Five Little Pigs

Chapter 3. Reconstruction

The afternoon sun shone into the laboratory at Handcross Manor. Some easy chairs and a settee had been brought into the room, but they served more to emphasize its forlorn aspect than to furnish it.

Slightly embarrassed, pulling at his moustache, Meredith Blake talked to Carla in a desultory way. He broke off once to say: ‘My dear, you are very like your mother – and yet unlike her, too.’

Carla asked: ‘How am I like her and how unlike?’

‘You have her colouring and her way of moving, but you are – how shall I put it – more positive than she ever was.’

Philip Blake, a scowl creasing over his forehead, looked out of the window and drummed impatiently on the pane. He said:

‘What’s the sense of all this? A perfectly fine Saturday afternoon-’

Hercule Poirot hastened to pour oil on troubled waters.

‘Ah, I apologize – it is, I know, unpardonable to disarrange the golf. Mais voyons, M. Blake, this is the daughter of your best friend. You will stretch a point for her, will you not?’

The butler announced: ‘Miss Warren.’

Meredith went to welcome her. He said: ‘It’s good of you to spare the time, Angela. You’re busy, I know.’

He led her over to the window.

Carla said: ‘Hallo, Aunt Angela. I read your article in The Times this morning. It’s nice to have a distinguished relative.’ She indicated the tall, square-jawed young man with the steady grey eyes. ‘This is John Rattery. He and I – hope – to be married.’

Angela Warren said: ‘Oh! – I didn’t know…’

Meredith went to greet the next arrival.

‘Well, Miss Williams, it’s a good many years since we met.’

Thin, frail and indomitable, the elderly governess advanced up the room. Her eyes rested thoughtfully on Poirot for a minute, then they went to the tall, square-shouldered figure in the well-cut tweeds.

Angela Warren came forward to meet her and said with a smile: ‘I feel like a schoolgirl again.’

‘I’m very proud of you, my dear,’ said Miss Williams. ‘You’ve done me credit. This is Carla, I suppose? She won’t remember me. She was too young…’

Philip Blake said fretfully: ‘What is all this? Nobody told me-’

Hercule Poirot said: ‘I call it – me – an excursion into the past. Shall we not all sit down? Then we shall be ready when the last guest arrives. And when she is here we can proceed to our business – to lay the ghosts.’

Philip Blake exclaimed: ‘What tomfoolery is this? You’re not going to hold a seance, are you?’

‘No, no. We are only going to discuss some events that happened long ago – to discuss them and, perhaps, to see more clearly the course of them. As to the ghosts, they will not materialize, but who is to say they are not here, in this room, although we cannot see them. Who is to say that Amyas and Caroline Crale are not here – listening?’

Philip Blake said: ‘Absurd nonsense-’ and broke off as the door opened again and the butler announced Lady Dittisham.

Elsa Dittisham came in with that faint, bored insolence that was a characteristic of her. She gave Meredith a slight smile, stared coldly at Angela and Philip, and went over to a chair by the window a little apart from the others. She loosened the rich pale furs round her neck and let them fall back. She looked for a minute or two about the room, then at Carla, and the girl stared back, thoughtfully appraising the woman who had wrought the havoc in her parents’ lives. There was no animosity in her young earnest face, only curiosity.

Elsa said: ‘I am sorry if I am late, M. Poirot.’

‘It was very good of you to come, madame.’

Cecilia Williams snorted ever so slightly. Elsa met the animosity in her eyes with a complete lack of interest. She said:

‘I wouldn’t have known you, Angela. How long is it? Sixteen years?’

Hercule Poirot seized his opportunity.

‘Yes, it is sixteen years since the events of which we are to speak, but let me first tell you why we are here.’

And in a few simple words he outlined Carla’s appeal to him and his acceptance of the task.

He went on quickly, ignoring the gathering storm visible on Philip’s face, and the shocked distaste on Meredith’s.

‘I accepted that commision – I set to work to find out – the truth.’

Carla Lemarchant, in the big grandfather chair, heard Poirot’s words dimly, from a distance.

With her hand shielding her eyes she studied five faces, surreptitiously. Could she see any of these people committing murder? The exotic Elsa, the red-faced Philip, dear, nice, kind Mr Meredith Blake, that grim tartar of a governess, the cool, competent Angela Warren?