五只小猪11
时间：2024-12-17 01:15:29
（单词翻译:单击）
Ten
THIS LITTLE PIG CRIED “WEE WEE WEE”
Angela Warren’s flat overlooked Regent’s Park. Here, on this spring day, a soft air wafted in
through the open window and one might have had the illusion that one was in the country if it had
not been for the steady menacing roar of the traffic passing below.
Poirot turned from the window as the door opened and Angela Warren came into the room.
It was not the first time he had seen her. He had availed himself of the opportunity to attend a
lecture she had given at the Royal Geographical. It had been, he considered, an excellent lecture.
Dry, perhaps, from the view of popular appeal. Miss Warren had an excellent delivery, she neither
paused nor hesitated for a word. She did not repeat herself. The tones of her voice were clear and
not unmelodious. She made no concessions to romantic appeal or love of adventure. There was
very little human interest in the lecture. It was an admirable recital of concise facts, adequately
illustrated by excellent slides, and with intelligent deductions from the facts recited. Dry, precise,
clear, lucid, highly technical.
The soul of Hercule Poirot approved. Here, he considered, was an orderly mind.
Now that he saw her at close quarters he realized that Angela Warren might easily have been a
very handsome woman. Her features were regular, though severe. She had finely marked dark
brows, clear intelligent brown eyes, a fine pale skin. She had very square shoulders and a slightly
mannish walk.
There was certainly about her no suggestion of the little pig who cries “Wee Wee.” But on the
right cheek, disfiguring and puckering the skin, was that healed scar. The right eye was slightly
distorted, the corner pulled downwards by it but no one would have realized that the sight of that
eye was destroyed. It seemed to Hercule Poirot almost certain that she had lived with her disability
so long that she was now completely unconscious of it. And it occurred to him that of the five
people in whom he had become interested as a result of his investigations, those who might have
been said to start with the fullest advantages were not those who had actually wrested the most
success and happiness from life. Elsa, who might have been said to start with all advantages—
youth, beauty, riches—had done worst. She was like a flower overtaken by untimely frost—still in
bud—but without life. Cecilia Williams, to outward appearances, had no assets of which to boast.
Nevertheless, to Poirot’s eye, there was no despondency there and no sense of failure. Miss
Williams’s life had been interesting to her—she was still interested in people and events. She had
that enormous mental and moral advantage of a strict Victorian upbringing denied to us in these
days—she had done her duty in that station of life to which it had pleased God to call her, and that
assurance encased her in an armour impregnable to the slings and darts of envy, discontent and
regret. She had her memories, her small pleasures, made possible by stringent economies, and
sufficient health and vigour to enable her still to be interested in life.
Now, in Angela Warren—that young creature handicapped by disfigurement and its consequent
humiliation, Poirot believed he saw a spirit strengthened by its necessary fight for confidence and
assurance. The undisciplined schoolgirl had given place to a vital and forceful woman, a woman
of considerable mental power and gifted with abundant energy to accomplish ambitious purposes.
She was a woman, Poirot felt sure, both happy and successful. Her life was full and vivid and
eminently enjoyable.
She was not, incidentally, the type of woman that Poirot really liked. Though admiring the
clear-cut precision of her mind, she had just a sufficient nuance of the femme formidable about her
to alarm him as a mere man. His taste had always been for the flamboyant and extravagant.
With Angela Warren it was easy to come to the point of his visit. There was no subterfuge. He
merely recounted Carla Lemarchant’s interview with him.
Angela Warren’s severe face lighted up appreciatively.
“Little Carla? She is over here? I would like to see her so much.”
“You have not kept in touch with her?”
“Hardly as much as I should have done. I was a schoolgirl at the time she went to Canada, and I
realized, of course, that in a year or two she would have forgotten us. Of late years, an occasional
present at Christmas has been the only link between us. I imagined that she would, by now, be
completely immersed in the Canadian atmosphere and that her future would lie over there. Better
so, in the circumstances.”
Poirot said: “One might think so, certainly. A change of name—a change of scene. A new life.
But it was not to be so easy as that.”
And he then told of Carla’s engagement, the discovery she had made upon coming of age and
her motives in coming to England.
Angela Warren listened quietly, her disfigured cheek resting on one hand. She betrayed no
emotion during the recital, but as Poirot finished, she said quietly:
“Good for Carla.”
Poirot was startled. It was the first time that he had met with this reaction. He said:
“You approve, Miss Warren?”
“Certainly. I wish her every success. Anything I can do to help, I will. I feel guilty, you know,
that I haven’t attempted anything myself.”
“Then you think that there is a possibility that she is right in her views.”
Angela Warren said sharply:
“Of course she’s right. Caroline didn’t do it. I’ve always known that.”
Hercule Poirot murmured:
“You surprise me very much indeed, mademoiselle. Everybody else I have spoken to—”
She cut in sharply:
“You mustn’t go by that. I’ve no doubt that the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming. My
own conviction is based on knowledge—knowledge of my sister. I just know quite simply and
definitely that Caro couldn’t have killed anyone.”
“Can one say that with certainty of any human creature?”
“Probably not in most cases. I agree that the human animal is full of curious surprises. But in
Caroline’s case there were special reasons—reasons which I have a better chance of appreciating
than anyone else could.”
She touched her damaged cheek.
“You see this? You’ve probably heard about it?” Poirot nodded. “Caroline did that. That’s why
I’m sure—I know—that she didn’t do murder.”
“It would not be a convincing argument to most people.”
“No, it would be the opposite. It was actually used in that way, I believe. As evidence that
Caroline had a violent and ungovernable temper! Because she had injured me as a baby, learned
men argued that she would be equally capable of poisoning an unfaithful husband.”
Poirot said:
“I, at least, appreciated the difference. A sudden fit of ungovernable rage does not lead you to
first abstract a poison and then use it deliberately on the following day.”
Angela Warren waved an impatient hand.
“That’s not what I mean at all. I must try and make it plain to you. Supposing that you are a
person normally affectionate and of kindly disposition—but that you are also liable to intense
jealousy. And supposing that during the years of your life when control is most difficult, you do, in
a fit of rage, come near to committing what is, in effect, murder. Think of the awful shock, the
horror, the remorse that seizes upon you. To a sensitive person, like Caroline, that horror and
remorse will never quite leave you. It never left her. I don’t suppose I was consciously aware of it
at the time, but looking back I recognize it perfectly. Caro was haunted, continually haunted, by
the fact that she had injured me. That knowledge never left her in peace. It coloured all her
actions. It explained her attitude to me. Nothing was too good for me. In her eyes, I must always
come first. Half the quarrels she had with Amyas were on my account. I was inclined to be jealous
of him and played all kinds of tricks on him. I pinched cat stuff to put in his drink, and once I put a
hedgehog in his bed. But Caroline was always on my side.”
Miss Warren paused, then she went on:
“It was very bad for me, of course. I got horribly spoilt. But that’s neither here nor there. We’re
discussing the effect on Caroline. The result of that impulse to violence was a life-long abhorrence
of any further act of the same kind. Caro was always watching herself, always in fear that
something of that kind might happen again. And she took her own ways of guarding against it.
One of these ways was a great extravagance of language. She felt (and I think, psychologically
quite truly) that if she were violent enough in speech she would have no temptation to violence in
action. She found by experience that the method worked. That’s why I’ve heard Caro say things
like ‘I’d like to cut so and so in pieces and boil him slowly in oil.’ And she’d say to me, or to
Amyas, ‘If you go on annoying me I shall murder you.’ In the same way she quarrelled easily and
violently. She recognized, I think, the impulse to violence that there was in her nature, and she
deliberately gave it an outlet that way. She and Amyas used to have the most fantastic and lurid
quarrels.”
Hercule Poirot nodded.
“Yes, there was evidence of that. They quarrelled like cat and dog, it was said.”
Angela Warren said:
“Exactly. That’s what is so stupid and misleading about evidence. Of course Caro and Amyas
quarrelled! Of course they said bitter and outrageous and cruel things to each other! What nobody
appreciates is that they enjoyed quarrelling. But they did! Amyas enjoyed it too. They were that
kind of couple. They both of them liked drama and emotional scenes. Most men don’t. They like
peace. But Amyas was an artist. He liked shouting and threatening and generally being
outrageous. It was like letting off steam to him. He was the kind of man who when he loses his
collar stud bellows the house down. It sounds very odd, I know, but living that way with continual
rows and makingsup was Amyas’s and Caroline’s idea of fun!”
She made an impatient gesture.
“If they’d only not hustled me away and let me give evidence, I’d have told them that.” Then
she shrugged her shoulders. “But I don’t suppose they would have believed me. And anyway then
it wouldn’t have been as clear in my mind as it is now. It was the kind of thing I knew but hadn’t
thought about and certainly had never dreamed of putting into words.”
She looked across at Poirot.
“You do see what I mean?”
He nodded vigorously.
“I see perfectly—and I realize the absolute rightness of what you have said. There are people to
whom agreement is monotony. They require the stimulant of dissension to create drama in their
lives.”
“Exactly.”
“May I ask you, Miss Warren, what were your own feelings at the time?”
Angela Warren sighed.
“Mostly bewilderment and helplessness, I think. It seemed a fantastic nightmare. Caroline was
arrested very soon—about three days afterwards, I think. I can still remember my indignation, my
dumb fury—and, of course, my childish faith that it was just a silly mistake, that it would be all
right. Caro was chiefly perturbed about me—she wanted me kept right away from it all as far as
possible. She got Miss Williams to take me away to some relations almost at once. The police had
no objection. And then, when it was decided that my evidence would not be needed, arrangements
were made for me to go to school abroad.
“I hated going, of course. But it was explained to me that Caro had me terribly on her mind and
that the only way I could help her was by going.”
She paused. Then she said:
“So I went to Munich. I was there when—when the verdict was given. They never let me go to
see Caro. Caro wouldn’t have it. That’s the only time, I think, when she failed in understanding.”
“You cannot be sure of that, Miss Warren. To visit someone dearly loved in a prison might
make a terrible impression on a young sensitive girl.”
“Possibly.”
Angela Warren got up. She said:
“After the verdict, when she had been condemned, my sister wrote me a letter. I have never
shown it to anyone. I think I ought to show it to you now. It may help you to understand the kind
of person Caroline was. If you like you may take it to show to Carla also.”
She went to the door, then turning back she said:
“Come with me. There is a portrait of Caroline in my room.”
For a second time, Poirot stood gazing up at a portrait.
As a painting, Caroline Crale’s portrait was mediocre. But Poirot looked at it with interest—it
was not its artistic value that interested him.
He saw a long oval face, a gracious line of jaw and a sweet, slightly timid expression. It was a
face uncertain of itself, emotional, with a withdrawn hidden beauty. It lacked the forcefulness and
vitality of her daughter’s face — that energy and joy of life Carla Lemarchant had doubtless
inherited from her father. This was a less positive creature. Yet, looking at the painted face,
Hercule Poirot understood why an imaginative man like Quentin Fogg had not been able to forget
her.
Angela Warren stood at his side again—a letter in her hand.
She said quietly:
“Now that you have seen what she was like—read her letter.”
He unfolded it carefully and read what Caroline Crale had written sixteen years ago.
My darling little Angela,
You will hear bad news and you will grieve, but what I want to impress upon
you is that it is all all right. I have never told you lies and I don’t now when I say
that I am actually happy—that I feel an essential rightness and a peace that I
have never known before. It’s all right, darling, it’s all right. Don’t look back and
regret and grieve for me—go on with your life and succeed. You can, I know. It’s
all, all right, darling, and I’m going to Amyas. I haven’t the least doubt that we
shall be together. I couldn’t have lived without him…Do this one thing for me—
be happy. I’ve told you—I’m happy. One has to pay one’s debts. It’s lovely to feel
peaceful.
Your loving sister,
Caro
Hercule Poirot read it through twice. Then he handed it back. He said:
“That is a very beautiful letter, mademoiselle—and a very remarkable one. A very remarkable
one.”
“Caroline,” said Angela Warren, “was a very remarkable person.”
“Yes, an unusual mind…You take it that this letter indicates innocence?”
“Of course it does!”
“It does not say so explicitly.”
“Because Caro would know that I’d never dream of her being guilty!”
“Perhaps—perhaps…But it might be taken another way. In the sense that she was guilty and
that in expiating her crime she will find peace.”
It fitted in, he thought, with the description of her in court. And he experienced in this moment
the strongest doubts he had yet felt of the course to which he had committed himself. Everything
so far had pointed unswervingly to Caroline Crale’s guilt. Now, even her own words testified
against her.
On the other side was only the unshaken conviction of Angela Warren. Angela had known her
well, undoubtedly, but might not her certainty be the fanatical loyalty of an adolescent girl, up in
arms for a dearly loved sister?
As though she had read his thoughts Angela Warren said:
“No, Mr. Poirot—I know Caroline wasn’t guilty.”
Poirot said briskly:
“The Bon Dieu knows I do not want to shake you on that point. But let us be practical. You say
your sister was not guilty. Very well, then, what really happened?”
Angela nodded thoughtfully. She said:
“That is difficult, I agree. I suppose that, as Caroline said, Amyas committed suicide.”
“Is that likely from what you know of his character?”
“Very unlikely.”
“But you do not say, as in the first case, that you know it is impossible?”
“No, because, as I said just now, most people do do impossible things—that is to say things that
seem out of character. But I presume, if you know them intimately, it wouldn’t be out of
character.”
“You knew your brother-in-law well?”
“Yes, but not like I knew Caro. It seems to me quite fantastic that Amyas should have killed
himself—but I suppose he could have done so. In fact, he must have done so.”
“You cannot see any other explanation?”
Angela accepted the suggestion calmly, but not without a certain stirring of interest.
“Oh, I see what you mean…I’ve never really considered that possibility. You mean one of the
other people killed him? That it was a deliberate cold-blooded murder….”
“It might have been, might it not?”
“Yes, it might have been…But it certainly seems very unlikely.”
“More unlikely than suicide?”
“That’s difficult to say…On the face of it, there was no reason for suspecting anybody else.
There isn’t now when I look back….”
“All the same, let us consider the possibility. Who of those intimately concerned would you say
was—shall we say—the most likely person?”
“Let me think. Well, I didn’t kill him. And the Elsa creature certainly didn’t. She was mad with
rage when he died. Who else was there? Meredith Blake? He was always very devoted to
Caroline, quite a tame cat about the house. I suppose that might give him a motive in a way. In a
book he might have wanted to get Amyas out of the way so that he himself could marry Caroline.
But he could have achieved that just as well by letting Amyas go off with Elsa and then in due
time consoling Caroline. Besides I really can’t see Meredith as a murderer. Too mild and too
cautious. Who else was there?”
Poirot suggested: “Miss Williams? Philip Blake?”
Angela’s grave face relaxed into a smile for a minute.
“Miss Williams? One can’t really make oneself believe that one’s governess could commit a
murder! Miss Williams was always so unyielding and so full of rectitude.”
She paused a minute and then went on:
“She was devoted to Caroline, of course. Would have done anything for her. And she hated
Amyas. She was a great feminist and disliked men. Is that enough for murder? Surely not.”
“It would hardly seem so,” agreed Poirot.
Angela went on:
“Philip Blake?” She was silent for some few moments. Then she said quietly: “I think, you
know, if we’re just talking of likelihoods, he’s the most likely person.”
Poirot said:
“You interest me very much, Miss Warren. May I ask why you say that?”
“Nothing at all definite. But from what I remember of him, I should say he was a person of
rather limited imagination.”
“And a limited imagination predisposes you to murder?”
“It might lead you to take a crude way of settling your difficulties. Men of that type get a certain
satisfaction from action of some kind or other. Murder is a very crude business, don’t you think
so?”
“Yes—I think you are right…It is definitely a point of view, that. But all the same, Miss
Warren, there must be more to it than that. What motive could Philip Blake possibly have had?”
Angela Warren did not answer at once. She stood frowning down at the floor.
Hercule Poirot said:
“He was Amyas Crale’s best friend, was he not?”
She nodded.
“But there is something in your mind, Miss Warren. Something that you have not yet told me.
Were the two men rivals, perhaps, over the girl—over Elsa?”
Angela Warren shook her head.
“Oh, no, not Philip.”
“What is there then?”
Angela Warren said slowly:
“Do you know the way that things suddenly come back to you—after years perhaps. I’ll explain
what I mean. Somebody told me a story once, when I was eleven. I saw no point in that story
whatsoever. It didn’t worry me—it just passed straight over my head. I don’t believe I ever, as
they say, thought of it again. But about two years ago, sitting in the stalls at a revue, that story
came back to me, and I was so surprised that I actually said aloud, ‘Oh, now I see the point of that
silly story about the rice pudding.’ And yet there had been no direct allusion on the same lines—
only some fun sailing rather near the wind.”
Poirot said: “I understand what you mean, mademoiselle.”
“Then you will understand what I am going to tell you. I was once staying at a hotel. As I
walked along a passage, one of the bedroom doors opened and a woman I knew came out. It was
not her bedroom—and she registered the fact plainly on her face when she saw me.
“And I knew then the meaning of the expression I had once seen on Caroline’s face when at
Alderbury she came out of Philip Blake’s room one night.”
She leant forward, stopping Poirot’s words.
“I had no idea at the time, you understand. I knew things—girls of the age I was usually do—but
I didn’t connect them with reality. Caroline coming out of Philip Blake’s bedroom was just
Caroline coming out of Philip Blake’s bedroom to me. It might have been Miss William’s room or
my room. But what I did notice was the expression on her face—a queer expression that I didn’t
know and couldn’t understand. I didn’t understand it until, as I have told you, the night in Paris
when I saw that same expression on another woman’s face.”
Poirot said slowly:
“But what you tell me, Miss Warren, is sufficiently astonishing. From Philip Blake himself I got
the impression that he disliked your sister and always had done so.”
Angela said:
“I know. I can’t explain it but there it is.”
Poirot nodded slowly. Already, in his interview with Philip Blake, he had felt vaguely that
something did not ring true. That overdone animosity against Caroline—it had not, somehow,
been natural.
And the words and phrases from his conversation with Meredith Blake came back to him. “Very
upset when Amyas married—did not go near them for over a year….”
Had Philip, then, always been in love with Caroline? And had his love, when she chose Amyas,
turned to bitterness and hate?
Yes, Philip had been too vehement — too biased. Poirot visualized him thoughtfully — the
cheerful prosperous man with his golf and his comfortable house. What had Philip Blake really
felt sixteen years ago.
Angela Warren was speaking.
“I don’t understand it. You see, I’ve no experience in love affairs—they haven’t come my way.
I’ve told you this for what it’s worth in case—in case it might have a bearing on what happened.”
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