She looked amused.
Yes, it was amusement. Quite genuine amusement.
She said: "I suppose my husband put that idea into your head.
He saw you when you arrived.
Of course, he doesn't understand in the least.
He never has.
I'm not at all the sensitive sort of person he imagines I am."
Poirot thought to himself:
"Yes, that is true.
A thin-skinned person would not have come to stay in Caroline Crale's house."
Lady Dittisham said,
"What is it you want me to do?"
"You are sure, madame, that to go over the past would not be painful to you?"
She considered a minute, and it struck Poirot suddenly that Lady Dittisham was a very frank woman.
She might lie from necessity but never from choice.
Elsa Dittisham said slowly:
"No, not painful.
In a way, I wish it were."
"Why?"
She said impatiently,
"It's so stupid - never to feel anything."
And Hercule Poirot thought,
"Yes, Elsa Greer is dead." Aloud he said,
"At all events, Lady Dittisham, it makes my task very much easier.
Have you a good memory?"
"Reasonably good, I think."
"And you are sure it will not pain you to go over those days in detail?"
"It won't pain me at all. Things can only pain you when they are happening."
"It is so with some people, I know."
Lady Dittisham said, "That's what Edward, my husband, can't understand. He thinks the trial and all that was a terrible ordeal for me."
"Was it not?"
Elsa Dittisham said,
"No, I enjoyed it." There was a reflective, satisfied quality in her voice. She went on. "God, how that old brute Depleach went for me!
He's a devil, if you like.
I enjoyed fighting him.
He didn't get me down."
She looked at Poirot with a smile.
"I hope I'm not upsetting your illusions.
A girl of twenty, I ought to have been prostrated, I suppose - agonized with shame or something.
I wasn't.
I didn't care what they said to me. I only wanted one thing."
"What?"
"To get her hanged, of course," said Elsa Dittisham.
He noticed her hands - beautiful hands but with long, curving nails.
Predatory hands.
She said, "You're thinking me vindictive? So I am vindictive - to anyone who has injured me.
That woman was to my mind the lowest kind of woman there is.
She knew that Amyas cared for me - that he was going to leave her - and she killed him so that I shouldn't have him." She looked across at Poirot. "Don't you think that's pretty mean?"
"You do not understand or sympathize with jealousy?"
"No, I don't think I do.