Blakeâs eyes twinkled. âHeard this one?â
Poirotâs laugh came at the right place. It was not an edifying story, but it was funny.
Philip Blake lay back in his chair, his muscles relaxed, his eyes creased with good humour.
Hercule Poirot thought suddenly that he looked rather like a contented pig.
A pig. This little pig went to market â¦.
What was he like, this man, this Philip Blake? A man, it would seem, without cares. Prosperous, contented. No remorseful thoughts, no uneasy twinges of conscience from the past, no haunting memories here. No, a well-fed pig who had gone to marketâand fetched the full market priceâ¦.
But once, perhaps, there had been more to Philip Blake. He must have been, when young, a handsome man. Eyes always a shade too small, a fraction too near together, perhapsâbut otherwise a well made, well set up young man. How old was he now? At a guess between fifty and sixty. Nearing forty, then, at the time of Craleâsdeath. Less stultified, then, less sunk in the gratifications of the minute. Asking more of life, perhaps, and receiving lessâ¦.
Poirot murmured as a mere catch-phrase:
âYou comprehend my position.â
âNo, really, you know, Iâm hanged if I do.â The stockbroker sat upright again, his glance was once more shrewd. âWhy you? Youâre not a writer?â
âNot preciselyâno. Actually I am a detective.â
The modesty of this remark had probably not been equalled before in Poirotâs conversation.
âOf course you are. We all know that. The famous Hercule Poirot!â
But his tone held a subtly mocking note. Intrinsically, Philip Blake was too much of an Englishman to take the pretensions of a foreigner seriously.
To his cronies he would have said:
âQuaint little mountebank. Oh well, I expect his stuff goes down with the women all right.â
And although that derisive patronizing attitude was exactly the one which Hercule Poirot had aimed at inducing, nevertheless he found himself annoyed by it.
This man, this successful man of affairs, was unimpressed by Hercule Poirot! It was a scandal.
âI am gratified,â said Poirot untruly, âthat I am so well known to you. My success, let me tell you, has been founded on the psychologyâthe eternal why? of human behaviour. That, Mr. Blake, is what interests the world in crime today. It used to be romance. Famous crimes were retold from one angle onlyâthe love story connected with them. Nowadays it is very different. People read with interest that Dr. Crippen murdered his wife because she was a big bouncing woman and he was little and insignificant and therefore she made him feel inferior. They read of some famous woman criminal that she killed because sheâd been snubbed by her father when she was three years old. It is, as I say, the why of crime that interests nowadays.â
Philip Blake said, with a slight yawn:
âThe why of most crimes is obvious enough, I should say. Usually money.â
Poirot cried:
âAh, but my dear sir, the why must never be obvious. That is the whole point!â
âAnd thatâs where you come in?â
âAnd that, as you say, is where I come in! It is proposed to rewrite the stories of certain bygone crimesâfrom the psychological angle. Psychology in crime, it is my speciality. I have accepted the commission.â
Philip Blake grinned.
âPretty lucrative, I suppose?â
âI hope soâI certainly hope so.â
âCongratulations. Now, perhaps, youâll tell me where I come in?â
âMost certainly. The Crale case, Monsieur.â
Phillip Blake did not look startled. But he looked thoughtful. He said:
âYes, of course, the Crale caseâ¦.â
Hercule Poirot said anxiously:
âIt is not displeasing to you, Mr. Blake?â
âOh, as to that.â Philip Blake shrugged his shoulders. âItâs no use resenting a
Payge Galvin, Meg Chance
T. Michael Martin
Stephanie Laurens, Victoria Alexander, Rachel Gibson
Terry Deary
Patricia Wentworth
John Julius Norwich
Greg Gutfeld
Kimberly Claire
Sophia Johnson
Richard Newsome