But we come now to something that is incongruous.
"Meredith Blake discovers his loss, telephones his brother. They meet down at the landing stage and they come up past the Battery Garden, where Caroline Crale is having a discussion with her husband on the subject of Angela's going to school.
Now, that does strike me as very odd.
Husband and wife have a terrific scene, ending in a distinct threat on Caroline's part, and yet, twenty minutes or so later, she goes down and starts a trivial domestic argument."
Poirot turned to Meredith Blake:
"You speak in your narrative of certain words you overheard Crale say.
These were:
'It's all settled - I'll see to her packing.'
That is right?"
Meredith Blake said, "It was something like that - yes."
Poirot turned to Philip Blake.
"Is your recollection the same?"
The latter frowned.
"I didn't remember it till you say so, but I do remember now. Something was said about packing!"
"Said by Mr Crale - not Mrs Crale?"
"Amyas said it.
All I heard Caroline say was something about its being very hard on the girl.
Anyway, what does all this matter?
We all know Angela was off to school in a day or two."
Poirot said,
"You do not see the force of my objection.
Why should Amyas Crale pack for the girl?
It is absurd, that!
There was Mrs Crale, there was Miss Williams, there was a housemaid.
It is a woman's job to pack - not a man's."
"What does it matter?" Philip Blake said impatiently. "It has nothing to do with the crime."
"You think not?
For me, it was the first point that struck me as suggestive.
And it is immediately followed by another.
Mrs Crale, a desperate woman, brokenhearted, who has threatened her husband a short while before and who is certainly contemplating either suicide or murder, now offers in the most amicable manner to bring her husband down some iced beer."
Meredith Blake said slowly,
"That isn't odd if she was contemplating murder.
Then, surely, it is just what she would do.
Dissimulate!"
"You think so?
She has decided to poison her husband; she has already got the poison.
Her husband keeps a supply of beer down in the Battery Garden.
Surely, if she has any intelligence at all she will put the poison in one of those bottles at a moment when there is no one about."
Meredith Blake objected.
"She couldn't have done that.
Somebody else might have drunk it."
"Yes, Elsa Greer.
Do you tell me that having made up her mind to murder her husband, Caroline Crale would have scruples against killing the girl, too?
"But let us not argue the point.
Let us confine ourselves to facts.
Caroline Crale says she will send her husband down some iced beer.
She goes up to the house, fetches a bottle from the conservatory, where it was kept, and takes it down to him. She pours it out and gives it to him.
Amyas Crale drinks it off and says,
'Everything tastes foul today.'
"Mrs Crale goes up again to the house.