by Mark Place
Poirot agreed. Through a framework of trees one looked 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 around.”
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. Poirot did not speak, nor did Blake. When they reached Handcross Manor once more, 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 once 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 odd, 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.”
Poirot 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 lilacs sent eddies of perfume toward 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 toward 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, M. 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.
“It is my wife you have come to see, I know,” he said.
Poirot answered, “Lady Dittisham was so kind as to give me an appointment.”
“Yes.”
There was a pause.
“You do not, I hope, object, Lord Dittisham?” Poirot hazarded.
The thin, dreamy face was transformed by a sudden, quick smile. “The objections of husbands, M. 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?”
“It is inevitable,” Hercule Poirot said. “Women will always see a private detective. Men will tell him to go to the devil.”
“Some women mi
ght 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…”
He rose and rang the bell. “My wife will be waiting for you,” he said brusquely.
The door opened.
“You rang, my lord?”
“Take M. 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 nor the most startling. Merely “expense no object,” allied to a lack of imagination. It was not a large room into which Poirot 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 leaped 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. He felt a strange pang. It was, perhaps, the fault of old Mr Johnathan, 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 make-up 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, M. 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.”
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. Have you a good memory?”
“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 had 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.”
Else 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 quaveringly 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 anymore. I thought I’d go on to the next thing.”
Yes, the next thing, Poirot saw her plainly trying so hard to fulfil 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 Stevensen, possibly not unlike Amyas Crale physically - a reversion to the creative arts; Dittisham!
Elsa Dittisham said, “I’ve nev
er 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.”
“What you do not understand,” Poirot said, “is that there are things that cannot be bought.”
She stared at him.
“I don’t mean just money.”
Poirot said, “No, no; I understand what you meant. 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? - working on 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.”