}"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?"}
}MRS. McGINTY'S DEAD 39}
}"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 looks 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}
}40 MRS. McGinty's DEAD
lived here and they were very 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 apologise, 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. / }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."}
MRS. McGinty's DEAD 41
}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 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 oughn'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
42}
}MRS. McGinty's DEAD 43}
}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 Bureh's suspicion of foreigners. He led the conversation away from murder and focussed 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}
}44}
}MRS. McGinty's DEAD}
}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 litters. Kept brass a treat and washed down the kitchen floor every day. She made quite a nice thing of going out to work. 1/10 an hour— 2/— from Holmeleigh, that was Mr Carpenter's of the Work's 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 had discovered they weren't properly married. She didn't read books, but she enjoyed the Sunday paper}
}MRS. MCGINTY'S DEAD 45
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 Con-
servative 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 that 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}
}46 MRS. McGinty's DEAD
Savings Bank was what he was after. £-200 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 left on the
scene of the crime? Any moron knew enough to wear
gloves or rub off fingerprints. Why then had the weap
on 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 menage? 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
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 want 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 ar though for future reference. "What's it all about?"}
}Poirot, never hindered by a pedantic regard for truth, launched out into speech.}
}47}
}48}
}MRS. McGinty's DEAD}
}"I am opening a further enquiry 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 very strong. Who are these relations of his?"}
}"I can tell you only 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 med
icos. 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}
}MRS. McGINTY'S DEAD 49
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 a house