Hickory Dickory Dock - Agatha Christie [39]
“A stethoscope,” said Inspector Sharpe curiously. “Where did you get a stethoscope?”
Nigel grinned suddenly.
“It was Len Bateson’s,” he said. “I pinched it.”
“From this house?”
“Yes.”
“So that explains the theft of the stethoscope. That was not Celia’s doing.”
“Good lord no! Can’t see a kleptomaniac stealing a stethoscope, can you?”
“What did you do with it afterwards?”
“Well, I had to pawn it,” said Nigel apologetically.
“Wasn’t that a little hard on Bateson?”
“Very hard on him. But without explaining my methods, which I didn’t mean to do, I couldn’t tell him about it. However,” added Nigel cheerfully, “I took him out not long after and gave him a hell of a party one evening.”
“You’re a very irresponsible young man,” said Inspector Sharpe.
“You should have seen their faces,” said Nigel, his grin widening, “when I threw down those three lethal preparations on the table and told them I had managed to pinch them without anybody being wise as to who took them.”
“What you’re telling me is,” said the inspector, “that you had three means of poisoning someone by three different poisons and that in each case the poison could not have been traced to you.”
Nigel nodded.
“That’s fair enough,” he said. “And given the circumstances it’s not a very pleasant thing to admit. But the point is, that the poisons were all disposed of at least a fortnight ago or longer.”
“That is what you think, Mr. Chapman, but it may not really be so.”
Nigel stared at him.
“What do you mean?”
“You had these things in your possession, how long?”
Nigel considered.
“Well, the tube of hyoscine about ten days, I suppose. The morphine tartrate, about four days. The tincture digitalin I’d only got that very afternoon.”
“And where did you keep these things—the hyoscine hydrobromide and the morphine tartrate, that is to say?”
“In the drawer of my chest of drawers, pushed to the back under my socks.”
“Did anyone know you had it there?”
“No. No, I’m sure they didn’t.”
There had been, however, a faint hesitation in his voice which Inspector Sharpe noticed, but for the moment he did not press the point.
“Did you tell anyone what you were doing? Your methods? The way you were going about these things?”
“No. At least—no, I didn’t.”
“You said ‘at least,’ Mr. Chapman.”
“Well, I didn’t actually. As a matter of fact, I was going to tell Pat, then I thought she wouldn’t approve. She’s very strict, Pat is, so I fobbed her off.”
“You didn’t tell her about stealing the stuff from the doctor’s car, or the prescription, or the morphia from the hospital?”
“Actually, I told her afterwards about the digitalin; that I’d written a prescription and got a bottle from the chemist, and about masquerading as a doctor at the hospital. I’m sorry to say Pat wasn’t amused. I didn’t tell her about pinching things from a car. I thought she’d go up in smoke.”
“Did you tell her you were going to destroy this stuff after you’d won the bet?”
“Yes. She was all worried and het up about it. Started to insist I took the things back or something like that.”
“That course of action never occurred to you yourself?”
“Good lord no! That would have been fatal; it would have landed me in no end of a row. No, we three just chucked the stuff on the fire and poured it down the loo and that was that. No harm done.”
“You say that, Mr. Chapman, but it’s quite possible that harm was done.”
“How can it have been, if the stuff was chucked away as I tell you?”
“Has it ever occurred to you, Mr. Chapman, that someone might have seen where you put those things, or found them perhaps, and that someone might have emptied morphia out of the bottle and