Читать книгу Mrs McGinty’s Dead - Agatha Christie, Georgette Heyer, Mary Westmacott - Страница 14

‘Yes, sir, it was me found her.’

Mrs Elliot was dramatic. A neat house, this, neat and prim. The only drama in it was Mrs Elliot’s, a tall gaunt dark-haired woman, recounting her one moment of glorious living.

‘Larkin, the baker, he came and knocked at the door. “It’s Mrs McGinty,” he said, “we can’t make her hear. Seems she might have been taken bad.” And indeed I thought she might. She wasn’t a young woman, not by any means. And palpitations she’d had, to my certain knowledge. I thought she might have had a stroke. So I hurried over, seeing as there were only the two men, and naturally they wouldn’t like to go into the bedroom.’

Poirot accepted this piece of propriety with an assenting murmur.

‘Hurried up the stairs, I did. He was on the landing, pale as death he was. Not that I ever thought at the time—well, of course, then I didn’t know what had happened. I knocked on the door loud and there wasn’t any answer, so I turned the handle and I went in. The whole place messed about—and the board in the floor up. “It’s robbery,” I said. “But where’s the poor soul herself?” And then we thought to look in the sitting-room. And there she was…Down on the floor with her poor head stove in. Murder! I saw at once what it was—murder! Couldn’t be anything else! Robbery and murder! Here in Broadhinny. I screamed and I screamed! Quite a job they had with me. Come over all faint, I did. They had to go and get me brandy from the Three Ducks. And even then I was all of a shiver for hours and hours. “Don’t you take on so, mother,” that’s what the sergeant said to me when he came. “Don’t you take on so. You go home and make yourself a nice cup of tea.” And so I did. And when Elliot came home, “Why, whatever’s happened?” he says, staring at me. Still all of a tremble I was. Always was sensitive from a child.’

Poirot dexterously interrupted this thrilling personal narrative.

‘Yes, yes, one can see that. And when was the last time you had seen poor Mrs McGinty?’

‘Must have been the day before, when she’d stepped out into the back garden to pick a bit of mint. I was just feeding the chickens.’

‘Did she say anything to you?’

‘Just good afternoon and were they laying any better.’

‘And that’s the last time you saw her? You didn’t see her on the day she died?’

‘No. I saw Him though.’ Mrs Elliot lowered her voice. ‘About eleven o’clock in the morning. Just walking along the road. Shuffling his feet the way he always did.’

Poirot waited, but it seemed that there was nothing to add.

He asked:

‘Were you surprised when the police arrested him?’

‘Well, I was and I wasn’t. Mind you, I’d always thought he was a bit daft. And no doubt about it, these daft ones do turn nasty, sometimes. My uncle had a feeble-minded boy, and he could go very nasty sometimes—as he grew up, that was. Didn’t know his strength. Yes, that Bentley was daft all right, and I shouldn’t be surprised if they don’t hang him when it comes to it, but sends him to the asylum instead. Why, look at the place he hid the money. No one would hide money in a place like that unless he wanted it to be found. Just silly and simple like, that’s what he was.’

‘Unless he wanted it found,’ murmured Poirot. ‘You did not, by any chance, miss a chopper—or an axe?’

‘No, sir, I did not. The police asked me that. Asked all of us in the cottages here. It’s a mystery still what he killed her with.’