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.”
Hercule Poirot said mildly:
“I am not a fool 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 about 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 a man he was—but she would not take warning. She rushed on 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’d only got 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 would 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 with 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 gone 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 whilst 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 pullover, 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 pullover), 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, pullover 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 tosses it off, making 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 grey 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.