Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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First published in Great Britain by

Collins 1952

Copyright © 1952 Agatha Christie Ltd.

All rights reserved.

www.agathachristie.com

Ebook Edition 2010 ISBN: 9780007422487

Version 2018-11-16

The moral right of the author is asserted

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

To Peter Saunders

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to authors

Contents

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Epilogue

E-book Extras

About Agatha Christie

The Agatha Christie Collection

www.agathachristie.com

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

Hercule Poirot came out of the Vieille Grand’mère restaurant into Soho. He turned up the collar of his overcoat through prudence, rather than necessity, since the night was not cold. ‘But at my age, one takes no risks,’ Poirot was wont to declare.

His eyes held a reflective sleepy pleasure. The Escargots de la Vieille Grand’mère had been delicious. A real find, this dingy little restaurant. Meditatively, like a well fed dog, Hercule Poirot curled his tongue round his lips. Drawing his handkerchief from his pocket, he dabbed his luxuriant moustaches.

Yes, he had dined well…And now what?

A taxi, passing him, slowed down invitingly. Poirot hesitated for a moment, but made no sign. Why take a taxi? He would in any case reach home too early to go to bed.

‘Alas,’ murmured Poirot to his moustaches, ‘that one can only eat three times a day…’

For afternoon tea was a meal to which he had never become acclimatized. ‘If one partakes of the five o’clock, one does not,’ he explained, ‘approach the dinner with the proper quality of expectant gastric juices. And the dinner, let us remember, is the supreme meal of the day!’

Not for him, either, the mid-morning coffee. No, chocolate and croissants for breakfast, Déjeuner at twelve-thirty if possible but certainly not later than one o’clock, and finally the climax: Le Dîner!

These were the peak periods of Hercule Poirot’s day. Always a man who had taken his stomach seriously, he was reaping his reward in old age. Eating was now not only a physical pleasure, it was also an intellectual research. For in between meals he spent quite a lot of time searching out and marking down possible sources of new and delicious food. La Vieille Grand’mère was the result of one of these quests and La Vieille Grand’mère had just received the seal of Hercule Poirot’s gastronomic approval.

But now, unfortunately, there was the evening to put in.

Hercule Poirot sighed.

‘If only,’ he thought, ‘ce cher Hastings were available…’

He dwelt with pleasure on his remembrances of his old friend.

‘My first friend in this country—and still to me the dearest friend I have. True, often and often did he enrage me. But do I remember that now? No. I remember only his incredulous wonder, his open-mouthed appreciation of my talents—the ease with which I misled him without uttering an untrue word, his bafflement, his stupendous astonishment when he at last perceived the truth that had been clear to me all along. Ce cher, cher ami! It is my weakness, it has always been my weakness, to desire to show off. That weakness, Hastings could never understand. But indeed it is very necessary for a man of my abilities to admire himself—and for that one needs stimulation from outside. I cannot, truly I cannot, sit in a chair all day reflecting how truly admirable I am. One needs the human touch. One needs—as they say nowadays—the stooge.’

Hercule Poirot sighed. He turned into Shaftesbury Avenue.

Should he cross it and go on to Leicester Square and spend the evening at a cinema? Frowning slightly, he shook his head. The cinema, more often than not, enraged him by the looseness of its plots—the lack of logical continuity in the argument—even the photography which, raved over by some, to Hercule Poirot seemed often no more than the portrayal of scenes and objects so as to make them appear totally different from what they were in reality.

Everything, Hercule Poirot decided, was too artistic nowadays. Nowhere was there the love of order and method that he himself prized so highly. And seldom was there any appreciation of subtlety. Scenes of violence and crude brutality were the fashion, and as a former police officer, Poirot was bored by brutality. In his early days, he had seen plenty of crude brutality. It had been more the rule than the exception. He found it fatiguing, and unintelligent.

‘The truth is,’ Poirot reflected as he turned his steps homeward, ‘I am not in tune with the modern world. And I am, in a superior way, a slave as other men are slaves. My work has enslaved me just as their work enslaves them. When the hour of leisure arrives, they have nothing with which to fill their leisure. The retired financier takes up golf, the little merchant puts bulbs in his garden, me, I eat. But there it is, I come round to it again. One can only eat three times a day. And in between are the gaps.’

He passed a newspaper-seller and scanned the bill.

‘Result of McGinty Trial. Verdict.’

It stirred no interest in him. He recalled vaguely a small paragraph in the papers. It had not been an interesting murder. Some wretched old woman knocked on the head for a few pounds. All part of the senseless crude brutality of these days.

Poirot turned into the courtyard of his block of flats. As always his heart swelled in approval. He was proud of his home. A splendid symmetrical building. The lift took him up to the third floor where he had a large luxury flat with impeccable chromium fittings, square armchairs, and severely rectangular ornaments. There could truly be said not to be a curve in the place.

As he opened the door with his latchkey and stepped into the square, white lobby, his manservant, George, stepped softly to meet him.

‘Good evening, sir. There is a—gentleman waiting to see you.’

He relieved Poirot deftly of his overcoat.

‘Indeed?’ Poirot was aware of that very slight pause before the word gentleman. As a social snob, George was an expert.

‘What is his name?’

‘A Mr Spence, sir.’

‘Spence.’ The name, for the moment, meant nothing to Poirot. Yet he knew that it should do so.

Pausing for a moment before the mirror to adjust his moustaches to a state of perfection, Poirot opened the door of the sitting-room and entered. The man sitting in one of the big square armchairs got up.

‘Hallo, M. Poirot, hope you remember me. It’s a long time…Superintendent Spence.’

‘But of course.’ Poirot shook him warmly by the hand.

Superintendent Spence of the Kilchester Police. A very interesting case that had been…As Spence had said, a long time ago now…

Poirot pressed his guest with refreshments. A grenadine? Crème de Menthe? Benedictine? Crème de Cacao?…

At this moment George entered with a tray on which was a whisky bottle and a siphon. ‘Or beer if you prefer it, sir?’ he murmured to the visitor.

Superintendent Spence’s large red face lightened.

‘Beer for me,’ he said.

Poirot was left to wonder once more at the accomplishments of George. He himself had had no idea that there was beer in the flat and it seemed incomprehensible to him that it could be preferred to a sweet liqueur.

When Spence had his foaming tankard, Poirot poured himself out a tiny glass of gleaming green crème de menthe.

‘But it is charming of you to look me up,’ he said. ‘Charming. You have come up from—?’

‘Kilchester. I’ll be retired in about six months. Actually, I was due for retirement eighteen months ago. They asked me to stop on and I did.’

‘You were wise,’ said Poirot with feeling. ‘You were very wise…’

‘Was I? I wonder. I’m not so sure.’

‘Yes, yes, you were wise,’ Poirot insisted. ‘The long hours of ennui, you have no conception of them.’

‘Oh, I’ll have plenty to do when I retire. Moved into a new house last year, we did. Quite a bit of garden and shamefully neglected. I haven’t been able to get down to it properly yet.’

‘Ah yes, you are one of those who garden. Me, once I decided to live in the country and grow vegetable marrows. It did not succeed. I have not the temperament.’

‘You should have seen one of my marrows last year,’ said Spence with enthusiasm. ‘Colossal! And my roses. I’m keen on roses. I’m going to have—’

He broke off.

‘That’s not what I came to talk about.’

‘No, no, you came to see an old acquaintance—it was kind. I appreciate it.’

‘There’s more to it than that, I’m afraid, M. Poirot. I’ll be honest. I want something.’

Poirot murmured delicately:

‘There is a mortgage, possibly, on your house? You would like a loan—’

Spence interrupted in a horrified voice:

‘Oh, good Lord, it’s not money! Nothing of that kind.’

Poirot waved his hands in graceful apology.

‘I demand your pardon.’

‘I’ll tell you straight out—it’s damned cheek what I’ve come for. If you send me away with a flea in my ear I shan’t be surprised.’

‘There will be no flea,’ said Poirot. ‘But continue.’

‘It’s the McGinty case. You’ve read about it, perhaps?’

Poirot shook his head.

‘Not with attention. Mrs McGinty—an old woman in a shop or a house. She is dead, yes. How did she die?’

Spence stared at him.

‘Lord!’ he said. ‘That takes me back. Extraordinary. And I never thought of it until now.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Nothing. Just a game. Child’s game. We used to play it when we were kids. A lot of us in a row. Question and answer all down the line. “Mrs McGinty’s dead!” “How did she die?” “Down on one knee just like I.” And then the next question, “Mrs McGinty’s dead.” “How did she die?” “Holding her hand out just like I.” And there we’d be, all kneeling and our right arms held out stiff. And then you got it! “Mrs McGinty’s dead.” “How did she die?” “Like THIS!” Smack, the top of the row would fall sideways and down we all went like a pack of ninepins!’ Spence laughed uproariously at the remembrance. ‘Takes me back, it does!’

Poirot waited politely. This was one of the moments when, even after half a lifetime in the country, he found the English incomprehensible. He himself had played at Cache Cache in his childhood, but he felt no desire to talk about it or even to think about it.

When Spence had overcome his own amusement, Poirot repeated with some slight weariness, ‘How did she die?’

The laughter was wiped off Spence’s face. He was suddenly himself again.

‘She was hit on the back of her head with some sharp, heavy implement. Her savings, about thirty pounds in cash, were taken after her room had been ransacked. She lived alone in a small cottage except for a lodger. Man of the name of Bentley. James Bentley.’

‘Ah yes, Bentley.’

‘The place wasn’t broken into. No signs of any tampering with the windows or locks. Bentley was hard up, had lost his job, and owed two months’ rent. The money was found hidden under a loose stone at the back of the cottage. Bentley’s coat sleeve had blood on it and hair—same blood group and the right hair. According to his first statement he was never near the body—so it couldn’t have come there by accident.’

‘Who found her?’

‘The baker called with bread. It was the day he got paid. James Bentley opened the door to him and said he’d knocked at Mrs McGinty’s bedroom door, but couldn’t get an answer. The baker suggested she might have been taken bad. They got the woman from next door to go up and see. Mrs McGinty wasn’t in the bedroom, and hadn’t slept in the bed, but the room had been ransacked and the floorboards had been prised up. Then they thought of looking in the parlour. She was there, lying on the floor, and the neighbour fairly screamed her head off. Then they got the police, of course.’

‘And Bentley was eventually arrested and tried?’

‘Yes. The case came on at the Assizes. Yesterday. Open and shut case. The jury were only out twenty minutes this morning. Verdict: Guilty. Condemned to death.’

Poirot nodded.

‘And then, after the verdict, you got in a train and came to London and came here to see me. Why?’

Superintendent Spence was looking into his beer glass. He ran his finger slowly round and round the rim.

‘Because,’ he said, ‘I don’t think he did it…’

Chapter 2

There was a moment or two of silence.

‘You came to me—’

Poirot did not finish the sentence.

Superintendent Spence looked up. The colour in his face was deeper than it had been. It was a typical countryman’s face, unexpressive, self-contained, with shrewd but honest eyes. It was the face of a man with definite standards who would never be bothered by doubts of himself or by doubts of what constituted right and wrong.

‘I’ve been a long time in the Force,’ he said. ‘I’ve had a good deal of experience of this, that and the other. I can judge a man as well as any other could do. I’ve had cases of murder during my service—some of them straightforward enough, some of them not so straightforward. One case you know of, M. Poirot—’

Poirot nodded.

‘Tricky, that was. But for you, we mightn’t have seen clear. But we did see clear—and there wasn’t any doubt. The same with the others you don’t know about. There was Whistler, he got his—and deserved it. There were those chaps who shot old Guterman. There was Verall and his arsenic. Tranter got off—but he did it all right. Mrs Courtland—she was lucky—her husband was a nasty perverted bit of work, and the jury acquitted her accordingly. Not justice—just sentiment. You’ve got to allow for that happening now and again. Sometimes there isn’t enough evidence—sometimes there’s sentiment, sometimes a murderer manages to put it across the jury—that last doesn’t happen often, but it can happen. Sometimes it’s a clever bit of work by defending counsel—or a prosecuting counsel takes the wrong tack. Oh yes, I’ve seen a lot of things like that. But—but—’

Spence wagged a heavy forefinger.

‘I haven’t seen—not in my experience—an innocent man hanged for something he didn’t do. It’s a thing, M. Poirot, that I don’t want to see.

‘Not,’ added Spence, ‘in this country!’

Poirot gazed back at him.

‘And you think you are going to see it now. But why—’

Spence interrupted him.

‘I know some of the things you’re going to say. I’ll answer them without you having to ask them. I was put on this case. I was put on to get evidence of what happened. I went into the whole business very carefully. I got the facts, all the facts I could. All those facts pointed one way—pointed to one person. When I’d got all the facts I took them to my superior officer. After that it was out of my hands. The case went to the Public Prosecutor and it was up to him. He decided to prosecute—he couldn’t have done anything else—not on the evidence. And so James Bentley was arrested and committed for trial, and was duly tried and has been found guilty. They couldn’t have found him anything else, not on the evidence. And evidence is what a jury have to consider. Didn’t have any qualms about it either, I should say. No, I should say they were all quite satisfied he was guilty.’

‘But you—are not?’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

Superintendent Spence sighed. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully with his big hand.

‘I don’t know. What I mean is, I can’t give a reason—a concrete reason. To the jury I dare say he looked like a murderer—to me he didn’t—and I know a lot more about murderers than they do.’

‘Yes, yes, you are an expert.’

‘For one thing, you know, he wasn’t cocky. Not cocky at all. And in my experience they usually are. Always so damned pleased with themselves. Always think they’re stringing you along. Always sure they’ve been so clever about the whole thing. And even when they’re in the dock and must know they’re for it, they’re still in a queer sort of way getting a kick out of it all. They’re in the limelight. They’re the central figure. Playing the star part—perhaps for the first time in their lives. They’re—well—you know—cocky!’

Spence brought out the word with an air of finality.

‘You’ll understand what I mean by that, M. Poirot.’

‘I understand very well. And this James Bentley—he was not like that?’

‘No. He was—well, just scared stiff. Scared stiff from the start. And to some people that would square in with his being guilty. But not to me.’

‘No, I agree with you. What is he like, this James Bentley?’

‘Thirty-three, medium height, sallow complexion, wears glasses—’

Poirot arrested the flow.

‘No, I do not mean his physical characteristics. What sort of a personality?’

‘Oh—that.’ Superintendent Spence considered. ‘Unprepossessing sort of fellow. Nervous manner. Can’t look you straight in the face. Has a sly sideways way of peering at you. Worst possible sort of manner for a jury. Sometimes cringing and sometimes truculent. Blusters in an inefficient kind of way.’

He paused and added in a conversational tone:

‘Really a shy kind of chap. Had a cousin rather like that. If anything’s awkward they go and tell some silly lie that hasn’t a chance of being believed.’

‘He does not sound attractive, your James Bentley.’

‘Oh, he isn’t. Nobody could like him. But I don’t want to see him hanged for all that.’

‘And you think he will be hanged?’

‘I don’t see why not. His counsel may lodge an appeal—but if so it will be on very flimsy grounds—a technicality of some kind, and I don’t see that it will have a chance of success.’

‘Did he have a good counsel?’

‘Young Graybrook was allotted to him under the Poor Persons’ Defence Act. I’d say he was thoroughly conscientious and put up the best show he could.’

‘So the man had a fair trial and was condemned by a jury of his fellow-men.’

‘That’s right. A good average jury. Seven men, five women—all decent reasonable souls. Judge was old Stanisdale. Scrupulously fair—no bias.’

‘So—according to the law of the land—James Bentley has nothing to complain of?’

‘If he’s hanged for something he didn’t do, he’s got something to complain of!’

‘A very just observation.’

‘And the case against him was my case—I collected the facts and put them together—and it’s on that case and those facts that he’s been condemned. And I don’t like it, M. Poirot, I don’t like it.’

Hercule Poirot looked for a long time at the red agitated face of Superintendent Spence.

‘Eh bien,’ he said. ‘What do you suggest?’

Spence looked acutely embarrassed.

‘I expect you’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s coming. The Bentley case is closed. I’m on another case already—embezzlement. Got to go up to Scotland tonight. I’m not a free man.’

‘And I—am?’

Spence nodded in a shame-faced sort of way.

‘You’ve got it. Awful cheek, you’ll think. But I can’t think of anything else—of any other way. I did all I could at the time, I examined every possibility I could. And I didn’t get anywhere. I don’t believe I ever would get anywhere. But who knows, it may be different for you. You look at things in—if you’ll pardon me for saying so—in a funny sort of way. Maybe that’s the way you’ve got to look at them in this case. Because if James Bentley didn’t kill her, then somebody else did. She didn’t chop the back of her head in herself. You may be able to find something that I missed. There’s no reason why you should do anything about this business. It’s infernal cheek my even suggesting such a thing. But there it is. I came to you because it was the only thing I could think of. But if you don’t want to put yourself out—and why should you—’

Poirot interrupted him.

‘Oh, but indeed there are reasons. I have leisure—too much leisure. And you have intrigued me—yes, you have intrigued me very much. It is a challenge—to the little grey cells of my brain. And then, I have a regard for you. I see you, in your garden in six months’ time, planting, perhaps, the rose bushes—and as you plant them it is not with the happiness you should be feeling, because behind everything there is an unpleasantness in your brain, a recollection that you try to push away, and I would not have you feel that, my friend. And finally—’ Poirot sat upright and nodded his head vigorously, ‘there is the principle of the thing. If a man has not committed murder, he should not be hanged.’ He paused and then added, ‘But supposing that after all, he did kill her?’

‘In that case I’d be only too thankful to be convinced of it.’

‘And two heads are better than one? Voilà, everything is settled. I precipitate myself upon the business. There is, that is clear, no time to be lost. Already the scent is cold. Mrs McGinty was killed—when?’

‘Last November, 22nd.’

‘Then let us at once get down to the brass tacks.’

‘I’ve got my notes on the case which I’ll pass over to you.’

‘Good. For the moment, we need only the bare outline. If James Bentley did not kill Mrs McGinty, who did?’

Spence shrugged his shoulders and said heavily:

‘There’s nobody, so far as I can see.’

‘But that answer we do not accept. Now, since for every murder there must be a motive, what, in the case of Mrs McGinty, could the motive be? Envy, revenge, jealousy, fear, money? Let us take the last and the simplest? Who profited by her death?’

‘Nobody very much. She had two hundred pounds in the Savings Bank. Her niece gets that.’

‘Two hundred pounds is not very much—but in certain circumstances it could be enough. So let us consider the niece. I apologize, my friend, for treading in your footsteps. You too, I know, must have considered all this. But I have to go over with you the ground already traversed.’

Spence nodded his large head.

‘We considered the niece, of course. She’s thirty-eight, married. Husband is employed in the building and decorating trade—a painter. He’s got a good character, steady employment, sharp sort of fellow, no fool. She’s a pleasant young woman, a bit talkative, seemed fond of her aunt in a mild sort of way. Neither of them had any urgent need for two hundred pounds, though quite pleased to have it, I dare say.’

‘What about the cottage? Do they get that?’

‘It was rented. Of course, under the Rent Restriction Act the landlord couldn’t get the old woman out. But now she’s dead, I don’t think the niece could have taken over—anyway she and her husband didn’t want to. They’ve got a small modern council house of their own of which they are extremely proud.’ Spence sighed. ‘I went into the niece and her husband pretty closely—they seemed the best bet, as you’ll understand. But I couldn’t get hold of anything.’

‘Bien. Now let us talk about Mrs McGinty herself. Describe her to me—and not only in physical terms, if you please.’

Spence grinned.

‘Don’t want a police description? Well, she was sixty-four. Widow. Husband had been employed in the drapery department of Hodges in Kilchester. He died about seven years ago. Pneumonia. Since then, Mrs McGinty has been going out daily to various houses round about. Domestic chores. Broadhinny’s a small village which has lately become residential. One or two retired people, one of the partners in an engineering works, a doctor, that sort of thing. There’s quite a good bus and train service to Kilchester, and Cullenquay which, as I expect you know, is quite a large summer resort, is only eight miles away, but Broadhinny itself is still quite pretty and rural—about a quarter of a mile off the main Drymouth and Kilchester road.’

Poirot nodded.

‘Mrs McGinty’s cottage was one of four that form the village proper. There is the post office and village shop, and agricultural labourers live in the others.’

‘And she took in a lodger?’

‘Yes. Before her husband died, it used to be summer visitors, but after his death she just took one regular. James Bentley had been there for some months.’

‘So we come to—James Bentley?’

‘Bentley’s last job was with a house agent’s in Kilchester. Before that, he lived with his mother in Cullenquay. She was an invalid and he looked after her and never went out much. Then she died, and an annuity she had died with her. He sold the little house and found a job. Well educated man, but no special qualifications or aptitudes, and, as I say, an unprepossessing manner. Didn’t find it easy to get anything. Anyway, they took him on at Breather & Scuttle’s. Rather a second-rate firm. I don’t think he was particularly efficient or successful. They cut down staff and he was the one to go. He couldn’t get another job, and his money ran out. He usually paid Mrs McGinty every month for his room. She gave him breakfast and supper and charged him three pounds a week—quite reasonable, all things considered. He was two months behind in paying her, and he was nearly at the end of his resources. He hadn’t got another job and she was pressing him for what he owed her.’

‘And he knew that she had thirty pounds in the house? Why did she have thirty pounds in the house, by the way, since she had a Savings Bank account?’

‘Because she didn’t trust the Government. Said they’d got two hundred pounds of her money, but they wouldn’t get any more. She’d keep that where she could lay her hands on it any minute. She said that to one or two people. It was under a loose board in her bedroom floor—a very obvious place. James Bentley admitted he knew it was there.’

‘Very obliging of him. And did niece and husband know that too?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Then we have now arrived back at my first question to you. How did Mrs McGinty die?’

‘She died on the night of November 22nd. Police surgeon put the time of death as being between 7 and 10 p.m. She’d had her supper—a kipper and bread and margarine, and according to all accounts, she usually had that about half-past six. If she adhered to that on the night in question, then by the evidence of digestion she was killed about eight-thirty or nine o’clock. James Bentley, by his own account, was out walking that evening from seven-fifteen to about nine. He went out and walked most evenings after dark. According to his own story he came in at about nine o’clock (he had his own key) and went straight upstairs to his room. Mrs McGinty had had wash-basins fixed in the bedrooms because of summer visitors. He read for about half an hour and then went to bed. He heard and noticed nothing out of the way. Next morning he came downstairs and looked into the kitchen, but there was no one there and no signs of breakfast being prepared. He says he hesitated a bit and then knocked on Mrs McGinty’s door, but got no reply.

‘He thought she must have overslept, but didn’t like to go on knocking. Then the baker came and James Bentley went up and knocked again, and after that, as I told you, the baker went next door and fetched in a Mrs Elliot, who eventually found the body and went off the deep end. Mrs McGinty was lying on the parlour floor. She’d been hit on the back of the head with something rather in the nature of a meat chopper with a very sharp edge. She’d been killed instantaneously. Drawers were pulled open and things strewn about, and the loose board in the floor in her bedroom had been prised up and the cache was empty. All the windows were closed and shuttered on the inside. No signs of anything being tampered with or of being broken into from outside.’

‘Therefore,’ said Poirot, ‘either James Bentley must have killed her, or else she must have admitted her killer herself whilst Bentley was out?’

‘Exactly. It wasn’t any hold-up or burglar. Now who would she be likely to let in? One of the neighbours, or her niece, or her niece’s husband. It boils down to that. We eliminated the neighbours. Niece and her husband were at the pictures that night. It is possible—just possible, that one or other of them left the cinema unobserved, bicycled three miles, killed the old woman, hid the money outside the house, and got back into the cinema unnoticed. We looked into that possibility, but we didn’t find any confirmation of it. And why hide the money outside McGinty’s house if so? Difficult place to pick it up later. Why not somewhere along the three miles back? No, the only reason for hiding it where it was hidden—’

Poirot finished the sentence for him.

‘Would be because you were living in that house, but didn’t want to hide it in your room or anywhere inside. In fact: James Bentley.’

‘That’s right. Everywhere, every time, you came up against Bentley. Finally there was the blood on his cuff.’

‘How did he account for that?’

‘Said he remembered brushing up against a butcher’s shop the previous day. Baloney! It wasn’t animal blood.’

‘And he stuck to that story?’

‘Not likely. At the trial he told a completely different tale. You see, there was a hair on the cuff as well—a blood-stained hair, and the hair was identical with Mrs McGinty’s hair. That had got to be explained away. He admitted then that he had gone into the room the night before when he came back from his walk. He’d gone in, he said, after knocking, and found her there, on the floor, dead. He’d bent over and touched her, he said, to make sure. And then he’d lost his head. He’d always been very much affected by the sight of blood, he said. He went to his room in a state of collapse and more or less fainted. In the morning he couldn’t bring himself to admit he knew what had happened.’

‘A very fishy story,’ commented Poirot.

‘Yes, indeed. And yet, you know,’ said Spence thoughtfully, ‘it might well be true. It’s not the sort of thing that an ordinary man—or a jury—can believe. But I’ve come across people like that. I don’t mean the collapse story. I mean people who are confronted by a demand for responsible action and who simply can’t face up to it. Shy people. He goes in, say, and finds her. He knows that he ought to do something—get the police—go to a neighbour—do the right thing whatever it is. And he funks it. He thinks “I don’t need to know anything about it. I needn’t have come in here tonight. I’ll go to bed just as if I hadn’t come in here at all…” Behind it, of course, there’s fear—fear that he may be suspected of having a hand in it. He thinks he’ll keep himself out of it as long as possible, and so the silly juggins goes and puts himself into it—up to his neck.’

Spence paused.

‘It could have been that way.’

‘It could,’ said Poirot thoughtfully.

‘Or again, it may have been just the best story his counsel could think up for him. But I don’t know. The waitress in the café in Kilchester where he usually had lunch said that he always chose a table where he could look into a wall or a corner and not see people. He was that kind of a chap—just a bit screwy. But not screwy enough to be a killer. He’d no persecution complex or anything of that kind.’

Spence looked hopefully at Poirot—but Poirot did not respond—he was frowning.

The two men sat silent for a while.

Chapter 3

At last Poirot roused himself with a sigh.

‘Eh bien,’ he said. ‘We have exhausted the motive of money. Let us pass to other theories. Had Mrs McGinty an enemy? Was she afraid of anyone?’

‘No evidence of it.’

‘What did her neighbours have to say?’

‘Not very much. They wouldn’t to the police, perhaps, but I don’t think they were holding anything back. She kept herself to herself, they said. But that’s regarded as natural enough. Our villages, you know, M. Poirot, aren’t friendly. Evacuees found that during the war. Mrs McGinty passed the time of day with the neighbours but they weren’t intimate.’

‘How long had she lived there?’

‘Matter of eighteen or twenty years, I think.’

‘And the forty years before that?’

‘There’s no mystery about her. Farmer’s daughter from North Devon. She and her husband lived near Ilfracombe for a time, and then moved to Kilchester. Had a cottage the other side of it—but found it damp, so they moved to Broadhinny. Husband seems to have been a quiet, decent man, delicate—didn’t go to the pub much. All very respectable and above board. No mysteries anywhere, nothing to hide.’

‘And yet she was killed?’

‘And yet she was killed.’

‘The niece didn’t know of anyone who had a grudge against her aunt?’

‘She says not.’

Poirot rubbed his nose in an exasperated fashion.

‘You comprehend, my dear friend, it would be so much easier if Mrs McGinty was not Mrs McGinty, so to speak. If she could be what is called a Mystery Woman—a woman with a past.’

‘Well, she wasn’t,’ said Spence stolidly. ‘She was just Mrs McGinty, a more or less uneducated woman, who let rooms and went out charring. Thousands of them all over England.’

‘But they do not all get murdered.’

‘No. I grant you that.’

‘So why should Mrs McGinty get murdered? The obvious answer we do not accept. What remains? A shadowy and improbable niece. An even more shadowy and improbable stranger. Facts? Let us stick to facts. What are the facts? An elderly charwoman is murdered. A shy and uncouth young man is arrested and convicted of the murder. Why was James Bentley arrested?’

Spence stared.

‘The evidence against him. I’ve told you—’

‘Yes. Evidence. But tell me, my Spence, was it real evidence or was it contrived?’

‘Contrived?’

‘Yes. Granted the premise that James Bentley is innocent, two possibilities remain. The evidence was manufactured, deliberately, to throw suspicion upon him. Or else he was just the unfortunate victim of circumstances.’

Spence considered.

‘Yes. I see what you’re driving at.’

‘There is nothing to show that the former was the case. But again there is nothing to show that it was not so. The money was taken and hidden outside the house in a place easily found. To have actually hidden it in his room would have been a little too much for the police to swallow. The murder was committed at a time when Bentley was taking a lonely walk, as he often did. Did the bloodstain come on his sleeve as he said it did at his trial, or was that, too, contrived? Did someone brush against him in the darkness and smear tell-tale evidence on his sleeve?’

‘I think that’s going a bit far, M. Poirot.’

‘Perhaps, perhaps. But we have got to go far. I think that in this case we have got to go so far that the imagination cannot as yet see the path clearly…For, you see, mon cher Spence, if Mrs McGinty is just an ordinary charwoman—it is the murderer who must be extraordinary. Yes—that follows clearly. It is in the murderer and not the murdered that the interest of this case lies. That is not the case in most crimes. Usually it is in the personality of the murdered person that the crux of the situation lies. It is the silent dead in whom I am usually interested. Their hates, their loves, their actions. And when you really know the murdered victim, then the victim speaks, and those dead lips utter a name—the name you want to know.’

Spence looked rather uncomfortable.

‘Those foreigners!’ he seemed to be saying to himself.

‘But here,’ continued Poirot, ‘it is the opposite. Here we guess at a veiled personality—a figure still hidden in darkness. How did Mrs McGinty die? Why did she die? The answer is not to be found in studying the life of Mrs McGinty. The answer is to be found in the personality of the murderer. You agree with me there?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Superintendent Spence cautiously.

‘Someone who wanted—what? To strike down Mrs McGinty? Or to strike down James Bentley?’

The Superintendent gave a doubtful ‘H’m!’

‘Yes—yes, that is one of the first points to be decided. Who is the real victim? Who was intended to be the victim?’

Spence said incredulously: ‘You really think someone would bump off a perfectly inoffensive old woman in order to get someone else hanged for murder?’

‘One cannot make an omelette, they say, without breaking eggs. Mrs McGinty, then, may be the egg, and James Bentley is the omelette. So let me hear, now, what you know of James Bentley.’

‘Nothing much. Father was a doctor—died when Bentley was nine years old. He went to one of the smaller public schools, unfit for the Army, had a weak chest, was in one of the Ministries during the war and lived with a possessive mother.’

‘Well,’ said Poirot, ‘there are certain possibilities there…More than there are in the life history of Mrs McGinty.’

‘Do you seriously believe what you are suggesting?’

‘No, I do not believe anything as yet. But I say that there are two distinct lines of research, and that we have to decide, very soon, which is the right one to follow.’

‘How are you going to set about things, M. Poirot? Is there anything I can do?’

‘First, I should like an interview with James Bentley.’

‘That can be arranged. I’ll get on to his solicitors.’

‘After that and subject, of course, to the result, if any—I am not hopeful—of that interview, I shall go to Broadhinny. There, aided by your notes, I shall, as quickly as possible, go over that same ground where you have passed before me.’

‘In case I’ve missed anything,’ said Spence with a wry smile.

‘In case, I would prefer to say, that some circumstance should strike me in a different light to the one in which it struck you. Human reactions vary and so does human experience. The resemblance of a rich financier to a soap boiler whom I had known in Liège once brought about a most satisfactory result. But no need to go into that. What I should like to do is to eliminate one or other of the trails I indicated just now. And to eliminate the Mrs McGinty trail—trail No. 1—will obviously be quicker and easier than to attack trail No. 2. Where, now, can I stay in Broadhinny? Is there an inn of moderate comfort?’

‘There’s the Three Ducks—but it doesn’t put people up. There’s the Lamb in Cullavon three miles away—or there is a kind of a Guest House in Broadhinny itself. It’s not really a Guest House, just a rather decrepit country house where the young couple who own it take in paying guests. I don’t think,’ said Spence dubiously, ‘that it’s very comfortable.’

Hercule Poirot closed his eyes in agony.

‘If I suffer, I suffer,’ he said. ‘It has to be.’

‘I don’t know what you’ll go there as,’ continued Spence doubtfully as he eyed Poirot. ‘You might be some kind of an opera singer. Voice broken down. Got to rest. That might do.’

‘I shall go,’ said Hercule Poirot, speaking with accents of royal blood, ‘as myself.’

Spence received this pronouncement with pursed lips.

‘D’you think that’s advisable?’

‘I think it is essential! But yes, essential. Consider, cher ami, it is time we are up against. What do we know? Nothing. So the hope, the best hope, is to go pretending that I know a great deal. I am Hercule Poirot. I am the great, the unique Hercule Poirot. And I, Hercule Poirot, am not satisfied about the verdict in the McGinty case. I, Hercule Poirot, have a very shrewd suspicion of what really happened. There is a circumstance that I, alone, estimate at its true value. You see?’

‘And then?’

‘And then, having made my effect, I observe the reactions. For there should be reactions. Very definitely, there should be reactions.’

Superintendent Spence looked uneasily at the little man.

‘Look here, M. Poirot,’ he said. ‘Don’t go sticking out your neck. I don’t want anything to happen to you.’

‘But if it does, you would be proved right beyond the shadow of doubt, is it not so?’

‘I don’t want it proved the hard way,’ said Superintendent Spence.

Chapter 4

With great distaste, Hercule Poirot looked round the room in which he stood. It was a room of gracious proportions but there its attraction ended. Poirot made an eloquent grimace as he drew a suspicious finger along the top of a book case. As he had suspected—dust! He sat down gingerly on a sofa and its broken springs sagged depressingly under him. The two faded armchairs were, as he knew, little better. A large fierce-looking dog whom Poirot suspected of having mange growled from his position on a moderately comfortable fourth chair.

The room was large, and had a faded Morris wall-paper. Steel engravings of unpleasant subjects hung crookedly on the walls with one or two good oil paintings. The chair-covers were both faded and dirty, the carpet had holes in it and had never been of a pleasant design. A good deal of miscellaneous bric-à-brac was scattered haphazard here and there. Tables rocked dangerously owing to absence of castors. One window was open, and no power on earth could, apparently, shut it again. The door, temporarily shut, was not likely to remain so. The latch did not hold, and with every gust of wind it burst open and whirling gusts of cold wind eddied round the room.

‘I suffer,’ said Hercule Poirot to himself in acute self-pity. ‘Yes, I suffer.’

The door burst open and the wind and Mrs Summerhayes came in together. She looked round the room, shouted ‘What?’ to someone in the distance and went out again.

Mrs Summerhayes had red hair and an attractively freckled face and was usually in a distracted state of putting things down, or else looking for them.

Hercule Poirot sprang to his feet and shut the door.

A moment or two later it opened again and Mrs Summerhayes reappeared. This time she was carrying a large enamel basin and a knife.

A man’s voice from some way away called out:

‘Maureen, that cat’s been sick again. What shall I do?’

Mrs Summerhayes called: ‘I’m coming, darling. Hold everything.’

She dropped the basin and the knife and went out again.

Poirot got up again and shut the door. He said:

‘Decidedly, I suffer.’

A car drove up, the large dog leaped from the chair and raised its voice in a crescendo of barking. He jumped on a small table by the window and the table collapsed with a crash.

‘Enfin,’ said Hercule Poirot. ‘C’est insupportable!’

The door burst open, the wind surged round the room, the dog rushed out, still barking. Maureen’s voice came, upraised loud and clear.

‘Johnnie, why the hell did you leave the back door open! Those bloody hens are in the larder.’

‘And for this,’ said Hercule Poirot with feeling, ‘I pay seven guineas a week!’

The door banged to with a crash. Through the window came the loud squawking of irate hens.

Then the door opened again and Maureen Summerhayes came in and fell upon the basin with a cry of joy.

‘Couldn’t think where I’d left it. Would you mind frightfully, Mr Er—hum—I mean, would it bother you if I sliced the beans in here? The smell in the kitchen is too frightful.’

‘Madame, I should be enchanted.’

It was not, perhaps, the exact phrase, but it was near enough. It was the first time in twenty-four hours that Poirot had seen any chance of a conversation of more than six seconds’ duration.

Mrs Summerhayes flung herself down in a chair and began slicing beans with frenzied energy and considerable awkwardness.

‘I do hope,’ she said, ‘that you’re not too frightfully uncomfortable? If there’s anything you want altered, do say so.’

Poirot had already come to the opinion that the only thing in Long Meadows he could even tolerate was his hostess.

‘You are too kind, madame,’ he replied politely. ‘I only wish it were within my powers to provide you with suitable domestics.’

‘Domestics!’ Mrs Summerhayes gave a squeal. ‘What a hope! Can’t even get hold of a daily. Our really good one was murdered. Just my luck.’

‘That would be Mrs McGinty,’ said Poirot quickly.

‘Mrs McGinty it was. God, how I miss that woman! Of course it was all a big thrill at the time. First murder we’ve ever had right in the family, so to speak, but as I told Johnnie, it was a downright bit of bad luck for us. Without McGinty I just can’t cope.’

‘You were attached to her?’

‘My dear man, she was reliable. She came. Monday afternoons and Thursday mornings—just like a clock. Now I have that Burp woman from up by the station. Five children and a husband. Naturally she’s never here. Either the husband’s taken queer, or the old mother, or the children have some foul disease or other. With old McGinty, at least it was only she herself who came over queer, and I must say she hardly ever did.’

‘And you found her always reliable and honest? You had trust in her?’

‘Oh, she’d never pinch anything—not even food. Of course she snooped a bit. Had a look at one’s letters and all that. But one expects that sort of thing. I mean they must live such awfully drab lives, mustn’t they?’

‘Had Mrs McGinty had a drab life?’

‘Ghastly, I expect,’ said Mrs Summerhayes vaguely. ‘Always on your knees scrubbing. And then piles of other people’s washing-up waiting for you on the sink when you arrive in the morning. If I had to face that every day, I’d be positively relieved to be murdered. I really would.’

The face of Major Summerhayes appeared at the window. Mrs Summerhayes sprang up, upsetting the beans, and rushed across to the window, which she opened to the fullest extent.

‘That damned dog’s eaten the hens’ food again, Maureen.’

‘Oh damn, now he’ll be sick!’

‘Look here,’ John Summerhayes displayed a colander full of greenery, ‘is this enough spinach?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Seems a colossal amount to me.’

‘It’ll be about a teaspoonful when it’s cooked. Don’t you know by now what spinach is like?’

‘Oh Lord!’

‘Has the fish come?’

‘Not a sign of it.’

‘Hell, we’ll have to open a tin of something. You might do that, Johnnie. One of the ones in the corner cupboard. That one we thought was a bit bulged. I expect it’s quite all right really.’

‘What about the spinach?’

‘I’ll get that.’

She leaped through the window, and husband and wife moved away together.

‘Nom d’un nom d’un nom!’ said Hercule Poirot. He crossed the room and closed the window as nearly as he could. The voice of Major Summerhayes came to him borne on the wind.

‘What about this new fellow, Maureen? Looks a bit peculiar to me. What’s his name again?’

‘I couldn’t remember it just now when I was talking to him. Had to say Mr Er-um. Poirot—that’s what it is. He’s French.’

‘You know, Maureen, I seem to have seen that name somewhere.’

‘Home Perm, perhaps. He looks like a hairdresser.’ Poirot winced.

‘N-no. Perhaps it’s pickles. I don’t know. I’m sure it’s familiar. Better get the first seven guineas out of him, quick.’

The voices died away.

Hercule Poirot picked up the beans from the floor where they had scattered far and wide. Just as he finished doing so, Mrs Summerhayes came in again through the door.

He presented them to her politely:

‘Voici, madame.’

‘Oh, thanks awfully. I say, these beans look a bit black. We store them, you know, in crocks, salted down. But these seem to have gone wrong. I’m afraid they won’t be very nice.’

‘I, too, fear that…You permit that I shut the door? There is a decided draught.’

‘Oh yes, do. I’m afraid I always leave doors open.’

‘So I have noticed.’

‘Anyway, that door never stays shut. This house is practically falling to pieces. Johnnie’s father and mother lived here and they were badly off, poor dears, and they never did a thing to it. And then when we came home from India to live here, we couldn’t afford to do anything either. It’s fun for the children in the holidays, though, lots of room to run wild in, and the garden and everything. Having paying guests here just enables us to keep going, though I must say we’ve had a few rude shocks.’

‘Am I your only guest at present?’

‘We’ve got an old lady upstairs. Took to her bed the day she came and has been there ever since. Nothing the matter with her that I can see. But there she is, and I carry up four trays a day. Nothing wrong with her appetite. Anyway, she’s going tomorrow to some niece or other.’

Mrs Summerhayes paused for a moment before resuming in a slightly artificial voice.

‘The fishman will be here in a minute. I wonder if you’d mind—er—forking out the first week’s rent. You are staying a week, aren’t you?’

‘Perhaps longer.’

‘Sorry to bother you. But I’ve not got any cash in the house and you know what these people are like—always dunning you.’

‘Pray do not apologize, madame.’ Poirot took out seven pound notes and added seven shillings. Mrs Summerhayes gathered the money up with avidity.

‘Thanks a lot.’

‘I should, perhaps, madame, tell you a little more about myself. I am Hercule Poirot.’

The revelation left Mrs Summerhayes unmoved.

‘What a lovely name,’ she said kindly. ‘Greek, isn’t it?’

‘I am, as you may know,’ said Poirot, ‘a detective.’ He tapped his chest. ‘Perhaps the most famous detective there is.’

Mrs Summerhayes screamed with amusement.

‘I see you’re a great practical joker, M. Poirot. What are you detecting? Cigarette ash and footprints?’

‘I am investigating the murder of Mrs McGinty,’ said Poirot. ‘And I do not joke.’

‘Ouch,’ said Mrs Summerhayes, ‘I’ve cut my hand.’

She raised a finger and inspected it.

Then she stared at Poirot.

‘Look here,’ she said. ‘Do you mean it? What I mean is, it’s all over, all that. They arrested that poor half-wit who lodged there and he’s been tried and convicted and everything. He’s probably been hanged by now.’

‘No, madame,’ said Poirot. ‘He has not been hanged—yet. And it is not “over”—the case of Mrs McGinty. I will remind you of the line from one of your poets. “A question is never settled until it is settled—right.”’

‘Oo,’ said Mrs Summerhayes, her attention diverted from Poirot to the basin in her lap. ‘I’m bleeding over the beans. Not too good as we’ve got to have them for lunch. Still it won’t matter really because they’ll go into boiling water. Things are always all right if you boil them, aren’t they? Even tins.’

‘I think,’ said Hercule Poirot quietly, ‘that I shall not be in for lunch.’

Chapter 5

‘I don’t know, I’m sure,’ said Mrs Burch.

She had said that three times already. Her natural distrust of foreign-looking gentlemen with black moustaches, wearing large fur-lined coats was not to be easily overcome.

‘Very unpleasant, it’s been,’ she went on. ‘Having poor auntie murdered and the police and all that. Tramping round everywhere, and ferreting about, and asking questions. With the neighbours all agog. I didn’t feel at first we’d ever live it down. And my husband’s mother’s been downright nasty about it. Nothing of that kind ever happened in her family, she kept saying. And “poor Joe” and all that. What about poor me? She was my aunt, wasn’t she? But really I did think it was all over now.’

‘And supposing that James Bentley is innocent, after all?’

‘Nonsense,’ snapped Mrs Burch. ‘Of course he isn’t innocent. He did it all right. I never did like the looks of him. Wandering about muttering to himself. Said to auntie, I did: “You oughtn’t to have a man like that in the house. Might go off his head,” I said. But she said he was quiet and obliging and didn’t give trouble. No drinking, she said, and he didn’t even smoke. Well, she knows better now, poor soul.’

Poirot looked thoughtfully at her. She was a big, plump woman with a healthy colour and a good-humoured mouth. The small house was neat and clean and smelt of furniture polish and Brasso. A faint appetizing smell came from the direction of the kitchen.

A good wife who kept her house clean and took the trouble to cook for her man. He approved. She was prejudiced and obstinate but, after all, why not? Most decidedly, she was not the kind of woman one could imagine using a meat chopper on her aunt, or conniving at her husband’s doing so. Spence had not thought her that kind of woman, and rather reluctantly, Hercule Poirot agreed with him. Spence had gone into the financial background of the Burches and had found no motive there for murder, and Spence was a very thorough man.

He sighed, and persevered with his task, which was the breaking down of Mrs Burch’s suspicion of foreigners. He led the conversation away from murder and focused on the victim of it. He asked questions about ‘poor auntie’, her health, her habits, her preferences in food and drink, her politics, her late husband, her attitude to life, to sex, to sin, to religion, to children, to animals.

Whether any of this irrelevant matter would be of use, he had no idea. He was looking through a haystack to find a needle. But, incidentally, he was learning something about Bessie Burch.

Bessie did not really know very much about her aunt. It had been a family tie, honoured as such, but without intimacy. Now and again, once a month or so, she and Joe had gone over on a Sunday to have midday dinner with auntie, and more rarely, auntie had come over to see them. They had exchanged presents at Christmas. They’d known that auntie had a little something put by, and that they’d get it when she died.

‘But that’s not to say we were needing it,’ Mrs Burch explained with rising colour. ‘We’ve got something put by ourselves. And we buried her beautiful. A real nice funeral it was. Flowers and everything.’

Auntie had been fond of knitting. She didn’t like dogs, they messed up a place, but she used to have a cat—a ginger. It strayed away and she hadn’t had one since, but the woman at the post office had been going to give her a kitten. Kept her house very neat and didn’t like litter. Kept brass a treat and washed down the kitchen floor every day. She made quite a nice thing of going out to work. One shilling and tenpence an hour—two shillings from Holmeleigh, that was Mr Carpenter’s of the Works’ house. Rolling in money, the Carpenters were. Tried to get auntie to come more days in the week, but auntie wouldn’t disappoint her other ladies because she’d gone to them before she went to Mr Carpenter’s, and it wouldn’t have been right.

Poirot mentioned Mrs Summerhayes at Long Meadows.

Oh yes, auntie went to her—two days a week. They’d come back from India where they’d had a lot of native servants and Mrs Summerhayes didn’t know a thing about a house. They tried to market-garden, but they didn’t know anything about that, either. When the children came home for the holidays, the house was just pandemonium. But Mrs Summerhayes was a nice lady and auntie liked her.

So the portrait grew. Mrs McGinty knitted, and scrubbed floors and polished brass, she liked cats and didn’t like dogs. She liked children, but not very much. She kept herself to herself.

She attended church on Sunday, but didn’t take part in any church activities. Sometimes, but rarely, she went to the pictures. She didn’t hold with goings on—and had given up working for an artist and his wife when she discovered they weren’t properly married. She didn’t read books, but she enjoyed the Sunday paper and she liked old magazines when her ladies gave them to her. Although she didn’t go much to the pictures, she was interested in hearing about film stars and their doings. She wasn’t interested in politics, but voted Conservative like her husband had always done. Never spent much on clothes, but got quite a lot given her from her ladies, and was of a saving disposition.

Mrs McGinty was, in fact, very much the Mrs McGinty that Poirot had imagined she would be. And Bessie Burch, her niece, was the Bessie Burch of Superintendent Spence’s notes.

Before Poirot took his leave, Joe Burch came home for the lunch hour. A small, shrewd man, less easy to be sure about than his wife. There was a faint nervousness in his manner. He showed less signs of suspicion and hostility than his wife. Indeed he seemed anxious to appear cooperative. And that, Poirot reflected, was very faintly out of character. For why should Joe Burch be anxious to placate an importunate foreign stranger? The reason could only be that the stranger had brought with him a letter from Superintendent Spence of the County Police.

So Joe Burch was anxious to stand in well with the police? Was it that he couldn’t afford, as his wife could, to be critical of the police?

A man, perhaps, with an uneasy conscience. Why was that conscience uneasy? There could be so many reasons—none of them connected with Mrs McGinty’s death. Or was it that, somehow or other, the cinema alibi had been cleverly faked, and that it was Joe Burch who had knocked on the door of the cottage, had been admitted by auntie and who had struck down the unsuspecting old woman? He would pull out the drawers and ransack the rooms to give the appearance of robbery, he might hide the money outside, cunningly, to incriminate James Bentley, the money that was in the Savings Bank was what he was after. Two hundred pounds coming to his wife which, for some reason unknown, he badly needed. The weapon, Poirot remembered, had never been found. Why had that not also been found on the scene of the crime? Any moron knew enough to wear gloves or rub off fingerprints. Why then had the weapon, which must have been a heavy one with a sharp edge, been removed? Was it because it could easily be identified as belonging to the Burch ménage? Was that same weapon, washed and polished, here in the house now? Something in the nature of a meat chopper, the police surgeon had said—but not, it seemed, actually a meat chopper. Something, perhaps a little unusual…a little out of the ordinary, easily identified. The police had hunted for it, but not found it. They had searched woods, dragged ponds. There was nothing missing from Mrs McGinty’s kitchen, and nobody could say that James Bentley had had anything of that kind in his possession. They had never traced any purchase of a meat chopper or any such implement to him. A small, but negative point in his favour. Ignored in the weight of other evidence. But still a point…

Poirot cast a swift glance round the rather overcrowded little sitting-room in which he was sitting.

Was the weapon here, somewhere, in this house? Was that why Joe Burch was uneasy and conciliatory?

Poirot did not know. He did not really think so. But he was not absolutely sure…

Chapter 6
I

In the offices of Messrs Breather & Scuttle, Poirot was shown, after some demur, into the room of Mr Scuttle himself.

Mr Scuttle was a brisk, bustling man, with a hearty manner.

‘Good morning. Good morning.’ He rubbed his hands. ‘Now, what can we do for you?’

His professional eye shot over Poirot, trying to place him, making, as it were, a series of marginal notes.

Foreign. Good quality clothes. Probably rich. Restaurant proprietor? Hotel manager? Films?

‘I hope not to trespass on your time unduly. I wanted to talk to you about your former employee, James Bentley.’

Mr Scuttle’s expressive eyebrows shot up an inch and dropped.

‘James Bentley. James Bentley?’ He shot out a question. ‘Press?’

‘No.’

‘And you wouldn’t be police?’

‘No. At least—not of this country.’

‘Not of this country.’ Mr Scuttle filed this away rapidly as though for future reference. ‘What’s it all about?’

Poirot, never hindered by a pedantic regard for truth, launched out into speech.

‘I am opening a further inquiry into James Bentley’s case—at the request of certain relatives of his.’

‘Didn’t know he had any. Anyway, he’s been found guilty, you know, and condemned to death.’

‘But not yet executed.’

‘While there’s life, there’s hope, eh?’ Mr Scuttle shook his head. ‘Should doubt it, though. Evidence was strong. Who are these relations of his?’

‘I can only tell you this, they are both rich and powerful. Immensely rich.’

‘You surprise me.’ Mr Scuttle was unable to help thawing slightly. The words ‘immensely rich’ had an attractive and hypnotic quality. ‘Yes, you really do surprise me.’

‘Bentley’s mother, the late Mrs Bentley,’ explained Poirot, ‘cut herself and her son off completely from her family.’

‘One of these family feuds, eh? Well, well. And young Bentley without a farthing to bless himself with. Pity these relations didn’t come to the rescue before.’

‘They have only just become aware of the facts,’ explained Poirot. ‘They have engaged me to come with all speed to this country and do everything possible.’

Mr Scuttle leaned back, relaxing his business manner.

‘Don’t know what you can do. I suppose there’s insanity? A bit late in the day—but if you got hold of the big medicos. Of course I’m not up in these things myself.’

Poirot leaned forward.

‘Monsieur, James Bentley worked here. You can tell me about him.’

‘Precious little to tell—precious little. He was one of our junior clerks. Nothing against him. Seemed a perfectly decent young fellow, quite conscientious and all that. But no idea of salesmanship. He just couldn’t put a project over. That’s no good in this job. If a client comes to us with a house he wants to sell, we’re there to sell it for him. And if a client wants a house, we find him one. If it’s a house in a lonely place with no amenities, we stress its antiquity, call it a period piece—and don’t mention the plumbing! And if the house looks straight into the gasworks, we talk about amenities and facilities and don’t mention the view. Hustle your client into it—that’s what you’re here to do. All sorts of little tricks there are. “We advise you, madam, to make an immediate offer. There’s a Member of Parliament who’s very keen on it—very keen indeed. Going out to see it again this afternoon.” They fall for that every time—a Member of Parliament is always a good touch. Can’t think why! No member ever lives away from his constituency. It’s just the good solid sound of it.’ He laughed suddenly, displayed gleaming dentures. ‘Psychology—that’s what it is—just psychology.’

Poirot leapt at the word.

‘Psychology. How right you are. I see that you are a judge of men.’

‘Not too bad. Not too bad,’ said Mr Scuttle modestly.

‘So I ask you again what was your impression of James Bentley? Between ourselves—strictly between ourselves—you think he killed the old woman?’

Scuttle stared.

‘Of course.’

‘And you think, too, that it was a likely thing for him to do—psychologically speaking?’

‘Well—if you put it like that—no, not really. Shouldn’t have thought he had the guts. Tell you what, if you ask me, he was barmy. Put it that way, and it works. Always a bit soft in the head, and what with being out of a job and worrying and all that, he just went right over the edge.’

‘You had no special reason for discharging him?’

Scuttle shook his head.

‘Bad time of year. Staff hadn’t enough to do. We sacked the one who was least competent. That was Bentley. Always would be, I expect. Gave him a good reference and all that. He didn’t get another job, though. No pep. Made a bad impression on people.’

It always came back to that, Poirot thought, as he left the office. James Bentley made a bad impression on people. He took comfort in considering various murderers he had known whom most people had found full of charm.

II

‘Excuse me, do you mind if I sit down here and talk to you for a moment?’

Poirot, ensconced at a small table in the Blue Cat, looked up from the menu he was studying with a start. It was rather dark in the Blue Cat, which specialized in an old-world effect of oak and leaded panes, but the young woman who had just sat down opposite to him stood out brightly from her dark background.

She had determinedly golden hair, and was wearing an electric blue jumper suit. Moreover, Hercule Poirot was conscious of having noticed her somewhere only a short time previously.

She went on:

‘I couldn’t help, you see, hearing something of what you were saying to Mr Scuttle.’

Poirot nodded. He had realized that the partitions in the offices of Breather & Scuttle were made for convenience rather than privacy. That had not worried him, since it was chiefly publicity that he desired.

‘You were typing,’ he said, ‘to the right of the back window.’

She nodded. Her teeth shone white in an acquiescing smile. A very healthy young woman, with a full buxom figure that Poirot approved. About thirty-three or four, he judged, and by nature dark-haired, but not one to be dictated to by nature.

‘About Mr Bentley,’ she said.

‘What about Mr Bentley?’

‘Is he going to appeal? Does it mean that there’s new evidence? Oh, I’m so glad. I couldn’t—I just couldn’t believe he did it.’

Poirot’s eyebrows rose.

‘So you never thought he did it,’ he said slowly.

‘Well, not at first. I thought it must be a mistake. But then the evidence—’ She stopped.

‘Yes, the evidence,’ said Poirot.

‘There just didn’t seem anyone else who could have done it. I thought perhaps he’d gone a little mad.’

‘Did he ever seem to you a little—what shall I say—queer?’

‘Oh no. Not queer in that way. He was just shy and awkward as anyone might be. The truth was, he didn’t make the best of himself. He hadn’t confidence in himself.’

Poirot looked at her. She certainly had confidence in herself. Possibly she had enough confidence for two.

‘You liked him?’ he asked.

She flushed.

‘Yes, I did. Amy—that’s the other girl in the office—used to laugh at him and call him a drip, but I liked him very much. He was gentle and polite—and he knew a lot really. Things out of books, I mean.’

‘Ah yes, things out of books.’

‘He missed his mother. She’d been ill for years, you know. At least, not really ill, but not strong, and he’d done everything for her.’

Poirot nodded. He knew those mothers.

‘And of course she’d looked after him, too. I mean taken care of his health and his chest in winter and what he ate and all that.’

Again he nodded. He asked:

‘You and he were friends?’

‘I don’t know—not exactly. We used to talk sometimes. But after he left here, he—I—I didn’t see much of him. I wrote to him once in a friendly way, but he didn’t answer.’

Poirot said gently:

‘But you like him?’

She said rather defiantly:

‘Yes, I do…’

‘That is excellent,’ said Poirot.

His mind switched back to the day of his interview with the condemned prisoner…He saw James Bentley clearly. The mouse-coloured hair, the thin awkward body, the hands with their big knuckles and wrists, the Adam’s apple in the lean neck. He saw the furtive, embarrassed—almost sly glance. Not straightforward, not a man whose word could be trusted—a secretive, sly deceitful fellow with an ungracious, muttering way of talking…That was the impression James Bentley would give to most superficial observers. It was the impression he had given in the dock. The sort of fellow who would tell lies, and steal money, and hit an old woman over the head…

But on Superintendent Spence, who knew men, he had not made that impression. Nor on Hercule Poirot…And now here was this girl.

‘What is your name, mademoiselle?’ he asked.

‘Maude Williams. Is there anything I could do—to help?’

‘I think there is. There are people who believe, Miss Williams, that James Bentley is innocent. They are working to prove that fact. I am the person charged with that investigation, and I may tell you that I have already made considerable progress—yes, considerable progress.’

He uttered that lie without a blush. To his mind it was a very necessary lie. Someone, somewhere, had got to be made uneasy. Maude Williams would talk, and talk was like a stone in a pond, it made a ripple that went on spreading outwards.

He said: ‘You tell me that you and James Bentley talked together. He told you about his mother and his home life. Did he ever mention anyone with whom he, or perhaps his mother, was on bad terms?’

Maude Williams reflected.

‘No—not what you’d call bad terms. His mother didn’t like young women much, I gather.’

‘Mothers of devoted sons never like young women. No, I mean more than that. Some family feud, some enmity. Someone with a grudge?’

She shook her head.

‘He never mentioned anything of that kind.’

‘Did he ever speak of his landlady, Mrs McGinty?’

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
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.

‘That’s what you’re down about, isn’t it? You’re the foreign gentleman from up at Summerhayes?’

‘So you know all about me?’ said Poirot. He beamed. ‘Yes, indeed, Mrs—’

‘Kiddle. My husband’s a plasterer. Moved in four months ago, we did. Been living with Bert’s mother before…Some folks said: “You’d never go into a house where there’s been a murder, surely?”—but what I said was, a house is a house, and better than a back sitting-room and sleeping on two chairs. Awful, this ’ousing shortage, isn’t it? And anyway we’ve never been troubled ’ere. Always say they walk if they’ve been murdered, but she doesn’t! Like to see where it happened?’

Feeling like a tourist being taken on a conducted tour, Poirot assented.

Mrs Kiddle led him into a small room over-burdened with a heavy Jacobean suite. Unlike the rest of the house, it showed no signs of ever having been occupied.

‘Down on the floor she was and the back of her head split open. Didn’t half give Mrs Elliot a turn. She’s the one what found her—she and Larkin who comes from the Co-op with the bread. But the money was took from upstairs. Come along up and I’ll show you where.’

Mrs Kiddle led the way up the staircase and into a bedroom which contained a large chest of drawers, a big brass bed, some chairs, and a fine assembly of baby clothes, wet and dry.

‘Right here it was,’ said Mrs Kiddle proudly.

Poirot looked round him. Hard to visualize that this rampant stronghold of haphazard fecundity was once the well-scrubbed domain of an elderly woman who was house-proud. Here Mrs McGinty had lived and slept.

‘I suppose this isn’t her furniture?’

‘Oh no. Her niece over in Cullavon took away all that.’

There was nothing left here of Mrs McGinty. The Kiddles had come and conquered. Life was stronger than death.

From downstairs the loud fierce wail of a baby arose.

‘That’s the baby woken up,’ said Mrs Kiddle unnecessarily.

She plunged down the stairs and Poirot followed her.

There was nothing here for him.

He went next door.

II

‘Yes, sir, it was me found her.’

Mrs Elliot was dramatic. A neat house, this, neat and prim. The only drama in it was Mrs Elliot’s, a tall gaunt dark-haired woman, recounting her one moment of glorious living.

‘Larkin, the baker, he came and knocked at the door. “It’s Mrs McGinty,” he said, “we can’t make her hear. Seems she might have been taken bad.” And indeed I thought she might. She wasn’t a young woman, not by any means. And palpitations she’d had, to my certain knowledge. I thought she might have had a stroke. So I hurried over, seeing as there were only the two men, and naturally they wouldn’t like to go into the bedroom.’

Poirot accepted this piece of propriety with an assenting murmur.

‘Hurried up the stairs, I did. He was on the landing, pale as death he was. Not that I ever thought at the time—well, of course, then I didn’t know what had happened. I knocked on the door loud and there wasn’t any answer, so I turned the handle and I went in. The whole place messed about—and the board in the floor up. “It’s robbery,” I said. “But where’s the poor soul herself?” And then we thought to look in the sitting-room. And there she was…Down on the floor with her poor head stove in. Murder! I saw at once what it was—murder! Couldn’t be anything else! Robbery and murder! Here in Broadhinny. I screamed and I screamed! Quite a job they had with me. Come over all faint, I did. They had to go and get me brandy from the Three Ducks. And even then I was all of a shiver for hours and hours. “Don’t you take on so, mother,” that’s what the sergeant said to me when he came. “Don’t you take on so. You go home and make yourself a nice cup of tea.” And so I did. And when Elliot came home, “Why, whatever’s happened?” he says, staring at me. Still all of a tremble I was. Always was sensitive from a child.’

Poirot dexterously interrupted this thrilling personal narrative.

‘Yes, yes, one can see that. And when was the last time you had seen poor Mrs McGinty?’

‘Must have been the day before, when she’d stepped out into the back garden to pick a bit of mint. I was just feeding the chickens.’

‘Did she say anything to you?’

‘Just good afternoon and were they laying any better.’

‘And that’s the last time you saw her? You didn’t see her on the day she died?’

‘No. I saw Him though.’ Mrs Elliot lowered her voice. ‘About eleven o’clock in the morning. Just walking along the road. Shuffling his feet the way he always did.’

Poirot waited, but it seemed that there was nothing to add.

He asked:

‘Were you surprised when the police arrested him?’

‘Well, I was and I wasn’t. Mind you, I’d always thought he was a bit daft. And no doubt about it, these daft ones do turn nasty, sometimes. My uncle had a feeble-minded boy, and he could go very nasty sometimes—as he grew up, that was. Didn’t know his strength. Yes, that Bentley was daft all right, and I shouldn’t be surprised if they don’t hang him when it comes to it, but sends him to the asylum instead. Why, look at the place he hid the money. No one would hide money in a place like that unless he wanted it to be found. Just silly and simple like, that’s what he was.’

‘Unless he wanted it found,’ murmured Poirot. ‘You did not, by any chance, miss a chopper—or an axe?’

‘No, sir, I did not. The police asked me that. Asked all of us in the cottages here. It’s a mystery still what he killed her with.’

III

Hercule Poirot walked towards the post office.

The murderer had wanted the money found, but he had not wanted the weapon to be found. For the money would point to James Bentley and the weapon would point to—whom?

He shook his head. He had visited the other two cottages. They had been less exuberant than Mrs Kiddle and less dramatic than Mrs Elliot. They had said in effect that Mrs McGinty was a very respectable woman who kept herself to herself, that she had a niece over at Cullavon, that nobody but the said niece ever came to see her, that nobody, so far as they knew, disliked her or bore a grudge against her, that was it true that there was a petition being got up for James Bentley and would they be asked to sign it?

‘I get nowhere—nowhere,’ said Poirot to himself. ‘There is nothing—no little gleam. I can well understand the despair of Superintendent Spence. But it should be different for me. Superintendent Spence, he is a good and painstaking police officer, but me, I am Hercule Poirot. For me, there should be illumination!’

One of his patent leather shoes slopped into a puddle and he winced.

He was the great, the unique Hercule Poirot, but he was also a very old man and his shoes were tight.

He entered the post office.

The right-hand side was given to the business of His Majesty’s mails. The left-hand side displayed a rich assortment of varied merchandise, comprising sweets, groceries, toys, hardware, stationery, birthday cards, knitting wool and children’s underclothes.

Poirot proceeded to a leisurely purchase of stamps.

The woman who bustled forward to attend to him was middle-aged with sharp, bright eyes.

‘Here,’ said Poirot to himself, ‘is undoubtedly the brains of the village of Broadhinny.’

Her name, not inappropriately, was Mrs Sweetiman.

‘And twelve pennies,’ said Mrs Sweetiman, deftly extracting them from a large book. ‘That’s four and tenpence altogether. Will there be anything more, sir?’

She fixed a bright eager glance at him. Through the door at the back a girl’s head showed listening avidly. She had untidy hair and a cold in the head.

‘I am by way of being a stranger in these parts,’ said Poirot solemnly.

‘That’s right, sir,’ agreed Mrs Sweetiman. ‘Come down from London, haven’t you?’

‘I expect you know my business here as well as I do,’ said Poirot with a slight smile.

‘Oh no, sir, I’ve really no idea,’ said Mrs Sweetiman in a wholly perfunctory manner.

‘Mrs McGinty,’ said Poirot.

Mrs Sweetiman shook her head.

‘That was a sad business—a shocking business.’

‘I expect you knew her well?’

‘Oh I did. As well as anyone in Broadhinny, I should say. She’d always pass the time of day with me when she came in here for any little thing. Yes, it was a terrible tragedy. And not settled yet, or so I’ve heard people say.’

‘There is a doubt—in some quarters—as to James Bentley’s guilt.’

‘Well,’ said Mrs Sweetiman, ‘it wouldn’t be the first time the police got hold of the wrong man—though I wouldn’t say they had in this case. Not that I should have thought it of him really. A shy, awkward sort of fellow, but not dangerous or so you’d think. But there, you never know, do you?’

Poirot hazarded a request for notepaper.

‘Of course, sir. Just come across the other side, will you?’

Mrs Sweetiman bustled round to take her place behind the left-hand counter.

‘What’s difficult to imagine is, who it could have been if it wasn’t Mr Bentley,’ she remarked as she stretched up to a top shelf for notepaper and envelopes. ‘We do get some nasty tramps along here sometimes, and it’s possible one of these might have found a window unfastened and got in that way. But he wouldn’t go leaving the money behind him, would he? Not after doing murder to get it—and pound notes anyway, nothing with numbers or marked. Here you are, sir, that’s a nice blue Bond, and envelopes to match.’

Poirot made his purchase.

‘Mrs McGinty never spoke of being nervous of anyone, or afraid, did she?’ he asked.

‘Not to me, she didn’t. She wasn’t a nervous woman. She’d stay late sometimes at Mr Carpenter’s—that’s Holmeleigh at the top of the hill. They often have people to dinner and stopping with them, and Mrs McGinty would go there in the evening sometimes to help wash up, and she’d come down the hill in the dark, and that’s more than I’d like to do. Very dark it is—coming down that hill.’

‘Do you know her niece at all—Mrs Burch?’

‘I know her just to speak to. She and her husband come over sometimes.’

‘They inherited a little money when Mrs McGinty died.’

The piercing dark eyes looked at him severely.

‘Well, that’s natural enough, isn’t it, sir? You can’t take it with you, and it’s only right your own flesh and blood should get it.’

‘Oh yes, oh yes, I am entirely in agreement. Was Mrs McGinty fond of her niece?’

‘Very fond of her, I think, sir. In a quiet way.’

‘And her niece’s husband?’

An evasive look appeared in Mrs Sweetiman’s face.

‘As far as I know.’

‘When did you see Mrs McGinty last?’

Mrs Sweetiman considered, casting her mind back.

‘Now let me see, when was it, Edna?’ Edna, in the doorway, sniffed unhelpfully. ‘Was it the day she died? No, it was the day before—or the day before that again? Yes, it was a Monday. That’s right. She was killed on the Wednesday. Yes, it was Monday. She came in to buy a bottle of ink.’

‘She wanted a bottle of ink?’

‘Expect she wanted to write a letter,’ said Mrs Sweetiman brightly.

‘That seems probable. And she was quite her usual self, then? She did not seem different in any way?’

‘N-no, I don’t think so.’

The sniffing Edna shuffled through the door into the shop and suddenly joined in the conversation.

‘She was different,’ she asserted. ‘Pleased about something—well—not quite pleased—excited.’

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ said Mrs Sweetiman. ‘Not that I noticed it at the time. But now that you say so—sort of spry, she was.’

‘Do you remember anything she said on that day?’

‘I wouldn’t ordinarily. But what with her being murdered and the police and everything, it makes things stand out. She didn’t say anything about James Bentley, that I’m quite sure. Talked about the Carpenters a bit and Mrs Upward—places where she worked, you know.’

‘Oh yes, I was going to ask you whom exactly she worked for here.’

Mrs Sweetiman replied promptly:

‘Mondays and Thursdays she went to Mrs Summerhayes at Long Meadow. That’s where you are staying, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Poirot sighed, ‘I suppose there is not anywhere else to stay?’

‘Not right in Broadhinny, there isn’t. I suppose you aren’t very comfortable at Long Meadows? Mrs Summerhayes is a nice lady but she doesn’t know the first thing about a house. These ladies don’t who come back from foreign parts. Terrible mess there always was there to clean up, or so Mrs McGinty used to say. Yes, Monday afternoons and Thursday mornings Mrs Summerhayes, then Tuesday mornings Dr Rendell’s and afternoons Mrs Upward at Laburnums. Wednesday was Mrs Wetherby at Hunter’s Close and Friday Mrs Selkirk—Mrs Carpenter she is now. Mrs Upward’s an elderly lady who lives with her son. They’ve got a maid, but she’s getting on, and Mrs McGinty used to go once a week to give things a good turn out. Mr and Mrs Wetherby never seem to keep any help long—she’s rather an invalid. Mr and Mrs Carpenter have a beautiful home and do a lot of entertaining. They’re all very nice people.’

It was with this final pronouncement on the population of Broadhinny that Poirot went out into the street again.

He walked slowly up the hill towards Long Meadows. He hoped devoutly that the contents of the bulged tin and the bloodstained beans had been duly eaten for lunch and had not been saved for a supper treat for him. But possibly there were other doubtful tins. Life at Long Meadows certainly had its dangers.

It had been, on the whole, a disappointing day.

What had he learned?

That James Bentley had a friend. That neither he nor Mrs McGinty had had any enemies. That Mrs McGinty had looked excited two days before her death and had bought a bottle of ink—

Poirot stopped dead…Was that a fact, a tiny fact at last?

He had asked idly, what Mrs McGinty should want with a bottle of ink, and Mrs Sweetiman had replied, quite seriously, that she supposed she wanted to write a letter.

There was significance there—a significance that had nearly escaped him because to him, as to most people, writing a letter was a common everyday occurrence.

But it was not so to Mrs McGinty. Writing a letter was to Mrs McGinty such an uncommon occurrence that she had to go out and buy a bottle of ink if she wanted to do so.

Mrs McGinty, then, hardly ever wrote letters. Mrs Sweetiman, who was the postmistress, was thoroughly cognisant of the fact. But Mrs McGinty had written a letter two days before her death. To whom had she written and why?

It might be quite unimportant. She might have written to her niece—to an absent friend. Absurd to lay such stress on a simple thing like a bottle of ink.

But it was all he had got and he was going to follow it up.

A bottle of ink…

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