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"Of course, Mr. Poirot. What can I do for you?"
"I would like, if I may, to have a short conversation with you?"
"Certainly."
"I may come round then, to Hickory Road?"
"Yes. I'll be expecting you. I'll tell Geronimo to bring you up to my room. There's not much privacy
here on a Sunday."
"Thank you, Miss Hobhouse. I am most grateful."
Geronimo opened the door to Poirot with a flourish, then bending forward he spoke with his usual
conspiratorial air.
"I take you up to Miss Valèrie very quietly. Hush sh sh."
Placing his finger on his lips, he led the way upstairs and into a good sized room overlooking Hickory
Road. It was furnished with taste and a reasonable amount of luxury as a bed sitting room.
The divan bed was covered with a worn but beautiful Persian rug, and there was an attractive Queen
Anne walnut bureau which Poirot judged hardly likely to be one of the original furnishings of 26
Hickory Road.
Valèrie Hobhouse was standing ready to greet him. She looked tired, he thought, and there were dark
circles round her eyes.
"Mais vous êtes très bien ici," said Poirot as he greeted her. "It is chic. It has an air."
Valèrie smiled.
"I've been here a good time," she said. "Two and a half years. Nearly three. I've dug myself in more or
less and I've got some of my own things."
"You are not a student, are you, Mademoiselle?"
"Oh no. Purely commercial. I've got a job."
"In a - cosmetic firm, was it?"
"Yes. I'm one of the buyers for Sabrina Fair - it's a Beauty Salon. Actually I have a small share in the
business. We run a certain amount of side-lines besides beauty treatment. Accessories, that type of
thing. Small Parisian novelties. And that's my department."
"You go over then fairly often to Paris and to the Continent?"
"Oh yes, about once a month, sometimes oftener."
"You must forgive me," said Poirot, "If I seem to be displaying curiosity..."
"Why not?" She cut him short. "In the circumstances in which we find ourselves we must all put up
with curiosity. I've answered a good many questions yesterday from Inspector Sharpe. You look as
though you would like an upright chair, Monsieur Poirot, rather than a low armchair."
"You display the perspicacity, Mademoiselle."
Poirot sat down carefully and squarely in a high-backed chair with arms to it.
Valèrie sat down on the divan. She offered him a cigarette and took one herself and lighted it.
He studied her with some attention. She had a nervous, rather haggard elegance that appealed to him
more than mere conventional good looks would have done. An intelligent and attractive young woman,
he thought. He wondered if her nervousness was the result of the recent inquiry or whether it was a
natural component of her manner. He remembered that he had thought much the same about her on the
evening when he had come to supper.
"Inspector Sharpe has been making inquiries of you?" he asked.
"Yes, indeed."
"And you have told him all that you know?"
"Of course."
"I wonder," said Poirot, "if that is true."
She looked at him with an ironic expression.
"Since you did not hear my answers to Inspector Sharpe you can hardly be a judge," she said.
"Ah no. It is merely one of my little ideas. I have them, you know, the little ideas. They are here." He
tapped his head.
It could be noticed that Poirot, as he sometimes did, was deliberately playing the mountebank.
Valèrie, however, did not smile. She looked at him in a straightforward manner. When she spoke it was
with a certain abruptness.
"Shall we come to the point, Mr. Poirot?" she asked. "I really don't know what you're driving at."
"But certainly, Miss Hobhouse."
He took from his pocket a little package.
"You can guess, perhaps, what I have here?"
"I'm not clairvoyant, Mr. Poirot. I can't see through paper and wrappings."
"I have here," said Poirot, "the ring that was stolen from Miss Patricia Lane."
"Patricia's engagement ring? I mean, her mother's engagement ring? But why should you have it?"
"I asked her to lend it to me for a day or two."
Again Valèrie's rather surprised eyebrows mounted her forehead.
"Indeed," she observed.
"I was interested in the ring," said Poirot. "Interested in its disappearance, in its return and in something
else about it. So I asked Miss Lane to lend it to me. She agreed readily. I took it straight away to a
jeweller friend of mine."
"Yes?"
"I asked him to report on the diamond in it. A fairly large stone, if you remember, flanked at either side
by a little cluster of small stones. You remember - Mademoiselle?"
"I think so. I don't really remember it very well."
"But you handled it, didn't you? It was in your soup plate."
"That was how it was returned! Oh yes, I remember that. I nearly swallowed it." Valèrie gave a short
laugh.
"As I say, I took the ring to my jeweller friend and I asked him his opinion on the diamond. Do you
know what his answer was?"
"How could I?"
"His answer was that the stone was not a diamond. It was merely a zircon. A white zircon."
"Oh!" She stared at him. Then she went on, her tone a little uncertain, "D'you mean that - Patricia
thought it was a diamond but it was only a zircon or..."
Poirot was shaking his head.
"No, I do not mean that. It was the engagement ring, so I understand, of this Patricia Lane's mother.
Miss Patricia Lane is a young lady of good family and her people, I should say, certainly before recent
taxation, were in comfortable circumstances. In those circles, Mademoiselle, money is spent upon an
engagement ring. An engagement ring must be a handsome ring, a diamond ring or a ring containing
some other precious stone. I am quite certain that the papa of Miss Lane would not have given her
mamma anything but a valuable engagement ring."
"As to that," said Valèrie, "I couldnt agree with you more. Patricia's father was a small country squire, I
believe."
"Therefore," said Poirot, "it would seem that the stone in the ring must have been replaced with another
stone later."
"I suppose," said Valèrie slowly, "that Pat might have lost the stone out of it, couldn't afford to replace it
with a diamond, and had a zircon put in instead."
"That is possible," said Hercule Poirot, "but I do not think it is what happened."
"Well, Monsieur Poirot, if we're guessing, what do you think happened?"
"I think," said Poirot, "that the ring was taken by Mademoiselle Celia and that the diamond was
deliberately removed and the zircon substituted before the ring was returned."
Valèrie sat up very straight.
"You think Celia stole that diamond deliberately?"
Poirot shook his head.
"No," he said. "I think you stole it, Mademoiselle."
Valèrie Hobhouse caught her breath sharply.
"Well, really!" she exclaimed. "That seems to me pretty thick. You've no earthly evidence of any kind."
"But yes," Poirot interrupted her. "I have evidence. The ring was returned in a plate of soup. Now me, I
dined here one evening. I noticed the way the soup was served. It was served from a tureen on the side
table. Therefore, if anyone found a ring in their soup plate it could only have been placed there either by
the person who was serving the soup (in this case Geronimo) or by the person whose soup plate it was.
You! I do not think it was Geronimo. I think that you staged the return of the ring in the soup that way
because it amused you. You have, if I may make the criticism, rather too humorous a sense of the
dramatic. To hold up the ring! To exclaim! I think you indulged your sense of humour there,
Mademoiselle, and did not realise that you betrayed yourself in so doing."
"Is that all?" Valèrie spoke scornfully.
"Oh, no, it is by no means all. You see, when Celia confessed that evening to having been responsible
for the thefts here, I noticed several small points. For instance, in speaking of this ring she said, 'I didn't [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]