Mrs McGinty's Dead - Agatha Christie [94]
‘Well, I got there. There was no sound in the house. The door was unlocked. I went in. You know how I found her. Sitting there dead, her face all purple and swollen. All the things I’d been thinking seemed silly and melodramatic. I knew that I’d never, really, want to kill anyone when it came to it…But I did realize that it might be awkward to explain what I’d been doing in the house. It was a cold night and I’d got gloves on, so I knew I hadn’t left any fingerprints, and I didn’t think for a moment anyone had seen me. That’s all.’ She paused and added abruptly: ‘What are you going to do about it?’
‘Nothing,’ said Hercule Poirot. ‘I wish you good luck in life, that is all.’
Epilogue
Hercule Poirot and Superintendent Spence were celebrating at the La Vieille Grand’mère.
As coffee was served Spence leaned back in his chair and gave a deep sigh of repletion.
‘Not at all bad grub here,’ he said approvingly. ‘A bit Frenchified, perhaps, but after all where can you get a decent steak and chips nowadays?’
‘I had been dining here on the evening you first came to me,’ said Poirot reminiscently.
‘Ah, a lot of water under the bridge since then. I’ve got to hand it to you, M. Poirot. You did the trick all right.’ A slight smile creased his wooden countenance. ‘Lucky that young man didn’t realize how very little evidence we’d really got. Why, a clever counsel would have made mincemeat of it! But he lost his head completely, and gave the show away. Spilt the beans and incriminated himself up to the hilt. Lucky for us!’
‘It was not entirely luck,’ said Poirot reprovingly. ‘I played him, as you play the big fish! He thinks I take the evidence against Mrs Summerhayes seriously—when it is not so, he suffers the reaction and goes to pieces. And besides, he is a coward. I whirl the sugar hammer and he thinks I mean to hit him. Acute fear always produces the truth.’
‘Lucky you didn’t suffer from Major Summerhayes’ reaction,’ said Spence with a grin. ‘Got a temper, he has, and quick on his feet. I only got between you just in time. Has he forgiven you yet?’
‘Oh yes, we are the firmest friends. And I have given Mrs Summerhayes a cookery book and I have also taught her personally how to make an omelette. Bon Dieu, what I suffered in that house!’
He closed his eyes.
‘Complicated business, the whole thing,’ ruminated Spence, uninterested in Poirot’s agonized memories. ‘Just shows how true the old saying is that everyone’s got something to hide. Mrs Carpenter, now, had a narrow squeak of being arrested for murder. If ever a woman acted guilty, she did, and all for what?’
‘Eh bien, what?’ asked Poirot curiously.
‘Just the usual business of a rather unsavoury past. She had been a taxi dancer—and a bright girl with plenty of men friends! She wasn’t a war widow when she came and settled down in Broadhinny. Only what they call nowadays an “unofficial wife”. Well, of course all that wouldn’t do for a stuffed shirt like Guy Carpenter, so she’d spun him a very different sort of tale. And she was frantic lest the whole thing would come out once we started poking round into people’s origins.’
He sipped his coffee, and then gave a low chuckle.
‘Then take the Wetherbys. Sinister sort of house. Hate and malice. Awkward frustrated sort of girl. And what’s behind that? Nothing sinister. Just money! Plain £.s.d.’
‘As simple as that!’
‘The girl has the money—quite a lot of it. Left her by an aunt. So mother keeps tight hold of her in case she should want to marry. And stepfather loathes her because she has the dibs and pays the bills. I gather he himself has been a failure at anything he’s tried. A mean cuss—and