Akibombo

In the novel Hickory Dickory Dock, Akibombo is a West African student resident at Hickory Road. His course of study is not stated but he apparently attends lessons at an "Institute" which Sally Finch also goes to. It is also likely to be near Regent's Park, as in one passage, she and Akibombo have a lunch break there. Akibombo has rather limited English but he does contribute an important lead to the investigation into the killing of Celia Austin. He told Inspector Sharpe that he had stomach trouble and a fellow resident Elizabeth Johnston offered to get some bicarbonate of soda--she knew Patricia Lane had one such bottle and wouldn't mind her borrowing it. However Akibombo felt ill after taking the powder. He later took the powder to a chemist who told him it was boracic powder and not bicarbonate of soda.

To Sharpe this was significant, because he already knew that Patricia Lane had found a bottle of morphine tartrate in Nigel Chapman's drawer (he had got it as part of a wager). Feeling that this was unsafe, Patricia had switched the morphine for bicarbonate of soda. She put her bottle of bicarbonate, now containing morphine so she thought, into a drawer in her own room. Akibombo's experience showed that when Patricia did the switch, someone else had already taken the morphine from the morphine bottle and replaced it with boracic. This boracic then went into Patricia's bicarbonate bottle and this was what Akibombo had taken. Therefore someone else still have the morphine.

With regards to the fact that an empty bottle of morphine and a suicide note which had been found in Celia's bedroom, Akibombo told the inspector that he thought someone else must have crept into her room and planted it. Celia's room had a balcony and so did the rooms next to her. He suggested that someone athletic could have jumped across from the next balcony and entered her room through the window which she always kept open.

Among the students, Akibombo got on well with Sally Finch. She later complimented him on his clear thinking and he asked her to put in a good word for him with his professor who always thought that his thinking was very muddled. Sally agreed to do so. She also invited him to be the best man when she got married to Len Bateson.

Akibombo is not featured in any of the film adaptations of the novel.