Mrs McGinty's Dead - Agatha Christie [63]
‘Lovely thing for killing anyone, wouldn’t it be?’ said Maureen conversationally.
She took it from him and aimed a murderous blow at a point in space.
‘Frightfully easy,’ she said. ‘What’s that bit in the Idylls of the King? “ ‘Mark’s way,’ he said, and clove him to the brain.” I should think you could cleave anyone to the brain with this all right, don’t you?’
Poirot looked at her. Her freckled face was serene and cheerful.
She said:
‘I’ve told Johnnie what’s coming to him if I get fed up with him. I call it the wife’s best friend!’
She laughed, put the sugar hammer down and turned towards the door.
‘What did I come in here for?’ she mused. ‘I can’t remember…Bother! I’d better go and see if that pudding needs more water in the saucepan.’
Poirot’s voice stopped her before she got to the door.
‘You brought this back with you from India, perhaps?’
‘Oh no,’ said Maureen. ‘I got it at the B. and B. at Christmas.’
‘B. and B.?’ Poirot was puzzled.
‘Bring and Buy,’ explained Maureen glibly. ‘At the Vicarage. You bring things you don’t want, and you buy something. Something not too frightful if you can find it. Of course there’s practically never anything you really want. I got this and that coffee pot. I like the coffee pot’s nose and I liked the little bird on the hammer.’
The coffee pot was a small one of beaten copper. It had a big curving spout that struck a familiar note to Poirot.
‘I think they come from Baghdad,’ said Maureen. ‘At least I think that’s what the Wetherbys said. Or it may have been Persia.’
‘It was from the Wetherbys’ house, then, that these came?’
‘Yes. They’ve got a most frightful lot of junk. I must go. That pudding.’
She went out. The door banged. Poirot picked up the sugar cutter again and took it to the window.
On the cutting edge were faint, very faint, discolorations.
Poirot nodded his head.
He hesitated for a moment, then he carried the sugar hammer out of the room and up to his bedroom. There he packed it carefully in a box, did the whole thing up neatly in paper and string, and going downstairs again, left the house.
He did not think that anyone would notice the disappearance of the sugar cutter. It was not a tidy household.
III
At Laburnums, collaboration was pursuing its difficult course.
‘But I really don’t feel it’s right making him a vegetarian, darling,’ Robin was objecting. ‘Too faddy. And definitely not glamorous.’
‘I can’t help it,’ said Mrs Oliver obstinately. ‘He’s always been a vegetarian. He takes round a little machine for grating raw carrots and turnips.’
‘But, Ariadne, precious, why?’
‘How do I know?’ said Mrs Oliver crossly. ‘How do I know why I ever thought of the revolting man? I must have been mad! Why a Finn when I know nothing about Finland? Why a vegetarian? Why all the idiotic manerisms he’s got? These things just happen. You try something—and people seem to like it—and then you go on—and before you know where you are, you’ve got someone like that maddening Sven Hjerson tied to you for life. And people even write and say how fond you must be of him. Fond of him? If I met that bony, gangling, vegetable-eating Finn in real life, I’d do a better murder than any I’ve ever invented.’
Robin Upward gazed at her with reverence.
‘You know, Ariadne, that might be rather a marvellous idea. A real Sven Hjerson—and you murder him. You might make a Swan Song book of it—to be published after your death.’
‘No fear!’ said Mrs Oliver. ‘What about the money? Any money to be made out of murders I want now.’
‘Yes. Yes. There I couldn’t agree with you more.’
The harassed playwright strode up and down.
‘This Ingrid creature is getting rather tiresome,’ he said. ‘And after the cellar scene which is really going to be marvellous, I don’t quite see how we’re going to prevent the next scene from being rather an anti-climax.’
Mrs Oliver was silent. Scenes, she felt, were Robin Upward’s headache.
Robin shot a dissatisfied glance at her.
That morning, in one of her