Hickory Dickory Dock - Agatha Christie [73]
“No,” said Poirot, shaking his head. “She did not bribe him.”
“And we’ve the evidence of the chemist at the corner of the road. He knows her quite well and he sticks to it that she came in at five minutes past six and bought face powder and aspirin and used the telephone. She left his shop at quarter past six and took a taxi from the rank outside.”
Poirot sat up in his chair.
“But that,” he said, “is magnificent! It is just what we want!”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“I mean that she actually telephoned from the box at the chemist’s shop.”
Inspector Sharpe looked at him in an exasperated fashion.
“Now, see here, M. Poirot. Let’s take the known facts. At eight minutes past six, Patricia Lane is alive and telephoning to the police station from this room. You agree to that?”
“I do not think she was telephoning from this room.”
“Well then, from the hall downstairs.”
“Not from the hall either.”
Inspector Sharpe sighed.
“I suppose you don’t deny that a call was put through to the police station? You don’t think that I and my sergeant and Police Constable Nye and Nigel Chapman were the victims of mass hallucination?”
“Assuredly not. A call was put through to you. I should say at a guess that it was put through from the public call box at the chemist’s on the corner.”
Inspector Sharpe’s jaw dropped for a moment.
“You mean that Valerie Hobhouse put through that call? That she pretended to speak as Patricia Lane, and that Patricia Lane was already dead.”
“That is what I mean, yes.”
The inspector was silent for a moment, then he brought down his fist with a crash on the table.
“I don’t believe it. The voice—I heard it myself—”
“You heard it, yes. A girl’s voice, breathless, agitated. But you didn’t know Patricia Lane’s voice well enough to say definitely that it was her voice.”
“I didn’t, perhaps. But it was Nigel Chapman who actually took the call. You can’t tell me that Nigel Chapman could be deceived. It isn’t so easy to disguise a voice over the telephone, or to counterfeit somebody else’s voice. Nigel Chapman would have known if it wasn’t Pat’s voice speaking.”
“Yes,” said Poirot. “Nigel Chapman would have known. Nigel Chapman knew quite well that it wasn’t Patricia. Who should know better than he, since he had killed her with a blow on the back of the head only a short while before.”
It was a moment or two before the inspector recovered his voice.
“Nigel Chapman? Nigel Chapman? But when we found her dead—he cried—cried like a child.”
“I dare say,” said Poirot. “I think he was as fond of that girl as he could be of anybody—but that wouldn’t save her—not if she represented a menace to his interests. All along, Nigel Chapman has stood out as the obvious probability. Who had morphia in his possession? Nigel Chapman. Who had the shallow brilliant intellect to plan and the audacity to carry out fraud and murder? Nigel Chapman. Who do we know to be both ruthless and vain? Nigel Chapman. He has all the hallmarks of the killer; the overweening vanity, the spitefulness, the growing recklessness that led him to draw attention to himself in every conceivable way—using the green ink in a stupendous double bluff, and finally overreaching himself by the silly deliberate mistake of putting Len Bateson’s hairs in Patricia’s fingers, oblivious of the fact that as Patricia was struck down from behind, she could not possibly have grasped her assailant by the hair. They are like that, these murderers, carried away by their own egotism, by their admiration of their own cleverness, relying on their charm—for he has charm, this Nigel—he has all the charm of a spoiled child who has never grown up, who never will grow up—who sees only one thing, himself,