Hickory Dickory Dock - Agatha Christie [50]
“It opens out other possibilities, though.”
“Yes—all that stuff knocking about in a drawer. Silly young ass!”
He went on to Elizabeth Johnston and her account of what Celia had said to her.
“If what she said is true, it’s significant.”
“Very significant,” Poirot agreed.
The inspector quoted:
“ ‘I shall know more about it tomorrow.’ ”
“And so—tomorrow never came for that poor girl. Your search of the house—did it accomplish anything?”
“There were one or two things that were—what shall I say?—unexpected, perhaps.”
“Such as?”
“Elizabeth Johnston is a member of the Communist Party. We found her Party card.”
“Yes,” said Poirot, thoughtfully. “That is interesting.”
“You wouldn’t have expected it,” said Inspector Sharpe. “I didn’t until I questioned her yesterday. She’s got a lot of personality, that girl.”
“I should think she was a valuable recruit to the Party,” said Hercule Poirot. “She is a young woman of quite unusual intelligence, I should say.”
“It was interesting to me,” said Inspector Sharpe, “because she has never paraded those sympathies, apparently. She’s kept very quiet about it at Hickory Road. I don’t see that it has any significance in connection with the case of Celia Austin, I mean—but it’s a thing to bear in mind.”
“What else did you find?”
Inspector Sharpe shrugged his shoulders.
“Miss Patricia Lane, in her drawer, had a handkerchief rather extensively stained with green ink.”
Poirot’s eyebrows rose.
“Green ink? Patricia Lane! So it may have been she who took the ink and spilled it over Elizabeth Johnston’s papers and then wiped her hands afterwards. But surely. . . .”
“Surely she wouldn’t want her dear Nigel to be suspected,” Sharpe finished for him.
“One would not have thought so. Of course, someone else might have put the handkerchief in her drawer.”
“Likely enough.”
“Anything else?”
“Well,” Sharpe reflected for a moment. “It seems Leonard Bateson’s father is in Longwith Vale Mental Hospital, a certified patient. I don’t suppose it’s of any particular interest, but. . . .”
“But Len Bateson’s father is insane. Probably without significance, as you say, but it is a fact to be stored away in the memory. It would even be interesting to know what particular form his mania takes.”
“Bateson’s a nice young fellow,” said Sharpe, “but of course his temper is a bit, well, uncontrolled.”
Poirot nodded. Suddenly, vividly, he remembered Celia Austin saying, “Of course, I wouldn’t cut up a rucksack. Anyway that was only temper.” How did she know it was temper? Had she seen Len Bateson hacking at that rucksack? He came back to the present to hear Sharpe say, with a grin:
“. . . and Mr. Achmed Ali has some extremely pornographic literature and postcards which explains why he went up in the air over the search.”
“There were many protests, no doubt?”
“I should say there were. A French girl practically had hysterics and an Indian, Mr. Chandra Lal, threatened to make an international incident of it. There were a few subversive pamphlets amongst his belongings—the usual half-baked stuff—and one of the West Africans had some rather fearsome souvenirs and fetishes. Yes, a search warrant certainly shows you the peculiar side of human nature. You heard about Mrs. Nicoletis and her private cupboard?”
“Yes, I heard about that.”
Inspector Sharpe grinned.
“Never seen so many empty brandy bottles in my life! And was she mad at us!”
He laughed, and then, abruptly, became serious.
“But we didn’t find what we went after,” he said. “No passports except strictly legitimate ones.”
“You can hardly expect such a thing as a false passport to be left about for you to find, mon ami. You never had occasion, did you, to make an official visit to 26 Hickory Road in connection with a passport? Say, in the last six months?”
“No. I’ll tell you the only occasions