perfectly capable of pinching the stuff-she had just as good a chance that afternoon-and might have tried to get my mother out of the way by poisoning her. I think that would be quite like Elsa. And then, possibly, by some awful accident, Amyas got the stuff instead of Caroline.’
‘Again it is not badly imagined. What else?’
Carla said slowly:
‘Well, I thought-perhaps-Meredith!’
‘Ah-Meredith Blake?’
‘Yes. You see, he sounds to me just the sort of person who would do a murder. I mean, he was the slow dithering one the others laughed at, and underneath, perhaps, he resented that. Then my father married the girl he wanted to marry. And my father was successful and rich. And he did make all those poisons! Perhaps he really made them because he liked the idea of being able to kill someone one day. He had to call attention to the stuff being taken, so as to divert suspicion from himself. But he himself was far the most likely person to have taken it. He might, even, have liked getting Caroline hanged-because she turned him down long ago. I think, you know, it’s rather fishy what he says in his account of it all-how people do things that aren’t characteristic of them. Supposing he meanthimself when he wrote that?’
Hercule Poirot said:
‘You are at least right in this-not to take what has been written down as necessarily a true narrative. What has been written may have been written deliberately to mislead.’
‘Oh, I know. I’ve kept that in mind.’
‘Any other ideas?’
Carla said slowly:
‘I wondered-before I’d read this-about Miss Williams. She lost her job, you see, when Angela went to school. And if Amyas had died suddenly, Angela probably wouldn’t have gone after all. I mean if it passed off as a natural death-which it easily might have done, I suppose, if Meredith hadn’t missed the coniine. I read up coniine, and it hasn’t got any distinctive post-mortem appearances. It might have been thought to be sunstroke. I know that just losing a job doesn’t sound a very adequate motive for murder. But murders have been committed again and again for what seem ridiculously inadequate motives. Tiny sums of money sometimes. And a middle-aged, perhaps rather incompetent governess might have got the wind up and just seen no future ahead of her.
‘As I say, that’s what I thought before I read this. But Miss Williams doesn’t sound like that at all. She doesn’t sound in the least incompetent-’
‘Not at all. She is still a very efficient and intelligent woman.’
‘I know. One can see that. And she sounds absolutely trustworthy too. That’s what has upset me really. Oh, you know-you understand. You don’t mind, of course. All along you’ve made it clear it was the truth you wanted. I suppose now we’ve got the truth! Miss Williams is quite right. One must accept truth. It’s no good basing your life on a lie because it’s what you want to believe. All right then-I can take it! My mother wasn’t innocent! She wrote me that letter because she was weak and unhappy and wanted to spare me. I don’t judge her. Perhaps I should feel like that too. I don’t know what prison does to you. And I don’t blame her either-if she felt so desperately about my father, I suppose she couldn’t help herself. But I don’t blame my father altogether either. I understand- just a little-howhe felt. So alive-and so full of wanting everything…He couldn’t help it-he was made that way. And he was a great painter. I think that excuses a lot.’
She turned her flushed excited face to Hecule Poirot with her chin raised defiantly.
Hercule Poirot said:
‘So-you are satisfied?’
‘Satisfied?’ said Carla Lemarchant. Her voice broke on the word.
Poirot leant forward and patted her paternally on the shoulder.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘You give up the fight at the moment when it is most worth fighting. At the moment when I, Hercule Poirot, have a very good idea of what really happened.’
Carla stared at him. She said:
‘Miss Williams loved my mother. She saw her-with her own eyes-faking that suicide evidence. If you believe what she says-’
Hercule Poirot got up. He said:
‘Mademoiselle, because Cecilia Williams says she saw your mother faking Amyas Crale’s fingerprints on the beer bottle-on the beer bottle, mind-that is the only thing I need to tell me definitely, once for all, that your mother did not kill your father.’
He nodded his head several times and went out of the room, leaving Carla staring after him.
Chapter 2. Poirot Asks Five Questions
‘Well, M. Poirot?’
Philip Blake’s tone was impatient.
Poirot said:
‘I have to thank you for your admirable and lucid account of the Crale tragedy.’
Philip Blake looked rather self-conscious.
‘Very kind of you,’ he murmured. ‘Really surprising how much I remembered when I got down to it.’
Poirot said:
‘It was an admirably clear narrative, but there were certain omissions, were there not?’
‘Omissions?’ Philip Blake frowned.
Hercule Poirot said:
‘Your narrative, shall we say, was not entirely frank.’ His tone hardened. ‘I have been informed, Mr Blake, that on at least one night during the summer, Mrs Crale was seen coming out of your room at a somewhat compromising hour.’
There was a silence broken only by Philip Blake’s heavy breathing. He said at last: ‘Who told you that?’
Hercule Poirot shook his head.
‘It is no matter who told me. That I know, that is the point.’
Again there was a silence; then Philip Blake made up his mind. He said:
‘By accident, it seems, you have stumbled upon a purely private matter. I admit that it does not square with what I have written down. Nevertheless, it squares better than you might think. I am forced now to tell you the truth.
‘I did entertain a feeling of animosity towards Caroline Crale. At the same time I was always strongly attracted by her. Perhaps the latter fact induced the former. I resented the power she had over me and tried to stifle the attraction she had for me by constantly dwelling on her worst points. I never liked her, if you understand. But it would have been easy at any moment for me to make love to her. I had been in love with her as a boy and she had taken no notice of me. I did not find that easy to forgive.
‘My opportunity came when Amyas lost his head so completely over the Greer girl. Quite without meaning to I found myself telling Caroline I loved her. She said quite calmly: ‘Yes, I have always known that.’ The insolence of the woman!
‘Of course I knew that she didn’t love me, but I saw that she was disturbed and disillusioned by Amyas’s present infatuation. That is a mood when a woman can very easily be won. She agreed to come to me that night. And she came.’
Blake paused. He found now a difficulty in getting the words out.
‘She came to my room. And then, with my arms round her, she told me quite coolly that it was no good! After all, she said, she was a one-man woman. She was Amyas Crale’s, for better or worse. She agreed that she had
