Hercule Poirot knew that there was only one way to penetrate the stronghold. He must approach Meredith Blake with the proper credentials. Those credentials must be social, not professional. Fortunately, in the course of his career, Hercule Poirot had made friends in many counties. Devonshire was no exception. He sat down to review what resources he had in Devonshire. As a result he discovered two people who were acquaintances or friends of Mr. Meredith Blake. He descended upon him therefore armed with two letters, one from Lady Mary Lytton-Gore, a gentle widow lady of restricted means, the most retiring of creatures; and the other from a retired Admiral, whose family had been settled in the county for four generations.
Meredith Blake received Poirot in a state of some perplexity.
As he had often felt lately, things were not what they used to be. Dash it all, private detectives used to be private detectives—fellows you got to guard wedding presents at country receptions, fellows you went to—rather shamefacedly—when there was some dirty business afoot and you’d got to get the hang of it.
But here was Lady Mary Lytton-Gore writing: “Hercule Poirot is a very old and valued friend of mine. Please do all you can to help him, won’t you?” And Mary Lytton-Gore wasn’t—no, decidedly she wasn’t—the sort of woman you associate with private detectives and all that they stand for. And Admiral Cronshaw wrote: “Very good chap—absolutely sound. Grateful if you will do what you can for him. Most entertaining fellow, can tell you lots of good stories.”
And now here was the man himself. Really a most impossible person—the wrong clothes—button boots!—an incredible moustache! Not his—Meredith Blake’s—kind of fellow at all. Didn’t look as though he’d ever hunted or shot—or even played a decent game. A foreigner.
Slightly amused, Hercule Poirot read accurately these thoughts passing through the other’s head.
He had felt his own interest rising considerably as the train brought him into the West Country. He would see now, with his own eyes, the actual place where these long past events happened.
It was here, at Handcross Manor, that two young brothers had lived and gone over to Alderbury and joked and played tennis and fraternized with a young Amyas Crale and a girl called Caroline. It was from here that Meredith had started out to Alderbury on that fatal morning. That had been sixteen years ago. Hercule Poirot looked with interest at the man who was confronting him with somewhat uneasy politeness.
Very much what he had expected. Meredith Blake resembled superficially every other English country gentleman of straitened means and outdoor tastes.
A shabby old coat of Harris tweed, a weather-beaten, pleasant, middle-aged face with somewhat faded blue eyes, a weak mouth, half hidden by a rather straggly moustache. Poirot found Meredith Blake a great contrast to his brother. He had a hesitating manner, his mental processes were obviously leisurely. It was as though his tempo had slowed down with the years just as his brother’s had been accelerated.
As Poirot had already guessed, he was a man whom you could not hurry. The leisurely life of the English countryside was in his bones.
He looked, the detective thought, a good deal older than his brother, though, from what Mr. Jonathan had said, it would seem that only a couple of years separated them.
Hercule Poirot prided himself on knowing how to handle an “old school tie.” It was no moment for trying to seem English. No, one must be a foreigner—frankly a foreigner—and be magnanimously forgiven for the fact. “Of course, these foreigners don’t quite know the ropes. Will shake hands at breakfast. Still, a decent fellow really….”
Poirot set about creating this impression of himself. The two men talked, cautiously, of Lady Mary Lytton-Gore and of Admiral Cronshaw. Other names were mentioned. Fortunately Poirot knew someone’s cousin and had met somebody else’s sister-in-law. He could see a kind of warmth dawning in the Squire’s eye. The fellow seemed to know the right people.
Gracefully, insidiously, Poirot slid into the purpose of his visit. He was quick to counteract the inevitable recoil. This book was, alas! going to be written. Miss Crale—Miss Lemarchant, as she was now called—was anxious for him to exercise a judicious editorship. The facts, unfortunately, were public property. But much could be done in their presentation to avoid wounding susceptibilities. Poirot murmured that before now he had been able to use discreet influence to avoid certain purple passages in a book of memoirs.
Meredith Blake flushed angrily. His hand shook a little as he filled a pipe. He said, a slight stammer in his voice:
“It’s—it’s g-ghoulish the way they dig these things up. S-sixteen years ago. Why can’t they let it be?”
Poirot shrugged his shoulders. He said:
“I agree with you. But what will you? There is a demand for such things. And anyone is at liberty to reconstruct a proved crime and to comment on it.”
“Seems disgraceful to me.”
Poirot murmured:
“Alas—we do not live in a delicate age…You would be surprised, Mr. Blake, if you knew the unpleasant publications I had succeeded in—shall we say—softening. I am anxious to do all I can to save Miss Crale’s feeling in the matter.”
Meredith Blake murmured: “Little Carla! That child! A grown-up woman. One can hardly believe it.”
“I know. Time flies swiftly, does it not?”
Meredith Blake sighed. He said: “Too quickly.”
Poirot said:
“As you will have seen in the letter I handed you from Miss Crale, she is very anxious to know everything possible about the sad events of the past.”
Meredith Blake said with a touch of irritation:
“Why? Why rake up everything again? How much better to let it all be forgotten.”
“You say that, Mr. Blake, because you know all the past too well. Miss Crale, remember, knows nothing. That is to say she knows only the story as she has learnt it from the official accounts.”
Meredith Blake winced. He said:
“Yes, I forgot. Poor child. What a detestable position for her. The shock of learning the truth. And then—those soulless, callous reports of the trial.”
“The truth,” said Hercule Poirot, “can never be done justice to in a mere legal recital. It is the things that are left out that are the things that matter. The emotions, the feelings—the characters of the actors in the drama. The extenuating circumstances—”
He paused and the other man spoke eagerly like an actor who had received his cue.
“Extenuating circumstances! That’s just it. If ever there were extenuating circumstances, there were in this case. Amyas Crale was an old friend—his family and mine had been friends for generations, but one has to admit that his conduct was, frankly, outrageous. He was an artist, of course, and presumably that explains it. But there it is—he allowed a most extraordinary set of affairs to arise. The position was one that no ordinary decent man could have contemplated for a moment.”
Hercule Poirot said:
“I am interested that you should say that. It had puzzled me, that situation. Not so does a well-bred man, a man of the world, go about his affairs.”
Blake’s thin, hesitating face had lit up with animation. He said:
“Yes, but the whole point is that Amyas never was an ordinary man! He was a painter, you see, and with him painting came first—really sometimes in the most extraordinary way! I don’t understand these so-called artistic people myself—never have. I understood Crale a little because, of course, I’d known him all my life. His people were the same sort as my people. And in many ways Crale ran true to type—it was only where art came in that he didn’t conform to the usual standards. He wasn’t, you see, an amateur in any way. He was first-class—really first-class. Some people say he’s a genius. They may be right. But as a result, he was always what I should describe as unbalanced. When he was painting a picture—nothing else mattered, nothing could be allowed to get in the way. He was like a man in a dream. Completely obsessed by what he was doing. Not till the canvas
was finished did he come out of this absorption and start to pick up the threads of ordinary life again.”
He looked questioningly at Poirot and the latter nodded.
“You understand, I see. Well, that explains, I think, why this particular situation arose. He was in love with this girl. He wanted to marry her. He was prepared to leave his wife and child for her. But he’d started painting her down here, and he wanted to finish that picture. Nothing else mattered to him. He didn’t see anything else. And the fact that the situation was a perfectly impossible one for the two women concerned, doesn’t seem to have occurred to him.”
“Did either of them understand his point of view?”
“Oh yes—in a way. Elsa did, I suppose. She was terrifically enthusiastic about his painting. But it was a difficult position for her—naturally. And as for Caroline—”
He stopped. Poirot said:
“For Caroline—yes, indeed.”
Meredith Blake said, speaking with a little difficulty:
“Caroline—I had always—well, I had always been very fond of Caroline. There was a time when—when I hoped to marry her. But that was soon nipped in the bud. Still, I remained, if I may say so, devoted to—to her service.”
Poirot nodded thoughtfully. That slightly old-fashioned phrase expressed, he felt, the man before him very typically. Meredith Blake was the kind of man who would devote himself readily to a romantic and honourable devotion. He would serve his lady faithfully and without hope of reward. Yes, it was all very much in character.
He said, carefully weighing the words:
“You must have resented this—attitude—on her behalf?”
“I did. Oh, I did. I—I actually remonstrated with Crale on the subject.”
“When was this?”
“Actually the day before—before it all happened. They came over to tea here, you know. I got Crale aside and I—I put it to him. I even said, I remember, that it wasn’t fair on either of them.”
“Ah, you said that?”
“Yes. I didn’t think—you see, that he realized.”
“Possibly not.”
“I said to him that it was putting Caroline in a perfectly unendurable position. If he meant to marry this girl, he ought not to have her staying in the house and—well—more or less flaunt her in Caroline’s face. It was, I said, an unendurable insult.”
Poirot asked curiously: “What did he answer?”
Meredith Blake replied with distaste:
“He said: ‘Caroline must lump it.’”
Hercule Poirot’s eyebrows rose.
“Not,” he said, “a very sympathetic reply.”
“I thought it abominable. I lost my temper. I said that no doubt, not caring for his wife, he didn’t mind how much he made her suffer, but what, I said, about the girl? Hadn’t he realized it was a pretty rotten position for her? His reply to that was that Elsa must lump it too!
“Then he went on: ‘You don’t seem to understand, Meredith, that this thing I’m painting is the best thing I’ve done. It’s good, I tell you. And a couple of jealous quarrelling women aren’t going to upset it—no, by hell, they’re not.’
“It was hopeless talking to him. I said he seemed to have taken leave of all ordinary decency. Painting, I said, wasn’t everything. He interrupted there. He said: ‘Ah, but it is to me.’
“I was still very angry. I said it was perfectly disgraceful the way he had always treated Caroline. She had had a miserable life with him. He said he knew that and he was sorry about it. Sorry! He said: ‘I know, Merry, you don’t believe that—but it’s the truth. I’ve given Caroline the hell of a life and she’s been a saint about it. But she did know, I think, what she might be letting herself in for. I told her candidly the sort of damnable egoistic, loose-living kind of chap I was.’
“I put it to him then very strongly that he ought not to break up his married life. There was the child to be considered and everything. I said that I could understand that a girl like Elsa could bowl a man over, but that even for her sake he ought to break off the whole thing. She was very young. She was going into this baldheaded, but she might regret it bitterly afterwards. I said couldn’t he pull himself together, make a clean break and go back to his wife?”
“And what did he say?”
Blake said: “He just looked—embarrassed. He patted me on the shoulder and said: ‘You’re a good chap, Merry. But you’re too sentimental. You wait till the picture’s finished and you’ll admit that I was right.’
“I said: ‘Damn your picture.’ And he grinned and said all the neurotic women in England couldn’t do that. Then I said that it would have been more decent to have kept the whole thing from Caroline until after the picture was finished. He said that that wasn’t his fault. It was Elsa who had insisted on spilling the beans. I said, Why? And he said that she had had some idea that it wasn’t straight otherwise. She wanted everything to be clear and above board. Well, of course, in a way, one could understand that and respect the girl for it. However badly she was behaving, she did at least want to be honest.”
“A lot of additional pain and grief is caused by honesty,” remarked Hercule Poirot.
Meredith Blake looked at him doubtfully. He did not quite like the sentiment. He sighed:
“It was a—a most unhappy time for us all.”
“The only person who does not seem to have been affected by it was Amyas Crale,” said Poirot.
“And why? Because he was a rank egoist. I remember him now. Grinning at me as he went off saying: ‘Don’t worry, Merry. Everything’s going to pan out all right!’”
“The incurable optimist,” murmured Poirot.
Meredith Blake said:
“He was the kind of man who didn’t take women seriously. I could have told him that Caroline was desperate.”
“Did she tell you so?”
“Not in so many words. But I shall always see her face as it was that afternoon. White and strained with a kind of desperate gaiety. She talked and laughed a lot. But her eyes—there was a kind of anguished grief in them that was the most moving thing I have ever known. Such a gentle creature, too.”
Hercule Poirot looked at him for a minute or two without speaking. Clearly the man in front of him felt no incongruity in speaking thus of a woman who on the day after had deliberately killed her husband.
Meredith Blake went on. He had by now quite overcome his first suspicious hostility. Hercule Poirot had the gift of listening. To men such as Meredith Blake, the reliving of the past has a definite attraction. He spoke now almost more to himself than to his guest.
“I ought to have suspected something, I suppose. It was Caroline who turned the conversation to—to my little hobby. It was, I must confess, an enthusiasm of mine. The old English herbalists, you know, are a very interesting study. There are so many plants that were formerly used in medicine and which have now disappeared from the official Pharmacopœia. And it’s astonishing, really, how a simple decoction of something or other will really work wonders. No need for doctors half the time. The French understand these things—some of their tisanes are first rate.” He was well away now on his hobby.
“Dandelion tea, for instance; marvellous stuff. And a decoction of hips—I saw the other day somewhere that that’s coming into fashion with the medical profession again. Oh yes, I must confess, I got a lot of pleasure out of my brews. Gathering the plants at the right time, drying them—macerating them—all the rest of it. I’ve even dropped to superstition sometimes and gathered my roots at the full of the moon or whatever it was the ancients advised. On that day I gave my guests, I remember, a special disquisition on the spotted hemlock. It flowers biennially. You gather the fruits when they’re ripening, just before they turn yellow. Coniine, you know, is a drug that’s dropped out—I don’t believe there’s any official preparation of it in the last Pharmacopœia—but I’ve proved the usefulness of it in whooping cough—and in asthma too, for that matter—”
“You talked
of all this in your laboratory?”
“Yes, I showed them round—explained the various drugs to them—valerian and the way it attracts cats—one sniff at that was enough for them! Then they asked about deadly nightshade and I told them about belladonna and atropine. They were very much interested.”
“They? What is comprised in that word?”
Meredith Blake looked faintly surprised as though he had forgotten that his listener had no first-hand knowledge of the scene.
“Oh, the whole party. Let me see, Philip was there and Amyas, and Caroline, of course. Angela. And Elsa Greer.”
“That was all?”
“Yes—I think so. Yes, I am sure of it,” Blake looked at him curiously. “Who else should there be?”
“I thought perhaps the governess—”
“Oh, I see. No, she wasn’t there that afternoon. I believe I’ve forgotten her name now. Nice women. Took her duties very seriously. Angela worried her a good deal I think.”
“Why was that?”
“Well, she was a nice kid, but she was inclined to run wild. Always up to something or other. Put a slug or something down Amyas’s back one day when he was hard at work painting. He went up in smoke. Cursed her up and down dale. It was after that that he insisted on this school idea.”
“Sending her to school?”
“Yes. I don’t mean he wasn’t fond of her, but he found her a bit of a nuisance sometimes. And I think—I’ve always thought—”
“Yes?”
“That he was a bit jealous. Caroline, you see, was a slave to Angela. In a way, perhaps, Angela came first with her—and Amyas didn’t like that. There was a reason for it of course. I won’t go into that, but—”
Poirot interrupted.
“The reason being that Caroline Crale reproached herself for an action that had disfigured the girl?”
Blake exclaimed: “Oh, you know that? I wasn’t going to mention it. All over and done with. But yes, that was the cause of her attitude I think. She always seemed to feel that there was nothing too much she could do—to make up, as it were.”
Poirot nodded thoughtfully. He asked: