Five Little Pigs

‘You rang, my lord?’

‘Take M. Poirot up to her ladyship.’

Up two flights of stairs, feet sinking into soft pile carpets. Subdued flood lighting. Money, money everywhere. Of taste, not so much. There had been a sombre austerity in Lord Dittisham’s room. But here, in the house, there was only a solid lavishness. The best. Not necessarily the showiest, or the most startling. Merely ‘expense no object’, allied to a lack of imagination.

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 make-up 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 make-up 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, M. 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, notpainful. 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 any one 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 thatI 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.’