The Floating Admiral - Agatha Christie [80]
“Mind you, Jennie, I don’t say as you’re wrong in thinking that she packed it up that morning and took it to London with her,” he said. “But there’s a possibility that she rolled it up small and stuffed it away in some hole or corner, and if so be as we could find it, I’ll eat my helmet if we don’t find it marked in some way or another that would be a useful clue. It might even be blood-stained.”
“It might truly,” said Jennie in thoughtful agreement.
They found several holes and corners in which the frock might have been hidden; but they did not find the frock.
Then on Monday afternoon as they were finishing their tea (and it was just about the time that Inspector Rudge was reporting at Whynmouth police station) Mrs. Emery said: “There’s one thing, Dick, as you might have a look at before you go, and that’s the basin in the bathroom. Miss Elma complained, when she came back, that the water ran out of it very slowly and now it’s quite choked up and it won’t run out of it at all. It’s a job for a plumber, I know; but you might be able to do something with it.”
“Well, that’s easy, Aunt,” said Hempstead with manly confidence. “It’s just a matter of clearing out the trap.”
He finished his tea—he was always rather longer about it than his uncle and the two women—and having gathered the tools he wanted from the house tool-box, he and Jennie went up to the bathroom, and he got to work. It was an easy job, for, after he had taken up the linoleum, he found the board in the floor above the trap loose, to enable the inevitable plumber to get at the trap easily. He unscrewed the nuts and lifted the cover off the trap. The trap was choked with hair, and he began to pull it out. He was struck by its coarseness and paused to examine it.
Then he said: “This is rum. If I hadn’t seen the beard on the Admiral’s chin, I should have said as he’d shaved it off.”
“It is like the Admiral’s beard,” said Jennie. “Only it’s not so grey.”
Hempstead picked the rest of the beard out of the trap carefully and put it in the little enamel basin he had brought up with him to hold the debris that was choking the trap, with a very thoughtful air.
Then he said: “Aunt said that Mrs. Holland complained of how slowly the water ran out of the basin when she came back from London after getting married. I don’t suppose anybody had used that basin between then and the morning after the Admiral was murdered.”
“I don’t suppose they did,” said Jennie.
“So, if anyone was shaving off his beard—” said Hempstead thoughtfully and stopped short.
He had said enough. It was no good talking about things. Besides, he wanted to think it out.
“I shouldn’t say anything about this, not even to my aunt or uncle,” he said. “It may be important.”
“Of course not,” said Jennie. “And certainly not to your aunt. It would be all over the place before night.”
“And you might find me a piece of thick brown paper. I can’t dry this hair in front of the kitchen fire ’cos my aunt would see it.”
“Of course you can’t,” said Jennie, and she went in search of brown paper.
Presently she came back with it. Hempstead squeezed the water out of the shaved-off hairs and wrapped them in the brown paper and put the little packet in his pocket. They went down to the kitchen.
“I suppose nobody used that basin between Mrs. Holland’s going away to get married and coming back, Aunt?” he said.
“Nobody that I know of,” said Mrs. Emery.
“Well, I’ve cleaned out that trap for you, and the water’s running quite free again,” he said and took his leave of them.
He went away thoughtful, thinking it out, in search of Inspector Rudge.
He found him just outside the Vicarage gates, displayed his find and told him where he had come across it.
“It is,” said the Inspector, “a rum go—in the trap of the bathroom basin at Rundel Croft? Well, well.”
His eyes brightened as he began to perceive the implications of the discovery.