Five Little Pigs

‘She was five and a half. A very charming child – a little over-quiet, perhaps. Thoughtful. Given to playing her own little games and not inviting outside co-operation. Natural and unspoilt.’

Poirot said:

‘It was fortunate she was so young.’

‘Yes, indeed. Had she been older the shock of the tragedy might have had a very bad effect.’

‘Nevertheless,’ said Poirot, ‘one feels that there was a handicap – however little the child understood or was allowed to know, there would have been an atmosphere of mystery and evasion and an abrupt uprooting. These things are not good for a child.’

Miss Williams replied thoughtfully:

‘They may have been less harmful than you think.’

Poirot said:

‘Before we leave the subject of Carla Lemarchant – little Carla Crale that was, there is something I would like to ask you. If any one can explain it, I think you can.’

‘Yes?’

Her voice was inquiring, non-commital.

Poirot waved his hands in an effort to express his meaning.

‘There is a something – a nuance I cannot define – but it seems to me always that the child, when I mention her, is not given her full representational value. When I mention her, the response comes always with a vague surprise, as though the person to whom I speak had forgotten altogether that therewas a child. Now surely, Mademoiselle, that is not natural? A child, under these circumstances, is a person of importance, not in herself, but as a pivotal point. Amyas Crale may have had reasons for abandoning his wife – or for not abandoning her. But in the usual break-up of a marriage the child forms a very important point. But here the child seems to count for very little. That seems to me – strange.’

Miss Williams said quickly:

‘You have put your finger on a vital point, M. Poirot. You are quite right. And that is partly why I said what I did just now – that Carla’s transportation to different surroundings might have been in some respects a good thing for her. When she was older, you see, she might have suffered from a certain lack in her home life.’

She leaned forward and spoke slowly and carefully.

‘Naturally, in the course of my work, I have seen a good many aspects of the parent and child problem. Many children, most children, I should say, suffer from over-attention on the part of their parents. There is too much love, too much watching over the child. It is uneasily conscious of this brooding, and seeks to free itself, to get away and be unobserved. With an only child that is particularly the case, and of course mothers are the worst offenders. The result on the marriage is often unfortunate. The husband resents coming second, seeks consolation – or rather flattery and attention – elsewhere, and a divorce results sooner or later. The best thing for a child, I am convinced, is to have what I should term healthy neglect on the part of both its parents. This happens naturally enough in the case of a large family of children and very little money. They are overlooked because the mother has literally no time to occupy herself with them. They realize quite well that she is fond of them, but they are not worried by too many manifestations of the fact.

‘But there is another aspect. One does occasionally find a husband and wife who are so all-sufficient to each other, so wrapped up in each other, that the child of the marriage hardly seems very real to either of them. And in those circumstances I think a child comes to resent that fact, to feel defrauded and left out in the cold. You understand that I am not speaking of neglect in any way. Mrs Crale, for instance, was what is termed an excellent mother, always careful of Carla’s welfare, of her health – playing with her at the right times and always kind and gay. But for all that, Mrs Crale was really completely wrapped up in her husband. She existed, one might say, only in him and for him.’ Miss Williams paused a minute and then said quietly: ‘That, I think, is the justification for what she eventually did.’

Hercule Poirot said:

‘You mean that they were more like lovers than like husband and wife?’

Miss Williams, with a slight frown of distaste for foreign phraseology, said:

‘You could certainly put it that way.’

‘He was devoted to her as she was to him?’

‘They were a devoted couple. But he, of course, was a man.’

Miss Williams contrived to put into that last word a wholly Victorian significance.

‘Men-’ said Miss Williams, and stopped.

As a rich property owner says ‘Bolsheviks’ – as an earnest Communist says ‘Capitalists!’ – as a good housewife says ‘Blackbeetles’ – so did Miss Williams say ‘Men!’

From her spinster’s, governess’s life, there rose up a blast of fierce feminism. Nobody hearing her speak could doubt that to Miss Williams Men were the Enemy!

Poirot said: ‘You hold no brief for men?’

She answered drily:

‘Men have the best of this world. I hope that it will not always be so.’