第 24 页

"Miss Williams was over here - you actually met her as you went out. She told you then that she was looking for Angela. Angela had gone bathing early, but Miss Williams did not see her in the water, nor anywhere on the rocks. She could swim across to this side easily - in fact, she did so later in the morning when she was bathing with Philip Blake. I suggest that she swam across here, came up to the house, got in through the window, and took something from the shelf."

Angela Warren said, "I did nothing of the kind - not, at least -"

"Ah!" Poirot gave a yelp of triumph. "You have remembered. You told me - did you not? - that to play a malicious joke on Amyas Crale you pinched some of what you called "the cat stuff" - that is how you put it -"

Meredith Blake said sharply, "Valerian! Of course."

"Exactly. That is what made you sure in your mind that it was a cat who had been in the room. Your nose is very sensitive. You smelled the faint, unpleasant odor of valerian without knowing, perhaps, that you did so, but it suggested to your subconscious mind 'cat.' Cats love valerian and will go anywhere for it. Valerian is particularly nasty to taste, and it was your account of it the day before which made mischievous Miss Angela plan to put some in her brother-in-law's beer, which she knew he always tossed down his throat in a draught."

Angela Warren said wonderingly, "Was it really that day? I remember taking it perfectly - yes, and I remember putting it in the beer and Caroline coming in and nearly catching me! Of course I remember. But I've never connected it with that particular day."

"Of course not, because there was no connection in your mind. The two events were entirely dissimilar to you. One was on a par with other mischievous pranks, the other was a bombshell of tragedy arriving without warning and succeeding in banishing all lesser incidents from your mind. But me, I noticed when you spoke of it that you said, 'I pinched, etc., etc., to put it in Amyas's drink.' You did not say you had actually done so."

"No, because I never did. Caroline came in just when I was unscrewing the bottle. Oh!" It was a cry. "And Caroline thought - she thought it was me. She stopped. She looked around. She said quietly in her usual cool tones, "I suppose you all think so, too."

She paused and then said, "I didn't kill Amyas. Not as the result of a malicious joke nor in any other way. If I had I would never have kept silence."

Miss Williams said sharply, "Of course you wouldn't, my dear." She looked at Hercule Poirot. "Nobody but a fool would think so."

"I am not a fool," Poirot said mildly, "and I do not think so. I know quite well who killed Amyas Crale."

He paused.

"There is always a danger of accepting facts as proved which are really nothing of the kind. Let us take the situation at Alderbury. A very old situation. Two women and one man. We have taken it for granted that Amyas Crale proposed to leave his wife for the other woman. But I suggest to you now that he never intended to do anything of the kind.

"He had had infatuations for women before. They obsessed him while they lasted, but they were soon over. The women he had fallen in love with were usually women of a certain experience - they did not expect too much of him. But this time the woman did. She was not, you see, a woman at all. She was a girl and, in Caroline Crale's words, she was terribly sincere. She may have been hard-boiled and sophisticated in speech, but in love she was frighteningly single-minded. Because she herself had a deep and overmastering passion for Amyas Crale she assumed that he had the same for her. She assumed without any question that their passion was for life. She assumed without asking him that he was going to leave his wife.

"But why, you will say, did Amyas Crale not undeceive her? And my answer is - the picture. He wanted to finish his picture.

"To some people that sounds incredible, but not to anybody who knows about artists. And we have already accepted that explanation in principle. That conversation between Crale and Meredith Blake is more intelligible now. Crale is embarrassed - pats Blake on the back, assures him optimistically the whole thing is going to pan out all right. To Amyas Crale, you see, everything is simple. He is painting a picture, slightly encumbered by what he describes as a couple of jealous, neurotic women, but neither of them is going to be allowed to interfere with what to him is the most important thing in life.

"If he were to tell Elsa the truth it would be all up with the picture. Perhaps in the first flush of his feelings for her he did talk of leaving Caroline. Men do say these things when they are in love. Perhaps he merely let it be assumed, as he is letting it be assumed now. He doesn't care what Elsa assumes. Let her think what she likes. Anything to keep her quiet for another day or two.

"Then he will tell her the truth - that things between them are over. He has never been a man to be troubled with scruples.

"He did, I think, make an effort not to get embroiled with Elsa to begin with. He warned her what kind of man he was, but she would not take warning. She rushed on to her fate. And to a man like Crale, women were fair game. If you had asked him, he would have said easily that Elsa was young - she'd soon get over it. That was the way Amyas Crale's mind worked.

"His wife was actually the only person he cared about at all. He wasn't worrying much about her. She only had to put up with things for a few days longer. He was furious with Elsa for blurting out things to Caroline, but he still optimistically thought it would be 'all right.' Caroline could forgive him as she had done so often before, and Elsa - Elsa would just have to 'lump it.' So simple are the problems of life to a man like Amyas Crale.

"But I think that that last evening he became really worried. About Caroline, not about Elsa. Perhaps he went to her room and she refused to speak to him. At any rate, after a restless night he took her aside after breakfast and blurted out the truth. He had been infatuated with Elsa, but it was all over. Once he'd finished the picture he'd never see her again.

"And it was in answer to that that Caroline Crale cried out indignantly, 'You and your women!' That phrase, you see, put Elsa in a class with others - those others who had one their way. And she added indignantly, 'Some day I'll kill you.'

"She was angry, revolted by his callousness and by his cruelty to the girl. When Philip Blake saw her in the hall and heard her murmur to herself, 'It's too cruel!' it was of Elsa she was thinking.

"As for Crale, he came out of the library, found Elsa with Philip Blake, and brusquely ordered her down to go on with the sitting. What he did not know was that Elsa Greer had been sitting just outside the library window and had overheard everything. And the account she gave later of that conversation was not the true one. There is only her word for it, remember. Imagine the shock it must have been to her to hear the truth, brutally spoken!

"On the previous afternoon Meredith Blake has told us that while he was waiting for Caroline to leave this room he was standing in the doorway with his back to the room. He was talking to Elsa Greer. That means that she would have been facing him and that she could see exactly what Caroline was doing over his shoulder - and that she was the only person who could do so.

"She saw Caroline take that poison. She said nothing, but she remembered it as she sat outside the library window.

"When Amyas Crale came out she made the excuse of wanting a pull-over and went up to Caroline Crale's room to look for that poison. Women know where other women are likely to hide things. She found it and, being careful not to obliterate any fingerprints or to leave her own, she drew off the fluid into a fountain-pen filler.

"Then she came down again and went off with Crale to the Battery Garden. And presently, no doubt, she poured him out some beer and he tossed it down in his usual way.

"Meanwhile, Caroline Crale was seriously disturbed. When she saw Elsa come up to the house (this time really to fetch a pull-over), Caroline slipped quickly down to the Battery Garden and tackled her husband. What he is doing is shameful! She won't stand for it! It's unbelievably cruel and hard on the girl! Amyas, irritable at being interrupted, says it's all settled - when the picture is done he'll send the girl packing! 'It's all settled - I'll send her packing, I tell you!'

"And then they hear the footsteps of the two Blakes, and Caroline comes out and, slightly embarrassed, murmurs something about Angela and school and having a lot to do, and by a natural association of ideas the two men judge the conversation they have overheard refers to Angela and 'I'll send her packing' becomes 'I'll see to her packing.'

"And Elsa, pull-over in hand, comes down the path, cool and smiling, and takes up the pose once more.

"She has counted, no doubt, upon Caroline's being suspected and the coniine bottle being found in her room. But Caroline now plays into her hands completely. She brings down some iced beer and pours it out for her husband.

"Amyas tossed it off, makes a face, and says, 'Everything tastes foul today.'

"Do you not see how significant that remark is? Everything tastes foul? Then there has been something else before that beer that has tasted unpleasant and the taste, of which is still in his mouth. And one other point: Philip Blake speaks of Crale's staggering a little and wonders 'if he has been drinking.' But that slight stagger was the first sign of the coniine working, and that means that it had already been administered to him some time before Caroline brought him the iced bottle of beer.

"And so Elsa Greer sat on the gray wall and posed and, since she must keep him from suspecting until it was too late, she talked to Amyas Crale brightly and naturally. Presently she saw Meredith on the bench above and waved her hand to him and acted her part even more thoroughly for his behalf.

"And Amyas Crale, a man who detested illness and refused to give in to it, painted doggedly on till his limbs failed and his speech thickened, and he sprawled there on that bench, helpless, hut with his mind still clear.

"The bell sounded from the house and Meredith left the bench to come down to the Battery. I think in that brief moment Elsa left her place and ran across to the table and dropped the last few drops of the poison into the beer glass that held that last innocent drink. (She got rid of the dropper on the path up to the house, crushing it to powder.) Then she met Meredith in the doorway.

"There is a glare there coming in out of the shadows. Meredith did not see very clearly - only his friend sprawled in a familiar position and saw his eyes turn from the picture in what he described as a malevolent glare.

"How much did Amyas know or guess? How much his conscious mind knew we cannot tell, but his hand and his eye were faithful."

Hercule Poirot gestured toward the picture on the wall.

"I should have known when I first saw that picture. For it is a very remarkable picture. It is the picture of a murderess painted by her victim - it is the picture of a girl watching her lover die."

In the silence that followed - a horrified, appalled silence - the sunset slowly flickered away, the last gleam left the window where it had rested on the dark head and pale furs of the woman sitting there.

Elsa Dittisham moved and spoke. She said, "Take them away, Meredith. Leave me with M. Poirot."

She sat there motionless until the door shut behind them. Then she said, "You are very clever, aren't you?"

Poirot did not answer.

She said, "What do you expect me to do? Confess?"

He shook his head.

"Because I shall do nothing of the kind!" Elsa said. "And I shall admit nothing. But what we say here, together, does not matter. Because it is only your word against mine."

"Exactly."

"I want to know what you are going to do."

Hercule Poirot said, "I shall do everything I can to induce the authorities to grant a posthumous free pardon to Caroline Crale."

Elsa laughed. "How absurd!" she said. "To be given a free pardon for something you didn't do." Then she said, "What about me?"

"I shall lay my conclusions before the necessary people. If they decide there is the possibility of making out a case against you, then they may act. I will tell you in my opinion there is not sufficient evidence - there are only inferences, not facts. Moreover, they will not be anxious to proceed against anyone in your position unless there is ample justification for such a course."

"I shouldn't care," Elsa said. "If I were standing in the dock, fighting for my life, there might be something in that - something alive - exciting. I might - enjoy it."

"Your husband would not."

"Do you think I care in the least what my husband would feel?"

"No, I do not. I do not think you have ever in your life cared about what any other person would feel. If you had, you might be happier."

She said sharply, " Why are you sorry for me?"

"Because, my child, you have so much to learn."

"What have I got to learn?"

"All the grown-up emotions - pity, sympathy, understanding. The only things you know - have ever known - are love and hate."

Elsa said:

"I saw Caroline take the coniine. I thought she meant to kill herself. That would have simplified things. And then, the next morning, I found out. He told her that he didn't care a button about me - he had cared, but it was all over. Once he'd finished the picture he'd send me packing. She'd nothing to worry about, he said.

"And she - was sorry for me... Do you understand what that did to me? I found the stuff and I gave it to him and I sat there watching him die. I've never felt so alive, so exultant, so full of power. I watched him die..."

She flung out her hands.

"I didn't understand that I was killing myself - not him. Afterward I saw her caught in a trap - and that was no good, either. I couldn't hurt her - she didn't care - she escaped from it all - half the time she wasn't there. She and Amyas both escaped - they went somewhere where I couldn't get at them. But they didn't die. I died."