

“The facts are public property I should have thought.”

“Yes. But not the interpretation of them.”

Dittisham said sharply: “Just what do you mean by that, Mr. Poirot?”

“My dear Lord Dittisham, there are many ways of regarding, for instance, a historical fact. Take an example: many books have been written on your Mary Queen of Scots, representing her as a martyr, as an unprincipled and wanton woman, as a rather simpleminded saint, as a murderess and an intriguer, or again as a victim of circumstance and fate! One can take one’s choice.”

“And in this case? Crale was killed by his wife—that is, of course, undisputed. At the trial my wife came in for some, in my opinion, undeserved calumny. She had to be smuggled out of court afterwards. Public opinion was very hostile to her.”

“The English,” said Poirot, “are a very moral people.”

Lord Dittisham said: “Confound them, they are!” He added—looking at Poirot: “And you?”

“Me,” said Poirot. “I lead a very moral life. That is not quite the same thing as having moral ideas.”

Lord Dittisham said: “I’ve wondered sometimes what this Mrs. Crale was really like. All this injured wife business—I’ve a feeling there was something behind that.”

“Your wife might know,” agreed Poirot.

“My wife,” said Lord Dittisham, “has never mentioned the case once.”

Poirot looked at him with quickened interest. He said: “Ah, I begin to see—”

The other said sharply: “What do you see?”

Poirot replied with a bow: “The creative imagination of the poet….”

Lord Dittisham rose and rang the bell. He said brusquely: “My wife will be waiting for you.”

The door opened. “You rang, my lord?”

“Take Mr. Poirot up to her ladyship.”

Up two flights of stairs, feet sinking into soft pile carpets. Subdued flood lighting. Money, money everywhere. Of taste, not so much. There had been a sombre austerity in Lord Dittisham’s room. But here, in the house, there was only a solid lavishness. The best. Not necessarily the showiest, or the most startling. Merely “expense no object,” allied to a lack of imagination.

Poirot said to himself: “Roast beef? Yes, roast beef!”

It was not a large room into which he was shown. The big drawing room was on the first floor. This was the personal sitting room of the mistress of the house and the mistress of the house was standing against the mantelpiece as Poirot was announced and shown in.

A phrase leapt into his startled mind and refused to be driven out: She died young . . . .

That was his thought as he looked at Elsa Dittisham who had been Elsa Greer.

He would never have recognized her from the picture Meredith Blake had shown him. That had been, above all, a picture of youth, a picture of vitality. Here there was no youth—there might never have been youth. And yet he realized, as he had not realized from Crale’s picture, that Elsa was beautiful. Yes, it was a very beautiful woman who came forward to meet him. And certainly not old. After all, what was she? Not more than thirty-six now if she had been twenty at the time of the tragedy. Her black hair was perfectly arranged round her shapely head, her features were almost classic, her makeup was exquisite.

He felt a strange pang. It was, perhaps, the fault of old Mr. Jonathan, speaking of Juliet…No Juliet here—unless perhaps one could imagine Juliet a survivor—living on, deprived of Romeo…Was it not an essential part of Juliet’s makeup that she should die young?

Elsa Greer had been left alive….

She was greeting him in a level rather monotonous voice. “I am so interested, Mr. Poirot. Sit down and tell me what you want me to do?”

He thought: “But she isn’t interested. Nothing interests her.”

Big grey eyes—like dead lakes.

Poirot became, as was his way, a little obviously foreign.

He exclaimed: “I am confused, madame, veritably I am confused.”

“Oh no, why?”

“Because I realize that this—this reconstruction of a past drama must be excessively painful to you!”

She looked amused. Yes, it was amusement. Quite genuine amusement.

She said: “I suppose my husband put that idea into your head? He saw you when you arrived. Of course he doesn’t understand in the least. He never has. I’m not at all the sensitive sort of person he imagines I am.” The amusement was still in her voice. She said: “My father, you know, was a mill hand. He worked his way up and made a fortune. You don’t do that if you’re thin-skinned. I’m the same.”

Poirot thought to himself: “Yes, that is true. A thin-skinned person would not have come to stay in Caroline Crale’s house.”

Lady Dittisham said: “What is it you want me to do?”

“You are sure, madame, that to go over the past would not be painful to you?”

She considered a minute, and it struck Poirot suddenly that Lady Dittisham was a very frank woman. She might lie from necessity but never from choice.

Elsa Dittisham said slowly: “No, not painful. In a way, I wish it were.”

“Why?”

She said impatiently: “It’s so stupid never to feel anything….”

And Hercule Poirot thought: “Yes, Elsa Greer is dead….” Aloud he said: “At all events, Lady Dittisham, it makes my task very much easier.”

She said cheerfully: “What do you want to know?”

“Have you a good memory, madame?”

“Reasonably good, I think.”

“And you are sure it will not pain you to go over those days in detail?”

“It won’t pain me at all. Things can only pain you when they are happening.”

“It is so with some people, I know.”

Lady Dittisham said: “That’s what Edward—my husband—can’t understand. He thinks the trial and all that was a terrible ordeal for me.”

“Was it not?”

Elsa Dittisham said: “No, I enjoyed it.” There was a reflective satisfied quality in her voice. She went on: “God, how that old brute Depleach went for me. He’s a devil, if you like. I enjoyed fighting him. He didn’t get me down.” She looked at Poirot with a smile. “I hope I’m not upsetting your illusions. A girl of twenty, I ought to have been prostrated, I suppose—agonized with shame or something. I wasn’t. I didn’t care what they said to me. I only wanted one thing.”

“What?”

“To get her hanged, of course,” said Elsa Dittisham.

He noticed her hands—beautiful hands but with long curving nails. Predatory hands.

She said: “You’re thinking me vindictive? So I am vindictive—to anyone who has injured me. That woman was to my mind the lowest kind of woman there is. She knew that Amyas cared for me—that he was going to leave her and she killed him so that I shouldn’t have him.”

She looked across at Poirot.

“Don’t you think that’s pretty mean?”

“You do not understand or sympathize with jealousy?”

“No, I don’t think I do. If you’ve lost, you’ve lost. If you can’t keep your husband, let him go with a good grace. It’s possessiveness I don’t understand.”

“You might have understood it if you had ever married him.”

“I don’t think so. We weren’t—” She smiled suddenly at Poirot. Her smile was, he felt, a little frightening. It was so far removed from any real feeling. “I’d like you to get this right,” she said. “Don’t think that Amyas Crale seduced an innocent young girl. It wasn’t like that at all! Of the two of us, I was responsible. I met him at a party and I fell for him—I knew I’d got to have him—”

“Although he was married?”

“Trespassers will be prosecuted? It takes more than a printed notice to keep you from reality. If he was unhappy with his wife and could be happy with me, then why not? We’ve only one life to live.”

“But it has been said he was happy with his wife.”

Elsa shook her head. “No. They quarrelled like cat and dog. She nagged at him. She was—oh, she was a horrible woman!”

She got up and lit a cigarette. She said with a little smile: “Probably I’m unfair to her. But I really do think she was rather hateful.”

Poirot said slowly: “It was a great tragedy.”

“Yes, it was a great tragedy.” She turned on him suddenly, into the dead monotonous weariness of her face something came quiveringly alive. “It killed me, do you understand? It killed me. Ever since there’s been nothing—nothing at all.” Her voice dropped. “Emptiness!” She waved her hands impatiently. “Like a stuffed fish in a glass case!”

“Did Amyas Crale mean so much to you?”

She nodded. It was a queer confiding little nod—oddly pathetic. She said: “I think I’ve always had a single-track mind.” She mused sombrely. “I suppose—really—one ought to put a knife into oneself—like Juliet. But—but to do that is to acknowledge that you’re done for—that life’s beaten you.”

“And instead?”

“There ought to be everything—just the same—once one has got over it. I did get over it. It didn’t mean anything to me any more. I thought I’d go on to the next thing.”

Yes, the next thing. Poirot saw her plainly trying so hard to fulfill that crude determination. Saw her beautiful and rich, seductive to men, seeking with greedy predatory hands to fill up a life that was empty. Hero worship—a marriage to a famous aviator—then an explorer, that big giant of a man, Arnold Stevenson—possibly not unlike Amyas Crale physically—a reversion to the creative arts; Dittisham!

Elsa Dittisham said: “I’ve never been a hypocrite! There’s a Spanish proverb I’ve always liked. Take what you want and pay for it, says God. Well, I’ve done that. I’ve taken what I wanted—but I’ve always been willing to pay the price.”

Hercule Poirot said: “What you do not understand is that there are things that cannot be bought.”

She stared at him. She said: “I don’t mean just money.”

Poirot said: “No, no, I understand what you mean. But it is not everything in life that has its ticket, so much. There are things that are not for sale.”

“Nonsense!”

He smiled very faintly. In her voice was the arrogance of the successful mill hand who had risen to riches.

Hercule Poirot felt a sudden wave of pity. He looked at the ageless, smooth face, the weary eyes, and he remembered the girl whom Amyas Crale had painted….

Elsa Dittisham said: “Tell me all about this book. What is the purpose of it? Whose idea is it?”

“Oh! my dear lady, what other purpose is there but to serve up yesterday’s sensation with today’s sauce.”

“But you’re not a writer?”

“No, I am an expert on crime.”

“You mean they consult you on crime books?”

“Not always. In this case, I have a commission.”

“From whom?”

“I am—what do you say—vetting this publication on behalf of an interested party.”

“What party?”

“Miss Carla Lemarchant.”

“Who is she?”

“She is the daughter of Amyas and Caroline Crale.”

Elsa stared for a minute. Then she said: “Oh, of course, there was a child. I remember. I suppose she’s grown up now?”

“Yes, she is twenty-one.”

“What is she like?”

“She is tall and dark and, I think, beautiful. And she has courage and personality.”

Elsa said thoughtfully: “I should like to see her.”

“She might not care to see you.”

Elsa looked surprised. “Why? Oh, I see. But what nonsense! She can’t possibly remember anything about it. She can’t have been more than six.”

“She knows that her mother was tried for her father’s murder.”

“And she thinks it’s my fault?”

“It is a possible interpretation.

Elsa shrugged her shoulders. She said: “How stupid! If Caroline had behaved like a reasonable human being—”

“So you take no responsibility?”

“Why should I? I’ve nothing to be ashamed of. I loved him. I would have made him happy.” She looked across at Poirot. Her face broke up—suddenly, incredibly, he saw the girl of the picture. She said: “If I could make you see. If you could see it from my side. If you knew—”

Poirot leaned forward. “But that is what I want. See, Mr. Philip Blake who was there at the time, he is writing me a meticulous account of everything that happened. Mr. Meredith Blake the same. Now if you—”

Elsa Dittisham took a deep breath. She said contemptuously: “Those two! Philip was always stupid. Meredith used to trot round after Caroline—but he was quite a dear. But you won’t have any real idea from their accounts.”

He watched her, saw the animation rising in her eyes, saw a living woman take shape from a dead one. She said quickly and almost fiercely: “Would you like the truth? Oh, not for publication. But just for yourself—”

“I will undertake not to publish without your consent.”

“I’d like to write down the truth…” She was silent a minute or two, thinking. He saw the smooth hardness of her cheeks falter and take on a younger curve, he saw life ebbing into her as the past claimed her again. “To go back—to write it all down…To show you what she was—” Her eyes flashed. Her breast heaved passionately. “She killed him. She killed Amyas. Amyas who wanted to live—who enjoyed living. Hate oughtn’t to be stronger than love—but her hate was. And my hate for her is—I hate her—I hate her—I hate her….”

She came across to him. She stooped, her hand clutched at his sleeve. She said urgently: “You must understand—you must—how we felt about each other. Amyas and I, I mean. There’s something—I’ll show you.”

She whirled across the room. She was unlocking a little desk, pulling out a drawer concealed inside a pigeon hole.

Then she was back. In her hand was a creased letter, the ink faded. She thrust it on him and Poirot had a sudden poignant memory of a child he had known who had thrust on him one of her treasures—a special shell picked up on the seashore and zealously guarded. Just so had that child stood back and watched him. Proud, afraid, keenly critical of his reception of her treasure.

He unfolded the faded sheets.

Elsa—you wonderful child! There never was anything as beautiful. And yet I’m afraid—I’m too old—a middle-aged, ugly tempered devil with no stability in me. Don’t trust me, don’t believe in me—I’m no good—apart from my work. The best of me is in that. There, don’t say you haven’t been warned.

Hell, my lovely—I’m going to have you all the same. I’d go to the devil for you and you know it. And I’ll paint a picture of you that will make the fat-headed world hold its sides and gasp! I’m crazy about you—I can’t sleep—I can’t eat. Elsa—Elsa—Elsa—I’m yours for ever—yours till death. AMYAS.

Sixteen years ago. Faded ink, crumbling paper. But the words still alive—still vibrating….

He looked across at the woman to whom they had been written.

But it was no longer a woman at whom he looked.

It was a young girl in love.

He thought again of Juliet….

*  *  *

“May I ask why, Mr. Poirot?”

Hercule Poirot considered his answer to the question. He was aware of a pair of very shrewd grey eyes watching him out of the small wizened face.

He had climbed to the top floor of the bare building and knocked on the door of No. 584 Gillespie Buildings, which had come into existence to provide what were called “flatlets” for working women.

Here, in a small cubic space, existed Miss Cecilia Williams, in a room that was bedroom, sitting room, dining room, and, by judicious use of the gas ring, kitchen—a kind of cubby hole attached to it contined a quarter-length bath and the usual offices.

Meagre though these surroundings might be, Miss Williams had contrived to impress upon them her stamp of personality.

The walls were distempered an ascetic pale grey, and various reproductions hung upon them. Dante meeting Beatrice on a bridge—and that picture once described by a child as a “blind girl sitting on an orange and called, I don’t know why, ‘Hope.’” There were also two water colours of Venice and a sepia copy of Botticelli’s “Primavera.” On the top of the low chest of drawers were a large quantity of faded photographs, mostly, by their style of hairdressing, dating from twenty to thirty years ago.

The square of carpet was threadbare, the furniture battered and of poor quality. It was clear to Hercule Poirot that Cecilia Williams lived very near the bone. There was no roast beef here. This was the little pig that had none.

Clear, incisive and insistent, the voice of Miss Williams repeated its demand.

“You want my recollections of the Crale case? May I ask why?”

It had been said of Hercule Poirot by some of his friends and associates, at moments when he has maddened them most, that he prefers lies to truth and will go out of his way to gain his ends by means of elaborate false statements, rather than trust to the simple truth.

But in this case his decision was quickly made. Hercule Poirot did not come of that class of Belgian or French children who have had an English governess, but he reacted as simply and inevitably as various small boys who had been asked in their time: “Did you brush your teeth this morning, Harold (or Richard or Anthony)?” They considered fleetingly the possibility of a lie and instantly rejected it, replying miserably, “No, Miss Williams.”

For Miss Williams had what every successful child educator must have, that mysterious quality—authority! When Miss Williams said “Go up and wash your hands, Joan,” or “I expect you to read this chapter on the Elizabethan poets and be able to answer my questions on it,” she was invariably obeyed. It had never entered Miss Williams’ head that she would not be obeyed.

So in this case Hercule Poirot proffered no specious explanation of a book to be written on bygone crimes. Instead he narrated simply the circumstances in which Carla Lemarchant had sought him out.

The small, elderly lady in the neat shabby dress listened attentively.

She said: “It interests me very much to have news of that child—to know how she has turned out.”

“She is a very charming and attractive young woman, with plenty of courage and a mind of her own.”

“Good,” said Miss Williams briefly.

“And she is, I may say, a very persistent person. She is not a person whom it is easy to refuse or put off.”

The ex-governess nodded thoughtfully. She asked: “Is she artistic?”

“I think not.”

Miss Williams said drily: “That’s one thing to be thankful for!”

The tone of the remark left Miss Williams’ views as to artists in no doubt whatever.

She added: “From your account of her I should imagine that she takes after her mother rather than after her father.”

“Very possibly. That you can tell me when you have seen her. You would like to see her?”

“I should like to see her very much indeed. It is always interesting to see how a child you have known has developed.”

“She was, I suppose, very young when you last saw her?”