Hickory Dickory Dock - Agatha Christie [70]
“Rasputin!”
“You swallowed a teaspoonful of morphia?”
“Naturally, I think it is bicarbonate.”
“Yes, yes, what I can’t understand is why you’re sitting here now!”
“And then, afterwards, I was ill, but really ill. Not just the fullness. Pain, bad pain in my stomach.”
“I can’t make out why you’re not dead!”
“Rasputin,” said Mrs. Hubbard. “They used to give him poison again and again, lots of it, and it didn’t kill him!”
Mr. Akibombo was continuing.
“So then, next day, when I am better, I take the bottle and the tiny bit of powder that is left in it to a chemist and I say please tell me what is this I have taken that has made me feel so bad?”
“Yes?”
“And he says come back later, and when I do, he says, ‘No wonder! This is not the bicarbonate. It is the borasseek. The acid borasseek. You can put it in the eyes, yes, but if you swallow a teaspoonful it makes you ill.’ ”
“Boracic?” The Inspector stared at him stupefied. “But how did boracic get into that bottle? What happened to the morphia?” He groaned. “Of all the haywire cases!”
“And I have been thinking, please,” went on Akibombo.
“You have been thinking,” Sharpe said. “And what have you been thinking?”
“I have been thinking of Miss Celia and how she died and that someone, after she was dead, must have come into her room and left there the empty morphia bottle and the little piece of paper that say she killed herself—”
Akibombo paused and the inspector nodded.
“And so I say—who could have done that? And I think if it is one of the girls it will be easy, but if a man not so easy, because he would have to go downstairs in our house and up the other stairs and someone might wake up and hear him or see him. So I think again, and I say, suppose it is someone in our house, but in the next room to Miss Celia’s—only she is in this house, you understand? Outside his window is a balcony and outside hers is a balcony too, and she will sleep with her window open because that is hygienic practice. So if he is big and strong and athletic he could jump across.”
“The room next to Celia’s in the other house,” said Mrs. Hubbard, “Let me see, that’s Nigel’s and—and. . . .”
“Len Bateson’s,” said the inspector. His finger touched the folded paper in his hand. “Len Bateson.”
“He is very nice, yes, said Mr. Akibombo sadly. “And to me most pleasant, but psychologically one does not know what goes on below top surface. That is so, is it not? That is modern theory. Mr. Chandra Lal very angry when his boracic for the eyes disappears and later, when I ask, he says he has been told that it was taken by Len Bateson. . . .”
“The morphia was taken from Nigel’s drawer and boracic was substituted for it, and when Patricia Lane came along and substituted soda bicarbonate for what she thought was morphia but which was really boracic powder . . . Yes . . . I see. . . .”
“I have helped you, yes?” Mr. Akibombo asked politely.
“Yes, indeed, we’re most grateful to you. Don’t—er—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 white 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.”
Chapter Nineteen
I
“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—but 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