But once, perhaps, there had been more to Philip Blake. He must have been, when young, a handsome man. Eyes always a shade too small, a fraction too near together, perhaps-but otherwise a well made, well set up young man. How old was he now? At a guess between fifty and sixty. Nearing forty, then, at the time of Crale’s death. Less stultified, then, less sunk in the gratifications of the minute. Asking more of life, perhaps, and receiving less…

Poirot murmured as a mere catch-phrase:

‘You comprehend my position.’

‘No, really, you know, I’m hanged if I do.’ The stockbroker sat upright again, his glance was once more shrewd. ‘Whyyou? You’re not a writer?’

‘Not precisely-no. Actually I am a detective.’

The modesty of this remark had probably not been equalled before in Poirot’s conversation.

‘Of course you are. We all know that. The famous Hercule Poirot!’

But his tone held a subtly mocking note. Intrinsically, Philip Blake was too much of an Englishman to take the pretensions of a foreigner seriously.

To his cronies he would have said:

‘Quaint little mountebank. Oh well, I expect his stuff goes down with the women all right.’

And although that derisive patronizing attitude was exactly the one which Hercule Poirot had aimed at inducing, nevertheless he found himself annoyed by it.

This man, this successful man of affairs, was unimpressed by Hercule Poirot! It was a scandal.

‘I am gratified,’ said Poirot untruly, ‘that I am so well known to you. My success, let me tell you, has been founded on the psychology-the eternalwhy? of human behaviour. That, M. Blake, is what interests the world in crime today. It used to be romance. Famous crimes were retold from one angle only-the love-story connected with them. Nowadays it is very different. People read with interest that Dr Crippen murdered his wife because she was a big bouncing woman and he was little and insignificant and therefore she made him feel inferior. They read of some famous woman criminal that she killed because she’d been snubbed by her father when she was three years old. It is, as I say, thewhy of crime that interests nowadays.’

Philip Blake said, with a slight yawn:

‘The why of most crimes is obvious enough, I should say. Usually money.’

Poirot cried:

‘Ah, but my dear sir, the why must never be obvious. That is the whole point!’

‘And that’s whereyou come in?’

‘And that, as you say, is where I come in! It is proposed to rewrite the stories of certain bygone crimes-from the psychological angle. Psychology in crime, it is my speciality. I have accepted the commission.’

Philip Blake grinned.

‘Pretty lucrative, I suppose?’

‘I hope so-I certainly hope so.’

‘Congratulations. Now, perhaps, you’ll tell me whereI come in?’

‘Most certainly. The Crale case, Monsieur.’

Phillip Blake did not look startled. But he looked thoughtful. He said:

‘Yes, of course, the Crale case…’

Hercule Poirot said anxiously:

‘It is not displeasing to you, Mr Blake?’

‘Oh, as to that.’ Philip Blake shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s no use resenting a thing that you’ve no power to stop. The trial of Caroline Crale is public property. Any one can go ahead and write it up. It’s no usemy objecting. In a way-I don’t mind telling you-I do dislike it a good deal. Amyas Crale was one of my best friends. I’m sorry the whole unsavoury business has to be raked up again. But these things happen.’

‘You are a philosopher, Mr Blake.’

‘No, no. I just know enough not to start kicking against the pricks. I dare say you’ll do it less offensively than many others.’

‘I hope, at least, to write with delicacy and good taste,’ said Poirot.

Philip Blake gave a loud guffaw but without any real amusement. ‘Makes me chuckle to hear you say that.’

‘I assure you, Mr Blake, I am really interested. It is not just a matter of money with me. I genuinely want to recreate the past, to feel and see the events that took place, to see behind the obvious and to visualize the thoughts and feelings of the actors in the drama.’

Philip Blake said:

‘I don’t know that there was much subtlety about it. It was a pretty obvious business. Crude female jealousy, that was all there was to it.’

‘It would interest me enormously, Mr Blake, if I could have your own reactions to the affair.’

Philip Blake said with sudden heat, his face deepening in colour.

‘Reactions! Reactions! Don’t speak so pedantically. I didn’t just stand there and react! You don’t seem to understand that my friend-my friend, I tell you, had been killed-poisoned! And that if I’d acted quicker I could have saved him.’

‘How do you make that out, Mr Blake?’

‘Like this. I take it that you’ve already read up the facts of the case?’ Poirot nodded. ‘Very well. Now on that morning my brother Meredith called me up. He was in a pretty good stew. One of his Hell brews was missing-and it was a fairly deadly Hell brew. What did I do? I told him to come along and we’d talk it over. Decide what was best to be done. “Decide what was best.” It beats me now how I could have been such a hesitating fool! I ought to have realized that there was no time to lose. I ought to have gone to Amyas straight away and warned him. I ought to have said: “Caroline’s pinched one of Meredith’s patent poisons, and you and Elsa had better look out for yourselves.” ’

Blake got up. He strode up and down in his excitement.

‘Good God, man. Do you suppose I haven’t gone over it in my mind again and again? Iknew. I had the chance to save him-and I dallied about-waiting for Meredith! Why hadn’t I the sense to realize that Caroline wasn’t going to have any qualms or hesitancies. She’d taken that stuff to use-and, by God, she’d used it at the very first opportunity. She wouldn’t wait till Meredith discovered his loss. I knew-of course I knew-that Amyas was in deadly danger-and I did nothing!’

‘I think you reproach yourself unduly, Monsieur. You had not much time-’

The other interrupted him:

‘Time? I had plenty of time. Any amount of courses open to me. I could have gone to Amyas, as I say-but there was the chance, of course, that he wouldn’t believe me. Amyas wasn’t the sort of man who’d believe easily in his own danger. He’d have scoffed at the notion. And he never thoroughly understood the sort of devil Caroline was. But I could have gone to her. I could have said: “I know what you’re up to. I know what you’re planning to do. But if Amyas or Elsa die of coniine poisoning, you’ll be hanged by your neck!” That would have stopped her. Or I might have rung up the police. Oh! there were things that could have been done-and instead, I let myself be influenced by Meredith’s slow, cautious methods. “We must be sure-talk it over-make quite certain who could have taken it…” Damned old fool-never made a quick decision in his life! A good thing for him he was the eldest son and has an estate to live on. If he’d ever tried tomake money he’d have lost every penny he had.’

Poirot asked:

‘You had no doubt yourself who had taken the poison?’

‘Of course not. I knew at once it must be Caroline. You see, I knew Caroline very well.’

Poirot said:

‘That is very interesting. I want to know, Mr Blake, what kind of a woman Caroline Crale was?’

Philip Blake said sharply:

‘She wasn’t the injured innocent people thought she was at the time of the trial!’

‘What was she, then?’

Blake sat down again. He said seriously:

‘Would you really like to know?’

‘I would like to know very much indeed.’

‘Caroline was a rotter. She was a rotter through and through. Mind you, she had charm. She had that kind of sweetness of manner that deceives people utterly. She had a frail, helpless look about her that appealed to people’s chivalry. Sometimes, when I’ve read a bit of history, I think Mary Queen of Scots must have been a bit like her. Always sweet and unfortunate and magnetic-and actually a cold calculating woman, a scheming woman who planned the murder of Darnley and got away with it. Caroline was like that-a cold, calculating planner. And she had a wicked temper.

‘I don’t know whether they’ve told you-it isn’t a vital point of the trial, but it shows her up-what she did to her baby sister? She was jealous, you know. Her mother had married again, and all the notice and affection went to little Angela. Caroline couldn’t stand that. She tried to kill the baby with a crowbar-smash its head in. Luckily the blow wasn’t fatal. But it was a pretty ghastly thing to do.’

‘Yes, indeed.’

‘Well, that was the real Caroline. She had to be first. That was the thing she simply could not stand-not being first. And there was a cold, egotistical devil in her that was capable of being stirred to murderous lengths.

‘She appeared impulsive, you know, but she was really calculating. When she stayed at Alderbury as a girl, she gave us all the once over and made her plans. She’d no money of her own. I was never in the running-a younger son with his way to make. (Funny, that, I could probably buy up Meredith and Crale, if he’d lived, nowadays!) She considered Meredith for a bit, but she finally fixed on Amyas. Amyas would have Alderbury, and though he wouldn’t have much money with it, she realized that his talent as a painter was something quite out of the way. She gambled on his being not only a genius but a financial success as well.

‘And she won. Recognition came to Amyas early. He wasn’t a fashionable painter exactly-but his genius was recognized and his pictures were bought. Have you seen any of his paintings? There’s one here. Come and look at it.’

He led the way into the dining-room and pointed to the left-hand wall.

‘There you are. That’s Amyas.’

Poirot looked in silence. It came to him with fresh amazement that a man could so imbue a conventional subject with his own particular magic. A vase of roses on a polished mahogany table. That hoary old set-piece. How then did Amyas Crale contrive to make his roses flame and burn with a riotous almost obscene life. The polished wood of the table trembled and took on sentient life. How explain the excitement the picture roused? For it was exciting. The proportions of the table would have distressed Superintendent Hale, he would have complained that no known roses were precisely of that shape or colour. And afterwards he would have gone about wondering vaguely why the roses he saw were unsatisfactory, and round mahogany tables would have annoyed him for no known reason.