"I'd not say that you weren't in the right of it there."
Hercule Poirot went on.
"Mrs Crale left a daughter."
"Aye, I mind there was a child.
Sent abroad to relatives, was she not?"
"That daughter believes firmly in her mother's innocence."
The bushy eyebrows of Mr Edmunds rose.
"That's the way of it, is it?"
Poirot asked,
"Is there anything you can tell me to support that belief?"
Edmunds reflected. Then, slowly, he shook his head.
"I could not conscientiously say there was.
I admired Mrs Crale.
Whatever else she was, she was a lady!
Not like the other. A hussy - no more, no less.
Bold as brass!
Jumped-up trash - that's what she was - and showed it!
Mrs Crale was quality."
"But none the less a murderess?"
Edmunds frowned. He said, with more spontaneity than he had yet shown,
"That's what I used to ask myself, day after day.
Sitting there in the dock so calm and gentle.
'I'll not believe it,' I used to say to myself.
But, if you take my meaning, Mr Poirot, there wasn't anything else to believe.
That hemlock didn't get into Mr Crale's beer by accident.
It was put there.
And if Mrs Crale didn't put it there, who did?"
"That is the question," said Poirot. "Who did?"
Again that shrewd eyes studied his face.
"So that's your idea?" said Mr Edmunds.
"What do you think yourself?"
There was a pause before the other answered. Then he said,
"There was nothing that pointed that way - nothing at all."
Poirot said,
"You were in court during the hearing of the case?"
"Every day."
"You heard the witnesses give evidence?"
"I did."
"Did anything strike you about them - any abnormality, and insincerity?"
"Was one of them lying, do you mean?"
Edmunds said bluntly.
"Had one of them a reason to wish Mr Crale dead?
If you'll excuse me, Mr Poirot, that's a very melodramatic idea."
"At least consider it," Poirot urged.
He watched the shrewd face, the screwed-up, thoughtful eyes.
Slowly, regretfully, Edmunds shook his head.
"That Miss Greer," he said, "she was bitter enough, and vindictive!
I'd say she overstepped the mark in a good deal she said, but it was Mr Crale alive she wanted.
He was no use to her dead.
She wanted Mrs Crale hanged, all right - but that was because death had snatched her man away from her.