Five Little Pigs (Hercule Poirot 25)

I stammered out angrily that I hadn’t been listening—and anyhow, I said, why did Elsa say a silly thing like that?

Amyas said it was just a joke.

That ought to have satisfied me. It did—almost. But not quite.

I said to Elsa when we were on the way back: “I asked Amyas what you meant when you said you were going to marry him, and he said it was just a joke.”

I felt that ought to snub her. But she only smiled.

I didn’t like that smile of hers. I went up to Caroline’s room. It was when she was dressing for dinner. I asked her then outright if it were possible for Amyas to marry Elsa.

I remember Caroline’s answer as though I heard it now. She must have spoken with great emphasis.

“Amyas will only marry Elsa after I am dead,” she said.

That reassured me completely. Death seemed ages away from us all. Nevertheless, I was still very sore with Amyas about what he had said in the afternoon, and I went for him violently all through dinner, and I remember we had a real flaming row, and I rushed out of the room and went up to bed and howled myself to sleep.

I don’t remember much about the afternoon at Meredith Blake’s, although I do remember his reading aloud the passage from the Phaedo describing Socrates’ death. I had never heard it before. I thought it was the loveliest, most beautiful thing I had ever heard. I remember that—but I don’t remember when it was. As far as I can recall now, it might have been any time that summer.

I don’t remember anything that happened the next morning either, though I have thought and thought. I’ve a vague feeling that I must have bathed, and I think I remember being made to mend something.

But it’s all very vague and dim till the time when Meredith came panting up the path from the terrace, and his face was all grey and queer. I remember a coffee cup falling off the table and being broken—Elsa did that. And I remember her running—suddenly running for all she was worth down the path—and the awful look there was on her face.

I kept saying to myself: “Amyas is dead.” But it just didn’t seem real.

I remember Dr. Faussett coming and his grave face. Miss Williams was busy looking after Caroline. I wandered about rather forlornly, getting in people’s way. I had a nasty sick feeling. They wouldn’t let me go down and see Amyas. But by and by the police came and wrote down things in notebooks, and presently they brought his body up on a stretcher covered with a cloth.

Miss Williams took me into Caroline’s room later. Caroline was on the sofa. She looked very white and ill.

She kissed me and said she wanted me to go away as soon as I could, and it was all horrible, but I wasn’t to worry or think about it any more than I could help. I was to join Carla at Lady Tressillian’s because this house was to be kept as empty as possible.

I clung to Caroline and said I didn’t want to go away. I wanted to stay with her. She said she knew I did, but it was better for me to go away and would take a lot of worry off her mind. And Miss Williams chipped in and said:

“The best way you can help your sister, Angela, is to do what she wants you to do without making a fuss about it.”

So I said I would do whatever Caroline wished. And Caroline said: “That’s my darling Angela.” And she hugged me and said there was nothing to worry about, and to talk about it and think about it all as little as possible.

I had to go down and talk to a Police Superintendent. He was very kind, asked me when I had last seen Amyas and a lot of other questions which seemed to me quite pointless at the time, but which, of course, I see the point of now. He satisfied himself that there was nothing that I could tell him which he hadn’t already heard from the others. So he told Miss Williams that he saw no objection to my going over to Ferriby Grange to Lady Tressillian’s.

I went there, and Lady Tressillian was very kind to me. But of course I soon had to know the truth. They arrested Caroline almost at once. I was so horrified and dumbfounded that I became quite ill.

I heard afterwards that Caroline was terribly worried about me. It was at her insistence that I was sent out of England before the trial came on. But that I have told you already.

As you see, what I have to put down is pitiably meagre. Since talking to you I have gone over the little I remember painstakingly, racking my memory for details of this or that person’s expression or reaction. I can remember nothing consistent with guilt. Elsa’s frenzy. Meredith’s grey worried face. Philip’s grief and fury—they all seem natural enough. I suppose, though, someone could have been playing a part?

I only know this, Caroline did not do it.

I am quite certain on this point, and always shall be, but I have no evidence to offer except my own intimate knowledge of her character.

End of Angela Warren’s Narrative.

BOOK THREE

One

CONCLUSIONS

Carla Lemarchant looked up. Her eyes were full of fatigue and pain. She pushed back the hair from her forehead in a tired gesture.