The Bible of Mrs. Hippy

As the inspector was carried back to London in the first available train, he found himself slipping from side to side on the smooth ice of his uncertain mind. Impartially he considered that this sudden return was likely to be as futile as any other attempt he had made at solving the problem of the murder. But, on the other hand, there could not be many rather undersized men in the neighbourhood of London who within the last two months had been intimately connected with Wesleyan Methodism and with death. When Mr. Batesby had spoken that morning it had seemed as if two streams of things — actual events and his own meditations — had flowed gently together; as if not he, but Life were solving the problem in the natural process of the world. He reminded himself now that such a simplicity was unlikely; explanations did not lucidly arise from mere accidents and present themselves as all but an ordered whole. He dimly remembered Mrs. Hippy, the occupant of the house next but two to his own; he remembered that she was an acquaintance of his wife, who had gone with her to certain bazaars, sales of work, and even church services. If she had had a lodger who had disappeared, why hadn’t his wife mentioned it before? It was such a failure on the part of his intimates that the inspector always expected, he told himself, and always found.

His wife was staying with her mother, so the inspector lunched near King’s Cross, and then went on to 227 Thobblehurst Road. Mrs. Hippy came to the door, and appeared delighted to see him. “Why, come in, inspector,” she said. “I thought Mrs. Colquhoun said you were going away.”

“So I did,” the inspector said, following her to the drawing-room, as it was solemnly called, which looked on to the street. “But I had some inquiries to make which brought me back.”

“Really?” Mrs. Hippy said, rather absently. “Inspector, can you think of a fish in two syllables?”

“A fish?” the inspector said vaguely. “Walrus? salmon? mackerel? No, that’s three.”

“It might count as two perhaps,” Mrs. Hippy answered. “Why did the porpoise? Because it saw the mack-reel.”

“Eh?” the inspector said. “What’s the idea exactly?”

Mrs. Hippy, plunging at a number of papers on the chesterfield, produced an effort in bright green and gold, entitled in red Puzzles and Riddles: a Magazine for All. “They’re offering a prize,” she said, “for the best ten questions and answers of that sort. They say it’s one of the best ways, but rather out of date. But I think they’re splendid. Look, I’ve done four. Why does the shoe-lace?”

She paused, got no answer, and said delightedly, “Because the button-holes. The next —”

“Good! Splendid!” the inspector cried. “Splendid, Mrs. Hippy. I suppose they’ll print them all if you win. And you’re sure to. You’d be good at cross-word puzzles. But I won’t disturb you long. I only came to ask if you could tell me anything about a fellow named Pattison you had stopping here,”

“Mr. Pattison?” Mrs. Hippy said, opening her eyes. “Why, do you want to arrest him? I don’t know where he is; he left me a month ago.”

“Where did he go to? Can you tell me that?” Colquhoun asked.

“Canada,” Mrs. Hippy answered. “At least, he said he was going to. But he was a funny creature altogether. Not sociable, if you understand. Dull, heavy, so to speak. I lent him all the old numbers of this”— she waved Puzzles and Riddles, “but he didn’t work out a single one, though I told him the easiest. And he spoilt my Bible, scribbling all over it. My mother’s Bible too — not the one I take to church. But there, it always seems to be like that when you try and help. People don’t deserve it, and that’s a fact.”

“Perhaps you won’t mind helping me, all the same,” the inspector said. “Could I see the Bible? And did you know that he was going to Canada?”

“Not to say know,” Mrs. Hippy said, looking longingly at the competition. “He said he was going; and one morning he wished me good-bye and said he’d send me a postcard. But he never has done.”

Further interrogation made it clear that her knowledge was of the slightest. She sometimes let two rooms, furnished, to a single gentleman, and the late Mr. Pattison, arriving at Victoria one day and seeing the card in her window, had taken them, with solemn assurances of respectability and a month’s rent ............