“Very well.” Mrs. Hubbard tentatively mentioned a sum which gave, she considered, ample margin, and Celia agreed at once. She opened the cheque book.
“Oh, bother my pen.” She went over to the shelves where odds and ends were kept belonging to various students. “There doesn’t seem to be any ink here except Nigel’s awful green. Oh, I’ll use that. Nigel won’t mind. I must remember to get a new bottle of Quink when I go out.”
She filled the pen and came back and wrote out the cheque.
Giving it to Mrs. Hubbard, she glanced at her watch.
“I shall be late. I’d better not stop for breakfast.”
“Now, you’d better have something, Celia—even if it’s only a bit of bread and butter—no good going out on an empty stomach. Yes, what is it?”
Geronimo, the Italian manservant, had come into the room and was making emphatic gestures with his hands, his wizened, monkeylike face screwed up in a comical grimace.
“The padrona, she just come in. She want to see you.” He added, with a final gesture, “She plenty mad.”
“I’m coming.”
Mrs. Hubbard left the room while Celia hurriedly began hacking a piece off the loaf.
Mrs. Nicoletis was walking up and down her room in a fairly good imitation of a tiger at the Zoo near feeding time.
“What is this I hear?” she burst out. “You send for the police? Without a word to me? Who do you think you are? My God, who does the woman think she is?”
“I did not send for the police.”
“You are a liar.”
“Now then, Mrs. Nicoletis, you can’t talk to me like that.”
“Oh no. Certainly not! It is I who am wrong. Not you. Always me. Everything you do is perfect. Police in my respectable hostel.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” said Mrs. Hubbard, recalling various unpleasant incidents. “There was that West Indian student who was wanted for living on immoral earnings and the notorious young Communist agitator who came here under a false name—and—”
“Ah! You throw that in my teeth? Is it my fault that people come here and lie to me and have forged papers and are wanted to assist the police in murder cases? And you reproach me for what I have suffered!”
“I’m doing nothing of the kind. I only point out that it wouldn’t be exactly a novelty to have the police here—I dare say it’s inevitable with a mixed lot of students. But the fact is that no one has ‘called in the police.’ A private detective with a big reputation happened to dine here as my guest last night. He gave a very interesting talk on criminology to the students.”
“As if there were any need to talk about criminology to our students! They know quite enough already. Enough to steal and destroy and sabotage as they like! And nothing is done about it—nothing!”
“I have done something about it.”
“Yes, you have told this friend of yours all about our most intimate affair. That is a gross breach of confidence.”
“Not at all. I’m responsible for running this place. I’m glad to tell you the matter is now cleared up. One of the students has confessed that she has been responsible for most of these happenings.”
“Dirty little cat,” said Mrs. Nicoletis. “Throw her into the street.”
“She is ready to leave of her own accord and she is making full reparation.”
“What is the good of that? My beautiful Students’ Home will now have a bad name. No one will come.” Mrs. Nicoletis sat down on the sofa and burst into tears. “Nobody thinks of my feelings,” she sobbed. “It is abominable, the way I am treated. Ignored! Thrust aside! If I were to die tomorrow, who would care?”
Wisely leaving this question unanswered, Mrs. Hubbard left the room.
“May the Almighty give me patience,” said Mrs. Hubbard to herself, and went down to the kitchen to interview Maria.
Maria was sullen and uncooperative. The word “police” hovered unspoken in the air.
“It is I who will be accused. I and Geronimo—the povero. What justice can you expect in a foreign land? No, I cannot cook the risotto as you suggest—they send the wrong rice. I make you instead the spaghetti.”
“We had spaghetti last night.”
“It does not matter. In my country we eat the spaghetti every day—every single day. The pasta, it is good all the time.”
“Yes, but you’re in England now.”
“Very well then, I make the stew. The English stew. You will not like it but I make it—pale—pale—with the onions boiled in much water instead of cooked in the oil—and pale meat on cracked bones.”
Maria spoke so menacingly that Mrs. Hubbard felt she was listening to an account of a murder.
“Oh, cook what you like,” she said angrily, and left the kitchen.
By six o’clock that evening, Mrs. Hubbard was once more her efficient self again. She had put notes in all the students’ rooms asking them to come and see her before dinner, and when the various summonses were obeyed, she explained that Celia had asked her to arrange matters. They were all, she thought, very nice about it. Even Genevieve, softened by a generous estimate of the value of her compact, said cheerfully that all would be sans rancune and added with a wise air, “One knows that these crises of the nerves occur. She is rich, this Celia, she does not need to steal. No, it is a storm in her head. M. McNabb is right there.”
Len Bateson drew Mrs. Hubbard aside as she came down when the dinner bell rang.
“I’ll wait for Celia out in the hall,” he said, “and bring her in. So that she sees it’s all right.”
“That’s very nice of you, Len.”
“That’s OK, Ma.”
In due course, as soup was being passed round, Len’s voice was heard booming from the hall.
“Come along in, Celia. All friends here.”
Nigel remarked waspishly to his soup plate:
“Done his good deed for the day!” but otherwise controlled his tongue and waved a hand of greeting to Celia as she came in with Len’s large arm passed round her shoulders.
There was a general outburst of cheerful conversation on various topics and Celia was appealed to by one and the other.
Almost inevitably this manifestation of goodwill died away into a doubtful silence. It was then that Mr. Akibombo turned a beaming face towards Celia and, leaning across the table, said:
“They have explained me good now all that I did not understand. You very clever at steal things. Long time nobody know. Very clever.”
At this point Sally Finch, gasping out, “Akibombo, you’ll be the death of me,” had such a severe choke that she had to go out in the hall to recover. And the laughter broke out in a thoroughly natural fashion.
Colin McNabb came in late. He seemed reserved and even more uncommunicative than usual. At the close of the meal and before the others had finished he got up and said in an embarrassed mumble:
“Got to go out and see someone. Like to tell you all first. Celia and I—hope to get married next year when I’ve done my course.”
The picture of blushing misery, he received the congratulations and jeering catcalls of his friends and finally escaped, looking terribly sheepish. Celia, on the other hand, was pink and composed.
“Another good man gone west,” sighed Len Bateson.
“I’m so glad, Celia,” said Patricia. “I hope you’ll be very happy.”
“Everything in the garden is now perfect,” said Nigel. “Tomorrow we’ll bring some chianti in and drink your health. Why is our dear Jean looking so grave? Do you disapprove of marriage, Jean?”
“Of course not, Nigel.”
“I always think it’s so much better than free love, don’t you? Nicer for the children. Looks better on their passports.”
“But the mother should not be too young,” said Genevieve. “They tell one that in the physiology classes.”
“Really, dear,” said Nigel, “you’re not suggesting that Celia’s below the age of consent or anything like that, are you? She�
�s free, white, and twenty-one.”
“That,” said Mr. Chandra Lal, “is a most offensive remark.”
“No, no, Mr. Chandra Lal,” said Patricia. “It’s just a—a kind of idiom. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“I do not understand,” said Mr. Akibombo. “If a thing does not mean anything, why should it be said?”
Elizabeth Johnston said suddenly, raising her voice a little:
“Things are sometimes said that do not seem to mean anything but they may mean a good deal. No, it is not your American quotation I mean. I am talking of something else.” She looked round the table. “I am talking of what happened yesterday.”
Valerie said sharply:
“What’s up, Bess?”
“Oh, please,” said Celia. “I think—I really do—that by tomorrow everything will be cleared up. I really mean it. The ink on your papers, and that silly business of the rucksack. And if—if the person owns up, like I’ve done, then everything will be cleared up.”
She spoke earnestly, with a flushed face, and one or two people looked at her curiously.
Valerie said with a short laugh:
“And we’ll all live happy ever afterwards.”
Then they got up and went into the common room. There was quite a little competition to give Celia her coffee. Then the wireless was turned on, some students left to keep appointments or to work and finally the inhabitants of 24 and 26 Hickory Road got to bed.
It had been, Mrs. Hubbard reflected, as she climbed gratefully between the sheets, a long wearying day.
“But thank goodness,” she said to herself. “It’s all over now.”
Chapter Seven
Miss Lemon was seldom, if ever, unpunctual. Fog, storm, epidemic of flu, transport breakdowns—none of these things seemed to affect that remarkable woman. But this morning Miss Lemon arrived, breathless, at five minutes past ten instead of on the stroke of ten o’clock. She was profusely apologetic and for her, quite ruffled.
“I’m extremely sorry, M. Poirot—really extremely sorry. I was just about to leave the flat when my sister rang up.”
“Ah, she is in good health and spirits, I trust?”
“Well, frankly no.” Poirot looked inquiring. “In fact, she’s very distressed. One of the students has committed suicide.”
Poirot stared at her. He muttered something softly under his breath.
“I beg your pardon, M. Poirot?”
“What is the name of the student?”
“A girl called Celia Austin.”
“How?”
“They think she took morphia.”
“Could it have been an accident?”
“Oh no. She left a note, it seems.”
Poirot said softly, “It was not this I expected, no, it was not this . . . and yet it is true, I expected something.”
He looked up to find Miss Lemon at attention, waiting with pencil poised above her pad. He sighed and shook his head.
“No, I will hand you here this morning’s mail. File them, please, and answer what you can. Me, I shall go round to Hickory Road.”
Geronimo let Poirot in, and recognising him as the honoured guest of two nights before, became at once voluble in a sibilant conspiratorial whisper.
“Ah, signor, it is you. We have here the trouble—the big trouble. The little signorina, she is dead in her bed this morning. First the doctor come. He shake his head. Now comes an inspector of the police. He is upstairs with the signora and the padrona. Why should she wish to kill herself, the poverina? When last night is so gay and the betrothment is made?”
“Betrothment?”
“Si, si. To Mr. Colin—you know—big, dark, always smoke the pipe.”
“I know.”
Geronimo opened the door of the common room and introduced Poirot into it with a redoublement of the conspiratorial manner.
“You stay here, yes? Presently, when the police go, I tell the signora you are here. That is good, yes?”
Poirot said that it was good and Geronimo withdrew. Left to himself, Poirot, who had no scruples of delicacy, made as minute an examination as possible of everything in the room with special attention to everything belonging to the students. His rewards were mediocre. The students kept most of their belongings and personal papers in their bedrooms.
Upstairs, Mrs. Hubbard was sitting facing Inspector Sharpe, who was asking questions in a soft apologetic voice. He was a big comfortable looking man with a deceptively mild manner.
“It’s very awkward and distressing for you, I know,” he said soothingly. “But you see, as Dr. Coles has already told you, there will have to be an inquest, and we have just to get the picture right, so to speak. Now this girl had been distressed and unhappy lately, you say?”
“Yes.”
“Love affair?”
“Not exactly.” Mrs. Hubbard hesitated.
“You’d better tell me, you know,” said Inspector Sharpe, persuasively. “As I say, we’ve got to get the picture. There was a reason, or she thought there was, for taking her own life? Any possibility that she might have been pregnant?”
“It wasn’t that kind of thing at all. I hesitated, Inspector Sharpe, simply because the child had done some very foolish things and I hoped it wouldn’t be necessary to bring them out in the open.”
Inspector Sharpe coughed.
“We have a good deal of discretion, and the coroner is a man of wide experience. But we have to know.”
“Yes, of course. I was being foolish. The truth is that for some time past, three months or more, things have been disappearing—small things, I mean—nothing very important.”
“Trinkets, you mean, finery, nylon stockings and all that? Money, too?”
“No money as far as I know.”
“Ah. And this girl was responsible?”
“Yes.”
“You’d caught her at it?”
“Not exactly. The night before last a—er—a friend of mine came to dine. A M. Hercule Poirot—I don’t know if you know the name.”
Inspector Sharpe had looked up from his notebook. His eyes had opened rather wide. It happened that he did know that name.
“M. Hercule Poirot?” he said. “Indeed? Now that’s very interesting.”
“He gave us a little talk after dinner and the subject of these thefts came up. He advised me, in front of them all, to go to the police.”
“He did, did he?”
“Afterwards, Celia came along to my room and owned up. She was very distressed.”
“Any question of prosecution?”
“No. She was going to make good the losses, and everyone was very nice to her about it.”
“Had she been hard up?”
“No. She had an adequately paid job as a dispenser at St. Catherine’s Hospital and has a little money of her own, I believe. She’s rather better off than most of our students.”
“So she’d no need to steal—but did,” said the inspector, writing it down.
“It’s kleptomania, I suppose,” said Mrs. Hubbard.
“That’s the label that’s used. I just mean one of the people that don’t need to take things, but nevertheless do take them.”
“I wonder if you’re being a little unfair to her. You see, there was a young man.”
“And he ratted on her?”
“Oh no. Quite the reverse. He spoke very strongly in her defence and as a matter of fact, last night, after supper, he announced that they’d become engaged.”
Inspector Sharpe’s eyebrows mounted his forehead in a surprised fashion.
“And then she goes to bed and takes morphia? That’s rather surprising, isn’t it?”
“It is. I can’t understand it.”
Mrs. Hubbard’s face was creased with perplexity and distress.
“And yet the facts are clear enough.” Sharpe nodded to the small torn piece of paper that lay on the table between them.
Dear Mrs. Hubbard (it ran), I really am sorry and this is the best thing I can do.
“It’s not signed, but you’ve no doubt it’s her handwriting?”
“No.”
Mrs. Hubbard spoke rather uncertainly and frowned as she looked at the torn scrap of paper. Why did she feel so strongly that there was something wrong about it—?
“There’s one clear fingerprint on it which is definitely hers,” said the inspector. “The morphia was in a small bottle with the label of St. Catherine’s Hospital on it and you tell me that she works as a dispenser in St. Catherine’s. She’d have access to the poison cupboard and that’s where she probably got it. Presumably she brought it home with her yesterday with suicide in mind.”
“I really can’t believe it. It doesn’t seem right somehow. She was so happy last night.”
“Then we must suppose that a reaction set in when she went up to bed. Perhaps there’s more in her past than you know about. Perhaps she was afraid of that coming out. You think she was very much in love with this young man—what’s his name, by the way?”
“Colin McNabb. He’s doing a postgraduate course at St. Catherine’s.”
“A doctor? And at St. Catherine’s?”
“Celia was very much in love with him, more, I should say, than he with her. He’s a rather self-centred young man.”
“Then that’s probably the explanation. She didn’t feel worthy of him, or hadn’t told him all she ought to tell him. She was quite young, wasn’t she?”
“Twenty-three.”
“They’re idealistic at that age and they take love affairs hard. Yes, that’s it, I’m afraid. Pity.”
He rose to his feet. “I’m afraid the actual facts will have to come out, but we’ll do all we can to gloss things over. Thank you, Mrs. Hubbard, I’ve got all the information I need now. Her mother died two years ago and the only relative you know of is this elderly aunt in Yorkshire—we’ll communicate with her.”
He picked up a small torn fragment with Celia’s agitated writing on it.
“There’s something wrong about that,” said Mrs. Hubbard suddenly.
“Wrong? In what way?”
“I don’t know—but I feel I ought to know. Oh dear.”
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