Mrs McGinty’s Dead

She shivered slightly.

‘Not by name. He said once that she gave him kippers much too often—and once he said his landlady was upset because she had lost her cat.’

‘Did he ever—you must be honest, please—mention that he knew where she kept her money?’

Some of the colour went out of the girl’s face, but she threw up her chin defiantly.

‘Actually, he did. We were talking about people being distrustful of banks—and he said his old landlady kept her spare money under a floorboard. He said: “I could help myself any day to it when she’s out.” Not quite as a joke, he didn’t joke, more as though he were really worried by her carelessness.’

‘Ah,’ said Poirot. ‘That is good. From my point of view, I mean. When James Bentley thinks of stealing, it presents itself to him as an action that is done behind someone’s back. He might have said, you see, “Some day someone will knock her on the head for it.”’

‘But either way, he wouldn’t be meaning it.’

‘Oh no. But talk, however light, however idle, gives away, inevitably, the sort of person you are. The wise criminal would never open his mouth, but criminals are seldom wise and usually vain and they talk a good deal—and so most criminals are caught.’

Maude Williams said abruptly:

‘But someone must have killed the old woman.’

‘Naturally.’

‘Who did? Do you know? Have you any idea?’

‘Yes,’ said Hercule Poirot mendaciously. ‘I think I have a very good idea. But we are only at the beginning of the road.’

The girl glanced at her watch.

‘I must get back. We’re only supposed to take half an hour. One-horse place, Kilchester—I’ve always had jobs in London before. You’ll let me know if there’s anything I can do—really do, I mean?’

Poirot took out one of his cards. On it he wrote Long Meadows and the telephone number.

‘That is where I am staying.’

His name, he noted with chagrin, made no particular impression on her. The younger generation, he could not but feel, were singularly lacking in knowledge of notable celebrities.

III

Hercule Poirot caught a bus back to Broadhinny feeling slightly more cheerful. At any rate there was one person who shared his belief in James Bentley’s innocence. Bentley was not so friendless as he had made himself out to be.

His mind went back again to Bentley in prison. What a dispiriting interview it had been. There had been no hope aroused, hardly a stirring of interest.

‘Thank you,’ Bentley had said dully, ‘but I don’t suppose there is anything anyone can do.’

No, he was sure he had not got any enemies.

‘When people barely notice you’re alive, you’re not likely to have any enemies.’

‘Your mother? Did she have an enemy?’

‘Certainly not. Everyone liked and respected her.’

There was a faint indignation in his tone.

‘What about your friends?’

And James Bentley had said, or rather muttered, ‘I haven’t any friends…’

But that had not been quite true. For Maude Williams was a friend.

‘What a wonderful dispensation it is of Nature’s,’ thought Hercule Poirot, ‘that every man, however superficially unattractive, should be some woman’s choice.’

For all Miss Williams’s sexy appearance, he had a shrewd suspicion that she was really the maternal type.

She had the qualities that James Bentley lacked, the energy, the drive, the refusal to be beaten, the determination to succeed.

He sighed.

What monstrous lies he had told that day! Never mind—they were necessary.

‘For somewhere,’ said Poirot to himself, indulging in an absolute riot of mixed metaphors, ‘there is in the hay a needle, and among the sleeping dogs there is one on whom I shall put my foot, and by shooting the arrows into the air, one will come down and hit a glass-house!’

Chapter 7 (#u0d668e7a-43ca-4acd-a0f5-133e7851156a)

I

The cottage where Mrs McGinty had lived was only a few steps from the bus stop. Two children were playing on the doorstep. One was eating a rather wormy-looking apple and the other was shouting and beating on the door with a tin tray. They appeared quite happy. Poirot added to the noise by beating hard on the door himself.

A woman looked round the corner of the house. She had on a coloured overall and her hair was untidy.

‘Stop it, Ernie,’ she said.

‘Sha’n’t,’ said Ernie and continued.

Poirot deserted the doorstep and made for the corner of the house.

‘Can’t do anything with children, can you?’ the woman said.

Poirot thought you could, but forbore to say so.

He was beckoned round to the back door.

‘I keep the front bolted up, sir. Come in, won’t you?’

Poirot passed through a very dirty scullery into an almost more dirty kitchen.

‘She wasn’t killed here,’ said the woman. ‘In the parlour.’

Poirot blinked slightly.