Mrs Crale on that morning as perhaps I should have been. At the time, however, I felt it was my duty to look for Angela. She was very naughty and obstinate about mending her clothes, and I had no intention of allowing her to defy me in the matter.
Her bathing-dress was missing and I accordingly went down to the beach. There was no sign of her in the water or on the rocks, so I conceived it possible that she had gone over to Mr Meredith Blake’s. She and he were great friends. I accordingly rowed myself across and resumed my search. I did not find her and eventually returned. Mrs Crale, Mr Blake and Mr Philip Blake were on the terrace.
It was very hot that morning if one was out of the wind, and the house and terrace were sheltered. Mrs Crale suggested they might like some iced beer.
There was a little conservatory which had been built on to the house in Victorian days. Mrs Crale disliked it, and it was not used for plants, but it had been made into a kind of bar, with various bottles of gin, vermouth, lemonade, ginger-beer, etc., on shelves, and a small refrigerator which was filled with ice every morning and in which some beer and ginger-beer was always kept.
Mrs Crale went there to get the beer and I went with her. Angela was at the refrigerator and was just taking out a bottle of beer.
Mrs Crale went in ahead of me. She said:
‘I want a bottle of beer to take down to Amyas.’
It is so difficult now to know whether I ought to have suspected anything. Her voice, I feel almost convinced, was perfectly normal. But I must admit that at that moment I was intent, not on her, but on Angela. Angela was by the refrigerator and I was glad to see that she looked red and rather guilty.
I was rather sharp with her, and to my surprise she was quite meek. I asked her where she had been, and she said she had been bathing. I said: ‘I didn’t see you on the beach.’ And she laughed. Then I asked her where her jersey was, and she said she must have left it down on the beach.
I mention these details to explain why I let Mrs Crale take the beer down to the Battery garden.
The rest of the morning is quite blank in my mind. Angela fetched her needle-book and mended her skirt without any more fuss. I rather think that I mended some of the household linen. Mr Crale did not come up for lunch. I was glad that he had at leastthat much decency.
After lunch, Mrs Crale said she was going down to the Battery. I wanted to retrieve Angela’s jersey from the beach. We started down together. She went into the Battery-I was going on when her cry called me back. As I told you when you came to see me, she asked me to go up and telephone. On the way up I met Mr Meredith Blake and then went back to Mrs Crale.
That was my story as I told it at the inquest and later at the trial.
What I am about to write down I have never told to any living soul. I was not asked any question to which I returned an untrue answer. Nevertheless I was guilty of withholding certain facts-I do not repent of that. I would do it again. I am fully aware that in revealing this I may be laying myself open to censure, but I do not think that after this lapse of time any one will take the matter very seriously-especially since Caroline Crale was convicted without my evidence.
This, then, is what happened.
I met Mr Meredith Blake as I said, and I ran down the path again as quickly as I could. I was wearing sandshoes and I have always been light on my feet. I came to the open Battery door, and this is what I saw.
Mrs Crale was busily polishing the beer bottle on the table with her handkerchief. Having done so, she took her dead husband’s hand and pressed the fingers of it on the beer bottle. All the time she was listening and on the alert. It was the fear I saw on her face that told me the truth.
I knew then, beyond any possible doubt, that Caroline Crale had poisoned her husband. And I, for one, do not blame her. He drove her to a point beyond human endurance, and he brought his fate upon himself.
I never mentioned the incident to Mrs Crale and she never knew that I had seen it.
Caroline Crale’s daughter must not bolster up her life with a lie. However much it may pain her to know the truth, truth is the only thing that matters.
Tell her, from me, that her mother is not to be judged. She was driven beyond what a loving woman can endure. It is for her daughter to understand and forgive.
Narrative of Angela Warren
Dear M. Poirot,
I am keeping my promise to you and have written down all I can remember of that terrible time sixteen years ago. But it was not until I started that I realized how very little I did remember. Until the thing actually happened, you see, there is nothing to fix anything by.
I’ve just a vague memory of summer days-and isolated incidents, but I couldn’t say for certain what summer they happened even! Amyas’s death was just a thunderclap coming out of the blue. I’d had no warning of it, and I seem to have missed everything that led up to it.
I’ve been trying to think whether that was to be expected or not. Are most girls of fifteen as blind and deaf and obtuse as I seem to have been? Perhaps they are. I was quick, I think, to gauge people’s moods, but I never bothered my head about whatcaused those moods.
Besides, just at that time, I’d suddenly begun to discover the intoxication of words. Things that I read, straps of poetry-of Shakespeare-would echo in my head. I remember now walking along the kitchen garden path repeating to myself in a kind of ecstatic delirium ‘under the glassy green translucent wave’…It was just so lovely I had to say it over and over again.
And mixed up with these new discoveries and excitements there were all the things I’d liked doing ever since I could remember. Swimming and climbing trees and eating fruit and playing tricks on the stable boy and feeding the horses.
Caroline and Amyas I took for granted. They were the central figures in my world, but I neverthought about them or about their affairs or what they thought and felt.
I didn’t notice Elsa Greer’s coming particularly. I thought she was stupid and I didn’t even think she was good- looking. I accepted her as someone rich but tiresome, whom Amyas was painting.
Actually, the very first intimation I had of the whole thing was what I overheard from the terrace where I had escaped after lunch one day-Elsa said she was going to marry Amyas! It struck me as just ridiculous. I remember tackling Amyas about it. In the garden at Handcross it was. I said to him:
‘Why does Elsa say she’s going to marry you? She couldn’t. People can’t have two wives-it’s bigamy and they go to prison.’
Amyas got very angry and said: ‘How the devil did you hear that?’
I said I’d heard it through the library window.
He was angrier than ever then, and said it was high time I went to school and got out of the habit of eavesdropping.
I still remember the resentment I felt when he said that. Because it was so unfair. Absolutely and utterly unfair.
I stammered out angrily that I hadn’t been listening-and anyhow, I said, why did Elsa say a silly thing like that?
Amyas said it was just a joke.
That ought to have satisfied me. It did-almost. But not quite.
I said to Elsa when we were on the way back: ‘I asked Amyas what you meant when you said you were going to marry him, and he said it was just a joke.’
I felt that ought to snub her. But she only smiled.
