Hicks did not seem inferior in any way that he could see, to the articles purchased by George from various other establishments. But it was very decidedly cheaper.
"Interesting," said Hercule Poirot.
He stared at the rucksacks.
Then he examined them in detail. Inside and outside, turning them upside down, feeling the seams, the pockets, the handles. Then he rose, went into the bathroom and came back with a small sharp com-knife. Turning the rucksack he had bought at Mr. Hicks' store inside out, he attacked the bottom of it with the knife. Between the inner lining and the bottom there was a heavy piece of corrugated stiffening, rather resembling in appearance corrugated paper. Poirot looked at the dismembered rucksack with a great deal of interest.
Then he proceeded to attack the other rucksacks.
He sat back finally and surveyed the amount of destruction he had just accomplished.
Then he drew the telephone towards him and after a short delay managed to get through to Inspector Sharpe.
"Encoutez, mon cher," he said. "I want to know just two things." Something in the nature of a guffaw from Inspector Sharpe.
"know two things about the horse, And one of them is rather coarse,," he observed.
"I beg your pardon," said Hercule Poirot, surprised.
"Nothing. Nothing. Just a rhyme I used to know.
What are the two things you want to know?" "You mentioned yesterday certain police inquiries at Hickory Road made during the last three months. Can you tell me the dates of them and also the time of day they were made?" "Yes-well-that should be easy. Itn be in the files. Just wait and I'll look it up." It was not long before the Inspector returned to the phone. "First inquiry as to Indian student disseminating subversive propaganda, 18th December last-3cccj P M." "That is too long ago." "Inquiry re Montage Jones, Eurasian, wanted in connection with murder of Mrs. Ahce Combe of Cambridge-February 24th-5cccj P more. Inquiry re William Robinsormative West Africa, wanted by Sheffield police-March 6th, I I A M." "Ah! I thank you." "But if you think that either of those cases could have any connection with-was Poirot interrapted him.
"No, they have no connection. I am interested only in the time of day they were made." "What are you up to, Poirot?" ""I dissect rucksacks, my friend. It is very interesting." Gently he replaced the receiver.
He took from his pocket book the amended list that Mrs. Hubbard had handed him the day before. It ran as follows: Rucksack (len Bateson's) Electric fight bulbs Bracelet (miss Rysdorff's) Diamond Ring (patricia's) Powder Compact (genevieve's) Evening shoe (sally's) Lipstick (elizabeth Johnston's) Earrings (valerie's) Stethoscope (len Bateson's) Bathsalts werehiswere Scarf cut in pieces (valerie's) Trousers (colin's) Cookery Book werehiswere Borarcie (chandra Lal's) Costume broach (sally's) Ink spilled on Elizabeth's notes.
(this is the best I can do. It's not absolutely accurate. L. Hubbard.) Poirot looked at it a long time.
He sighed and murmured to himself, "Yes . . . decidedly . . . we have to eliminate the things that do not matter. . . ." He had an idea as to who could help him to do that.
It was Sunday. Most of the students would probably be at home.
He dialled the number of 26 Hickory Road and asked to speak to Miss Valerie Hobhouse. A thick rather guttural voice seemed rather doubtful as to whether she was up yet, but said it would go and see.
Presently he heard a low husky voice, "Valerie Hobhouse speaking." "It is Hercule Poirot. You remember me?" "Of course, Mr. Poirot. What can I do for you?" "I would like, if I may, to have a short conversation with you?" "Certainly." "I may come roundeaeathen, to Hickory Road?" "Yes. I'll be expecting you. I'll ten Geronimo to bring you up to my room. There's not much privacy here on a Sunday." "Thank you, Miss Hobhouse. I am most grateful." Geronimo opened the door to Poirot with a flourish, then bending forward he spoke with his usual conspiratorial air. c" I take you up to Miss Valerie very quietly. Hush sh sh." Placing his finger on his lips, he led the way upstairs and into a good sized room overlooking Hickory Road. It was furnished with taste and a reasonable amount of luxury as a bed sitting room.
The divan bed was covered with a worn but beautiful Persian rug, and there was an attractive Queen Anne walnut bureau which Poirot judged hardly likely to be one of the original furnishings of 26 Hickory Road.
Valerie Hobhouse was standing ready to greet him.
She looked tired, he thought, and there were dark circles round her eyes.
Mais vous ites tris bien ici," said Poirot as he greeted her. "It is chic. It has an air." Valerie smiled.
"I've been here a good time," she said. "Two and a half years. Nearly three. I've dug myself in more or less and I've got some of my own things." "You are not a student, are you, Mademoiselle?" "Oh no. Purely commercial. I've got a job." "In a-cosmetic firm, was it?" "Yes. I'm one of the buyers for Sabrina Fair-it's a Beauty Salon.
Actually I have a small share in the business. We run a certain amount of side-fines besides beauty treatment. Accessories, that type of thing. Small Parisian novelties. And that's my department." "You go over then fairly often to Paris and to the Continent7" "Oh yes, about once a month, sometimes oftener." "You must forgive me," said Poirot, "If I seem to be displaying curiosity. . . ." "Why not?" She cut him short. "In the circumstances in which we find ourselves we must all put up with curiosity. I've answered a good many questions yesterday from Inspector Sharpe. You look as though you would like an upright chair, Monsieur Poirot, rather than a low armchair." "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 Jittle ideas. I have them, you know comthe little ideas. They are here." He tapped his head.
It could be noticedthat 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, Mr. 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, Mr. Poirot. I can't see through paper and wrappings." "I have here," said Poirot, "the ring that was stolen from Miss Patricia Lane." "Patricia's 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. An engagement ring must be a handsome ringa 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 couldnt 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 with 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, Monsieur 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 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 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 Meationabb had been thought out for Celia by someone else. Someone with far more intelligence than Celia Austin had andwitha good working knowledge of psychology. You told her the ring was valuable; you took it from her and arranged for its return. Inthe same way it was at your suggestion that she slashed a scarf of yours to pieces." "These are all theories," said Valerie, "and rather far-fetched 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 really it would be 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 coma really valuable piece of jewelry about which there'd be a lot of hoo-ha 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 the future to stick to costume jewelry 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 plaitidg and unplaiting the end of a fringed scarf that she was wearing round her neck. He went on, in an even more persuasive voide, "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, MoDsieur 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 shall'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 real-'Ise 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 daresay 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 a
fford it again I'll replace the diamond. Is that what you want, Mr. 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 on 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 comthey took her to the police station. Theythought she was-was-was "Drunk? I suppose.
"Yes-she had been drinking. But anyway-she died-was "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 comb yes-I was. . . . When I first came herethree years ago, she wasn't nearly as-as temperamental as she became later-She was good company-amusing comwarm-hearted- She's changed a lot in the last year-was Valerie looked at Mrs. Hubbard.
Agatha Christie - Hickory Dickory Death Page 13
