第 18 页

I shut and locked the window and went out, locking the I door behind me. I was considerably upset and also bewildered. When startled, my mental processes are, I am afraid, somewhat slow.

I was first disturbed, then apprehensive, and finally definitely alarmed. I questioned the household, and they all denied having entered the laboratory at all. I thought things over a little while longer and then decided to ring up my brother and get his advice.

Philip was quicker than I was. He saw the seriousness of my discovery and urged me to come over at once and consult with him.

I went out, encountering Miss Williams, who was looking for a truant pupil. I assured her that I had not seen Angela and that she had not been to the house.

I think that Miss Williams noticed there was something amiss. She looked at me rather curiously. I had no intention, however, of telling her what had happened. I suggested she should try the kitchen garden - Angela had a favorite apple tree there - and I myself hurried down to the shore and rowed myself across to the Alderbury side. My brother was already there waiting for me.

We walked up to the house together by the way you and I went the other day. Having seen the topography, you can understand that in passing underneath the wall of the Battery Garden we were bound to overhear anything being said inside it.

Beyond the fact that Caroline and Amyas were engaged in a disagreement of some kind, I did not pay much attention to what was said.

Certainly I overheard no threat of any kind uttered by Caroline. The subject of discussion was Angela, and I presume Caroline was pleading for a respite from the fiat of school. Amyas, however, was adamant, shouting out irritably that it was all settled - he'd see to her packing.

The door of the Battery opened just as we drew abreast of it and Caroline came out. She looked disturbed, but not unduly so. She smiled rather absently at me, and said they had been discussing Angela. Elsa came down the path at that minute and, as Amyas dearly wanted to get on with the sitting without interruption from us, we went on up the path.

Philip blamed himself severely afterward for the fact that we did not take immediate action.

But I myself cannot see it the same way. We had no earthly right to assume that such a thing as murder was being contemplated. (Moreover, I now believe that it was not contemplated.) It was clear that we should have to adopt some course of action, but I still maintain that we were right to talk the matter over carefully first. It was necessary to find the right thing to do, and once or twice I found myself wondering if I had not, after all, made a mistake. Had the bottle really been full the day before as I thought?

I am not one of these people (like my brother Philip) who can be cocksure of everything. One's memory does play tricks on one. How often, for instance, one is convinced one has put an article in a certain place, later to find that he has put it somewhere quite different. The more I tried to recall the state of the bottle on the preceding afternoon the more uncertain and doubtful I became. This was very annoying to Philip, who began completely to lose patience with me.

We were not able to continue our discussion at the time and tacitly agreed to postpone it until after lunch. (I may say that I was alway free to drop in for lunch at Alderbury if I chose.)

Later, Angela and Caroline brought us beer. I asked Angela what she had been up to, playing truant, and told her Miss Williams was on the warpath, and she said she had been bathing, and added that she didn't see why she should have to mend her horrible old skirt when she was going to have all new things to go to school with.

Since there seemed no chance of further talk with Philip alone, and since I was really anxious to think things out by myself, I wandered off down the path toward the Battery. Just above the Battery, as I showed you, there is a clearing in the trees where there used to be an old bench. I sat there smoking and thinking, and watching Elsa as she sat posing for Amyas.

I shall always think of her as she was that day - rigid in the pose, with her yellow shirt and dark-blue trousers and a red pull-over slung round her shoulders for warmth.

Her face was so alight with life and health and radiance. And that gay voice of hers reciting plans for the future.

This sounds as though I was eavesdropping, but that is not so. I was perfectly visible to Elsa. Both she and Amyas knew I was there. She waved her hand at me and called up that Amyas was a perfect bear that morning - he wouldn't let her rest. She was stiff and aching all over.

Amyas growled out that she wasn't as stiff as he was. He was stiff all over - muscular rheumatism. Elsa said mockingly, "Poor old man!" And he said she'd be taking on a creaking invalid.

It shocked me, you know, their light-hearted acquiescence in their future together while they were causing so much suffering. And yet I couldn't hold it against her. She was so young, so confident, so very much in love. And she didn't really know what she was doing. She didn't understand suffering. She just assumed with the naпve confidence of a child that Caroline would be "all right," that "she'd soon get over it." She saw nothing, you see, but herself and Amyas - happy together. She'd already told me my point of view was old-fashioned. She had no doubts, no qualms, no pity, either. But can one expect pity from radiant youth? It is an older, wiser emotion.

They didn't talk very much, of course. No painter wants to be chattering when he is working. Perhaps every ten minutes or so Elsa would make an observation and Amyas would grunt a reply. Once she said:

"I think you're right about Spain. That's the first place we'll go to. And you must take me to see a bullfight. It must be wonderful! Only I'd like the bull to kill the man - not the other way about. I understand how Roman women felt when they saw a man die. Men aren't much, but animals are splendid."

I suppose she was rather like an animal herself - young and primitive and with nothing yet of man's sad experience and doubtful wisdom. I don't believe Elsa had begun to think - she only felt. But she was very much alive - more alive than any person I have ever known.

That was the last time I saw her radiant and assured - on top of the world. Fey is the word for it, isn't it?

The bell sounded for lunch, and I got up and went down the path and in at the Battery door, and Elsa joined me. It was dazzlingly bright there coming in out of the shady trees. I could hardly see. Amyas was sprawled back on the seat, his arms flung out. He was staring at the picture. I've so often seen him like that. How was I to know that already the poison was working, stiffening him as he sat?

He so hated and resented illness. He would never own to it. I dare say he thought he had got a touch of the sun - the symptoms are much the same - but he'd be the last person to complain about it.

Elsa said, "He won't come up to lunch."

Privately I thought he was wise. I said, "So long, then."

He moved his eyes from the picture until they rested on me. There was a queer - how shall I describe it? - it looked like malevolence. A kind of malevolent glare.

Naturally I didn't understand it then - if his picture wasn't going as he liked he often looked quite murderous. I thought that was what it was. He made a sort of grunting sound.

Neither Elsa nor I saw anything unusual in him - just artistic temperament.

So we left him there and she and I went up to the house laughing and talking. If she'd known - poor child - that she'd never see him alive again - Oh, well, thank God, she didn't. She was able to be happy a little longer. Caroline was quite normal at lunch - a little preoccupied, nothing more. And doesn't that show that she had nothing to do with it? She couldn't have been such an actress.

She and the governess went down afterward and found him. I met Miss Williams as she came up. She told me to telephone a doctor and went back to Caroline.

That poor child! Elsa, I mean. She had that frantic, unrestrained grief that children have. They can't believe that life can do these things to them. Caroline was quite calm. Yes, she was quite calm. She was able, of course, to control herself better than Elsa. She didn't seem remorseful - then. Just said he must have done it himself. And we couldn't believe that. Elsa burst out and accused her to her face.

Of course, she may have realized, already, that she herself would be suspected. Yes, that probably explains her manner.

Philip was quite convinced that she had done it.

The governess was a great help and stand-by. She made Elsa lie down and gave her a sedative and she kept Angela out of the way when the police came. Yes, she was a tower of strength, that woman.

The whole thing became a nightmare. The police searching the house and asking questions, and then the reporters swarming about the place like flies and clicking cameras and wanting interviews with members of the family.

A nightmare, the whole thing...

It's still a nightmare, after all these years. Please God, once you've convinced little Carla what really happened, we can forget it all and never remember it again.

Amyas must have committed suicide - however unlikely it seems.

(End of Meredith Blake's Narrative)

Narrative of Lady Dittisham

I have set down here the full story of my meeting with Amyas Crale, up to the time of his tragic death.

I saw him first at a studio party. He was standing, I remember, by a window and I saw him as I came in at the door. I asked who he was. Someone said, "That's Crale, the painter." I said at once that I'd like to meet him.

We talked on that occasion for perhaps ten minutes. When anyone makes the impression on you that Amyas Crale made on me, it's hopeless to attempt to describe it. If I say that when I saw Amyas Crale everybody else seemed to grow very small and fade away, that expresses it as well as anything can.

Immediately after that meeting I went to look at as many of his pictures as I could. He had a show on in Bond Street at the moment and there was one of his pictures in Manchester and one in Leeds and two in public galleries in London. I went to see them all. Then I met him again. I said, "I've been to see all your pictures. I think they're wonderful."

He just looked amused. He said, "Who said you were any judge of painting? I don't believe you know anything about it."

I said, "Perhaps not. But they are marvelous, all the same."

He grinned at me and said, "Don't be a gushing little fool."

I said, "I'm not; I want you to paint me."

Crale said, "If you've any sense at all, you'll realize that I don't paint portraits of pretty women."

I said, "It needn't be a portrait, and I'm not a pretty woman."

He looked at me then as though he'd begun to see me. He said, "No, perhaps you're not."

I said, "Will you paint me, then?"

He studied me for some time with his head on one side. Then he said, "You're a strange child, aren't you?"

I said, "I'm quite rich, you know; I can afford to pay well for it."

He said, "Why are you so anxious for me to paint you?"

I said, "Because I want it!"

He said, "Is that a reason?"

And I said, "Yes. I always get what I want."

He said then, "Oh, my poor child, how young you are!"

I said, "Will you paint me?"

He took me by the shoulders and turned me toward the light and looked me over. Then he stood away from me a little. I stood quite still, waiting.

He said, "I've sometimes wanted to paint a flight of impossibly colored Australian macaws alighting on St Paul's Cathedral. If I painted you against a nice traditional bit of outdoor landscape I believe I'd get exactly the same result."

I said, "Then you will paint me?"

He said, You're one of the loveliest, crudest, most flamboyant bits of exotic coloring I've ever seen. I'll paint you!"

I said, "Then that's settled."

He went on. "But I'll warn you, Elsa Greer. If I do paint you, I shall probably make love to you."

I said, "I hope you will..."

I said it quite steadily and quietly. I heard him catch his breath and I saw the look that came into his eyes.

You see, it was as sudden as all that.

A day or two later we met again. He told me that he wanted me to come down to Devonshire - he'd got the very place there that he wanted for a background. He said, "I'm married, you know, and I'm very fond of my wife."

I said if he was fond of her she must be very nice.

He said she was extremely nice. "In fact," he said, "she's quite adorable - and I adore her. So put that in your pipe, young Elsa, and smoke it."

I told him that I quite understood.

He began the picture a week later. Caroline Crale welcomed me very pleasantly. She didn't like me much, but, after all, why should she? Amyas was very circumspect. He never said a word to me that his wife couldn't have overheard and I was polite and formal to him. Underneath, though, we both knew.

After ten days he told me I was to go back to London.

I said, "The picture isn't finished."

He said: "It's barely begun. The truth of the matter is that I can't paint you, Elsa."

I said, "Why?"

He said, "You know well enough why, Elsa. And that's why you we got to clear out. I can't think about the painting - I can't think about anything but you."

I knew it would be no good my going back to London, but I said, "Very well, I'll go if you say so."

Amyas said, "Good girl."

So I went. I didn't write to him.

He held out for ten days and then he came. He was so thin and haggard and miserable that it shocked me.

He said, "I warned you, Elsa. Don't say I didn't warn you."

I said, "I've been waiting for you. I knew you'd come."

He gave a sort of groan and said, "There are things that are too strong for any man. I can't eat or sleep or rest for wanting you."

I said I knew that, and that it was the same with me and had been from the first moment I'd seen him.

We were made for each other and we'd found each other - and we both knew we had to be together always.