Agatha Christie - Hickory Dickory Dock

"Look here, Jean, you can't get away with that.

Nigel's attache 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 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 a quite 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 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."

"Oh, hell!" said Valerie.

She left the room. 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."

"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 I did 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!"

"O K., 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 routing 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 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 Sodi Bic bottle and 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 all the point?"

"I felt it was safer there."

"My dear girl, either the morphia should have been under lock and key, or if it wasn't, it couldn't really matter whether it was among my socks or your handkerchiefs."

"Well, it did marter. 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 'Sodi 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, 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 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. 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."

"Nigel, those are my underclothes."