“You display the perspicacity, mademoiselle.” Poirot sat down carefully and squarely in a high-backed chair with arms to it.
Valerie sat down on the divan. She offered him a cigarette and took one herself and lighted it. He studied her with some attention. She had a nervous, rather haggard elegance that appealed to him more than mere conventional good looks would have done. An intelligent and attractive young woman, he thought. He wondered if her nervousness was the result of the recent inquiry or whether it was a natural component of her manner. He remembered that he had thought much the same about her on the evening when he had come to supper.
“Inspector Sharpe has been making inquiries of you?” he asked.
“Yes, indeed.”
“And you have told him all that you know?”
“Of course.”
“I wonder,” said Poirot, “if that is true.”
She looked at him with an ironic expression.
“Since you did not hear my answers to Inspector Sharpe you can hardly be a judge,” she said.
“Ah no. It is merely one of my little ideas. I have them, you know—the little ideas. They are here.” He tapped his head.
It could be noticed that Poirot, as he sometimes did, was deliberately playing the mountebank. Valerie, however, did not smile. She looked at him in a straightforward manner. When she spoke it was with a certain abruptness.
“Shall we come to the point, M. Poirot?” she asked. “I really don’t know what you’re driving at.”
“But certainly, Miss Hobhouse.”
He took from his pocket a little package.
“You can guess, perhaps, what I have here?”
“I’m not clairvoyant, M. Poirot. I can’t see through paper and wrappings.”
“I have here,” said Poirot, “the ring that was stolen from Miss Patricia Lane.”
“The engagement ring? I mean, her mother’s engagement ring? But why should you have it?”
“I asked her to lend it to me for a day or two.”
Again Valerie’s rather surprised eyebrows mounted her forehead.
“Indeed,” she observed.
“I was interested in the ring,” said Poirot. “Interested in its disappearance, in its return and in something else about it. So I asked Miss Lane to lend it to me. She agreed readily. I took it straight away to a jeweller friend of mine.”
“Yes?”
“I asked him to report on the diamond in it. A fairly large stone, if you remember, flanked at either side by a little cluster of small stones. You remember—mademoiselle?”
“I think so. I don’t really remember it very well.”
“But you handled it, didn’t you? It was in your soup plate.”
“That was how it was returned! Oh yes, I remember that. I nearly swallowed it.” Valerie gave a short laugh.
“As I say, I took the ring to my jeweller friend and I asked him his opinion on the diamond. Do you know what his answer was?”
“How could I?”
“His answer was that the stone was not a diamond. It was merely a zircon. A white zircon.”
“Oh!” She stared at him. Then she went on, her tone a little uncertain. “D’you mean that—Patricia thought it was a diamond but it was only a zircon or. . . .”
Poirot was shaking his head.
“No, I do not mean that. It was the engagement ring, so I understand, of this Patricia Lane’s mother. Miss Patricia Lane is a young lady of good family, and her people, I should say, certainly before recent taxation, were in comfortable circumstances. In those circles, mademoiselle, money is spent upon an engagement ring—a diamond ring or a ring containing some other precious stone. I am quite certain that the papa of Miss Lane would not have given her mamma anything but a valuable engagement ring.”
“As to that,” said Valerie, “I couldn’t agree with you more. Patricia’s father was a small country squire, I believe.”
“Therefore,” said Poirot, “it would seem that the stone in the ring must have been replaced by another stone later.”
“I suppose,” said Valerie slowly, “that Pat might have lost the stone out of it, couldn’t afford to replace it with a diamond, and had a zircon put in instead.”
“That is possible,” said Hercule Poirot, “but I do not think it is what happened.”
“Well, M. Poirot, if we’re guessing, what do you think happened?”
“I think,” said Poirot, “that the ring was taken by Mademoiselle Celia and that the diamond was deliberately removed and the zircon substituted before the ring was returned.”
Valerie sat up very straight.
“You think that Celia stole that diamond deliberately?”
Poirot shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I think you stole it, mademoiselle.”
Valerie Hobhouse caught her breath sharply:
“Well, really!” she exclaimed. “That seems to me pretty thick. You’ve no earthly evidence of any kind.”
“But, yes,” Poirot interrupted her. “I have evidence. The ring was returned in a plate of soup. Now me, I dined here one evening. I noticed the way the soup was served. It was served from a tureen on the side table. Therefore, if anyone found a ring in their soup plate it could only have been placed there either by the person who was serving the soup (in this case Geronimo) or by the person whose soup plate it was. You! I do not think it was Geronimo. I think that you staged the return of the ring in the soup in that way because it amused you. You have, if I may make the criticism, rather too humorous a sense of the dramatic. To hold up the ring! To exclaim! I think you indulged your sense of humour there, mademoiselle, and did not realise that you betrayed yourself in so doing.”
“Is that all?” Valerie spoke scornfully.
“Oh, no, it is by no means all. You see, when Celia confessed that evening to having been responsible for the thefts here, I noticed several small points. For instance, in speaking of this ring she said, ‘I didn’t realise how valuable it was. As soon as I knew I managed to return it.’ How did she know, Miss Valerie? Who told her how valuable the ring was? And then again in speaking of the cut scarf, little Miss Celia said something like, ‘That didn’t matter, Valerie didn’t mind . . . ’ Why did you not mind if a good quality silk scarf belonging to you was cut to shreds? I formed the impression then and there that the whole campaign of stealing things, of making herself out to be a kleptomaniac, and so attracting the attention of Colin McNabb, had been thought out for Celia by someone else. Someone with far more intelligence than Celia Austin had and with a good working knowledge of psychology. You told her the ring was valuable; you took it from her and arranged for its return. In the same way it was at your suggestion that she slashed a scarf of yours to pieces.”
“These are all theories,” said Valerie, “and rather farfetched theories at that. The inspector has already suggested to me that I put Celia up to doing these tricks.”
“And what did you say to him?”
“I said it was nonsense,” said Valerie.
“And what do you say to me?”
Valerie looked at him searchingly for a moment or two. Then she gave a short laugh, stubbed out her cigarette, leaned back thrusting a cushion behind her back, and said:
“You’re quite right. I put her up to it.”
“May I ask you why?”
Valerie said impatiently:
“Oh, sheer foolish good nature. Benevolent interfering. There Celia was, mooning about like a little ghost, yearning over Colin who never looked at her. It all seemed so silly. Colin’s one of those conceited opinionated young men wrapped up in psychology and complexes and emotional blocks and all the rest of it, and I thought it would be really rather fun to egg him on and make a fool of him. Anyway I hated to see Celia look so miserable, so I got hold of her, gave her a talking-to, explained in outline the whole scheme, and urged her on to it. She was a bit nervous, I think, about it all, but rather thrilled at the same time. Then, of course, one of the first things
the little idiot does is to find Pat’s ring left in the bathroom and pinch that—a really valuable piece of jewellery about which there’d be a lot of hoo-haa and the police would be called in and the whole thing might take a serious turn. So I grabbed the ring off her, told her I’d return it somehow, and urged her in future to stick to costume jewellery and cosmetics and a little wilful damage to something of mine which wouldn’t land her in trouble.”
Poirot drew a deep breath.
“That was exactly what I thought,” he said.
“I wish that I hadn’t done it now,” said Valerie sombrely. “But I really did mean well. That’s an atrocious thing to say and just like Jean Tomlinson, but there it is.”
“And now,” said Poirot, “we come to this business of Patricia’s ring. Celia gave it to you. You were to find it somewhere and return it to Patricia. But before returning it to Patricia,” he paused. “What happened?”
He watched her fingers nervously plaiting and unplaiting the end of a fringed scarf that she was wearing round her neck. He went on, in an even more persuasive voice:
“You were hard up, eh, was that it?”
Without looking up at him she gave a short nod of the head.
“I said I’d come clean,” she said and there was bitterness in her voice. “The trouble with me is, M. Poirot, I’m a gambler. That’s one of the things that’s born in you and you can’t do anything much about it. I belong to a little club in Mayfair—oh, I shan’t tell you just where—I don’t want to be responsible for getting it raided by the police or anything of that kind. We’ll just let it go at the fact that I belong to it. There’s roulette there, baccarat, all the rest of it. I’ve taken a nasty series of losses one after the other. I had this ring of Pat’s. I happened to be passing a shop where there was a zircon ring. I thought to myself, ‘if this diamond was replaced with a white zircon Pat would never know the difference!’ You never do look at a ring you know really well. If the diamond seems a bit duller than usual you just think it needs cleaning or something like that. All right, I had an impulse. I fell. I prised out the diamond and sold it. Replaced it with a zircon and that night I pretended to find it in my soup. That was a damn silly thing to do, too, I agree. There! Now you know it all. But honestly, I never meant Celia to be blamed for that.”
“No, no, I understand.” Poirot nodded his head. “It was just an opportunity that came your way. It seemed easy and you took it. But you made there a great mistake, mademoiselle.”
“I realise that,” said Valerie drily. Then she broke out unhappily:
“But what the hell! Does that matter now? Oh, turn me in if you like. Tell Pat. Tell the inspector. Tell the world! But what good is it going to do? How’s it going to help us with finding out who killed Celia?”
Poirot rose to his feet.
“One never knows,” he said, “what may help and what may not. One has to clear out of the way so many things that do not matter and that confuse the issue. It was important for me to know who had inspired the little Celia to play the part she did. I know that now. As to the ring, I suggest that you go yourself to Miss Patricia Lane and that you tell her what you did and express the customary sentiments.”
Valerie made a grimace.
“I dare say that’s pretty good advice on the whole,” she said. “All right, I’ll go to Pat and I’ll eat humble pie. Pat’s a very decent sort. I’ll tell her that when I can afford it again I’ll replace the diamond. Is that what you want, M. Poirot?”
“It is not what I want, it is what is advisable.”
The door opened suddenly and Mrs. Hubbard came in.
She was breathing hard and the expression in her face made Valerie exclaim:
“What’s the matter, Mum? What’s happened?”
Mrs. Hubbard dropped into a chair.
“It’s Mrs. Nicoletis.”
“Mrs. Nick? What about her?”
“Oh, my dear. She’s dead.”
“Dead?” Valerie’s voice came harshly. “How? When?”
“It seems she was picked up in the street last night—they took her to the police station. They thought she was—was—”
“Drunk? I suppose. . . .”
“Yes—she had been drinking. But anyway—she died—”
“Poor old Mrs. Nick,” said Valerie. There was a tremor in her husky voice.
Poirot said gently:
“You were fond of her, mademoiselle?”
“It’s odd in a way—she could be a proper old devil—but yes—I was . . . When I first came here—three years ago, she wasn’t nearly as—as temperamental as she became later. She was good company—amusing—warmhearted. She’s changed a lot in the last year—”
Valerie looked at Mrs. Hubbard.
“I suppose that’s because she’d taken to drinking on the quiet—they found a lot of bottles and things in her room, didn’t they?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Hubbard hesitated, then burst out: “I do blame myself—letting her go off home alone last night—she was afraid of something, you know.”
“Afraid?”
Poirot and Valerie said it in unison.
Mrs. Hubbard nodded unhappily. Her mild round face was troubled.
“Yes. She kept saying she wasn’t safe. I asked her to tell me what she was afraid of—and she snubbed me. And one never knew with her, of course, how much was exaggeration. But now—I wonder—”
Valerie said:
“You don’t think that she—that she, too—that she was—”
She broke off with a look of horror in her eyes.
Poirot asked:
“What did they say was the cause of death?”
Mrs. Hubbard said unhappily:
“They—they didn’t say. There’s to be an inquest—on Tuesday—”
Chapter Fifteen
In a quiet room at New Scotland Yard, four men were sitting round a table.
Presiding over the conference was Superintendent Wilding of the Narcotics squad. Next to him was Sergeant Bell, a young man of great energy and optimism who looked rather like an eager greyhound. Leaning back in his chair, quiet and alert, was Inspector Sharpe. The fourth man was Hercule Poirot. On the table was a rucksack.
Superintendent Wilding stroked his chin thoughtfully.
“It’s an interesting idea, M. Poirot,” he said cautiously. “Yes, it’s an interesting idea.”
“It is, as I say, simply an idea,” said Poirot.
Wilding nodded.
“We’ve outlined the general position,” he said. “Smuggling goes on all the time, of course, in one form or another. We clear up one lot of operators, and after a due interval things start again somewhere else. Speaking for my own branch, there’s been a good lot of the stuff coming into this country in the last year and a half. Heroin mostly—a fair amount of coke. There are various depots dotted here and there on the Continent. The French police have got a lead or two as to how it comes into France—they’re less certain how it goes out again.”
“Would I be right in saying,” Poirot asked, “that your problem could be divided roughly under three heads. There is the problem of distribution, there is the problem of how the consignments enter the country, and there is the problem of who really runs the business and takes the main profits?”
“Roughly I’d say that’s quite right. We know a fair amount about the small distributors and how the stuff is distributed. Some of the distributors we pull in, some we leave alone hoping that they may lead us to the big fish. It’s distributed in a lot of different ways, nightclubs, pubs, drug stores, an odd doctor or so, fashionable women’s dressmakers and hairdressers. It is handed over on racecourses, and in antique dealers’, sometimes in a crowded multiple store. But I needn’t tell you all this. It’s not that side of it that’s important. We can keep pace with all that fairly well. And we’ve got certain very shrewd suspicions as to what I’ve called the big fish. One or two very respectable wealthy gentlemen against whom there’s never a breath of suspicion. Very c
areful they are; they never handle the stuff themselves, and the little fry don’t even know who they are. But every now and again, one of them makes a slip—and then—we get him.”
“That is all very much as I supposed. The line in which I am interested is the third line—how do the consignments come into the country?”
“Ah. We’re an island. The most usual way is the good old-fashioned way of the sea. Running a cargo. Quiet landing somewhere on the east coast, or a little cove down south, by a motorboat that’s slipped quietly across the Channel. That succeeds for a bit but sooner or later we get a line on the particular fellow who owns the boat and once he’s under suspicion his opportunity’s gone. Once or twice lately the stuff ’s come in on one of the airliners. There’s big money offered, and occasionally one of the stewards or one of the crew proves to be only too human. And then there are the commercial importers. Respectable firms that import grand pianos, or what have you! They have quite a good run for a bit, but we usually get wise to them in the end.”
“You would agree that it is one of the chief difficulties when you are running an illicit trade—the entry from abroad into this country?”
“Decidedly. And I’ll say more. For some time now, we’ve been worried. More stuff is coming in than we can keep pace with.”
“And what about other things, such as gems?”
Sergeant Bell spoke.
“There’s a good deal of it going on, sir. Illicit diamonds and other stones are coming out of South Africa and Australia, some from the Far East. They’re coming into this country in a steady stream, and we don’t know how. The other day a young woman, an ordinary tourist, in France, was asked by a casual acquaintance if she’d take a pair of shoes across the Channel. Not new ones, nothing dutiable, just some shoes someone had left behind. She agreed quite unsuspiciously. We happened to be on to that. The heels of the shoes turned out to be hollow and packed with uncut diamonds.”
Superintendent Wilding said:
“But look here, M. Poirot, what is it you’re on the track of, dope or smuggled gems?”
“Either. Anything, in fact, of high value and small bulk. There is an opening, it seems to me, for what you might call a freight service, conveying goods such as I have described to and fro across the Channel. Stolen jewellery, the stones removed from their settings, could be taken out of England, illicit stones and drugs brought in. It could be a small independent agency, unconnected with distribution, that carried stuff on a commission basis. And the profits might be high.”
Hickory Dickory Dock: A Hercule Poirot Mystery Page 14
