Five Little Pigs (19 page)

I

“W
ell, Mr. Poirot?”

Philip Blake's tone was impatient.

Poirot said:

“I have to thank you for your admirable and lucid account of the Crale tragedy.”

Philip Blake looked rather self-conscious.

“Very kind of you,” he murmured. “Really surprising how much I remembered when I got down to it.”

Poirot said:

“It was an admirably clear narrative, but there were certain omissions, were there not?”

“Omissions” Philip Blake frowned.

Hercule Poirot said:

“Your narrative, shall we say, was not entirely frank.” His tone hardened. “I have been informed, Mr. Blake, that on at least one night during the summer, Mrs. Crale was seen coming out of your room at a somewhat compromising hour.”

There was a silence broken only by Philip Blake's heavy breathing. He said at last: “Who told you that?”

Hercule Poirot shook his head.

“It is no matter who told me. That I
know,
that is the point.”

Again there was a silence; then Philip Blake made up his mind. He said:

“By accident, it seems, you have stumbled upon a purely private matter. I admit that it does not square with what I have written down. Nevertheless, it squares better than you might think. I am forced now to tell you the truth.

“I
did
entertain a feeling of animosity toward Caroline Crale. At the same time I was always strongly attracted by her. Perhaps the latter fact induced the former. I resented the power she had over me and tried to stifle the attraction she had for me by constantly dwelling on her worst points. I never
liked
her, if you understand. But it would have been easy at any moment for me to make love to her. I had been in love with her as a boy and she had taken no notice of me. I did not find that easy to forgive.

“My opportunity came when Amyas lost his head so completely over the Greer girl. Quite without meaning to I found myself telling Caroline I loved her. She said quite calmly: “Yes, I have always known that.” The insolence of the woman!

“Of course I knew that she didn't love me, but I saw that she was disturbed and disillusioned by Amyas's present infatuation. That is a mood when a woman can very easily be won. She agreed to come to me that night. And she came.”

Blake paused. He found now a difficulty in getting the words out.

“She came to my room. And then, with my arms round her,
she told me quite coolly that it was no good! After all, she said, she was a one-man woman. She was Amyas Crale's, for better or worse. She agreed that she had treated me very badly, but said she couldn't help it. She asked me to forgive her.

“And she left me.
She left me!
Do you wonder, Mr. Poirot, that my hatred of her was heightened a hundredfold? Do you wonder that I have never forgiven her? For the insult she did me—as well as for the fact that she killed the friend I loved better than anyone in the world!”

Trembling violently, Philip Blake exclaimed:

“
I don't want to speak of it,
do you hear? You've got your answer. Now go! And never mention the matter to me again!”

II

“I want to know, Mr. Blake, the order in which your guests left the laboratory that day?”

Meredith Blake protested.

“But, my dear Mr. Poirot. After sixteen years! How can I possibly remember? I've told you that Caroline came out last.”

“You are
sure
of that?”

“Yes—at least—I think so….”

“Let us go there now. We must be
quite
sure, you see.”

Still protesting, Meredith Blake led the way. He unlocked the door and swung back the shutters. Poirot spoke to him authoritatively.

“Now then, my friend. You have showed your visitors your interesting preparations of herbs. Shut your eyes now and think—”

Meredith Blake did so obediently. Poirot drew a handkerchief
from his pocket and gently passed it to and fro. Blake murmured, his nostrils twitching slightly:

“Yes, yes—extraordinary how things come back to one. Caroline, I remember, had on a pale coffee-coloured dress. Phil was looking bored…He always thought my hobby was quite idiotic.”

Poirot said:

“Reflect now, you are about to leave the room. You are going to the library where you are going to read the passage about the death of Socrates. Who leaves the room first—do you?”

“Elsa and I—yes. She passed through the door first. I was close behind her. We were talking. I stood there waiting for the others to come so that I could lock the door again. Philip—yes, Philip came out next. And Angela—she was asking him what bulls and bears were. They went on through the hall. Amyas followed them. I stood there waiting still—for Caroline, of course.”

“So you are quite sure Caroline stayed behind. Did you see what she was doing?”

Blake shook his head.

“No, I had my back to the room, you see. I was talking to Elsa—boring her, I expect—telling her how certain plants must be gathered at the full of the moon according to old superstition. And then Caroline came out—hurrying a little—and I locked the door.”

He stopped and looked at Poirot, who was replacing a handkerchief in his pocket. Meredith Blake sniffled disgustedly and thought: “Why, the fellow actually uses
scent!
”

Aloud he said:

“I am quite sure of it. That was the order. Elsa, myself, Philip, Angela and Caroline. Does that help you at all?”

Poirot said:

“It all fits in. Listen. I want to arrange a meeting here. It will not, I think, be difficult….”

III

“Well?”

Elsa Dittisham said it almost eagerly—like a child.

“I want to ask you a question, madame.”

“Yes?”

Poirot said:

“After it was all over—the trial, I mean—did Meredith Blake ask you to marry him?”

Elsa stared. She looked contemptuous—almost bored.

“Yes—he did. Why?”

“Were you surprised?”

“Was I? I don't remember.”

“What did you say?”

Elsa laughed. She said:

“What do you think I said? After
Amyas
—Meredith? It would have been ridiculous! It was stupid of him. He always was rather stupid.”

She smiled suddenly.

“He wanted, you know, to protect me—to ‘look after me'—that's how he put it! He thought like everybody else that the Assizes had been a terrible ordeal for me. And the reporters! And the booing crowds! And all the mud that was slung at me.”

She brooded a minute. Then said:

“Poor old Meredith! Such an ass!” And laughed again.

IV

Once again Hercule Poirot encountered the shrewd penetrating glance of Miss Williams, and once again felt the years falling away and himself a meek and apprehensive little boy.

There was, he explained, a question he wished to ask.

Miss Williams intimated her willingness to hear what the question was.

Poirot said slowly, picking his words carefully:

“Angela Warren was injured as a very young child. In my notes I find two references to that fact. In one of them it is stated that Mrs. Crale threw a paperweight at the child. In the other that she attacked the baby with a crowbar. Which of those versions is the right one?”

Miss Williams replied briskly:

“I never heard anything about a crowbar. The paperweight is the correct story.”

“Who was your own informant?”

“Angela herself. She volunteered the information quite early.”

“What did she say exactly?”

“She touched her cheek and said: ‘Caroline did this when I was a baby. She threw a paperweight at me. Never refer to it, will you, because it upsets her dreadfully.'”

“Did Mrs. Crale herself ever mention the matter to you?”

“Only obliquely. She assumed that I knew the story. I remember her saying once: ‘I know you think I spoil Angela, but you see, I always feel there is nothing I can do to make up to her for what I did.' And on another occasion she said: ‘To know you have permanently injured another human being is the heaviest burden anyone could have to bear.'”

“Thank you, Miss Williams. That is all I wanted to know.”

Cecilia Williams said sharply:

“I don't understand you, Mr. Poirot. You showed Carla my account of the tragedy?”

Poirot nodded.

“And yet you are still—” She stopped.

Poirot said:

“Reflect a minute. If you were to pass a fishmonger's and saw twelve fish laid out on his slab, you would think they were all real fish, would you not? But one of them might be stuffed fish.”

Miss Williams replied with spirit:

“Most unlikely and anyway—”

“Ah, unlikely, yes, but not impossible—because a friend of mine once took down a stuffed fish (it was his trade, you comprehend) to compare it with the real thing! And if you saw a bowl of zinnias in a drawing room in December you would say that they were false—but they might be real ones flown home from Baghdad.”

“What is the meaning of all this nonsense?” demanded Miss Williams.

“It is to show you that it is the eyes of the mind with which one really sees….”

V

Poirot slowed up a little as he approached the big block of flats overlooking Regent's Park.

Really, when he came to think of it, he did not want to ask
Angela Warren any questions at all. The only question he did want to ask her could wait….

No, it was really only his insatiable passion for symmetry that was bringing him here. Five people—there should be five questions! It was neater so. It rounded off the thing better.

Ah well—he would think of something.

Angela Warren greeted him with something closely approaching eagerness. She said:

“Have you found out anything? Have you got anywhere?”

Slowly Poirot nodded his head in his best China mandarin manner. He said:

“At last I make progress.”

“Philip Blake?” It was halfway between statement and a question.

“Mademoiselle, I do not wish to say anything at present. The moment has not yet come. What I will ask of you is to be so good as to come down to Handcross Manor. The others have consented.”

She said with a slight frown:

“What do you propose to do? Reconstruct something that happened sixteen years ago?”

“See it, perhaps, from a clearer angle. You will come?”

Angela Warren said slowly:

“Oh, yes, I'll come. It will be interesting to see all those people again. I shall see
them
now, perhaps, from a clearer angle (as you put it) than I did then.”

“And you will bring with you the letter that you showed me?”

Angela Warren frowned.

“That letter is my own. I showed it to you for a good and suf
ficient reason, but I have no intention of allowing it to be read by strange and unsympathetic persons.”

“But you will allow yourself to be guided by me in this matter?”

“I will do nothing of the kind. I will bring the letter with me, but I shall use my own judgement which I venture to think is quite as good as yours.”

Poirot spread out his hands in a gesture of resignation. He got up to go. He said:

“You permit that I ask one little question?”

“What is it?”

“At the time of the tragedy, you had lately read, had you not, Somerset Maugham's
The Moon and Sixpence?
”

Angela stared at him. Then she said:

“I believe—why, yes, that is quite true.” She looked at him with frank curiosity. “How did you know?”

“I want to show you, mademoiselle, that even in a small unimportant matter, I am something of a magician. There are things I know without having to be told.”

T
he afternoon sun shone into the laboratory at Handcross Manor. Some easy chairs and a settee had been brought into the room, but they served more to emphasize its forlorn aspect than to furnish it.

Slightly embarrassed, pulling at his moustache, Meredith Blake talked to Carla in a desultory way. He broke off once to say: “My dear, you are very like your mother—and yet unlike her, too.”

Carla asked: “How am I like her and how unlike?”

“You have her colouring and her way of moving, but you are—how shall I put it—more
positive
than she ever was.”

Philip Blake, a scowl creasing over his forehead, looked out of the window and drummed impatiently on the pane. He said:

“What's the sense of all this? A perfectly fine Saturday afternoon—”

Hercule Poirot hastened to pour oil on troubled waters.

“Ah, I apologize—it is, I know, unpardonable to disarrange the
golf.
Mais voyons,
Mr. Blake, this is the daughter of your best friend. You will stretch a point for her, will you not?”

The butler announced: “Miss Warren.”

Meredith went to welcome her. He said: “It's good of you to spare the time, Angela. You're busy, I know.”

He led her over to the window.

Carla said: “Hallo, Aunt Angela. I read your article in
The Times
this morning. It's nice to have a distinguished relative.” She indicated the tall, square-jawed young man with the steady grey eyes. “This is John Rattery. He and I—hope—to be married.”

Angela Warren said: “Oh!—I didn't know….”

Meredith went to greet the next arrival.

“Well, Miss Williams, it's a good many years since we met.”

Thin, frail and indomitable, the elderly governess advanced up the room. Her eyes rested thoughtfully on Poirot for a minute, then they went to the tall, square-shouldered figure in the well-cut tweeds.

Angela Warren came forward to meet her and said with a smile: “I feel like a schoolgirl again.”

“I'm very proud of you, my dear,” said Miss Williams. “You've done me credit. This is Carla, I suppose? She won't remember me. She was too young….”

Philip Blake said fretfully: “What
is
all this? Nobody told me—”

Hercule Poirot said: “I call it—me—an excursion into the past. Shall we not all sit down? Then we shall be ready when the last guest arrives. And when she is here we can proceed to our business—to lay the ghosts.”

Philip Blake exclaimed: “What tomfoolery is this? You're not going to hold a
séance,
are you?”

“No, no. We are only going to discuss some events that happened long ago—to discuss them and, perhaps, to see more clearly the course of them. As to the ghosts, they will not materialize, but who is to say they are not here, in this room, although we cannot see them. Who is to say that Amyas and Caroline Crale are not here—listening?”

Philip Blake said: “Absurd nonsense—” and broke off as the door opened again and the butler announced Lady Dittisham.

Elsa Dittisham came in with that faint, bored insolence that was a characteristic of her. She gave Meredith a slight smile, stared coldly at Angela and Philip, and went over to a chair by the window a little apart from the others. She loosened the rich pale furs round her neck and let them fall back. She looked for a minute or two about the room, then at Carla, and the girl stared back, thoughtfully appraising the woman who had wrought the havoc in her parents' lives. There was no animosity in her young earnest face, only curiosity.

Elsa said: “I am sorry if I am late, Mr. Poirot.”

“It was very good of you to come, madame.”

Cecilia Williams snorted ever so slightly. Elsa met the animosity in her eyes with a complete lack of interest. She said:

“I wouldn't have known
you,
Angela. How long is it? Sixteen years?”

Hercule Poirot seized his opportunity.

“Yes, it is sixteen years since the events of which we are to speak, but let me first tell you why we are here.”

And in a few simple words he outlined Carla's appeal to him and his acceptance of the task.

He went on quickly, ignoring the gathering storm visible on Philip's face, and the shocked distaste on Meredith's.

“I accepted that commision—I set to work to find out—the truth.”

Carla Lemarchant, in the big grandfather chair, heard Poirot's words dimly, from a distance.

With her hand shielding her eyes she studied five faces, surreptitiously. Could she see any of these people committing murder? The exotic Elsa, the red-faced Philip, dear, nice, kind Mr. Meredith Blake, that grim tartar of a governess, the cool, competent Angela Warren?

Could she—if she tried hard—visualize one of them killing someone? Yes, perhaps—but it wouldn't be the right kind of murder. She could picture Philip Blake, in an outburst of fury, strangling some women—yes, she
could
picture that…And she could picture Meredith Blake, threatening a burglar with a revolver—and letting it off by accident. And she could picture Angela Warren, also firing a revolver, but not by accident. With no personal feeling in the matter—the safety of the expedition depended on it! And Elsa, in some fantastic castle, saying from her couch of oriental silks: “Throw the wretch over the battlements!” All wild fancies—and not even in the wildest flight of fancy could she imagine little Miss Williams killing anybody at all! Another fantastic picture: “Did you ever kill anybody, Miss Williams?” “Go on with your arithmetic, Carla, and don't ask silly questions. To kill anybody is very wicked.”

Carla thought: “I must be ill—and I must stop this. Listen, you fool, listen to that little man who says he knows.”

Hercule Poirot was talking.

“That was my task—to put myself in reverse gear, as it were, and go back through the years and discover what really happened.”

Philip Blake said: “We all know what happened. To pretend anything else is a swindle—that's what it is, a bare-faced swindle. You're getting money out of this girl on false pretences.”

Poirot did not allow himself to be angered. He said:

“You say,
we all know what happened
. You speak without reflection. The accepted version of certain facts is not necessarily the true one. On the face of it, for instance, you, Mr. Blake, disliked Caroline Crale. That is the accepted version of your attitude. But anyone with the least flair for psychology can perceive at once that the exact opposite was the truth. You were always violently attracted towards Caroline Crale. You resented the fact, and tried to conquer it by steadfastly telling yourself her defects and reiterating your dislike. In the same way, Mr. Meredith Blake had a tradition of devotion to Caroline Crale lasting over many years. In his story of the tragedy he represents himself as resenting Amyas Crale's conduct on
her
account, but you have only to read carefully between the lines and you will see that the devotion of a lifetime had worn itself thin and that it was the young, beautiful Elsa Greer that was occupying
his
mind and thoughts.”

There was a splutter from Meredith, and Lady Dittisham smiled.

Poirot went on.

“I mention these matters only as illustrations, though they have
their bearing on what happened. Very well, then, I start on my backward journey—to learn everything I can about the tragedy. I will tell you how I set about it. I talked to the Counsel who defended Caroline Crale, to the Junior Counsel for the Crown, to the old solicitor who had known the Crale family intimately, to the lawyer's clerk who had been in court during the trial, to the police officer in charge of the case—and I came finally to the five eyewitnesses who had been upon the scene. And from all of these I put together a picture—a composite picture of a woman. And I learned these facts:

“
That at no time did Caroline Crale protest her innocence
(except in that one letter written to her daughter).

“That Caroline Crale showed no fear in the dock, that she showed, in fact, hardly any interest, that she adopted throughout a thoroughly defeatist attitude. That in prison she was quiet and serene. That in a letter she wrote to her sister immediately after the verdict, she expressed herself as acquiescent in the fate that had overtaken her. And in the opinion of everyone I talked to (with one notable exception)
Caroline Crale was guilty
.”

Philip Blake nodded his head. “Of course she was!”

Hercule Poirot said:

“But it was not my part to accept the verdict of
others
. I had to examine the evidence for
myself
. To examine the facts and to satisfy myself that the psychology of the case accorded itself with them. To do this I went over the police files carefully, and I also succeeded in getting five people who were on the spot to write me out their own accounts of the tragedy. These accounts were very valuable for they contained certain matter which the police files could not give me—that is to say: A, certain conversations and incidents which,
from the police point of view, were not relevant; B, the opinions of the people themselves as to what Caroline Crale was thinking and feeling (not admissible legally as evidence); C, certain facts which had been deliberately withheld from the police.

“I was in a position now to judge the case for
myself
. There seems no doubt whatever that Caroline Crale had ample motive for the crime. She loved her husband, he had publicly admitted that he was about to leave her for another woman, and by her own admission she was a jealous woman.

“To come from motives to means, an empty scent bottle that had contained coniine was found in her bureau drawer. There were no fingerprints upon it but hers. When asked about it by the police, she admitted taking it from this room we are in now. The coniine bottle here also had her fingerprints upon it. I questioned Mr. Meredith Blake as to the order in which the five people left this room on that day—for it seemed to me hardly conceivable that
anyone
should be able to help themselves to the poison whilst five people were in the room. The people left the room in this order—Elsa Greer, Meredith Blake, Angela Warren and Philip Blake, Amyas Crale, and lastly Caroline Crale. Moreover, Mr. Meredith Blake has his back to the room whilst he was waiting for Mrs. Crale to come out, so that it was impossible for him to see what she was doing. She had, that is to say, the opportunity. I am therefore satisfied that she did take the coniine. There is indirect confirmation of it. Mr. Meredith Blake said to me the other day: “I can remember standing here and smelling the jasmine through the open window.” But the month was September, and the jasmine creeper outside that window would have finished flowering. It is the ordinary jasmine which blooms in June and July. But the scent bottle found in
her room and which contained the dregs of coniine had originally contained jasmine scent. I take it as certain, then, that Mrs. Crale decided to steal the coniine, and surreptitiously emptied out the scent from a bottle she had in her bag.

“I tested that a second time the other day when I asked Mr. Blake to shut his eyes and try and remember the order of leaving the room. A whiff of jasmine scent stimulated his memory immediately. We are all more influenced by smell than we know.

“So we come to the morning of the fatal day. So far the facts are not in dispute. Miss Greer's sudden revealing of the fact that she and Mr. Crale contemplate marriage, Amyas Crale's confirmation of that, and Caroline Crale's deep distress. None of these things depend on the evidence of one witness only.

“On the following morning there is a scene between husband and wife in the library. The first thing that is overheard is Caroline Crale saying: “You and your women!” in a bitter voice, and finally going on to say, “Some day I'll kill you.” Philip Blake overheard this from the hall. And Miss Greer overheard it from the terrace outside.

“She then heard Mr. Crale ask his wife to be reasonable. And she heard Mrs. Crale say: “Sooner than let you go to that girl—I'll kill you.” Soon after this Amyas Crale comes out and brusquely tells Elsa Greer to come down and pose for him. She gets a pullover and accompanies him.

“There is nothing so far that seems psychologically incorrect. Every one has behaved as they might be expected to behave. But we come now to something that
is
incongruous.

“Meredith Blake discovers his loss, telephones his brother; they meet down at the landing stage and they come up past the
Battery garden, where Caroline Crale is having a discussion with her husband on the subject of Angela's going to school. Now that does strike me as very odd. Husband and wife have a terrific scene, ending in a distinct threat on Caroline's part, and yet, twenty minutes or so later, she goes down and starts a trivial domestic argument.”

Poirot turned to Meredith Blake.

“You speak in your narrative of certain words you overheard Crale say. These were: ‘It's all settled—I'll see to her packing.' That is right?”

Meredith Blake said: “It was something like that—yes.”

Poirot turned to Philip Blake.

“Is your recollection the same?”

The latter frowned.

“I didn't remember it till you say so—but I do remember now. Something
was
said about packing!”

“Said by Mr. Crale—not Mrs. Crale?”

“Amyas said it. All I heard Caroline say was something about its being very hard on the girl. Anyway, what does all this matter? We all know Angela was off to school in a day or two.”

Poirot said: “You do not see the force of my objection. Why should
Amyas Crale
pack for the girl? It is absurd, that! There was Mrs. Crale, there was Miss Williams, there was a housemaid. It is a woman's job to pack—not a man's.”