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.”