"That seems probable. And she was quite her usual self, then? She did not seem different in any way?"
"N-no, I don't think so."
The sniffing Edna shuffled through the door into the shop and suddenly joined in the conversation.
"She was different," she asserted. "Pleased about something - well - not pleased quite - excited."
"Perhaps you're right," said Mrs Sweetiman. "Not that I noticed it at the time. But now that you say so - sort of spry, she was."
"Do you remember anything she said on that day?"
"I wouldn't ordinarily. But what with her being murdered and the police and everything, it makes things stand out. She didn't say anything about James Bentley, that I'm quite sure. Talked about the Carpenters a bit and Mrs Upward - places where she worked, you know."
"Oh yes, I was going to ask you whom exactly she worked for here."
Mrs Sweetiman replied promptly:
"Mondays and Thursdays she went to Mrs Summerhayes at Long Meadow. That's where you are staying, isn't it?"
"Yes." Poirot sighed. "I suppose there is not anywhere else to stay?"
"Not right in Broadhinny, there isn't. I suppose you aren't very comfortable at Long Meadows? Mrs Summerhayes is a nice lady but she doesn't know the first thing about a house. These ladies don't who come back from foreign parts. Terrible mess there always was there to clean up, or so Mrs McGinty used to say. Yes, Monday afternoons and Thursday mornings Mrs Summerhayes, then Tuesday mornings Dr Rendell's and afternoons Mrs Upward, at Laburnums. Wednesday was Mrs Wetherby at Hunter's Close and Friday Mrs Selkirk - Mrs Carpenter she is now. Mrs Upward's an elderly lady who lives with her son. They've got a maid, but she's getting on and Mrs McGinty used to go once a week to give things a good turn out. Mr and Mrs Wetherby never seem to keep any help long - she's rather an invalid. Mr and Mrs Carpenter have a beautiful home and do a lot of entertaining. They're all very nice people."
It was with this final pronouncement on the population of Broadhinny that Poirot went out into the street again.
He walked slowly up the hill towards Long Meadow. He hoped devoutly that the contents of the bulged tin and the bloodstained beans had been duly eaten for lunch and had not been saved for a supper treat for him. But possibly there were other doubtful tins. Life at Long Meadows certainly had its dangers.
It had been, on the whole, a disappointing day.
What had he learned?
That James Bentley had a friend. That neither he nor Mrs McGinty had had any enemies. That Mrs McGinty had looked excited two days before her death and had bought a bottle of ink -
Poirot stopped dead... Was that a fact, a tiny fact at last?
He had asked idly, what Mrs McGinty should want with a bottle of ink, and Mrs Sweetiman had replied, quite seriously, that she supposed she wanted to write a letter...
There was significance there - a significance that had nearly escaped him because to him, as to most people, writing a letter was a common everyday occurrence.
But it was not so to Mrs McGinty. Writing a letter was to Mrs McGinty such an uncommon occurrence that she had to go out and buy a bottle of ink if she wanted to do so.
Mrs McGinty, then, hardly ever wrote letters. Mrs Sweetiman, who was the postmistress, was thoroughly cognisant of that fact. But Mrs McGinty had written a letter two days before her death. To whom had she written and why?
It might be quite unimportant. She might have written to her niece - to an absent friend. Absurd to lay such stress on a simple thing like a bottle of ink.
But it was all he had got and he was going to follow it up.
A bottle of ink...
Chapter 8
"A letter?" Bessie Burch shook her head. "No, I didn't get any letter from Auntie. What should she write to me about?"
Poirot suggested: "There might have been something she wanted to tell you."
"Auntie wasn't much of a one for writing. She was getting on for seventy, you know, and when she was young they didn't get much schooling."
"But she could read and write?"
"Oh, of course. Not much of a one for reading, though she liked her News of the World and her Sunday Companion. But writing came a bit difficult always. If she'd anything to let me know about, like putting us off from coming to see her, or saying she couldn't come to us, she'd usually ring up Mr Benson, the chemist next door, and he'd send the message in. Very obliging that way, he is. You see, we're in the area, so it only cost twopence. There's a call-box at the post office in Broadhinny."
Poirot nodded. He appreciated the fact that twopence was better than twopence ha'penny. He already had a picture of Mrs McGinty as the spare and saving kind. She had been, he thought, very fond of money.
He persisted gently:
"But your aunt did write to you sometimes, I suppose?"
"Well, there were cards at Xmas."
"And perhaps she had friends in other parts of England to whom she wrote?"
"I don't know about that. There was her sister-in-law, but she died two years ago and there was a Mrs Birdlip - but she's dead too."
"So, if she wrote to someone, it would be most likely in answer to a letter she had received?"
Again Bessie Burch looked doubtful.
"I don't know who'd be writing to her, I'm sure. Of course," her face brightened, "there's always the Government."
Poirot agreed that in these days, communications from what Bessie loosely referred to as "the Government" were the rule, rather than the exception.
"And a lot of fandangle it usually is," said Mrs Burch. "Forms to fill in, and a lot of impertinent questions as shouldn't be asked of any decent body."
"So Mrs McGinty might have got some Government communication that she had to answer?"
"If she had, she'd have brought it along to Joe, so as he could help her with it. Those sort of things fussed her and she always brought them to Joe."
"Can you remember if there were any letters among her personal possessions?"
"I couldn't rightly say. I don't remember anything. But then the police took over at first. It wasn't for quite a while they let me pack her things and take them away."
"What happened to those things?"
"That chest over there is hers - good solid mahogany, and there's a wardrobe upstairs, and some good kitchen stuff. The rest we sold because we'd no room for them."
"I meant her own personal things." He added: "Such things as brushes and combs, photographs, toilet things, clothes..."
"Oh, them. Well, tell you the truth, I packed them in a suitcase and it's still upstairs. Didn't rightly know what to do with them. Thought I'd take the clothes to the jumble sale at Xmas, but I forgot. Didn't seem nice to take them to one of those nasty second-hand clothes people."
"I wonder - might I see the contents of that suitcase?"
"Welcome, I'm sure. Though I don't think you'll find anything to help you. The police went through it all, you know."
"Oh I know. But, all the same -"
Mrs Burch led him briskly into a minute back bedroom, used, Poirot judged, mainly for home dressmaking. She pulled out a suitcase from under the bed and said:
"Well, here you are, and you'll excuse me stopping, but I've got the stew to see to."
Poirot gratefully excused her, and heard her thumping downstairs again. He drew the suitcase towards him and opened it.
A waft of mothballs came out to greet him.
With a feeling of pity, he lifted out the contents, so eloquent in their revelation of a woman who was dead. A rather worn long black coat. Two woollen jumpers. A coat and skirt. Stockings. No underwear (presumably Bessie Burch had taken those for her own wear). Two pairs of shoes wrapped up in newspaper. A brush and comb, worn but clean. An old dented silver-backed mirror. A photograph in a leather frame of a wedding pair dressed in the style of thirty years ago - a picture of Mrs McGinty and her husband presumably. Two picture postcards of Margate. A china dog. A recipe torn out of a paper for making vegetable marrow jam. Another piece dealing with "Flying Saucers" on a sensational note. A third clipping dealt with Mother Shipton's prophecies. There was also a Bible and a Prayer Book.
There were no handbags, or gloves. Presumably Bessie Burch had taken these, or given them away. The clothes here, Poirot judged, would have been too small for the buxom Bessie. Mrs McGinty had been a thin, spare woman.
He unwrapped one of the pairs of shoes. They were of quite good quality and not much worn. Decidedly on the small side for Bessie Butch.
He was just about to wrap them up neatly again when his eye was caught by the heading on the piece of newspaper. It was the Sunday Companion and the date was November 19th. Mrs McGinty had been killed on November 22nd.
This then was the paper she had bought on the Sunday preceding her death. It had been lying in her room and Bessie Butch had used it in due course to wrap up her aunt's things.
Sunday, November 19th. And on Monday Mrs McGinty had gone into the post office to buy a bottle of ink...
Could that be because of something she had seen in Sunday's newspaper?
He unwrapped the other pair of shoes. They were wrapped in the News of the World of the same date.
He smoothed out both papers and took them over to a chair where he sat down to read them. And at once he made a discovery. On one page of the Sunday Companion, something had been cut out. It was a rectangular piece out of the middle page. The space was too big for any of the clippings he had found.
He looked through both newspapers, but could find nothing else of interest. He wrapped them round the shoes again and packed the suitcase tidily.
Then he went downstairs.
Mrs Burch was busy in the kitchen.
"Don't suppose you found anything?" she said.
"Alas, no." He added in a casual voice: "Do you remember if there was a cutting from a newspaper in your aunt's purse or in her handbag, was there?"
"Can't remember any. Perhaps the police took it."
But the police had not taken it. That Poirot knew from his study of Spence's notes. The contents of the dead woman's handbag had been listed, no newspaper cutting was among them.
"Eh bien," said Hercule Poirot to himself. "The next step is easy. It will be either the wash-out - or else, at last, I advance."
II
Sitting very still, with the dusty files of newspaper in front of him, Poirot told himself that his recognition of the significance of the bottle of ink had not played him false.
The Sunday Companion was given to romantic dramatizations of past events.
The paper at which Poirot was looking was the Sunday Companion of Sunday, November 19th.
At the top of the middle page were these words in big type:
Women Victims of Bygone Tragedies
Where are these women now?
Below the caption were four very blurred reproductions of photographs clearly taken many years ago.
The subjects of them did not look tragic. They looked, actually, rather ridiculous, since nearly all of them were dressed in the style of a bygone day, and nothing is more ridiculous than the fashions of yesterday - though in another thirty years or so their charm may have reappeared, or at any rate be once more apparent.
Under each photo was a name.
Eva Kane, the "other woman" in the famous Craig case.
Janice Courtland, the "tragic wife" whose husband was a fiend in human form.
Little Lily Gamboll, tragic child product of our overcrowded age.
Vera Blake, unsuspecting wife of a killer.
And then came the question in bold type again:
Where are these women now?
Poirot blinked and set himself to read meticulously the somewhat romantic prose which gave the life stories of these dim and blurry heroines.
The name of Eva Kane he remembered, for the Craig Case had been a very celebrated one. Alfred Craig had been Town Clerk of Parminster, a conscientious, rather nondescript little man, correct and pleasant in his behaviour. He had had the misfortune to marry a tiresome and temperamental wife. Mrs Craig ran him into debt, bullied him, nagged him, and suffered from nervous maladies that unkind friends said were entirely imaginary. Eva Kane was the young nursery governess in the house. She was nineteen, pretty, helpless and rather simple. She fell desperately in love with Craig and he with her. Then one day the neighbors heard that Mrs Craig had been "ordered abroad" for her health. That had been Craig's story. He took her up to London, the first stage of the journey, by car late one evening, and "saw her off" to the South of France. Then he returned to Parminster and at intervals mentioned how him wife's health was no better by her accounts of it in letters. Eva Kane remained behind to housekeep for him, and tongues soon started wagging. Finally, Craig received news of his wife's death abroad. He went away and returned a week later, with an account of the funeral.
In some ways, Craig was a simple man. He made the mistake of mentioning where his wife had died, a moderately well-known resort on the French Riviera. It only remained for someone who had a relative or friend living there to write to them, discover that there had been no death or funeral of anyone of that name and, after a period of rank gossip, to communicate with the police.
Subsequent events can be briefly summarised.
Mrs Craig had not left for the Riviera. She had been cut in neat pieces and buried in the Craig cellar. And the autopsy of the remains showed poisoning by a vegetable alkaloid.
Craig was arrested and sent for trial. Eva Kane was originally charged as an accessory, but the charge was dropped, since it appeared clear that she had throughout been completely ignorant of what had occurred. Craig in the end made a full confession and was sentenced and executed.
Eva Kane, who was expecting a child, left Parminster and, in the words of the Sunday Companion: Kindly relatives in the New World offered her a home. Changing her name, the pitiful young girl, seduced in her trusting youth by a cold-blooded murderer, left these shores for ever, to begin a new life and to keep for ever locked in her heart and concealed from her daughter the name of her father.
