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Five Little Pigs :: Christie Agatha
Страница: 125 из 147Supposing my mother had gone to her and told her that she wouldn’t divorce my father-that nothing would induce her to divorce him. You may say what you like, but I think Elsa had a bourgeois mind-she wanted to be respectably married. I think that then Elsa would have been perfectly capable of pinching the stuff-she had just as good a chance that afternoon-and might have tried to get my mother out of the way by poisoning her. I think that would be quitelike Elsa. And then, possibly, by some awful accident, Amyas got the stuff instead of Caroline.’
‘Again it is not badly imagined. What else?’
Carla said slowly:
‘Well, I thought-perhaps-Meredith!’
‘Ah-Meredith Blake?’
‘Yes. You see, he sounds to me just the sort of person who would do a murder. I mean, he was the slow dithering one the others laughed at, and underneath, perhaps, he resented that. Then my father married the girl he wanted to marry. And my father was successful and rich. And he did make all those poisons! Perhaps he really made them because he liked the idea of being able to kill someone one day. He had to call attention to the stuff being taken, so as to divert suspicion from himself. But he himself was far the most likely person to have taken it. He might, even, have liked getting Caroline hanged-because she turned him down long ago. I think, you know, it’s rather fishy what he says in his account of it all-how people do things that aren’t characteristic of them. Supposing he meanthimself when he wrote that?’
Hercule Poirot said:
‘You are at least right in this-not to take what has been written down as necessarily a true narrative. What has been written may have been written deliberately to mislead.’
‘Oh, I know. I’ve kept that in mind.’
‘Any other ideas?’
Carla said slowly:
‘I wondered-before I’d read this-about Miss Williams. She lost her job, you see, when Angela went to school. And if Amyas had died suddenly, Angela probably wouldn’t have gone after all. I mean if it passed off as a natural death-which it easily might have done, I suppose, if Meredith hadn’t missed the coniine. I read up coniine, and it hasn’t got any distinctive post-mortem appearances. It might have been thought to be sunstroke. I know that just losing a job doesn’t sound a very adequate motive for murder. But murders have been committed again and again for what seem ridiculously inadequate motives. Tiny sums of money sometimes. And a middle-aged, perhaps rather incompetent governess might have got the wind up and just seen no future ahead of her.
‘Again it is not badly imagined. What else?’
Carla said slowly:
‘Well, I thought-perhaps-Meredith!’
‘Ah-Meredith Blake?’
‘Yes. You see, he sounds to me just the sort of person who would do a murder. I mean, he was the slow dithering one the others laughed at, and underneath, perhaps, he resented that. Then my father married the girl he wanted to marry. And my father was successful and rich. And he did make all those poisons! Perhaps he really made them because he liked the idea of being able to kill someone one day. He had to call attention to the stuff being taken, so as to divert suspicion from himself. But he himself was far the most likely person to have taken it. He might, even, have liked getting Caroline hanged-because she turned him down long ago. I think, you know, it’s rather fishy what he says in his account of it all-how people do things that aren’t characteristic of them. Supposing he meanthimself when he wrote that?’
Hercule Poirot said:
‘You are at least right in this-not to take what has been written down as necessarily a true narrative. What has been written may have been written deliberately to mislead.’
‘Oh, I know. I’ve kept that in mind.’
‘Any other ideas?’
Carla said slowly:
‘I wondered-before I’d read this-about Miss Williams. She lost her job, you see, when Angela went to school. And if Amyas had died suddenly, Angela probably wouldn’t have gone after all. I mean if it passed off as a natural death-which it easily might have done, I suppose, if Meredith hadn’t missed the coniine. I read up coniine, and it hasn’t got any distinctive post-mortem appearances. It might have been thought to be sunstroke. I know that just losing a job doesn’t sound a very adequate motive for murder. But murders have been committed again and again for what seem ridiculously inadequate motives. Tiny sums of money sometimes. And a middle-aged, perhaps rather incompetent governess might have got the wind up and just seen no future ahead of her.