Lord Edgware Dies人性记录31

Chapter 31, A Human Document,A day or two after that I was suddenly recalled to the Argentine. So it happened that I never saw Jane Wilkinson again and only read in the paper of her trial and condemnation ¹. Unexpectedly, at least unexpectedly to me, she went completely to pieces when charged with the truth. So long as she was able to be proud of her cleverness and act her part she made no mistakes, but once her self-confidence failed her, owing to someone having found her out, she was as incapable ² as a child would be of keeping up a deception ³. Cross-examined, she went completely to pieces.,So, as I said before, that luncheon ⁴ party was the last time I saw Jane Wilkinson. But when I think of her, I always see her the same way – standing ⁵ in her room at the Savoy trying on expensive black clothes with a serious absorbed face. I am convinced that that was no pose. She was being completely natural. Her plan had succeeded and therefore she had no further qualms ⁶ and doubts. Neither do I think that she ever suffered one pang ⁷ of remorse ⁸ for the three crimes she had committed.,I reproduce here a document which she had directed was to be sent to Poirot after her death. It is, I think, typical of that very lovely and completely conscienceless lady.,Dear M. Poirot, I have been thinking things over and I feel that I should like to write this for you. I know that you sometimes publish reports of your cases. I don’t really think that you’ve ever published a document by the person themselves. I feel, too, that I would like everyone to know just exactly how I did it all. I still think it was all very well planned. If it hadn’t been for you everything would have been quite all right. I’ve felt rather bitter about that, but I suppose you couldn’t help it. I’m sure, if I send you this, you’ll give it plenty of prominence ⁹. You will, won’t you? I should like to be remembered. And I do think I am really a unique person. Everybody here seems to think so.,I soon realized that my husband simply had got to die, but I didn’t know how to set about it. You can imagine things like that ever so much better in the States. I thought and I thought – but I couldn’t see how to arrange it. And then, suddenly, I saw Carlotta Adams do her imitation of me and at once I began to see a way. With her help I could get an alibi ¹⁰. That same evening I saw you, and it suddenly struck me that it would be a good idea to send you to my husband to ask him for a divorce. At the same time I would go about talking of killing ¹¹ my husband, because I’ve always noticed that if you speak the truth in a rather silly way nobody believes you. I’ve often done it over contracts. And it’s also a good thing to seem stupider than you are. At my second meeting with Carlotta Adams I broached ¹² the idea. I said it was a bet, and she fell for it at once. She was to pretend to be me at some party and if she got away with it she was to have ten thousand dollars. She was very enthusiastic and several of the ideas were hers – about changing clothes and all that. You see, we couldn’t do it here because of Ellis and we couldn’t do it at her place because of her maid. She, of course, didn’t see why we couldn’t. It was a little awkward. I just said ‘No.’ She thought me a little stupid about it, but she gave in and we thought of the hotel plan. I took a pair of Ellis’s pince-nez.,Of course I realized quite soon that she would have to be got out of the way too. It was a pity, but after all, those imitations of hers really were very impertinent. If mine hadn’t happened to suit me I’d have been angry about it. I had some veronal myself, though I hardly ever take it, so that was quite easy. And then I had quite a brainwave. You see, it would be so much better if it could seem that she was in the habit of taking it. I ordered a box – the duplicate of one I’d been given and I had her initials put on it and an inscription ¹³ inside. I thought if I put some odd initial and Paris, November, inside it, it would make it all much more difficult. I wrote for the box from the Ritz when I was in there lunching one day. And I sent Ellis over to fetch it. She didn’t know what it was, of course.,Everything went off quite well on the night. I took one of Ellis’s corn knives, while she was over in Paris, because it was nice and sharp. She never noticed because I put it back afterwards. It was a doctor in San Francisco who showed me just where to stick it in. He’d been talking about lumbar and cistern ¹⁴ punctures ¹⁵, and he said one had to be very careful, otherwise one went through the cistertia magna and into the medulla oblongata where all the vital nerve centres are, and that that would cause immediate ¹⁶ death. I made him show me the exact place several times. I thought it might perhaps come in useful one day. I told him I wanted to use the idea in a film.,It was very dishonourable of Carlotta Adams to write to her sister. She’d promised me to tell nobody. I do think it was clever of me to see what a good thing it would be to tear off that one page and leave he instead of she. I thought of that all by myself. I think I’m more proud of that than anything else. Everyone always says I haven’t got brains – but I think it needed real brains to think of that.,I’d thought things over very carefully and I did exactly what I’d planned when the Scotland Yard man came. I rather enjoyed that part of it. I had thought, perhaps, that he’d really arrest me. I felt quite safe, because they’d have to believe all those people at the dinner and I didn’t see how they could find out about me and Carlotta changing clothes.,The jury's condemnation was a shock to the suspect. 陪审团宣告有罪使嫌疑犯大为震惊。,He would be incapable of committing such a cruel deed.他不会做出这么残忍的事 。