Hickory Dickory Dock - Agatha Christie [23]
“Well, frankly no.” Poirot looked inquiring. “In fact, she’s very distressed. One of the students has committed suicide.”
Poirot stared at her. He muttered something softly under his breath.
“I beg your pardon, M. Poirot?”
“What is the name of the student?”
“A girl called Celia Austin.”
“How?”
“They think she took morphia.”
“Could it have been an accident?”
“Oh no. She left a note, it seems.”
Poirot said softly, “It was not this I expected, no, it was not this . . . and yet it is true, I expected something.”
He looked up to find Miss Lemon at attention, waiting with pencil poised above her pad. He sighed and shook his head.
“No, I will hand you here this morning’s mail. File them, please, and answer what you can. Me, I shall go round to Hickory Road.”
Geronimo let Poirot in, and recognising him as the honoured guest of two nights before, became at once voluble in a sibilant conspiratorial whisper.
“Ah, signor, it is you. We have here the trouble—the big trouble. The little signorina, she is dead in her bed this morning. First the doctor come. He shake his head. Now comes an inspector of the police. He is upstairs with the signora and the padrona. Why should she wish to kill herself, the poverina? When last night is so gay and the betrothment is made?”
“Betrothment?”
“Si, si. To Mr. Colin—you know—big, dark, always smoke the pipe.”
“I know.”
Geronimo opened the door of the common room and introduced Poirot into it with a redoublement of the conspiratorial manner.
“You stay here, yes? Presently, when the police go, I tell the signora you are here. That is good, yes?”
Poirot said that it was good and Geronimo withdrew. Left to himself, Poirot, who had no scruples of delicacy, made as minute an examination as possible of everything in the room with special attention to everything belonging to the students. His rewards were mediocre. The students kept most of their belongings and personal papers in their bedrooms.
Upstairs, Mrs. Hubbard was sitting facing Inspector Sharpe, who was asking questions in a soft apologetic voice. He was a big comfortable looking man with a deceptively mild manner.
“It’s very awkward and distressing for you, I know,” he said soothingly. “But you see, as Dr. Coles has already told you, there will have to be an inquest, and we have just to get the picture right, so to speak. Now this girl had been distressed and unhappy lately, you say?”
“Yes.”
“Love affair?”
“Not exactly.” Mrs. Hubbard hesitated.
“You’d better tell me, you know,” said Inspector Sharpe, persuasively. “As I say, we’ve got to get the picture. There was a reason, or she thought there was, for taking her own life? Any possibility that she might have been pregnant?”
“It wasn’t that kind of thing at all. I hesitated, Inspector Sharpe, simply because the child had done some very foolish things and I hoped it wouldn’t be necessary to bring them out in the open.”
Inspector Sharpe coughed.
“We have a good deal of discretion, and the coroner is a man of wide experience. But we have to know.”
“Yes, of course. I was being foolish. The truth is that for some time past, three months or more, things have been disappearing—small things, I mean—nothing very important.”
“Trinkets, you mean, finery, nylon stockings and all that? Money, too?”
“No money as far as I know.”
“Ah. And this girl was responsible?”
“Yes.”
“You’d caught her at it?”
“Not exactly. The night before last a—er—a friend of mine came to dine. A M. Hercule Poirot—I don’t know if you know the name.”
Inspector Sharpe had looked up from his notebook. His eyes had opened rather wide. It happened that he did know that name.
“M. Hercule Poirot?” he said. “Indeed? Now that’s very interesting.”
“He gave us a little talk after dinner and the subject of these thefts came up. He advised me, in front of them all, to go to the police.”
“He did, did he?”
“Afterwards, Celia came along to my room and owned up. She was very distressed.”
“Any question of prosecution?”
“No. She was going to make good the losses, and everyone was very nice to her about it.