Five Little Pigs   ::   Christie Agatha

Actually, the very first intimation I had of the whole thing was what I overheard from the terrace where I had escaped after lunch one day-Elsa said she was going to marry Amyas! It struck me as just ridiculous. I remember tackling Amyas about it. In the garden at Handcross it was. I said to him:

‘Why does Elsa say she’s going to marry you? She couldn’t. People can’t have two wives-it’s bigamy and they go to prison.’

Amyas got very angry and said: ‘How the devil did you hear that?’

I said I’d heard it through the library window.

He was angrier than ever then, and said it was high time I went to school and got out of the habit of eavesdropping.

I still remember the resentment I felt when he said that. Because it was sounfair. Absolutely and utterly unfair.

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 Ido remember his reading aloud the passage from the Ph?do 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.