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 apologise, 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 her 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 s 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 hand 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 chop 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 bloodstained 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 thought fully, "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 the 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 aboveboard. 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 our 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 premises that James Bentley is innocent, two possibilities remain. The evidence was manufactured, deliberately, to throw suspicion against him. Or else he was just the unfortunate victim of circumstances."
"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 char woman – 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.
"These 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 managed. 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."
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