Hickory Dickory Dock: A Hercule Poirot Mystery

by Agatha Christie

  “Len Bateson,” said Mrs. Hubbard, in a distressed voice. “Oh! No.”

  Sharpe looked at her.

  “You don’t want it to be Len Bateson?”

  “I’ve got fond of that boy. He’s got a temper, I know, but he’s always seemed so nice.”

  “That’s been said about a lot of criminals,” said Sharpe.

  Gently he unfolded his little paper packet. Mrs. Hubbard obeyed his gesture and leaned forward to look.

  On the white paper were two red short curly hairs. . . .

  “Oh! dear,” said Mrs. Hubbard.

  “Yes,” said Sharpe reflectively. “In my experience a murderer usually makes at least one mistake.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  I

  “But it is beautiful, my friend,” said Hercule Poirot with admiration. “So clear—so beautifully clear.”

  “You sound as if you were talking about soup,” grumbled the inspector. “It may be Consommé to you—but to me there’s a good deal of thick Mock Turtle about it still.”

  “Not now. Everything fits in in its appointed place.”

  “Even these?”

  As he had done to Mrs. Hubbard, Inspector Sharpe produced his exhibit of two red hairs.

  Poirot’s answer was almost in the same words as Sharpe had used.

  “Ah—yes,” he said. “What do you call it on the radio? The one deliberate mistake.”

  The eyes of the two men met.

  “No one,” said Hercule Poirot, “is as clever as they think they are.”

  Inspector Sharpe was greatly tempted to say:

  “Not even Hercule Poirot?” but he restrained himself.

  “For the other, my friend, it is all fixed?”

  “Yes, the balloon goes up tomorrow.”

  “You go yourself?”

  “No. I’m scheduled to appear at 26 Hickory Road. Cobb will be in charge.”

  “We will wish him good luck.”

  Gravely, Hercule Poirot raised his glass. It contained crème de menthe.

  Inspector Sharpe raised his whisky glass.

  “Here’s hoping,” he said.

  II

  “They do think up things, these places,” said Sergeant Cobb.

  He was looking with grudging admiration at the display window of SABRINA FAIR. Framed and enclosed in an expensive illustration of the glassmaker’s art—the “glassy green translucent wave”—Sabrina was displayed, recumbent, clad in brief and exquisite panties and happily surrounded with every variety of deliciously packaged cosmetics. Besides the panties she wore various examples of barbaric costume jewellery.

  Detective-Constable McCrae gave a snort of deep disapproval.

  “Blasphemy, I call it. Sabrina Fair, that’s Milton, that is.”

  “Well, Milton isn’t the Bible, my lad.”

  “You’ll not deny that Paradise Lost is about Adam and Eve and the garden of Eden and all the devils of hell and if that’s not religion, what is?”

  Sergeant Cobb did not enter on these controversial matters. He marched boldly into the establishment, the dour constable at his heels. In the shell pink interior of Sabrina Fair the sergeant and his satellite looked as out of place as the traditional bull in a china shop.

  An exquisite creature in delicate salmon pink swam up to them, her feet hardly seeming to touch the floor.

  Sergeant Cobb said, “Good morning, madam,” and produced his credentials. The lovely creature withdrew in a flutter. An equally lovely but slightly older creature appeared. She in turn gave way to a superb and resplendent duchess whose blue grey hair and smooth cheeks set age and wrinkles at nought. Appraising steel grey eyes met the steady gaze of Sergeant Cobb.

  “This is most unusual,” said the duchess severely. “Please come this way.”

  She led him through a square salon with a centre table where magazines and periodicals were heaped carelessly. All round the walls were curtained recesses where glimpses could be obtained of recumbent women supine under the ministrant hands of pink robed priestesses.

  The duchess led the police officers into a small businesslike apartment with a big roll top desk, severe chairs, and no softening of the harsh northern light.

  “I am Mrs. Lucas, the proprietress of this establishment,” she said. “My partner, Miss Hobhouse, is not here today.”

  “No, madam,” said Sergeant Cobb, to whom this was no news.

  “This search warrant of yours seems to be most high-handed,” said Mrs. Lucas. “This is Miss Hobhouse’s private office. I sincerely hope that it will not be necessary for you to—er—upset our clients in any way.”

  “I don’t think you need to worry unduly on that score,” said Cobb. “What we’re after isn’t likely to be in the public rooms.”

  He waited politely until she unwillingly withdrew. Then he looked round Valerie Hobhouse’s office. The narrow window gave a view of the back premises of the other Mayfair firms. The walls were panelled in pale grey and there were two good Persian rugs on the floor. His eyes went from the small wall safe to the big desk.

  “Won’t be in the safe,” said Cobb. “Too obvious.”

  A quarter of an hour later, the safe and the drawers of the desk had yielded up their secrets.

  “Looks like it’s maybe a mare’s nest,” said McCrae, who was by nature both gloomy and disapproving.

  “We’re only beginning,” said Cobb.

  Having emptied the drawers of their contents and arranged the latter neatly in piles, he now proceeded to take the drawers out and turn them upside down.

  He uttered an ejaculation of pleasure.

  “Here we are, my lad,” he said.

  Fastened to the underneath side of the bottom drawer with adhesive tape were a half-dozen small dark blue books with gilt lettering.

  “Passports,” said Sergeant Cobb. “Issued by Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, God bless his trusting heart.”

  McCrae bent over with interest as Cobb opened the passports and compared the affixed photographs.

  “Hardly think it was the same woman, would you?” said McCrae.

  The passports were those of Mrs. da Silva, Miss Irene French, Mrs. Olga Kohn, Miss Nina Le Mesurier, Mrs. Gladys Thomas, and Miss Moira O’Neele. They represented a dark young woman whose age varied between twenty-five and forty.

  “It’s the different hairdo every time that does it,” said Cobb. “Pompadour, curls, straight cut, page boy bob, etc. She’s done something to her nose for Olga Kohn, plumpers in her cheeks for Mrs. Thomas. Here are two more—foreign passports—Madame Mahmoudi, Algerian. Sheila Donovan, Eire. I’ll say she’s got bank accounts in all these different names.”

  “Bit complicated, isn’t that?”

  “It has to be complicated, my lad. Inland Revenue always snooping round asking embarrassing questions. It’s not so difficult to make money by smuggling goods—but it’s hell and all to account for money when you’ve got it! I bet this little gambling club in Mayfair was started by the lady for just that reason. Winning money by gambling is about the only thing an income tax inspector can’t check up on. A good part of the loot, I should say, is cached around in Algerian and French banks and in Eire. The whole thing’s a thoroughly well thought out businesslike setup. And then, one day, she must have had one of these fake passports lying about at Hickory Road and that poor little devil Celia saw it.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “It was a clever idea of Miss Hobhouse’s,” said Inspector Sharpe. His voice was indulgent, almost fatherly.

  He shuffled the passports from one hand to the other like a man dealing cards.

  “Complicated thing, finance,” he said. “We’ve had a busy time haring round from one bank to the other. She covered her tracks well—her financial tracks, I mean. I’d say that in a couple of years’ time she could have cleared out, gone abroad and lived happily ever after, as they say, on ill-gotten gains. It wasn’t a big show—illicit diamonds, sapphires, etc., coming in—stolen stuff go
ing out—and narcotics on the side, as you might say. Thoroughly well organised. She went abroad under her own and under different names, but never too often, and the actual smuggling was always done, unknowingly, by someone else. She had agents abroad who saw to the exchange of rucksacks at the right moment. Yes, it was a clever idea. And we’ve got M. Poirot here to thank for putting us on to it. It was smart of her, too, to suggest that psychological stealing stunt to poor little Miss Austin. You were wise to that almost at once, weren’t you, M. Poirot?”

  Poirot smiled in a deprecating manner and Mrs. Hubbard looked admiringly at him. The conversation was strictly off the record in Mrs. Hubbard’s sitting room.

  “Greed was her undoing,” said Poirot. “She was tempted by that fine diamond in Patricia Lane’s ring. It was foolish of her because it suggested at once that she was used to handling precious stones—that business of prising the diamond out and replacing it with a zircon. Yes, that certainly gave me ideas about Valerie Hobhouse. She was clever, though, when I taxed her with inspiring Celia, she admitted it and explained it in a thoroughly sympathetic way.”

  “But murder!” said Mrs. Hubbard. “Cold-blooded murder. I can’t really believe it even now.”

  Inspector Sharpe looked gloomy.

  “We aren’t in a position to charge her with the murder of Celia Austin yet,” he said. “We’ve got her cold on the smuggling, of course. No difficulties about that. But the murder charge is more tricky. The public prosecutor doesn’t see his way. There’s motive, of course, and opportunity. She probably knew all about the bet and Nigel’s possession of morphia, but there’s no real evidence, and there are the two other deaths to take into account. She could have poisoned Mrs. Nicoletis all right—but on the other hand, she definitely did not kill Patricia Lane. Actually she’s about the only person who’s completely in the clear. Geronimo says positively that she left the house at six o’clock. He sticks to that. I don’t know whether she bribed him—”

  “No,” said Poirot, shaking his head. “She did not bribe him.”

  “And we’ve the evidence of the chemist at the corner of the road. He knows her quite well and he sticks to it that she came in at five minutes past six and bought face powder and aspirin and used the telephone. She left his shop at quarter past six and took a taxi from the rank outside.”

  Poirot sat up in his chair.

  “But that,” he said, “is magnificent! It is just what we want!”

  “What on earth do you mean?”

  “I mean that she actually telephoned from the box at the chemist’s shop.”

  Inspector Sharpe looked at him in an exasperated fashion.

  “Now, see here, M. Poirot. Let’s take the known facts. At eight minutes past six, Patricia Lane is alive and telephoning to the police station from this room. You agree to that?”

  “I do not think she was telephoning from this room.”

  “Well then, from the hall downstairs.”

  “Not from the hall either.”

  Inspector Sharpe sighed.

  “I suppose you don’t deny that a call was put through to the police station? You don’t think that I and my sergeant and Police Constable Nye and Nigel Chapman were the victims of mass hallucination?”

  “Assuredly not. A call was put through to you. I should say at a guess that it was put through from the public call box at the chemist’s on the corner.”

  Inspector Sharpe’s jaw dropped for a moment.

  “You mean that Valerie Hobhouse put through that call? That she pretended to speak as Patricia Lane, and that Patricia Lane was already dead.”

  “That is what I mean, yes.”

  The inspector was silent for a moment, then he brought down his fist with a crash on the table.

  “I don’t believe it. The voice—I heard it myself—”

  “You heard it, yes. A girl’s voice, breathless, agitated. But you didn’t know Patricia Lane’s voice well enough to say definitely that it was her voice.”

  “I didn’t, perhaps. But it was Nigel Chapman who actually took the call. You can’t tell me that Nigel Chapman could be deceived. It isn’t so easy to disguise a voice over the telephone, or to counterfeit somebody else’s voice. Nigel Chapman would have known if it wasn’t Pat’s voice speaking.”

  “Yes,” said Poirot. “Nigel Chapman would have known. Nigel Chapman knew quite well that it wasn’t Patricia. Who should know better than he, since he had killed her with a blow on the back of the head only a short while before.”

  It was a moment or two before the inspector recovered his voice.

  “Nigel Chapman? Nigel Chapman? But when we found her dead—he cried—cried like a child.”

  “I dare say,” said Poirot. “I think he was as fond of that girl as he could be of anybody—but that wouldn’t save her—not if she represented a menace to his interests. All along, Nigel Chapman has stood out as the obvious probability. Who had morphia in his possession? Nigel Chapman. Who had the shallow brilliant intellect to plan and the audacity to carry out fraud and murder? Nigel Chapman. Who do we know to be both ruthless and vain? Nigel Chapman. He has all the hallmarks of the killer; the overweening vanity, the spitefulness, the growing recklessness that led him to draw attention to himself in every conceivable way—using the green ink in a stupendous double bluff, and finally overreaching himself by the silly deliberate mistake of putting Len Bateson’s hairs in Patricia’s fingers, oblivious of the fact that as Patricia was struck down from behind, she could not possibly have grasped her assailant by the hair. They are like that, these murderers, carried away by their own egotism, by their admiration of their own cleverness, relying on their charm—for he has charm, this Nigel—he has all the charm of a spoiled child who has never grown up, who never will grow up—who sees only one thing, himself, and what he wants!”

  “But why, M. Poirot? Why murder? Celia Austin, perhaps, but why Patricia Lane?”

  “That,” said Poirot, “we have got to find out.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  “I haven’t seen you for a long time,” said old Mr. Endicott to Hercule Poirot. He peered at the other keenly. “It’s very nice of you to drop in.”

  “Not really,” said Hercule Poirot. “I want something.”

  “Well, as you know, I’m deeply in your debt. You cleared up that nasty Abernethy business for me.”

  “I am surprised really to find you here. I thought you had retired.”

  The old lawyer smiled grimly. His firm was a most respectable and old-established one.

  “I came in specially today to see a very old client. I still attend to the affairs of one or two old friends.”

  “Sir Arthur Stanley was an old friend and client, was he not?”

  “Yes. We’ve undertaken all his legal work since he was quite a young man. A very brilliant man, Poirot—quite an exceptional brain.”

  “His death was announced on the six o’clock news yesterday, I believe.”

  “Yes. The funeral’s on Friday. He’s been ailing some time. A malignant growth, I understand.”

  “Lady Stanley died some years ago?”

  “Two and a half years ago, roughly.”

  The keen eyes below the bushy brows looked sharply at Poirot.

  “How did she die?”

  The lawyer replied promptly.

  “Overdose of sleeping stuff. Medinal as far as I remember.”

  “There was an inquest?”

  “Yes. The verdict was that she took it accidentally.”

  “Did she?”

  Mr. Endicott was silent for a moment.

  “I won’t insult you,” he said. “I’ve no doubt you’ve got a good reason for asking. Medinal’s a rather dangerous drug, I understand, because there’s not a big margin between an effective dose and a lethal one. If the patient gets drowsy and forgets she’s taken a dose and takes another—well, it can have a fatal result.”

  Poirot nodded.

  “Is that what she did?”

  “
Presumably. There was no suggestion of suicide, or suicidal tendencies.”

  “And no suggestion of—anything else?”

  Again that keen glance was shot at him.

  “Her husband gave evidence.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He made it clear that she did sometimes get confused after taking her nightly dose and ask for another.”

  “Was he lying?”

  “Really, Poirot, what an outrageous question. Why should you suppose for a minute that I should know?”

  Poirot smiled. The attempt at bluster did not deceive him.

  “I suggest, my friend, that you know very well. But for the moment I will not embarrass you by asking you what you know. Instead I will ask you for an opinion. The opinion of one man about another. Was Arthur Stanley the kind of man who would do away with his wife if he wanted to marry another woman?”

  Mr. Endicott jumped as though he had been stung by a wasp.

  “Preposterous,” he said angrily. “Quite preposterous. And there was no other woman. Stanley was devoted to his wife.”

  “Yes,” said Poirot. “I thought so. And now—I will come to the purpose of my call upon you. You are the solicitors who drew up Arthur Stanley’s will. You are, perhaps, his executor.”

  “That is so.”

  “Arthur Stanley had a son. The son quarrelled with his father at the time of his mother’s death. Quarrelled with him and left home. He even went so far as to change his name.”

  “That I did not know. What’s he calling himself?”

  “We shall come to that. Before we do I am going to make an assumption. If I am right, perhaps you will admit the fact. I think that Arthur Stanley left a sealed letter with you, a letter to be opened under certain circumstances or after his death.”

  “Really, Poirot! In the Middle Ages you would certainly have been burnt at the stake. How you can possibly know the things you do!”

  “I am right then? I think there was an alternative in the letter. Its contents were either to be destroyed—or you were to take a certain course of action.”

  He paused.

  “Bon dieu!” said Poirot with alarm. “You have not already destroyed—”