Mrs McGinty's Dead

by Agatha Christie

A bottle of ink…

  Chapter 8

  I

  ‘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 Comet. 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 costs 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 Christmas.’

  ‘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 say rightly. 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 Christmas, 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 dress-making. 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 post-cards 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 Burch.

  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 Comet 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 Burch 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 Comet, 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: ‘You do not 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 Comet was given to romantic dramatizations of past events.

  The paper at which Poirot was looking was the Sunday Comet 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.

&nbs
p; 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 neighbours 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 his 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 summarized.

  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 Comet:

  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.

  ‘My daughter shall grow up happy and innocent. Her life shall not be tainted 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 Mid-western 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 Comet 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 Comet. 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, 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 eyes looked over the four photographs once again.

  Where, the Sunday Comet 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.r />
  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 Comet. Nevertheless it was so.

  ‘Cough it up, cough it up,’ said Miss Horsefall impatiently to Poirot. ‘I’ve got to be going.’

  ‘It is about your article in the Sunday Comet. 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 Comet, 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.’