Spence wagged a heavy forefinger.
"I haven't seen—not in }my }experience—an innocent man hanged for something he didn't do. It's a thing, M. Poirot, that I don't }want }to see.
"Not," added Spence, "in }this }country!"
}Poirot gazed back at him.}
"And you think you are going to see it now. But why—",
Spence interrupted him.
"I know some of the things you're going to say. I'll answer them without you having to ask them. I was put on this case. I was put on to get evidence of what happened. I went into the whole business very carefully. I got the facts, all the facts I could. All those facts pointed one way—pointed to one person. When I'd got
}20}
}MRS. }McGINTY'S DEAD}
all the facts I took them to my superior officer. After that it was out of my hands. The case went to the Public Prosecutor and it was up to him. He decided to prosecute—he couldn't have done anything else—not on the evidence. And so James Bentley was arrested and committed for trial and was duly tried and has been found guilty. They couldn't have found him anything else, not on the evidence. And evidence is what a jury has to consider. Didn't have any qualms about it either, I should say. No, I should say they were all quite satisfied he }was }guilty."
"But you—are not?"
"No."
"Why?"
Superintendent Spence sighed. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully with his big hand.
"I don't know. What I mean is, I can't give a reason —a concrete reason. To the jury I daresay he looked like a murderer—to me he didn't—and I know a lot more about murderers than they do."
"Yes, yes, you are an expert."
"For one thing, you know, he wasn't }cocky. }Not cocky at all. And in my experience they usually are. Always so damned pleased with themselves. Always think they're stringing you along. Always sure they've been so clever about the whole thing. And even when they're in the dock and must know they're for it, they're still in a queer sort of way getting a kick out of it all. They're in the limelight. They're the central figure. Playing the star part—perhaps for the first time in their lives. They're—well—you know—}cocky?'}
Spence brought out the word with an air of finality.
"You'll understand what I mean by that, M. Poirot."
"I understand very well. And this James Bentley— he was not like that?"
"No. He was—well, just scared stiff. Scared stiff from
MRS. McGINTY'S DEAD 21
the start. And to some people that would square in with
his being guilty. But not to me."
}"No, I agree with you. What is he like, this James Bentley?"}
}"Thirty three, medium height, sallow complexion,}
}wears glasses—"}
}Poirot arrested the flow.}
}"No, I do not mean his physical characteristics. What sort of a personality?"}
}"Oh—that." Superintendent Spence considered. "Unprepossessing sort of fellow: Nervous manner. Can't look you straight in the face. Has a sly sideways way of peering at you. Worst possible sort of manner for a jury. Sometimes cringing and sometimes truculent. Blusters in an inefficient kind of way."}
He paused and added in a conversational tone:
"Really a shy kind of chap. Had a cousin rather like that. If anything's awkward they go and tell some silly lie that hasn't a chance of being believed."
"He does not sound attractive, your James Bentley."
}"Oh he isn't. Nobody could }like }him. But I don't want to see him hanged for all that."}
"And you think he will be hanged?"
"I don't see why not. His counsel may lodge an appeal—but if so it will be on very flimsy grounds—a technicality of some kind and I don't see that it will have a chance of success."
"Did he have a good counsel?"
"Young Graybrook was allotted to him under the Poor Persons Defence Act. I'd say he was thoroughly conscientious and put up the best show he could."
}"So the man had a fair trial and was condemned by a jury of his fellow men."}
}"That's right. A good average jury. Seven men, five women—all decent reasonable souls. Judge was old Stanisdale. Scrupulously fair—no bias."}
}
22 MRS. McGINTY'S DEAD}
}"So according to the law of the land—James Bentley has nothing to complain of?"}
}"If he's hanged for something he didn't do, he's got something to complain of!"}
}"A very just observation."}
}"And the case against him was }my }case—I collected, the facts and put them together—and it's on that case and those facts that he's been condemned. And I don't like it, M. Poirot, I don't like it."}
}Hercule Poirot looked for a long time at the red agitated face of Superintendent Spence.}
}"Eh bien," }he said. "What do you suggest?"}
}Spence looked acutely embarrassed.}
}"I expect you've got a pretty good idea of what's coming. The Bentley case is closed. I'm on another case already—embezzlement. Got to go up to Scotland to-night. I'm not a free man."}
}"And I—am?"}
}Spence nodded in a shamefaced sort of way.}
}"You've got it. Awful cheek, you'll think. But I can't think of anything else—of any other way. I did all I could at the time, I examined every possibility I could. And I didn't get anywhere. I don't believe I ever would get anywhere. But who knows, it may be different for you. You look at things in—if you'll pardon me for saying so—in a funny sort of way. Maybe that's the way you've got to look at them in this case. Because if James Bentley didn't kill her, then somebody else did. She didn't chop the back of her head in herself. You may be able to find something that I missed. There's no reason why you should do anything about this business. It's infernal cheek my even suggesting such a thing. But there it is. I came to you because it was the only thing I could think of. But if you don't want to put yourself out—and why should you?—"}
}Poirot interrupted him.}
}MRS. McGINTY'S DEAD 23}
}"Oh, but indeed there are reasons. I have leisure —too much leisure. And you have intrigued me—yes, you have intrigued me very much. It is a challenge—to the little grey cells of my brain. And then, I have a regard for you. I see you, in your garden in six months' time, planting, perhaps, the rose bushes—and as you plant them it is not with the happiness you should be feeling, because behind everything, there is an unpleasantness in your brain, a recollection that you try to push away, and I would not have you feel that, my friend. And finally—" Poirot sat upright and nodded his head vigorously, "there is the principle of the thing. If a man has not committed murder he should not be hanged." He paused and then added, "But supposing that, after all, he did kill her?"}
}"In that case I'd be only too thankful to be convinced of it."}
}"And two heads are better than one? }Voila, }everything is settled. I precipitate myself upon the business. There is, that is clear, no time to be lost. Already the scent is cold. Mrs McGinty was killed—when?"}
}"Last November 22nd."}
}"Then let us at once get down to the brass tacks."}
}"I've got my notes on the case which I'll pass over to you."}
}"Good. For the moment, we need only the bare outline. If James Bentley did not kill Mrs McGinty, who did?"}
}Spence shrugged his shoulders and said heavily:}
}"There's nobody, so far as I can see."}
}"But that answer we do not accept. Now, since for every murder there must be a motive, what, in the case of Mrs McGinty, could the motive be? Envy, revenge, jealousy, fear, money? Let us take the last and the simplest. Who profited by her death?"}
}24}
}MRS. McGinty's DEAD}
}"Nobody very much. She had two hundred pounds in the Savings Bank. Her niece gets that."}
}"Two hundred pounds is not very much—but in certain circumstances it could be enough. So let us consider the niece. I apologise, my friend,
for treading in your footsteps. You too, I know, must have considered all this. But I have to go over with you the ground already traversed."}
}Spence nodded his large head.}
}"We considered the niece, of course. She's thirty eight, married. Husband is employed in the building and decorating trade—a painter. He's got a good character, steady employment, sharp sort of fellow, no fool. She's a pleasant young woman, a bit talkative, seemed fond of her aunt in a mild sort of way. Neither of them had any urgent need for two hundred pounds, though quite pleased to have it, I daresay."}
}"What about her cottage? Do they get that?"
"It was rented. Of course, under the Rent Restriction Act the landlord couldn't get the old woman out. But now she's dead, I don't think the niece could have taken over—anyway she and her husband didn't want to. They've got a small modern council house of their own of which they are extremely proud." Spence sighed. "I went into the niece and her husband pretty closely— they seemed the best bet, as you'll understand. But I couldn't get 'hold of anything."}
}"Bien. }Now let us talk about Mrs McGinty herself. Describe her to me—and not only in physical terms, if you please." Spence grinned.}
}"Don't want a police description? Well, she was sixty-four. Widow. Husband had been employed in the drapery department of Hodges in Kilchester. He died about seven years ago. Pneumonia. Since then, Mrs McGinty has been going out daily to various houses round about.}
}MRS. McGinty's DEAD 25
Domestic chores. Broadhinny's a small village which
has lately become residential. One or two retired people, one of the partners in an engineering works, a doctor, that sort of thing. There's quite a good bus and
train service in Kilchester and Cullenquay which, as I
expect you know, is quite a large summer resort, is only
eight miles away, but Broadhinny itself is still quite
pretty and rural—about a quarter of a mile off the main
Drymouth and Kilchester road."}
}Poirot nodded.}
}"Mrs McGinty's cottage was one of four that form the village proper. There is the post office and village shop, and agricultural labourers live in the others."}
}"And she took in a lodger?"}
}"Yes. Before her husband died, it used to be summer visitors, but after his death she took just one regular. James Bentley had been there for some months."}
}"So we come to—James Bentley?"}
}"Bentley's last job was with a house agent 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 and 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 re-}
}26 MRS. }MCGINTY'S DEAD}
}sources. 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 seven and ten 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 washbasins 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}
}MRS. }McGINTY'S DEAD 27}
}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 the 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,}
28
}MRS. McGinty's DEAD}
}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 blood on his cuff."}
}"How did he account for that?"}
}"Said he remembered brushing up against a butcher's shop 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 thoughtfully, "it might well be true. It's not the s
ort 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 to-night. 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}