Eve Carpenter

In the novel Mrs McGinty's Dead, Eve Carpenter lives in the Broadhinny house Holmeleigh, with her husband Guy Carpenter. She is a tall young woman and has has platinum blonde hair and wide "corn-flower" blue eyes. The text mentions that Mrs Carpenter spoke ungraciously, but "there was a faint suggestion of appeasement behind her manner". When she was a child, she used to wear glasses.

When Mrs McGinty was killed, Eve Carpenter was unmarried and lived in Rose Cottage under the name of  Eva Selkirk. At that time Mrs McGinty was her cleaner, and came every Friday. Eve is almost obsessive in her support of her husband's political ambitions.

When Laura Upward was murdered, Mrs Carpenter's lipstick was found on a cup at Laburnums, the house of the Upwards. She felt the police was going to arrest her anytime soon, so she offered to pay the Crofts some money (apparently quite a large sum) so that they said that she had never left Holmeleigh. Hercule Poirot reproached her and remarked how a jury would believe Mrs Carpenter was guilty after the Crofts gave their testimony. She replied that she had to do it, since her husband wouldn't have helped.

Towards the end of the novel, it is revealed that just like most of the people in Broadhinny, Mrs Carpenter had something in her past which she wanted to hide--Superintendent Spence said Mrs Carpenter was a "taxi dancer" with plenty of male friends. However she presented herself as a war widow and married her current husband. This could have been a plausible reason for Mrs Carpenter insisting that Mrs McGinty was a frightful liar.

Portrayals
The part of Eve Carpenter was played by Mary Stockley in the ITV TV adaptation of the novel which formed part of the TV series Agatha Christie's Poirot. Here she was a dancer of the Cactus Club in Soho. This however is not revealed by Superintendent Spence but by Maude Williams who "spied on" the residents of Broadhinny under the cover of doing a real estate survey. In the original novel Miss Williams goes undercover as a maid in another house.

In Mademoiselle Mac Ginty est morte, the France Télévisions adaptation of the novel, the parallel character is Helene Schmit.