Hercule Poirot 100 Years (1916 - 2016)

by Mark Place

  So I said I would do whatever Caroline wished. And Caroline said, “That’s my darling, Angela.” And she hugged me and said there was nothing to worry about. I had to go down and talk to a police superintendent. He was very kind, asked me when I had last seen Amyas, and a lot of other questions which seemed to me quite pointless at the time, but which, of course, I see the point of now. He satisfied himself that there was nothing that I could tell him which he hadn’t already heard from the others. So he told Miss Williams that he saw no objection to my going over to Ferrilby Grange to Lady Tressilian’s. I went there, and Lady Tressilian was very kind to me. But, of course, I soon had to know the truth. They arrested Caroline almost at once. I was so horrified and dumbfounded that I became quite ill. I heard afterward that Caroline was terribly worried about me. It was at her insistence that I was sent out of England before the trial came on. But that I have told you already. As you see, what I have to put down is pitiably meagre. Since talking to you I have gone over the little I remember painstakingly, racking my memory for details of this or that person’s expression or reaction. I can remember nothing consistent with guilt. Elsa’s frenzy, Meredith’s grey, worried face, Philip’s grief and fury - they all seem natural enough. I suppose, though, someone could have been playing a part. I only know this, Caroline did not do it. I am quite certain on this point and always shall be, but I have no evidence to offer except my own intimate knowledge of her character.

  (End of Angela Warren’s Narrative)

  Carla Lemarchant looked up. Her eyes were full of fatigue and pain. She pushed back the hair from her forehead in a tired gesture. She said, “It’s so bewildering, all this.” She touched the pile of manuscripts. “Because the angle’s different every time! Everybody sees my mother differently. But the facts are the same. Everyone agrees on the facts.”

  “It has discouraged you, reading them?”

  “Yes. Hasn’t it discouraged you?”

  “No, I have found those documents very valuable - very informative.”

  He spoke slowly and reflectively.

  Carla said, “I wish I’d never read them!”

  Poirot looked across at her. “Ah - so it makes you feel that way?”

  Carla said bitterly, “They all think she did it - all of them except Aunt Angela, and what she thinks doesn’t count. She hasn’t got any reason for it. She’s just one of those loyal people who’ll stick to a thing through thick and thin. She just goes on saying, ‘Caroline couldn’t have done it.”

  “It strikes you like that?”

  “How else should it strike me? I’ve realized, you know, that if my mother didn’t do it, then one of these five people must have done it. I’ve even had theories as to why.”

  “Ah? That is interesting. Tell me.”

  “Oh, they were only theories. Philip Blake, for instance. He’s a stockbroker, he was my father’s best friend - probably my father trusted him. And artists are usually careless about money matters. Perhaps Philip Blake was in a jam and used my father’s money. He may have got my father to sign something. Then the whole thing may have been on the point of coming out - and only my father’s death could have saved him. That’s one of the things I thought of.”

  “Not badly imagined at all. What else?”

  “Well, there’s Elsa. Philip Blake says here she had her head screwed on too well to meddle with poison, but I don’t think that’s true at all. Supposing my mother had gone to her and told her that she wouldn’t divorce my father - that nothing would induce her to divorce him. You may say what you like but I think Elsa had a bourgeois mind – she wanted to be respectably married, I think that then Elsa would have been 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 Meredith 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 meant himself 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 on coniine and it hasn’t 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 - how he 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 Hercule Poirot with her chin raised defiantly.

  “So you are satisfied?” Poirot said.

  “Satisfied?” said Carla Lemarchant. Her voice broke on the word. Poirot leaned 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. “Mademoiselle,” he said, “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 one 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.
>
  “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 toward 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 around 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 treated me very badly, but she said she couldn’t help it. She asked me to forgive her.” And she left me. She left me! Do you wonder, M. Poirot, that my hatred of her was heightened a hundredfold? Do you wonder that I have never forgiven her? For the insult she did me, as well as for the fact that she killed the friend I loved better than anyone in the world!”

  Trembling violently, Philip Blake exclaimed: “I don’t want to speak of it, do you hear? You’ve got your answer. Now go! And never mention the matter to me again!”

  “I want to know, Mr Blake, the order in which your guests left the laboratory that day.”

  Meredith Blake protested, “But, my dear M. Poirot - after sixteen years! How can I possibly remember? I’ve told you that Caroline came out last.”

  “You are sure of that?”

  “Yes - at least - I think so.”

  “Let us go there now. We must be sure, you see.”

  Still protesting, Meredith Blake led the way. He unlocked the door and swung back the shutters. Poirot spoke to him authoritatively. “Now, then, my friend. You have showed your visitors your interesting preparations of herbs. Shut your eyes and think.”

  Meredith Blake did so obediently. Poirot drew a handkerchief from his pocket and gently passed it to and fro. Blake murmured, his nostrils twitching slightly, “Yes, yes - extraordinary how things come back to one! Caroline, I remember, had on a pale coffee-coloured dress. Phil was looking bored. He always thought my hobby was quite idiotic.”

  “Reflect, now,” Poirot said. “You are about to leave the room. You are going to the library, where you are going to read the passage about the death of Socrates. Who leaves the room first - do you?”

  “Elsa and I - yes. She passed through the door first. I was close behind her. We were talking. I stood there waiting for the others to come, so that I could lock the door again. Philip - yes, Philip came out next. And Angela - she was asking him what bulls and bears were. They went on through the hall. Amyas followed them. I stood there waiting still – for Caroline, of course.”

  “So you are quite sure Caroline stayed behind. Did you see what she was doing?”

  Blake shook his head. “No, I had my back to the room, you see. I was talking to Elsa - boring her, I expect - telling her how certain plants must be gathered at the full of the moon, according to old superstition. And then Caroline came out - hurrying a little - and I locked the door.”

  He stopped and looked at Poirot, who was replacing a handkerchief in his pocket. Meredith Blake sniffed disgustedly and thought, “Why, the fellow actually uses scent!” Aloud he said: “I am quite sure of it. That was the order: Elsa, myself, Philip, Angela, and Caroline. Does that help you at all?”

  Poirot said, “It all fits in. Listen: I want to arrange a meeting here. It will not, I think, be difficult…”

  “Well?” Elsa Dittisham said it almost eagerly - like a child.

  Poirot said, “I want to ask you a question, madame.”

  “Yes?”

  Poirot said, “After it was all over - the trial, I mean - did Meredith Blake ask you to marry him?”

  Elsa stared. She looked contemptuous, almost bored. “Yes - he did. Why?”

  “Were you surprised?”

  “Was I? I don’t remember.”

  “What did you say?”

  Elsa laughed. She said, “What do you think I said? After Amyas - Meredith? It would have been ridiculous! It was stupid of him. He always was rather stupid.”

  She smiled suddenly. “He, wanted, you know, to protect me - to ‘look after me,’ that’s how he put it! He thought, like everybody else, that the assizes had been a terrible ordeal for me. And the reporters! And the booing crowds! And all the mud that was slung at me.”

  She brooded a minute. Then she said, “Poor old Meredith! Such an ass!” And laughed again. Once again Hercule Poirot encountered the shrewd, penetrating glance of Miss Williams, and once again felt the years falling away and himself a meek and apprehensive little boy. There was, he explained, a question he wished to ask. Miss Williams intimated her willingness to hear what the question was. Poirot said slowly, picking his words carefully: “Angela Warren was injured as a very young child. Mrs Crale threw a paperweight at her. Is that right?”

  Miss Williams replied, “Yes.”

  “Who was your informant?”

  “Angela herself. She volunteered the information quite early.”

  “What did she say exactly?”

  “She touched her cheek and said, ‘Caroline did this when I was a baby. She threw a paperweight at me. Never refer to it - will you? - because it upsets her dreadfully.’”

  “Did Mrs Crale herself ever mention the matter to you?”

  “Only obliquely. She assumed that I knew the story. I remember her saying once, ‘I know you think I spoil Angela, but, you see, I always feel there is nothing I can do to make up to her for what I did.’ And on another occasion she said, ‘To know you have permanently injured another human being is the heaviest burden anyone could have to bear.’”

  “Thank you, Miss Williams. That is all I wanted to know.”

  Poirot slowed up a little as he approached the big block of flats overlooking Regent’s Park. Really, when he came to think of it, he did not want to ask Angela Warren any questions at all. The only question he did want to ask her could wait…No, it was really only his insatiable passion for symmetry that was bringing him here. Five people - there should be five questions! It was neater so. It rounded off the thing better. Angela Warren greeted him with something closely approaching eagerness. She said: “Have you found out anything? Have you got
anywhere?” Slowly Poirot nodded his head in his best China mandarin manner. “At last I make progress,” he said.

  “Philip Blake?” It was halfway between statement and a question. “Mademoiselle, I do not wish to say anything at present. The moment has not yet come. What I will ask of you is to be so good as to come down to Handcross Manor. The others have consented.”

  She said, with a slight frown, “What do you propose to do? Reconstruct something that happened sixteen years ago?”

  “See it, perhaps, from a clearer angle. You will come?”

  “Oh, yes, I’ll come,” Angela Warren said slowly. “It will be interesting to see all those people again. I shall see them now, perhaps, from a clearer angle (as you put it) than I did then.”

  “And you will bring with you the letter that you showed me?”

  Angela Warren frowned. “That letter is my own. I showed it to you for a good and sufficient reason, but I have no intention of allowing it to be read by strange and unsympathetic persons.”

  “But you will allow yourself to be guided by me in the matter?”

  “I will do nothing of the kind. I will bring the letter with me, but I shall use my own judgement, which I venture to think is quite as good as yours.” Poirot spread out his hands in a gesture of resignation. He got up to go. He said, “You permit that I ask one little question?”

  “What is it?”

  “At the time of the tragedy, you had lately read - had you not? - a life of the painter Gauguin.”