“Oh, Valerie, don’t say things like that!”
“Well, it’s quite true,” said Valerie. She stubbed out a cigarette as she spoke. “I smuggle clothes in from Paris and tell the most frightful lies about their faces to the hideous women who come to the salon. I even travel on buses without paying my fare when I’m hard up. But come on, tell me. What’s it all about?”
“It’s what Nigel said at breakfast. If one knows something about someone else, do you think one ought to tell?”
“What an idiotic question! You can’t put a thing like that in general terms. What is it you want to tell, or don’t want to tell?”
“It’s about a passport.”
“A passport?” Valerie sat up, surprised. “Whose passport?”
“Nigel’s. He’s got a false passport.”
“Nigel?” Valerie sounded disbelieving. “I don’t believe it. It seems most improbable.”
“But he has. And you know, Valerie, I believe there’s some question—I think I heard the police saying that Celia had said something about a passport. Supposing she’d found out about it and he killed her?”
“Sounds very melodramatic,” said Valerie. “But frankly, I don’t believe a word of it. What is this story about a passport?”
“I saw it.”
“How did you see it?”
“Well, it was absolutely an accident,” said Jean. “I was looking for something in my despatch case a week or two ago, and by mistake I must have looked in Nigel’s attaché case instead. They were both on the shelf in the common room.”
Valerie laughed rather disagreeably.
“Tell that to the marines!” she said. “What were you really doing? Snooping?”
“No, of course not!” Jean sounded justly indignant. “The one thing I’d never do is to look among anybody’s private papers. I’m not that sort of person. It was just that I was feeling rather absentminded, so I opened the case and I was just sorting through it. . . .”
“Look here, Jean, you can’t get away with that. Nigel’s attaché case is a good deal larger than yours and it’s an entirely different colour. While you’re admitting things you might just as well admit that you are that sort of person. All right. You found a chance to go through some of Nigel’s things and you took it.”
Jean rose.
“Of course, Valerie, if you’re going to be so unpleasant and so very unfair and unkind, I shall. . . .”
“Oh, come back, child!” said Valerie. “Get on with it. I’m getting interested now. I want to know.”
“Well, there was this passport,” said Jean. “It was down at the bottom and it had a name on it. Stanford or Stanley or some name like that, and I thought, ‘How odd that Nigel should have somebody else’s passport here.’ I opened it and the photograph inside was Nigel! So don’t you see, he must be leading a double life? What I wonder is, ought I to tell the police? Do you think it’s my duty?”
Valerie laughed.
“Bad luck, Jean,” she said. “As a matter of fact, I believe there’s quite a simple explanation. Pat told me. Nigel came into some money, or something, on condition that he changed his name. He did it perfectly properly by deed poll or whatever it is, but that’s all it is. I believe his original name was Stanfield or Stanley, or something like that.”
“Oh!” Jean looked thoroughly chagrined.
“Ask Pat about it if you don’t believe me,” said Valerie.
“Oh—no—well, if it’s as you say, I must have made a mistake.”
“Better luck next time,” said Valerie.
“I don’t know what you mean, Valerie.”
“You’d like to get your knife into Nigel, wouldn’t you? And get him in wrong with the police?”
Jean drew herself up.
“You may not believe me, Valerie,” she said, “but all I wanted to do was my duty.”
She left the room.
“Oh, hell!” said Valerie.
There was a tap at the door and Sally entered.
“What’s the matter, Valerie? You’re looking a bit down in the mouth.”
“It’s that disgusting Jean. She really is too awful! You don’t think, do you, that there’s the remotest chance it was Jean that bumped off poor Celia? I should rejoice madly if I ever saw Jean in the dock.”
“I’m with you there,” said Sally. “But I don’t think it’s particularly likely. I don’t think Jean would ever stick her neck out enough to murder anybody.”
“What do you think about Mrs. Nick?”
“I just don’t know what to think. I suppose we shall hear soon.”
“I’d say ten to one she was bumped off, too,” said Valerie.
“But why? What’s going on here?” said Sally.
“I wish I knew. Sally, do you ever find yourself looking at people?”
“What do you mean, Val, looking at people?”
“Well, looking and wondering, ‘Is it you?’ I’ve got a feeling, Sally, that there’s someone here who’s mad. Really mad. Bad mad, I mean—not just thinking they’re a cucumber.”
“That may well be,” said Sally. She shivered.
“Ouch!” she said. “Somebody’s walking over my grave.”
IV
“Nigel I’ve got something I must tell you.”
“Well, what is it, Pat?” Nigel was burrowing frantically in his chest of drawers. “What the hell did I do with those notes of mine I can’t imagine. I shoved them in here, I thought.”
“Oh, Nigel, don’t scrabble like that! You leave everything in such a frightful mess and I’ve just tidied it.”
“Well, what the hell, I’ve got to find my notes, haven’t I?”
“Nigel, you must listen!”
“OK, Pat, don’t look so desperate. What is it?”
“It’s something I’ve got to confess.”
“Not murder, I hope?” said Nigel, with his usual flippancy.
“No, of course not!”
“Good. Well, what lesser sin?”
“It was one day when I mended your socks and I brought them along here to your room and was putting them away in your drawer. . . .”
“Yes?”
“And the bottle of morphia was there. The one you told me about, that you got from the hospital.”
“Yes, and you made such a fuss about it!”
“But, Nigel, it was there in your drawer among your socks, where anybody could have found it.”
“Why should they? Nobody else goes rooting about among my socks except you.”
“Well, it seemed to me dreadful to leave it about like that, and I know you’d said you were going to get rid of it after you’d won your bet, but in the meantime there it was, still there.”
“Of course. I hadn’t got the third thing yet.”
“Well, I thought it was very wrong, and so I took the bottle out of the drawer and I emptied the poison out of it, and I replaced it with some ordinary bicarbonate of soda. It looked almost exactly the same.”
Nigel paused in his scramble for his lost notes.
“Good lord!” he said. “Did you really? You mean that when I was swearing to Len and old Colin that the stuff was morphine sulphate or tartrate or whatever it was, it was merely bicarbonate of soda all the time?”
“Yes. You see. . . .”
Nigel interrupted her. He was frowning.
“I’m not sure, you know, that that doesn’t invalidate the bet. Of course, I’d no idea—”
“But Nigel, it was really dangerous keeping it there.”
“Oh lord, Pat, must you always fuss so? What did you do with the actual stuff?”
“I put it in the soda bic bottle and I hid it at the back of my handkerchief drawer.”
Nigel looked at her in mild surprise.
“Really, Pat, your logical thought processes beggar description! What was the point?”
“I felt it was safer there.”
“My dear girl, either the morphia should have been under lock and key, or if it was
n’t, it couldn’t really matter whether it was among my socks or your handkerchiefs.”
“Well, it did matter. For one thing, I have a room to myself and you share yours.”
“Why, you don’t think poor old Len was going to pinch the morphia off me, do you?”
“I wasn’t going to tell you about it, ever, but I must now. Because, you see, it’s gone.”
“You mean the police have swiped it?”
“No. It disappeared before that.”
“Do you mean . . . ? ” Nigel gazed at her in consternation. “Let’s get this straight. There’s a bottle labelled ‘Soda Bic,’ containing morphine sulphate, which is knocking about the place somewhere, and at any time someone may take a heaping teaspoonful of it if they’ve got a pain in their middle? Good God, Pat! You have done it! Why the hell didn’t you throw the stuff away if you were so upset about it?”
“Because I thought it was valuable and ought to go back to the hospital instead of being just thrown away. As soon as you’d won your bet, I meant to give it to Celia and ask her to put it back.”
“You’re sure you didn’t give it to her?”
“No, of course not. You mean I gave it to her, and she took it and it was suicide, and it was all my fault?”
“Calm down. When did it disappear?”
“I don’t know exactly. I looked for it the day before Celia died. I couldn’t find it, but I just thought I’d perhaps put it somewhere else.”
“It was gone the day before she died?”
“I suppose,” said Patricia, her face white, “that I’ve been very stupid.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” said Nigel. “To what lengths can a muddled mind and an active conscience go!”
“Nigel. D’you think I ought to tell the police?”
“Oh, hell!” said Nigel. “I suppose so, yes. And it’s going to be all my fault.”
“Oh, no, Nigel darling, it’s me. I—”
“I pinched the damned stuff in the first place,” said Nigel. “It all seemed to be a very amusing stunt at the time. But now—I can already hear the vitriolic remarks from the bench.”
“I am sorry. When I took it I really meant it for—”
“You meant it for the best. I know! Look here, Pat, I simply can’t believe the stuff has disappeared. You’ve forgotten just where you put it. You do mislay things sometimes, you know.”
“Yes, but—”
She hesitated, a shade of doubt appearing on her frowning face.
Nigel rose briskly.
“Let’s go along to your room and have a thorough search.”
V
“Nigel, those are my underclothes.”
“Really, Pat, you can’t go all prudish on me at this stage. Down among the panties is just where you would hide a bottle, now, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but I’m sure I—”
“We can’t be sure of anything until we’ve looked everywhere. And I’m jolly well going to do it.”
There was a perfunctory tap on the door and Sally Finch entered. Her eyes widened with surprise. Pat, clasping a handful of Nigel’s socks, was sitting on the bed, and Nigel, the bureau drawers all pulled out, was burrowing like an excited terrier into a heap of pullovers whilst about him were strewn panties, brassières, stockings, and other component parts of female attire.
“For land’s sake,” said Sally, “what goes on?”
“Looking for bicarbonate,” said Nigel briefly.
“Bicarbonate? Why?”
“I’ve got a pain,” said Nigel, grinning. “A pain in my tum-tum-tum—and nothing but bicarbonate will assuage it.”
“I’ve got some somewhere, I believe.”
“No good, Sally, it’s got to be Pat’s. Hers is the only brand that will ease my particular ailment.”
“You’re crazy,” said Sally. “What’s he up to, Pat?”
Patricia shook her head miserably.
“You haven’t seen my soda bic, have you, Sally?” she asked. “Just a little in the bottom of the bottle?”
“No.” Sally looked at her curiously. Then she frowned. “Let me see. Somebody around here—no, I can’t remember—Have you got a stamp, Pat? I want to mail a letter and I’ve run out.”
“In the drawer there.”
Sally opened the shallow drawer of the writing table, took out a book of stamps, extracted one, affixed it to the letter she held in her hand, dropped the stamp book back in the drawer, and put twopence-halfpenny on the desk.
“Thanks. Shall I mail this letter of yours at the same time?”
“Yes—no—no, I think I’ll wait.”
Sally nodded and left the room.
Pat dropped the socks she had been holding, and twisted her fingers nervously together.
“Nigel?”
“Yes?” Nigel had transferred his attention to the wardrobe and was looking in the pockets of a coat.
“There’s something else I’ve got to confess.”
“Good lord, Pat, what else have you been doing?”
“I’m afraid you’ll be angry.”
“I’m past being angry. I’m just plain scared. If Celia was poisoned with the stuff that I pinched, I shall probably go to prison for years and years, even if they don’t hang me.”
“It’s nothing to do with that. It’s about your father.”
“What?” Nigel spun round, an expression of incredulous astonishment on his face.
“You do know he’s very ill, don’t you?”
“I don’t care how ill he is.”
“It said so on the wireless last night. ‘Sir Arthur Stanley, the famous research chemist, is lying in a very critical condition.’ ”
“So nice to be a VIP. All the world gets the news when you’re ill.”
“Nigel, if he’s dying, you ought to be reconciled to him.”
“Like hell I will!”
“But if he’s dying.”
“He’s the same swine dying as he was when he was in the pink of condition!”
“You mustn’t be like that, Nigel. So bitter and unforgiving.”
“Listen, Pat—I told you once: he killed my mother.”
“I know you said so, and I know you adored her. But I do think, Nigel, that you sometimes exaggerate. Lots of husbands are unkind and unfeeling and their wives resent it and it makes them very unhappy. But to say your father killed your mother is an extravagant statement and isn’t really true.”
“You know so much about it, don’t you?”
“I know that some day you’ll regret not having made it up with your father before he died. That’s why—” Pat paused and braced herself. “That’s why I—I’ve written to your father—telling him—”
“You’ve written to him? Is that the letter Sally wanted to post?” He strode over to the writing table. “I see.”
He picked up the letter lying addressed and stamped, and with quick, nervous fingers, he tore it into small pieces and threw it into the wastepaper basket.
“That’s that! And don’t you dare do anything of that kind again.”
“Really, Nigel, you are absolutely childish. You can tear the letter up, but you can’t stop me writing another, and I shall.”
“You’re so incurably sentimental. Did it ever occur to you that when I said my father killed my mother, I was stating just a plain unvarnished fact. My mother died of an overdose of medinal. Took it by mistake, they said at the inquest. But she didn’t take it by mistake. It was given to her, deliberately, by my father. He wanted to marry another woman, you see, and my mother wouldn’t give him a divorce. It’s a plain sordid murder story. What would you have done in my place? Denounced him to the police? My mother wouldn’t have wanted that . . . So I did the only thing I could do—told the swine I knew—and cleared out—for ever. I even changed my name.”
“Nigel—I’m sorry . . . I never dreamed. . . .”
“Well, you know now . . . The respected and famous Arthur Stanley with his researches and antibiotics. Flourishi
ng like the green bay tree! But his fancy piece didn’t marry him after all. She sheered off. I think she guessed what he’d done—”
“Nigel dear, how awful—I am sorry. . . .”
“All right. We won’t talk of it again. Let’s get back to this blasted bicarbonate business. Now think back carefully to exactly what you did with the stuff. Put your head in your hands and think, Pat.”
VI
Genevieve entered the common room in a state of great excitement. She spoke to the assembled students in a low thrilled voice.
“I am sure now, but absolutely sure I know who killed the little Celia.”
“Who was it, Genevieve?” demanded René. “What has arrived to make you so positive?”
Genevieve looked cautiously round to make sure the door of the common room was closed. She lowered her voice.
“It is Nigel Chapman.”
“Nigel Chapman, but why?”
“Listen. I pass along the corridor to go down the stairs just now and I hear voices in Patricia’s room. It is Nigel who speaks.”
“Nigel? In Patricia’s room?” Jean spoke in a disapproving voice. But Genevieve swept on.
“And he is saying to her that his father killed his mother, and that, pour ça, he has changed his name. So it is clear, is it not? His father was a convicted murderer, and Nigel he has the hereditary taint. . . .”
“It is possible,” said Mr. Chandra Lal, dwelling pleasurably on the possibility. “It is certainly possible. He is so violent, Nigel, so unbalanced. No self-control. You agree?” He turned condescendingly to Akibombo, who nodded an enthusiastic black woolly head and showed his white teeth in a pleased smile.
“I’ve always felt very strongly,” said Jean, “that Nigel has no moral sense . . . A thoroughly degenerate character.”
“It is sex murder, yes,” said Mr. Achmed Ali. “He sleeps with this girl, then he kills her. Because she is a nice girl, respectable, she will expect marriage. . . .”
“Rot,” said Leonard Bateson explosively.
“What did you say?”
“I said rot!” roared Len.
Chapter Seventeen
I
Seated in a room at the police station, Nigel looked nervously into the stern eyes of Inspector Sharpe. Stammering slightly, he had just brought his narrative to a close.
Hickory Dickory Dock: A Hercule Poirot Mystery Page 16
