“Well, after all, Mrs. Nicoletis, there has been a murder, remember. And after a murder one has to put up with certain things which might not be very pleasant at ordinary times.”
“I spit upon the murder!” said Mrs. Nicoletis. “That little Celia she commits suicide. She has a silly love affair and she takes poison. It is the sort of thing that is always happening. They are so stupid about love, these girls—as though love mattered! One year, two years and it is all finished, the grand passion! The man is the same as any other man! But these silly girls they do not know that. They take the sleeping draught and the disinfectant and they turn on gas taps and then it is too late.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Hubbard, turning full circle, as it were, to where the conversation had started, “I shouldn’t worry any more about it all now.”
“That is all very well for you. Me, I have to worry. It is not safe for me any longer.”
“Safe?” Mrs. Hubbard looked at her, startled.
“It was my private cupboard,” Mrs. Nicoletis insisted. “Nobody knows what was in my private cupboard. I did not want them to know. And now they do know. I am very uneasy. They may think—what will they think?”
“Who do you mean by they?”
Mrs. Nicoletis shrugged her large, handsome shoulders and looked sulky.
“You do not understand,” she said, “but it makes me uneasy. Very uneasy.”
“You’d better tell me,” said Mrs. Hubbard. “Then perhaps I can help you.”
“Thank goodness I do not sleep here,” said Mrs. Nicoletis. “These locks on the doors here they are all alike; one key fits any other. No, thanks to heaven, I do not sleep here.”
Mrs. Hubbard said:
“Mrs. Nicoletis, if you are afraid of something, hadn’t you better tell me just what it is?”
Mrs. Nicoletis gave her a flickering look from her dark eyes and then looked away again.
“You have said it yourself,” she said evasively. “You have said there has been a murder in this house, so naturally one is uneasy. Who may be next? One does not even know who the murderer is. That is because the police are so stupid, or perhaps they have been bribed.”
“That’s all nonsense and you know it,” said Mrs. Hubbard. “But tell me, have you got any cause for real anxiety. . . .”
Mrs. Nicoletis flew into one of her tempers.
“Ah, you do not think I have any cause for anxiety? You know best as usual! You know everything! You are so wonderful; you cater, you manage, you spend money like water on food so that the students are fond of you, and now you want to manage my affairs! But that, no! I keep my affairs to myself and nobody shall pry into them, do you hear? No, Mrs. What-do-you-call-it Paul Pry.”
“Please yourself,” said Mrs. Hubbard, exasperated.
“You are a spy—I always knew it.”
“A spy on what?”
“Nothing,” said Mrs. Nicoletis. “There is nothing here to spy upon. If you think there is it is because you made it up. If lies are told about me I shall know who told them.”
“If you wish me to leave,” said Mrs. Hubbard, “you’ve only got to say so.”
“No, you are not to leave. I forbid it. Not at this moment. Not when I have all the cares of the police, of murder, of everything else on my hands, I shall not allow you to abandon me.”
“Oh, all right,” said Mrs. Hubbard helplessly. “But really, it’s very difficult to know what you do want. Sometimes I don’t think you know yourself. You’d better lie down on my bed and have a sleep—”
Chapter Thirteen
Hercule Poirot alighted from a taxi at 26 Hickory Road.
The door was opened to him by Geronimo who welcomed him as an old friend. There was a constable standing in the hall and Geronimo drew Poirot into the dining room and closed the door.
“It is terrible,” he whispered, as he assisted Poirot off with his overcoat. “We have police there all time! Ask questions, go here, go there, look in cupboards, look in drawers, come into Maria’s kitchen even. Maria very angry. She says she like to hit policeman with rolling pin but I say better not. I say policeman not like being hit by rolling pins and they make us more embarrassments if Maria do that.”
“You have the good sense,” said Poirot approvingly. “Is Mrs. Hubbard at liberty?”
“I take you upstairs to her.”
“A little moment.” Poirot stopped him. “Do you remember the day when certain electric lightbulbs disappeared?”
“Oh yes, I remember. But that long time ago now. One—two—three months ago.”
“Exactly what electric lightbulbs were taken?”
“The one in the hall and I think in the common room. Someone make joke. Take all the bulbs out.”
“You don’t remember the exact date?”
Geronimo struck an attitude as he thought.
“I do not remember,” he said. “But I think it was on day when policeman come, some time in February—”
“A policeman? What did a policeman come here for?”
“He come here to see Mrs. Nicoletis about a student. Very bad student, come from Africa. Not do work. Go to labour exchange, get National Assistance, then have woman and she go out with men for him. Very bad that. Police not like that. All this in Manchester, I think, or Sheffield. So he ran away from there and he come here, but police come after him and they talk to Mrs. Hubbard about him. Yes. And she say he not stop here because she no like him and she send him away.”
“I see. They were trying to trace him.”
“Scusi?”
“They were trying to find him?”
“Yes, yes, that is right. They find him and then they put him in prison because he live on woman, and live on woman must not do. This is nice house here. Nothing like that here.”
“And that was the day the bulbs were missing?”
“Yes. Because I turn switch and nothing happen. And I go into common room and no bulb there, and I look in drawer here for spares and I see bulbs have been taken away. So I go down to kitchen and ask Maria if she know where spare bulbs—but she angry because she not like police come and she say spare bulbs not her business, so I bring just candles.”
Poirot digested this story as he followed Geronimo up the stairs to Mrs. Hubbard’s room.
Poirot was welcomed warmly by Mrs. Hubbard, who was looking tired and harassed. She held out, at once, a piece of paper to him.
“I’ve done my best, M. Poirot, to write down these things in the proper order but I wouldn’t like to say that it’s a hundred percent accurate now. You see, it’s very difficult when you look back over a period of months to remember just when this, that or the other happened.”
“I am deeply grateful to you, madame. And how is Mrs. Nicoletis?”
“I’ve given her a sedative and I hope she’s asleep now. She made a terrible fuss over the search warrant. She refused to open the cupboard in her room and the inspector broke it open and quantities of empty brandy bottles tumbled out.”
“Ah!” said Poirot, making a tactful sound.
“Which really explains quite a lot of things,” said Mrs. Hubbard. “I really can’t imagine why I didn’t think of that before, having seen as much of drink as I have out in Singapore. But all that, I’m sure, isn’t what interests you.”
“Everything interests me,” said Poirot.
He sat down and studied the piece of paper that Mrs. Hubbard had handed to him.
“Ah!” he said, after a moment or two. “I see that now the rucksack heads the list.”
“Yes. It wasn’t a very important thing, but I do remember now, definitely, that it happened before the jewellery and those sort of things began to disappear. It was all rather mixed up with some trouble we had about one of the coloured students. He’d left a day or two before this happened and I remember thinking that it might have been a revengeful act on his part before he went. There’d been, well—a little trouble.”
“Ah! Geronimo has recounted to me something like tha
t. You had, I believe, the police here? Is that right?”
“Yes. It seems they had an inquiry from Sheffield or Birmingham or somewhere. It had all been rather a scandal. Immoral earnings and all that sort of thing. He was had up about it in court later. Actually, he’d only stayed here about three or four days. Then I didn’t like his behaviour, the way he was carrying on, so I told him that his room was engaged and that he’d have to go. I wasn’t really at all surprised when the police called. Of course, I couldn’t tell them where he’d gone to, but they got on his track all right.”
“And it was after that that you found the rucksack?”
“Yes, I think so—it’s hard to remember. You see, Len Bateson was going off on a hitchhike and he couldn’t find his rucksack anywhere and he created a terrible fuss about it, and everyone did a lot of searching, and at last Geronimo found it shoved behind the boiler all cut to ribbons. Such an odd thing to happen. So curious; and pointless, M. Poirot.”
“Yes,” Poirot agreed. “Curious and pointless.”
He remained thoughtful for a moment.
“And it was on that same day, the day the police came to inquire about this African student, that some electric bulbs disappeared—or so Geronimo tells me. Was it that day?”
“Well, I can’t really remember. Yes, yes, I think you’re right, because I remember coming downstairs with the police inspector and going into the common room with him and there were candles there. We wanted to ask Akibombo whether this other young man had spoken to him at all or told him where he was going to stay.”
“Who else was in the common room?”
“Oh, I think most of the students had come back by that time. It was in the evening, you know, just about six o’clock. I asked Geronimo about the bulbs and he said they’d been taken out. I asked him why he hadn’t replaced them and he said we were right out of electric bulbs. I was rather annoyed as it seemed such a silly pointless joke. I thought of it as a joke, not as stealing, but I was rather surprised that we had no more electric bulbs because we usually keep quite a good supply in stock. Still, I didn’t take it seriously, M. Poirot, not at that time.”
“The bulbs and the rucksack,” said Poirot thoughtfully.
“But it still seems to me possible,” said Mrs. Hubbard, “that those two things have no connection with poor little Celia’s peccadilloes. You remember she denied very earnestly that she’d ever touched the rucksack at all.”
“Yes, yes, that is true. How soon after this did the thefts begin?”
“Oh dear, M. Poirot, you’ve no idea how difficult all this is to remember. Let me see—that was March, no, February—the end of February. Yes, yes, I think Genevieve said she’d missed her bracelet about a week after that. Yes, between the 20th and 25th of February.”
“And after that the thefts went on fairly continuously?”
“Yes.”
“And this rucksack was Len Bateson’s?”
“Yes.”
“And he was very annoyed about it?”
“Well, you mustn’t go by that, M. Poirot,” said Mrs. Hubbard, smiling a little. “Len Bateson is that kind of boy, you know. Warm hearted, generous, kind to a fault, but one of those fiery, outspoken tempers.”
“What was it, this rucksack—something special?”
“Oh no, it was just the ordinary kind.”
“Could you show me one like it?”
“Well, yes, of course. Colin’s got one, I think, just like it. So has Nigel—in fact Len’s got one again now because he had to go and buy another. The students usually buy them at the shop at the end of the road. It’s a very good place for all kinds of camping equipment and hikers’ outfits. Shorts, sleeping bags, all that sort of thing. And very cheap—much cheaper than any of the big stores.”
“If I could just see one of these rucksacks, madame?”
Mrs. Hubbard obligingly led him to Colin McNabb’s room.
Colin himself was not there, but Mrs. Hubbard opened the wardrobe, stooped, and picked up a rucksack which she held out to Poirot.
“There you are, M. Poirot. That’s exactly like the one that was missing and that we found all cut up.”
“It would take some cutting,” murmured Poirot, as he fingered the rucksack appreciatively. “One could not snip at this with a little pair of embroidery scissors.”
“Oh no, it wasn’t what you’d expect a—well, a girl to do, for instance. There must have been a certain amount of strength involved, I should say. Strength and—well—malice, you know.”
“I know, yes, I know. It is not pleasant. Not pleasant to think about.”
“Then, when later that scarf of Valerie’s was found, also slashed to pieces, well, it did look—what shall I say—unbalanced.”
“Ah,” said Poirot. “But I think there you are wrong, madame. I do not think there is anything unbalanced about this business. I think it has aim and purpose, and shall we say, method?”
“Well, I dare say you know more about these things, M. Poirot, than I do,” said Mrs. Hubbard. “All I can say is, I don’t like it. As far as I can judge we’ve got a very nice lot of students here and it would distress me very much to think that one of them is—well, not what I’d like to think he or she is.”
Poirot had wandered over to the window. He opened it and stepped out on to the old-fashioned balcony.
The room looked out over the back of the house. Below was a small, sooty garden.
“It is more quiet here than at the front, I expect?” he said.
“In a way. But Hickory Road isn’t really a noisy road. And facing this way you get all the cats at night. Yowling, you know, and knocking the lids off the dustbins.”
Poirot looked down at four large battered ash cans and other assorted backyard junk.
“Where is the boiler house?”
“That’s the door to it, down there next to the coal house.”
“I see.”
He gazed down speculatively.
“Who else has rooms facing this way?”
“Nigel Chapman and Len Bateson have the next room to this.”
“And beyond them?”
“Then it’s the next house—and the girls’ rooms. First the room Celia had and beyond it Elizabeth Johnston’s and then Patricia Lane’s. Valerie and Jean Tomlinson look out to the front.”
Poirot nodded and came back into the room.
“He is neat, this young man,” he murmured, looking round him appreciatively.
“Yes. Colin’s room is always very tidy. Some of the boys live in a terrible mess,” said Mrs. Hubbard. “You should see Len Bateson’s room.” She added indulgently, “But he is a nice boy, M. Poirot.”
“You say that these rucksacks are bought at the shop at the end of the road?”
“Yes.”
“What is the name of that shop?”
“Now really, M. Poirot, when you ask me like that I can’t remember. Mabberley, I think. Or else Kelso. No, I know they don’t sound the same kind of name but they’re the same sort of name in my mind. Really, of course, because I knew some people once called Kelso and some other ones called Mabberley, and they were very alike.”
“Ah,” said Poirot. “That is one of the reasons for things that always fascinate me. The unseen link.”
He looked once more out of the window and down into the garden, then took his leave of Mrs. Hubbard and left the house.
He walked down Hickory Road until he came to the corner and turned into the main road. He had no difficulty in recognising the shop of Mrs. Hubbard’s description. It displayed in great profusion picnic baskets, rucksacks, Thermos flasks, sports equipment of all kinds, shorts, bush shirts, topees, tents, swimming suits, bicycle lamps and torches; in fact all possible needs of young and athletic youth. The name above the shop, he noted, was neither Mabberley nor Kelso but Hicks. After a careful study of the goods displayed in the window, Poirot entered and represented himself as desirous of purchasing a rucksack for a hypothetical nephew.
&nbs
p; “He makes ‘le camping,’ you understand,” said Poirot at his most foreign. “He goes with other students upon the feet and all he needs he takes with him on his back, and the cars and the lorries that pass, they give him a lift.”
The proprietor, who was a small obliging man with sandy hair, replied promptly.
“Ah, hitchhiking,” he said. “They all do it nowadays. Must lose the buses and the railways a lot of money, though. Hitchhike themselves all over Europe some of these young people do. Now it’s a rucksack you’re wanting sir. Just an ordinary rucksack?”
“I understand so. You have a variety then?”
“Well, we have one or two extra light ones for ladies, but this is the general article we sell. Good, stout, stand a lot of wear, and really very cheap though I say it myself.”
He produced a stout canvas affair which was, as far as Poirot could judge, an exact replica of the one he had been shown in Colin’s room. Poirot examined it, asked a few more exotic and unnecessary questions, and ended by paying for it then and there.
“Ah yes, we sell a lot of these,” said the man as he made it up into a parcel.
“A good many students lodge round here, do they not?”
“Yes. This is a neighbourhood with a lot of students.”
“There is one hostel, I believe in Hickory Road?”
“Oh yes, I’ve sold several to the young gentlemen there. And the young ladies. They usually come here for any equipment they want before they go off. My prices are cheaper than the big stores, and so I tell them. There you are, sir, and I’m sure your nephew will be delighted with the service he gets out of this.”
Poirot thanked him and went out with his parcel.
He had only gone a step or two when a hand fell on his shoulder.
It was Inspector Sharpe.
“Just the man I want to see,” said Sharpe.
“You have accomplished your search of the house?”
“I’ve searched the house, but I don’t know that I’ve accomplished very much. There’s a place along here where you can get a decent sandwich and a cup of coffee. Come along with me if you’re not busy. I’d like to talk to you.”
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