Five Little Pigs Read Online Free PDF Page B

words and answered pat and to the point. You couldn’t have told, listening to her, which side she was on. Got all her wits about her, she had.The brisk kind.” He paused. “Knew a lot more than she ever let on about the whole thing, I shouldn’t wonder.”
    â€œI, too, should not wonder,” said Hercule Poirot.
    He looked sharply at the wrinkled, shrewd face of Mr. Alfred Edmunds. It was quite bland and impassive. But Hercule Poirot wondered if he had been vouchsafed a hint.

Four
T HE O LD S OLICITOR
    M r. Caleb Jonathan lived in Essex. After a courteous exchange of letters, Poirot received an invitation, almost royal in its character, to dine and sleep. The old gentleman was decidedly a character. After the insipidity of young George Mayhew, Mr. Jonathan was like a glass of his own vintage port.
    He had his own methods of approach to a subject, and it was not until well on towards midnight, when sipping a glass of fragrant old brandy, that Mr. Jonathan really unbent. In oriental fashion he had appreciated Hercule Poirot’s courteous refusal to rush him in any way. Now, in his own good time, he was willing to elaborate the theme of the Crale family.
    â€œOur firm, of course, has known many generations of the Crales. I knew Amyas Crale and his father, Richard Crale, and I can remember Enoch Crale—the grandfather. Country squires, all of them, thought more of horses than human beings. They rode straight, liked women, and had no truck with ideas. They distrusted ideas. But Richard Crale’s wife was cram full of ideas—more ideasthan sense. She was poetical and musical—she played the harp, you know. She enjoyed poor health and looked very picturesque on her sofa. She was an admirer of Kingsley. That’s why she called her son Amyas. His father scoffed at the name—but he gave in.
    â€œAmyas Crale profited by his mixed inheritance. He got his artistic trend from his weakly mother, and his driving power and ruthless egoism from his father. All the Crales were egoists. They never by any chance saw any point of view but their own.”
    Tapping with a delicate finger on the arm of his chair, the old man shot a shrewd glance at Poirot.
    â€œCorrect me if I am wrong, Mr. Poirot, but I think you are interested in—character, shall we say?”
    Poirot replied.
    â€œThat, to me, is the principal interest of all my cases.”
    â€œI can conceive of it. To get under the skin, as it were, of your criminal. How interesting. How absorbing. Our firm, of course, have never had a criminal practice. We should not have been competent to act for Mrs. Crale, even if taste had allowed. Mayhews, however, were a very adequate firm. They briefed Depleach—they didn’t perhaps show much imagination there—still, he was very expensive and, of course, exceedingly dramatic! What they hadn’t the wits to see was that Caroline would never play up in the way he wanted her to. She wasn’t a dramatic woman.”
    â€œWhat was she?” asked Poirot. “It is that that I am chiefly anxious to know.”
    â€œYes, yes—of course. How did she come to do what she did? That is the really vital question. I knew her, you know, before she married. Caroline Spalding, she was. A turbulent unhappy creature. Very alive. Her mother was left a widow early in life andCaroline was devoted to her mother. Then the mother married again—there was another child. Yes—yes, very sad, very painful. These young, ardent, adolescent jealousies.”
    â€œShe was jealous?”
    â€œPassionately so. There was a regrettable incident. Poor child, she blamed herself bitterly afterwards. But you know, Mr. Poirot, these things happen. There is an inability to put on the brakes. It comes—it comes with maturity.”
    Poirot said:
    â€œWhat happened?”
    â€œShe struck the child—the baby—flung a paperweight at her. The child lost the sight of one eye and