五只小猪20
时间：2024-12-17 02:32:46
（单词翻译:单击）
Four
TRUTH
Slowly, Angela Warren swung round. Her eyes, hard and contemptuous, ranged over the faces
turned towards her.
She said:
“You’re blind fools—all of you. Don’t you know that if I had done it I would have confessed!
I’d never have let Caroline suffer for what I’d done. Never!”
Poirot said:
“But you did tamper with the beer.”
“I? Tamper with the beer?”
Poirot turned to Meredith Blake.
“Listen, monsieur. In your account here of what happened, you describe having heard sounds in
this room, which is below your bedroom, on the morning of the crime.”
Blake nodded.
“But it was only a cat.”
“How do you know it was a cat?”
“I—I can’t remember. But it was a cat. I am quite sure it was a cat. The window was open just
wide enough for a cat to get through.”
“But it was not fixed in that position. The sash moves freely. It could have been pushed up and a
human being could have got in and out.”
“Yes, but I know it was a cat.”
“You did not see a cat?”
Blake said perplexedly and slowly:
“No, I did not see it—” He paused, frowning. “And yet I know.”
“I will tell you why you know presently. In the meantime I put this point to you. Someone could
have come up to the house that morning, have got into your laboratory, taken something from the
shelf and gone again without your seeing them. Now if that someone had come over from
Alderbury it could not have been Philip Blake, nor Elsa Greer, nor Amyas Crale nor Caroline
Crale. We know quite well what all those four were doing. That leaves Angela Warren and Miss
Williams. Miss Williams was over here—you actually met her as you went out. She told you then
that she was looking for Angela. Angela had gone bathing early, but Miss Williams did not see her
in the water, nor anywhere on the rocks. She could swim across to this side easily—in fact she did
so later in the morning when she was bathing with Philip Blake. I suggest that she swam across
here, came up to the house, got in through the window, and took something from the shelf.”
Angela Warren said: “I did nothing of the kind—not—at least—”
“Ah!” Poirot gave a yelp of triumph. “You have remembered. You told me, did you not, that to
play a malicious joke on Amyas Crale you pinched some of what you called ‘the cat stuff’—that is
how you put it—”
Meredith Blake said sharply:
“Valerian! Of course.”
“Exactly. That is what made you sure in your mind that it was a cat who had been in the room.
Your nose is very sensitive. You smelled the faint, unpleasant odour of valerian without knowing,
perhaps, that you did so—but it suggested to your subconscious mind ‘Cat.’ Cats love valerian and
will go anywhere for it. Valerian is particularly nasty to taste, and it was your account of it the day
before which made mischievous Miss Angela plan to put some in her brother-in-law’s beer, which
she knew he always tossed down his throat in a draught.”
Angela Warren said wonderingly: “Was it really that day? I remember taking it perfectly. Yes,
and I remember getting out the beer and Caroline coming in and nearly catching me! Of course I
remember…But I’ve never connected it with that particular day.”
“Of course not—because there was no connection in your mind. The two events were entirely
dissimilar to you. One was on a par with other mischievous pranks—the other was a bombshell of
tragedy arriving without warning and succeeding in banishing all lesser incidents from your mind.
But me, I noticed when you spoke of it that you said: ‘I pinched, etc., etc., to put it in Amyas’s
drink.’ You did not say you had actually done so.”
“No, because I never did. Caroline came in just when I was unscrewing the bottle. Oh!” It was a
cry. “And Caroline thought—she thought it was me—!”
She stopped. She looked round. She said quietly in her usual cool tones: “I suppose you all
think so, too.”
She paused and then said: “I didn’t kill Amyas. Not as the result of a malicious joke nor in any
other way. If I had I would never have kept silence.”
Miss Williams said sharply:
“Of course you wouldn’t, my dear.” She looked at Hercule Poirot. “Nobody but a fool would
think so.”
Hercule Poirot said mildly:
“I am not a fool and I do not think so. I know quite well who killed Amyas Crale.”
He paused.
“There is always a danger of accepting facts as proved which are really nothing of the kind. Let
us take the situation at Alderbury. A very old situation. Two women and one man. We have taken
it for granted that Amyas Crale proposed to leave his wife for the other woman. But I suggest to
you now that he never intended to do anything of the kind.
“He had had infatuations for women before. They obsessed him while they lasted, but they were
soon over. The women he had fallen in love with were usually women of a certain experience—
they did not expect too much of him. But this time the woman did. She was not, you see, a woman
at all. She was a girl, and in Caroline Crale’s words, she was terribly sincere…She may have been
hard-boiled and sophisticated in speech, but in love she was frighteningly single-minded. Because
she herself had a deep and overmastering passion for Amyas Crale she assumed that he had the
same for her. She assumed without any question that their passion was for life. She assumed
without asking him that he was going to leave his wife.
“But why, you will say, did Amyas Crale not undeceive her? And my answer is—the picture.
He wanted to finish his picture.
“To some people that sounds incredible—but not to anybody who knows about artists. And we
have already accepted that explanation in principle. That conversation between Crale and
Meredith Blake is more intelligible now. Crale is embarrassed—pats Blake on the back, assures
him optimistically the whole thing is going to pan out all right. To Amyas Crale, you see,
everything is simple. He is painting a picture, slightly encumbered by what he describes as a
couple of jealous, neurotic women—but neither of them is going to be allowed to interfere with
what to him is the most important thing in life.
“If he were to tell Elsa the truth it would be all up with the picture. Perhaps in the first flush of
his feelings for her he did talk about leaving Caroline. Men do say these things when they are in
love. Perhaps he merely let it be assumed, as he is letting it be assumed now. He doesn’t care what
Elsa assumes. Let her think what she likes. Anything to keep her quiet for another day or two.
“Then—he will tell her the truth—that things between them are over. He has never been a man
to be troubled with scruples.
“He did, I think, make an effort not to get embroiled with Elsa to begin with. He warned her
what kind of a man he was—but she would not take warning. She rushed on her Fate. And to a
man like Crale women were fair game. If you had asked him he would have said easily that Elsa
was young—she’d soon get over it. That was the way Amyas Crale’s mind worked.
“His wife was actually the only person he cared about at all. He wasn’t worrying much about
her. She’d only got to put up with things for a few days longer. He was furious with Elsa for
blurting out things to Caroline, but he still optimistically thought it would be ‘all right.’ Caroline
would forgive him as she had done so often before, and Elsa—Elsa would just have to ‘lump it.’
So simple are the problems of life to a man like Amyas Crale.
“But I think that that last evening he became really worried. About Caroline, not about Elsa.
Perhaps he went to her room and she refused to speak with him. At any rate, after a restless night,
he took her aside after breakfast and blurted out the truth. He had been infatuated with Elsa, but it
was all over. Once he’d finished the picture he’d never see her again.
“And it was in answer to that that Caroline Crale cried out indignantly: ‘You and your women!’
That phrase, you see, put Elsa in a class with others—those others who had gone their way. And
she added indignantly: ‘Some day I’ll kill you.’
“She was angry, revolted by his callousness and by his cruelty to the girl. When Philip Blake
saw her in the hall and heard her murmur to herself, ‘It’s too cruel!’ it was of Elsa she was
thinking.
“As for Crale, he came out of the library, found Elsa with Philip Blake, and brusquely ordered
her down to go on with the sitting. What he did not know was that Elsa Greer had been sitting just
outside the library window and had overheard everything. And the account she gave later of that
conversation was not the true one. There is only her word for it, remember.
“Imagine the shock it must have been to her to hear the truth, brutally spoken!
“On the previous afternoon Meredith Blake has told us that whilst he was waiting for Caroline
to leave this room he was standing in the doorway with his back to the room. He was talking to
Elsa Greer. That means that she would have been facing him and that she could see exactly what
Caroline was doing over his shoulder—and that she was the only person who could do so.
“She saw Caroline take that poison. She said nothing, but she remembered it as she sat outside
the library window.
“When Amyas Crale came out she made the excuse of wanting a pullover, and went up to
Caroline Crale’s room to look for that poison. Women know where other women are likely to hide
things. She found it, and being careful not to obliterate any fingerprints or to leave her own, she
drew off the fluid into a fountain-pen filler.
“Then she came down again and went off with Crale to the Battery garden. And presently, no
doubt, she poured him out some beer and he tossed it down in his usual way.
“Meanwhile, Caroline Crale was seriously disturbed. When she saw Elsa come up to the house
(this time really to fetch a pullover), Caroline slipped quickly down to the Battery garden and
tackled her husband. What he is doing is shameful! She won’t stand for it! It’s unbelievably cruel
and hard on the girl! Amyas, irritable at being interrupted, says it’s all settled—when the picture is
done he’ll send the girl packing! ‘It’s all settled—I’ll send her packing. I tell you.’
“And then they hear the footsteps of the two Blakes, and Caroline comes out and, slightly
embarrassed, murmurs something about Angela and school and having a lot to do, and by a natural
association of ideas the two men judge the conversation they have overheard refers to Angela, and
‘I’ll send her packing’ becomes ‘I’ll see to her packing.’
“And Elsa, pullover in hand, comes down the path, cool and smiling, and takes up the pose once
more.
“She has counted, no doubt, upon Caroline’s being suspected and the coniine bottle being found
in her room. But Caroline now plays into her hands completely. She brings down some iced beer
and pours it out for her husband.
“Amyas tosses it off, making a face and says: ‘Everything tastes foul today.’
“Do you not see how significant that remark is? Everything tastes foul? Then there has been
something else before that beer that has tasted unpleasant and the taste of which is still in his
mouth. And one other point. Philip Blake speaks of Crale’s staggering a little and wonders ‘if he
has been drinking.’ But that slight stagger was the first sign of the coniine working, and that means
that it had already been administered to him some time before Caroline brought him the iced
bottle of beer.
“And so Elsa Greer sat on the grey wall and posed and, since she must keep him from
suspecting until it was too late, she talked to Amyas Crale brightly and naturally. Presently she
saw Meredith on the bench above and waved her hand to him and acted her part even more
thoroughly for his behalf.
“And Amyas Crale, a man who detested illness and refused to give in to it, painted doggedly on
till his limbs failed and his speech thickened, and he sprawled there on that bench, helpless, but
with his mind still clear.
“The bell sounded from the house and Meredith left the bench to come down to the Battery. I
think in that brief moment Elsa left her place and ran across to the table and dropped the last few
drops of the poison into the beer glass that held that last innocent drink. (She got rid of the dropper
on the path up to the house—crushing it to powder.) Then she met Meredith in the doorway.
“There is a glare there coming in out of the shadows. Meredith did not see very clearly—only
his friend sprawled in a familiar position and saw his eyes turn from the picture in what he
described as a malevolent glare.
“How much did Amyas know or guess? How much his conscious mind knew we cannot tell, but
his hand and his eye were faithful.”
Hercule Poirot gestured towards the picture on the wall.
“I should have known when I first saw that picture. For it is a very remarkable picture. It is the
picture of a murderess painted by her victim—it is the picture of a girl watching her lover die….”
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