Blake heard Mrs Crale say: “You and your women. I’d like to kill you. Some day I will kill you.” ’
‘No mention of suicide?’
‘Exactly. None at all. No words like “If you do this thing, I’ll kill myself.” Miss Greer’s evidence was much the same. According to her, Mr Crale said: “Do try and be reasonable about this, Caroline. I’m fond of you and will always wish you well—you and the child. But I’m going to marry Elsa. We’ve always agreed to leave each other free.” Mrs Crale answered to that: “Very well, don’t say I haven’t warned you.” He said: “What do you mean?” And she said: “I mean that I love you and I’m not going to lose you. I’d rather kill you than let you go to that girl.” ’
Poirot made a slight gesture.
‘It occurs to me,’ he murmured, ‘that Miss Greer was singularly unwise to raise this issue? Mrs Crale could easily have refused her husband a divorce.’
‘We had some evidence bearing on that point,’ said Hale. ‘Mrs Crale, it seems, confided partly in Mr Meredith Blake. He was an old and trusted friend. He was very distressed and managed to get a word with Mr Crale about it. This, I may say, was on the preceding afternoon. Mr Blake remonstrated delicately with his friend, said how distressed he would be if the marriage between Mr and Mrs Crale was to break up so disastrously. He also stressed the point that Miss Greer was a very young girl and that it was a very serious thing to drag a young girl through the divorce court. To this Mr Crale replied, with a chuckle (callous sort of brute he must have been): “That isn’t Elsa’s idea at all. She isn’t going to appear. We shall fix it up in the usual way.” ’
Poirot said: ‘Therefore even more imprudent of Miss Greer to have broken out the way she did.’
Superintendent Hale said:
‘Oh, you know what women are! Have to get at each other’s throats. It must have been a difficult situation anyhow. I can’t understand Mr Crale allowing it to happen. According to Mr Meredith Blake he wanted to finish his picture. Does that make sense to you?’
‘Yes, my friend, I think it does.’
‘It doesn’t to me. The man was asking for trouble!’
‘He was probaby seriously annoyed with his young woman for breaking out the way she did.’
‘Oh, he was. Meredith Blake said so. If he had to finish the picture I don’t see why he couldn’t have taken some photographs and worked from them. I know a chap—does watercolours of places—he does that.’
Poirot shook his head.
‘No—I can understand Crale the artist. You must realize, my friend, that at that moment, probably, his picture was all that mattered to Crale. However much he wanted to marry the girl, the picture came first. That’s why he hoped to get through her visit without its coming to an open issue. The girl, of course, didn’t see it that way. With women, love always comes first.’
‘Don’t I know it?’ said Superintendent Hale with feeling.
‘Men,’ continued Poirot, ‘and especially artists—are different.’
‘Art!’ said the Superintendent with scorn. ‘All this talk about Art! I never have understood it and I never shall! You should have seen that picture Crale was painting. All lopsided. He’d made the girl look as though she’d got toothache, and the battlements were all cock-eyed. Unpleasant looking, the whole thing. I couldn’t get it out of my mind for a long time afterwards. I even dreamt about it. And what’s more it affected my eyesight—I began to see battlements and walls and things all out of drawing. Yes, and women too!’
Poirot smiled. He said:
‘Although you do not know it, you are paying a tribute to the greatness of Amyas Crale’s art.’
‘Nonsense. Why can’t a painter paint something nice and cheerful to look at? Why go out of your way to look for ugliness?’
‘Some of us, mon cher, see beauty in curious places.’
‘The girl was a good looker, all right,’ said Hale. ‘Lots of make-up and next to no clothes on. It isn’t decent the way these girls go about. And that was sixteen years ago, mind you. Nowadays one wouldn’t think anything of it. But then—well, it shocked me. Trousers and one of those canvas shirts, open at the neck—and not another thing, I should say!’
‘You seem to remember these points very well,’ murmured Poirot slyly.
Superintendent Hale blushed. ‘I’m just passing on the impression I got,’ he said austerely.
‘Quite—quite,’ said Poirot soothingly. He went on:
‘So it would seem that the principal witnesses against Mrs Crale were Philip Blake and Elsa Greer?’
‘Yes. Vehement, they were, both of them. But the governess was called by the prosecution too, and what she said carried more weight than the other two. She was on Mrs Crale’s side entirely, you see. Up in arms for her. But she was an honest woman and gave her evidence truthfully without trying to minimize it in any way.’
‘And Meredith Blake?’
‘He was very distressed by the whole thing, poor gentleman. As well he might be! Blamed himself for his drug brewing—and the coroner blamed him for it too. Coniine and AE Salts comes under Schedule I of the Poisons Acts. He came in for some pretty sharp censure. He was a friend of both parties, and it hit him very hard—besides being the kind of county gentleman who shrinks from notoriety and being in the public eye.’
‘Did not Mrs Crale’s young sister give evidence?’
‘No. It wasn’t necessary. She wasn’t there when Mrs Crale threatened her husband, and there was nothing she could tell us that we couldn’t get from someone else equally well. She saw Mrs Crale go to the refrigerator and get the iced beer out and, of course, the Defence could have subpœnaed her to say that Mrs Crale took it straight down without tampering with it in any way. But that point wasn’t relevant because we never claimed that the coniine was in the beer bottle.’
‘How did she manage to put it in the glass with those two looking on?’
‘Well, first of all, they weren’t looking on. That is to say, Mr Crale was painting—looking at his canvas and at the sitter. And Miss Greer was posed, sitting with her back almost to where Mrs Crale was standing, and her eyes looking over Mr Crale’s shoulder.’
Poirot nodded.
‘As I say neither of the two was looking at Mrs Crale. She had the stuff in one of those pipette things—one used to fill fountain pens with them. We found it crushed to splinters on the path up to the house.’
Poirot murmured:
‘You have an answer to everything.’
‘Well, come now, M. Poirot! Without prejudice. She threatens to kill him. She takes the stuff from the laboratory. The empty bottle is found in her room and nobody has handled it but her. She deliberately takes down iced beer to him—a funny thing, anyway, when you realize that they weren’t on speaking terms—’
‘A very curious thing. I had already remarked on it.’
‘Yes. Bit of a give away. Why was she so amiable all of a sudden? He complains of the taste of the stuff—and coniine has a nasty taste. She arranges to find the body and she sends the other woman off to telephone. Why? So that she can wipe that bottle and glass and then press his fingers on it. After that she can pipe up and say that it was remorse and that he committed suicide. A likely story.’
‘It was certainly not very well imagined.’
‘No. If you ask me she didn’t take the trouble to think. She was so eaten up with hate and jealousy. All she thought of was doing him in. And then, when it’s over, when she sees him there dead—well, then, I should say, she suddenly comes to herself and realizes that what