Miss Williams said sharply,
"Of course you wouldn't, my dear." She looked at Hercule Poirot. "Nobody but a fool would think so."
"I am not a fool," Poirot said mildly, "and I do not think so.
I know quite well who killed Amyas Crale." He paused. "There is always a danger of accepting facts as proved which are really nothing of the kind.
Let us take the situation at Alderbury.
A very old situation. Two women and one man.
We have taken it for granted that Amyas Crale proposed to leave his wife for the other woman.
But I suggest to you now that he never intended to do anything of the kind.
"He had had infatuations for women before.
They obsessed him while they lasted, but they were soon over. The women he had fallen in love with were usually women of a certain experience - they did not expect too much of him.
But this time the woman did.
She was not, you see, a woman at all.
She was a girl and, in Caroline Crale's words, she was terribly sincere. She may have been hard-boiled and sophisticated in speech, but in love she was frighteningly single-minded.
Because she herself had a deep and overmastering passion for Amyas Crale she assumed that he had the same for her. She assumed without any question that their passion was for life.
She assumed without asking him that he was going to leave his wife.
"But why, you will say, did Amyas Crale not undeceive her?
And my answer is - the picture.
He wanted to finish his picture.
"To some people that sounds incredible, but not to anybody who knows about artists.
And we have already accepted that explanation in principle.
That conversation between Crale and Meredith Blake is more intelligible now.
Crale is embarrassed - pats Blake on the back, assures him optimistically the whole thing is going to pan out all right.
To Amyas Crale, you see, everything is simple. He is painting a picture, slightly encumbered by what he describes as a couple of jealous, neurotic women, but neither of them is going to be allowed to interfere with what to him is the most important thing in life.
"If he were to tell Elsa the truth it would be all up with the picture.
Perhaps in the first flush of his feelings for her he did talk of leaving Caroline.
Men do say these things when they are in love.
Perhaps he merely let it be assumed, as he is letting it be assumed now.
He doesn't care what Elsa assumes.
Let her think what she likes. Anything to keep her quiet for another day or two.
"Then he will tell her the truth - that things between them are over.
He has never been a man to be troubled with scruples.
"He did, I think, make an effort not to get embroiled with Elsa to begin with.
He warned her what kind of man he was, but she would not take warning. She rushed on to her fate.
And to a man like Crale, women were fair game.
If you had asked him, he would have said easily that Elsa was young - she'd soon get over it.
That was the way Amyas Crale's mind worked.
"His wife was actually the only person he cared about at all.
He wasn't worrying much about her. She only had to put up with things for a few days longer.
He was furious with Elsa for blurting out things to Caroline, but he still optimistically thought it would be 'all right.'
Caroline could forgive him as she had done so often before, and Elsa - Elsa would just have to 'lump it.'
So simple are the problems of life to a man like Amyas Crale.
"But I think that that last evening he became really worried. About Caroline, not about Elsa.
Perhaps he went to her room and she refused to speak to him.
At any rate, after a restless night he took her aside after breakfast and blurted out the truth.
He had been infatuated with Elsa, but it was all over.
Once he'd finished the picture he'd never see her again.
"And it was in answer to that that Caroline Crale cried out indignantly,
'You and your women!'
That phrase, you see, put Elsa in a class with others - those others who had one their way.
And she added indignantly,