Agatha Christie - Hickory Dickory Death

by Hickory Dickory Dock (lit)

Instead I will ask you for an opinion. The opinion of one man about another. Was Arthur Stanley the kind of man who would do away with his wife if he wanted to marry another woman?" Mr. Endicott jumped as though he had been stung by a wasp.

  "Preposterous," he said angrily. "Quite preposterous. And there was no other woman. Stanley was devoted to his wife." "Yes," said Poirot. "I thought so. And now-I will come to the purpose of my call upon you. You arethe solicitors who drew up Arthur Stanley's will. You are, perhaps, his executor." "That is so." "Arthur Stanley had a son. The son quaffelled with his father at the time of his mother's death.

  Quarrelled with him and left home. He even went so far as to change his name." "That I did not know. What's he calling himself?" "We shall come to that. Before we do I am going' to make an assumption. If I am right, perhaps you will admit the fact. I think that Arthur Stanley left a sealed letter with you, a letter to be opened under certain circumstances or after his death." "Really, Poirot! In the Middle Ages you would certainly have been burnt at the stake. How you can possibly know the things you do!" "I am right then? I think there was an alternative in the letter. Its contents were either to be destroyed comor you were to take a certain course of action." He paused. The other did not speak.

  "Bon Dieu!" said Poirot, with alarm. "You have not ajready destroyed-was He broke off in relief as Mr. Endicott slowly shook his head in negation.

  "We never act in haste," he said reprovingly. "I have to make full enquiries-to satisfy myself absolutely' He paused. "This matter," he said severely, "is highly confidential. Even to you, Poirot' He shook his head.

  "And if I show you good cause why you should speak?" "That- is- up to you. I cannot conceive how you can possibly know anything at all that is relevant to the matter we are discussing." "I do not know coms I have to guess. If I guess correctly-was "HigWy unlikely," said Mr. Endicott with a wave of his hand.

  Poirot drew a deep breath.

  "Very well then. It is in my mind that your instructions are as follows. In the event of Sir Arthur's death, you are to trace his son, Nigel, to ascertain where he is living and how he is living and particularly whether he is or has been engaged in any criminal activity whatsoever." This time Mr. Endicott's impregnable legal calm was really shattered. He uttered an exclamation such as few had ever heard from his Eps.

  "Since you appear to be in full possession of the facts," he said, "I'll tell you anything you want to know. I gather you've come across young Nigel in the course of your professional activities. What's the young devil been up to?" "I think the story goes as follows. After he left home he changed his name, telling anyone who was interested that he had to do so as a condition of a legacy. He then fell in with some people who were ranning a smuggling racketrugs and jewels. I think it was due to him that the racket assumed its final form-an exceedingly clever one involving the using of innocent bona fide students. The whole thing was operated by two people, Nigel Chapman, as he now called himself, and a young woman called Valerie Hobhouse who, I think, originally introduced him to the smuggling trade. It was a small private concern and they worked it on a commission basis-but it was immensely profitable.

  The goods had to be of small bulk, but thousands of pounds' worth of gems and narcotics occupy a very small space. Everything went well until one of those unforeseen chances occurred. A police officer came one day to a students' hostel to make inquiries in connection with a murder near Cambridge. I think you know the reason why that particular piece of information should cause Nigel to panic. He thought the police were after him.

  He removed certain electric light bulbs so that the light should be dim and he also, in a panic, took a certain racksack out into the back yard, hacked it to pieces and threw it behind the boiler since he feared traces of narcotic might be found in its false bottom.

  "His panic was quite unfounded-the police had merely come to ask questions about a certain Eurasian student-but one of the girls living in the Hostel had happened to look out of her window and had seen. him destroying the rucksack. That did not immediately sign her death warrant. Instead, a clever scheme was ,thought up by which she herself was induced to commit certain foolish actions which would place her in a very invidious position. But they carried that scheme too far. I was called in. I advised going to the police. The girl lost her head and confessed. She confessed, that is, to the things that she had done. But she went, I think, to Nigel, and urged him to confess also to the rucksack business and to spilling ink over a fellow student's work. Neither Nigel nor his accomplice could consider attention being called to the rucksack-their whole plan of campaign would be ruined.

  Moreover Celia, the girl in question, had another dangerous piece of knowledge which she revealed, as it happened, the night I dined there. She knew who Nigel really was." "But surely-was Mr. Endicott frowned.

  "Nigel had moved from one world to another. Any former friends he met might know that he now called himself Chapman, but they knew nothing of what he was doing.

  In the Hostel nobody knew that his real name was Stanley-but Celia suddenly revealed that she knew him in both capacities. She also knew that Valerie Hobhouse, on one occasion at least, had travelled abroad on a false passport. She knew too much. The next evening she went out to meet him by appointment somewhere. He gave her a drink of coffee and in it was morphia. She died in her sleep with everything arranged to look like suicide." Mr. Endicott stirred. An expression of deep distress crossed his face. He murmured something under his breath.

  "But that was not the end," said Poirot. "The woman who owned the chain of hosters and students' clubs died soon after in suspicious circumstances and then, finally, there came the last most cruel and heartless crime. Patricia Lane, a girl who was devoted to Nigel and of whom he himself was really fond, meddled unwittingly in his all airs, and moreover insisted that he should be reconciled to his father before the latter died. He told her a string of lies, but rearised that her obstinacy might urge her actually to write a second letter after the first was destroyed. I think, my friend, that you can tell me why, from his point of view, that would have been such a fatal thing to happen." Mr. Endicott rose. He went across the room to a safe, unlocked it, and came back with a long envelope in his hand. It had a broken red seal on the back of it. He drew out two enclosures and laid them before Poirot.

  Dear Endicott. You will open this after I am dead. I wish you to trace my son Nigel and find out If he has been guilty of any criminal actions whatsoever.

  "The facts I am about to tell you are known to me only. Nigel has always been profoundly unsatisfactory in his character. He has twice been guilty of forging my name to a cheque. On each occasion I acknowledged the signature as mine, but warned him that I would not do so again. On the third occasion it was his mother's name he forged. She charged him with it. He begged her to keep silence.

  She refused. She and I had discussed him, and she made it clear she was going to tell me. It was then that, in handing her her evening sleeping mixture, he administered an overdose. Before it took effect, however, she had come to my room and told me all about matters. When, the next morning, she was found dead, I knew who had done it.

  "I accused Nigel and told him that I intended to make a clean breast of all the facts to the police. He pleaded desperately with me. What would you have done, Endicott? I have no illusions about my son, I know him for what he is, one of those dangerous misfits who have neither conscience nor pity.

  I had no cause to save him. But it was the thought of my beloved wife that swayed me. Would she wish me to execute justice? I thought that I knew the answer-she would have wanted her son saved from the scaffold. She would have shrunk, as I shrank, from dragging down our name. But there was another consideration.

  I firmly believe that once a killer, always a killer. There might be, in the future, other victims. I made a bargain with my son, and whether I did right or wrong, I do not know. He was to write out a confession of his crime which I should keep. He was comto leave my house and never ret
urn, but make a new are for hijnself. I would give him a second chance. Money belonging to his mother would come to him automatically. He had had a good education. He had every chance of making good.

  "But-if he were convicted of any criminal activity whatsoever the confession he had left with me should go to the police. I safeguarded myself by explaining that my own death would not solve the problem.

  "You are my oldest friend. I am placing a bur den on your shoulders, but I ask it in the name of a dead woman who was also your friend. Find Nigel. If his record is clean destroy this letter and the enclosed confession. If not-then justice must be done.

  Your affectionate friend, Arthur Stanley "Ah!" Poirot breathed a long sigh. He unfolded the enclosure.

  I hereby confess that I murdered my mother by giving her an overdose of medinal on Novem her 18, 195-.

  Nigel Stanley.

  "YOU QUITE UNDERSTAND your position, Miss Hobhouse. I have already warned you' Valerie Hobhouse cut him short.

  "I know what I'm doing. You've warned me that what I say will be used in evidence. I'm prepared for that. You've got me on the smuggling charge. I haven't got a hope. That means a long term of imprisonment. This other means that I'll be charged as an accessory to murder." "Your being willing to make a statement may help you, but I can't make any promise or hold out any inducement." "I don't know that I care. Just as well end it all as languish in prison for years. I want to make a statement. I may be what you call an accessory, but I'm not a killer. I never intended murder or wanted it. I'm not such a fool. What I do want is that there should be a clear case against Nigel .

  "Celia knew far too much, but I could have dealt with that somehow. Nigel didn't give me time. He got her to come out and meet him, told her that he was going to own up to the rucksack and the ink business and then slipped her the morphia in a cup of coffee. He'd got hold of her letter to Mrs.

  Hubbard earlier on and had torn out a useful "suicide" phrase. He put that and the empty morphia phial (which he had retrieved after pretending to throw it away) by her bed. I see now that he'd been contemplating murder for quite a little time. Then he came and told me what he'd done.

  For my own sake I had to stand in with him.

  "The same thing must have happened with Mrs. Nick.

  He'd found out that she drank, that she was getting unreliable-he managed to meet her somewhere on her way home, and poisoned her drink. He denied it to mbut I know that that's what he did. Then came Pat. He came up to my room and told me what had happened. He told me what I'd got to do-so that both he and I would have an unbreakable alibi. I was in the net by then, there was no way out.... I suppose, if you hadn't caught me, I'd have gone abroad somewhere, and made a new life for myself. But you did catch me. . . . And now I only care about one thing-to make sure that that cruel smiling devil gets hanged." Inspector Sharpe drew a deep breath. All this was eminently satisfactory, it was an unbelievable piece of luck; but he was puzzled.

  The Constable licked his pencil.

  "I'm not sure that I quite understand," began Sharpe.

  She cut him short.

  "You don't need to understand. I've got my reasons." Hercule Poirot spoke very gently.

  "Mrs. Nicoletis?" he asked.

  He heard the sharp intake of her breath.

  "She was-your mother, was she not?" "Yes," said Valerie Hobhouse. "She was my mother. . .

  "I DO NOT UNDERSTAND," said Mr. Akibombo plaintively.

  He looked anxiously from one red head to the (yourher.

  Sally Finch and Len Bateson were conducting a conversation which Mr. A-kibombo found it hard to follow.

  "Do you think," asked Sally, "that Nigel meant me to be suspected, or you?" "Either, I should say," replied Len. "I believe he actually took the hairs from my brusIL" "I do not understand, please," said Mr.

  Akibombo. "Was it then Mr. Nigel who jumped the balcony?" "Nigel can jump like a *Cat. I couldn't have jumped across that space. I'm far too heavy." . "t want to apologise very deeply and humbly for wholly unjustifiable suspicions." "That's all right," said Len.

  "Actually, you helped a lot," said Sally.

  "All your thinking-about the boracie." Mr. Akibombo brightened up.

  "One ought to have realised all along," said Len, "that Nigel was a thoroughly maladjusted type and-was "Oh, for heaven's sake-you sound just like Colin.

  Frankly, Nigel always gave me the creeps-and at last I see why. Do you realise, Len, that if poor Sir Arthur Stanley hadn't been sentimental and had turned Nigel straight over to the police, three other people would be alive today? It's a solemn thought." "Still, one can understand what he felt about it" "Please, Miss Sally." "Yes, Akibombo?" "If you meet my Professor at University party tonight will you tell him, please, that I have done some good thinking? My Professor he says often that I have a muddled thought process." "I'll tell him," said Sally.

  Len Bateson was looking the picture of gloom.

  "In a week's time you'll be back in America," he said.

  There was a momentary silence.

  "I shall come back," said Sally. "Or you might come and do a course over there." "What's the use?" "Akibombo," said Sally, "would you like, one day, to be Best Man at a wedding?" "What is Best Man, please?" "The bridegroom, Len here for instance, gives you a ring to keep for him, and he and you go to church very smartly dressed and at the right moment he asks you for the ring and you give it to him, and he puts it on my finger, and the organ plays the wedding march and everybody cries. And there we are." "You mean that you and Mr. Len are to be married?" "That's the idea." "Sallyl" "Unless, of course, Len doesn't care for the idea." "Sally! But you don't know comab my father-was "So what? Of course I know. So your father's nuts.

  All right, so are lots of people's fathers." "It isn3t a hereditary type of mania. I can assure you of that, Sally, if you only knew how desperately unhappy I've been about you." "I did just have a tiny suspicion." "In Africa," said Mr. Akibombo, "in old days, before Atomic Age and scientific thought had come, marriage customs were very curious and interesting. I tell you-was "You'd better not," said Sally. "I have an idea they might make both Len and me blush, and when you've got red hair it's very noticeable when you blush." Hercule Poirot signed the last of the letters that Miss Lenion had laid before him.

  "Tr?ness bien," he said gravely. "Not a single mistake." Miss Lemon looked slightly affronted.

  "I don't often make mistakes, I hope," she said.

  "Not often. But it has happened. How is your sister, by the way?" "She is thinking of going on a cruise, Mr.

  Poirot.

  To the Northern capitals." "Ah," said Hercule Poirot.

  He wondered if-possibly-on a cruise-his Not that he himself would undertake a sea voyage comn for any inducement.

  The clock behind him struck one.

  The clock struck one, The mouse ran down, Hickory dickory dock, declared Hercule Poirot.

  "I beg your pardon, Mr. Poirot?" "Nothing," said Hercule Poirot.

  The End