"On the whole, you know, it was rather too much of a good thing."
"I am not sure," said Hercule Poirot, "that I quite understand you."
Fogg drew his delicately marked brows together.
His sensitive hand stroked his bare upper lip.
"How shall I put it?" he said.
"It's a very English point of view.
'Shooting the sitting bird' describes it best.
Is that intelligible to you?"
"It is, as you say, a very English point of view, but I think I understand you.
In the Assize Court, as on the playing fields of Eton, and in the hunting country, the Englishman likes the victim to have a sporting chance."
"That's it, exactly.
Well, in this case, the accused didn't have a chance.
Humpie Rudolph did as he liked with her.
It started with her examination by Depleach.
She stood up there, you know - as docile as a little girl at a party, answering Depleach's questions with the answers she'd learned off by heart. Quite docile, word-perfect - and absolutely unconvincing!
She'd been told what to say, and she said it.
It wasn't Depleach's fault.
That old mountebank played his part perfectly - but in any scene that needs two actors, one alone can't carry it.
She didn't play up to him. It made the worst possible effect on the jury.
And then old Humpie got up.
I expect you've seen him? He's a great loss. Hitching his gown up, swaying back on his feet, and then - straight off the mark! "As I tell you, he made mincemeat of her! Led up to this and that - and she fell into the pitfall every time.
He got her to admit the absurdities of her own statements, he got her to contradict herself, she floundered in deeper and deeper.
And then he wound up with his usual stuff. Very compelling - very convinced:
'I suggest to you, Mrs Crale, that this story of yours about stealing coniine in order to commit suicide is a tissue of falsehood.
I suggest that you took it in order to administer it to your husband, who was about to leave you for another woman, and that you did deliberately administer it to him.'
And she looked at him - such a pretty creature, graceful, delicate - and she said,
'Oh, no - no, I didn't.'
It was the flattest thing you ever heard, the most unconvincing.
I saw old Depleach squirm in his seat.
He knew it was all up then."
Fogg paused a minute, then he went on.
"The jury were only out just over half an hour.
They brought her in: Guilty with a recommendation to mercy.
"Actually, you know, she made a good contrast to the other woman in the case.
The girl. The jury were unsympathetic to her from the start.
She never turned a hair.
Very good-looking, hard-boiled, modern. To the women in the court she stood for a type - type of the home breaker.
Homes weren't safe when girls like that were wandering abroad. Girls full of sex and contemptuous of the rights of wives and mothers.
She didn't spare herself, I will say.
She was honest. Admirably honest. She'd fallen in love with Amyas Crale and he with her and she'd no scruples at all about taking him away from his wife and child.
"I admired her in a way. She had guts.
Depleach put in some nasty stuff in cross-examination and she stood up well to it.
But the court was unsympathetic.
And the judge didn't like her.
Old Avis, it was. Been a bit of a rip himself when young - but he's very hot on morality when he's presiding in his robes.
His summing up against Caroline Crale was mildness itself.
He couldn't deny the facts but he threw out pretty strong hints as to provocation and all that."
Hercule Poirot asked,
"He did not support the suicide theory of the defense?"
Fogg shook his head.