“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.
“And Amyas Crale, a man who detested illness and refused to give in to it, painted doggedly on till his limbs failed and his speech thickened, and he sprawled there on that bench, helpless, but with his mind still clear.
“The bell sounded from the house and Meredith left the bench to come down to the Battery. I think in that brief moment Elsa left her place and ran across to the table and dropped the last few drops of the poison into the beer glass that held that last innocent drink. (She got rid of the dropper on the path up to the house—crushing it to powder.) Then she met Meredith in the doorway.
“There is a glare there coming in out of the shadows. Meredith did not see very clearly—only his friend sprawled in a familiar position and saw his eyes turn from the picture in what he described as a malevolent glare.
“How much did Amyas know or guess? How much his conscious mind knew we cannot tell, but his hand and his eye were faithful.”
Hercule Poirot gestured towards the picture on the wall.
“I should have known when I first saw that picture. For it is a very remarkable picture. It is the picture of a murderess painted by her victim—it is the picture of a girl watching her lover die….”
Five
AFTERMATH
In the silence that followed—a horrified, appalled silence, the sunset slowly flickered away, the last gleam left the window where it had rested on the dark head and pale furs of the woman sitting there.
Elsa Dittisham moved and spoke. She said:
“Take them away, Meredith. Leave me with Mr. Poirot.”
She sat there motionless until the door shut behind them. Then she said: “You are very clever, aren’t you?”
Poirot did not answer.
She said: “What do you expect me to do? Confess?”
He shook his head.
Elsa said:
“Because I shall do nothing of the kind! And I
shall admit nothing. But what we say here, together, does not matter. Because it is only a question of your word against mine.”
“Exactly.”
“I want to know what you are going to do?”
Hercule Poirot said:
“I shall do everything I can to induce the authorities to grant a posthumous free pardon to Caroline Crale.”
Elsa laughed. She said: “How absurd! To be given a free pardon for something you didn’t do.” Then she said: “What about me?”
“I shall lay my conclusion before the necessary people. If they decide there is the possibility of making out a case against you then they may act. I will tell you in my opinion there is not sufficient evidence—there are only inferences, not facts. Moreover, they will not be anxious to proceed against anyone in your position unless there is ample justification for such a course.”
Elsa said:
“I shouldn’t care. If I were standing in the dock, fighting for my life—there might be something in that—something alive—exciting. I might—enjoy it.”
“Your husband would not.”
She stared at him.
“Do you think I care in the least what my husband would feel?”
“No, I do not. I do not think you have ever in your life cared about what any other person would feel. If you had, you might be happier.”
She said sharply:
“Why are you sorry for me?”
“Because, my child, you have so much to learn.”
“What have I got to learn?”
“All the grown-up emotions—pity, sympathy, understanding. The only things you know—have ever known—are love and hate.”
Elsa said:
“I saw Caroline take the coniine. I thought she meant to kill herself. That would have simplified things. And then, the next morning, I found out. He told her that he didn’t care a button about me—he had cared, but it was all over. Once he’d finished the picture he’d send me packing. She’d nothing to worry about, he said.
“And she—was sorry for me…Do you understand what that did to me? I found the stuff and I gave it to him and I sat there watching him die. I’ve never felt so alive, so exultant, so full of power. I watched him die….”
She flung out her hands.
“I didn’t understand that I was killing myself—not him. Afterwards I saw her caught in a trap—and that was no good either. I couldn’t hurt her—she didn’t care—she escaped from it all—half the time she wasn’t there. She and Amyas both escaped—they went somewhere where I couldn’t get at them. But they didn’t die. I died.”
Elsa Dittisham got up. She went across to the door. She said again:
“I died….”
In the hall she passed two young people whose life together was just beginning.
The chauffeur held open the door of the car. Lady Dittisham got in and the chauffeur wrapped the fur rug round her knees.
* * *
The Agatha Christie Collection
THE HERCULE POIROT MYSTERIES
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The Mysterious Affair at Styles
The Murder on the Links
Poirot Investigates
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The Big Four
The Mystery of the Blue Train
Peril at End House
Lord Edgware Dies
Murder on the Orient Express
Three Act Tragedy
Death in the Clouds
The A.B.C. Murders
Murder in Mesopotamia
Cards on the Table
Murder in the Mews and Other Stories
Dumb Witness
Death on the Nile
Appointment with Death
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas
Sad Cypress
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe
Evil Under the Sun
Five Little Pigs
The Hollow
The Labors of Hercules
Taken at the Flood
The Underdog and Other Stories
Mrs. McGinty’s Dead
After the Funeral
Hickory Dickory Dock
Dead Man’s Folly
Cat Among the Pigeons
The Clocks
Third Girl
Hallowe’en Party
Elephants Can Remember
Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case
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The Agatha Christie Collection
THE MISS MARPLE MYSTERIES
Join the legendary spinster sleuth from it. Mary Mead in solving murders far and wide.
The Murder at the Vicarage
The Body in the Library
The Moving Finger
A Murder Is Announced
They Do It with Mirrors
A Pocket Full of Rye
4:50 From Paddington
The Mirror Crack’d
A Caribbean Mystery
At Bertram’s Hotel
Nemesis
Sleeping Murder
Miss Marple: The Compl Short Story Collection
THE TOMMY AND TUPPENCE MYSTERIES
Jump on board with the entertaining crime-solving couple from Young Adventurers Ltd.
The Secret Adversary
Partners in Crime
N or M?
By the Pricking of My Thumbs
Postern of Fate
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The Agatha Christie Collection
Don’t miss a single one of Agatha Christie’s stand-alone novels and short-story collections.
The Man in the Brown Suit
The Secret of Chimneys
The Seven Dials Mystery
The Mysterious Mr. Quin
The Sittaford Mystery
Parker Pyne Investigates
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?
Murder Is Easy
The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories
And Then There Were None
Towards Zero
Death Comes as the End
Sparkling Cyanide
The Witness for the Prosecution and Other Stories
Crooked House
Three Blind Mice and Other Stories
They Came to Baghdad
Destination Unknown
Ordeal by Innocence
Double Sin and Other Stories
The Pale Horse
Star over Bethlehem: Poems and Holiday Stories
Endless Night
Passenger to Frankfurt
The Golden Ball and Other Stories
The Mousetrap and Other Plays
The Harlequin Tea Set
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About the Author
Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time and in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages. She is the author of eighty crime novels and short-story collections, nineteen plays, two memoirs, and six novels written under the name Mary Westmacott.
She first tried her hand at detective fiction while working in a hospital dispensary during World War I, creating the now legendary Hercule Poirot with her debut novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles. With The Murder in the Vicarage, published in 1930, she introduced another beloved sleuth, Miss Jane Marple. Additional series characters include the husband-and-wife crime-fighting team of Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, private investigator Parker Pyne, and Scotland Yard detectives Superintendent Battle and Inspector Japp.
Many of Christie’s novels and short stories were adapted into plays, films, and television series. The Mousetrap, her most famous play of all, opened in 1952 and is the longest-running play in history. Among her best-known film adaptations are Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and Death on
the Nile (1978), with Albert Finney and Peter Ustinov playing Hercule Poirot, respectively. On the small screen Poirot has been most memorably portrayed by David Suchet, and Miss Marple by Joan Hickson and subsequently Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie.
Christie was first married to Archibald Christie and then to archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, whom she accompanied on expeditions to countries that would also serve as the settings for many of her novels. In 1971 she achieved one of Britain’s highest honors when she was made a Dame of the British Empire. She died in 1976 at the age of eighty-five. Her one hundred and twentieth anniversary was celebrated around the world in 2010.
www.AgathaChristie.com
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THE AGATHA CHRISTIE COLLECTION
The Man in the Brown Suit
The Secret of Chimneys
The Seven Dials Mystery
The Mysterious Mr. Quin
The Sittaford Mystery
Parker Pyne Investigates
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?
Murder Is Easy
The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories
And Then There Were None
Towards Zero
Death Comes as the End
Sparkling Cyanide
The Witness for the Prosecution and
Other Stories
Crooked House
Three Blind Mice and Other Stories
They Came to Baghdad
Destination Unknown
Ordeal by Innocence
Double Sin and Other Stories
The Pale Horse
Star over Bethlehem: Poems and
Holiday Stories
Endless Night
Passenger to Frankfurt
The Golden Ball and Other Stories
The Mousetrap and Other Plays
The Harlequin Tea Set
The Hercule Poirot Mysteries