‘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 arranged. 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.’
‘In case I’ve missed anything,’ said Spence with a wry smile.
‘In case, I would prefer to say, that some circumstance should strike me in a different light to the one in which it struck you. Human reactions vary and so does human experience. The resemblance of a rich financier to a soap boiler whom I had known in Liège once brought about a most satisfactory result. But no need to go into that. What I should like to do is to eliminate one or other of the trails I indicated just now. And to eliminate the Mrs McGinty trail—trail No. 1—will obviously be quicker and easier than to attack trail No. 2. Where, now, can I stay in Broadhinny? Is there an inn of moderate comfort?’
‘There’s the Three Ducks—but it doesn’t put people up. There’s the Lamb in Cullavon three miles away—or there is a kind of a Guest House in Broadhinny itself. It’s not really a Guest House, just a rather decrepit country house where the young couple who own it take in paying guests. I don’t think,’ said Spence dubiously, ‘that it’s very comfortable.’
Hercule Poirot closed his eyes in agony.
‘If I suffer, I suffer,’ he said. ‘It has to be.’
‘I don’t know what you’ll go there as,’ continued Spence doubtfully as he eyed Poirot. ‘You might be some kind of an opera singer. Voice broken down. Got to rest. That might do.’
‘I shall go,’ said Hercule Poirot, speaking with accents of royal blood, ‘as myself.’
Spence received this pronouncement with pursed lips.
‘D’you think that’s advisable?’
‘I think it is essential! But yes, essential. Consider, cher ami, it is time we are up against. What do we know? Nothing. So the hope, the best hope, is to go pretending that I know a great deal. I am Hercule Poirot. I am the great, the unique Hercule Poirot. And I, Hercule Poirot, am not satisfied about the verdict in the McGinty case. I, Hercule Poirot, have a very shrewd suspicion of what really happened. There is a circumstance that I, alone, estimate at its true value. You see?’
‘And then?’
‘And then, having made my effect, I observe the reactions. For there should be reactions. Very definitely, there should be reactions.’
Superintendent Spence looked uneasily at the little man.
‘Look here, M. Poirot,’ he said. ‘Don’t go sticking out your neck. I don’t want anything to happen to you.’
‘But if it does, you would be proved right beyond the shadow of doubt, is it not so?’
‘I don’t want it proved the hard way,’ said Superintendent Spence.
With great distaste, Hercule Poirot looked round the room in which he stood. It was a room of gracious proportions but there its attraction ended. Poirot made an eloquent grimace as he drew a suspicious finger along the top of a book case. As he had suspected—dust! He sat down gingerly on a sofa and its broken springs sagged depressingly under him. The two faded armchairs were, as he knew, little better. A large fierce-looking dog whom Poirot suspected of having mange growled from his position on a moderately comfortable fourth chair.
The room was large, and had a faded Morris wall-paper. Steel engravings of unpleasant subjects hung crookedly on the walls with one or two good oil paintings. The chair-covers were both faded and dirty, the carpet had holes in it and had never been of a pleasant design. A good deal of miscellaneous bric-à-brac was scattered haphazard here and there. Tables rocked dangerously owing to absence of castors. One window was open, and no power on earth could, apparently, shut it again. The door, temporarily shut, was not likely to remain so. The latch did not hold, and with every gust of wind it burst open and whirling gusts of cold wind eddied round the room.
‘I suffer,’ said Hercule Poirot to himself in acute self-pity. ‘Yes, I suffer.’
The door burst open and the wind and Mrs Summerhayes came in together. She looked round the room, shouted ‘What?’ to someone in the distance and went out again.
Mrs Summerhayes had red hair and an attractively freckled face and was usually in a distracted state of putting things down, or else looking for them.
Hercule Poirot sprang to his feet and shut the door.
A moment or two later it opened again and Mrs Summerhayes reappeared. This time she was carrying a large enamel basin and a knife.
A man’s voice from some way away called out:
‘Maureen, that cat’s been sick again. What shall I do?’
Mrs Summerhayes called: ‘I’m coming, darling. Hold everything.’
She dropped the basin and the knife and went out again.
Poirot got up again and shut the door. He said:
‘Decidedly, I suffer.’
A car drove up, the large dog leaped from the chair and raised its voice in a crescendo of barking. He jumped on a small table by the window and the table collapsed with a crash.
‘Enfin,’ said Hercule Poirot. ‘C’est insupportable!’
The door burst open, the wind surged round the room, the dog rushed out, still barking. Maureen’s voice came, upraised loud and clear.
‘Johnnie, why the hell did you leave the back door open! Those bloody hens are in the larder.’
‘And for this,’ said Hercule Poirot with feeling, ‘I pay seven guineas a week!’
The door banged