五只小猪09
时间：2024-12-17 01:14:32
（单词翻译:单击）
Eight
THIS LITTLE PIG HAD ROAST BEEF
The house in Brook Street had Darwin tulips in the window boxes. Inside the hall a great vase of
white lilac sent eddies of perfume towards the open front door.
A middle-aged butler relieved Poirot of his hat and stick. A footman appeared to take them and
the butler murmured deferentially:
“Will you come this way, sir?”
Poirot followed him along the hall and down three steps. A door was opened, the butler
pronounced his name with every syllable correct.
Then the door closed behind him and a tall thin man got up from a chair by the fire and came
towards him.
Lord Dittisham was a man just under forty. He was not only a Peer of the Realm, he was a poet.
Two of his fantastical poetic dramas had been staged at vast expense and had had a succès
d’estime. His forehead was rather prominent, his chin was eager, and his eyes and his mouth
unexpectedly beautiful.
He said:
“Sit down, Mr. Poirot.”
Poirot sat down and accepted a cigarette from his host. Lord Dittisham shut the box, struck a
match and held it for Poirot to light his cigarette, then he himself sat down and looked thoughtfully
at his visitor.
Then he said:
“It is my wife you have come to see, I know.”
Poirot answered:
“Lady Dittisham was so kind as to give me an appointment.”
“Yes.”
There was a pause. Poirot hazarded:
“You do not, I hope, object, Lord Dittisham?”
The thin dreamy face was transformed by a sudden quick smile.
“The objections of husbands, Mr. Poirot, are never taken seriously in these days.”
“Then you do object?”
“No. I cannot say that. But I am, I must confess it, a little fearful of the effect upon my wife. Let
me be quite frank. A great many years ago, when my wife was only a young girl, she passed
through a terrible ordeal. She has, I hope, recovered from the shock. I have come to believe that
she has forgotten it. Now you appear and necessarily your questions will reawaken these old
memories.”
“It is regrettable,” said Hercule Poirot politely.
“I do not know quite what the result will be.”
“I can only assure you, Lord Dittisham, that I shall be as discreet as possible, and do all I can
not to distress Lady Dittisham. She is, no doubt, of a delicate and nervous temperament.”
Then, suddenly and surprisingly, the other laughed. He said:
“Elsa? Elsa’s as strong as a horse!”
“Then—” Poirot paused diplomatically. The situation intrigued him.
Lord Dittisham said:
“My wife is equal to any amount of shocks. I wonder if you know her reason for seeing you?”
Poirot replied placidly: “Curiosity?”
A kind of respect showed in the other man’s eyes.
“Ah, you realize that?”
Poirot said:
“It is inevitable. Women will always see a private detective! Men will tell him to go to the
devil.”
“Some women might tell him to go to the devil too.”
“After they have seen him—not before.”
“Perhaps.” Lord Dittisham paused. “What is the idea behind this book?”
Hercule Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
“One resurrects the old tunes, the old stage turns, the old costumes. One resurrects, too, the old
murders.”
“Faugh!” said Lord Dittisham.
“Faugh! If you like. But you will not alter human nature by saying Faugh. Murder is a drama.
The desire for drama is very strong in the human race.”
Lord Dittisham murmured:
“I know—I know….”
“So you see,” said Poirot, “the book will be written. It is my part to make sure that there shall be
no gross misstatements, no tampering with the known facts.”
“The facts are public property I should have thought.”
“Yes. But not the interpretation of them.”
Dittisham said sharply:
“Just what do you mean by that, Mr. Poirot?”
“My dear Lord Dittisham, there are many ways of regarding, for instance, a historical fact. Take
an example: many books have been written on your Mary Queen of Scots, representing her as a
martyr, as an unprincipled and wanton woman, as a rather simpleminded saint, as a murderess and
an intriguer, or again as a victim of circumstance and fate! One can take one’s choice.”
“And in this case? Crale was killed by his wife—that is, of course, undisputed. At the trial my
wife came in for some, in my opinion, undeserved calumny. She had to be smuggled out of court
afterwards. Public opinion was very hostile to her.”
“The English,” said Poirot, “are a very moral people.”
Lord Dittisham said: “Confound them, they are!”
He added—looking at Poirot: “And you?”
“Me,” said Poirot. “I lead a very moral life. That is not quite the same thing as having moral
ideas.”
Lord Dittisham said:
“I’ve wondered sometimes what this Mrs. Crale was really like. All this injured wife business—
I’ve a feeling there was something behind that.”
“Your wife might know,” agreed Poirot.
“My wife,” said Lord Dittisham, “has never mentioned the case once.”
Poirot looked at him with quickened interest. He said:
“Ah, I begin to see—”
The other said sharply:
“What do you see?”
Poirot replied with a bow:
“The creative imagination of the poet….”
Lord Dittisham rose and rang the bell. He said brusquely:
“My wife will be waiting for you.”
The door opened.
“You rang, my lord?”
“Take Mr. Poirot up to her ladyship.”
Up two flights of stairs, feet sinking into soft pile carpets. Subdued flood lighting. Money,
money everywhere. Of taste, not so much. There had been a sombre austerity in Lord Dittisham’s
room. But here, in the house, there was only a solid lavishness. The best. Not necessarily the
showiest, or the most startling. Merely “expense no object,” allied to a lack of imagination.
Poirot said to himself: “Roast beef? Yes, roast beef!”
It was not a large room into which he was shown. The big drawing room was on the first floor.
This was the personal sitting room of the mistress of the house and the mistress of the house was
standing against the mantelpiece as Poirot was announced and shown in.
A phrase leapt into his startled mind and refused to be driven out.
She died young….
That was his thought as he looked at Elsa Dittisham who had been Elsa Greer.
He would never have recognized her from the picture Meredith Blake had shown him. That had
been, above all, a picture of youth, a picture of vitality. Here there was no youth—there might
never have been youth. And yet he realized, as he had not realized from Crale’s picture, that Elsa
was beautiful. Yes, it was a very beautiful woman who came forward to meet him. And certainly
not old. After all, what was she? Not more than thirty-six now if she had been twenty at the time
of the tragedy. Her black hair was perfectly arranged round her shapely head, her features were
almost classic, her makeup was exquisite.
He felt a strange pang. It was, perhaps, the fault of old Mr. Jonathan, speaking of Juliet…No
Juliet here—unless perhaps one could imagine Juliet a survivor—living on, deprived of Romeo…
Was it not an essential part of Juliet’s makeup that she should die young?
Elsa Greer had been left alive….
She was greeting him in a level rather monotonous voice.
“I am so interested, Mr. Poirot. Sit down and tell me what you want me to do?”
He thought:
“But she isn’t interested. Nothing interests her.”
Big grey eyes—like dead lakes.
Poirot became, as was his way, a little obviously foreign.
He exclaimed:
“I am confused, madame, veritably I am confused.”
“Oh no, why?”
“Because I realize that this—this reconstruction of a past drama must be excessively painful to
you!”
She looked amused. Yes, it was amusement. Quite genuine amusement.
She said:
“I suppose my husband put that idea into your head? He saw you when you arrived. Of course
he doesn’t understand in the least. He never has. I’m not at all the sensitive sort of person he
imagines I am.”
The amusement was still in her voice. She said:
“My father, you know, was a mill hand. He worked his way up and made a fortune. You don’t
do that if you’re thin-skinned. I’m the same.”
Poirot thought to himself: Yes, that is true. A thin-skinned person would not have come to stay
in Caroline Crale’s house.
Lady Dittisham said:
“What is it you want me to do?”
“You are sure, madame, that to go over the past would not be painful to you?”
She considered a minute, and it struck Poirot suddenly that Lady Dittisham was a very frank
woman. She might lie from necessity but never from choice.
Elsa Dittisham said slowly:
“No, not painful. In a way, I wish it were.”
“Why?”
She said impatiently:
“It’s so stupid never to feel anything….”
And Hercule Poirot thought:
“Yes, Elsa Greer is dead….”
Aloud he said:
“At all events, Lady Dittisham, it makes my task very much easier.”
She said cheerfully:
“What do you want to know?”
“Have you a good memory, madame?”
“Reasonably good, I think.”
“And you are sure it will not pain you to go over those days in detail?”
“It won’t pain me at all. Things can only pain you when they are happening.”
“It is so with some people, I know.”
Lady Dittisham said:
“That’s what Edward—my husband—can’t understand. He thinks the trial and all that was a
terrible ordeal for me.”
“Was it not?”
Elsa Dittisham said:
“No, I enjoyed it.” There was a reflective satisfied quality in her voice. She went on: “God, how
that old brute Depleach went for me. He’s a devil, if you like. I enjoyed fighting him. He didn’t get
me down.”
She looked at Poirot with a smile.
“I hope I’m not upsetting your illusions. A girl of twenty, I ought to have been prostrated, I
suppose—agonized with shame or something. I wasn’t. I didn’t care what they said to me. I only
wanted one thing.”
“What?”
“To get her hanged, of course,” said Elsa Dittisham.
He noticed her hands—beautiful hands but with long curving nails. Predatory hands.
She said:
“You’re thinking me vindictive? So I am vindictive—to anyone who has injured me. That
woman was to my mind the lowest kind of woman there is. She knew that Amyas cared for me—
that he was going to leave her and she killed him so that I shouldn’t have him.”
She looked across at Poirot.
“Don’t you think that’s pretty mean?”
“You do not understand or sympathize with jealousy?”
“No, I don’t think I do. If you’ve lost, you’ve lost. If you can’t keep your husband, let him go
with a good grace. It’s possessiveness I don’t understand.”
“You might have understood it if you had ever married him.”
“I don’t think so. We weren’t—” She smiled suddenly at Poirot. Her smile was, he felt, a little
frightening. It was so far removed from any real feeling. “I’d like you to get this right,” she said.
“Don’t think that Amyas Crale seduced an innocent young girl. It wasn’t like that at all! Of the
two of us, I was responsible. I met him at a party and I fell for him—I knew I’d got to have him
—”
A travesty—a grotesque travesty but—
And all my fortunes at thy foot I’ll lay
And follow thee, my lord, throughout the world….
“Although he was married?”
“Trespassers will be prosecuted? It takes more than a printed notice to keep you from reality. If
he was unhappy with his wife and could be happy with me, then why not? We’ve only one life to
live.”
“But it has been said he was happy with his wife.”
Elsa shook her head.
“No. They quarrelled like cat and dog. She nagged at him. She was—oh, she was a horrible
woman!”
She got up and lit a cigarette. She said with a little smile:
“Probably I’m unfair to her. But I really do think she was rather hateful.”
Poirot said slowly: “It was a great tragedy.”
“Yes, it was a great tragedy.” She turned on him suddenly, into the dead monotonous weariness
of her face something came quiveringly alive.
“It killed me, do you understand? It killed me. Ever since there’s been nothing—nothing at all.”
Her voice dropped. “Emptiness!” She waved her hands impatiently. “Like a stuffed fish in a glass
case!”
“Did Amyas Crale mean so much to you?”
She nodded. It was a queer confiding little nod—oddly pathetic. She said:
“I think I’ve always had a single-track mind.” She mused sombrely. “I suppose—really—one
ought to put a knife into oneself—like Juliet. But—but to do that is to acknowledge that you’re
done for—that life’s beaten you.”
“And instead?”
“There ought to be everything—just the same—once one has got over it. I did get over it. It
didn’t mean anything to me any more. I thought I’d go on to the next thing.”
Yes, the next thing. Poirot saw her plainly trying so hard to fulfil that crude determination. Saw
her beautiful and rich, seductive to men, seeking with greedy predatory hands to fill up a life that
was empty. Hero worship—a marriage to a famous aviator—then an explorer, that big giant of a
man, Arnold Stevenson—possibly not unlike Amyas Crale physically—a reversion to the creative
arts: Dittisham!
Elsa Dittisham said:
“I’ve never been a hypocrite! There’s a Spanish proverb I’ve always liked. Take what you want
and pay for it, says God. Well, I’ve done that. I’ve taken what I wanted—but I’ve always been
willing to pay the price.”
Hercule Poirot said:
“What you do not understand is that there are things that cannot be bought.”
She stared at him. She said:
“I don’t mean just money.”
Poirot said:
“No, no, I understand what you mean. But it is not everything in life that has its ticket, so much.
There are things that are not for sale.”
“Nonsense!”
He smiled very faintly. In her voice was the arrogance of the successful mill hand who had risen
to riches.
Hercule Poirot felt a sudden wave of pity. He looked at the ageless, smooth face, the weary
eyes, and he remembered the girl whom Amyas Crale had painted….
Elsa Dittisham said:
“Tell me all about this book. What is the purpose of it? Whose idea is it?”
“Oh! my dear lady, what other purpose is there but to serve up yesterday’s sensation with
today’s sauce.”
“But you’re not a writer?”
“No, I am an expert on crime.”
“You mean they consult you on crime books?”
“Not always. In this case, I have a commission.”
“From whom?”
“I am—what do you say—vetting this publication on behalf of an interested party.”
“What party?”
“Miss Carla Lemarchant.”
“Who is she?”
“She is the daughter of Amyas and Caroline Crale.”
Elsa stared for a minute. Then she said:
“Oh, of course, there was a child. I remember. I suppose she’s grown up now?”
“Yes, she is twenty-one.”
“What is she like?”
“She is tall and dark and, I think, beautiful. And she has courage and personality.”
Elsa said thoughtfully:
“I should like to see her.”
“She might not care to see you.”
Elsa looked surprised.
“Why? Oh, I see. But what nonsense! She can’t possibly remember anything about it. She can’t
have been more than six.”
“She knows that her mother was tried for her father’s murder.”
“And she thinks it’s my fault?”
“It is a possible interpretation.”
Elsa shrugged her shoulders. She said:
“How stupid! If Caroline had behaved like a reasonable human being—”
“So you take no responsibility?”
“Why should I? I’ve nothing to be ashamed of. I loved him. I would have made him happy.”
She looked across at Poirot. Her face broke up—suddenly, incredibly, he saw the girl of the
picture. She said: “If I could make you see. If you could see it from my side. If you knew—”
Poirot leaned forward.
“But that is what I want. See, Mr. Philip Blake who was there at the time, he is writing me a
meticulous account of everything that happened. Mr. Meredith Blake the same. Now if you—”
Elsa Dittisham took a deep breath. She said contemptuously:
“Those two! Philip was always stupid. Meredith used to trot round after Caroline—but he was
quite a dear. But you won’t have any real idea from their accounts.”
He watched her, saw the animation rising in her eyes, saw a living woman take shape from a
dead one. She said quickly and almost fiercely:
“Would you like the truth? Oh, not for publication. But just for yourself—”
“I will undertake not to publish without your consent.”
“I’d like to write down the truth…” She was silent a minute or two, thinking. He saw the
smooth hardness of her cheeks falter and take on a younger curve, he saw life ebbing into her as
the past claimed her again.
“To go back—to write it all down…To show you what she was—”
Her eyes flashed. Her breast heaved passionately.
“She killed him. She killed Amyas. Amyas who wanted to live—who enjoyed living. Hate
oughtn’t to be stronger than love—but her hate was. And my hate for her is—I hate her—I hate
her—I hate her….”
She came across to him. She stooped, her hand clutched at his sleeve. She said urgently:
“You must understand—you must—how we felt about each other. Amyas and I, I mean.
There’s something—I’ll show you.”
She whirled across the room. She was unlocking a little desk, pulling out a drawer concealed
inside a pigeon hole.
Then she was back. In her hand was a creased letter, the ink faded. She thrust it on him and
Poirot had a sudden poignant memory of a child he had known who had thrust on him one of her
treasures—a special shell picked up on the seashore and zealously guarded. Just so had that child
stood back and watched him. Proud, afraid, keenly critical of his reception of her treasure.
He unfolded the faded sheets.
Elsa—you wonderful child! There never was anything as beautiful. And yet I’m
afraid—I’m too old—a middle-aged, ugly tempered devil with no stability in me.
Don’t trust me, don’t believe in me—I’m no good—apart from my work. The best
of me is in that. There, don’t say you haven’t been warned.
Hell, my lovely—I’m going to have you all the same. I’d go to the devil for you
and you know it. And I’ll paint a picture of you that will make the fat-headed
world hold its sides and gasp! I’m crazy about you—I can’t sleep—I can’t eat.
Elsa—Elsa—Elsa—I’m yours for ever—yours till death. Amyas.
Sixteen years ago. Faded ink, crumbling paper. But the words still alive—still vibrating….
He looked across at the woman to whom they had been written.
But it was no longer a woman at whom he looked.
It was a young girl in love.
He thought again of Juliet….
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