The door banged to with a crash. Through the window came the loud squawking of irate hens.
Then the door opened again and Maureen Summerhayes came in and fell upon the basin with a cry of joy.
"Couldn't think where I'd left it. Would you mind frightfully, Mr Er - hum - I mean, would it bother you if I sliced the beans in here? The smell in the kitchen is too frightful."
"Madame, I should be enchanted."
It was not, perhaps, the exact phrase, but it was near enough. It was the first time in twenty-four hours that Poirot had seen any chance of a conversation of more than six seconds' duration.
Mrs Summerhayes flung herself down in a chair and began slicing beans with frenzied energy and considerable awkwardness.
"I do hope," she said, "that you're not too frightfully uncomfortable? If there's anything you want altered, do say so."
Poirot had already come to the opinion that the only thing in Long Meadows he could even tolerate was his hostess.
"You are too kind, madame," he replied politely. "I only wish it were within my powers to provide you with suitable domestics."
"Domestics!" Mrs Summerhayes gave a squeal. "What a hope! Can't even get hold of a daily. Our really good one was murdered. Just my luck."
"That would be Mrs McGinty," said Poirot quickly.
"Mrs McGinty it was. God, how I miss that woman! Of course it was all a big thrill at the time. First murder we've ever had right in the family, so to speak, but as I told Johnnie, it was a downright bit of bad luck for us. Without McGinty I just can't cope."
"You were attached to her?"
"My dear man, she was reliable. She came. Monday afternoons and Thursday mornings - just like a clock. Now I have that Burp woman from up by the station. Five children and a husband. Naturally she's never here. Either the husband's taken queer, or the old mother, or the children have some foul disease or other. With old McGinty, at least it was only she herself who came over queer, and I must say she hardly ever did."
"And you found her always reliable and honest? You had trust in her?"
"Oh, she'd never pinch anything - not even food. Of course she snooped a bit. Had a look at one's letters and all that. But one expects that sort of thing. I mean they must live such awfully drab lives, mustn't they?"
"Had Mrs McGinty had a drab life?"
"Ghastly, I expect," said Mrs Summerhayes vaguely. "Always on your knees scrubbing. And then piles of other people's washing up waiting for you on the sink when you arrive in the morning. If I had to face that every day, I'd be positively relieved to be murdered. I really would."
The face of Major Summerhayes appeared at the window. Mrs Summerhayes sprang up, upsetting the beans, and rushed across to the window, which she opened to the fullest extent.
"That damned dog's eaten the hens' food again, Maureen."
"Oh damn, now he'll be sick!"
"Look here," John Summerhayes displayed a colander of greenery, "is this enough spinach?"
"Of course not."
"Seems a colossal amount to me."
"It'll be about a teaspoonful when it's cooked. Don't you know by now what spinach is like?"
"Oh lord!"
"Has the fish come?"
"Not a sign of it."
"Hell, we'll have to open a tin of something. You might do that, Johnnie. One of the ones in the corner cupboard. That one we thought was a bit bulged. I expect it's quite all right really."
"What about the spinach?"
"I'll get that."
She leaped through the window, and husband and wife moved away together.
"Nom d'un nom d'un nom!" said Hercule Poirot. He crossed the room and closed the window as nearly as he could. The voice of Major Summerhayes came to him borne on the wind.
"What about this new fellow, Maureen? Looks a bit peculiar to me. What's his name again?"
"I couldn't remember it just now when I was talking to him. Had to say Mr Er-um. Poirot - that's what it is. He's French."
"You know, Maureen, I seem to have seen that name somewhere."
"Home Perm, perhaps. He looks like a hairdresser."
Poirot winced.
"N-no. Perhaps it's pickles. I don't know. I'm sure it's familiar. Better get the first seven guineas out of him, quick."
The voices died away.
Hercule Poirot picked up the beans from the floor where they had scattered far and wide. Just as he finished doing so, Mrs Summerhayes came in again through the door.
He presented them to her politely:
"Voici, Madame."
"Oh thanks awfully. I say, these beans look a bit black. We store then, you know, in crocks, salted down. But these seem to have gone wrong. I'm afraid they won't be very nice."
"I, too, fear that... You permit that I shut the door? There is a decided draught."
"Oh yes, do. I'm afraid I always leave doors open."
"So I have noticed."
"Anyway, that door never stays shut. This house is practically falling to pieces. Johnnie's father and mother lived here and they were very badly off, poor dears, and they never did a thing to it. And then when we came home from India to live here, we couldn't afford to do anything either. It's fun for the children in the holidays, though, lots of room to run wild in, and the garden and everything. Having paying guests here just enables us to keep going, though I must say we've had a few rude shocks."
"Am I your only guest at present?"
"We've got an old lady upstairs. Took to her bed the day she came and has been there ever since. Nothing the matter with her that I can see. But there she is, and I carry up four trays a day. Nothing wrong with her appetite. Anyway, she's going tomorrow to some niece or other."
Mrs Summerhayes paused for a moment before resuming in a slightly artificial voice.
"The fishman will be here in a minute. I wonder if you'd mind - er - forking out the first week's rent. You are staying a week, aren't you?"
"Perhaps longer."
"Sorry to bother you. But I've not got any cash in the house and you know what these people are like - always dunning you."
"Pray do not apologise, madame."
Poirot took out seven pound notes and added seven shillings. Mrs Summerhayes gathered the money up with avidity.
"Thanks a lot."
"I should, perhaps, Madame, tell you a little more about myself. I am Hercule Poirot."
The revelation left Mrs Summerhayes unmoved.
"What a lovely name," she said kindly. "Greek, isn't it?"
"I am, as you may know," said Poirot, "a detective." He tapped his chest. "Perhaps the most famous detective there is."
Mrs Summerhayes screamed with amusement.
"I see you're a great practical joker, M. Poirot. What are you detecting? Cigarette ash and footprints?"
"I am investigating the murder of Mrs McGinty," said Poirot. "And I do not joke."
"Ouch," said Mrs Summerhayes. "I've cut my hand."
She raised a finger and inspected it.
Then she stared at Poirot.
"Look here," she said. "Do you mean it? What I mean is, it's over, all that. They arrested that poor half-wit who lodged there and he's been tried and convicted and everything. He's probably been hanged by now."
"No, madame," said Poirot. "He has not been hanged - yet. And it is not 'over' - the case of Mrs McGinty. I will remind you of the line from one of your poets. 'A question is never settled until it is settled - right.'"
"Oo," said Mrs Summerhayes, her attention diverted from Poirot to the basin in her lap. "I'm bleeding over the beans. Not too good as we've got to have them for lunch. Still it won't matter really because they'll go into boiling water. Thing are always all right if you boil them, aren't they? Even tins."
"I think," said Hercule Poirot quietly, "that I shall not be in for lunch."
Chapter 5
"I don't know, I'm sure," said Mrs Burch.
She had said that three times already. Her natural distrust of foreign-looking gentlemen with black moustaches wearing large fur lined coats was not to be easily overcome.
"Very unpleasant it's been," she went on. "Having poor Auntie murdered and the police and all that. Tramping round everywhere and ferreting about, and asking questions. With the neighbours all agog. I didn't feel at first we'd ever live it down. And my husband's mother's been downright nasty about it. Nothing of that kind ever happened in her family, she kept saying. And 'poor Joe' and all that. What about poor me? She was my aunt, wasn't she? But really I did think it was all over now."
"And supposing that James Bentley is innocent, after all?"
"Nonsense," snapped Mrs Burch. "Of course he isn't innocent. He did it all right. I never did like the looks of him. Wandering about muttering to himself. Said to Auntie, I did: 'You oughtn't to have a man like that in the house. Might go off his head,' I said. But she said he was quiet and obliging and didn't give trouble. No drinking, she said, and he didn't even smoke. Well, she knows better now, poor soul."
Poirot looked thoughtfully at her. She was a big, plump woman with a healthy colour and a good-humoured mouth. The small house was neat and clean and smelt of furniture polish and brasso. A faint appetising smell came from the direction of the kitchen.
A good wife who kept her house clean and took the trouble to cook for her man. He approved. She was prejudiced and obstinate but, after all, why not? Most decidedly, she was not the kind of woman one could imagine using a meat chopper on her aunt, or conniving at her husband's doing so. Spence had not thought her that kind of woman, and rather reluctantly, Hercule Poirot agreed with him. Spence had gone into the financial background of the Burches and had found no motive there for murder, and Spence was a very thorough man.
He sighed, and persevered with his task, which was the breaking down of Mrs Burch's suspicion of foreigners. He led the conversation away from murder and focused on the victim of it. He asked questions about "poor Auntie," her health, her habits, her preferences in food and drink, her politics, her late husband, her attitude to life, to sex, to sin, to religion, to children, to animals.
Whether any of this irrelevant matter would be of use, he had no idea. He was looking through a haystack to find a needle. But, incidentally, he was learning something about Bessie Burch.
Bessie did not really know very much about her aunt. It had been a family tie, honoured as such, but without intimacy. Now and again, once a month or so, she and Joe had gone over on a Sunday, to have midday dinner with Auntie, and more rarely, Auntie had come over to see them. They had exchanged presents at Christmas. They'd known that Auntie had a little something put by, and that they'd get it when she died.
"But that's not to say we were needing it," Mrs Butch explained with rising colour. "We've got something put by ourselves. And we buried her beautiful. A real nice funeral it was. Flowers and everything."
Auntie had been fond of knitting. She didn't like dogs, they messed up a place, but she used to have a cat - a ginger. It strayed away and she hadn't had one since, but the woman at the post office had been going to give her a kitten. Kept her house very neat and didn't like litter. Kept brass a treat and washed down the kitchen floor every day. She made quite a nice thing of going out to work. One shilling and tenpence an hour - two shillings from Holmeleigh, that was Mr Carpenter's of the Works' house. Rolling in money, the Carpenters were. Tried to get Auntie to come more days in the week, but Auntie wouldn't disappoint her other ladies because she'd gone to them before she went to Mr Carpenter's, and it wouldn't have been right.
Poirot mentioned Mrs Summerhayes at Long Meadows.
Oh yes, Auntie went to her - two days a week. They'd come back from India where they'd had a lot of native servants and Mrs Summerhayes didn't know a thing about a house. They tried to market-garden, but they didn't know anything about that, either. When the children came home for the holidays, the house was just pandemonium. But Mrs Summerhayes was a nice lady and Auntie liked her.
So the portrait grew. Mrs McGinty knitted, and scrubbed floors and polished brass, she liked cats and didn't like dogs. She liked children, but not very much. She kept herself to herself.
She attended church on Sunday, but didn't take part in any church activities. Sometimes, but rarely, she went to the pictures. She didn't hold with goings on - and had given up working for an artist and his wife when she had discovered they weren't properly married. She didn't read books, but she enjoyed the Sunday paper and she liked old magazines when her ladies gave them to her. Although she didn't go much to the pictures, she was interested in hearing about film stars and their doings. She wasn't interested in politics, but voted Conservative like her husband had always done. Never spent much on clothes, but got quite a lot given her from her ladies, and was of a saving disposition.
Mrs McGinty was, in fact, very much the Mrs McGinty that Poirot had imagined she would be. And Bessie Burch, her niece, was the Bessie Burch of Superintendent Spence's notes.
Before Poirot took his leave, Joe Burch came home for the lunch hour. A small, shrewd man, less easy to be sure about than his wife. There was a faint nervousness in his manner. He showed less signs of suspicion and hostility than his wife. Indeed he seemed anxious to appear cooperative. And that, Poirot reflected, was very faintly out of character. For why should Joe Burch be anxious to placate an importunate foreign stranger? The reason could only be that that stranger had brought with him a letter from Superintendent Spence of the County Police.
So Joe Burch was anxious to stand in well with the police? Was it that he couldn't afford, as his wife could, to be critical of the police?
