Mrs McGinty's Dead - Agatha Christie [49]
Superintendent Spence sighed. Then he laid out on the table four photographs.
‘These are the photos you asked me to get—the original photos that the Sunday Comet used. At any rate they’re a little clearer than the reproductions. But upon my word, they’re not much to go upon. Old, faded—and with women the hair-do makes a difference. There’s nothing definite in any of them to go upon like ears or a profile. That cloche hat and that arty hair and the roses! Doesn’t give you a chance.’
‘You agree with me that we can discard Vera Blake?’
‘I should think so. If Vera Blake was in Broadhinny, everyone would know it—telling the sad story of her life seems to have been her speciality.’
‘What can you tell me about the others?’
‘I’ve got what I could for you in the time. Eva Kane left the country after Craig was sentenced. And I can tell you the name she took. It was Hope. Symbolic, perhaps?’
Poirot murmured:
‘Yes, yes—the romantic approach. “Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead.” A line from one of your poets. I dare say she thought of that. Was her name Evelyn, by the way?’
‘Yes, I believe it was. But Eva was what she was known as always. And by the way, M. Poirot, now that we’re on the subject, the police opinion of Eva Kane doesn’t quite square with this article here. Very far from it.’
Poirot smiled.
‘What the police think—it is not evidence. But it is usually a very sound guide. What did the police think of Eva Kane?’
‘That she was by no means the innocent victim that the public thought her. I was quite a young chap at the time and remember hearing it discussed by my old Chief and Inspector Traill who was in charge of the case. Traill believed (no evidence, mind you) that the pretty little idea of putting Mrs Craig out of the way was all Eva Kane’s idea—and that she not only thought of it, but she did it. Craig came home one day and found his little friend had taken a short cut. She thought it would all pass off as natural death, I dare say. But Craig knew better. He got the wind up and disposed of the body in the cellar and elaborated the plan of having Mrs Craig die abroad. Then, when the whole thing came out, he was frantic in his assertions that he’d done it alone, that Eva Kane had known nothing about it. Well,’ Superintendent Spence shrugged his shoulders, ‘nobody could prove anything else. The stuff was in the house. Either of them could have used it. Pretty Eva Kane was all innocence and horror. Very well she did it, too: a clever little actress. Inspector Traill had his doubts—but there was nothing to go upon. I’m giving you that for what it’s worth, M. Poirot. It’s not evidence.’
‘But it suggests the possibility that one, at least, of these “tragic women” was something more than a tragic woman—that she was a murderess and that, if the incentive was strong enough, she might murder again…And now the next one, Janice Courtland, what can you tell me about her?’
‘I’ve looked up the files. A nasty bit of goods. If we hanged Edith Thompson we certainly ought to have hanged Janice Courtland. An unpleasant pair, she and her husband, nothing to choose between them, and she worked on that young man until she had him all up in arms. But all the time, mark you, there was a rich man in the background, and it was to marry him she wanted her husband out of the way.’
‘Did she marry him?’
Spence shook his head.
‘No idea.’
‘She went abroad—and then?’
Spence shook his head.
‘She was a free woman. She’d not been charged with anything. Whether she married, or what happened to her, we don’t know.’
‘One might meet her at a cocktail party any day,’ said Poirot, thinking of Dr Rendell’s remark.
‘Exactly.’
Poirot shifted his gaze to the last photograph.
‘And the child? Lily Gamboll?’
‘Too young to be charged with murder. She was sent to an approved school. Good record there. Was taught shorthand and typing and was found a job under probation. Did well. Last heard of in Ireland. I think we could wash her out, you know, M. Poirot, same as