Agatha Christie - Hickory Dickory Dock

"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, et cetera, 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?" 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 a serious girl. She'd never have made fun of Colin. 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?"

"Spilling 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 ease than Niel, though it showed in a different way. He was suspicious and truculent.

"All right!" he burst out, after the first routine enquiries 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 around 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 wanted to poison the kid for? I'd 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?"

"T mean that, out of a purely kindly intention, you might have suggested something of the kind to her." Len gave a short laugh.

"Think I'd do some damfool thing like that? You're crazy." The Inspector shifted his round.

"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 somethin, 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.