Mrs McGinty's Dead - Agatha Christie [46]
Poirot frowned slightly. Robin handed drinks to Mrs Oliver and to him.
‘Well,’ said Robin, ‘here’s to crime.’
He drank.
‘She used to work here,’ he said.
‘Mrs McGinty?’ asked Mrs Oliver.
‘Yes. Didn’t she, Madre?’
‘When you say work here, she came one day a week.’
‘And odd afternoons sometimes.’
‘What was she like?’ asked Mrs Oliver.
‘Terribly respectable,’ said Robin. ‘And maddeningly tidy. She had a ghastly way of tidying up everything and putting things into drawers so that you simply couldn’t guess where they were.’
Mrs Upward said with a certain grim humour:
‘If somebody didn’t tidy things away at least one day a week, you soon wouldn’t be able to move in this small house.’
‘I know, Madre, I know. But unless things are left where I put them, I simply can’t work at all. My notes get all disarranged.’
‘It’s annoying to be as helpless as I am,’ said Mrs Upward. ‘We have a faithful old maid, but it’s all she can manage just to do a little simple cooking.’
‘What is it?’ asked Mrs Oliver. ‘Arthritis?’
‘Some form of it. I shall have to have a permanent nurse-companion soon, I’m afraid. Such a bore. I like being independent.’
‘Now, darling,’ said Robin. ‘Don’t work yourself up.’
He patted her arm.
She smiled at him with sudden tenderness.
‘Robin’s as good as a daughter to me,’ she said. ‘He does everything—and thinks of everything. No one could be more considerate.’
They smiled at each other.
Hercule Poirot rose.
‘Alas,’ he said. ‘I must go. I have another call to make and then a train to catch. Madame, I thank you for your hospitality. Mr Upward, I wish all success to the play.’
‘And all success to you with your murder,’ said Mrs Oliver.
‘Is this really serious, M. Poirot?’ asked Robin Upward. ‘Or is it a terrific hoax?’
‘Of course it isn’t a hoax,’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘It’s deadly serious. He won’t tell me who the murderer is, but he knows, don’t you?’
‘No, no, madame,’ Poirot’s protest was just sufficiently unconvincing. ‘I told you that as yet, no, I do not know.’
‘That’s what you said, but I think you do know really…But you’re so frightly secretive, aren’t you?’
Mrs Upward said sharply:
‘Is this really true? It’s not a joke?’
‘It is not a joke, madame,’ said Poirot.
He bowed and departed.
As he went down the path he heard Robin Upward’s clear tenor voice:
‘But Ariadne, darling,’ he said, ‘it’s all very well, but with that moustache and everything, how can one take him seriously? Do you really mean he’s good?’
Poirot smiled to himself. Good indeed!
About to cross the narrow lane, he jumped back just in time.
The Summerhayes’ station wagon, lurching and bumping, came racing past him. Summerhayes was driving.
‘Sorry,’ he called. ‘Got to catch train.’ And faintly from the distance: ‘Covent Garden…’
Poirot also intended to take a train—the local train to Kilchester, where he had arranged a conference with Superintendent Spence.
He had time, before catching it, for just one last call.
He went to the top of the hill and through gates and up a well-kept drive to a modern house of frosted concrete with a square roof and a good deal of window. This was the home of Mr and Mrs Carpenter. Guy Carpenter was a partner in the big Carpenter Engineering Works—a very rich man who had recently taken to politics. He and his wife had only been married a short time.
The Carpenters’ front door was not opened by foreign help, or an aged faithful. An imperturbable manservant opened the door and was loath to admit Hercule Poirot. In his view Hercule Poirot was the kind of caller who is left outside. He clearly suspected that Hercule Poirot had come to sell something.
‘Mr and Mrs Carpenter are not at home.’
‘Perhaps, then, I might wait?’
‘I couldn’t say when they will be in.’
He closed the door.
Poirot did not go down the drive. Instead he walked round the corner of the house and almost collided with a tall young woman in a mink coat.
‘Hallo,’ she said. ‘What the hell do you want?’
Poirot raised his hat with gallantry.
‘I was hoping,’ he said, ‘that I could see Mr or Mrs Carpenter. Have I the pleasure