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:
‘Good Lord, why make up these things?’
Hercule Poirot shrugged his shoulders. He was at his most foreign today. He was out to be despised but patronized.
He murmured:
‘It is the public. They eat it up-yes, eat it up.’
‘Ghouls,’ said Philip Blake.
But he said it good-humouredly-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.’
‘Ah!’ 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 humour.
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 market 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 equalled 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 behaviour. 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.’
Poirot cried:
‘Ah, but my dear sir, 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 speciality. 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.’
Phillip 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. Any one 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 unsavoury 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 dare say 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.’
Philip Blake said:
‘I don’t know that there was much subtlety about it. 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 colour.
‘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
