Five Little Pigs

‘I will tell youwhy you know presently. In the meantime I put this point to you. Someone could have come up to the house that morning, have got into your laboratory, taken something from the shelf and gone again without your seeing them. Now if that someone had come over from Alderbury it could not have been Philip Blake, nor Elsa Greer, nor Amyas Crale nor Caroline Crale. We know quite well what all those four were doing. That leaves Angela Warren and Miss Williams. Miss Williams was over here-you actually met her as you went out. She told you then that she was looking for Angela. Angela had gone bathing early, but Miss Williams did not see her in the water, nor anywhere on the rocks. She could swim across to this side easily-in fact she did so later in the morning when she was bathing with Philip Blake. I suggest that she swam across here, came up to the house, got in through the window, and took something from the shelf.’

Angela Warren said: ‘I did nothing of the kind-not-at least-’

‘Ah!’ Poirot gave a yelp of triumph. ‘You have remembered. You told me, did you not, that to play a malicious joke on Amyas Crale you pinched some of what you called “the cat stuff”-that is how you put it-’

Meredith Blake said sharply:

‘Valerian! Of course.’

‘Exactly.That is what made you sure in your mind that it was a cat who had been in the room. Your nose is very sensitive. You smelled the faint, unpleasant odour of valerian without knowing, perhaps, that you did so-but it suggested to your subconscious mind “Cat”. Cats love valerian and will go anywhere for it. Valerian is particularly nasty to taste, and it was your account of it the day before which made mischievous Miss Angela plan to put some in her brother-in-law’s beer, which she knew he always tossed down his throat in a draught.’

Angela Warren said wonderingly: ‘Was it really that day? I remember taking it perfectly. Yes, and I remember getting out the beer and Caroline coming in and nearly catching me! Of course I remember…But I’ve never connected it with that particular day.’

‘Of course not-because there was no connectionin your mind. The two events were entirely dissimilar to you. One was on a par with other mischievous pranks-the other was a bombshell of tragedy arriving without warning and succeeding in banishing all lesser incidents from your mind. But me, I noticed when you spoke of it that you said: “I pinched, etc., etc.,to put it in Amyas’s drink.” You did not say you had actuallydone so.’

‘No, because I never did. Caroline came in just when I was unscrewing the bottle. Oh!’ It was a cry. ‘And Caroline thought-she thought it wasme -!’

She stopped. She looked round. She said quietly in her usual cool tones: ‘I suppose you all think so, too.’

She paused and then said: ‘I didn’t kill Amyas. Not as the result of a malicious joke nor in any other way. If I had I would never have kept silence.’

Miss Williams said sharply:

‘Of course you wouldn’t, my dear.’ She looked at Hercule Poirot. ‘Nobody but afool would think so.’

Hercule Poirot said mildly:

‘I am not a fool and I do not think so.I know quite well who killed Amyas Crale.’

He paused.

‘There is always a danger of accepting facts as proved which are really nothing of the kind. Let us take the situation at Alderbury. A very old situation. Two women and one man. We have taken it for granted that Amyas Crale proposed to leave his wife for the other woman. But I suggest to you nowthat he never intended to do anything of the kind.

‘He had had infatuations for women before. They obsessed him while they lasted, but they were soon over. The women he had fallen in love with were usually women of a certain experience-they did not expect too much of him. But this time the woman did. She was not, you see, a woman at all. She was a girl, and in Caroline Crale’s words, she was terribly sincere…She may have been hard-boiled and sophisticated in speech, but in love she was frighteningly single-minded.Because she herself had a deep and overmastering passion for Amyas Crale she assumed that he had the same for her. She assumed without any question that their passion was for life. She assumed without asking him that he was going to leave his wife.

‘But why, you will say, did Amyas Crale not un-deceive 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.