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‘Of course, Elizabeth.’
Mrs Hubbard was rather surprised. Elizabeth Johnston was a girl from the West Indies who was studying law. She was a hard worker, ambitious, who kept very much to herself. She had always seemed particularly well balanced and competent, and Mrs Hubbard had always regarded her as one of the most satisfactory students in the hostel.
She was perfectly controlled now, but Mrs Hubbard caught the slight tremor in her voice although the dark features were quite impassive.
‘Is something the matter?’
‘Yes. Will you come with me to my room, please?’
‘Just a moment.’ Mrs Hubbard threw off her coat and gloves and then followed the girl out of the room and up the next flight of stairs. The girl had a room on the top floor. She opened the door and went across to a table near the window.
‘Here are the notes of my work,’ she said. ‘This represents several months of hard study. You see what has been done?’
Mrs Hubbard caught her breath with a slight gasp.
Ink had been spilled on the table. It had run all over the papers, soaking them through. Mrs Hubbard touched it with her fingertip. It was still wet.
She said, knowing the question to be foolish as she asked it:
‘You didn’t spill the ink yourself?’
‘No. It was done whilst I was out.’
‘Mrs Biggs, do you think—’
Mrs Biggs was the cleaning woman who looked after the top-floor bedrooms.
‘It was not Mrs Biggs. It was not even my own ink. That is here on the shelf by my bed. It has not been touched. It was done by someone who brought ink here and did it deliberately.’
Mrs Hubbard was shocked.
‘What a very wicked—and cruel thing to do.’
‘Yes, it is a bad thing.’
The girl spoke quietly, but Mrs Hubbard did not make the mistake of underrating her feelings.
‘Well, Elizabeth, I hardly know what to say. I am shocked, badly shocked, and I shall do my utmost to find out who did this wicked malicious thing. You’ve no ideas yourself as to that?’
The girl replied at once.
‘This is green ink, you saw that.’
‘Yes, I noticed that.’
‘It is not very common, this green ink. I know one person here who uses it. Nigel Chapman.’
‘Nigel? Do you think Nigel would do a thing like that?’
‘I should not have thought so—no. But he writes his letters and his notes with green ink.’
‘I shall have to ask a lot of questions. I’m very sorry, Elizabeth, that such a thing should happen in this house and I can only tell you that I shall do my best to get to the bottom of it.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Hubbard. There have been—other things, have there not?’
‘Yes—er—yes.’
Mrs Hubbard left the room and started towards the stairs. But she stopped suddenly before proceeding down and instead went along the passage to a door at the end of the corridor. She knocked and the voice of Miss Sally Finch bade her enter.
The room was a pleasant one and Sally Finch herself, a cheerful redhead, was a pleasant person.
She was writing on a pad and looked up with a bulging cheek. She held out an open box of sweets and said indistinctly:
‘Candy from home. Have some.’
‘Thank you, Sally. Not just now. I’m rather upset.’ She paused. ‘Have you heard what’s happened to Elizabeth Johnston?’
‘What’s happened to Black Bess?’
The nickname was an affectionate one and had been accepted as such by the girl herself.
Mrs Hubbard described what had happened. Sally showed every sign of sympathetic anger.
‘I’ll say that’s a mean thing to do. I wouldn’t believe anyone would do a thing like that to our Bess. Everybody likes her. She’s quiet and doesn’t get around much, or join in, but I’m sure there’s no one who dislikes her.’
‘That’s what I should have said.’
‘Well, it’s all of a piece, isn’t it, with the other things? That’s why—’
‘That’s why what?’ Mrs Hubbard asked as the girl stopped abruptly.
Sally said slowly:
‘That’s why I’m getting out of here. Did Mrs Nick tell you?’
‘Yes. She was very upset about it. Seemed to think you hadn’t given her the real reason.’
‘Well, I didn’t. No point in making her go up in smoke. You know what she’s like. But that’s the reason, right enough. I just don’t like what’s going on here. It was odd losing my shoe, and then Valerie’s scarf being all cut to bits and Len’s rucksack…it wasn’t so much things being pinched—after all, that may happen any time—it’s not nice but it’s roughly normal—but this other isn’t.’ She paused for a moment, smiling, and then suddenly grinned. ‘Akibombo’s scared,’ she said. ‘He’s always very superior and civilised—but there’s a good old West African belief in magic very close to the surface.’
‘Tchah!’ said Mrs Hubbard crossly. ‘I’ve no patience with superstitious nonsense. Just some ordinary human being making a nuisance of themselves. That’s all there is to it.’
Sally’s mouth curved up in a wide cat-like grin.
‘The emphasis,’ she said, ‘is on ordinary. I’ve a sort of feeling that there’s a person in this house who isn’t ordinary!’
Mrs Hubbard went on down the stairs. She turned into the students’ common-room on the ground floor. There were four people in the room. Valerie Hobhouse, prone on a sofa with her narrow, elegant feet stuck up over the arm of it; Nigel Chapman sitting at a table with a heavy book open in front of him; Patricia Lane leaning against the mantelpiece, and a girl in a mackintosh who had just come in and who was pulling off a woolly cap as Mrs Hubbard entered. She was a stocky, fair girl with brown eyes set wide apart and a mouth that was usually just a little open so that she seemed perpetually startled.
Valerie, removing a cigarette from her mouth, said in a lazy, drawling voice:
‘Hallo, Ma, have you administered soothing syrup to the old devil, our revered proprietress?’
Patricia Lane said:
‘Has she been on the warpath?’
‘And how!’ said Valerie and chuckled.
‘Something very unpleasant has happened,’ said Mrs Hubbard. ‘Nigel, I want you to help me.’
‘Me, ma’am?’ Nigel looked at her and shut his book. His thin, malicious face was suddenly illuminated by a mischievous but surprisingly sweet smile. ‘What have I done?’
‘Nothing, I hope,’ said Mrs Hubbard. ‘But ink has been deliberately and maliciously spilt all over Elizabeth Johnston’s notes, and it’s green ink. You write with green ink, Nigel.’
He stared at her, his smile disappearing.
‘Yes, I use green ink.’
‘Horrid stuff,’ said Patricia. ‘I wish you wouldn’t, Nigel. I’ve always told you I think it’s horribly affected of you.’
‘I like being affected,’ said Nigel. ‘Lilac ink would be even better, I think. I must try and get some. But are you serious, Mum? About the sabotage, I mean?’
‘Yes, I am serious. Was it your doing, Nigel?’
‘No, of course not. I like annoying people, as you know, but I’d never do a filthy trick like that—and certainly not to Black Bess who minds her own business in a way that’s an example to some people I could mention. Where is that ink of mine? I filled my pen yesterday evening, I remember. I usually keep it on the shelf over there.’ He sprang up and went across the room. ‘Here it is.’ He picked the bottle up, then whistled. ‘You’re right. The bottle’s nearly empty. It should be practically full.’
The girl in the mackintosh gave a little gasp.
‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Oh dear, I don’t like it—’
Nigel wheeled at her accusingly.
‘Have you got an alibi, Celia?’ he said menacingly.
The girl gave a gasp.
‘I didn’t do it. I really didn’t do it. Anyway, I’ve been at the hospital all day. I couldn’t—’
‘Now, Nigel,’ said Mrs Hubbard. ‘Don’t tease Celia.’
Patricia Lane said angrily:
‘I don’t see why Nigel should be suspected. Just because his ink was taken—’
Valerie said cattishly:
‘That’s right, darling, defend your young.’
‘But it’s so unfair—’
‘But really I didn’t have anything to do with it,’ Celia protested earnestly.
‘Nobody thinks you did, infant,’ said Valerie impatiently. ‘All the same, you know,’ her eyes met Mrs Hubbard’s and exchanged a glance, ‘all this is getting beyond a joke. Something will have to be done about it.’
‘Something is going to be done,’ said Mrs Hubbard grimly.
CHAPTER 4 (#u049153c2-9d25-5af5-96cf-92a90a6e46b3)
‘Here you are, M. Poirot.’
Miss Lemon laid a small brown paper parcel before Poirot. He removed the paper and looked appraisingly at a well-cut silver evening shoe.
‘It was at Baker Street just as you said.’
‘That has saved us trouble,’ said Poirot. ‘Also it confirms my ideas.’
‘Quite,’ said Miss Lemon, who was sublimely incurious by nature.
She was, however, susceptible to the claims of family affection. She said:
‘If it is not troubling you too much, M. Poirot, I received a letter from my sister. There have been some new developments.’
‘You permit that I read it?’
She handed it to him and, after reading it, he directed Miss Lemon to get her sister on the telephone. Presently Miss Lemon indicated that the connection had been obtained. Poirot took the receiver.
‘Mrs Hubbard?’
‘Oh yes, M. Poirot. So kind of you to ring me up so promptly. I was really very—’
Poirot interrupted her.
‘Where are you speaking from?’
‘Why—from 26 Hickory Road, of course. Oh I see what you mean. I am in my own sitting-room.’
‘There is an extension?’
‘This is the extension. The main phone is downstairs in the hall.’
‘Who is in the house who might listen in?’
‘All the students are out at this time of day. The cook is out marketing. Geronimo, her husband, understands very little English. There is a cleaning woman, but she is deaf and I’m quite sure wouldn’t bother to listen in.’
‘Very good, then. I can speak freely. Do you occasionally have lectures in the evening, or films? Entertainments of some kind?’
‘We do have lectures occasionally. Miss Baltrout, the explorer, came not long ago, with her coloured transparencies. And we had an appeal for Far Eastern Missions, though I am afraid that quite a lot of the students went out that night.’
‘Ah. Then this evening you will have prevailed on M. Hercule Poirot, the employer of your sister, to come and discourse to your students on the more interesting of his cases.’
