The question seemed to irritate Blake.
He said, "Why?
How should I know why?
These things are so.
Philip always crabbed her whenever he could.
He was annoyed, I think, when Amyas married her.
He never went near them for over a year.
And yet Amyas was almost his best friend.
That was the reason really, I suppose. He didn't feel that any woman was good enough.
And he probably felt that Caroline's influence would spoil their friendship."
"And did it?"
"No, of course it didn't.
Amyas was always just as fond of Philip - right up to the end.
Used to twit him with being a moneygrubber and with growing a corporation and being a Philistine generally.
Philip didn't care. He just used to grin and say it was a good thing Amyas had one respectable friend."
"How did your brother react to the Elsa Greer affair?"
"Do you know, I find it rather difficult to say.
His attitude wasn't really easy to define. He was annoyed, I think, with Amyas for making a fool of himself over the girl.
He said more than once that it wouldn't work and that Amyas would live to regret it.
At the same time I have a feeling - yes, very definitely I have a feeling that he was just faintly pleased at seeing Caroline let down."
There was a silence.
Then Blake said with the irritable plaintiveness of a weak man,
"It was all over - forgotten - and now you come, raking it all up."
"Not I. Caroline Crale."
Meredith stared at him.
"Caroline?
What do you mean?"
Poirot said, watching him,
"Caroline Crale the second."
Meredith's face relaxed.
"Ah, yes, the child.
Little Carla.
I - I misunderstood you for a moment."
"You thought I meant the original Caroline Crale?
You thought that it was she who would not - how shall I say it? - rest easy in her grave."
Blake shivered.
"Don't, man."
"You know that she wrote to her daughter - the last words she ever wrote - that she was innocent?"
Meredith stared at him.
He said - and his voice sounded utterly incredulous,
"Caroline wrote that?"
"Yes."
Poirot paused and said,
"It surprises you?"
"It would surprise you if you'd seen her in court.
Poor, hunted, defenseless creature.
Not even struggling."
"A defeatist?"
"No, no. She wasn't that.
It was, I think, the knowledge that she'd killed the man she loved - or I thought it was that."