Hickory Dickory Dock - Agatha Christie [67]
“Oh! Good. I’ll be in my room.”
“So long, Pat.”
Hardly a word was spoken during the brief ride to Hickory Road. Sharpe wondered to himself whether this was a break at last. Would Patricia Lane have any definite evidence to offer, or would it be pure surmise on her part? Clearly she had remembered something that had seemed to her important. He supposed that she had been telephoning from the hall, and that therefore she had had to be guarded in her language. At this time in the evening so many people would have been passing through.
Nigel opened the front door at 26 Hickory Road with his key and they passed inside. Through the open door of the common room, Sharpe could see the rumpled red head of Leonard Bateson bent over some books.
Nigel led the way upstairs and along the passage to Pat’s room. He gave a short tap on the door and entered.
“Hallo, Pat. Here we—”
His voice stopped, dying away in a long choking gasp. He stood motionless. Over his shoulder, Sharpe saw also what there was to see.
Patricia Lane lay slumped on the floor.
The inspector pushed Nigel gently aside. He went forward and knelt down by the girl’s huddled body. He raised her head, felt for the pulse, then delicately let the head resume its former position. He rose to his feet, his face grim and set.
“No?” said Nigel, his voice high and unnatural. “No. No. No.”
“Yes, Mr. Chapman. She’s dead.”
“No, no. Not Pat! Dear stupid Pat. How—”
“With this.”
It was a simple, quickly improvised weapon. A marble paperweight slipped into a woollen sock.
“Struck on the back of the head. A very efficacious weapon. If it’s any consolation to you, Mr. Chapman, I don’t think she even knew what happened to her.”
Nigel sat down shakily on the bed. He said:
“That’s one of my socks . . . She was going to mend it . . . Oh, God, she was going to mend it. . . .”
Suddenly he began to cry. He cried like a child—with abandon and without self-consciousness.
Sharpe was continuing his reconstruction.
“It was someone she knew quite well. Someone who picked up a sock and just slipped the paperweight into it. Do you recognise the paperweight, Mr. Chapman?”
He rolled the sock back so as to display it.
Nigel, still weeping, looked.
“Pat always had it on her desk. A Lion of Lucerne.”
He buried his face in his hands.
“Pat—oh, Pat! What shall I do without you!”
Suddenly he sat upright, flinging back his untidy fair hair.
“I’ll kill whoever did this! I’ll kill him! Murdering swine!”
“Gently, Mr. Chapman. Yes, yes, I know how you feel. A brutal piece of work.”
“Pat never harmed anybody. . . .”
Speaking soothingly, Inspector Sharpe got him out of the room. Then he went back himself into the bedroom. He stooped over the dead girl. Very gently he detached something from between her fingers.
II
Geronimo, perspiration running down his forehead, turned frightened dark eyes from one face to the other.
“I see nothing. I hear nothing, I tell you. I do not know anything at all. I am with Maria in kitchen. I put the minestrone on, I grate the cheese—”
Sharpe interrupted the catalogue.
“Nobody’s accusing you. We just want to get some times quite clear. Who was in and out of the house the last hour?”
“I do not know. How should I know?”
“But you can see very clearly from the kitchen window who goes in and out, can’t you?”
“Perhaps, yes.”
“Then just tell us.”
“They come in and out all the time at this hour of the day.”
“Who was in the house from six o’clock until six thirty-five when we arrived?”
“Everybody except Mr. Nigel and Mrs. Hubbard and Miss Hobhouse.”
“When did they go out?”
“Mrs. Hubbard she go out before teatime, she has not come back yet.”
“Go on.”
“Mr. Nigel goes out about half an hour ago, just before six—look very upset. He come back with you just now—”
“That’s right, yes.”
“Miss Valerie, she goes out just at six o’clock. Time signal, pip, pip, pip. Dressed for cocktails, very smart. She still out.”
“And everybody else is here?”
“Yes, sir. All here.”
Sharpe looked down at his notebook.