by Mark Place
Hercule Poirot’s voice ceased. He said: “You will all agree, I think, that that is a very remarkable letter. A beautiful letter, too, but certainly remarkable. For there is one striking omission in it - it contains no protestation of innocence.” Angela Warren said without turning her head, “That was unnecessary.”
“Yes, Miss Warren, it was unnecessary. Caroline Crale had no need to tell her sister that she was innocent, because she thought her sister knew that fact already - knew it for the best of all reasons. All Caroline Crale was concerned about was to comfort and reassure and to avert the possibility of a confession from Angela. She reiterates again and again - ‘It’s all right, darling; it’s all, all right.’ Angela Warren said, “Can’t you understand? She wanted me to be happy, that is all.”
“Yes, she wanted you to be happy, that is abundantly clear. It is her one preoccupation. She has a child, but it is not that child of whom she is thinking - that is to come later. No, it is her sister who occupies her mind to the exclusion of everything else. Her sister must be reassured, must be encouraged to live her life, to be happy and successful. And so that the burden of acceptance may not be too great, Caroline includes that one very significant phrase: ‘One must pay one’s debts.’
“That one phrase explains everything. It refers explicitly to the burden that Caroline has carried for so many years, ever since, in a fit of uncontrolled adolescent rage, she hurled a paperweight at her baby sister and injured that sister for life. Now, at last, she has the opportunity to pay the debt she owes. And if it is any consolation, I will say to you all that I earnestly believe that in the payment of that debt Caroline Crale did achieve a peace and serenity greater than any she had ever known. Because of her belief that she was paying that debt, the ordeal of trial and condemnation could not touch her. It is a strange thing to say of a condemned murderess - but she had everything to make her happy. Yes, more than you imagine, as I will show you presently.
“See how, by this explanation, everything falls into its place where Caroline’s own reactions are concerned. Look at the series of events from her point of view. To begin with, on the preceding evening, an event occurs which reminds her forcibly of her own undisciplined girlhood. Angela throws a paperweight at Amyas Crale. That, remember, is what she herself did many years ago. Angela shouts out that she wishes Amyas was dead.
“Then, on the next morning, Caroline comes into the little conservatory and finds Angela tampering with the beer. Remember Miss Williams’s words: ‘Angela was there. She looked guilty.’ Guilty of playing truant was what Miss Williams meant; but to Caroline, Angela’s guilty face, as she was caught unawares, would have a different meaning. Remember that on at least one occasion before Angela had put things in Amyas’s drink. It was an idea which might readily occur to her. Caroline takes the bottle that Angela gives her and goes down with it to the Battery. And there she pours it out and gives it to Amyas, and he makes a face as he tosses it off and utters those significant words - ‘Everything tastes foul today.’
“Caroline has no suspicions then, but after lunch she goes down to the Battery and finds her husband dead - and she has no doubts at all but that he has been poisoned. She has not done it. Who, then, has? And the whole thing comes over her with a rush: Angela’s threats, Angela’s face stooping over the beer and caught unawares - guilty - guilty - guilty. Why has the child done it? As a revenge on Amyas, perhaps not meaning to kill, just to make him ill or sick? Or has she done it for her, Caroline’s sake? Has she realized and resented Amyas’s desertion of her sister? Caroline remembers - oh, so well - her own undisciplined violent emotions at Angela’s age. And only one thought springs to her mind: How can she protect Angela? Angela handled that bottle - Angela’s fingerprints will be on it. She quickly wipes it and polishes it. If only everybody can be got to believe it is suicide. If Amyas’s fingerprints are the only ones found. She tries to fit his dead fingers round the bottle - working desperately, listening for someone to come. Once take that assumption as true and everything from then on fits in. Her anxiety about Angela all along, her insistence on getting her away, keeping her out of touch with what was going on. Her fear of Angela’s being questioned unduly by the police. Finally her overwhelming anxiety to get Angela out of England before the trial comes on. Because she is always terrified that Angela might break down and confess.”
Slowly, Angela Warren swung around. Her eyes, hard and contemptuous, ranged over the faces turned toward her. She said, “You blind fools - all of you. Don’t you know that if I had done it I would have confessed? I’d never have let Caroline suffer for what I’d done. Never!”
“But you did tamper with the beer,” Poirot said.
“I? Tamper with the beer?”
Poirot turned to Meredith Blake. “Listen, monsieur. In your account here of what happened you describe having heard sounds in this room, which is below your bedroom, on the morning of the crime.” Blake nodded. “But it was only a cat.”
“How do you know it was a cat?”
“I - I can’t remember. But it was a cat. I am quite sure it was a cat. The window was open just wide enough for a cat to get through.”
“But it was not fixed in that position. The sash moves freely. It could have been pushed up and a human being could have got in and out.”
“Yes, but I know it was a cat.”
“You did not see a cat?”
Blake said perplexedly and slowly, “No, I, did not see it -” He paused, frowning. “And yet I know.”
“I will tell you why you know presently. In the meantime I put this point to you: Someone could have come up to the house that morning, have got into your laboratory, taken something from the shelf, and gone again without your seeing him or her. Now, if that someone had come over from Alderbury it could not have been Philip Blake, nor Elsa Greer, nor Amyas Crale, nor Caroline Crale. We know quite well what all those four were doing. That leaves Angela Warren and Miss Williams. Miss Williams was over here - you actually met her as you went out. She told you then that she was looking for Angela. Angela had gone bathing early, but Miss Williams did not see her in the water, nor anywhere on the rocks. She could swim across to this side easily – in fact, she did so later in the morning when she was bathing with Philip Blake. I suggest that she swam across here, came up to the house, got in through the window, and took something from the shelf.”
Angela Warren said, “I did nothing of the kind - not, at least -”
“Ah!” Poirot gave a yelp of triumph. “You have remembered. You told me - did you not? - that to play a malicious joke on Amyas Crale you pinched some of what you called “the cat stuff” - that is how you put it - “
Meredith Blake said sharply, “Valerian! Of course.”
“Exactly. That is what made you sure in your mind that it was a cat who had been in the room. Your nose is very sensitive. You smelled the faint, unpleasant odour of valerian without knowing, perhaps, that you did so, but it suggested to your subconscious mind ‘cat.’ Cats love valerian and will go anywhere for it. Valerian is particularly nasty to taste, and it was your account of it the day before which made mischievous Miss Angela plan to put some in her brother-in-law’s beer, which she knew he always tossed down his throat in a draught.”
Angela Warren said wonderingly, “Was it really that day? I remember taking it perfectly - yes, and I remember putting it in the beer and Caroline coming in and nearly catching me! Of course I remember. But I’ve never connected it with that particular day.”
“Of course not, because there was no connection in your mind. The two events were entirely dissimilar to you. One was on a par with other mischievous pranks, the other was a bombshell of tragedy arriving without warning and succeeding in banishing all lesser incidents from your mind. But me, I noticed when you spoke of it that you said, ‘I pinched, etc., etc., to put it in Amyas’s drink.’ You did not say you had actually done so.”
“No, because I never did. Caroline came in just when I was unscrewing the bot
tle. Oh!” It was a cry. “And Caroline thought - she thought it was me. She stopped. She looked around. She said quietly in her usual cool tones, “I suppose you all think so, too.”
She paused and then said, “I didn’t kill Amyas. Not as the result of a malicious joke nor in any other way. If I had I would never have kept silence.”
Miss Williams said sharply, “Of course you wouldn’t, my dear.” She looked at Hercule Poirot. “Nobody but a fool would think so.”
“I am not a fool,” Poirot said mildly, “and I do not think so. I know quite well who killed Amyas Crale.”
He paused. “There is always a danger of accepting facts as proved which are really nothing of the kind. Let us take the situation at Alderbury. A very old situation. Two women and one man. We have taken it for granted that Amyas Crale proposed to leave his wife for the other woman. But I suggest to you now that he never intended to do anything of the kind. “He had had infatuations for women before. They obsessed him while they lasted, but they were soon over. The women he had fallen in love with were usually women of a certain experience - they did not expect too much of him. But this time the woman did. She was not, you see, a woman at all. She was a girl and, in Caroline Crale’s words, she was terribly sincere. She may have been hard-boiled and sophisticated in speech, but in love she was frighteningly single-minded. Because she herself had a deep and overmastering passion for Amyas Crale she assumed that he had the same for her. She assumed without any question that their passion was for life. She assumed without asking him that he was going to leave his wife.
“But why, you will say, did Amyas Crale not undeceive her? And my answer is - the picture. He wanted to finish his picture. To some people that sounds incredible, but not to anybody who knows about artists. And we have already accepted that explanation in principle. That conversation between Crale and Meredith Blake is more intelligible now. Crale is embarrassed - pats Blake on the back, assures him optimistically the whole thing is going to pan out all right. To Amyas Crale, you see, everything is simple. He is painting a picture, slightly encumbered by what he describes as a couple of jealous, neurotic women, but neither of them is going to be allowed to interfere with what to him is the most important thing in life. “If he were to tell Elsa the truth it would be all up with the picture. Perhaps in the first flush of his feelings for her he did talk of leaving Caroline. Men do say these things when they are in love. Perhaps he merely let it be assumed, as he is letting it be assumed now. He doesn’t care what Elsa assumes. Let her think what she likes. Anything to keep her quiet for another day or two. Then he will tell her the truth - that things between them are over. He has never been a man to be troubled with scruples. He did, I think, make an effort not to get embroiled with Elsa to begin with. He warned her what kind of man he was, but she would not take warning. She rushed on to her fate. And to a man like Crale, women were fair game. If you had asked him, he would have said easily that Elsa was young - she’d soon get over it. That was the way Amyas Crale’s mind worked.”
“His wife was actually the only person he cared about at all. He wasn’t worrying much about her. She only had to put up with things for a few days longer. He was furious with Elsa for blurting out things to Caroline, but he still optimistically thought it would be ‘all right.’
Caroline could forgive him as she had done so often before, and Elsa - Elsa would just have to ‘lump it.’ So simple are the problems of life to a man like Amyas Crale.
“But I think that that last evening he became really worried. About Caroline, not about Elsa. Perhaps he went to her room and she refused to speak to him. At any rate, after a restless night he took her aside after breakfast and blurted out the truth. He had been infatuated with Elsa, but it was all over. Once he’d finished the picture he’d never see her again. And it was in answer to that that Caroline Crale cried out indignantly, ‘You and your women!’ That phrase, you see, put Elsa in a class with others - those others who had one their way. And she added indignantly, ‘Someday I’ll kill you.’
“She was angry, revolted by his callousness and by his cruelty to the girl. When Philip Blake saw her in the hall and heard her murmur to herself, ‘It’s too cruel!’ it was of Elsa she was thinking.”
“As for Crale, he came out of the library, found Elsa with Philip Blake, and brusquely ordered her down to go on with the sitting. What he did not know was that Elsa Greer had been sitting just outside the library window and had overheard everything. And the account she gave later of that conversation was not the true one. There is only her word for it, remember. Imagine the shock it must have been to her to hear the truth, brutally spoken!”
“On the previous afternoon Meredith Blake has told us that while he was waiting for Caroline to leave this room he was standing in the doorway with his back to the room. He was talking to Elsa Greer. That means that she would have been facing him and that she could see exactly what Caroline was doing over his shoulder - and that she was the only person who could do so. She saw Caroline take that poison. She said nothing, but she remembered it as she sat outside the library window. When Amyas Crale came out she made the excuse of wanting a pullover and went up to Caroline Crale’s room to look for that poison. Women know where other women are likely to hide things. She found it and, being careful not to obliterate any fingerprints or to leave her own, she drew off the fluid into a fountain-pen filler.”
“Then she came down again and went off with Crale to the Battery Garden. And presently, no doubt, she poured him out some beer and he tossed it down in his usual way. Meanwhile, Caroline Crale was seriously disturbed. When she saw Elsa come up to the house (this time really to fetch a pullover), Caroline slipped quickly down to the Battery Garden and tackled her husband. What he is doing is shameful! She won’t stand for it! It’s unbelievably cruel and hard on the girl! Amyas, irritable at being interrupted, says it’s all settled - when the picture is done he’ll send the girl packing! ‘It’s all settled - I’ll send her packing, I tell you!’
“And then they hear the footsteps of the two Blakes, and Caroline comes out and, slightly embarrassed, murmurs something about Angela and school and having a lot to do, and by a natural association of ideas the two men judge the conversation they have overheard refers to Angela and ‘I’ll send her packing’ becomes ‘I’ll see to her packing.’
“And Elsa, pullover in hand, comes down the path, cool and smiling, and takes up the pose once more. She has counted, no doubt, upon Caroline’s being suspected and the coniine bottle being found in her room. But Caroline now plays into her hands completely. She brings down some iced beer and pours it out for her husband. Amyas tossed it off, makes a face, and says, ‘Everything tastes foul today.’
“Do you not see how significant that remark is? Everything tastes foul? Then there has been something else before that beer that has tasted unpleasant and the taste, of which is still in his mouth. And one other point: Philip Blake speaks of Crale’s staggering a little and wonders ‘if he has been drinking.’ But that slight stagger was the first sign of the coniine working, and that means that it had already been administered to him some time before Caroline brought him the iced bottle of beer. “And so Elsa Greer sat on the grey wall and posed and, since she must keep him from suspecting until it was too late, she talked to Amyas Crale brightly and naturally. Presently she saw Meredith on the bench above and waved her hand to him and acted her part even more thoroughly for his behalf.
“And Amyas Crale, a man who detested illness and refused to give in to it, painted doggedly on till his limbs failed and his speech thickened, and he sprawled there on that bench, helpless, hut with his mind still clear. The bell sounded from the house and Meredith left the bench to come down to the Battery. I think in that brief moment Elsa left her place and ran across to the table and dropped the last few drops of the poison into the beer glass that held that last innocent drink. (She got rid of the dropper on the path up to the house, crushing it to powder.) Then she met Meredith in the doorway
.|”
“There is a glare there coming in out of the shadows. Meredith did not see very clearly - only his friend sprawled in a familiar position and saw his eyes turn from the picture in what he described as a malevolent glare. How much did Amyas know or guess? How much his conscious mind knew we cannot tell, but his hand and his eye were faithful.”
Hercule Poirot gestured toward the picture on the wall. “I should have known when I first saw that picture. For it is a very remarkable picture. It is the picture of a murderess painted by her victim - it is the picture of a girl watching her lover die.”
In the silence that followed - a horrified, appalled silence - the sunset slowly flickered away, the last gleam left the window where it had rested on the dark head and pale furs of the woman sitting there.
Elsa Dittisham moved and spoke. She said, “Take them away, Meredith. Leave me with M. Poirot.”
She sat there motionless until the door shut behind them. Then she said, “You are very clever, aren’t you?” Poirot did not answer.
She said, “What do you expect me to do? Confess?”
He shook his head. “Because I shall do nothing of the kind!” Elsa said. “And I shall admit nothing. But what we say here, together, does not matter. Because it is only your word against mine.”
“Exactly.”
“I want to know what you are going to do.”
Hercule Poirot said, “I shall do everything I can to induce the
authorities to grant a posthumous free pardon to Caroline Crale.”
Elsa laughed. “How absurd!” she said. “To be given a free pardon for something you didn’t do.” Then she said, “What about me?”