Hickory Dickory Dock

by Agatha Christie

  Sharpe smiled gently.

  “Yes,” he said, “I’ve always found—well—amiability—a great help.”

  The two men smiled at each other in mutual accord. Sharpe rose to depart.

  “I suppose every single one of them is a possible murderer,” he said slowly.

  “I should think so,” said Poirot nonchalantly. “Leonard Bateson, for instance, has a temper. He could lose control. Valerie Hobhouse has brains and could plan cleverly. Nigel Chapman is the childish type that lacks proportion. There is a French girl there who might kill if enough money were involved. Patricia Lane is a maternal type and maternal types are always ruthless. The American girl, Sally Finch, is cheerful and gay, but she could play an assumed part better than most. Jean Tomlinson is very full of sweetness and righteousness but we have all known killers who attended Sunday school with sincere devotion. The West Indian girl Elizabeth Johnston has probably the best brains of anyone in the hostel. She has subordinated her emotional life to her brain—that is dangerous. There is a charming young African who might have motives for killing about which we could never guess. We have Colin McNabb, the psychologist. How many psychologists does one know to whom it might be said Physician, heal thyself?”

  “For heaven’s sake, Poirot. You are making my head spin! Is nobody incapable of murder?”

  “I have often wondered,” said Hercule Poirot.

  Chapter Nine

  Inspector Sharpe sighed, leaned back in his chair and rubbed his forehead with a handkerchief. He had interviewed an indignant and tearful French girl, a supercilious and uncooperative young Frenchman, a stolid and suspicious Dutchman, a voluble and aggressive Egyptian. He had exchanged a few brief remarks with two nervous young Turkish students who did not really understand what he was saying and the same went for a charming young Iraqi. None of these, he was pretty certain, had had anything to do, or could help him in any way with the death of Celia Austin. He had dismissed them one by one with a few reassuring words and was now preparing to do the same to Mr. Akibombo.

  The young West African looked at him with smiling white teeth and rather childlike, plaintive, eyes.

  “I should like to help—yes—please,” he said. “She is very nice to me, this Miss Celia. She give me once a box of Edinburgh rock—very nice confection which I do not know before. It seems very sad she should be killed. Is it blood feud, perhaps? Or is it perhaps fathers or uncles who come and kill her because they have heard false stories that she do wrong things.”

  Inspector Sharpe assured him that none of these things were remotely possible. The young man shook his head sadly.

  “Then I do not know why it happened,” he said. “I do not see why anybody here should want to do harm to her. But you give me piece of her hair and nail clippings,” he continued, “and I see if I find out by old method. Not scientific, not modern, but very much in use where I come from.”

  “Well, thank you, Mr. Akibombo, but I don’t think that will be necessary. We—er—don’t do things that way over here.”

  “No, sir, I quite understand. Not modern. Not atomic age. Not done at home now by new policemen—only old men from bush. I am sure all new methods very superior and sure to achieve complete success.” Mr. Akibombo bowed politely and removed himself. Inspector Sharpe murmured to himself:

  “I sincerely hope we do meet with success—if only to maintain prestige.”

  His next interview was with Nigel Chapman, who was inclined to take the conduct of the conversation into his own hands.

  “This is an absolutely extraordinary business, isn’t it?” he said. “Mind you, I had an idea that you were barking up the wrong tree when you insisted on suicide. I must say, it’s rather gratifying to me to think that the whole thing hinges, really, on her having filled her fountain pen with my green ink. Just the one thing the murderer couldn’t possibly foresee. I suppose you’ve given due consideration as to what can possibly be the motive for this crime?”

  “I’m asking the questions, Mr. Chapman,” said Inspector Sharpe drily.

  “Oh, of course, of course,” said Nigel, airily, waving a hand. “I was trying to make a bit of a shortcut of it, that was all. But I suppose we’ve got to go through with all the red tape as usual. Name, Nigel Chapman. Age, twenty-five. Born, I believe, in Nagasaki—it really seems a most ridiculous place. What my father and mother were doing there at the time I can’t imagine. On a world tour, I suppose. However, it doesn’t make me necessarily a Japanese, I understand. I’m taking a diploma at London University in Bronze Age and Medieval History. Anything else you want to know?”

  “What is your home address, Mr. Chapman?”

  “No home address, my dear sir. I have a papa, but he and I have quarrelled, and his address is therefore no longer mine. So 26 Hickory Road and Coutts Bank, Leadenhall Street Branch, will always find me, as one says to travelling acquaintances whom you hope you will never meet again.”

  Inspector Sharpe displayed no reaction towards Nigel’s airy impertinence. He had met Nigels before and shrewdly suspected that Nigel’s impertinence masked a natural nervousness of being questioned in connection with murder.

  “How well did you know Celia Austin?” he asked.

  “That’s really quite a difficult question. I knew her very well in the sense of seeing her practically every day, and being on quite cheerful terms with her, but actually I didn’t know her at all. Of course, I wasn’t in the least bit interested in her and I think she probably disapproved of me, if anything.”

  “Did she disapprove of you for any particular reason?”

  “Well, she didn’t like my sense of humour very much. Then, of course, I wasn’t one of those brooding, rude young men like Colin McNabb. That kind of rudeness is really the perfect technique for attracting women.”

  “When was the last time you saw Celia Austin?”

  “At dinner yesterday evening. We’d all given her the big hand, you know. Colin had got up and hemmed and hawed and finally admitted, in a coy and bashful way, that they were engaged. Then we all ragged him a bit, and that was that.”

  “Was that at dinner or in the common room?”

  “Oh, at dinner. Afterwards, when we went into the common room Colin went off somewhere.”

  “And the rest of you had coffee in the common room.”

  “If you call the fluid they serve coffee—yes,” said Nigel.

  “Did Celia Austin have coffee?”

  “Well, I suppose so. I mean, I didn’t actually notice her having coffee, but she must have had it.”

  “You did not personally hand her her coffee, for instance?”

  “How horribly suggestive all this is! When you said that and looked at me in that searching way, d’you know I felt quite certain that I had handed Celia her coffee and had filled it up with strychnine, or whatever it was. Hypnotic suggestion, I suppose, but actually, Mr. Sharpe, I didn’t go near her—and to be frank, I didn’t even notice her drinking coffee, and I can assure you, whether you believe me or not, that I have never had any passion for Celia myself and that the announcement of her engagement to Colin McNabb aroused no feelings of murderous revenge in me.”

  “I’m not really suggesting anything of the kind, Mr. Chapman,” said Sharpe mildly. “Unless I’m very much mistaken, there’s no particular love angle to this, but somebody wanted Celia Austin out of the way. Why?”

  “I simply can’t imagine why, Inspector. It’s really most intriguing because Celia was really a most harmless kind of girl, if you know what I mean. Slow on the uptake; a bit of a bore; thoroughly nice; and absolutely, I should say, not the kind of girl to get herself murdered.”

  “Were you surprised when you found that it was Celia Austin who had been responsible for the various disappearances, thefts, etcetera, in this place?”

  “My dear man, you could have knocked me over with a feather! Most uncharacteristic, that’s what I thought.”

  “You didn’t, perhaps, put her up to doing these things?”
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  Nigel’s stare of surprise seemed quite genuine.

  “I? Put her up to it? Why should I?”

  “Well, that would be rather the question, wouldn’t it? Some people have a funny sense of humour.”

  “Well, really, I may be dense, but I can’t see anything amusing about all this silly pilfering that’s been going on.”

  “Not your idea of a joke?”

  “It never occurred to me it was meant to be funny. Surely, Inspector, the thefts were purely psychological?”

  “You definitely consider that Celia Austin was a kleptomaniac?”

  “But surely there can’t be any other explanation, Inspector?”

  “Perhaps you don’t know as much about kleptomaniacs as I do, Mr. Chapman.”

  “Well, I really can’t think of any other explanation.”

  “You don’t think it’s possible that someone might have put Miss Austin up to all this as a means of—say—arousing Mr. McNabb’s interest in her?”

  Nigel’s eyes glistened with appreciative malice.

  “Now that really is a most diverting explanation, Inspector,” he said. “You know, when I think of it, it’s perfectly possible and of course old Colin would swallow it, line, hook and sinker.” Nigel savoured this with much glee for a second or two. Then he shook his head sadly.

  “But Celia wouldn’t have played,” he said. “She was soppy about him.”

  “You’ve no theory of your own, Mr. Chapman, about the things that have been going on in this house? About, for instance, the spilling of ink over Miss Johnston’s papers?”

  “If you’re thinking I did it, Inspector Sharpe, that’s quite untrue. Of course, it looks like me because of the green ink, but if you ask me, that was just spite.”

  “What was spite?”

  “Using my ink. Somebody deliberately used my ink to make it look like me. There’s a lot of spite about here, Inspector.”

  The Inspector looked at him sharply.

  “Now what exactly do you mean by a lot of spite about?”

  But Nigel immediately drew back into his shell and became noncommittal.

  “I didn’t mean anything really—just that when a lot of people are cooped up together, they get rather petty.”

  The next person on Inspector Sharpe’s list was Leonard Bateson. Len Bateson was even less at his ease than Nigel, though it showed in a different way. He was suspicious and truculent.

  “All right!” he burst out, after the first routine inquiries were concluded. “I poured out Celia’s coffee and gave it to her. So what?”

  “You gave her her after-dinner coffee—is that what you’re saying, Mr. Bateson?”

  “Yes. At least I filled the cup up from the urn and put it down beside her and you can believe it or not, but there was no morphia in it.”

  “You saw her drink it?”

  “No, I didn’t actually see her drink it. We were all moving around and I got into an argument with someone just after that. I didn’t notice when she drank it. There were other people round her.”

  “I see. In fact, what you are saying is that anybody could have dropped morphia into her coffee cup?”

  “You try and put anything in anyone’s cup! Everybody would see you.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Sharpe.

  Len burst out aggressively:

  “What the hell do you think I want to poison the kid for? I’ve nothing against her.”

  “I’ve not suggested that you did want to poison her.”

  “She took the stuff herself. She must have taken it herself. There’s no other explanation.”

  “We might think so, if it weren’t for that faked suicide note.”

  “Faked my hat! She wrote it, didn’t she?”

  “She wrote it as part of a letter, early that morning.”

  “Well—she could have torn a bit out and used it as a suicide note.”

  “Come now, Mr. Bateson. If you wanted to write a suicide note you’d write one. You wouldn’t take a letter you’d written to somebody else and carefully tear out one particular phrase.”

  “I might do. People do all sorts of funny things.”

  “In that case, where is the rest of the letter?”

  “How should I know? That’s your business, not mine.”

  “I’m making it my business. You’d be well advised, Mr. Bateson, to answer my questions civilly.”

  “Well, what do you want to know? I didn’t kill the girl, and I’d no motive for killing her.”

  “You liked her?”

  Len said less aggressively:

  “I liked her very much. She was a nice kid. A bit dumb, but nice.”

  “You believed her when she owned up to having committed the thefts which had been worrying everyone for some time past?”

  “Well, I believed her, of course, since she said so. But I must say it seemed odd.”

  “You didn’t think it was a likely thing for her to do?”

  “Well, no. Not really.”

  Leonard’s truculence had subsided now that he was no longer on the defensive and was giving his mind to a problem which obviously intrigued him.

  “She didn’t seem to be the type of a kleptomaniac, if you know what I mean,” he said. “Nor a thief either.”

  “And you can’t think of any other reason for her having done what she did?”

  “Other reason? What other reason could there be?”

  “Well, she might have wanted to arouse the interest of Mr. Colin McNabb.”

  “That’s a bit far-fetched, isn’t it?”

  “But it did arouse his interest.”

  “Yes, of course it did. Old Colin’s absolutely dead keen on any kind of psychological abnormality.”

  “Well, then. If Celia Austin knew that. . . .”

  Len shook his head.

  “You’re wrong there. She wouldn’t have been capable of thinking a thing like that out. Of planning it, I mean. She hadn’t got the knowledge.”

  “You’ve got the knowledge, though, haven’t you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that, out of a purely kind intention, you might have suggested something of the kind to her.”

  Len gave a short laugh.

  “Think I’d do a damfool thing like that? You’re crazy.”

  The Inspector shifted his ground.

  “Do you think that Celia Austin spilled the ink over Elizabeth Johnston’s papers or do you think someone else did it?”

  “Someone else. Celia said she didn’t do that and I believe her. Celia never got riled by Bess; not like some other people did.”

  “Who got riled by her—and why?”

  “She ticked people off, you know.” Len thought about it for a moment or two. “Anyone who made a rash statement. She’d look across the table and she’d say, in that precise way of hers, ‘I’m afraid that is not borne out by the facts. It has been well established by statistics that . . . ’ Something of that kind. Well, it was riling, you know—especially to people who like making rash statements, like Nigel Chapman for instance.”

  “Ah yes. Nigel Chapman.”

  “And it was green ink, too.”

  “So you think it was Nigel who did it?”

  “Well, it’s possible, at least. He’s a spiteful sort of cove, you know, and I think he might have a bit of racial feeling. About the only one of us who has.”

  “Can you think of anybody else who Miss Johnston annoyed with her exactitude and her habit of correction?”

  “Well, Colin McNabb wasn’t too pleased now and again, and she got Jean Tomlinson’s goat once or twice.”

  Sharpe asked a few more desultory questions but Len Bateson had nothing useful to add. Next Sharpe saw Valerie Hobhouse.

  Valerie was cool, elegant, and wary. She displayed much less nervousness than either of the men had done. She had been fond of Celia, she said. Celia was not particularly bright and it was rather pathetic the way she had set her heart on Colin McNabb.


  “Do you think she was a kleptomaniac, Miss Hobhouse?”

  “Well, I suppose so. I don’t really know much about the subject.”

  “Do you think anyone had put her up to doing what she did?”

  Valerie shrugged her shoulders.

  “You mean in order to attract that pompous ass Colin?”

  “You’re very quick on the point, Miss Hobhouse. Yes, that’s what I mean. You didn’t suggest it to her yourself, I suppose?”

  Valerie looked amused.

  “Well, hardly, my dear man, considering that a particularly favourite scarf of mine was cut to ribbons. I’m not so altruistic as that.”

  “Do you think anyone else suggested it to her?”

  “I should hardly think so. I should say it was just natural on her part.”

  “What do you mean by natural?”

  “Well, I first had a suspicion that it was Celia when all the fuss happened about Sally’s shoe. Celia was jealous of Sally. Sally Finch, I’m talking about. She’s far and away the most attractive girl here and Colin paid her a fair amount of attention. So on the night of this party Sally’s shoe disappears and she has to go in an old black dress and black shoes. There was Celia looking as smug as a cat that’s swallowed cream about it. Mind you, I didn’t suspect her of all these petty thievings of bracelets and compacts.”

  “Who did you think was responsible for those?”

  Valerie shrugged her shoulders.

  “Oh, I don’t know. One of the cleaning women, I thought.”

  “And the slashed rucksack?”

  “Was there a slashed rucksack? I’d forgotten. That seems very pointless.”

  “You’ve been here a good long time, haven’t you, Miss Hobhouse?”

  “Well, yes. I should say I’m probably the oldest inhabitant. That is to say, I’ve been here two years and a half now.”

  “So you probably know more about this hostel than anybody else?”

  “I should say so, yes.”

  “Have you any ideas of your own about Celia Austin’s death? Any idea of the motive that underlay it?”

  Valerie shook her head. Her face was serious now.

  “No,” she said. “It was a horrible thing to happen. I can’t see anybody who could possibly have wanted Celia to die. She was a nice, harmless child, and she’d just got engaged to be married, and. . . .”