Seven
I
The cottage where Mrs. McGinty had lived was only a few steps from the bus stop. Two childrenwere playing on the doorstep. One was eating a rather wormy-looking apple and the other wasshouting and beating on the door with a tin tray. They appeared quite happy. Poirot added to thenoise by beating hard on the door himself.
A woman looked round the corner of the house. She had on a coloured overall and her hairwas untidy.
“Stop it, Ernie,” she said.
“Sha’n’t,” said Ernie and continued.
Poirot deserted¹ the doorstep and made for the corner of the house.
“Can’t do anything with children, can you?” the woman said.
Poirot thought you could, but forbore to say so.
He was beckoned² round to the back door.
“I keep the front bolted up, sir. Come in, won’t you?”
Poirot passed through a very dirty scullery into an almost more dirty kitchen.
“She wasn’t killed here,” said the woman. “In the parlour.”
Poirot blinked slightly.
“That’s what you’re down about, isn’t it? You’re the foreign gentleman from up atSummerhayes?”
“So you know all about me?” said Poirot. He beamed. “Yes, indeed, Mrs.—”
“Kiddle. My husband’s a plasterer. Moved in four months ago, we did. Been living withBert’s mother before .?.?. Some folks said: ‘You’d never go into a house where there’s been amurder, surely?’—but what I said was, a house is a house, and better than a back sitting-room³ andsleeping on two chairs. Awful, this ’ousing shortage, isn’t it? And anyway we’ve never beentroubled ’ere. Always say they walk if they’ve been murdered, but she doesn’t! Like to see whereit happened?”
Feeling like a tourist being taken on a conducted tour, Poirot assented⁴.
Mrs. Kiddle led him into a small room overburdened with a heavy Jacobean suite⁵. Unlike therest of the house, it showed no signs of ever having been occupied.
“Down on the floor she was and the back of her head split open. Didn’t half give Mrs. Elliot aturn. She’s the one what found her—she and Larkin who comes from the Co-op with the bread.

分享到：