“I suppose that’s because she’d taken to drinking on the quiet-they found a lot of bottles and things in her room, didn’t they?” :, Yes,” Mrs. Hubbard hesitated, then burst out, ‘I do blame myself-letting her go off home alone last ni lit-she was afraid of something, you know.” “Afraid?” Poirot and Valerie said it in unison.
Mrs. Hubbard nodded unhappily.
Her mild round face was troubled.
“Yes. She kept saying she wasn’t safe.
I asked her to tell me what she was afraid of-and she snubbed me. And one never knew with her, of course, how much was exaggeration-But now-I wonder-was Valerie said, “You don’t think that she-that she, too-that she was-was She broke off with a look of horror in her eyes.
Poirot asked, “What did they say was the cause of death?” Mrs. Hubbard said unhappily, “They-they didn’t say- There’s to be an inquest comon Tuesday-was IN A QUIET ROOM at New Scotland Yard, four men were sitting round a table.
Presiding over the conference was Superintendent Wilding of the Narcotics squad. Next to him was Sergeant Bell, a young man of great energy and optimiswho looked rather like an eager greyhound.
Leaning back in his chair, quiet and alert, was Inspector Sharpe. The fourth man was Hercule Poirot. On the table was a rucksack.
Superintendent Wilding stroked his chin thoughtfully.
“It’s an interesting idea, Mr. Poirot,” he said cautiously. “Yes, it’s an interesting idea.” “It is, as I say, simply an idea,” said Poirot.
Wilding nodded.
“We’ve outlined the general position,” he said.
“Smuggling goes on all the time, of course, in one form or another. We clear up one lot of operators and after a due interval things start again somewhere else. Speaking for my own branch, there’s been a good lot of the stuff coming into this country in the last year and a half. Heroin mostly-a fair amount of coke. There are various depots dotted here and there on the continent. The French police have got a lead or two as to how it comes into France-they’re less certain how it goes out again.” “Would I be right in saying,” Poirot asked, “that your problem could be divided roughly under three heads.
There is the problem of distribution, there is the problem of how the consi innents enter the country, and there is the problem of who really runs the business and takes the main profits?” “Roughly I’d say that’s quite right. We know a fair amount about the small distributors and how the stuff is distributed. Some of the distributors we pull in, some we leave alone hoping that they may lead us to the big fish. It’s distributed in a lot of different ways, night clubs, pubs, drugstores, an odd doctor or so, fashionable women’s dressmakers and hairdressers. It’s handed over on race courses, and in antique dealers”, sometimes in a crowded multiple store.
But I needn’t tell you all this. It’s not that side of it that’s important. We can keep pace with all that fairly well. And we’ve got certain very shrewd suspicions as to what I’ve called the big fish.
One or two very respectable wealthy gentlemen against whom there’s never a breath of suspicion. Very careful they are; they never handle the stuff themselves, and the little fry don’t even know who they are. But every now and again, one of them makes a slip-and then-we get him.” “That is all very much as I supposed. The line in which I am interested is the second line-how do the consignments come into the country?” “Ah. We’re an island. The most usual way is the good old fashioned way of the sea. Running a cargo. Quiet landing somewhere on the East coast, or a little cove down South, by a motor boat that’s slipped quietly across the Channel. That succeeds for a bit but sooner or later we get a line on the particular fellow who owns the boat and once he’s under suspicion his opportunity’s gone. Once or twice lately the stuff’s come in on one of the air liners. There’s big money offered, and occasionally one of the stewards or one of the crew proves to be only too human. And then there are the commercial importers. Respectable firms that import grand pianos or what have you!