Mrs McGinty's Dead Read Online Free PDF Page B

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.”

Mrs McGinty's Dead

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