It had not originally been considered a big house, but was now big enough to be inconvenient domestically.
Poirot inquired of the foreign young woman who opened the door for Mrs Wetherby.
She stared at him and then said: 'I do not know. Please to come. Miss Henderson perhaps?'
She left him standing in the hall. It was in an estate agent's phrase 'fully furnished' – with a good many curios from various parts of the world. Nothing looked very clean or well dusted.
Presently the foreign gift reappeared. She said: 'Please to come,' and showed him into a chilly little room with a large desk. On the mantelpiece was a big and rather evil-looking copper coffee pot with an enormous hooked spout like a large hooked nose.
The door opened behind Poirot and a girl came into the room.
'My mother is lying down,' she said. 'Can I do anything for you?'
'You are Miss Wetherby?'
' Henderson. Mr Wetherby is my stepfather.'
She was a plain girl of about thirty, large and awkward. She had watchful, anxious eyes.
'I was anxious to hear what you could tell me about a Mrs McGinty who used to work here.'
She stared at him.
'Mrs McGinty? But she's dead.'
'I know that,' said Poirot gently. 'Nevertheless, I would like to hear about her.'
'Oh. Is it for insurance or something?'
'Not for insurance. It is a question of fresh evidence.'
'Fresh evidence. You mean – her death?'
'I am engaged,' said Poirot, 'by the solicitors for the defence to make an inquiry on James Bentley's behalf.'
Staring at him, she asked: 'But didn't he do it?'
'The jury thought he did. But juries have been known to make a mistake.'
'Then it was really somebody else who killed her?'
'It may have been.'
She asked abruptly: 'Who?'
'That,' said Poirot softly, 'is the question.'
'I don't understand at all.'
'No? But you can tell me something about Mrs McGinty, can't you?'
She said rather reluctantly:
'I suppose so… What do you want to know?'
'Well – to begin with – what did you think of her?'
'Why – nothing in particular. She was just like anybody else.'
'Talkative or silent? Curious or reserved? Pleasant or morose? A nice woman, or – not a very nice woman?'
Miss Henderson reflected.
'She worked well – but she talked a lot. Sometimes she said rather funny things. I didn't – really – like her very much.'
The door opened and the foreign help said:
'Miss Deirdre, your mother say: please to bring.'
'My mother wants me to take this gentleman upstairs to her?'
'Yes please, thank you.'
Deirdre Henderson looked at Poirot doubtfully. 'Will you come up to my mother?'
'But certainly.'
Deirdre led the way across the hall and up the stairs. She said inconsequently: 'One does get so very tired of foreigners.'
Since her mind was clearly running on her domestic help and not on the visitor, Poirot did not take offence. He reflected that Deirdre Henderson seemed a rather simple young woman – simple to the point of gaucheness.
The room upstairs was crowded with knick-knacks. It was the room of a woman who had travelled a good deal and who had been determined wherever she went to have a souvenir of the place. Most of the souvenirs were clearly made for the delight and exploitation of tourists. There were too many sofas and tables and chairs in the room, too little air and too many draperies – and in the midst of it all was Mrs Wetherby.
Mrs Wetherby seemed a small woman – a pathetic small woman in a large room. That was the effect. But she was not really quite so small as she had decided to appear. The 'poor little me' type can achieve its result quite well, even if really of medium height.
She was reclining very comfortably on a sofa and near her were books and some knitting and a glass of orange juice and a box of chocolates. She said brightly:
'You must forgive me not getting up, but the doctor does so insist on my resting every day, and everyone scolds me if I don't do what I'm told.'
Poirot took her extended hand and bowed over it with the proper murmur of homage.
Behind him, uncompromising, Deirdre said: 'He wants to know about Mrs McGinty.'
The delicate hand that had lain passively in his tightened and he was reminded for a moment of the talon of a bird. Not really a piece of delicate Dresden china – a scratchy predatory claw…
Laughing slightly, Mrs Wetherby said:
'How ridiculous you are, Deirdre darling. Who is Mrs McGinty?'
'Oh, Mummy – you do remember really. She worked for us. You know, the one who was murdered.'
Mrs Wetherby closed her eyes, and shivered.
'Don't, darling. It was all so horrid. I felt nervous for weeks afterwards. Poor old woman, but so stupid to keep money under the floor. She ought to have put it in the bank. Of course I remember all that – I'd just forgotten her name.'
Deirdre said stolidly:
'He wants to know about her.'
'Now do sit down, M. Poirot. I'm quite devoured by curiosity. Mrs Rendell just rang up and she said we had a very famous criminologist down here, and she described you. And then, when that idiot Frieda described a visitor, I felt sure it must be you, and I sent down word for you to come up. Now tell me, what's all this?'
'It is as your daughter says, I want to know about Mrs McGinty. She worked here. She came to you, I understand, on Wednesdays. And it was on a Wednesday she died. So she had been here that day, had she not?'
'I suppose so. Yes, I suppose so. I can t really tell now. It's so long ago.'
'Yes. Several months. And she did not say anything that day – anything special?'
'That class of person always talks a lot,' said Mrs Wetherby with distaste. 'One doesn't really listen. And anyway she couldn't tell she was going to be robbed and killed that night, could she?'
'There is cause and effect,' said Poirot.
Mrs Wetherby wrinkled her forehead.
'I don't see what you mean.'
'Perhaps I do not see myself – not yet. One works through darkness towards light… Do you take in the Sunday papers, Mrs Wetherby?'
Her blue eyes opened very wide.
'Oh yes. Of course. We have the Observer and the Sunday Times. Why?'
'I wondered. Mrs McGinty took the Sunday Companion and the News of the World.'
He paused but nobody said anything. Mrs Wetherby sighed and half closed her eyes. She said:
'It was all very upsetting. That horrible lodger of her. I don't think really he can have been quite right in the head. Apparently he was quite an educated man, too. That makes it worse, doesn't it?'
'Does it?'
'Oh yes – I do think so. Such a brutal crime. A meat chopper. Ugh!'
'The police never found the weapon,' said Poirot.
'I expect he threw it in a pond or something.'
