Maude Williams

In the novel Mrs McGinty's Dead, Maude Williams is a woman who worked at Breather and Scuttle, a firm of house agents in Kilchester, where James Bentley also worked some time before the events in the book.

After Poirot called on Mr Scuttle for background information on Bentley, Maude sought out Poirot while he was lunching at a restaurant. She told him that she did not believe that Bentley was guilty of the murder of Abigail McGinty and offered to help in his investigations. Upon questioning, she admitted to Poirot that she liked Bentley.

Maude is described as a very healthy dark-haired woman of thirty-three or thirty four, and with "a full buxom figure that Poirot approved." Poirot observed that she had the qualities which James Bentley lacked: energy, drive, a refusal to be beaten and a determination to succeed. She was "not one to be dictated to by nature."

When the maid of Hunter's Close fired herself, Maude took her place to investigate about the Wetherbys.

She was interested in James Bentley and one of his few friends. About this, Poirot observed: "What a wonderful dispensation it is of Nature’s ... that every man, however superficially unattractive, should be some woman’s choice." Nonetheless, Poirot decided, at the end of the book, to try to pair Bentley off with Deirdre Henderson instead. Maude had too much energy and vitality, Poirot thought. With her, Bentley would simply withdraw further into his shell.

Portrayals
In the ITV 2007 adaptation of the novel, the role of Maude Williams was played by Sarah Smart. The portrayal is fairly faithful to the original. She worked in Bentley's real estate agency and when she saw Poirot making enquiries there, she approached Poirot to offer her help as she believed Bentley to be innocent. She then proceeded to gather intelligence about the various households in Broadhinny, gaining admission by pretending to do real estate surveys, thus providing Poirot with valuable background on the various suspects. Bentley wrote poetry in this adaptation and Maude felt that his writing was promising. In this adaptation, Maude's real lastname is Craig. Eva Kane was her governess. Maude had deliberately quit a job in London to get closer to Broadhinny. On the night Laura Upward was killed, Maude had come to her house with a gun. She believed Mrs Upward to be Eva Kane and wanted to kill her as revenge for destroying her family. However when she got to the house, she found that Mrs Upward was already dead and so she left. Since Deirdre Henderson does not exist in this adaptation, Poirot pairs Maude off with Bentley at the end of the episode.

Maude Williams does not have a parallel character in the France Televisions 2015 adaptation Mademoiselle Mac Ginty est morte, unless one counts Alice Avril who in this adaptation is the estranged wife of Robert Vasseur, the James Bentley parallel. Alice is every bit as spirited as Maude Williams, but she is hardly sympathetic to Vasseur. At one point Vasseur begs the police not to lock him up in the same cell as Alice as she would beat him up.