Five Little Pigs   ::   Christie Agatha

Poirot said:

‘Had your firm acted for Mrs Crale for a long period of years?’

George Mayhew shook his head.

‘On the contrary. Jonathan and Jonathan were the Crale solicitors. Under the circumstances, however, Mr Jonathan felt that he could not very well act for Mrs Crale, and he arranged with us-with my father-to take over her case. You would do well, I think, M. Poirot, to arrange a meeting with old Mr Jonathan. He has retired from active work-he is over seventy-but he knew the Crale family intimately, and he could tell you far more than I can. Indeed, I myself can tell you nothing at all. I was a boy at the time. I don’t think I was even in court.’

Poirot rose and George Mayhew, rising too, added:

‘You might like to have a word with Edmunds, our managing clerk. He was with the firm then and took a great interest in the case.’

Edmunds was a man of slow speech. His eyes gleamed with legal caution. He took his time in sizing up Poirot before he let himself be betrayed into speech. He said:

‘Ay, I mind the Crale case.’

He added severely: ‘It was a disgraceful business.’

His shrewd eyes rested appraisingly on Hercule Poirot.

He said:

‘It’s a long time since to be raking things up again.’

‘A court verdict is not always an ending.’

Edmunds’s square head nodded slowly.

‘I’d not say that you weren’t in the right of it there.’

Hercule Poirot went on: ‘Mrs Crale left a daughter.’

‘Ay, I mind there was a child. Sent abroad to relatives, was she not?’

Poirot went on:

‘That daughter believes firmly in her mother’s innocence.’

The huge bushy eyebrows of Mr Edmunds rose.

‘That’s the way of it, is it?’

Poirot asked:

‘Is there anything you can tell me to support that belief?’

Edmunds reflected. Then, slowly, he shook his head.

‘I could not conscientiously say there was. I admired Mrs Crale. Whatever else she was, she was a lady! Not like the other. A hussy-no more, no less. Bold as brass! Jumped-up trash-that’s whatshe was-and showed it! Mrs Crale was quality.’

‘But none the less a murderess?’

Edmunds frowned. He said, with more spontaneity than he had yet shown:

‘That’s what I used to ask myself, day after day. Sitting there in the dock so calm and gentle. “I’ll not believe it,” I used to say to myself. But, if you take my meaning, Mr Poirot, there wasn’t anything else to believe. That hemlock didn’t get into Mr Crale’s beer by accident.