Mrs McGinty’s Dead. Agatha Christie
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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 shop 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 blood-stained 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 thoughtfully, ‘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.
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 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 above board. 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 out 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 premise that James Bentley is innocent, two possibilities remain. The evidence was manufactured, deliberately, to throw suspicion upon him. Or else he was just the unfortunate victim of circumstances.’
Spence considered.
‘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 charwoman—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