Agatha Christie: Mrs McGinty's Dead

"So we come to – James Bentley?"

"Bentley's last job was with a house agent's in Kilchester. Before that, he lived with his mother in Cullenquay. She was an invalid and he looked after her and never went out much. Then she died, and an annuity she had died with her. He sold the little house and found a job. Well educated man, but no special qualifications or aptitudes, and, as I say, an unprepossessing manner. Didn't find it easy to get anything. Anyway, they took him on at Breather Scuttle's. Rather a second-rate firm. I don't think he was particularly efficient or successful. They cut down staff and he was the one to go. He couldn't get another job, and his money ran out. He usually paid Mrs McGinty every month for his room. She gave him breakfast and supper and charged him three pounds a week – quite reasonable, all things considered. He was two months behind in paying her, and he was nearly at the end of his resources. He hadn't got another job and she was pressing him for what he owed her."

"And he knew that she had thirty pounds in the house? Why did she have thirty pounds in the house, by the way, since she had a Savings Bank account?"

"Because she didn't trust the Government. Said they'd got two hundred pounds of her money, but they wouldn't get any more. She'd keep that where she could lay her hand on it any minute. She said that to one or two people. It was under a loose board in her bedroom floor – a very obvious place. James Bentley admitted he knew it was there."

"Very obliging of him. And did niece and husband know that too?"

"Oh yes."

"Then we have now arrived back at my first question to you. How did Mrs McGinty die?"

"She died on the night of November 22nd. Police surgeon put the time of death as being between 7 and 10 p.m. She'd had her supper – a kipper and bread and margarine, and according to all accounts, she usually had that about half-past six. If she adhered to that on the night in question, then by the evidence of digestion she was killed about eight-thirty or nine o'clock. James Bentley, by his own account, was out walking that evening from seven-fifteen to about nine. He went out and walked most evenings after dark. According to his own story he came in at about nine o'clock (he had his own key) and went straight upstairs to his room. Mrs McGinty had had wash-basins fixed in the bedrooms because of summer visitors. He read for about half an hour and then went to bed. He heard and noticed nothing out of the way. Next morning he came downstairs and looked into the kitchen, but there was no one there and no signs of breakfast being prepared. He says he hesitated a bit and then knocked on Mrs McGinty's door, but got no reply.

"He thought she must have overslept, but didn't like to go on knocking. Then the baker came and James Bentley went up and knocked again, and after that, as I told you, the baker went next door and fetched in a Mrs Elliot, who eventually found the body and went off the deep end. Mrs McGinty was lying on the parlour floor. She'd been hit on the back of the head with something rather in the nature of a meat chopper with a very sharp edge. She'd been killed instantaneously. Drawers were pulled open and things strewn about, and the loose board in the floor in her bedroom had been prised up and the cache was empty. All the windows were closed and shuttered on the inside. No signs of anything being tampered with or of being broken into from outside."

"Therefore," said Poirot, "either James Bentley must have killed her, or else she must have admitted her killer herself whilst Bentley was out?"

"Exactly. It wasn't any hold-up or burglar. Now who would she be likely to let in? One of the neighbours, or her niece, or her niece's husband. It boils down to that. We eliminated the neighbours. Niece and her husband were at the pictures that night. It is possible – just possible, that one or other of them left the cinema unobserved, bicycled three miles, killed the old woman, hid the money outside the house, and got back into the cinema unnoticed. We looked into that possibility, but we didn't find any confirmation of it. And why hide the money outside McGinty's house if so? Difficult place to pick it up later. Why not somewhere along the three miles back? No, the only reason for hiding it where it was hidden -"

Poirot finished the sentence for him.

"- would be because you were living in that house, but didn't want to hide it in your room or anywhere inside. In fact: James Bentley."

"That's right. Everywhere, every time, you came up against Bentley. Finally there was the blood on his cuff."

"How did he account for that?"

"Said he remembered brushing up against a butcher's chop the previous day. Baloney! It wasn't animal blood."

"And he stuck to that story?"

"Not likely. At the trial he told a completely different tale. You see, there was a hair on the cuff as well – a bloodstained hair, and the hair was identical with Mrs McGinty's hair. That had got to be explained away. He admitted then that he had gone into the room the night before when he came back from his walk. He'd gone in, he said, after knocking, and found her there, on the floor, dead. He'd bent over and touched her, he said, to make sure. And then he'd lost his head. He'd always been very much affected by the sight of blood, he said. He went to his room in a state of collapse and more or less fainted. In the morning he couldn't bring himself to admit he knew what had happened."

"A very fishy story," commented Poirot.

"Yes, indeed. And yet, you know," said Spence thought fully, "it might well be true. It's not the sort of thing that an ordinary man – or a jury – can believe. But I've come across people like that. I don't mean the collapse story. I mean people who are confronted by a demand for responsible action and who simply can't face up to it. Shy people. He goes in, say, and finds her. He knows that he ought to do something – get the police – go to a neighbour – do the right thing whatever it is. And he funks it. He thinks 'I don't need to know anything about it. I needn't have come in here tonight. I'll go to bed just as if I hadn't come in here at all…' Behind it, of course, there's fear – fear that he may be suspected of having a hand in it. He thinks he'll keep himself out of it as long as possible, and so the silly juggins goes and puts himself into it – up to his neck."

Spence paused.

"It could have been that way."

"It could," said Poirot thoughtfully.

"Or again, it may have been just the best story his counsel could think up for him. But I don't know. The waitress in the café in Kilchester where he usually had lunch said that he always chose a table where he could look into a wall or a corner and not see people. He was that kind of a chap – just a bit screwy. But not screwy enough to be a killer. He'd no persecution complex or anything of that kind."

Spence looked hopefully at Poirot – but Poirot did not respond – he was frowning.

The two men sat silent for a while.

At last Poirot roused himself with a sigh.

"Eh bien," he said. "We have exhausted the motive of money. Let us pass to other theories. Had Mrs McGinty an enemy? Was she afraid of anyone?"

"No evidence of it."

"What did her neighbours have to say?"

"Not very much. They wouldn't to the police, perhaps, but I don't think they were holding anything back. She kept herself to herself, they said. But that's regarded as natural enough. Our villages, you know, M. Poirot, aren't friendly. Evacuees found that during the war. Mrs McGinty passed the time of the day with the neighbours but they weren't intimate."

"How long had she lived there?"

"Matter of eighteen or twenty years, I think."

"And the forty years before that?"

"There's no mystery about her. Farmer's daughter from North Devon. She and her husband lived near Ilfracombe for a time, and then moved to Kilchester. Had a cottage the other side of it – but found it damp, so they moved to Broadhinny. Husband seems to have been a quiet, decent man, delicate – didn't go to the pub much. All very respectable and aboveboard. No mysteries anywhere, nothing to hide."