Free Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie

It was no moment for trying to seem English. No, one must be a foreigner - frankly a foreigner - and be magnanimously forgiven for the fact. “Of course these foreigners don't quite know the ropes. Will shake hands at breakfast. Still, a decent fellow really...”
    Poirot set about creating this impression of himself. The two men talked, cautiously, of Lady Mary Lytton-Gore and of Admiral Cronshaw. Other names were mentioned. Fortunately, Poirot knew someone's cousin and had met somebody else's sister-in-law. He could see a kind of warmth dawning in the squire's eyes. The fellow seemed to know the right people.
    Gracefully, insidiously, Poirot slid into the purpose of his visit. He was quick to counteract the inevitable recoil. This book was, alas, going to be written. Miss Crale - Miss Lemarchant, as she was now called - was anxious for him to exercise a judicious editorship. The facts, unfortunately, were public property. But much could be done in their presentation to avoid wounding susceptibilities. Poirot murmured that before now he had been able to use discreet influence to avoid certain sensational passages in a book of memoirs.
    Meredith Blake flushed angrily. His hand shook a little as he filled a pipe. He said, a slight stammer in his voice, “It's - it's g-ghoulish the way they dig these things up. S-Sixteen years ago. Why can't they let it be?”
    Poirot shrugged his shoulders. “I agree with you,” he said. “But what will you? There is a demand for such things. And anyone is at liberty to reconstruct a proved crime and to comment on it.”
    “Seems disgraceful to me.”
    Poirot murmured, “Alas, we do not live in a delicate age. You would be surprised, Mr Blake, if you knew the unpleasant publications I have succeeded in - shall we say - softening? I am anxious to do all I can to save Miss Crale's feeling in the matter.”
    Blake murmured, “Little Carla! That child! A grownup woman. One can hardly believe it.”
    “I know. Time flies swiftly, does it not?”
    Meredith Blake sighed. He said, “Too quickly.”
    Poirot said, “As you will have seen in the letter I handed you from Miss Crale, she is very anxious to know everything possible about the sad events of the past.”
    “Why?” Meredith Blake said with a touch of irritation. “Why rake up everything again? How much better to let it all be forgotten.”
    “You say that, Mr Blake, because you know all the past too well. Miss Crale, remember, knows nothing. That is to say, she knows only the story as she has learned it from official accounts.”
    Meredith Blake winced. He said, “Yes, I forgot. Poor child! What a detestable position for her. The shock of learning the truth. And then - those soulless, callous reports of the trial.”
    “The truth,” said Hercule Poirot, “can never be done justice to in a mere legal recital. It is the things that are left out that are the things that matter. The emotions, the feelings, the characters of the actors in the drama, the extenuating circumstances -”
    He paused, and the other man spoke eagerly, like an actor who had received his cue.
    “Extenuating circumstances! That's just it. If ever there were extenuating circumstances, there were in this case. Amyas Crale was an old friend - his family and mine had been friends for generations, but one has to admit that his conduct was, frankly, outrageous. He was an artist, of course, and presumably that explains it. But there it is - he allowed a most extraordinary set of affairs to arise. The position was one that no ordinary decent man could have contemplated for a moment.”
    Hercule Poirot said, “I am interested that you should say that. It had puzzled me - that situation. Not so does a well-bred man, a man of the world, go about his affairs.”
    Blake's thin, hesitating face had lit up with animation. He said:
    "Yes, but the whole point is that Amyas never was an ordinary man! He was a painter, you see, and with him painting came first - really,