When they reached Handcross Manor once more, Blake said abruptly:
"I bought that picture, you know. The one that Amyas was painting.
I just couldn't stand the idea of its being sold for - well, publicity value - a lot of dirty-minded brutes gaping at it.
It was a fine piece of work.
Amyas said it was the best thing he'd ever done.
I shouldn't be surprised if he was right.
It was practically finished.
He only wanted to work on it another day or so.
Would - would you care to see it?"
Hercule Poirot said quickly,
"Yes, indeed."
Blake led the way across the hall and took a key from his pocket. He unlocked a door and they went into a fair-sized, dusty-smelling room.
It was closely shuttered. Blake went across to the windows and opened the wooden shutters.
Then, with a little difficulty, he flung up a window and a breath of fragrant spring air came wafting into the room.
Meredith said, "That's better."
He stood by the window inhaling the air, and Poirot joined him.
There was no need to ask what the room had been.
The shelves were empty, but there were marks upon them where bottles had once stood.
Against one wall was some derelict chemical apparatus and a sink. The room was thick in dust.
Meredith Blake was looking out of the window.
He said: "How easily it all comes back.
Standing here, smelling the jasmine, and talking - talking, like the damned fool I was, about my precious potions and distillations!"
Absently, Poirot stretched a hand through the window. He pulled off a spray of jasmine leaves just breaking from their woody stem.
Meredith Blake moved resolutely across the floor. On the wall was a picture covered with a dust sheet.
He jerked the dust sheet away.
Poirot caught his breath.
He had seen, so far, four pictures of Amyas Crale's - two at the Tate; one at a London dealer's; one, the still life of roses.
But now he was looking at what the artist himself had called his best picture, and Poirot realized at once what a superb artist the man had been.
The painting had an odd, superficial smoothness. At first sight it might have been a poster, so seemingly crude were its contrasts.
A girl, a girl in a canary-yellow shirt and dark-blue slacks, sitting on a gray wall in full sunlight against a background of violent blue sea.
Just the kind of subject for a poster.
But the first appearance was deceptive; there was a subtle distortion - an amazing brilliance and clarity in the light.
And the girl - Yes, here was life. All there was, all there could be, of life, of youth, of sheer, blazing vitality.
The face was alive and the eyes - So much life!
Such passionate youth!
That, then, was what Amyas Crale had seen in Elsa Greer, which had made him blind and deaf to the gentle creature, his wife.
Elsa was life.
Elsa was youth.
A superb, slim, straight creature, arrogant, her head turned, her eyes insolent with triumph. Looking at you, watching you - waiting...
Hercule Poirot spread out his hands. He said,
"It is a great - Yes, it is great."
Meredith Blake said, a catch in his voice,
"She was so young -"
Poirot nodded. He thought to himself,
"What do most people mean when they say that? So young.
Something innocent, something appealing, something helpless. But youth is not that!
Youth is crude, youth is strong, youth is powerful - yes, and cruel!
And one thing more - youth is vulnerable."
Poirot followed his host to the door.
His interest was quickened now in Elsa Greer, whom he was to visit next.