Mrs. McGinty's Dead

by Agatha Christie

  Chapter 26

  ‘I really don’t see, M. Poirot, how ever you came to suspect Robin Upward.’

  Poirot looked complacently at the faces turned towards him.

  He always enjoyed explanations.

  ‘I ought to have suspected him much sooner. The clue, such a simple clue, was the sentence uttered by Mrs Summerhayes at the cocktail party that day. She said to Robin Upward: “I don’t like being adopted, do you?” Those were the revealing two words. Do you? They meant—they could only mean—that Mrs Upward was not Robin’s own mother.

  ‘Mrs Upward was morbidly anxious herself that no one should know that Robin was not her own son. She had probably heard too many ribald comments on brilliant young men who live with and upon elderly women. And very few people did know—only the small theatrical coterie where she had first come across Robin. She had few intimate friends in this country, having lived abroad so long, and she chose in any case to come and settle down here far away from her own Yorkshire. Even when she met friends of the old days, she did not enlighten them when they assumed that this Robin was the same Robin they had known as a little boy.

  ‘But from the very first something had struck me as not quite natural in the household at Laburnums. Robin’s attitude to Mrs Upward was not that of either a spoiled child, or of a devoted son. It was the attitude of a protégé to a patron. The rather fanciful title of Madre had a theatrical touch. And Mrs Upward, though she was clearly very fond of Robin, nevertheless unconsciously treated him as a prized possession that she had bought and paid for.

  ‘So there is Robin Upward, comfortably established, with “Madre’s” purse to back his ventures, and then into his assured world comes Mrs McGinty who has recognized the photograph that he keeps in a drawer—the photograph with “my mother” written on the back of it. His mother, who he has told Mrs Upward was a talented young ballet dancer who died of tuberculosis! Mrs McGinty, of course, thinks that the photograph is of Mrs Upward when young, since she assumes as a matter of course that Mrs Upward is Robin’s own mother. I do not think that actual blackmail ever entered Mrs McGinty’s mind, but she did hope, perhaps, for a “nice little present,” as a reward for holding her tongue about a piece of bygone gossip which would not have been pleasant for a “proud” woman like Mrs Upward.

  ‘But Robin Upward was taking no chances. He purloins the sugar hammer, laughingly referred to as a perfect weapon for murder by Mrs Summerhayes, and on the following evening, he stops at Mrs McGinty’s cottage on his way to broadcast. She takes him into the parlour, quite unsuspicious, and he kills her. He knows where she keeps her savings—everyone in Broadhinny seems to know—and he fakes a burglary, hiding the money outside the house. Bentley is suspected and arrested. Everything is now safe for clever Robin Upward.

  ‘But then, suddenly, I produce four photographs, and Mrs Upward recognizes the one of Eva Kane as being identical with a photograph of Robin’s ballerina mother! She needs a little time to think things out. Murder is involved. Can it be possible that Robin—? No, she refuses to believe it.

  ‘What action she would have taken in the end we do not know. But Robin was taking no chances. He plans the whole mise en scène. The visit to the Rep on Janet’s night out, the telephone calls, the coffee cup carefully smeared with lipstick taken from Eve Carpenter’s bag, he even buys a bottle of her distinctive perfume. The whole thing was a theatrical scene setting with prepared props. Whilst Mrs Oliver waited in the car, Robin ran back twice into the house. The murder was a matter of seconds. After that there was only the swift distribution of the “props”. And with Mrs Upward dead, he inherited a large fortune by the terms of her will, and no suspicion could attach to him since it would seem quite certain that a woman had committed the crime. With three women visiting the cottage that night, one of them was almost sure to be suspected. And that, indeed, was so.

  ‘But Robin, like all criminals, was careless and over confident. Not only was there a book in the cottage with his original name scribbled in it, but he also kept, for purposes of his own, the fatal photograph. It would have been much safer for him if he had destroyed it, but he clung to the belief that he could use it to incriminate someone else at the right moment.

  ‘He probably thought then of Mrs Summerhayes. That may be the reason he moved out of the cottage and into Long Meadows. After all, the sugar hammer was hers, and Mrs Summerhayes was, he knew, an adopted child and might find it hard to prove she was not Eva Kane’s daughter.

  ‘However, when Deirdre Henderson admitted having been on the scene of the crime, he conceived the idea of planting the photograph amongst her possessions. He tried to do so, using a ladder that the gardener had left against the window. But Mrs Wetherby was nervous and had insisted on all the windows being kept locked, so Robin did not succeed in his purpose. He came straight back here and put the photograph in a drawer which, unfortunately for him, I had searched only a short time before.

  ‘I knew, therefore, that the photograph had been planted, and I knew by whom—by the only person in the house—that person who was typing industriously over my head.

  ‘Since the name Evelyn Hope had been written on the flyleaf of the book from the cottage, Evelyn Hope must be either Mrs Upward—or Robin Upward…

  ‘The name Evelyn had led me astray—I had connected it with Mrs Carpenter since her name was Eve. But Evelyn was a man’s name as well as a woman’s.

  ‘I remembered the conversation Mrs Oliver had told me about at the Little Rep in Cullenquay. The young actor who had been talking to her was the person I wanted to confirm my theory—the theory that Robin was not Mrs Upward’s own son. For by the way he had talked, it seemed clear that he knew the real facts. And his story of Mrs Upward’s swift retribution on a young man who had deceived her as to his origins was suggestive.

  ‘The truth is that I ought to have seen the whole thing very much sooner. I was handicapped by a serious error. I believed that I had been deliberately pushed with the intention of sending me on to a railway line—and that the person who had done so was the murderer of Mrs McGinty. Now Robin Upward was practically the only person in Broadhinny who could not have been at Kilchester station at that time.’

  There was a sudden chuckle from Johnnie Summerhayes.

  ‘Probably some old woman with a basket. They do shove.’

  Poirot said:

  ‘Actually, Robin Upward was far too conceited to fear me at all. It is a characteristic of murderers. Fortunately, perhaps. For in this case there was very little evidence.’

  Mrs Oliver stirred.

  ‘Do you mean to say,’ she demanded incredulously, ‘that Robin murdered his mother whilst I sat outside in the car, and that I hadn’t the least idea of it? There wouldn’t have been time!’

  ‘Oh yes, there would. People’s ideas of time are usually ludicrously wrong. Just notice some time how swiftly a stage can be reset. In this case it was mostly a matter of props.’

  ‘Good theatre,’ murmured Mrs Oliver mechanically.

  ‘Yes, it was pre-eminently a theatrical murder. All very much contrived.’

  ‘And I sat there in the car—and hadn’t the least idea!’

  ‘I am afraid,’ murmured Poirot, ‘that your woman’s intuition was taking a day off…’

  Chapter 27

  ‘I’m not going back to Breather & Scuttle,’ said Maude Williams. ‘They’re a lousy firm anyway.’

  ‘And they have served their purpose.’

  ‘What do you mean by that, M. Poirot?’

  ‘Why did you come to this part of the world?’

  ‘I suppose being Mr Knowall, you think you know?’

  ‘I have a little idea.’

  ‘And what is this famous idea.’

  Poirot was looking meditatively at Maude’s hair.

  ‘I have been very discreet,’ he said. ‘It has been assumed that the woman who went into Mrs Upward’s house, the fair-haired woman that Edna saw, was Mrs Carpenter, and that she has denied being
there simply out of fright. Since it was Robin Upward who killed Mrs Upward, her presence has no more significance than that of Miss Henderson. But all the same I do not think she was there. I think Miss Williams, that the woman Edna saw was you.’

  ‘Why me?’

  Her voice was hard.

  Poirot countered with another question.

  ‘Why were you so interested in Broadhinny? Why, when you went over there, did you ask Robin Upward for an autograph—you are not the autograph-hunting type. What did you know about the Upwards? Why did you come to this part of the world in the first place? How did you know that Eva Kane died in Australia and the name she took when she left England?’

  ‘Good at guessing, aren’t you? Well, I’ve nothing to hide, not really.’

  She opened her handbag. From a worn notecase she pulled out a small newspaper cutting frayed with age. It showed the face that Poirot by now knew so well, the simpering face of Eva Kane.

  Written across it were the words, She killed my mother.

  Poirot handed it back to her.

  ‘Yes, I thought so. Your real name is Craig?’

  Maude nodded.

  ‘I was brought up by some cousins—very decent they were. But I was old enough when it all happened not to forget. I used to think about it a good deal. About her. She was a nasty bit of goods all right—children know! My father was just—weak. And besotted by her. But he took the rap. For something, I’ve always believed, that she did. Oh yes, I know he’s an accessory after the fact—but it’s not quite the same thing, is it? I always meant to find out what had become of her. When I was grown up, I got detectives on to it. They traced her to Australia and finally reported that she was dead. She’d left a son—Evelyn Hope he called himself.

  ‘Well, that seemed to close the account. But then I got pally with a young actor chap. He mentioned someone called Evelyn Hope who’d come from Australia, but who now called himself Robin Upward and who wrote plays. I was interested. One night Robin Upward was pointed out to me—and he was with his mother. So I thought that, after all, Eva Kane wasn’t dead. Instead, she was queening it about with a packet of money.

  ‘I got myself a job down here. I was curious—and a bit more than curious. All right, I’ll admit it, I thought I’d like to get even with her in some way…When you brought up all this business about James Bentley, I jumped to the conclusion that it was Mrs Upward who’d killed Mrs McGinty. Eva Kane up to her tricks again. I happened to hear from Michael West that Robin Upward and Mrs Oliver were coming over to this show at the Cullenquay Rep. I decided to go to Broadhinny and beard the woman. I meant—I don’t quite know what I meant. I’m telling you everything—I took a little pistol I had in the war with me. To frighten her? Or more? Honestly, I don’t know…

  ‘Well, I got there. There was no sound in the house. The door was unlocked. I went in. You know how I found her. Sitting there dead, her face all purple and swollen. All the things I’d been thinking seemed silly and melodramatic. I knew that I’d never, really, want to kill anyone when it came to it…But I did realize that it might be awkward to explain what I’d been doing in the house. It was a cold night and I’d got gloves on, so I knew I hadn’t left any fingerprints, and I didn’t think for a moment anyone had seen me. That’s all.’ She paused and added abruptly: ‘What are you going to do about it?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Hercule Poirot. ‘I wish you good luck in life, that is all.’

  Epilogue

  Hercule Poirot and Superintendent Spence were celebrating at the La Vieille Grand’mère.

  As coffee was served Spence leaned back in his chair and gave a deep sigh of repletion.

  ‘Not at all bad grub here,’ he said approvingly. ‘A bit Frenchified, perhaps, but after all where can you get a decent steak and chips nowadays?’

  ‘I had been dining here on the evening you first came to me,’ said Poirot reminiscently.

  ‘Ah, a lot of water under the bridge since then. I’ve got to hand it to you, M. Poirot. You did the trick all right.’ A slight smile creased his wooden countenance. ‘Lucky that young man didn’t realize how very little evidence we’d really got. Why, a clever counsel would have made mincemeat of it! But he lost his head completely, and gave the show away. Spilt the beans and incriminated himself up to the hilt. Lucky for us!’

  ‘It was not entirely luck,’ said Poirot reprovingly. ‘I played him, as you play the big fish! He thinks I take the evidence against Mrs Summerhayes seriously—when it is not so, he suffers the reaction and goes to pieces. And besides, he is a coward. I whirl the sugar hammer and he thinks I mean to hit him. Acute fear always produces the truth.’

  ‘Lucky you didn’t suffer from Major Summerhayes’ reaction,’ said Spence with a grin. ‘Got a temper, he has, and quick on his feet. I only got between you just in time. Has he forgiven you yet?’

  ‘Oh yes, we are the firmest friends. And I have given Mrs Summerhayes a cookery book and I have also taught her personally how to make an omelette. Bon Dieu, what I suffered in that house!’

  He closed his eyes.

  ‘Complicated business, the whole thing,’ ruminated Spence, uninterested in Poirot’s agonized memories. ‘Just shows how true the old saying is that everyone’s got something to hide. Mrs Carpenter, now, had a narrow squeak of being arrested for murder. If ever a woman acted guilty, she did, and all for what?’

  ‘Eh bien, what?’ asked Poirot curiously.

  ‘Just the usual business of a rather unsavoury past. She had been a taxi dancer—and a bright girl with plenty of men friends! She wasn’t a war widow when she came and settled down in Broadhinny. Only what they call nowadays an “unofficial wife”. Well, of course all that wouldn’t do for a stuffed shirt like Guy Carpenter, so she’d spun him a very different sort of tale. And she was frantic lest the whole thing would come out once we started poking round into people’s origins.’

  He sipped his coffee, and then gave a low chuckle.

  ‘Then take the Wetherbys. Sinister sort of house. Hate and malice. Awkward frustrated sort of girl. And what’s behind that? Nothing sinister. Just money! Plain £.s.d.’

  ‘As simple as that!’

  ‘The girl has the money—quite a lot of it. Left her by an aunt. So mother keeps tight hold of her in case she should want to marry. And stepfather loathes her because she has the dibs and pays the bills. I gather he himself has been a failure at anything he’s tried. A mean cuss—and as for Mrs W., she’s pure poison dissolved in sugar.’

  ‘I agree with you.’ Poirot nodded his head in a satisfied fashion. ‘It is fortunate that the girl has money. It makes her marriage to James Bentley much more easy to arrange.’

  Superintendent Spence looked surprised.

  ‘Going to marry James Bentley? Deirdre Henderson? Who says so?’

  ‘I say so,’ said Poirot. ‘I occupy myself with the affair. I have, now that our little problem is over, too much time on my hands. I shall employ myself in forwarding this marriage. As yet, the two concerned have no idea of such a thing. But they are attracted. Left to themselves, nothing would happen—but they have to reckon with Hercule Poirot. You will see! The affair will march.’

  Spence grinned.

  ‘Don’t mind sticking your fingers in other people’s pies, do you?’

  ‘Mon cher, that does not come well from you,’ said Poirot reproachfully.

  ‘Well, you’ve got me there. All the same, James Bentley is a poor stick.’

  ‘Certainly he is a poor stick! At the moment he is positively aggrieved because he is not going to be hanged.’

  ‘He ought to be down on his knees with gratitude to you,’ said Spence.

  ‘Say, rather, to you. But apparently he does not think so.’

  ‘Queer cuss.’

  ‘As you say, and yet at least two women have been prepared to take an interest in him. Nature is very unexpected.’

  ‘I thought it was Maude Williams you were going to pair off with him.’

  �
��He shall make his choice,’ said Poirot. ‘He shall—how do you say it?—award the apple. But I think that it is Deirdre Henderson that he will choose. Maude Williams has too much energy and vitality. With her he would retire even farther into his shell.’

  ‘Can’t think why either of them should want him!’

  ‘The ways of nature are indeed inscrutable.’

  ‘All the same, you’ll have your work cut out. First bringing him up to the scratch—and then prising the girl loose from poison puss mother—she’ll fight you tooth and claw!’

  ‘Success is on the side of the big battalions.’

  ‘On the side of the big moustaches, I suppose you mean.’

  Spence roared. Poirot stroked his moustache complacently and suggested a brandy.

  ‘I don’t mind if I do, M. Poirot.’

  Poirot gave the order.

  ‘Ah,’ said Spence, ‘I knew there was something else I had to tell you. You remember the Rendells?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Well, when we were checking up on him, something rather odd came to light. It seems that when his first wife died in Leeds where his practice was at that time, the police there got some rather nasty anonymous letters about him. Saying, in effect, that he’d poisoned her. Of course people do say that sort of thing. She’d been attended by an outside doctor, reputable man, and he seemed to think her death was quite above board. There was nothing to go upon except the fact that they’d mutually insured their lives in each other’s favour, and people do do that…Nothing for us to go upon, as I say, and yet—I wonder? What do you think?’

  Poirot remembered Mrs Rendell’s frightened air. Her mention of anonymous letters, and her insistence that she did not believe anything they said. He remembered, too, her certainty that his inquiry about Mrs McGinty was only a pretext.

  He said, ‘I should imagine that it was not only the police who got anonymous letters.’

  ‘Sent them to her, too?’

  ‘I think so. When I appeared in Broadhinny, she thought I was on her husband’s track, and that the McGinty business was a pretext. Yes—and he thought so, too…That explains it! It was Dr Rendell who tried to push me under the train that night!’