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 any one 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’tsee 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-onher 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 herealized.’

‘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 forher? 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’sgood, 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 tome.”

‘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 bald-headed, 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?’