"My daughter shall grow up happy and innocent. Her life shall not be stained by the cruel past. That I have sworn. My tragic memories shall remain mine alone."
Poor frail trusting Eva Kane. To learn, so young, the villainy and infamy of man. Where is she now? Is there, in some Midwestern town, an elderly woman, quiet and respected by her neighbours, who has, perhaps, sad eyes... And does a young woman, happy and cheerful, with children, perhaps, of her own, come and see "Momma," telling her of all the little rubs and grievances of daily life - with no idea of what past sufferings her mother has endured?
"Oh la la!" said Hercule Poirot. And passed on to the next Tragic Victim.
Janice Courtland, the "tragic wife," had certainly been unfortunate in her husband. His peculiar practices, referred to in such a guarded way as to rouse instant curiosity, had been suffered by her for eight years. Eight years of martyrdom, the Sunday Companion said firmly. Then Janice made a friend. An idealistic and unworldly young man who, horrified by a scene between husband and wife that he had witnessed by accident, had thereupon assaulted the husband with such vigour that the latter had crashed in his skull on a sharply-edged marble fire surround. The jury had found that provocation had been intense, that the young idealist had had no intention of killing, and a sentence of five years for manslaughter was given.
The suffering Janice, horrified by all the publicity the case had brought her, had gone abroad "to forget."
Has she forgotten? asked the Sunday Companion. We hope so. Somewhere, perhaps, is a happy wife and mother to whom those years of nightmare suffering silently endured, seem now only like a dream...
"Well, well," said Hercule Poirot and passed on to Lily Gamboll, the tragic child product of our overcrowded age.
Lily Gamboll had, it seemed, been removed from her overcrowded home. An aunt had assumed responsibility for Lily's life. Lily had wanted to go to the pictures, Aunt had said "No." Lily Gamboll had picked up the meat chopper which was lying conveniently on the table and had aimed a blow at her aunt with it. The aunt, though autocratic, was small and frail. The blow killed her. Lily was a well-developed and muscular child for her twelve years. An approved school had opened its doors and Lily had disappeared from the everyday scene.
By now she is a woman, free again to take her place in our civilization. Her conduct, during her years of confinement and probation, is said to have been exemplary. Does not this show that it is not the child, but the system, that we must blame? Brought up in ignorance, in slum conditions, little Lily was the victim of her environment.
Now, having atoned for her tragic lapse, she lives somewhere, happily, we hope, a good citizen and a good wife and mother. Poor little Lily Gamboll.
Poirot shook his head. A child of twelve who took a swing at her aunt with a meat chopper and hit her hard enough to kill her was not, in his opinion, a nice child. His sympathies were, in this case, with the aunt.
He passed on to Vera Blake.
Vera Blake was clearly one of those women with whom everything, goes wrong. She had first taken up with a boyfriend who turned out to be a gangster wanted by the police for killing a bank watchman. She had then married a respectable tradesman who turned out to be a receiver of stolen goods. Her two children had likewise, in due course, attracted the attention of the police. They went with mamma to department stores and did a pretty line in shoplifting. Finally, however, a "good man" had appeared on the scene. He had offered tragic Vera a home in the Dominions. She and her children should leave this effete country.
From henceforward a New Life awaited them. At last, after long years of repeated blows from Fate, Vera's troubles are over.
"I wonder," said Poirot sceptically. "Very possibly she will find she has married a confidence trickster who works the liners!"
He leant back and studied the four photographs. Eva Kane with tousled curly hair over her ears and an enormous hat, held a bunch of roses up to her ear like a telephone receiver. Janice Courtland had a cloche hat pushed down over her ears and a waist round her hips. Lily Gamboll was a plain child with an adenoidal appearance of open mouth, hard breathing and thick spectacles. Vera Blake was so tragically black and white that no features showed.
For some reason Mrs McGinty had torn out this feature, photographs and all. Why? Just to keep because the stories interested her? He thought not. Mrs McGinty had kept very few things during her sixty-odd years of life. Poirot knew that from the police reports of her belongings.
She had torn this out on the Sunday and on the Monday she had bought a bottle of ink and the inference was that she, who never wrote letters, was about to write a letter. If it had been a business letter, she would probably have asked Joe Burch to help her. So it had not been business. It had been - what?
Poirot's eye looked over the four photographs once again.
Where, the Sunday Companion asked, are these women now?
One of them, Poirot thought, might have been in Broadhinny last November.
III
It was not until the following day that Poirot found himself tête à tête with Miss Pamela Horsefall.
Miss Horsefall couldn't give him long, because she had to rush away to Sheffield, she explained.
Miss Horsefall was tall, manly-looking, a hard drinker and smoker, and it would seem, looking at her, highly improbable that it was her pen which had dropped such treacly sentiment in the Sunday Companion. Nevertheless it was so.
"Cough it up, cough it up," said Miss Horsefall impatiently to Poirot. "We got to be going."
"It is about your article in the Sunday Companion. Last November. The series about Tragic Women."
"Oh, that series. Pretty lousy, weren't they?"
Poirot did not express an opinion on that point. He said:
"I refer in particular to the article on Women Associated with Crime that appeared on November 19th. It concerned Eva Kane, Vera Blake, Janice Courtland and Lily Gamboll."
Miss Horsefall grinned.
"Where are these tragic women now? I remember."
"I suppose you sometimes get letters after the appearance of these articles?"
"You bet I do! Some people seem to have nothing better to do than write letters. Somebody 'once saw the murderer Craig walking down the street.' Somebody would like to tell me 'the story of her life, far more tragic than anything I could ever imagine.'"
"Did you get a letter after the appearance of that article from a Mrs McGinty of Broadhinny?"
"My dear man, how on earth should I know? I get buckets of letters. How should I remember one particular name?"
"I thought you might remember," said Poirot, "because a few days later Mrs McGinty was murdered."
"Now you're talking." Miss Horsefall forgot to be impatient to get to Sheffield, and sat down astride a chair. "McGinty - McGinty... I do remember the name. Conked on the head by her lodger. Not a very exciting crime from the point of view of the public. No sex appeal about it. You say the woman wrote to me?"
"She wrote to the Sunday Companion, I think."
"Same thing. It would come on to me. And with the murder - and her name being in the news - surely I should remember -" She stopped. "Look here - it wasn't from Broadhinny. It was from Broadway."
"So you do remember?"
"Well, I'm not sure... But the name... Comic name, isn't it? McGinty! Yes - atrocious writing and quite illiterate. If I'd only realised... But I'm sure it came from Broadway."
Poirot said: "You say yourself the writing was bad. Broadway and Broadhinny - they could look alike."
"Yes - might be so. After all, one wouldn't be likely to know these queer rural names. McGinty - yes. I do remember definitely. Perhaps the murder fixed the name for me."
"Can you remember what she said in her letter?"
"Something about a photograph. She knew where there was a photograph like in the paper - and would we pay her anything for it and how much?"
"And you answered?"
"My dear man, we don't want anything of that kind. We sent back the standard reply. Polite thanks but nothing doing. But as we sent it to Broadway - I don't suppose she'd ever get it."
"She knew where there was a photograph..."
Into Poirot's mind there came back a remembrance. Maureen Summerhayes' careless voice saying, "Of course she snooped round a bit."
Mrs McGinty had snooped. She was honest, but she liked to know about things. And people kept things - foolish, meaningless things from the past. Kept them for sentimental reasons, or just overlooked them and didn't remember they were there.
Mrs McGinty had seen an old photograph and later she had recognised it reproduced in the Sunday Companion. And she had wondered if there was any money in it...
He rose briskly. "Thank you, Miss Horsefall. You will pardon me, but those notes on the cases that you wrote, were they accurate? I notice, for instance, that the year of the Craig trial is given wrongly - it was actually a year later than you say. And in the Courtland case, the husband's name was Herbert, I seem to remember, not Hubert. Lily Gamboll's aunt lived in Buckinghamshire, not Berkshire."
Miss Horsefall waved a cigarette.
"My dear man. No point in accuracy. Whole thing was a romantic farrago from beginning to end. I just mugged up the facts a bit and then let fly with a lot of hou ha."
"What I am trying to say is that even the characters of your heroines are not, perhaps, quite as represented."
Pamela let out a neighing sound like a horse.
"Course they weren't. What do you think? I've no doubt that Eva Kane was a thorough little bitch, and not an injured innocent at all. And as for the Courtland woman, why did she suffer in silence for eight years with a sadistic pervert? Because he was rolling in money, and the romantic friend hadn't any."
"And the tragic child, Lily Gamboll?"
"I wouldn't care to have her gambolling about me with a meat chopper."
Poirot ticked off on his fingers.
"They left the country - they went to the New World - abroad - 'to the Dominions' - 'to start a New Life.' And there is nothing to show, is there, that they did not, subsequently, come back to this country?"
"Not a thing," agreed Miss Horsefall. "And now - I really must fly -"
Later that night Poirot rang up Spence.
"I've been wondering about you, Poirot. Have you got anything? Anything at all?"
"I have made my inquiries," said Poirot grimly.
"Yes?"
"And the result of them is this: The people who live in Broadhinny are all very nice people."
"What do you mean by that, M. Poirot?"
"Oh, my friend, consider. 'Very nice people.' That has been, before now, a motive for murder."
Chapter 9
"All very nice people," murmured Poirot as he turned in at the gate of Crossways, near the station.
A brass plate in the doorpost announced that Dr Rendell, M.D., lived there.
Dr Rendell was a large cheerful man of forty. He greeted his guest with definite empressement.
"Our quiet little village is honoured," he said, "by the presence of the great Hercule Poirot."
"Ah," said Poirot. He was gratified. "You have, then, heard of me?"
"Of course we have heard of you. Who hasn't?"
The answer to that would have been damaging to Poirot's self-esteem. He merely said politely: "I am fortunate to find you at home."
It was not particularly fortunate. It was, on the contrary, astute timing. But Dr Rendell replied heartily:
"Yes. Just caught me. Surgery in a quarter of an hour. Now what can I do for you? I'm devoured with curiosity to know what you're doing down here. A rest cure? Or have we crime in our midst?"
"In the past tense - not the present."
"Past? I don't remember -"
"Mrs McGinty."
"Of course. Of course. I was forgetting. But don't say you're concerned with that - at this late date?"
"If I may mention this to you in confidence, I am employed by the defence. Fresh evidence on which to lodge an appeal."
Dr Rendell said sharply: "But what fresh evidence can there be?"
"That, alas, I am not at liberty to state -"
"Oh, quite - please forgive me."
"But I have come across certain things which are, I may say - very curious - very - how shall I put it? - suggestive? I came to you, Dr Rendell, because I understand that Mrs McGinty occasionally was employed here."
"Oh yes, yes - she was - What about a drink? Sherry? Whisky? You prefer sherry? So do I." He brought two glasses and, sitting down by Poirot, he went on: "She used to come once a week to do extra cleaning. I've got a very good housekeeper - excellent - but the brasses - and scrubbing the kitchen floor - well, my Mrs Scott can't get down on her knees very well. Mrs McGinty was an excellent worker."
"Do you think that she was a truthful person?"
"Truthful? Well, that's an odd question. I don't think I could say - no opportunity of knowing. As far as I know she was quite truthful."
"If then she made a statement to anyone, you think that statement would probably be true?"
Dr Rendell looked faintly disturbed.
"Oh, I wouldn't like to go as far as that. I really know so little about her. I could ask Mrs Scott. She'd know better."
"No, no. It would be better not to do that."
"You're arousing my curiosity," said Dr Rendell genially. "What was it she was going around saying? Something a bit libellous, was it? Slanderous, I suppose I mean."
Poirot merely shook his head. He said: "You understand, all this is extremely hush hush at present. I am only at the very commencement of my investigation."
Dr Rendell said rather drily:
"You'll have to hurry a bit, won't you?"
"You are right. The time at my disposal is short."
"I must say you surprise me... We've all been quite sure down here that Bentley did it. There didn't seem any doubt possible."
