Three
At last Poirot roused himself with a sigh.
“Eh bien,” he said. “We have exhausted¹ the motive² 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 holdinganything back. She kept herself to herself, they said. But that’s regarded as natural enough. Ourvillages, you know, M. Poirot, aren’t friendly. Evacuees³ found that during the war. Mrs. McGintypassed the time of 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 husbandlived 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, decentman, delicate—didn’t go to the pub much. All very respectable and above board. No mysteriesanywhere, nothing to hide.”
“And yet she was killed?”
“And yet she was killed.”
“The niece didn’t know of anyone who had a grudge⁴ against her aunt?”
“She says not.”
Poirot rubbed his nose in an exasperated⁵ fashion.
“You comprehend, my dear friend, it would be so much easier if Mrs. McGinty was not Mrs.
McGinty, so to speak. If she could be what is called a Mystery Woman—a woman with a past.”
“Well, she wasn’t,” said Spence stolidly⁶. “She was just Mrs. McGinty, a more or lessuneducated woman, who let rooms and went out charring. Thousands of them all over England.”
“But they do not all get murdered.”
“No. I grant you that.”

分享到：