Five Little Pigs Read Free Page A

hidden away at the bottom of a drawer.”
    Hercule Poirot moved uncomfortably. He said:
    â€œSomebody else might have put it there.”
    â€œOh! 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.”
    â€œFor what reason?”
    â€œShe 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.”
    â€œIt was given him in beer, was it not?”
    â€œYes. 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 beer she 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.”
    â€œThey found her fingerprints on the bottle?”
    â€œNo, they didn’t—they found only his —and they were phoney ones. She was alone with the body, you see, while the governess went to call up a doctor. And what she must have done was to wipe the bottle and glass and then press his fingers on them. She wanted to pretend, you see, that she’d never even handled the stuff. Well, that didn’t work. Old Rudolph, who was prosecuting, had a lot of fun with that—proved quite definitely by demonstration in court that a man couldn’t hold a bottle with his fingers in that position! Of course we did our best to prove that he could —that his hands would take up a contorted attitude when he was dying—but frankly our stuff wasn’t very convincing.”
    Hercule Poirot said:
    â€œThe coniine in the bottle must have been put there before she took it down to the garden.”
    â€œThere was no coniine in the bottle at all. Only in the glass.”
    He paused—his large handsome face suddenly altered—heturned his head sharply. “Hallo,” he said. “Now then, Poirot, what are you driving at? ”
    Poirot said:
    â€œ If Caroline Crale was innocent, how did that coniine get into the beer? The defence said at the time that Amyas Crale himself put it there. But you say to me that that was in the highest degree unlikely—and for my part I agree with you. He was not that kind of man. Then, if Caroline Crale did not do it, someone else did .”
    Depleach said with almost a splutter:
    â€œOh, damn it all, man, you can’t flog a dead horse. It’s all over and done with years ago. Of course she did it. You’d know that well enough if you’d seen her at the time. It was written all over her! I even fancy that the verdict was a relief to her. She wasn’t frightened. No nerves at all. Just wanted to get through the trial and have it over. A very brave woman, really….”
    â€œAnd yet,” said Hercule Poirot, “when she died she left a letter to be given to her daughter in which she swore solemnly that she was innocent.”
    â€œI dare say she did,” said Sir Montague Depleach. “You or I would have done the same in her place.”
    â€œHer daughter says she was not that kind of woman.”
    â€œThe daughter says—pah! What does she know about it? My dear Poirot, the daughter was a mere infant at the time of the trial. What