• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 413 0

firm, of course, has known many generations of the Crales. I knew Amyas Crale and his father, Richard Crale, and I can remember Enoch Crale—the grandfather. Country squires, all of them, thought more of horses than human beings. They rode straight, liked women, and had no truck with ideas. They distrusted ideas. But Richard Crale’s wife was cram full of ideas—more ideas than sense. She was poetical and musical—she played the harp, you know. She enjoyed poor health and looked very picturesque on her sofa. She was an admirer of Kingsley. That’s why she called her son Amyas. His father scoffed at the name—but he gave in.

“Amyas Crale profited by his mixed inheritance. He got his artistic trend from his weakly mother, and his driving power and ruthless egoism from his father. All the Crales were egoists. They never by any chance saw any point of view but their own.”

Tapping with a delicate finger on the arm of his chair, the old man shot a shrewd glance at Poirot.

“Correct me if I am wrong, Mr. Poirot, but I think you are interested in—character, shall we say?”

Poirot replied.

“That, to me, is the principal interest of all my cases.”

“I can conceive of it. To get under the skin, as it were, of your criminal. How interesting. How absorbing. Our firm, of course, have never had a criminal practice. We should not have been competent to act for Mrs. Crale, even if taste had allowed. Mayhews, however, were a very adequate firm. They briefed Depleach—they didn’t perhaps show much imagination there—still, he was very expensive and, of course, exceedingly dramatic! What they hadn’t the wits to see was that Caroline would never play up in the way he wanted her to. She wasn’t a dramatic woman.”

“What was she?” asked Poirot. “It is that that I am chiefly anxious to know.”

“Yes, yes—of course. How did she come to do what she did? That is the really vital question. I knew her, you know, before she married. Caroline Spalding, she was. A turbulent unhappy creature. Very alive. Her mother was left a widow early in life and Caroline was devoted to her mother. Then the mother married again—there was another child. Yes—yes, very sad, very painful. These young, ardent, adolescent jealousies.”

“She was jealous?”

“Passionately so. There was a regrettable incident. Poor child, she blamed herself bitterly afterwards. But you know, Mr. Poirot, these things happen. There is an inability to put on the brakes. It comes—it comes with maturity.”

Poirot said:

“What happened?”

“She struck the child—the baby—flung a paperweight at her. The child lost the sight of one eye and was permanently disfigured.”

Mr. Jonathan sighed. He said:

“You can imagine the effect a simple question on that point had at the trial.”

He shook his head:

“It gave the impression that Caroline Crale was a woman of ungovernable temper. That was not true. No, that was not true.”

He paused and then resumed:

“Caroline Spalding came often to stay at Alderbury. She rode well, and was keen. Richard Crale was fond of her. She waited on Mrs. Crale and was deft and gentle—Mrs. Crale also liked her. The girl was not happy at home. She was happy at Alderbury. Diana Crale, Amyas’s sister, and she were by way of being friends. Philip and Meredith Blake, boys from the adjoining estate, were frequently at Alderbury. Philip was always a nasty, money-grubbing little brute. I must confess I have always had a distaste for him. But I am told that he tells a very good story and that he has the reputation of being a staunch friend. Meredith was what my contemporaries used to call Namby Pamby. Liked botany and butterflies and observing birds and beasts. Nature study they call it nowadays. Ah, dear—all the young people were a disappointment to their parents. None of them ran true to type—huntin’, shootin’, fishin’. Meredith preferred watching birds and animals to shooting or hunting them, Philip definitely preferred town to country and went into the business of moneymaking. Diana married a fellow who wasn’t a gentleman—one of the temporary officers in the war. And Amyas, strong, handsome, virile