Agatha Christie - Hickory Dickory Dock

"I have helped you, yes?" Mr. Akibombo asked politely.

"Yes, indeed, we're most grateful to you. Don't repeat any of this."

"No, sir. I will be most careful." Mr. Akibombo bowed politely to all and left the room. "Len Bateson," said Mrs. Hubbard in a distressed voice. "Oh! No." Sharpe looked at her. "You don't want it to be Len Bateson?"

"I've got fond of that boy. He's got a temper, I know, but he's always seemed so nice."

"That's been said about a lot of criminals," said Sharpe. Gently he unfolded his little paper packet. Mrs. Hubbard obeyed his gesture and leaned forward to look.

On the wte paper were two red short curly hairs.

"Oh! dear," said Mrs. Hubbard.

"Yes," said Sharpe reflectively. "In my experience a murderer usually makes at least one mistake."

"BUT IT IS BEAUTIFUL, my friend," said Hercule Poirot with admiration. "So clear-so beautifully clear."

"You sound as if you were talking about soup," grumbled the Inspector. "It may be consommé to you, to me there's a good deal of thick mock turtle about it, still."

"Not now. Everything fits in in its appointed place."

"Even these?"

As he had done to Mrs. Hubbard, Inspector Sharpe produced his exhibit of two red hairs.

Poirot's answer was almost in the same words as Sharpe had used.

"Ah-yes," he said. "What do you call it on the radio? The one deliberate mistake." The eyes of the two men met. "No one," said Hercule Poirot, "is as clever as they think they are."

Inspector Sharpe was greatly tempted to say: "Not even Hercule Poirot?" but he restrained himself.

"For the other, my friend, it is all fixed?"

"Yes, the balloon goes up tomorrow."

"You go yourself?"

"No, I'm scheduled to appear at 26 Hickory Road. Cobb will be in charge."

"We will wish him good luck." Gravely, Hercule Poirot raised his glass. It contained créme de menthe.

Inspector Sharpe raised his whisky glass.

"Here's hoping," he said.

"They do think up things, these places," said Sergeant Cobb.

He was looking with grudging admiration at the display window of SABRINA FAIR. Framed and enclosed in an expensive illustration of the glassmaker's art-the "glassy green translucent wave"-Sabrina was displayed recumbent, clad in brief and exquisite panties and happily surrounded with every variety of deliciously packaged cosmetics. Besides the panties she wore various examples of barbaric costume jewelry.

Detective Constable McCrae gave a snort of deep disapproval.

"Blasphemy, I call it. Sabrina Fair, that's Milton, that is."

"Well, Milton isn't the Bible, my lad."

"You'll not deny that Paradise Lost is about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden and all the devils of Hell and if that's not religion, what is?" Sergeant Cobb did not enter on these controversial matters. He marched ishment, the dour constable at his heels. In the shell pink interior of Sabrina Fair the Sergeant and his satellite looked as out of place as the traditional bull in a china shop.

An exquisite creature in delicate salmon pink swam up to them, her feet hardly seeming to touch the floor.

Sergeant Cobb said, "Good morning, Madam," and produced his credentials. The lovely creature withdrew in a flutter. An equally lovely but slightly older creature appeared.

She intum gave way to a superb and resplendent Duchess whose blue-grey hair and smooth cheeks set age and wrinkles at nought. Appraising steel grey eyes met the steady gaze of Sergeant Cobb.

"This is most unusual," said the Duchess severely. "Please come this way." She led him bethrough a square salon with a centre table where magazines and periodicals were heaped carelessly. All round the walls were curtained recesses where glimpses could be obtained of recumbent women supine under the ministrant hands of pink robed priestesses.

The Duchess led the police officers into a small business-like apartment with a big roll top desk, severe chairs, and no softening of the harsh Northern light.

"I am Mrs. Lucas, the proprietress of this establishment," she said. "My partner, Miss Hobhouse, is not here today."

"No, Madam," said Sergeant Cobb, to whom this was no news.

"This search warrant of yours seems to be most highhanded," said Mrs. Lucas. "This is Miss Hobhouse's private office. I sincerely hope that it will not be necessary for you to upset our clients in any way."

"I don't think you need to worry unduly on that score," said Cobb. "What we're after isn't likely to be in the public rooms." He waited politely until she unwillingly withdrew. Then he looked round Valerie Hobhouse's office. The narrow window gave a view of the back premises of other Mayfair firms. The walls were panelled in pale grey and there were two good Persian rugs on the floor. His eyes went from the small wall safe to the big desk.

"Won't be in the safe," said Cobb. "Too obvious." A quarter of an hour later, the safe and the drawers of the desk had yielded up their secrets.

"Looks like it's maybe a mare's nest," said McCrae who was by nature both gloomy and disapproving.

"We're only beginning," said Cobb.

Having emptied the drawers of their contents and arranged the latter neatly in piles, he now proceeded to take the drawers out and turn them upside down.

He uttered an ejaculation of pleasure.

"Here we are, my lad," he said.

Fastened to the underneath side of the bottom drawer with adhesive tape were a half dozen small dark blue books with gilt lettering.

"Passports," said SereaeaIeant Cobb.

"Issued by Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, God bless his trusting heart." McCrae bent over with interest as Cobb opened the passports and compared the affixed photographs.

"Hardly think it was the same woman, would you?" said MacRae.

The passports were those of Mrs. da Silva, Miss Irene French, Mrs. Olga Kohn, Miss Nina Le Mesurier, Mrs. Gladwys Thomas, and Miss Moira O'Neele. They represented a dark young woman whose age varied between twenty-five and forty.

"It's the different hair-do every time that does it," said Cobb. "Pompadour, curls, straight out, page boy bob, etc. She's done something to her nose for Olga Kohn, plumpers in her cheeks for Mrs. Thomas. Here are two more-foreign passports-Madame Mahmoudi, Algerian. Sheila Donovan, Eire. I'll say she's got bank accounts in all these different names."

"Bit complicated, isn't that?"

"It has to be complicated, my lad. Inland Revenue. Always snooping around asking embarrassing questions. It's not so difficult to make money by smuggling goods but it's hell and all to account for money when you've got it! I bet this little gambling club in Mayfair was started by the lady for just that reason. Winning money by gambling is about the only thing an Income Tax Inspector can't cheek up on. A good part of the loot, I should say, is eached around in Algerian and French banks and in Eire. The whole thing's a thoroughly well thought out business-like set-up. And then, one day, she must have had one of the fake passports lying about at Hickory Road and that poor little devil Celia saw it."

"IT WAS A CLEVER IDEA of Miss Hobhouse's," said Inspector Sharpe. His voice was indulgent, almost fatherly.

He shuffled the passports from one hand to the other like a man dealing cards.

"Complicated thing, finance," he said. "We've had a busy time haring round from one Bank to the other. She covered her tracks well-her financial tracks, I mean. I'd say that in a couple of years' time she could have cleared out, gone abroad and lived happily ever after, as they say, on ill-gotten gains. It wasn't a big show-illicit diamonds, sapphires, etc., coming in, stolen stuff going out-and narcotics on the side, as you might say. Thoroughly well organised. She went abroad under her own and under different names, but never too often, and the actual smuggling was always done, unknowingly, by someone else. She had agents abroad who saw to the exchange of rucksacks at the right moment. Yes, it was a clever idea. And we've got Mr. Poirot here to thank for putting us on to it. It was smart of her, too, to suggest that psychological stealing stunt to poor little Miss Austin. You were wise to that almost at once, weren't you, M. Poirot?" Poirot smiled in a deprecating manner and Mrs. Hubbard looked admiringly at him. The conversation was strictly off the record in Mrs. Hubbard's sitting room.