Poirot said to himself: “Roast beef? Yes, roast beef!”
It was not a large room into which he was shown. The big drawing room was on the first floor. This was the personal sitting room of the mistress of the house and the mistress of the house was standing against the mantelpiece as Poirot was announced and shown in.
A phrase leapt into his startled mind and refused to be driven out.
She died young….
That was his thought as he looked at Elsa Dittisham who had been Elsa Greer.
He would never have recognized her from the picture Meredith Blake had shown him. That had been, above all, a picture of youth, a picture of vitality. Here there was no youth—there might never have been youth. And yet he realized, as he had not realized from Crale’s picture, that Elsa was beautiful. Yes, it was a very beautiful woman who came forward to meet him. And certainly not old. After all, what was she? Not more than thirty-six now if she had been twenty at the time of the tragedy. Her black hair was perfectly arranged round her shapely head, her features were almost classic, her makeup was exquisite.
He felt a strange pang. It was, perhaps, the fault of old Mr. Jonathan, speaking of Juliet…No Juliet here—unless perhaps one could imagine Juliet a survivor—living on, deprived of Romeo…Was it not an essential part of Juliet’s makeup that she should die young?
Elsa Greer had been left alive….
She was greeting him in a level rather monotonous voice.
“I am so interested, Mr. Poirot. Sit down and tell me what you want me to do?”
He thought:
“But she isn’t interested. Nothing interests her.”
Big grey eyes—like dead lakes.
Poirot became, as was his way, a little obviously foreign.
He exclaimed:
“I am confused, madame, veritably I am confused.”
“Oh no, why?”
“Because I realize that this—this reconstruction of a past drama must be excessively painful to you!”
She looked amused. Yes, it was amusement. Quite genuine amusement.
She said:
“I suppose my husband put that idea into your head? He saw you when you arrived. Of course he doesn’t understand in the least. He never has. I’m not at all the sensitive sort of person he imagines I am.”
The amusement was still in her voice. She said:
“My father, you know, was a mill hand. He worked his way up and made a fortune. You don’t do that if you’re thin-skinned. I’m the same.”
Poirot thought to himself: Yes, that is true. A thin-skinned person would not have come to stay in Caroline Crale’s house.
Lady Dittisham said:
“What is it you want me to do?”
“You are sure, madame, that to go over the past would not be painful to you?”
She considered a minute, and it struck Poirot suddenly that Lady Dittisham was a very frank woman. She might lie from necessity but never from choice.
Elsa Dittisham said slowly:
“No, not painful. In a way, I wish it were.”
“Why?”
She said impatiently:
“It’s so stupid never to feel anything….”
And Hercule Poirot thought:
“Yes, Elsa Greer is dead….”
Aloud he said:
“At all events, Lady Dittisham, it makes my task very much easier.”
She said cheerfully:
“What do you want to know?”
“Have you a good memory, madame?”
“Reasonably good, I think.”
“And you are sure it will not pain you to go over those days in detail?”
“It won’t pain me at all. Things can only pain you when they are happening.”
“It is so with some people, I know.”
Lady Dittisham said:
“That’s what Edward—my husband—can’t understand. He thinks the trial and all that was a terrible ordeal for me.”
“Was it not?”
Elsa Dittisham said:
“No, I enjoyed it.” There was a reflective satisfied quality in her voice. She went on: “God, how that old brute Depleach went for me. He’s a devil, if you like. I enjoyed fighting him. He didn’t get me down.”
She looked at Poirot with a smile.
“I hope I’m not upsetting your illusions. A girl of twenty, I ought to have been prostrated, I suppose—agonized with shame or something. I wasn’t. I didn’t care what they said to me. I only wanted one thing.”
“What?”
“To get her hanged, of course,” said Elsa Dittisham.
He noticed her hands—beautiful hands but with long curving nails. Predatory hands.
She said:
“You’re thinking me vindictive? So I am vindictive—to anyone who has injured me. That woman was to my mind the lowest kind of woman there is. She knew that Amyas cared for me—that he was going to leave her and she killed him so that I shouldn’t have him.”
She looked across at Poirot.
“Don’t you think that’s pretty mean?”
“You do not understand or sympathize with jealousy?”
“No, I don’t think I do. If you’ve lost, you’ve lost. If you can’t keep your husband, let him go with a good grace. It’s possessiveness I don’t understand.”
“You might have understood it if you had ever married him.”
“I don’t think so. We weren’t—” She smiled suddenly at Poirot. Her smile was, he felt, a little frightening. It was so far removed from any real feeling. “I’d like you to get this right,” she said. “Don’t think that Amyas Crale seduced an innocent young girl. It wasn’t like that at all! Of the two of us, I was responsible. I met him at a party and I fell for him—I knew I’d got to have him—”
A travesty—a grotesque travesty but—
And all my fortunes at thy foot I’ll lay
And follow thee, my lord, throughout the world….
“Although he was married?”
“Trespassers will be prosecuted? It takes more than a printed notice to keep you from reality. If he was unhappy with his wife and could be happy with me, then why not? We’ve only one life to live.”
“But it has been said he was happy with his wife.”
Elsa shook her head.
“No. They quarrelled like cat and dog. She nagged at him. She was—oh, she was a horrible woman!”
She got up and lit a cigarette. She said with a little smile:
“Probably I’m unfair to her. But I really do think she was rather hateful.”
Poirot said slowly: “It was a great tragedy.”
“Yes, it was a great tragedy.” She turned on him suddenly, into the dead monotonous weariness of her face something came quiveringly alive.
“It killed me, do you understand? It killed me. Ever since there’s been nothing—nothing at all.” Her voice dropped. “Emptiness!” She waved her hands impatiently. “Like a stuffed fish in a glass case!”
“Did Amyas Crale mean so much to you?”
She nodded. It was a queer confiding little nod—oddly pathetic. She said:
“I think I’ve always had a single-track mind.” She mused sombrely. “I suppose—really—one ought to put a knife into oneself—like Juliet. But—but to do that is to acknowledge that you’re done for—that life’s beaten you.”
“And instead?”
“There ought to be everything—just the same—once one has got over it. I did get over it. It didn’t mean anything to me any more. I thought I’d go on to the next thing.”
Yes, the next thing. Poirot saw her plainly trying so hard to fulfil that crude determination. Saw her beautiful and rich, seductive to men, seeking with greedy predatory hands to fill up a life that was empty. Hero worship—a marriage to a famous aviator—then an explorer, that big giant of a man, Arnold Stevenson—possibly not unlike Amyas Crale physically—a reversion to the creative arts: Dittisham!
Elsa Dittisham said:
&nb
sp; “I’ve never been a hypocrite! There’s a Spanish proverb I’ve always liked. Take what you want and pay for it, says God. Well, I’ve done that. I’ve taken what I wanted—but I’ve always been willing to pay the price.”
Hercule Poirot said:
“What you do not understand is that there are things that cannot be bought.”
She stared at him. She said:
“I don’t mean just money.”
Poirot said:
“No, no, I understand what you mean. But it is not everything in life that has its ticket, so much. There are things that are not for sale.”
“Nonsense!”
He smiled very faintly. In her voice was the arrogance of the successful mill hand who had risen to riches.
Hercule Poirot felt a sudden wave of pity. He looked at the ageless, smooth face, the weary eyes, and he remembered the girl whom Amyas Crale had painted….
Elsa Dittisham said:
“Tell me all about this book. What is the purpose of it? Whose idea is it?”
“Oh! my dear lady, what other purpose is there but to serve up yesterday’s sensation with today’s sauce.”
“But you’re not a writer?”
“No, I am an expert on crime.”
“You mean they consult you on crime books?”
“Not always. In this case, I have a commission.”
“From whom?”
“I am—what do you say—vetting this publication on behalf of an interested party.”
“What party?”
“Miss Carla Lemarchant.”
“Who is she?”
“She is the daughter of Amyas and Caroline Crale.”
Elsa stared for a minute. Then she said:
“Oh, of course, there was a child. I remember. I suppose she’s grown up now?”
“Yes, she is twenty-one.”
“What is she like?”
“She is tall and dark and, I think, beautiful. And she has courage and personality.”
Elsa said thoughtfully:
“I should like to see her.”
“She might not care to see you.”
Elsa looked surprised.
“Why? Oh, I see. But what nonsense! She can’t possibly remember anything about it. She can’t have been more than six.”
“She knows that her mother was tried for her father’s murder.”
“And she thinks it’s my fault?”
“It is a possible interpretation.”
Elsa shrugged her shoulders. She said:
“How stupid! If Caroline had behaved like a reasonable human being—”
“So you take no responsibility?”
“Why should I? I’ve nothing to be ashamed of. I loved him. I would have made him happy.” She looked across at Poirot. Her face broke up—suddenly, incredibly, he saw the girl of the picture. She said: “If I could make you see. If you could see it from my side. If you knew—”
Poirot leaned forward.
“But that is what I want. See, Mr. Philip Blake who was there at the time, he is writing me a meticulous account of everything that happened. Mr. Meredith Blake the same. Now if you—”
Elsa Dittisham took a deep breath. She said contemptuously:
“Those two! Philip was always stupid. Meredith used to trot round after Caroline—but he was quite a dear. But you won’t have any real idea from their accounts.”
He watched her, saw the animation rising in her eyes, saw a living woman take shape from a dead one. She said quickly and almost fiercely:
“Would you like the truth? Oh, not for publication. But just for yourself—”
“I will undertake not to publish without your consent.”
“I’d like to write down the truth…” She was silent a minute or two, thinking. He saw the smooth hardness of her cheeks falter and take on a younger curve, he saw life ebbing into her as the past claimed her again.
“To go back—to write it all down…To show you what she was—”
Her eyes flashed. Her breast heaved passionately.
“She killed him. She killed Amyas. Amyas who wanted to live—who enjoyed living. Hate oughtn’t to be stronger than love—but her hate was. And my hate for her is—I hate her—I hate her—I hate her….”
She came across to him. She stooped, her hand clutched at his sleeve. She said urgently:
“You must understand—you must—how we felt about each other. Amyas and I, I mean. There’s something—I’ll show you.”
She whirled across the room. She was unlocking a little desk, pulling out a drawer concealed inside a pigeon hole.
Then she was back. In her hand was a creased letter, the ink faded. She thrust it on him and Poirot had a sudden poignant memory of a child he had known who had thrust on him one of her treasures—a special shell picked up on the seashore and zealously guarded. Just so had that child stood back and watched him. Proud, afraid, keenly critical of his reception of her treasure.
He unfolded the faded sheets.
Elsa—you wonderful child! There never was anything as beautiful. And yet I’m afraid—I’m too old—a middle-aged, ugly tempered devil with no stability in me. Don’t trust me, don’t believe in me—I’m no good—apart from my work. The best of me is in that. There, don’t say you haven’t been warned.
Hell, my lovely—I’m going to have you all the same. I’d go to the devil for you and you know it. And I’ll paint a picture of you that will make the fat-headed world hold its sides and gasp! I’m crazy about you—I can’t sleep—I can’t eat. Elsa—Elsa—Elsa—I’m yours for ever—yours till death. Amyas.
Sixteen years ago. Faded ink, crumbling paper. But the words still alive—still vibrating….
He looked across at the woman to whom they had been written.
But it was no longer a woman at whom he looked.
It was a young girl in love.
He thought again of Juliet….
Nine
THIS LITTLE PIG HAD NONE
“May I ask why, Mr. Poirot?”
Hercule Poirot considered his answer to the question. He was aware of a pair of very shrewd grey eyes watching him out of the small wizened face.
He had climbed to the top floor of the bare building and knocked on the door of No. 584 Gillespie Buildings, which had come into existence to provide what were called “flatlets” for working women.
Here, in a small cubic space, existed Miss Cecilia Williams, in a room that was bedroom, sitting room, dining room, and, by judicious use of the gas ring, kitchen—a kind of cubby hole attached to it contined a quarter-length bath and the usual offices.
Meagre though these surroundings might be, Miss Williams had contrived to impress upon them her stamp of personality.
The walls were distempered an ascetic pale grey, and various reproductions hung upon them. Dante meeting Beatrice on a bridge—and that picture once described by a child as a “blind girl sitting on an orange and called, I don’t know why, ‘Hope.’” There were also two water colours of Venice and a sepia copy of Botticelli’s “Primavera.” On the top of the low chest of drawers were a large quantity of faded photographs, mostly, by their style of hairdressing, dating from twenty to thirty years ago.
The square of carpet was threadbare, the furniture battered and of poor quality. It was clear to Hercule Poirot that Cecilia Williams lived very near the bone. There was no roast beef here. This was the little pig that had none.
Clear, incisive and insistent, the voice of Miss Williams repeated its demand.
“You want my recollections of the Crale case? May I ask why?”
It had been said of Hercule Poirot by some of his friends and associates, at moments when he has maddened them most, that he prefers lies to truth and will go out of his way to gain his ends by means of elaborate false statements, rather than trust to the simple truth.
But in this case his decision was quickly made. Hercule Poirot did not come of that class of Belgian or French children who have had an English governess, bu
t he reacted as simply and inevitably as various small boys who had been asked in their time: “Did you brush your teeth this morning, Harold (or Richard or Anthony)?” They considered fleetingly the possibility of a lie and instantly rejected it, replying miserably, “No, Miss Williams.”
For Miss Williams had what every successful child educator must have, that mysterious quality—authority! When Miss Williams said “Go up and wash your hands, Joan,” or “I expect you to read this chapter on the Elizabethan poets and be able to answer my questions on it,” she was invariably obeyed. It had never entered Miss Williams’ head that she would not be obeyed.
So in this case Hercule Poirot proffered no specious explanation of a book to be written on bygone crimes. Instead he narrated simply the circumstances in which Carla Lemarchant had sought him out.
The small, elderly lady in the neat shabby dress listened attentively.
She said:
“It interests me very much to have news of that child—to know how she has turned out.”
“She is a very charming and attractive young woman, with plenty of courage and a mind of her own.”
“Good,” said Miss Williams briefly.
“And she is, I may say, a very persistent person. She is not a person whom it is easy to refuse or put off.”
The ex-governess nodded thoughtfully. She asked:
“Is she artistic?”
“I think not.”
Miss Williams said drily:
“That’s one thing to be thankful for!”
The tone of the remark left Miss Williams’ views as to artists in no doubt whatever.
She added:
“From your account of her I should imagine that she takes after her mother rather than after her father.”
“Very possibly. That you can tell me when you have seen her. You would like to see her?”
“I should like to see her very much indeed. It is always interesting to see how a child you have known has developed.”
“She was, I suppose, very young when you last saw her?”