people myself-never have. I understood Crale a little because, of course, I’d known him all my life. His people were the same sort as my people. And in many ways Crale ran true to type-it was only where art came in that he didn’t conform to the usual standards. He wasn’t, you see, an amateur in any way. He was first-class-really first- class. Some people say he’s a genius. They may be right. But as a result, he was always what I should describe as unbalanced. When he was painting a picture-nothing else mattered, nothing could be allowed to get in the way. He was like a man in a dream. Completely obsessed by what he was doing. Not till the canvas was finished did he come out of this absorption and start to pick up the threads of ordinary life again.’
He looked questioningly at Poirot and the latter nodded.
‘You understand, I see. Well, that explains, I think, why this particular situation arose. He was in love with this girl. He wanted to marry her. He was prepared to leave his wife and child for her. But he’d started painting her down here, and he wanted to finish that picture. Nothing else mattered to him. He didn’t see anything else. And the fact that the situation was a perfectly impossible one for the two women concerned, doesn’t seem to have occurred to him.’
‘Did either of them understand his point of view?’
‘Oh yes-in a way. Elsa did, I suppose. She was terrifically enthusiastic about his painting. But it was a difficult position for her-naturally. And as for Caroline-’
He stopped. Poirot said:
‘For Caroline-yes, indeed.’
Meredith Blake said, speaking with a little difficulty:
‘Caroline-I had always-well, I had always been very fond of Caroline. There was a time when-when I hoped to marry her. But that was soon nipped in the bud. Still, I remained, if I may say so, devoted to-to her service.’
Poirot nodded thoughtfully. That slightly old-fashioned phrase expressed, he felt, the man before him very typically. Meredith Blake was the kind of man who would devote himself readily to a romantic and honourable devotion. He would serve his lady faithfully and without hope of reward. Yes, it was all very much in character.
He said, carefully weighing the words:
‘You must have resented this-attitude-on her behalf?’
‘I did. Oh, I did. I-I actually remonstrated with Crale on the subject.’
‘When was this?’
‘Actually the day before-before it all happened. They came over to tea here, you know. I got Crale aside and I-I put it to him. I even said, I remember, that it wasn’t fair on either of them.’
‘Ah, you said that?’
‘Yes. I didn’t think-you see, that he realized.’
‘Possibly not.’
‘I said to him that it was putting Caroline in a perfectly unendurable position. If he meant to marry this girl, he ought not to have her staying in the house and-well-more or less flaunt her in Caroline’s face. It was, I said, an unendurable insult.’
Poirot asked curiously: ‘What did he answer?’
Meredith Blake replied with distaste:
‘He said: “Caroline must lump it.” ’
Hercule Poirot’s eyebrows rose.
‘Not,’ he said, ‘a very sympathetic reply.’
‘I thought it abominable. I lost my temper. I said that no doubt, not caring for his wife, he didn’t mind how much he made her suffer, but what, I said, about the girl? Hadn’t he realized it was a pretty rotten position for her? His reply to that was that Elsa must lump it too!
‘Then he went on: “You don’t seem to understand, Meredith, that this thing I’m painting is the best thing I’ve done. It’s good, I tell you. And a couple of jealous quarrelling women aren’t going to upset it-no, by hell, they’re not.”
‘It was hopeless talking to him. I said he seemed to have taken leave of all ordinary decency. Painting, I said, wasn’t everything. He interrupted there. He said: “Ah, but it is to me.”
‘I was still very angry. I said it was perfectly disgraceful the way he had always treated Caroline. She had had a miserable life with him. He said he knew that and he was sorry about it. Sorry! He said: “I know, Merry, you don’t believe that-but it’s the truth. I’ve given Caroline the hell of a life and she’s been a saint about it. But she did know, I think, what she might be letting herself in for. I told her candidly the sort of damnable egoistic, loose-living kind of chap I was.”
‘I put it to him then very strongly that he ought not to break up his married life. There was the child to be considered and everything. I said that I could understand that a girl like Elsa could bowl a man over, but that even for her sake he ought to break off the whole thing. She was very young. She was going into this bald-headed, but she might regret it bitterly afterwards. I said couldn’t he pull himself together, make a clean break and go back to his wife?’
‘And what did he say?’
Blake said: ‘He just looked-embarrassed. He patted me on the shoulder and said: “You’re a good chap, Merry. But you’re too sentimental. You wait till the picture’s finished and you’ll admit that I was right.”
‘I said: “Damn your picture.” And he grinned and said all the neurotic women in England couldn’t do that. Then I said that it would have been more decent to have kept the whole thing from Caroline until after the picture was finished. He said that that wasn’this fault. It was Elsa who had insisted on spilling the beans. I said, Why? And he said that she had had some idea that it wasn’t straight otherwise. She wanted everything to be clear and above board. Well, of course, in a way, one could understand that and respect the girl for it. However badly she was behaving, she did at least want to be honest.’
‘A lot of additional pain and grief is caused by honesty,’ remarked Hercule Poirot.
Meredith Blake looked at him doubtfully. He did not quite like the sentiment. He sighed:
‘It was a-a most unhappy time for us all.’
‘The only person who does not seem to have been affected by it was Amyas Crale,’ said Poirot.
‘And why? Because he was a rank egoist. I remember him now. Grinning at me as he went off saying: “Don’t worry, Merry. Everything’s going to pan out all right!” ’
‘The incurable optimist,’ murmured Poirot.
Meredith Blake said:
‘He was the kind of man who didn’t take women seriously. I could have told him that Caroline was desperate.’
‘Did she tell you so?’
‘Not in so many words. But I shall always see her face as it was that afternoon. White and strained with a kind of desperate gaiety. She talked and laughed a lot. But her eyes-there was a kind of anguished grief in them that was the most moving thing I have ever known. Such a gentle creature, too.’
Hercule Poirot looked at him for a minute or two without speaking. Clearly the man in front of him felt no incongruity in speaking thus of a woman who on the day after had deliberately killed her husband.
Meredith Blake went on. He had by now quite overcome his first suspicious hostility. Hercule Poirot had the gift of listening. To men such as Meredith Blake, the reliving of the past has a definite attraction. He spoke now almost more to himself than to his guest.
‘I ought to have suspected something, I suppose. It was Caroline who turned the conversation to-to my little hobby. It was, I must confess, an enthusiasm of mine. The old English herbalists, you know, are a very interesting study. There are so many plants that were formerly used in medicine and which have now disappeared from the official Pharmacopœia. And it’s astonishing, really, how a simple decoction of something or other will really work wonders. No need for doctors half the time. The French understand these things-some of their tisanes are
