Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie Read Free Book Online

thing, I'll kill myself.' Miss Greer's evidence was much the same. According to her, Mr Crale said, 'Do try and be reasonable about this, Caroline. I'm fond of you and will always wish you well - you and the child. But I'm going to marry Elsa. We've always agreed to leave each other free.' Mrs Crale answered to that, 'Very well, don't, say I haven't warned you.' He said, 'What do you mean?' And she said, 'I mean that I love you and I'm not going to lose you. I'd rather kill you than let you go to that girl.'”
    Poirot made a slight gesture. “It occurs to me,” he murmured, “that Miss Greer was singularly unwise to raise this issue. Mrs Crale could easily have refused her husband a divorce.”
    “We had some evidence bearing on that point,” said Hale. “Mrs Crale, it seems, confided partly, in Mr Meredith Blake. He was an old and trusted friend. He was very distressed and managed to get a word with Mr Crale about it. This, I may say, was on the preceding afternoon. Mr Blake remonstrated delicately with his friend, said how distressed he would be if the marriage between Mr and Mrs Crale was to break up so disastrously. He also stressed the point that Miss Greer was a very young girl and that it was a very serious thing to drag a young girl through the divorce court. To this Mr Crale replied, with a chuckle (callous sort of brute he must have been), 'That isn't Elsa's idea at all. She isn't going to appear. We shall fix it up in the usual way.'”
    “Therefore,” Poirot said, “even more imprudent of Miss Greer to have broken out the way she did.”
    Superintendent Hale said, “Oh, you know what women are! Have to get at one another's throats. It must have been a difficult situation anyhow. I can't understand Mr Crale allowing it to happen. According to Mr Meredith Blake he wanted to finish his picture. Does that make sense to you?”
    “Yes, my friend, I think it does.”
    “It doesn't to me. The man was asking for trouble!”
    “He was probably seriously annoyed with his young woman for breaking out the way she did.”
    “Oh, he was. Meredith Blake said so. If he had to finish the picture I don't see why he couldn't have taken some photographs and worked from them. I know a chap - does water colors of places - he does that.”
    Poirot shook his head. “No - I can understand Crale the artist. You must realize, my friend, that at that moment, probably, his picture was all that mattered to Crale. However much he wanted to marry the girl, the picture came first. That's why he hoped to get through her visit without its coming to an open issue. The girl, of course, didn't see it that way. With women, love always comes first.”
    “Don't I know it,” said Superintendent Hale with feeling.
    “Men,” continued Poirot, “and especially artists, are different.”
    “Art!” said the superintendent with scorn. “All this talk about art! I never have understood it and I never shall! You should have seen that picture Crale was painting. All lopsided. He'd made the girl look as though she had toothache and the battlements were all cockeyed. Unpleasant-looking, the whole thing. I couldn't get it out of my mind for a long time afterward. I even dreamed about it. And, what's more, it affected my eyesight - I began to see battlements and walls and things all out of drawing. Yes, and women, too!”
    Poirot smiled. He said, “Although you do not know it, you are paying a tribute to the greatness of Amyas Crale's art.”
    “Nonsense. Why can't a painter paint something nice and cheerful to look at? Why go out of your way to look for ugliness?”
    “Some of us, mon cher, see beauty in curious places.”
    “The girl was a good-looker, all right,” said Hale. “Lots of make-up and next to no clothes on. It isn't decent the way these girls go about. And that was sixteen years ago, mind you. Nowadays one wouldn't think anything of it. But then - well, it shocked me. Trousers and one of those sports shirts, open at the neck