Now, in Angela Warren-that young creature handicapped by disfigurement and its consequent humiliation, Poirot believed he saw a spirit strengthened by its necessary fight for confidence and assurance. The undisciplined schoolgirl had given place to a vital and forceful woman, a woman of considerable mental power and gifted with abundant energy to accomplish ambitious purposes. She was a woman, Poirot felt sure, both happy and successful. Her life was full and vivid and eminently enjoyable.
She was not, incidentally, the type of woman that Poirot really liked. Though admiring the clear-cut precision of her mind, she had just a sufficient nuance of th efemme formidable about her to alarm him as a mere man. His taste had always been for the flamboyant and extravagant.
With Angela Warren it was easy to come to the point of his visit. There was no subterfuge. He merely recounted Carla Lemarchant’s interview with him.
Angela Warren’s severe face lighted up appreciatively.
‘Little Carla? She is over here? I would like to see her so much.’
‘You have not kept in touch with her?’
‘Hardly as much as I should have done. I was a schoolgirl at the time she went to Canada, and I realized, of course, that in a year or two she would have forgotten us. Of late years, an occasional present at Christmas has been the only link between us. I imagined that she would, by now, be completely immersed in the Canadian atmosphere and that her future would lie over there. Better so, in the circumstances.’
Poirot said: ‘One might think so, certainly. A change of name-a change of scene. A new life. But it was not to be so easy as that.’
And he then told of Carla’s engagement, the discovery she had made upon coming of age and her motives in coming to England.
Angela Warren listened quietly, her disfigured cheek resting on one hand. She betrayed no emotion during the recital, but as Poirot finished, she said quietly:
‘Good for Carla.’
Poirot was startled. It was the first time that he had met with this reaction. He said:
‘You approve, Miss Warren?’
‘Certainly. I wish her every success. Anything I can do to help, I will. I feel guilty, you know, that I haven’t attempted anything myself.’
‘Then you think that there is a possibility that she is right in her views.’
Angela Warren said sharply:
‘Of course she’s right. Caroline didn’t do it. I’ve always known that.’
Hercule Poirot murmured:
‘You surprise me very much indeed, mademoiselle. Everybody else I have spoken to-’
She cut in sharply:
‘You mustn’t go by that. I’ve no doubt that the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming. My own conviction is based on knowledge-knowledge of my sister. I just know quite simply and definitely that Caro couldn’t have killed any one.’
‘Can one say that with certainty of any human creature?’
‘Probably not in most cases. I agree that the human animal is full of curious surprises. But in Caroline’s case there were special reasons-reasons which I have a better chance of appreciating than any one else could.’
She touched her damaged cheek.
‘You see this? You’ve probably heard about it?’ Poirot nodded. ‘Caroline did that. That’s why I’m sure-I know - that she didn’t do murder.’
‘It would not be a convincing argument to most people.’
‘No, it would be the opposite. It was actually used in that way, I believe. As evidence that Caroline had a violent and ungovernable temper! Because she had injured me as a baby, learned men argued that she would be equally capable of poisoning an unfaithful husband.’
Poirot said:
‘I, at least, appreciated the difference. A sudden fit of ungovernable rage does not lead you to first abstract a poison and then use it deliberately on the following day.’
Angela Warren waved an impatient hand.
‘That’s not what I mean at all. I must try and make it plain to you. Supposing that you are a person normally affectionate and of kindly disposition-but that you are also liable to intense jealousy. And supposing that during the years of your life when control is most difficult, you do, in a fit of rage, come near to committing what is, in effect, murder. Think of the awful shock, the horror, the remorse that seizes upon you. To a sensitive person, like Caroline, that horror and remorse will never quite leave you. It never left her. I don’t suppose I was consciously aware of it at the time, but looking back I recognize it perfectly. Caro was haunted, continually haunted, by the fact that she had injured me. That knowledge never left her in peace. It coloured all her actions. It explained her attitude to me. Nothing was too good for me. In her eyes, I must always come first. Half the quarrels she had with Amyas were on my account. I was inclined to be jealous of him and played all kinds of tricks on him. I pinched cat stuff to put in his drink, and once I put a hedgehog in his bed. But Caroline was always on my side.’
Miss Warren paused, then she went on:
‘It was very bad for me, of course. I got horribly spoilt. But that’s neither here nor there. We’re discussing the effect on Caroline. The result of that impulse to violence was a life-long abhorrence of any further act of the same kind. Caro was always watching herself, always in fear that something of that kind might happen again. And she took her own ways of guarding against it. One of these ways was a great extravagance of language. She felt (and I think, psychologically quite truly) that if she were violent enough in speech she would have no temptation to violence in action. She found by experience that the method worked. That’s why I’ve heard Caro say things like “I’d like to cut so and so in pieces and boil him slowly in oil.” And she’d say to me, or to Amyas, “If you go on annoying me I shall murder you.” In the same way she quarrelled easily and violently. She recognized, I think, the impulse to violence that there was in her nature, and she deliberately gave it an outlet that way. She and Amyas used to have the most fantastic and lurid quarrels.’
Hercule Poirot nodded.
‘Yes, there was evidence of that. They quarrelled like cat and dog, it was said.’
Angela Warren said:
‘Exactly. That’s what is so stupid and misleading about evidence. Of course Caro and Amyas quarrelled! Of course they said bitter and outrageous and cruel things to each other! What nobody appreciates is that theyenjoyed quarrelling. But they did! Amyas enjoyed it too. They were that kind of couple. They both of them liked drama and emotional scenes. Most men don’t. They like peace. But Amyas was an artist. He liked shouting and threatening and generally being outrageous. It was like letting off steam to him. He was the kind of man who when he loses his collar stud bellows the house down. It sounds very odd, I know, but living that way with continual rows and makings-up was Amyas’s and Caroline’s idea of fun!’
She made an impatient gesture.
‘If they’d only not hustled me away and let me give evidence, I’d have told them that.’ Then she shrugged her shoulders. ‘But I don’t suppose they would have believed me. And anyway then it wouldn’t have been as clear in my mind as it is now. It was the kind of thing I knew but hadn’t thought about and certainly had never dreamed of putting into words.’
She looked across at Poirot.
‘You do see what I mean?’
He nodded vigorously.
‘I see perfectly-and I realize the absolute rightness of what you have said. There are people to whom agreement is monotony. They require the stimulant of dissension to create drama in their lives.’
‘Exactly.’
