Agatha Christie - Hickory Dickory Dock

"Really, Pat, you can't go all prudish on me at this stage. Down among the panties is just where you would hide a bottle, now, isn't it?"

"Yes, but I'm sure I-"

"We cant be sure of anything until we've looked everywhere. And I'm jolly well going to do it." There was a perfunctory tap on the door and Sally Finch entered. Her eyes widened with surprise. Pat, clasping a handful of Nigel's socks, was sitting on the bed, and Nigel, the bureau drawers all pulled out, was burrowing like an excited terrier into a heap of pullovers whilst about him were strewn panties, brassiandres, stockings and other component parts of female attire.

"For land's sake," said Sally, "what goes on?"

"Looking for bicarbonate," said Nigel briefly.

"Bicarbonate? Why?"

"I've got a pain," said Nigel grinning.

"A pain in my turn-turn-turn-and nothing but bicarbonate will assuage it."

"I've got some somewhere, I believe."

"No good, Sally, it's got to be Pat's.

Hers is the only brand that will ease my particular ailment."

"You're crazy," said Sally. "What's he up to, Pat?" Patricia shook her head miserably.

"You haven't seen my Sodi Bic, have you, Sally?" she asked. "Just a little in the bottom of the bottle."

"No." Sally looked at her curiously. Then she frowned. "Let me see. Somebody around here-no, I can't remember- Have you got a stamp, Pat? I have to mail a letter and I've run out."

"In the drawer there." Sally opened the shallow drawer of the writing table, took out a book of stamps, extracted one, affixed it to the letter she held in her hand, dropped the stamp book back in the drawer, and put two pence halfpenny on the desk.

"Thanks. Shall I mail this letter of yours at the same time?"

"Yes-no- No, I think I'll wait." Sally nodded and left the room. Pat dropped the socks she had been holding, and twisted her fingers nervously together.

"Nigel?"

"Yes?" Nigel had transferred his attention to the wardrobe and was looking in the pockets of a coat.

"There's something else I've got to confess."

"Good Lord, Pat, what else have you been doing?"

"I'm afraid you'll be angry."

"I'm past being angry. I'm just plain scared. If Celia was poisoned with the stuff that I pinched, I shall probably go to prison for years and years, even if they don't hang me."

"It's nothing to do with that. It's about your father."

"What?" Nigel spun around, an expression of incredulous astonishment on his face.

"You do know he's very ill, don't you?"

"I don't care how ill he is."

"It said so on the wireless last night. 'Sir Arthur Stanley, the famous research chemist, is lying in a very critical condition.'"

"So nice to be a V I P. All the world gets the news when you're ill."

"Nigel, if he's dying, you ought to be reconciled to him."

"Like hell, I will!"

"But if he's dying."

"He's the same swine dying as he was when he was in the pink of condition."

"You mustn't be like that, Nigel. So bitter and unforgiving."

"Listen, Pat-I told you once: he killed my mother."

"I know you said so, and I know you adored her. But I do think, Nigel, that you sometimes exaggerate.

Lots of husbands are unkind and unfeeling and their wives resent it and it makes them very unhappy. But to say your father killed your mother is an extravagant statement and isn't really true."

"You know so much about it, don't you?"

"I know that some day you'll regret not having made it up with your father before he died. That's why-" Pat paused and braced herself. "That's why I've written to your father-telling him-"

"You've written to him? is that the letter Sally wanted to post?" He strode ovet to the writing table. "I see." He picked up the letter lying addressed and stamped, and with quick nervous fingers, he tore it into small pieces and threw it into the waste paper basket.

"That's that! And don't you dare do anything of that kind again."

"Really, Nigel, you are absolutely childish. You can tear the letter up, but you can't stop me writing another, and I shall."

"You're so incurably sentimental. Did it never occur to you that when I said my father killed my mother, I was stating just a plain unvarnished fact? My mother died of an overdose of veronal. Took it by mistake, they said at the inquest. But she didn't take it by mistake. It was given to her, deliberately, by my father. He wanted to marry another woman, you see, and my mother wouldn't give him a divorce. It's a plain sordid murder story. What would you have done in my place?

Denounced him to the police? My mother wouldn't have wanted that… So I did the only thing I could do told the swine I knew-and cleared out-for ever. I even changed my name."

"Nigel-I'm sorry… I never dreamed..

"Well, you know now… The respected and famous Arthur Stanley with his researches and his antibiotics. Flourishing like the green bay tree? But his fancy piece didn't marry him after an. She sheered off. I think she guessed what he'd done-"

"Nigel, dear, how awful-I am sorry…"

"All right. We won't talk of it again.

Let's get back to this blasted bicarbonate business. Now think back carefully to exactly what you did with the stuff- Put your head in your hands and think, Pat." Genevieve entered the Common Room in a state of great excitement. She spoke to the assembled students in a low thrilled voice.

"I am sure now, but absolutely sure I know who killed the little Celia."

"Who was it, Genevieve?" demanded René.

"What has arrived to make you so positive?" Genevieve looked cautiously round to make sure the door of the Common Room was closed. She lowered her voice.

"It is Nigel Chapman."

"Nigel Chapman, but why?"

"Listen. I pass along the corridor to go down the stairs just now and I hear voices in Patricia's room. It is Nigel who speaks."

"Nigel? In Patricia's room?" Jean spoke in a disapproving voice. But Genevieve swept on.

"And he is saying to her that his father killed his mother, and that, pour Va, he has changed his name. So it is clear, is it not? His father was a convicted murderer, and Nigel he has the hereditary taint..."

"It is possible," said Mr. Chandra Lal, dwelling pleasurably on the possibility. "It is certainly possible. He is so violent, Nigel, so unbalanced. No self control. You agree?" He turned condescendingly to Akibombo who nodded an enthusiastic black woolly head and showed his white teeth in a pleased smile.

"I've always felt very strongly," said Jean, "that Nigel has no moral sense… A thoroughly degenerate character."

"It is sex murder, yes," said Mr. Ahmed Ali. "He sleeps with this girl, then he kills her. Because she is nice girl, respectable, she will expect marriage.

"Rot," said Leonard Bateson explosively.

"What did you say?"

"I said ROT!" roared Len.

SEATED IN A ROOM at the police station, Nigel looked nervously into the stern eyes of Inspector Sharpe. Stammering slightly, he had just brought his narrative to a close.

"You realize, Mr. Chapman, that what you have just told us is very serious? Very serious indeed."

"Of course I realise it. I wouldn't have come here to tell you about it unless I'd felt that it was urgent."

"And you say Miss Lane can't remember exactly when she last saw this bicarbonate bottle containing morphine?"

"She's got herself all muddled up. The more she tries to think the more uncertain she gets. She said I flustered her. She's trying to think it out quietly while I came round to you."

"We'd better go round to Hickory Road right away." As the Inspector spoke the telephone on the table rang and the constable who had been taking notes of Nigel's story, stretched out his hand and lifted the receiver.

"It's Miss Lane now," he said as he listened. "Wanting to speak to Mr. Chapman." Nigel leaned across the table and took the receiver from him. "Pat? Nigel here." The girl's voice came, breathless, eager, the words tumbling over each other.