Dumb Witness - Agatha Christie [99]
“There was an interesting little passage between her and her brother. I conceived the idea that each suspected the other of the crime. Charles endeavoured to make her say that she knew of the existence of the new will. Why? Clearly because if she knew of it she could not be suspected of the murder. She, on the other hand, clearly did not believe Charles’ statement that Miss Arundell had shown it to him! She regarded it as a singularly clumsy attempt on his part to divert suspicion from himself.
“There was another significant point. Charles displayed a reluctance to use the word arsenic. Later I found that he had questioned the old gardener at length upon the strength of some weed killer. It was clear what had been in his mind.”
Charles Arundell shifted his position a little.
“I thought of it,” he said. “But—well, I suppose I hadn’t got the nerve.”
Poirot nodded at him.
“Precisely, it is not in your psychology. Your crimes will always be the crimes of weakness. To steal, to forge—yes, it is the easiest way—but to kill—no! To kill one needs the type of mind that can be obsessed by an idea.”
He resumed his lecturing manner.
“Theresa Arundell, I decided, had quite sufficient strength of mind to carry such a design through, but there were other facts to take into consideration. She had never been thwarted, she had lived fully and selfishly—but that type of person is not the type that kills—except perhaps in sudden anger. And yet—I felt sure—it was Theresa Arundell who had taken the weed killer from the tin.”
Theresa spoke suddenly:
“I’ll tell you the truth. I thought of it. I actually took some weed killer from a tin down at Littlegreen House. But I couldn’t do it! I’m too fond of living—of being alive—I couldn’t do that to anyone—take life from them… I may be bad and selfish but there are things I can’t do! I couldn’t kill a living, breathing human creature!”
Poirot nodded.
“No, that is true. And you are not as bad as you paint yourself, mademoiselle. You are only young—and reckless.”
He went on:
“There remained Mrs. Tanios. As soon as I saw her I realized that she was afraid. She saw that I realized that and she very quickly made capital out of that momentary betrayal. She gave a very convincing portrait of a woman who is afraid for her husband. A little later she changed her tactics. It was very cleverly done—but the change did not deceive me. A woman can be afraid for her husband or she can be afraid of her husband—but she can hardly be both. Mrs. Tanios decided on the latter rôle—and she played her part cleverly—even to coming out after me into the hall of the hotel and pretending that there was something she wanted to tell me. When her husband followed her as she knew he would, she pretended that she could not speak before him.
“I realized at once, not that she feared her husband, but that she disliked him. And at once, summing the matter up, I felt convinced that here was the exact character I had been looking for. Here was—not a self-indulgent woman—but a thwarted one. A plain girl, leading a dull existence, unable to attract the men she would like to attract, finally accepting a man she did not care for rather than be left an old maid. I could trace her growing dissatisfaction with life, her life in Smyrna exiled from all she cared for in life. Then the birth of her children and her passionate attachment to them.
“Her husband was devoted to her but she came secretly to dislike him more and more. He had speculated with her money and lost it—another grudge against him.
“There was only one thing that illuminated her drab life, the expectation of her Aunt Emily’s death. Then she would have money, independence, the means to educate