“I felt, all the time, that she didn’t really know what she was talking about. She was rattling these things off—things she’d read in books or heard from her friends—it was like a parrot. She was—it’s a queer thing to say—pathetic somehow. So young and so self-confident.” He paused. “There is something about youth, Mr. Poirot, that is—that can be—terribly moving.”
Hercule Poirot said, looking at him with some interest: “I know what you mean….”
Blake went on, speaking more to himself than to Poirot.
“That’s partly, I think, why I tackled Crale. He was nearly twenty years older than the girl. It didn’t seem fair.”
Poirot murmured:
“Alas—how seldom one makes any effect. When a person has determined on a certain course—it is not easy to turn them from it.”
Meredith Blake said:
“That is true enough.” His tone was a shade bitter. “I certainly did no good by my interference. But then, I am not a very convincing person. I never have been.”
Poirot threw him a quick glance. He read into that slight acerbity of tone the dissatisfaction of a sensitive man with his own lack of personality. And he acknowledged to himself the truth of what Blake had just said. Meredith Blake was not the man to persuade anyone into or out of any course. His well-meaning attempts would always be set aside—indulgently usually, without anger, but definitely set aside. They would not carry weight. He was essentially an ineffective man.
Poirot said, with an appearance of changing a painful subject: “You still have your laboratory of medicines and cordials, yes?”
“No.”
The word came sharply—with an almost anguished rapidity Meridith Blake said, his face flushing:
“I abandoned the whole thing—dismantled it. I couldn’t go on with it—how could I?—after what had happened. The whole thing, you see, might have been said to be my fault.”
“No, no, Mr. Blake, you are too sensitive.”
“But don’t you see? If I hadn’t collected those damned drugs? If I hadn’t laid stress on them—boasted about them—forced them on those people’s notice that afternoon? But I never thought—I never dreamed—how could I—”
“How indeed.”
“But I went bumbling on about them. Pleased with my little bit of knowledge. Blind, conceited fool. I pointed out that damned coniine. I even, fool that I was, took them back into the library and read them out that passage from the Phaedo describing Socrates’ death. A beautiful piece of writing—I’ve always admired it. But it’s haunted me ever since.”
Poirot said:
“Did they find any fingerprints on the coniine bottle?”
“Hers.”
“Caroline Crale’s?”
“Yes.”
“Not yours?”
“No. I didn’t handle the bottle, you see. Only pointed to it.”
“But at the same time, surely, you had handled it?”
“Oh, of course, but I gave the bottles a periodic dusting from time to time—I never allowed the servants in there, of course—and I had done that about four or five days previously.”
“You kept the room locked up?”
“Invariably.”
“When did Caroline Crale take the coniine from the bottle?”
Meredith Blake replied reluctantly: