She’s always more or less in the public eye. The kind of woman who likes notoriety, I should imagine.’
‘Or possibly a hero worshipper,’ suggested Poirot.
The idea was upsetting to George Mayhew. He accepted it dubiously.
‘Well, possibly-yes, I suppose that might be so.’
He seemed to be turning the idea over in his mind.
Poirot said:
‘Had your firm acted for Mrs Crale for a long period of years?’
George Mayhew shook his head.
‘On the contrary. Jonathan and Jonathan were the Crale solicitors. Under the circumstances, however, Mr Jonathan felt that he could not very well act for Mrs Crale, and he arranged with us-with my father-to take over her case. You would do well, I think, M. Poirot, to arrange a meeting with old Mr Jonathan. He has retired from active work-he is over seventy-but he knew the Crale family intimately, and he could tell you far more than I can. Indeed, I myself can tell you nothing at all. I was a boy at the time. I don’t think I was even in court.’
Poirot rose and George Mayhew, rising too, added:
‘You might like to have a word with Edmunds, our managing clerk. He was with the firm then and took a great interest in the case.’
Edmunds was a man of slow speech. His eyes gleamed with legal caution. He took his time in sizing up Poirot before he let himself be betrayed into speech. He said:
‘Ay, I mind the Crale case.’
He added severely: ‘It was a disgraceful business.’
His shrewd eyes rested appraisingly on Hercule Poirot.
He said:
‘It’s a long time since to be raking things up again.’
‘A court verdict is not always an ending.’
Edmunds’s square head nodded slowly.
‘I’d not say that you weren’t in the right of it there.’
Hercule Poirot went on: ‘Mrs Crale left a daughter.’
‘Ay, I mind there was a child. Sent abroad to relatives, was she not?’
Poirot went on:
‘That daughter believes firmly in her mother’s innocence.’
The huge bushy eyebrows of Mr Edmunds rose.
‘That’s the way of it, is it?’
Poirot asked:
‘Is there anything you can tell me to support that belief?’
Edmunds reflected. Then, slowly, he shook his head.
‘I could not conscientiously say there was. I admired Mrs Crale. Whatever else she was, she was a lady! Not like the other. A hussy-no more, no less. Bold as brass! Jumped-up trash-that’s whatshe was-and showed it! Mrs Crale was quality.’
‘But none the less a murderess?’
Edmunds frowned. He said, with more spontaneity than he had yet shown:
‘That’s what I used to ask myself, day after day. Sitting there in the dock so calm and gentle. “I’ll not believe it,” I used to say to myself. But, if you take my meaning, Mr Poirot, there wasn’t anything else to believe. That hemlock didn’t get into Mr Crale’s beer by accident. It was put there. And if Mrs Crale didn’t put it there, who did?’
‘That is the question,’ said Poirot. ‘Who did?’
Again those shrewd old eyes searched his face.
‘So that’s your idea?’ said Mr Edmunds.
‘What do you think yourself?’
There was a pause before the officer answered. Then he said:
‘There was nothing that pointed that way-nothing at all.’
Poirot said:
‘You were in court during the hearing of the case?’
‘Every day.’
‘You heard the witnesses give evidence?’
‘I did.’
‘Did anything strike you about them-any abnormality, any insincerity?’
Edmunds said bluntly:
‘Was one of them lying, do you mean? Had one of them a reason to wish Mr Crale dead? If you’ll excuse me, Mr Poirot, that’s a verymelodramatic idea.’
‘At least consider it,’ Poirot urged.
He watched the shrewd face, the screwed-up, thoughtful eyes. Slowly, regretfully, Edmunds shook his head.
‘That Miss Greer,’ he said, ‘she was bitter enough,and vindictive! I’d say she overstepped the mark in a good deal she said, but it was Mr Crale alive she wanted. He was no use to her dead. She wanted Mrs Crale hanged all right-but that was because death had snatched her man away from her. Like a baulked tigress she was! But, as I say, it was Mr Crale alive she’d wanted. Mr Philip Blake,he was against Mrs Crale too. Prejudiced. Got his knife into her whenever he could. But I’d say he was honest according to his lights. He’d been Mr Crale’s great friend. His brother, Mr Meredith Blake-a bad witness he was-vague, hesitating-never seemed sure of his answers. I’ve seen many witnesses like that. Look as though they’re lying when all the time they’re telling the truth. Didn’t want to say anything more than he could help, Mr Meredith Blake didn’t. Counsel got all the more out of him on that account. One of these quiet gentlemen who get easily flustered. The governess now, she stood up well to them. Didn’t waste words and answered pat and to the point. You couldn’t have told, listening to her, which side she was on. Got all her wits about her, she had. The brisk kind.’ He paused. ‘Knew a lot more than she ever let on about the whole thing, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘I, too, should not wonder,’ said Hercule Poirot.
He looked sharply at the wrinkled, shrewd face of Mr Alfred Edmunds. It was quite bland and impassive. But Hercule Poirot wondered if he had been vouchsafed a hint.
Chapter 4. The Old Solicitor
Mr Caleb Jonathan lived in Essex. After a courteous exchange of letters, Poirot received an invitation, almost royal in its character, to dine and sleep. The old gentleman was decidedly a character. After the insipidity of young George Mayhew, Mr Jonathan was like a glass of his own vintage port.
He had his own methods of approach to a subject, and it was not until well on towards midnight, when sipping a glass of fragrant old brandy, that Mr Jonathan really unbent. In oriental fashion he had appreciated Hercule Poirot’s courteous refusal to rush him in any way. Now, in his own good time, he was willing to elaborate the theme of the Crale family.
‘Our firm, of course, has known many generations of the Crales. I knew Amyas Crale and his father, Richard Crale, and I can remember Enoch Crale-the grandfather. Country squires, all of them, thought more of horses than human beings. They rode straight, liked women, and had no truck with ideas. They distrusted ideas. But Richard Crale’s wife was cram full of ideas-more ideas than sense. She was poetical and musical-she played the harp, you know. She enjoyed poor health and looked very picturesque on her sofa. She was an admirer of Kingsley. That’s why she called her son Amyas. His father scoffed at the name-but he gave in.
‘Amyas Crale profited by his mixed inheritance. He got his artistic trend from his weakly mother, and his driving power and ruthless egoism from his father. All the Crales were egoists. They never by any chance saw any point of view but their own.’
Tapping with a delicate finger on the arm of his chair, the old man shot a shrewd glance at Poirot.
‘Correct me if I am wrong, M. Poirot, but I think you are interested in-character, shall we say?’
Poirot replied.
‘That, to me, is the principal interest of all my cases.’
‘I can conceive of it. To get under the skin, as it were, of your criminal. How interesting. How absorbing. Our firm, of course, have never had a criminal practice. We should not have been competent to act for Mrs Crale, even if taste had allowed. Mayhews, however, were a very adequate firm. They briefed Depleach-they didn’t perhaps show much imagination there-still, he was very expensive and, of course, exceedingly dramatic! What they hadn’t the wits to see was that Caroline would never play up in the way he wanted her to. She wasn’t a dramatic woman.’
‘What was she?’ asked Poirot. ‘It is that that I am chiefly anxious to know.’
‘Yes, yes-of course. How did she come to do what she did? That is the really vital question. I knew her, you know, before she married. Caroline Spalding, she was. A turbulent unhappy creature. Very alive. Her mother was left a widow early in life and Caroline was devoted to her mother. Then the mother married again-there was another child. Yes-yes, very sad, very painful. These young, ardent, adolescent jealousies.’
‘She was jealous?’
‘Passionately so. There was a regrettable incident. Poor child, she blamed herself bitterly afterwards. But you know, M. Poirot, these things happen. There is an inability to put on the brakes. It comes-it comes with maturity.’
Poirot said:
‘What happened?’
‘She struck the child-the baby-flung a paperweight at her. The child lost the sight of one eye and was permanently disfigured.’
Mr Jonathan sighed. He said:
‘You can imagine the effect a simple question on that point had at the trial.’
He shook his head:
‘It gave the impression that Caroline Crale was a woman of ungovernable temper. That was not true. No, that was not true.’
He paused and then resumed:
‘Caroline Spalding came often to stay at Alderbury. She rode well, and was keen. Richard Crale was fond of her. She waited on Mrs Crale and was deft and gentle-Mrs Crale also liked her. The girl was not happy at home. She was happy at Alderbury. Diana Crale, Amyas’s sister, and she were by way of being friends. Philip and Meredith Blake, boys from the adjoining estate, were frequently at Alderbury. Philip was always a nasty, money-grubbing little brute. I must confess I have always had a distaste for him. But I am told that he tells a very good story and that he has the reputation of being a staunch friend. Meredith was what my contemporaries used to call Namby Pamby. Liked botany and butterflies and observing birds and beasts. Nature study they call it nowadays. Ah, dear-all the young people were a disappointment to their parents. None of them ran true to type-huntin’, shootin’, fishin’. Meredith preferred watching birds and animals to shooting or hunting them, Philip definitely preferred town to country and went into the business of money-making. Diana married a fellow who wasn’t a gentleman-one of the temporary officers in the war. And Amyas, strong, handsome, virile Amyas, blossomed into being a painter, of all things in the world. It’s my opinion that Richard Crale died of the shock.
‘And in due course Amyas married Caroline Spalding. They’d always fought and sparred, but it was a love match all right. They were both crazy about each other. And they continued to care. But Amyas was like all the Crales, a ruthless egoist. He loved Caroline but he never once considered her in any way. He did as he pleased. It’s my opinion that he was as fond of her as he could be of anybody-but she came a long way behind his art. That came first. And I should say at no time did his art give place to a woman. He had affairs with women-they stimulated him-but he left them high and dry when he’d finished with them. He wasn’t a sentimental man, nor a romantic one. And he wasn’t entirely a sensualist either. The only woman he cared a button for was his own wife. And because she knew that she put up with a lot. He was a very fine painter, you know. She realized that, and respected it. He chased off in his amorous pursuits and came back again-usually with a picture to show for it.
‘It might have gone on like that if it hadn’t come to Elsa Greer. Elsa Greer-’
Mr Jonathan shook his head.
Poirot said: ‘What of Elsa Greer?’
Mr Jonathan said unexpectedly:
‘Poor child. Poor child.’
Poirot said: ‘So you feel like that about her?’
Jonathan said:
‘Maybe it is because I am an old man, but I find, M. Poirot, that there is something about the defencelessness of youth that moves me to tears. Youth is so vulnerable. It is so ruthless-so sure. So generous and so demanding.’
Getting up, he crossed to the bookcase. Taking out a volume he opened it, turned the pages, and then read out:
‘ “If that thy bent of love be honourable,
The purpose marriage, send me word tomorrow
By one that I’ll procure to come to thee,
Where and what time thou wilt perform the rite,
And all my fortunes at thy foot I’ll lay,
And follow thee my lord throughout the world.” ’
‘There speaks love allied to youth, in Juliet’s words. No reticence, no holding back, no so-called maiden modesty. It is the courage, the insistence, the ruthless force of youth. Shakespeare knew youth. Juliet singles out Romeo. Desdemona claims Othello. They have no doubts, the young, no fear, no pride.’
Poirot said thoughtfully:
‘So to you Elsa Greer spoke in the words of Juliet?’
‘Yes. She was a spoiled child of fortune-young, lovely, rich. She found her mate and claimed him-no young Romeo, a married, middle-aged painter. Elsa Greer had no code to restrain her, she had the code of modernity. “Take what you want-we shall only live once!’
He sighed, leaned back, and again tapped gently on the arm of his chair.
‘A predatory Juliet. Young, ruthless, but horribly vulnerable! Staking everything on the one audacious throw. And seemingly she won…and then-at the last moment-death steps in-and the living, ardent, joyous Elsa died also. There was left only a vindictive, cold, hard woman, hating with all her soul the woman whose hand had done this thing.