‘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’this 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 Pharmacop?ia. 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 theirtisanes 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 Pharmacop?ia-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:

‘And Angela? Did she bear a grudge against her half sister?’

‘Oh no, don’t run away with that idea. Angela was devoted to Caroline. She never gave that old business a thought, I’m sure. It was just Caroline who couldn’t forgive herself.’

‘Did Angela take kindly to the idea of boarding school?’

‘No, she didn’t. She was furious with Amyas. Caroline took her side, but Amyas had absolutely made his mind up about it. In spite of a hot temper, Amyas was an easy man in most respects, but when he really got his back up, everyone had to give in. Both Caroline and Angela knuckled under.’

‘She was to go to school-when?’

‘The autumn term-they were getting her kit together, I remember. I suppose, if it hadn’t been for the tragedy, she would have gone off a few days later. There was some talk of her packing on the morning of that day.’

Poirot said: ‘And the governess?’

‘What do you mean-the governess?’

‘How did she like the idea? It deprived her of a job, did it not?’

‘Yes-well, I suppose it did in a way. Little Carla used to do a few lessons, but of course she was only-what? Six or thereabouts. She had a nurse. They wouldn’t have kept Miss Williams on for her. Yes, that’s the name-Williams. Funny how things come back to you when you talk them over.’

‘Yes, indeed. You are back now, are you not, in the past? You relive the scenes-the words that people said, their gestures-the expressions on their faces?’

Meredith Blake said slowly:

‘In a way-yes…But there are gaps, you know…Great chunks missed out. I remember, for instance, the shock it was to me when I first learned that Amyas was going to leave Caroline-but I can’t remember whether it was he who told me or Elsa. I do remember arguing with Elsa on the subject-trying to show her, I mean, that it was a pretty rotten thing to do. And she only laughed at me in that cool way of hers and said I was old fashioned. Well, I dare say Iam old fashioned, but I still think I was right. Amyas had a wife and child-he ought to have stuck to them.’

‘But Miss Greer thought that point of view out of date?’

‘Yes. Mind you, sixteen years ago, divorce wasn’t looked on quite so much as a matter of course as it is now. But Elsa was the kind of girl who went in for being modern. Her point of view was that when two people weren’t happy together it was better to make a break. She said that Amyas and Caroline never stopped having rows and that it was far better for the child that she shouldn’t be brought up in an atmosphere of disharmony.’

‘And her argument did not impress you?’

Meredith Blake said slowly:

‘I felt, all the time, that she didn’t really know what she was talking about. She was rattling these things off-things she’d read in books or heard from her friends-it was like a parrot. She was-it’s a queer thing to say-pathetic somehow. So young and so self-confident.’ He paused. ‘There is something about youth, M. Poirot, that is-that can be-terribly moving.’

Hercule Poirot said, looking at him with some interest: ‘I know what you mean…’

Blake went on, speaking more to himself than to Poirot.

‘That’s partly, I think, why I tackled Crale. He was nearly twenty years older than the girl. It didn’t seem fair.’

Poirot murmured:

‘Alas-how seldom one makes any effect. When a person has determined on a certain course-it is not easy to turn them from it.’

Meredith Blake said:

‘That is true enough.’ His tone was a shade bitter. ‘I certainly did no good by my interference. But then, I am not a very convincing person. I never have been.’

Poirot threw him a quick glance. He read into that slight acerbity of tone the dissatisfaction of a sensitive man with his own lack of personality. And he acknowledged to himself the truth of what Blake had just said. Meredith Blake was not the man to persuade any one into or out of any course. His well-meaning attempts would always be set aside-indulgently usually, without anger, but definitely set aside. They would not carry weight. He was essentially an ineffective man.

Poirot said, with an appearance of changing a painful subject: ‘You still have your laboratory of medicines and cordials, yes?’

‘No.’

The word came sharply-with an almost anguished rapidity Meridith Blake said, his face flushing:

‘I abandoned the whole thing-dismantled it. I couldn’t go on with it-how could I?-after what had happened. The whole thing, you see, might have been said to bemy fault.’