Fogg shrugged his thin shoulders. He said:
“What else was there? 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 was means, motive, opportunity—everything.”
“One might have attempted to show that these things were artificially arranged?”
Fog 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?”
Fogg said slowly:
“I’m afraid I do. 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 recall 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.”
Fogg said slowly:
“Yes, you’re right—I do see it—quite plainly.”
Poirot said:
“It would interest me, my friend, very much, if you would tell me why?”
“Why?” Fogg considered the question. His thin intellectual face was alert—interested. “Yes, now why?”
Poirot asked:
“What do you see so plainly? The witnesses? The counsel? The judge? The accused standing in the 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. The 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 alive than the other—that girl with the perfect body, and the 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 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….”
Three
THE YOUNG SOLICITOR
George Mayhew was cautious and non-committal.
He remembered the case, of course, but not at all clearly. His father had been in charge—he himself had been only nineteen at the time.
Yes, the case had made a great stir. Because of Crale being such a well-known man. His pictures were very fine—very fine indeed. Two of them were in the Tate. Not that that meant anything.
Mr. Poirot would excuse him, but he didn’t see quite what Mr. 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 that 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 worshipper,” suggested Poirot.
The idea was upsetting to George Mayhew. He accepted it dubiously.
“Well, possibly—yes, I suppose that might be so.”
He seemed to be turning the idea over in his mind.
Poirot said:
“Had your firm acted for Mrs. Crale for a long period of years?”
George Mayhew shook his head.
“On the contrary. Jonathan and Jonathan were the Crale solicitors. Under the circumstances, however, Mr. Jonathan 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, Mr. Poirot, to arrange a meeting with old Mr. Jonathan. 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.”
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:
“Ay, 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.”
“Ay, I mind there was a child. Sent abroad to relatives, was she not?”
Poirot went on:
“That daughter believes firm
ly in her mother’s innocence.”
The huge 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 those shrewd old eyes searched his face.
“So that’s your idea?” said Mr. Edmunds.
“What do you think yourself?”
There was a pause before the officer 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, any insincerity?”
Edmunds said bluntly:
“Was one of them lying, do you mean? 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 baulked 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 these 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.
Four
THE OLD SOLICITOR
Mr. Caleb Jonathan lived in Essex. After a courteous exchange of letters, 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. Jonathan 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 towards midnight, when sipping a glass of fragrant old brandy, that Mr. Jonathan 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 his 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, Mr. Poirot, but I think you are interested in—character, shall we say?”
Poirot replied.
“That, to me, 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, have 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 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 afterwards. But you know, Mr. Poirot, these things happen. There is an inability to put on the brakes. It comes—it comes with maturity.”
Poirot said:
“What happened?”
“She struck the child—the baby—flung a paperweight at her. The child lost the sight of one eye and was permanently disfigured.”
Mr. Jonathan 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 was 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 a nasty, money-grubbing little brute. I must confess I have always had a distaste for him. But I am told that he tells a very good story and that he has the reputation of being a staunch friend. Meredith was what my contemporaries used to call Namby Pamby. Liked botany and butterflies and observing birds and beasts. Nature study they call it nowadays. Ah, dear—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 shooting or hunting them, Philip definitely preferred town to country and went into the business of moneymaking. 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 in 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. Jonathan shook his head.
Poirot said: “What of Elsa Greer?”
Mr. Jonathan said unexpectedly:
“Poor child. Poor child.”
Poirot said: “So you feel like that about her?”
Jonathan said:
“Maybe it is because I am an old man, but I find, Mr. Poirot, that there is something about the defencelessness of youth that moves me to tears. Youth is so vulnerable. It is so ruthless—so sure. So generous and so demanding.”
Getting up, he crossed to the bookcase. Taking out a volume he opened it, turned the pages, and then read out:
“‘If that thy bent of love be honourable,
The purpose marriage, send me word tomorrow
By one that I’ll procure to come to thee,
Five Little Pigs Page 3