Mrs McGinty's Dead - Agatha Christie [83]
Poirot said that he knew. ‘And you found something?’ he asked politely.
‘Not a letter or anything of that sort, no. But I found something interesting—at least I think it’s interesting. Look here.’
He unwrapped from a piece of newspaper an old and rather decrepit book.
‘In one of the bookshelves it was. Old book, published years ago. But look here.’ He opened it and showed the flyleaf. Pencilled across it were the words: Evelyn Hope.
‘Interesting, don’t you think? That’s the name, in case you don’t remember—’
‘The name that Eva Kane took when she left England. I do remember,’ said Poirot.
‘Looks as though when Mrs McGinty spotted one of those photos here in Broadhinny, it was our Mrs Upward. Makes it kind of complicated, doesn’t it?’
‘It does,’ said Poirot with feeling. ‘I can assure you that when you go back to Superintendent Spence with this piece of information he will pull out his hair by the roots—yes, assuredly by the roots.’
‘I hope it won’t be as bad as that,’ said Sergeant Fletcher.
Poirot did not reply. He went on down the hill. He had ceased to think. Nothing anywhere made sense.
He went into the post office. Maude Williams was there looking at knitting patterns. Poirot did not speak to her. He went to the stamp counter. When Maude had made her purchase, Mrs Sweetiman came over to him and he bought some stamps. Maude went out of the shop.
Mrs Sweetiman seemed preoccupied and not talkative. Poirot was able to follow Maude out fairly quickly. He caught her up a short distance along the road and fell into step beside her.
Mrs Sweetiman, looking out of the post office window, exclaimed to herself disapprovingly. ‘Those foreigners! All the same, every manjack of ’em. Old enough to be her grandfather, he is!’
II
‘Eh bien,’ said Poirot, ‘you have something to tell me?’
‘I don’t know that it’s important. There was somebody trying to get in at the window of Mrs Wetherby’s room.’
‘When?’
‘This morning. She’d gone out, and the girl was out with the dog. Old frozen fish was shut up in his study as usual. I’d have been in the kitchen normally—it faces the other way like the study—but actually it seemed a good opportunity to—you understand?’
Poirot nodded.
‘So I nipped upstairs and into Her Acidity’s bedroom. There was a ladder against the window and a man was fumbling with the window catch. She’s had everything locked and barred since the murder. Never a bit of fresh air. When the man saw me he scuttled down and made off. The ladder was the gardener’s—he’d been cutting back the ivy and had gone to have his elevenses.’
‘Who was the man? Can you describe him?’
‘I only got the merest glimpse. By the time I got to the window he was down the ladder and gone, and when I first saw him he was against the sun, so I couldn’t see his face.’
‘You are sure it was a man?’
Maude considered.
‘Dressed as a man—an old felt hat on. It might have been a woman, of course…’
‘It is interesting,’ said Poirot. ‘It is very interesting…Nothing else?’
‘Not yet. The junk that old woman keeps! Must be dotty! She came in without me hearing this morning and bawled me out for snooping. I shall be murdering her next. If anyone asks to be murdered that woman does. A really nasty bit of goods.’
Poirot murmured softly:
‘Evelyn Hope…’
‘What’s that?’ She spun round on him.
‘So you know that name?’
‘Why—yes…It’s the name Eva Whatsername took when she went to Australia. It—it was in the paper—the Sunday Comet.’
‘The Sunday Comet said many things, but it did not say that. The police found the name written in a book in Mrs Upward’s house.’
Maude exclaimed:
‘Then it was her—and she didn’t die out there…Michael was right.’
‘Michael?’
Maude said abruptly:
‘I can’t stop. I’ll be late serving lunch. I’ve got it all in the oven, but it will be getting dried up.’
She started off at a run. Poirot stood looking after her.
At the post office window, Mrs Sweetiman, her nose glued to the pane, wondered if that old foreigner had been making suggestions of a certain character