allo, Aunt Angela. I read your article in The Times this morning. It’s nice to have a distinguished relative.” She indicated the tall, square-jawed young man with the steady grey eyes. “This is John Rattery. He and I—hope—to be married.”
Angela Warren said: “Oh!—I didn’t know….”
Meredith went to greet the next arrival.
“Well, Miss Williams, it’s a good many years since we met.”
Thin, frail and indomitable, the elderly governess advanced up the room. Her eyes rested thoughtfully on Poirot for a minute, then they went to the tall, square-shouldered figure in the well-cut tweeds.
Angela Warren came forward to meet her and said with a smile: “I feel like a schoolgirl again.”
“I’m very proud of you, my dear,” said Miss Williams. “You’ve done me credit. This is Carla, I suppose? She won’t remember me. She was too young….”
Philip Blake said fretfully: “What is all this? Nobody told me—”
Hercule Poirot said: “I call it—me—an excursion into the past. Shall we not all sit down? Then we shall be ready when the last guest arrives. And when she is here we can proceed to our business—to lay the ghosts.”
Philip Blake exclaimed: “What tomfoolery is this? You’re not going to hold a séance, are you?”
“No, no. We are only going to discuss some events that happened long ago—to discuss them and, perhaps, to see more clearly the course of them. As to the ghosts, they will not materialize, but who is to say they are not here, in this room, although we cannot see them. Who is to say that Amyas and Caroline Crale are not here—listening?”
Philip Blake said: “Absurd nonsense—” and broke off as the door opened again and the butler announced Lady Dittisham.
Elsa Dittisham came in with that faint, bored insolence that was a characteristic of her. She gave Meredith a slight smile, stared coldly at Angela and Philip, and went over to a chair by the window a little apart from the others. She loosened the rich pale furs round her neck and let them fall back. She looked for a minute or two about the room, then at Carla, and the girl stared back, thoughtfully appraising the woman who had wrought the havoc in her parents’ lives. There was no animosity in her young earnest face, only curiosity.
Elsa said: “I am sorry if I am late, Mr. Poirot.”
“It was very good of you to come, madame.”
Cecilia Williams snorted ever so slightly. Elsa met the animosity in her eyes with a complete lack of interest. She said:
“I wouldn’t have known you, Angela. How long is it? Sixteen years?”
Hercule Poirot seized his opportunity.
“Yes, it is sixteen years since the events of which we are to speak, but let me first tell you why we are here.”
And in a few simple words he outlined Carla’s appeal to him and his acceptance of the task.
He went on quickly, ignoring the gathering storm visible on Philip’s face, and the shocked distaste on Meredith’s.
“I accepted that commision—I set to work to find out—the truth.”
Carla Lemarchant, in the big grandfather chair, heard Poirot’s words dimly, from a distance.
With her hand shielding her eyes she studied five faces, surreptitiously. Could she see any of these people committing murder? The exotic Elsa, the red-faced Philip, dear, nice, kind Mr. Meredith Blake, that grim tartar of a governess, the cool, competent Angela Warren?
Could she—if she tried hard—visualize one of them killing someone? Yes, perhaps—but it wouldn’t be the right kind of murder. She could picture Philip Blake, in an outburst of fury, strangling some women—yes, she could picture that…And she could picture Meredith Blake, threatening a burglar with a revolver—and letting it off by accident. And she could picture Angela Warren, also firing a revolver, but not by accident. With no personal feeling in the matter—the safety of the expedition depended on it! And Elsa, in some fantastic castle, saying from her couch of oriental silks: “Throw the wretch over the battlements!” All wild fancies—and not even in the wildest flight of fancy could she imagine little Miss Williams killing anybody at all! Another fantastic picture: “Did you ever kill anybody, Miss Williams?” “Go on with your arithmetic, Carla, and don’t ask silly questions. To kill anybody is very wicked.”
Carla thought: “I must be ill—and I must stop this. Listen, you fool, listen to that little man who says he knows.”
Hercule Poirot was talking.
“That was my task—to put myself in reverse gear, as it were, and go back through the years and discover what really happened.”
Philip Blake said: “We all know what happened. To pretend anything else is a swindle—that’s what it is, a bare-faced swindle. You’re getting money out of this girl on false pretences.”
Poirot did not allow himself to be angered. He said: