Five Little Pigs

‘I suppose my husband put that idea into your head? He saw you when you arrived. Of course he doesn’t understand in the least. He never has. I’m not at all the sensitive sort of person he imagines I am.’

The amusement was still in her voice. She said:

‘My father, you know, was a mill hand. He worked his way up and made a fortune. You don’t do that if you’re thin-skinned. I’m the same.’

Poirot thought to himself: Yes, that is true. A thin-skinned person would not have come to stay in Caroline Crale’s house.

Lady Dittisham said:

‘What is it you want me to do?’

‘You are sure, madame, that to go over the past would not be painful to you?’

She considered a minute, and it struck Poirot suddenly that Lady Dittisham was a very frank woman. She might lie from necessity but never from choice.

Elsa Dittisham said slowly:

‘No, not painful. In a way, I wish it were.’

‘Why?’

She said impatiently:

‘It’s so stupid never to feel anything…’

And Hercule Poirot thought:

‘Yes, Elsa Greer is dead…’

Aloud he said:

‘At all events, Lady Dittisham, it makes my task very much easier.’

She said cheerfully:

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Have you a good memory, madame?’

‘Reasonably good, I think.’

‘And you are sure it will not pain you to go over those days in detail?’

‘It won’t pain me at all. Things can only pain you when they are happening.’

‘It is so with some people, I know.’

Lady Dittisham said:

‘That’s what Edward – my husband – can’t understand. He thinks the trial and all that was a terrible ordeal for me.’

‘Was it not?’

Elsa Dittisham said:

‘No, I enjoyed it.’ There was a reflective satisfied quality in her voice. She went on: ‘God, how that old brute Depleach went for me. He’s a devil, if you like. I enjoyed fighting him. He didn’t get me down.’

She looked at Poirot with a smile.

‘I hope I’m not upsetting your illusions. A girl of twenty, I ought to have been prostrated, I suppose – agonized with shame or something. I wasn’t. I didn’t care what they said to me. I only wanted one thing.’

‘What?’

‘To get her hanged, of course,’ said Elsa Dittisham.

He noticed her hands – beautiful hands but with long curving nails. Predatory hands.

She said:

‘You’re thinking me vindictive? So I am vindictive – to any one who has injured me. That woman was to my mind the lowest kind of woman there is. She knew that Amyas cared for me – that he was going to leave her and she killed him so that I shouldn’t have him.’

She looked across at Poirot.

‘Don’t you think that’s pretty mean?’

‘You do not understand or sympathize with jealousy?’

‘No, I don’t think I do. If you’ve lost, you’ve lost. If you can’t keep your husband, let him go with a good grace. It’s possessiveness I don’t understand.’

‘You might have understood it if you had ever married him.’

‘I don’t think so. We weren’t-’ She smiled suddenly at Poirot. Her smile was, he felt, a little frightening. It was so far removed from any real feeling. ‘I’d like you to get this right,’ she said. ‘Don’t think that Amyas Crale seduced an innocent young girl. It wasn’t like that at all! Of the two of us, I was responsible. I met him at a party and I fell for him – I knew I’d got to have him-’

A travesty – a grotesque travesty but-

And all my fortunes at thy foot I’ll lay

And follow thee, my lord, throughout the world…

‘Although he was married?’

‘Trespassers will be prosecuted? It takes more than a printed notice to keep you from reality. If he was unhappy with his wife and could be happy with me, then why not? We’ve only one life to live.’

‘But it has been said he was happy with his wife.’

Elsa shook her head.

‘No. They quarrelled like cat and dog. She nagged at him. She was – oh, she was a horrible woman!’

She got up and lit a cigarette. She said with a little smile:

‘Probably I’m unfair to her. But I really do think she was rather hateful.’

Poirot said slowly: ‘It was a great tragedy.’

‘Yes, it was a great tragedy.’ She turned on him suddenly, into the dead monotonous weariness of her face something came quiveringly alive.

‘It killed me, do you understand? It killed me. Ever since there’s been nothing – nothing at all.’ Her voice dropped. ‘Emptiness!’ She waved her hands impatiently. ‘Like a stuffed fish in a glass case!’

‘Did Amyas Crale mean so much to you?’

She nodded. It was a queer confiding little nod – oddly pathetic. She said:

‘I think I’ve always had a single-track mind.’ She mused sombrely. ‘I suppose – really – one ought to put a knife into oneself – like Juliet. But – but to do that is to acknowledge that you’re done for – that life’s beaten you.’

‘And instead?’

‘There ought to be everything – just the same – once one has got over it. I did get over it. It didn’t mean anything to me any more. I thought I’d go on to the next thing.’