Free Hickory Dickory Dock by Agatha Christie Page B

understand,” he said.
    “No, and I do not understand. The things that were taken -” he shook his head. “They did not make a pattern - they did not make sense. It is like seeing a trail of footprints and they are not all made by the same feet. There is, quite clearly, the print of what you have called 'a silly kid' - but there is more than that. Other things happened that were meant to fit in with the pattern of Celia Austin - but they did not fit in. They were meaningless, apparently purposeless. There was evidence, too, of malice. And Celia was not malicious.”
    “She was a kleptomaniac?”
    “I should very much doubt it.”
    “Just an ordinary petty thief, then?”
    “Not in the way you mean. I give it to you as my opinion that all this pilfering of petty objects was done to attract the attention of a certain young man.”
    “Colin McNabb?”
    “Yes. She was desperately in love with Colin McNabb. Colin never noticed her. Instead of a nice, pretty, well behaved young girl, she displayed herself as an interesting young criminal. The result was successful. Colin McNabb immediately fell for her, as they say, in a big way.”
    “He must be a complete fool, then.”
    “Not at all. He is a keen psychologist.”
    “Oh,” Inspector Sharpe groaned. “One of those! I understand now.”
    A faint grin showed on his face. “Pretty smart of the girl.” “Surprisingly so.”
    Poirot repeated, musingly, “Yes, surprisingly so.”
    Inspector Sharpe looked alert.
    “Meaning by that, Mr. Poirot?”
    “That I wondered - I still wonder - if the idea had been suggested to her by someone else?”
    “For what reason?”
    “How do I know? Altruism? Some ulterior motive? One is in the dark.”
    “Any ideas as to who it might have been who gave her the tip?”
    “No - unless - but -”
    “All the same,” said Sharpe, pondering, “I don't quite get it. If she's been simply trying this kleptomania business on, and it's succeeded, why the hell go and commit suicide?”
    “The answer is that she should not have committed suicide.”
    The two men looked at each other.
    Poirot murmured:
    “You are quite sure that she did?”
    “It's clear as day, Mr. Poirot. There's no reason to believe otherwise and -”
    The door opened and Mrs. Hubbard came in. She looked flushed and triumphant. Her chin stuck out aggressively.
    “I've got it,” she said triumphantly.
    “Good morning, Mr. Poirot. I've got it, Inspector Sharpe. It came to me quite suddenly. Why that suicide note looked wrong, I mean. Celia couldn't possibly have written it.”
    “Why not, Mrs. Hubbard?”
    “Because it's written in ordinary blue black ink. And Celia filled her pen with green ink - that ink over there,” Mrs. Hubbard nodded towards the shelf, “at breakfast-time yesterday morning.”
    Inspector Sharpe, a somewhat different Inspector Sharpe, came back into the room which he had left abruptly after Mrs. Hubbard's statement.
    “Quite right,” he said. “I've checked up. The only pen in the girl's room, the one that was by her bed, has green ink in it. Now that green ink -”
    Mrs. Hubbard held up the nearly empty bottle.
    Then she explained, clearly and concisely, the scene at the breakfast table.
    “I feel sure,” she ended, “that the scrap of paper was torn out of the letter she had written to me yesterday - and which I never opened.”
    “What did she do with it? Can you remember?”
    Mrs. Hubbard shook her head.
    “I left her alone in here and went to do my housekeeping. She must, I think, have left it lying somewhere in here, and forgotten about it.”
    “And somebody found it... and opened it somebody -”
    He broke off.
    “You realize,” he said, “what this means? I haven't been very happy about this torn bit of paper all along. There was quite a pile of lecture notepaper in her room, much more natural to write a suicide note on one of them. This means that somebody saw the possibility of using the opening phrase of her letter to