“But you see, there is more to it than that. She not only wants to know—she wants to prove her mother innocent.”
Miss Williams said: “Poor child.”
“That is what you say, is it?”
Miss Williams said:
“I see now why you said that it might be better if she had never known. All the same, I think it is best as it is. To wish to find her mother innocent is a natural hope—and hard though the actual revelation may be, I think from what you say of her that Carla is brave enough to learn the truth and not flinch from it.”
“You are sure it is the truth?”
“I don’t understand you?”
“You see no loophole for believing that Mrs. Crale was innocent?”
“I don’t think that possibility has ever been seriously considered.”
“And yet she herself clung to the theory of suicide?”
Miss Williams said drily:
“The poor woman had to say something.”
“Do you know that when Mrs. Crale was dying she left a letter for her daughter in which she solemnly swears that she is innocent?”
Miss Williams stared.
“That was very wrong of her,” she said sharply.
“You think so?”
“Yes, I do. Oh, I dare say you are a sentimentalist like most men—”
Poirot interrupted indignantly:
“I am not a sentimentalist.”
“But there is such a thing as false sentiment. Why write that, a lie, at such a solemn moment? To spare your child pain? Yes, many women would do that. But I should not have thought it of Mrs. Crale. She was a brave woman and a truthful woman. I should have thought it far more like her to have told her daughter not to judge.”
Poirot said with slight exasperation:
“You will not even consider then the possibility that what Caroline Crale wrote was the truth?”
“Certainly not!”
“And yet you profess to have loved her?”
“I did love her. I had a great affection and deep sympathy for her.”
“Well, then—”
Miss Williams looked at him in a very odd way.
“You don’t understand, Mr. Poirot. It doesn’t matter my saying this now—so long afterwards. You see, I happen to know that Caroline Crale was guilty!”
“What?”
“It’s true. Whether I did right in withholding what I knew at the time I cannot be sure—but I did withhold it. But you must take it from me, quite definitely, that I know Caroline Crale was guilty….”
Ten
THIS LITTLE PIG CRIED “WEE WEE WEE”
Angela Warren’s flat overlooked Regent’s Park. Here, on this spring day, a soft air wafted in through the open window and one might have had the illusion that one was in the country if it had not been for the steady menacing roar of the traffic passing below.
Poirot turned from the window as the door opened and Angela Warren came into the room.
It was not the first time he had seen her. He had availed himself of the opportunity to attend a lecture she had given at the Royal Geographical. It had been, he considered, an excellent lecture. Dry, perhaps, from the view of popular appeal. Miss Warren had an excellent delivery, she neither paused nor hesitated for a word. She did not repeat herself. The tones of her voice were clear and not unmelodious. She made no concessions to romantic appeal or love of adventure. There was very little human interest in the lecture. It was an admirable recital of concise facts, adequately illustrated by excellent slides, and with intelligent deductions from the facts recited. Dry, precise, clear, lucid, highly technical.
The soul of Hercule Poirot approved. Here, he considered, was an orderly mind.
Now that he saw her at close quarters he realized that Angela Warren might easily have been a very handsome woman. Her features were regular, though severe. She had finely marked dark brows, clear intelligent brown eyes, a fine pale skin. She had very square shoulders and a slightly mannish walk.
There was certainly about her no suggestion of the little pig who cries “Wee Wee.” But on the right cheek, disfiguring and puckering the skin, was that healed scar. The right eye was slightly distorted, the corner pulled downwards by it but no one would have realized that the sight of that eye was destroyed. It seemed to Hercule Poirot almost certain that she had lived with her disability so long that she was now completely unconscious of it. And it occurred to him that of the five people in whom he had become interested as a result of his investigations, those who might have been said to start with the fullest advantages were not those who had actually wrested the most success and happiness from life. Elsa, who might have been said to start with all advantages—youth, beauty, riches—had done worst. She was like a flower overtaken by untimely frost—still in bud—but without life. Cecilia Williams, to outward appearances, had no assets of which to boast. Nevertheless, to Poirot’s eye, there was no despondency there and no sense of failure. Miss Williams’s life had been interesting to her—she was still interested in people and events. She had that enormous mental and moral advantage of a strict Victorian upbringing denied to us in these days—she had done her duty in that station of life to which it had pleased God to call her, and that assurance encased her in an armour impregnable to the slings and darts of envy, discontent and regret. She had her memories, her small pleasures, made possible by stringent economies, and sufficient health and vigour to enable her still to be interested in life.
Now, in Angela Warren—that young creature handicapped by disfigurement and its consequent humiliation, Poirot believed he saw a spirit strengthened by its necessary fight for confidence and assurance. The undisciplined schoolgirl had given place to a vital and forceful woman, a woman of considerable mental power and gifted with abundant energy to accomplish ambitious purposes. She was a woman, Poirot felt sure, both happy and successful. Her life was full and vivid and eminently enjoyable.
She was not, incidentally, the type of woman that Poirot really liked. Though admiring the clear-cut precision of her mind, she had just a sufficient nuance of the femme formidable about her to alarm him as a mere man. His taste had always been for the flamboyant and extravagant.
With Angela Warren it was easy to come to the point of his visit. There was no subterfuge. He merely recounted Carla Lemarchant’s interview with him.
Angela Warren’s severe face lighted up appreciatively.
“Little Carla? She is over here? I would like to see her so much.”
“You have not kept in touch with her?”
“Hardly as much as I should have done. I was a schoolgirl at the time she went to Canada, and I realized, of course, that in a year or two she would have forgotten us. Of late years, an occasional present at Christmas has been the only link between us. I imagined that she would, by now, be completely immersed in the Canadian atmosphere and that her future would lie over there. Better so, in the circumstances.”
Poirot said: “One might think so, certainly. A change of name—a change of scene. A new life. But it was not to be so easy as that.”
And he then told of Carla’s engagement, the discovery she had made upon coming of age and her motives in coming to England.
Angela Warren listened quietly, her disfigured cheek resting on one hand. She betrayed no emotion during the recital, but as Poirot finished, she said quietly:
“Good for Carla.”
Poirot was startled. It was the first time that he had met with this reaction. He said:
“You approve, Miss Warren?”
“Certainly. I wish her every success. Anything I can do to help, I will. I feel guilty, you know, that I haven’t attempted anything myself.”
“Then you think that there is a possibility that she is right in her views.”
Angela Warren said sharply:
“Of course she’s right. Caroline didn’t do it. I’ve always known that.”
Hercule Poirot murmured:
“You surprise me very much indeed
, mademoiselle. Everybody else I have spoken to—”
She cut in sharply:
“You mustn’t go by that. I’ve no doubt that the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming. My own conviction is based on knowledge—knowledge of my sister. I just know quite simply and definitely that Caro couldn’t have killed anyone.”
“Can one say that with certainty of any human creature?”
“Probably not in most cases. I agree that the human animal is full of curious surprises. But in Caroline’s case there were special reasons—reasons which I have a better chance of appreciating than anyone else could.”
She touched her damaged cheek.
“You see this? You’ve probably heard about it?” Poirot nodded. “Caroline did that. That’s why I’m sure—I know—that she didn’t do murder.”
“It would not be a convincing argument to most people.”
“No, it would be the opposite. It was actually used in that way, I believe. As evidence that Caroline had a violent and ungovernable temper! Because she had injured me as a baby, learned men argued that she would be equally capable of poisoning an unfaithful husband.”
Poirot said:
“I, at least, appreciated the difference. A sudden fit of ungovernable rage does not lead you to first abstract a poison and then use it deliberately on the following day.”
Angela Warren waved an impatient hand.
“That’s not what I mean at all. I must try and make it plain to you. Supposing that you are a person normally affectionate and of kindly disposition—but that you are also liable to intense jealousy. And supposing that during the years of your life when control is most difficult, you do, in a fit of rage, come near to committing what is, in effect, murder. Think of the awful shock, the horror, the remorse that seizes upon you. To a sensitive person, like Caroline, that horror and remorse will never quite leave you. It never left her. I don’t suppose I was consciously aware of it at the time, but looking back I recognize it perfectly. Caro was haunted, continually haunted, by the fact that she had injured me. That knowledge never left her in peace. It coloured all her actions. It explained her attitude to me. Nothing was too good for me. In her eyes, I must always come first. Half the quarrels she had with Amyas were on my account. I was inclined to be jealous of him and played all kinds of tricks on him. I pinched cat stuff to put in his drink, and once I put a hedgehog in his bed. But Caroline was always on my side.”
Miss Warren paused, then she went on:
“It was very bad for me, of course. I got horribly spoilt. But that’s neither here nor there. We’re discussing the effect on Caroline. The result of that impulse to violence was a life-long abhorrence of any further act of the same kind. Caro was always watching herself, always in fear that something of that kind might happen again. And she took her own ways of guarding against it. One of these ways was a great extravagance of language. She felt (and I think, psychologically quite truly) that if she were violent enough in speech she would have no temptation to violence in action. She found by experience that the method worked. That’s why I’ve heard Caro say things like ‘I’d like to cut so and so in pieces and boil him slowly in oil.’ And she’d say to me, or to Amyas, ‘If you go on annoying me I shall murder you.’ In the same way she quarrelled easily and violently. She recognized, I think, the impulse to violence that there was in her nature, and she deliberately gave it an outlet that way. She and Amyas used to have the most fantastic and lurid quarrels.”
Hercule Poirot nodded.
“Yes, there was evidence of that. They quarrelled like cat and dog, it was said.”
Angela Warren said:
“Exactly. That’s what is so stupid and misleading about evidence. Of course Caro and Amyas quarrelled! Of course they said bitter and outrageous and cruel things to each other! What nobody appreciates is that they enjoyed quarrelling. But they did! Amyas enjoyed it too. They were that kind of couple. They both of them liked drama and emotional scenes. Most men don’t. They like peace. But Amyas was an artist. He liked shouting and threatening and generally being outrageous. It was like letting off steam to him. He was the kind of man who when he loses his collar stud bellows the house down. It sounds very odd, I know, but living that way with continual rows and makingsup was Amyas’s and Caroline’s idea of fun!”
She made an impatient gesture.
“If they’d only not hustled me away and let me give evidence, I’d have told them that.” Then she shrugged her shoulders. “But I don’t suppose they would have believed me. And anyway then it wouldn’t have been as clear in my mind as it is now. It was the kind of thing I knew but hadn’t thought about and certainly had never dreamed of putting into words.”
She looked across at Poirot.
“You do see what I mean?”
He nodded vigorously.
“I see perfectly—and I realize the absolute rightness of what you have said. There are people to whom agreement is monotony. They require the stimulant of dissension to create drama in their lives.”
“Exactly.”
“May I ask you, Miss Warren, what were your own feelings at the time?”
Angela Warren sighed.
“Mostly bewilderment and helplessness, I think. It seemed a fantastic nightmare. Caroline was arrested very soon—about three days afterwards, I think. I can still remember my indignation, my dumb fury—and, of course, my childish faith that it was just a silly mistake, that it would be all right. Caro was chiefly perturbed about me—she wanted me kept right away from it all as far as possible. She got Miss Williams to take me away to some relations almost at once. The police had no objection. And then, when it was decided that my evidence would not be needed, arrangements were made for me to go to school abroad.
“I hated going, of course. But it was explained to me that Caro had me terribly on her mind and that the only way I could help her was by going.”
She paused. Then she said:
“So I went to Munich. I was there when—when the verdict was given. They never let me go to see Caro. Caro wouldn’t have it. That’s the only time, I think, when she failed in understanding.”
“You cannot be sure of that, Miss Warren. To visit someone dearly loved in a prison might make a terrible impression on a young sensitive girl.”
“Possibly.”
Angela Warren got up. She said:
“After the verdict, when she had been condemned, my sister wrote me a letter. I have never shown it to anyone. I think I ought to show it to you now. It may help you to understand the kind of person Caroline was. If you like you may take it to show to Carla also.”
She went to the door, then turning back she said:
“Come with me. There is a portrait of Caroline in my room.”
For a second time, Poirot stood gazing up at a portrait.
As a painting, Caroline Crale’s portrait was mediocre. But Poirot looked at it with interest—it was not its artistic value that interested him.
He saw a long oval face, a gracious line of jaw and a sweet, slightly timid expression. It was a face uncertain of itself, emotional, with a withdrawn hidden beauty. It lacked the forcefulness and vitality of her daughter’s face—that energy and joy of life Carla Lemarchant had doubtless inherited from her father. This was a less positive creature. Yet, looking at the painted face, Hercule Poirot understood why an imaginative man like Quentin Fogg had not been able to forget her.
Angela Warren stood at his side again—a letter in her hand.
She said quietly:
“Now that you have seen what she was like—read her letter.”
He unfolded it carefully and read what Caroline Crale had written sixteen years ago.
My darling little Angela,
You will hear bad news and you will grieve, but what I want to impress upon you is that it is all all right. I have never told you lies and I don’t now when I say that I am actually happy—that I feel an essential rightness and a peace that I have never known before. It’s all right, darl
ing, it’s all right. Don’t look back and regret and grieve for me—go on with your life and succeed. You can, I know. It’s all, all right, darling, and I’m going to Amyas. I haven’t the least doubt that we shall be together. I couldn’t have lived without him…Do this one thing for me—be happy. I’ve told you—I’m happy. One has to pay one’s debts. It’s lovely to feel peaceful.
Your loving sister,
Caro
Hercule Poirot read it through twice. Then he handed it back. He said:
“That is a very beautiful letter, mademoiselle—and a very remarkable one. A very remarkable one.”
“Caroline,” said Angela Warren, “was a very remarkable person.”
“Yes, an unusual mind…You take it that this letter indicates innocence?”
“Of course it does!”
“It does not say so explicitly.”
“Because Caro would know that I’d never dream of her being guilty!”
“Perhaps—perhaps…But it might be taken another way. In the sense that she was guilty and that in expiating her crime she will find peace.”
It fitted in, he thought, with the description of her in court. And he experienced in this moment the strongest doubts he had yet felt of the course to which he had committed himself. Everything so far had pointed unswervingly to Caroline Crale’s guilt. Now, even her own words testified against her.
On the other side was only the unshaken conviction of Angela Warren. Angela had known her well, undoubtedly, but might not her certainty be the fanatical loyalty of an adolescent girl, up in arms for a dearly loved sister?
As though she had read his thoughts Angela Warren said:
“No, Mr. Poirot—I know Caroline wasn’t guilty.”
Poirot said briskly:
“The Bon Dieu knows I do not want to shake you on that point. But let us be practical. You say your sister was not guilty. Very well, then, what really happened?”
Angela nodded thoughtfully. She said:
“That is difficult, I agree. I suppose that, as Caroline said, Amyas committed suicide.”
“Is that likely from what you know of his character?”