Seven

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

A woman looked round the corner of the house. She had on a coloured overall and her hairwas 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 atSummerhayes?”

“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 withBert’s mother before .?.?. Some folks said: ‘You’d never go into a house where there’s been amurder, surely?’—but what I said was, a house is a house, and better than a back sitting-room andsleeping on two chairs. Awful, this ’ousing shortage, isn’t it? And anyway we’ve never beentroubled ’ere. Always say they walk if they’ve been murdered, but she doesn’t! Like to see whereit happened?”

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

Mrs. Kiddle led him into a small room overburdened with a heavy Jacobean suite. Unlike therest 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 aturn. 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 ofdrawers, 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 haphazardfecundity was once the well-scrubbed domain of an elderly woman who was house-proud. HereMrs. 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. Lifewas 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’tmake her hear. Seems she might have been taken bad.’ And indeed I thought she might. Shewasn’t a young woman, not by any means. And palpitations she’d had, to my certain knowledge. Ithought she might have had a stroke. So I hurried over, seeing as there were only the two men, andnaturally 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 everthought at the time—well, of course, then I didn’t know what had happened. I knocked on thedoor loud and there wasn’t any answer, so I turned the handle and I went in. The whole placemessed about—and the board in the floor up. ‘It’s robbery,’ I said. ‘But where’s the poor soulherself?’ And then we thought to look in the sitting-room. And there she was .?.?. Down on thefloor with her poor head stove in. Murder! I saw at once what it was—murder! Couldn’t beanything else! Robbery and murder! Here in Broadhinny. I screamed and I screamed! Quite a jobthey had with me. Come over all faint, I did. They had to go and get me brandy from the ThreeDucks. 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 makeyourself a nice cup of tea.’ And so I did. And when Elliot came home, ‘Why, whatever’shappened?’ 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 ofmint. 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 themorning. 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 doubtabout it, these daft ones do turn nasty, sometimes. My uncle had a feeble-minded boy, and hecould go very nasty sometimes—as he grew up, that was. Didn’t know his strength. Yes, thatBentley 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 hidemoney in a place like that unless he wanted it to be found. Just silly and simple like, that’s what hewas.”

“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 amystery 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 thanMrs. Kiddle and less dramatic than Mrs. Elliot. They had said in effect that Mrs. McGinty was avery respectable woman who kept herself to herself, that she had a niece over at Cullavon, thatnobody but the said niece ever came to see her, that nobody, so far as they knew, disliked her orbore a grudge against her, that was it true that there was a petition being got up for James Bentleyand would they be asked to sign it?

“I get nowhere—nowhere,” said Poirot to himself. “There is nothing—no little gleam. I canwell 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 shoeswere tight.

He entered the post office.

The right-hand side was given to the business of His Majesty’s mails. The left-hand sidedisplayed 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 showedlistening 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 daywith me when she came in here for any little thing. Yes, it was a terrible tragedy. And not settledyet, 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 wrongman—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, doyou?”

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,” sheremarked as she stretched up to a top shelf for notepaper and envelopes. “We do get some nastytramps along here sometimes, and it’s possible one of these might have found a windowunfastened and got in that way. But he wouldn’t go leaving the money behind him, would he? Notafter doing murder to get it—and pound notes anyway, nothing with numbers or marked. Here youare, 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 andstopping 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 yourown 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 theday 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 bottleof 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 inany way?”

“N-no, I don’t think so.”

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

“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 thatyou 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, itmakes things stand out. She didn’t say anything about James Bentley, that I’m quite sure. Talkedabout 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 whereyou 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 LongMeadows? 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 toclean 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 isnow. Mrs. Upward’s an elderly lady who lives with her son. They’ve got a maid, but she’s gettingon, 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 havea 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 outinto the street again.

He walked slowly up the hill towards Long Meadows. He hoped devoutly that the contents ofthe bulged tin and the bloodstained beans had been duly eaten for lunch and had not been savedfor a supper treat for him. But possibly there were other doubtful tins. Life at Long Meadowscertainly 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. Sweetimanhad 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, asto 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 uncommonoccurrence 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 herdeath. 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 .?.?.