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Five Little Pigs :: Christie Agatha
Страница: 8 из 147She got him to paint her-he didn’t paint regular Society portraits, “Mrs Blinkety Blank in satin and pearls”, but he painted figures. I don’t know that most women would have cared to be painted by him-he didn’t spare them! But he painted the Greer girl, and he ended by falling for her good and proper. He was getting on for forty, you know, and he’d been married a good many years. He was just ripe for making a fool of himself over some chit of a girl. Elsa Greer was the girl. He was crazy about her, and his idea was to get a divorce from his wife and marry Elsa.
‘Caroline Crale wasn’t standing for that. She threatened him. She was overheard by two people to say that if he didn’t give the girl up she’d kill him. And she meant it all right! The day before it happened, they’d been having tea with a neighbour. He was by way of dabbling in herbs and home-brewed medicines. Amongst his patent brews was one of coniine-spotted hemlock. There was some talk about it and its deadly properties.
‘The next day he noticed that half the contents of the bottle had gone. Got the wind up about it. They found an almost empty bottle of it in Mrs Crale’s room, hidden away at the bottom of a drawer.’
Hercule Poirot moved uncomfortably. He said:
‘Somebody else might have put it there.’
‘Oh! She admitted to the police she’d taken it. Very unwise, of course, but she didn’t have a solicitor to advise her at that stage. When they asked her about it, she admitted quite frankly that she had taken it.’
‘For what reason?’
‘She made out that she’d taken it with the idea of doing herself in. She couldn’t explain how the bottle came to be empty-nor how it was that there were only her fingerprints on it. That part of it was pretty damaging. She contended, you see, that Amyas Crale had committed suicide. But if he’d taken the coniine from the bottle she’d hidden in her room,his fingerprints would have been on the bottle as well as hers.’
‘It was given him in beer, was it not?’
‘Yes. She got out the bottle from the refrigerator and took it down herself to where he was painting in the garden. She poured it out and gave it to him and watched him drink it. Every one went up to lunch and left him-he often didn’t come in to meals. Afterwards she and the governess found him there dead. Her story was that the beershe gave him was all right. Our theory was that he suddenly felt so worried and remorseful that he slipped the poison in himself. All poppycock-he wasn’t that kind of man! And the fingerprint evidence was the most damning of all.
‘Caroline Crale wasn’t standing for that. She threatened him. She was overheard by two people to say that if he didn’t give the girl up she’d kill him. And she meant it all right! The day before it happened, they’d been having tea with a neighbour. He was by way of dabbling in herbs and home-brewed medicines. Amongst his patent brews was one of coniine-spotted hemlock. There was some talk about it and its deadly properties.
‘The next day he noticed that half the contents of the bottle had gone. Got the wind up about it. They found an almost empty bottle of it in Mrs Crale’s room, hidden away at the bottom of a drawer.’
Hercule Poirot moved uncomfortably. He said:
‘Somebody else might have put it there.’
‘Oh! She admitted to the police she’d taken it. Very unwise, of course, but she didn’t have a solicitor to advise her at that stage. When they asked her about it, she admitted quite frankly that she had taken it.’
‘For what reason?’
‘She made out that she’d taken it with the idea of doing herself in. She couldn’t explain how the bottle came to be empty-nor how it was that there were only her fingerprints on it. That part of it was pretty damaging. She contended, you see, that Amyas Crale had committed suicide. But if he’d taken the coniine from the bottle she’d hidden in her room,his fingerprints would have been on the bottle as well as hers.’
‘It was given him in beer, was it not?’
‘Yes. She got out the bottle from the refrigerator and took it down herself to where he was painting in the garden. She poured it out and gave it to him and watched him drink it. Every one went up to lunch and left him-he often didn’t come in to meals. Afterwards she and the governess found him there dead. Her story was that the beershe gave him was all right. Our theory was that he suddenly felt so worried and remorseful that he slipped the poison in himself. All poppycock-he wasn’t that kind of man! And the fingerprint evidence was the most damning of all.