Mrs McGinty's Dead - Agatha Christie [41]
A thin fair-haired pale woman ran lightly down the stairs.
‘Here’s M. Hercule Poirot, Shelagh. What do you think of that?’
‘Oh,’ Mrs Rendell appeared to be startled out of speaking. Her very pale blue eyes stared at Poirot apprehensively.
‘Madame,’ said Poirot, bowing over her head in his most foreign manner.
‘We heard that you were here,’ said Shelagh Rendell. ‘But we didn’t know—’ She broke off. Her light eyes went quickly to her husband’s face.
‘It is from him she takes the Greenwich time,’ said Poirot to himself.
He uttered a few florid phrases and took his leave.
An impression remained with him of a genial Dr Rendell and a tongue-tied, apprehensive Mrs Rendell.
So much for the Rendells, where Mrs McGinty had gone to work on Tuesday mornings.
II
Hunter’s Close was a solidly built Victorian house approached by a long untidy drive overgrown with weeds. It had not originally been considered a big house, but was now big enough to be inconvenient domestically.
Poirot inquired of the foreign young woman who opened the door for Mrs Wetherby.
She stared at him and then said: ‘I do not know. Please to come. Miss Henderson perhaps?’
She left him standing in the hall. It was in an estate agent’s phrase ‘fully furnished’—with a good many curios from various parts of the world. Nothing looked very clean or well dusted.
Presently the foreign girl reappeared. She said: ‘Please to come,’ and showed him into a chilly little room with a large desk. On the mantelpiece was a big and rather evil-looking copper coffee pot with an enormous hooked spout like a large hooked nose.
The door opened behind Poirot and a girl came into the room.
‘My mother is lying down,’ she said. ‘Can I do anything for you?’
‘You are Miss Wetherby?’
‘Henderson. Mr Wetherby is my stepfather.’
She was a plain girl of about thirty, large and awkward. She had watchful eyes.
‘I was anxious to hear what you could tell me about Mrs McGinty who used to work here.’
She stared at him.
‘Mrs McGinty? But she’s dead.’
‘I know that,’ said Poirot gently. ‘Nevertheless, I would like to hear about her.’
‘Oh. Is it for insurance or something?’
‘Not for insurance. It is a question of fresh evidence.’
‘Fresh evidence. You mean—her death?’
‘I am engaged,’ said Poirot, ‘by the solicitors for the defence to make an inquiry on James Bentley’s behalf.’
Staring at him, she asked: ‘But didn’t he do it?’
‘The jury thought he did. But juries have been known to make a mistake.’
‘Then it was really someone else who killed her?’
‘It may have been.’
She asked abruptly: ‘Who?’
‘That,’ said Poirot softly, ‘is the question.’
‘I don’t understand at all.’
‘No? But you can tell me something about Mrs McGinty, can’t you?’
She said rather reluctantly:
‘I suppose so…What do you want to know?’
‘Well—to begin with—what did you think of her?’
‘Why—nothing in particular. She was just like anybody else.’
‘Talkative or silent? Curious or reserved? Pleasant or morose? A nice woman, or—not a very nice woman?’
Miss Henderson reflected.
‘She worked well—but she talked a lot. Sometimes she said rather funny things…I didn’t—really—like her very much.’
The door opened and the foreign help said:
‘Miss Deirdre, your mother say: please to bring.’
‘My mother wants me to take this gentleman upstairs to her?’
‘Yes please, thank you.’
Deirdre Henderson looked at Poirot doubtfully.
‘Will you come up to my mother?’
‘But certainly.’
Deirdre led the way across the hall and up the stairs. She said inconsequently: ‘One does get so very tired of foreigners.’
Since her mind was clearly running on her domestic help and not on the visitor, Poirot did not take offence. He reflected that Deirdre Henderson seemed a rather simple young woman—simple to the point of gaucheness.
The room upstairs was crowded with knick-knacks. It was the room of a woman who had travelled a good deal and who had been determined wherever she went to have a souvenir of the place. Most of the souvenirs were clearly made for the delight and exploitation of tourists. There were