Five

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

She had said that three times already. Her natural distrust of foreign-looking gentlemen withblack 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 andall that. Tramping round everywhere, and ferreting about, and asking questions. With theneighbours all agog. I didn’t feel at first we’d ever live it down. And my husband’s mother’s beendownright 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 itwas 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 didlike the looks of him. Wandering about muttering to himself. Said to auntie, I did: ‘You oughtn’tto have a man like that in the house. Might go off his head,’ I said. But she said he was quiet andobliging and didn’t give trouble. No drinking, she said, and he didn’t even smoke. Well, sheknows better now, poor soul.”

Poirot looked thoughtfully at her. She was a big, plump woman with a healthy colour and agood-humoured mouth. The small house was neat and clean and smelt of furniture polish andBrasso. 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. Heapproved. She was prejudiced and obstinate but, after all, why not? Most decidedly, she was notthe kind of woman one could imagine using a meat chopper on her aunt, or conniving at herhusband’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 Burchesand 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’ssuspicion 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 lookingthrough a haystack to find a needle. But, incidentally, he was learning something about BessieBurch.

Bessie did not really know very much about her aunt. It had been a family tie, honoured assuch, but without intimacy. Now and again, once a month or so, she and Joe had gone over on aSunday 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 putby, 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’vegot something put by ourselves. And we buried her beautiful. A real nice funeral it was. Flowersand everything.”

Auntie had been fond of knitting. She didn’t like dogs, they messed up a place, but she usedto have a cat—a ginger. It strayed away and she hadn’t had one since, but the woman at the postoffice had been going to give her a kitten. Kept her house very neat and didn’t like litter. Keptbrass a treat and washed down the kitchen floor every day. She made quite a nice thing of goingout 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 tocome more days in the week, but auntie wouldn’t disappoint her other ladies because she’d goneto 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’dhad a lot of native servants and Mrs. Summerhayes didn’t know a thing about a house. They triedto market-garden, but they didn’t know anything about that, either. When the children came homefor the holidays, the house was just pandemonium. But Mrs. Summerhayes was a nice lady andauntie liked her.

So the portrait grew. Mrs. McGinty knitted, and scrubbed floors and polished brass, she likedcats 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, butrarely, she went to the pictures. She didn’t hold with goings on—and had given up working for anartist and his wife when she discovered they weren’t properly married. She didn’t read books, butshe 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 andtheir doings. She wasn’t interested in politics, but voted Conservative like her husband had alwaysdone. Never spent much on clothes, but got quite a lot given her from her ladies, and was of asaving disposition.

Mrs. McGinty was, in fact, very much the Mrs. McGinty that Poirot had imagined she wouldbe. 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 showedless signs of suspicion and hostility than his wife. Indeed he seemed anxious to appearcooperative. And that, Poirot reflected, was very faintly out of character. For why should JoeBurch be anxious to placate an importunate foreign stranger? The reason could only be that thestranger 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, ashis wife could, to be critical of the police?

A man, perhaps, with an uneasy conscience. Why was that conscience uneasy? There couldbe 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 hadknocked on the door of the cottage, had been admitted by auntie and who had struck down theunsuspecting old woman? He would pull out the drawers and ransack the rooms to give theappearance 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 tohis wife which, for some reason unknown, he badly needed. The weapon, Poirot remembered, hadnever been found. Why had that not also been found on the scene of the crime? Any moron knewenough to wear gloves or rub off fingerprints. Why then had the weapon, which must have been aheavy one with a sharp edge, been removed? Was it because it could easily be identified asbelonging to the Burch ménage? Was that same weapon, washed and polished, here in the housenow? 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, easilyidentified. 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 JamesBentley had had anything of that kind in his possession. They had never traced any purchase of ameat chopper or any such implement to him. A small, but negative point in his favour. Ignored inthe weight of other evidence. But still a point .?.?.

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

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

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