五只小猪07
时间：2024-12-17 01:11:31
（单词翻译:单击）
Six
THIS LITTLE PIG WENT TO MARKET…
Philip Blake was recognizably like the description given of him by Montague Depleach. A
prosperous, shrewd, jovial-looking man—slightly running to fat.
Hercule Poirot had timed his appointment for half past six on a Saturday afternoon. Philip Blake
had just finished his eighteen holes, and he had been on his game—winning a fiver from his
opponent. He was in the mood to be friendly and expansive.
Hercule Poirot explained himself and his errand. On this occasion at least he showed no undue
passion for unsullied truth. It was a question, Blake gathered, of a series of books dealing with
famous crimes.
Philip Blake frowned. He said:
“Good Lord, why make up these things?”
Hercule Poirot shrugged his shoulders. He was at his most foreign today. He was out to be
despised but patronized.
He murmured:
“It is the public. They eat it up—yes, eat it up.”
“Ghouls,” said Philip Blake.
But he said it good-humouredly—not with the fastidiousness and the distaste that a more
sensitive man might have displayed.
Hercule Poirot said with a shrug of the shoulders:
“It is human nature. You and I, Mr. Blake, who know the world, have no illusions about our
fellow human beings. Not bad people, most of them, but certainly not to be idealized.”
Blake said heartily:
“I’ve parted with my illusions long ago.”
“Instead, you tell a very good story, so I have been told.”
“Ah!” Blake’s eyes twinkled. “Heard this one?”
Poirot’s laugh came at the right place. It was not an edifying story, but it was funny.
Philip Blake lay back in his chair, his muscles relaxed, his eyes creased with good humour.
Hercule Poirot thought suddenly that he looked rather like a contented pig.
A pig. This little pig went to market….
What was he like, this man, this Philip Blake? A man, it would seem, without cares. Prosperous,
contented. No remorseful thoughts, no uneasy twinges of conscience from the past, no haunting
memories here. No, a well-fed pig who had gone to market—and fetched the full market price….
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. “Why you? 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 eternal why? of human behaviour. That, Mr. 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, the why 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 where you 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 where I 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. Anyone can go ahead and write it
up. It’s no use my 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? I knew. 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 to make
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.
Poirot gave a little sigh.
He murmured:
“Yes—it is all there.”
Blake led the way back. He mumbled:
“Never have understood anything about art myself. Don’t know why I like looking at that thing
so much, but I do. It’s—oh, damn it all, it’s good.”
Poirot nodded emphatically.
Blake offered his guest a cigarette and lit one himself. He said:
“And that’s the man—the man who painted those roses—the man who painted the ‘Woman
with a Cocktail Shaker’—the man who painted that amazing painful ‘Nativity,’ that’s the man
who was cut short in his prime, deprived of his vivid forceful life all because of a vindictive mean-
natured woman!”
He paused:
“You’ll say that I’m bitter—that I’m unduly prejudiced against Caroline. She had charm—I’ve
felt it. But I knew—I always knew—the real woman behind. And that woman, Mr. Poirot, was
evil. She was cruel and malignant and a grabber!”
“And yet it has been told me that Mrs. Crale put up with many hard things in her married life?”
“Yes, and didn’t she let everybody know about it! Always the martyr! Poor old Amyas. His
married life was one long hell—or rather it would have been if it hadn’t been for his exceptional
quality. His art, you see—he always had that. It was an escape. When he was painting he didn’t
care, he shook off Caroline and her nagging and all the ceaseless rows and quarrels. They were
endless, you know. Not a week passed without a thundering row over one thing or another. She
enjoyed it. Having rows stimulated her, I believe. It was an outlet. She could say all the hard bitter
stinging things she wanted to say. She’d positively purr after one of those set-tos—go off looking
as sleek and well-fed as a cat. But it took it out of him. He wanted peace—rest—a quiet life. Of
course a man like that ought never to marry—he isn’t out for domesticity. A man like Crale should
have affairs but no binding ties. They’re bound to chafe him.”
“He confided in you?”
“Well—he knew that I was a pretty devoted pal. He let me see things. He didn’t complain. He
wasn’t that kind of man. Sometimes he’d say, ‘Damn all women.’ Or he’d say, ‘Never get
married, old boy. Wait for hell till after this life.’”
“You knew about his attachment to Miss Greer?”
“Oh yes—at least I saw it coming on. He told me he’d met a marvellous girl. She was different,
he said, from anything or anyone he’d ever met before. Not that I paid much attention to that.
Amyas was always meeting one woman or other who was ‘different.’ Usually a month later he’d
stare at you if you mentioned them, and wonder who you were talking about! But this Elsa Greer
really was different. I realized that when I came down to Alderbury to stay. She’d got him, you
know, hooked him good and proper. The poor mutt fairly ate out of her hand.”
“You did not like Elsa Greer either?”
“No, I didn’t like her. She was definitely a predatory creature. She, too, wanted to own Crale
body and soul. But I think, all the same, that she’d have been better for him than Caroline. She
might conceivably have let him alone once she was sure of him. Or she might have got tired of
him and moved on to someone else. The best thing for Amyas would have been to be quite free of
female entanglements.”
“But that, it would seem, was not to his taste?”
Philip Blake said with a sigh:
“The damned fool was always getting himself involved with some woman or other. And yet, in
a way, women really meant very little to him. The only two women who really made any
impression on him at all in his life were Caroline and Elsa.”
Poirot said:
“Was he fond of the child?”
“Angela? Oh! we all liked Angela. She was such a sport. She was always game for anything.
What a life she led that wretched governess of hers. Yes, Amyas liked Angela all right—but
sometimes she went too far and then he used to get really mad with her—and then Caroline would
step in—Caro was always on Angela’s side and that would finish Amyas altogether. He hated it
when Caro sided with Angela against him. There was a bit of jealousy all round, you know.
Amyas was jealous of the way Caro always put Angela first and would do anything for her. And
Angela was jealous of Amyas and rebelled against his overbearing ways. It was his decision that
she should go to school that autumn, and she was furious about it. Not, I think, because she didn’t
like the idea of school, she really rather wanted to go, I believe—but it was Amyas’s high-handed
way of settling it all offhand that infuriated her. She played all sorts of tricks on him in revenge.
Once she put ten slugs in his bed. On the whole, I think Amyas was right. It was time she got some
discipline. Miss Williams was very efficient, but even she confessed that Angela was getting too
much for her.”
He paused. Poirot said:
“When I asked if Amyas was fond of the child—I referred to his own child, his daughter?”
“Oh, you mean little Carla? Yes, she was a great pet. He enjoyed playing with her when he was
in the mood. But his affection for her wouldn’t have deterred him from marrying Elsa, if that’s
what you mean. He hadn’t that kind of feeling for her.”
“Was Caroline Crale very devoted to the child?” A kind of spasm contorted Philip’s face. He
said:
“I can’t say that she wasn’t a good mother. No, I can’t say that. It’s the one thing—”
“Yes, Mr. Blake?”
Philip said slowly and painfully:
“It’s the one thing I really—regret—in this affair. The thought of that child. Such a tragic
background to her young life. They sent her abroad to Amyas’s cousin and her husband. I hope—I
sincerely hope—they managed to keep the truth from her.”
Poirot shook his head. He said:
“The truth, Mr. Blake, has a habit of making itself known. Even after many years.”
The stockbroker murmured: “I wonder.”
Poirot went on:
“In the interests of truth, Mr. Blake, I am going to ask you to do something.”
“What is it?”
“I am going to beg that you will write me out an exact account of what happened on those days
at Alderbury. That is to say, I am going to ask you to write me out a full account of the murder and
its attendant circumstances.”
“But, my dear fellow, after all this time? I should be hopelessly inaccurate.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Surely.”
“No, for one thing, with the passage of time, the mind retains a hold on essentials and rejects
superficial matters.”
“Ho! You mean a mere broad outline?”
“Not at all. I mean a detailed conscientious account of each event as it occurred, and every
conversation you can remember.”
“And supposing I remember them wrong?”
“You can give the wording at least to the best of your reflection. There may be gaps, but that
cannot be helped.”
Blake looked at him curiously.
“But what’s the idea? The police files will give you the whole thing far more accurately.”
“No, Mr. Blake. We are speaking now from the psychological point of view. I do not want bare
facts. I want your own selections of facts. Time and your memory are responsible for that
selection. There may have been things done, words spoken, that I should seek for in vain in the
police files. Things and words that you never mentioned because, maybe, you judged them
irrelevant, or because you preferred not to repeat them.”
Blake said sharply:
“Is this account of mine for publication?”
“Certainly not. It is for my eye only. To assist me to draw my own deductions.”
“And you won’t quote from it without my consent?”
“Certainly not.”
“Hm,” said Philip Blake. “I’m a very busy man, Mr. Poirot.”
“I appreciate that there will be time and trouble involved. I should be happy to agree to a—
reasonable fee.”
There was a moment’s pause. Then Philip Blake said suddenly:
“No, if I do it—I’ll do it for nothing.”
“And you will do it?”
Philip said warningly:
“Remember, I can’t vouch for the accuracy of my memory.”
“That is perfectly understood.”
“Then I think,” said Philip Blake, “that I should like to do it. I feel I owe it—in a way—to
Amyas Crale.”
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