Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2014

Copyright © Agatha Christie® Poirot® The Monogram Murders™

Copyright © Agatha Christie Limited 2014

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Sophie Hannah asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780007547425

Ebook Edition © September 2014 ISBN: 9780007547432

Version: 2020-07-28

Dedication

For Agatha Christie

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

1. Runaway Jennie

2. Murder in Three Rooms

3. At the Bloxham Hotel

4. The Frame Widens

5. Ask a Hundred People

6. The Sherry Conundrum

7. Two Keys

8. Assembling Our Thoughts

9. A Visit to Great Holling

10. Slander’s Mark

11. Two Recollections

12. A Grievous Wound

13. Nancy Ducane

14. The Mind in the Mirror

15. The Fourth Cufflink

16. A Lie for a Lie

17. The Older Woman and the Younger Man

18. Knock and See Who Comes to the Door

19. The Truth at Last

20. How It All Went Wrong

21. All the Devils Are Here

22. The Monogram Murders

23. The Real Ida Gransbury

24. The Blue Jug and Bowl

25. If Murder Began With a D

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Read on for the first chapter of Sophie Hannah’s new book, The Killings at Kingfisher Hill

Also by Sophie Hannah

The Agatha Christie Collection

About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1
Runaway Jennie

‘All’s I’m saying is, I don’t like her,’ the waitress with the flyaway hair whispered. It was a loud whisper, easily overheard by the solitary customer in Pleasant’s Coffee House. He wondered whether the ‘her’ under discussion on this occasion was another waitress or a regular patron like himself.

‘I don’t have to like her, do I? You want to think different, you feel free.’

‘I thought she was nice enough,’ said the shorter waitress with the round face, sounding less certain than she had a few moments ago.

‘That’s how she is when her pride’s taken a knock. Soon as she perks up, her tongue’ll start dripping poison again. It’s the wrong way round. I’ve known plenty of her sort—never trust ’em.’

‘What d’you mean it’s the wrong way round?’ asked the round-faced waitress.

Hercule Poirot, the only diner in the coffee house at just after half past seven on this Thursday evening in February, knew what the waitress with the flyaway hair meant. He smiled to himself. It was not the first time she had made an astute observation.

‘Anyone can be forgiven for saying a sharp word when they’re up against it—I’ve done it myself, I don’t mind admitting. And when I’m happy, I want other folks to be happy. That’s the way it should be. But then there’s those like her who treat you worst when things are going their way. Them’s the ones you want to watch out for.’

Bien vu, thought Hercule Poirot. De la vraie sagesse populaire.

The door of the coffee shop flew open and banged against the wall. A woman wearing a pale brown coat and a darker brown hat stood in the doorway. She had fair hair. Poirot could not see her face. Her head was turned to look over her shoulder, as if she was waiting for someone to catch her up.

A few seconds of the door standing open was long enough for the cold night air to drive out all the warmth from the small room. Normally this would have infuriated Poirot, but he was interested in the new arrival who had entered so dramatically and did not appear to care what impression she made.

He placed his hand flat over the top of his coffee cup in the hope of preserving the warmth of his drink. This tiny crooked-walled establishment in St Gregory’s Alley, in a part of London that was far from being the most salubrious, made the best coffee Poirot had tasted anywhere in the world. He would not usually drink a cup before his dinner as well as after it—indeed, such a prospect would horrify him in ordinary circumstances—but every Thursday, when he came to Pleasant’s at 7.30 p.m. precisely, he made an exception to his rule. By now, he regarded this weekly exception as a little tradition.

Other traditions of the coffee house he enjoyed rather less: positioning the cutlery, napkin and water glass correctly on his table, having arrived to find it all askew. The waitresses evidently believed it was sufficient for the items to be somewhere—anywhere—on the table. Poirot disagreed, and made a point of imposing order as soon as he arrived.

‘’Scuse me, miss, would you mind shutting the door if you’re coming in?’ Flyaway Hair called out to the woman in the brown hat and coat who was gripping the door frame with one hand, still facing the street. ‘Or even if you’re not coming in. Those of us in here don’t want to freeze.’

The woman stepped inside. She closed the door, but did not apologise for having left it open so long. Her jagged breathing could be heard across the room. She seemed not to notice that there were other people present. Poirot greeted her with a quiet ‘Good evening’. She half-turned towards him, but made no response. Her eyes were wide with alarm of an uncommon kind—powerful enough to take hold of a stranger, like a physical grip.

Poirot no longer felt calm and contented as he had when he’d arrived. His peaceful mood was shattered.

The woman hurried over to the window and peered out. She will not see whatever she looks for, Poirot thought to himself. Staring into the blackness of night from a well-lit room, it is impossible to see very much at all when the glass reflects only an image of the room you are in. Yet she continued to stare out for some time, seemingly determined to watch the street.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ said Flyaway Hair a touch impatiently. ‘What’s the matter? Has something happened?’

The woman in the brown coat and hat turned round. ‘No, I …’ The words came out as a sob. Then she managed to get herself under control. ‘No. May I take the table in the corner?’ She pointed to the one furthest from the door to the street.

‘You’re welcome to any table, besides the one where the gentleman’s sitting. They’re all laid.’ Having reminded herself of Poirot, Flyaway Hair said to him, ‘Your dinner’s cooking nicely, sir.’ Poirot was delighted to hear it. The food at Pleasant’s was almost as good as the coffee. Indeed, when he considered the two together, Poirot found it hard to believe what he knew to be the case: that everybody who worked in the kitchen here was English. Incroyable.

Flyaway Hair turned back to the distressed woman. ‘You sure there’s nothing wrong, Jennie? You look as if you’ve come face to face with the devil.’

‘I’m all right, thank you. A cup of strong, hot tea is all I need. My usual, please.’ Jennie hurried over to a table in the far corner, passing Poirot without looking at him. He turned his chair slightly so that he could observe her. Most assuredly something was the matter with her; it was something she did not wish to discuss with the coffee house waitresses, evidently.

Without taking off her hat or coat, she sat down in a chair that faced away from the door to the street, but no sooner had she done so than she turned again and looked over her shoulder. Having the opportunity to examine her face in more detail, Poirot guessed that she was around forty years of age. Her large blue eyes were wide and unblinking. They looked, Poirot reflected, as if there was a shocking sight before them—‘Face to face with the devil’, as Flyaway Hair had remarked. Yet as far as Poirot could see, there was no such sight for Jennie to behold, only the square room with its tables, chairs, wooden hat and coat stand in the corner, and its crooked shelves bearing the weight of many teapots of different colours, patterns and sizes.

Those shelves, they were enough to make a person shudder! Poirot saw no reason why a warped shelf could not easily be replaced with a straight one, in the same way that he could not comprehend why anybody would place a fork on a square table and not ensure that it lay parallel to the straight line of the table’s edge. However, not everyone had the ideas of Hercule Poirot; he had long ago accepted this—both the advantages and disadvantages it brought him.

Twisted in her seat, the woman—Jennie—stared wildly at the door, as if expecting somebody to burst through it at any moment. She was trembling, perhaps partly from the cold.

No—Poirot changed his mind—not at all from the cold. It was warm once again in the coffee house. And, since Jennie was intent upon watching the door and yet had sat with her back to it and as far as possible from it, there was only one sensible conclusion to draw.

Picking up his coffee cup, Poirot left his table and made his way over to where she sat. She wore no wedding ring on her finger, he noticed. ‘Will you permit me to join you for a short while, mademoiselle?’ He would have liked to arrange her cutlery, napkin and water glass as he had his own, but he restrained himself.

‘Pardon? Yes, I suppose so.’ Her tone revealed how little she cared. She was concerned only with the coffee house door. She was still watching it avidly, still twisted in her chair.

‘I am pleased to introduce myself to you. My name is … ah …’ Poirot broke off. If he told her his name, Flyaway Hair and the other waitress would hear it, and he would no longer be their anonymous ‘foreign gent’, the retired policeman from the Continent. The name Hercule Poirot had a powerful effect upon some people. Over the past few weeks, since he had entered into a most enjoyable state of hibernation, Poirot had experienced for the first time in an age the relief of being nobody in particular.

It could not have been more apparent that Jennie was not interested in his name or his presence. A tear had escaped from the corner of her eye and was making its way down her cheek.

‘Mademoiselle Jennie,’ Poirot said, hoping that by using her Christian name he might have more luck in getting her attention. ‘I used to be a policeman. I am retired now, but before I retired, in my work I encountered many people in states of agitation similar to the one that you are in now. I do not mean those who were unhappy, though they are abundant in every country. No, I am talking about people who believed themselves to be in danger.’

At last, he had made an impression. Jennie fixed her wide, frightened eyes on him. ‘A … a policeman?’

‘Oui. I retired many years ago, but—’

‘So in London you can’t do anything? You can’t … I mean, you have no power here? To arrest criminals, or anything like that?’

‘That is correct.’ Poirot smiled at her. ‘In London, I am an elderly gentleman, enjoying his retirement.’

She had not looked at the door in nearly ten seconds.

‘Am I right, mademoiselle? Do you believe yourself to be in danger? Do you look over your shoulder because you suspect that the person you are afraid of has followed you here and will walk through the door at any moment?’

‘Oh, I’m in danger, all right!’ She seemed to want to say more. ‘Are you sure you’re no longer any sort of policeman at all?’

‘No sort whatsoever,’ Poirot assured her. Not wishing her to believe he was entirely without influence, he added, ‘I have a friend who is a detective with Scotland Yard if you need the help of the police. He is very young—not much more than thirty—but he will go far in the police, I think. He would be happy to speak to you, I am sure. For my own part, I can offer …’ Poirot stopped as the round-faced waitress approached with a cup of tea.

Having delivered it to Jennie, she retreated to the kitchen. Flyaway Hair had also withdrawn to the same place. Knowing how she liked to expound upon the behaviour of her regular patrons, Poirot guessed that she was presently trying to stir up a lively discussion about the Foreign Gent and his unexpected visit to Jennie’s table. Poirot did not usually speak for any longer than necessary with any of the other customers at Pleasant’s. Apart from when he dined here with his friend Edward Catchpool—the Scotland Yard detective with whom he temporarily shared a lodging house—he confined himself to his own company, in the spirit of l’hibernation.

The gossiping of the coffee house waitresses did not concern Poirot; he was grateful for their convenient absence. He hoped it would make Jennie more likely to speak frankly to him. ‘I would be happy to offer you my counsel, mademoiselle,’ he said.

‘You’re very kind, but no one can help me.’ Jennie wiped her eyes. ‘I’d like to be helped—I’d like it more than anything! But it’s too late. I am already dead, you see, or I shall be soon. I can’t hide for ever.’

Already dead … Her words had brought a new chill into the room.

‘So, you see, there is no help to be had,’ she went on, ‘and even if there were, I should not deserve it. But … I do feel a little better with you sitting at my table.’ She had wrapped her arms around herself, either for comfort or in a vain attempt to stop her body from shaking. She hadn’t drunk a drop of her tea. ‘Please stay. Nothing will happen while I’m talking to you. That’s some consolation, at least.’

‘Mademoiselle, this is most concerning. You are alive now, and we must do what is necessary to keep you alive. Please tell me—’

‘No!’ Her eyes widened and she shrank back in her chair. ‘No, you mustn’t! Nothing must be done to stop this. It can’t be stopped, it’s impossible. Inevitable. Once I am dead, justice will be done, finally.’ She looked over her shoulder towards the door again.

Poirot frowned. Jennie perhaps felt a little better since he’d sat down at her table, but he felt decidedly worse. ‘Do I understand you correctly? Are you suggesting that somebody is pursuing you who wishes to murder you?’

Jennie fixed her tearful blue eyes on him. ‘Does it count as murder if I give in and let it happen? I’m so tired of running, of hiding, of being so dreadfully afraid. I want it to be over with if it’s going to happen, and it is, because it must. It’s the only way to make things right. It’s what I deserve.’

‘This cannot be so,’ said Poirot. ‘Without knowing the particulars of your predicament, I disagree with you. Murder can never be right. My friend, the policeman—you must allow him to help you.’

‘No! You mustn’t speak a word about this to him, or to anybody. Promise me that you won’t!’

Hercule Poirot was not in the habit of making promises he could not keep.

‘What could you possibly have done that calls for the punishment of murder? Have you murdered somebody yourself?’

‘There would be no difference if I had! Murder isn’t the only thing that’s unforgivable, you know. I don’t expect you’ve ever done anything truly unforgivable, have you?’

‘Whereas you have? And you believe you must pay with your own life? Non. This is not right. If I could persuade you to accompany me to my lodging house— it is very near. My friend from Scotland Yard, Mr Catchpool—’

‘No!’ Jennie leaped up out of her chair.

‘Please sit, mademoiselle.’

‘No. Oh, I’ve said too much! How stupid I am! I only told you because you look so kind, and I thought you couldn’t do anything. If you hadn’t said you were retired and from another country, I’d never have said a word! Promise me this: if I’m found dead, you’ll tell your friend the policeman not to look for my killer.’ She pressed her eyes shut and clasped her hands together. ‘Oh, please let no one open their mouths! This crime must never be solved. Promise me you’ll tell your policeman friend that, and make him agree? If you care about justice, please do as I ask.’

She made a dash for the door. Poirot stood up to follow, then, noticing the distance she’d covered in the time it took him to extract himself from his chair, sat down again with a heavy sigh. It was futile. Jennie was gone, out into the night. He would never catch her.

The door to the kitchen opened and Flyaway Hair appeared with Poirot’s dinner. The smell offended his stomach; he had lost every last scrap of his appetite.

‘Where’s Jennie?’ Flyaway Hair asked him, as if he were somehow responsible for her having vanished. He did, in fact, feel responsible. If he had moved faster, if he had chosen his words more carefully …

‘This is the limit!’ Flyaway Hair slammed Poirot’s meal down on the table and marched back to the kitchen door. Pushing it open she yelled, ‘That Jennie’s upped and gone without paying!’

‘But what is it that she must pay for?’ Hercule Poirot muttered to himself.

One minute later, after a brief unsuccessful attempt to take an interest in his beef chop with vermicelli soufflé, Poirot knocked at the door of Pleasant’s kitchen. Flyaway Hair opened it narrowly, so that nothing was visible beyond her slender form in the doorway.

‘Something wrong with your dinner, sir?’

‘Allow me to pay for the tea that Mademoiselle Jennie has abandoned,’ Poirot offered. ‘In return, if you would be kind enough to answer one or two questions?’

‘D’you know Jennie, then? I’ve not seen you and her together before.’

‘Non. I do not know her. That is why I ask you.’

‘Why’d you go and sit with her, then?’

‘She was afraid, and in great distress. I found it troubling to see. I hoped I might be able to offer some assistance.’

‘The likes of Jennie can’t be helped,’ Flyaway Hair said. ‘All right, I’ll answer your questions, but I’ll ask you one first: where was it you were a policeman?’

Poirot did not point out that she had already asked him three questions. This was the fourth.

She peered at him through narrowed eyes. ‘Somewhere they speak French—but not France, was it?’ she said. ‘I’ve seen what you do with your face when the other girls say “the French chap”.’

Poirot smiled. Perhaps it would do no harm for her to know his name. ‘I am Hercule Poirot, mademoiselle. From Belgium. I am delighted to make your acquaintance.’ He extended his hand.

She shook it. ‘Fee Spring. Euphemia really, but everyone calls me Fee. If they used my whole name, they’d never get round to the rest of what they wanted to say to me, would they? Not that I’d be any the worse off for that.’

‘Do you know the whole name of Mademoiselle Jennie?’

Fee nodded in the direction of Poirot’s table, where steam still rose from his heaped plate. ‘Eat your dinner. I’ll be out in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.’ She withdrew abruptly, closing the door in his face.

Poirot proceeded back to his seat. Perhaps he would take Fee Spring’s advice and make a further effort with the beef chop. How heartening it was to speak to somebody who observed details. Hercule Poirot did not encounter many such people.

Fee reappeared promptly with a cup in her hand, no saucer. She took a slurp from it as she sat down in the chair that Jennie had vacated. Poirot managed not to wince at the sound.

‘I don’t know a lot about Jennie,’ she said. ‘Just what I’ve picked up from odd things she’s said. She does for a lady with a big house. Lives in. That’s why she comes here regular, to collect Her Ladyship’s coffee and cakes, for her fancy dinners and parties and the like. Comes right across town—she said that once. Plenty of our regulars come quite a way. Jennie always stays for a drink. “My usual, please,” she says when she arrives, like she’s a lady herself. That voice is her playing at being grand, I reckon. It’s not the one she was born with. Could be why she doesn’t say much, if she knows she can’t keep it up.’

‘Pardon me,’ said Poirot, ‘but how do you know that Mademoiselle Jennie has not always spoken in this way?’

‘You ever heard a domestic talk all proper like that? Can’t say as I have.’

‘Oui, mais … So it is the speculation and nothing more?’

Fee Spring grudgingly admitted that she did not know for certain. For as long as she had known her, Jennie had spoken ‘like a proper lady’.

‘I’ll say this for Jennie: she’s a tea girl, so she’s got some sense in her head at least.’

‘A tea girl?’

‘That’s right.’ Fee sniffed at Poirot’s coffee cup. ‘All you that drinks coffee when you could be drinking tea want your brains looking at, if you ask me.’

‘You do not know the name of the lady for whom Jennie works, or the address of the big house?’ Poirot asked.

‘No. Don’t know Jennie’s last name neither. I know she had a terrible heartbreak years and years ago. She said so once.’

‘Heartbreak? Did she tell you of what kind?’

‘S’only one sort,’ said Fee decisively. ‘The sort that does a heart right in.’

‘What I mean to say is that there are many causes of the heartbreak: love that is unreturned, the loss of a loved one at a tragically young age—’

‘Oh, we never got the story,’ said Fee, with a trace of bitterness in her voice. ‘Never will, neither. One word, heartbreak, was all she’d part with. See, the thing about Jennie is, she don’t talk. You wouldn’t be able to help her none if she was still sat here in this chair, no more than you can now with her run off. She’s all shut up in herself, that’s Jennie’s trouble. Likes to wallow in it, whatever it is.’

All shut up in herself … The words sparked a memory in Poirot—of a Thursday evening at Pleasant’s several weeks ago, and Fee talking about a customer.

He said, ‘She asks no questions, n’est-ce pas? She is not interested in the social exchanges or the conversation? She does not care to find out what is the latest news in the life of anybody else?’

‘Too true!’ Fee looked impressed. ‘There’s not a scrap of curiosity in her. I’ve never known anyone more wrapped up in her own cares. Just doesn’t see the world or the rest of us in it. She never asks you how you’re rubbing along, or what you’ve been doing with yourself.’ Fee tilted her head to one side. ‘You’re quick to catch on, aren’t you?’

‘I know what I know only from listening to you speak to the other waitresses, mademoiselle.’

Fee’s face turned red. ‘I’m surprised you’d go to the bother of listening.’

Poirot had no wish to embarrass her further, so he did not tell her that he greatly looked forward to her descriptions of the individuals he had come to think of, collectively, as ‘The Coffee-House Characters’—Mr Not Quite, for instance, who, each time he came in, would order his food and then, immediately afterwards, cancel the order because he had decided it was not quite what he wanted.

Now was not the appropriate time to enquire if Fee had a name of the same order as Mr Not Quite for Hercule Poirot that she used in his absence—perhaps one that made reference to his exquisite moustaches.

‘So Mademoiselle Jennie does not wish to know the business of other people,’ Poirot said thoughtfully, ‘but unlike many who take no interest in the lives and ideas of those around them, and who talk only about themselves at great length, she does not do this either—is that not so?’

Fee raised her eyebrows. ‘Powerful memory you’ve got there. Dead right again. No, Jennie’s not one to talk about herself. She’ll answer a question, but she won’t linger on it. Doesn’t want to be kept too long from what’s in her head, whatever it is. Her hidden treasure—except it don’t make her happy, whatever she’s dwelling on. I’ve long since given up trying to fathom her.’

‘She dwells on the heartbreak,’ Poirot murmured. ‘And the danger.’

‘Did she say she was in danger?’

‘Oui, mademoiselle. I regret that I was not quick enough to stop her from leaving. If something should happen to her …’ Poirot shook his head and wished he could recover the settled feeling with which he had arrived. He slapped the tabletop with the flat of his hand as he made his decision. ‘I will return here demain matin. You say she is here often, n’est-ce pas? I will find her before the danger does. This time, Hercule Poirot, he will be quicker!’

‘Fast or slow, don’t matter,’ said Fee. ‘No one can find Jennie, not even with her right in front of their noses, and no one can help her.’ She stood and picked up Poirot’s plate. ‘There’s no point letting good food go cold over it,’ she concluded.

CHAPTER 2
Murder in Three Rooms

That was how it started, on the evening of Thursday, 7 February 1929, with Hercule Poirot, and Jennie, and Fee Spring; amid the crooked, teapot-huddled shelves of Pleasant’s Coffee House.

Or, I should say, that was how it appeared to start. I’m not convinced that stories from real life have beginnings and ends, as a matter of fact. Approach them from any vantage point and you’ll see that they stretch endlessly back into the past and spread inexorably forward into the future. One is never quite able to say ‘That’s that, then,’ and draw a line.

Luckily, true stories do have heroes and heroines. Not being one myself, having no hope of ever being one, I am all too aware that they are real.

I wasn’t present that Thursday evening at the coffee house. My name was mentioned—Edward Catchpool, Poirot’s policeman friend from Scotland Yard, not much older than thirty (thirty-two, to be precise)—but I was not there. I have, nevertheless, decided to try to fill the gaps in my own experience in order make a written record of the Jennie story. Fortunately, I have the testimony of Hercule Poirot to help me and there is no better witness.

I am writing this for the benefit of nobody but myself. Once my account is complete I shall read and reread it until I am able to cast my eyes over the words without feeling the shock that I feel now as I write them—until ‘How can this have happened?’ gives way to ‘Yes, this is what happened.’

At some point I shall have to think of something better to call it than ‘The Jennie Story’. It’s not much of a title.

I first met Hercule Poirot six weeks before the Thursday evening I have described, when he took a room in a London lodging house that belongs to Mrs Blanche Unsworth. It is a spacious, impeccably clean building with a rather severe square façade and an interior that could not be more feminine; there are flounces and frills and trims everywhere. I sometimes fear that I will leave for work one day and find that somehow a lavender-coloured fringe from some item in the drawing room has attached itself to my elbow or my shoe.

Unlike me, Poirot is not a permanent fixture in the house but a temporary visitor. ‘I will enjoy one month at least of restful inactivity,’ he told me on the first night that he appeared. He said it with great resolve, as if he imagined I might try to stop him. ‘My mind, it grows too busy,’ he explained. ‘The rushing of the many thoughts … Here I believe they will slow down.’

I asked where he lived, expecting the answer ‘France’; I found out a little later that he is Belgian, not French. In response to my question, he walked over to the window, pulled the lace curtain to one side and pointed at a wide, elegant building that was at most three hundred yards away. ‘You live there?’ I said. I thought it must be a joke.

‘Oui. I do not wish to be far from my home,’ Poirot explained. ‘It is most pleasing to me that I am able to see it: the beautiful view!’ He gazed at the mansion block with pride, and for a few moments I wondered if he had forgotten I was there. Then he said, ‘Travel is a wonderful thing. It is stimulating, but not restful. Yet if I do not take myself away somewhere, there will be no vacances for the mind of Poirot! Disturbance will arrive in one form or another. At home one is too easily found. A friend or a stranger will come with a matter of great importance comme toujours—it is always of the greatest importance!—and the little grey cells will once more be busy and unable to conserve their energy. So, Poirot, he is said to have left London for a while, and meanwhile he takes his rest in a place he knows well, protected from the interruption.’

He said all this, and I nodded along, as if it made perfect sense, wondering if people grow ever more peculiar as they age.

Mrs Unsworth never cooks dinner on a Thursday evening—that’s her night for visiting her late husband’s sister—and this was how Poirot came to discover Pleasant’s Coffee House. He told me he could not risk being seen in any of his usual haunts while he was supposed to be out of town, and asked if I could recommend ‘a place where a person like you might go, mon ami—but where the food is excellent’. I told him about Pleasant’s: cramped, a little eccentric, but most people who tried it once went back again and again.

On this particular Thursday evening—the night of Poirot’s encounter with Jennie—he arrived home at ten past ten, much later than usual. I was in the drawing room, sitting close to the fire but unable to warm myself up. I heard Blanche Unsworth whispering to Poirot seconds after I heard the front door open and shut; she must have been waiting for him in the hall.

I couldn’t hear what she was saying but I could guess: she was anxious, and I was the cause of her anxiety. She had arrived back from her sister-in-law’s house at half past nine and decided that something was wrong with me. I looked a fright—as if I hadn’t eaten and wouldn’t sleep. She’d said all this to me herself. I don’t know quite how a person manages to look as if he hasn’t eaten, incidentally. Perhaps I was leaner than I had been at breakfast that morning.

She inspected me from a variety of angles and offered me everything she could think of that might set me right, starting with the obvious remedies one offers in such situations—food, drink, a friendly ear. Once I’d rejected all three as graciously as I could, she proceeded to more outlandish suggestions: a pillow stuffed with herbs, something foul-smelling but apparently beneficial from a dark blue bottle that I must put in my bath water.

I thanked her and refused. She cast her eyes frantically around the drawing room, looking for any unlikely object she might foist upon me with the promise that it would solve all my problems.

Now, more likely than not, she was whispering to Poirot that he must press me to accept the foul-smelling blue bottle or the herb pillow.

Poirot is normally back from Pleasant’s and reading in the drawing room by nine o’clock on a Thursday evening. I had returned from the Bloxham Hotel at a quarter past nine, determined not to think about what I had encountered there, and very much looking forward to finding Poirot in his favourite chair so that we could talk about amusing trivialities as we so often did.

He wasn’t there. His absence made me feel strangely remote from everything, as if the ground had fallen away beneath my feet. Poirot is a regular sort of person who does not like to vary his routines—‘It is the unchanging daily routine, Catchpool, that makes for the restful mind’ he had told me more than once—and yet he was a full quarter of an hour late.

When I heard the front door at half past nine, I hoped it was him, but it was Blanche Unsworth. I nearly let out a groan. If you’re worried about yourself, the last thing you want is the company of somebody whose chief pastime is fussing over nothing.

I was afraid I might not be able to persuade myself to return to the Bloxham Hotel the following day, and I knew that I had to. That was what I was trying not to think about.

‘And now,’ I reflected, ‘Poirot is here at last, and he will be worried about me as well, because Blanche Unsworth has told him he must be.’ I decided I would be better off with neither of them around. If there was no possibility of talking about something easy and entertaining, I preferred not to talk at all.

Poirot appeared in the drawing room, still wearing his hat and coat, and closed the door behind him. I expected a barrage of questions from him, but instead he said with an air of distraction, ‘It is late. I walk and walk around the streets, looking, and I achieve nothing except to make myself late.’

He was worried, all right, but not about me and whether I had eaten or was going to eat. It was a huge relief. ‘Looking?’ I asked.

‘Oui. For a woman, Jennie, whom I very much hope is still alive and not murdered.’

‘Murdered?’ I had that sense of the ground dropping away again. I knew Poirot was a famous detective. He had told me about some of the cases he’d solved. Still, he was supposed to be having a break from all that, and I could have done without him producing that particular word at that moment, in such a portentous fashion.

‘What does she look like, this Jennie?’ I asked. ‘Describe her. I might have seen her. Especially if she’s been murdered. I’ve seen two murdered women tonight, actually, and one man, so you might be in luck. The man didn’t look as if he was likely to be called Jennie, but as for the other two—’

‘Attendez, mon ami,’ Poirot’s calm voice cut through my desperate ramblings. He took off his hat and began to unbutton his coat. ‘So Madame Blanche, she is correct—you are troubled? Ah, but how did I not see this straight away? You are pale. My thoughts, they were elsewhere. They arrange to be elsewhere when they see that Madame Blanche approaches! But please tell Poirot immédiatement: what is the matter?’

‘Three murders are the matter,’ I said. ‘And all three of them like nothing I’ve seen before. Two women and one man. Each one in a different room.’

Of course, I had encountered violent death before many times—I had been with Scotland Yard for nearly two years, and a policeman for five—but most murders had about them an obvious appearance of lost control: somebody had lashed out in a fit of temper, or had one tipple too many and lost his rag. This business at the Bloxham was very different. Whoever had killed three times at the hotel had planned ahead—for months, I guessed. Each of his crime scenes was a work of macabre art with a hidden meaning that I could not decipher. It terrified me to think that this time I was not up against a chaotic ruffian of the sort I was used to, but perhaps a cold, meticulous mind that would not allow itself to be defeated.

I was no doubt being overly gloomy about it, but I couldn’t shake my feelings of foreboding. Three matching corpses: the very idea made me shudder. I told myself I must not develop a phobia; I had rather to treat this case as I would any other, no matter how different it seemed on the surface.

‘Each of the three murders in a different room in the same house?’ Poirot asked.

‘No, at the Bloxham Hotel. Up Piccadilly Circus way. I don’t suppose you know it?’

‘Non.’

‘I had never been inside it before tonight. It’s not the sort of place a chap like me would think to go. It’s palatial.’

Poirot was sitting with his back very straight. ‘Three murders, in the same hotel and each in a different room?’ he said.

‘Yes, and all committed earlier in the evening within a short space of time.’

‘This evening? And yet you are here. Why are you not at the hotel? The killer, he is apprehended already?’

‘No such luck, I’m afraid. No, I …’ I stopped and cleared my throat. Reporting the facts of the case was straightforward enough, but I had no wish to explain to Poirot how my mood had been affected by what I had seen, or to tell him that I had been at the Bloxham for no more than five minutes before I succumbed to the powerful urge to leave.

The way all three had been laid out on their backs so formally: arms by their sides, palms of their hands touching the floor, legs together …

Laying out the dead. The phrase forced its way into my mind, accompanied by a vision of a dark room from many years ago—a room I had been compelled to enter as a young child, and had been refusing to enter in my imagination ever since. I fully intended to carry on refusing for the rest of my life.

Lifeless hands, palms facing downwards.

‘Hold his hand, Edward.’

‘Don’t worry, there are plenty of police crawling about the place,’ I said quickly and loudly, to banish the unwelcome vision. ‘Tomorrow morning is soon enough for me to go back.’ Seeing that he was waiting for a fuller answer, I added, ‘I had to clear my head. Frankly, I’ve never seen anything as peculiar as these three murders in all my life.’

‘In what way peculiar?’

‘Each of the victims had something in his or her mouth—the same thing.’

‘Non.’ Poirot wagged his finger at me. ‘This is not possible, mon ami. The same thing cannot be inside three different mouths at the same time.’

‘Three separate things, all identical,’ I clarified. ‘Three cufflinks, solid gold from the look of them. Monogrammed. Same initials on all three: PIJ. Poirot? Are you all right? You look—’

‘Mon Dieu!’ He had risen to his feet and begun to pace around the room. ‘You do not see what this means, mon ami. No, you do not see it at all, because you have not heard the story of my encounter with Mademoiselle Jennie. Quickly I must tell you what happened so that you understand.’

Poirot’s idea of telling a story quickly is rather different from most people’s. Every detail matters to him equally, whether it’s a fire in which three hundred people perish or a small dimple on a child’s chin. He can never be induced to rush to the nub of a matter, so I settled into my chair and let him tell it in his own way. By the time he had finished, I felt as if I had experienced the events first-hand—more comprehensively, indeed, than I experience many scenes from my life in which I personally participate.

‘What an extraordinary thing to happen,’ I said. ‘On the same night as the three murders at the Bloxham, too. Quite a coincidence.’

Poirot sighed. ‘I do not think it is a coincidence, my friend. One accepts that the coincidences happen from time to time, but here there is a clear connection.’

‘You mean murder on the one hand, and the fear of being murdered on the other?’

‘Non. That is one connection, yes, but I am talking about something different.’ Poirot stopped promenading around the drawing room and turned to face me. ‘You say that in your three murder victims’ mouths are found three gold cufflinks bearing the monogram “PIJ”?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Mademoiselle Jennie, she said to me quite clearly: “Promise me this: if I’m found dead, you’ll tell your friend the policeman not to look for my killer. Oh, please let no one open their mouths! This crime must never be solved.” What do you think she meant by “Oh, please let no one open their mouths”?’

Was he joking? Apparently not. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘it’s clear, isn’t it? She feared she would be murdered, didn’t want her killer punished and was hoping no one would say anything to point the finger at him. She believes she is the one who deserves to be punished.’

‘You choose the meaning that at first seems obvious,’ said Poirot. He sounded disappointed in me. ‘Ask yourself if there is another possible meaning of those words: “Oh, please let no one open their mouths”. Reflect upon your three gold cufflinks.’

‘They are not mine,’ I said emphatically, wishing at that moment that I could push the whole case very far away from me. ‘All right, I see what you’re driving at, but—’

‘What do you see? Je conduis ma voiture à quoi?’

‘Well … “Please let no one open their mouths” could, at a stretch, mean “Please let no one open the mouths of the three murder victims at the Bloxham Hotel.”’ I felt an utter fool giving voice to this preposterous theory.

‘Exactement! “Please let no one open their mouths and find the gold cufflinks with the initials PIJ.” Is it not possible that this is what Jennie meant? That she knew about the three murder victims at the hotel, and that she knew that whoever killed them was also intent on killing her?’

Without waiting for my answer, Poirot proceeded with his imaginings. ‘And the letters PIJ, the person who has those initials, he is very important to the story, n’est-ce pas? Jennie, she knows this. She knows that if you find these three letters you will be on your way to finding the murderer, and she wants to prevent this. Alors, you must catch him, before it is too late for Jennie, or else Hercule Poirot, he shall not forgive himself!’

I was alarmed to hear this. I felt a pressing sense of responsibility for catching this killer as it was, and did not wish also to be responsible for Poirot never forgiving himself. Did he really look at me and see a man capable of apprehending a murderer with a mind of this sort—a mind that would think to place monogrammed cufflinks in the mouths of the dead? I have always been a straightforward person and I work best at straightforward things.

‘I think you must go back to the hotel,’ said Poirot. He meant immediately.

I shuddered at the memory of those three rooms. ‘First thing tomorrow will be soon enough,’ I said, studiously avoiding his gleaming eyes. ‘I should tell you, I’m not going to make a fool of myself by bringing up this Jennie person. It would only confuse everybody. You have come up with a possible meaning for what she said and I have come up with another. Yours is the more interesting, but mine is twenty times more likely to be correct.’

‘It is not,’ came the contradiction.

‘We shall have to disagree about it,’ I said firmly. ‘If we were to ask a hundred people, they would all agree with me and not with you, I suspect.’

‘I too suspect this.’ Poirot sighed. ‘Allow me to convince you if I can. A few moments ago, you said to me about the murders at the hotel, “Each of the victims had something in his or her mouth”, did you not?’

I agreed that I had.

‘You did not say, “in their mouth”, you said, “his or her”—because you are an educated man and you speak in the singular and not the plural: “his or her”, to go with “each”—it is grammatically correct. Mademoiselle Jennie, she is a housemaid, but she has the speech of an educated person and the vocabulary also. She used the word “inevitable” when talking about her death, her murder. And then she said to me, “So you see, there is no help to be had, and even if there were, I should not deserve it.” She is a woman who uses the English language as it should be used. Therefore, mon ami …’ Poirot was up on his feet again. ‘Therefore! If you are correct and Jennie meant to say, “Please let no one open their mouths” in the sense of “Please let no one give information to the police”, why did she not say, “Please let no one open his or her mouth?” The word “no one” requires the singular, not the plural!’

I stared up at him with an ache in my neck, too bewildered and weary to respond. Hadn’t he told me himself that Jennie was in a frightful panic? In my experience, people who are stricken with terror tend not to fuss about grammar.

I had always thought of Poirot as among the most intelligent of men, but perhaps I had been wrong. If this was the sort of nonsense he was inclined to spout then no wonder he had judged it time to submit his mind to a rest cure.

‘Naturally, you will now tell me that Jennie was distressed and was therefore not careful about her speech,’ Poirot went on. ‘However she spoke with perfect correctness apart from in this one instance—unless I am right and you are wrong, in which case Jennie said nothing that was grammatically incorrect at all!’

He clapped his hands together and seemed so gratified by his announcement that I was moved to say rather sharply, ‘That’s marvellous, Poirot. A man and two women are murdered, and it’s my job to sort it out, but I’m jolly pleased that Jennie, whoever she is, didn’t slip up in her use of the English language.’

‘And Poirot also, he is jolly pleased,’ said my hard-to-discourage friend, ‘because a little progress has been made, a little discovery. Non.’ His smile vanished and his expression became more serious. ‘Mademoiselle Jennie did not make the error of grammar. The meaning she intended was, “Please let no one open the mouths of the three murdered people—their mouths”.’

‘If you insist,’ I muttered.

‘Tomorrow after breakfast you will return to the Bloxham Hotel,’ said Poirot. ‘I will join you there later, after I look for Jennie.’

‘You?’ I said, somewhat perturbed. Words of protest formed in my head, but I knew they would never reach Poirot’s ears. Famous detective or not, his ideas about the case had so far been, frankly, ridiculous, but if he was offering his company, I wouldn’t turn it down. He was very sure of himself and I was not—that was what it boiled down to. I already felt bolstered by the interest he was taking.

‘Oui,’ he said. ‘Three murders have been committed that share an extremely unusual feature: the monogrammed cufflink in the mouth. Most assuredly I will go to the Bloxham Hotel.’

‘Aren’t you supposed to be avoiding stimulation and resting your brain?’ I asked.

‘Oui. Précisément.’ Poirot glared at me. ‘It is not restful for me to sit in this chair all day and think of you omitting to mention to anybody my meeting with Mademoiselle Jennie, a detail of the utmost importance! It is not restful for me to consider that Jennie runs around London giving her murderer every opportunity to kill her and put his fourth cufflink in her mouth.’

Poirot leaned forward in his chair. ‘Please tell me that this at least has struck you: that cufflinks come in pairs? You have three in the mouths of the dead at the Bloxham Hotel. Where is the fourth, if not in the pocket of the killer, waiting to go into the mouth of Mademoiselle Jennie after her murder?’

I’m afraid I laughed. ‘Poirot, that’s just plain silly. Yes, cufflinks normally come in pairs but really, it’s quite simple: he wanted to kill three people, so he only used three cufflinks. You can’t use the notion of some dreamed-up fourth cufflink to prove anything—certainly not to link the hotel murders to this Jennie woman.’

Poirot’s face had taken on a stubborn cast. ‘When you are a killer who decides to use cufflinks in this way, mon ami, you invite the thought of the pairs. It is the killer who has put before us the notion of the fourth cufflink and the fourth victim, not Hercule Poirot!’

‘But … then how do we know he doesn’t have six victims in mind, or eight? Who is to say that the pocket of this killer doesn’t contain five more cufflinks with the monogram PIJ?’

To my amazement, Poirot nodded and said, ‘You make a good point.’

‘No, Poirot, it’s not a good point,’ I said despondently. ‘I conjured it up out of nowhere. You might enjoy my flights of fancy but I can promise you my bosses at Scotland Yard won’t.’

‘Your bosses, they do not like you to consider what is possible? No, of course they do not,’ Poirot answered himself. ‘And they are the people in charge of catching this murderer. They, and you. Bon. This is why Hercule Poirot must go tomorrow to the Bloxham Hotel.’

CHAPTER 3
At the Bloxham Hotel

The following morning at the Bloxham, I could not help but feel unsettled, knowing that Poirot might arrive at any moment to tell us simple police folk how foolishly we were approaching the investigation of our three murders. I was the only one who knew he was coming, which set me rather on edge. His presence would be my responsibility, and I was afraid that he might demoralize the troops. If truth be told, I feared that he might demoralize me. In the optimistic light of an unusually bright February day, and after a surprisingly satisfactory night’s sleep, I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t forbidden him from coming anywhere near the Bloxham.

I didn’t suppose it mattered, however; he would not have listened to me if I had.

I was in the hotel’s opulent lobby when Poirot arrived, talking to a Mr Luca Lazzari, the hotel’s manager. Lazzari was a friendly, helpful and startlingly enthusiastic man with black curly hair, a musical way of speaking, and moustaches that were in no way the equal of Poirot’s. Lazzari seemed determined that I and my fellow policemen should enjoy our time at the Bloxham every bit as much as the paying guests did—those that did not end up getting murdered, that is.

I introduced him to Poirot, who nodded curtly. He seemed out of sorts and I soon learned why. ‘I did not find Jennie,’ he said. ‘Half the morning I waited at the coffee house! But she did not come.’

‘Hardly “half the morning”, Poirot,’ I said, for he was prone to exaggeration.

‘Mademoiselle Fee also was not there. The other waitresses, they were able to tell me nothing.’

‘Bad luck,’ I said, unsurprised by the news. I hadn’t for a moment imagined that Jennie might revisit the coffee house, and I felt guilty. I should perhaps have tried harder to make Poirot see sense: she had run away from him and from Pleasant’s, having declared that confiding in him had been a mistake. Why on earth would she return the following day and allow him to take charge of protecting her?

‘So!’ Poirot looked at me expectantly. ‘What do you have to tell me?’

‘I too am here to provide the information you need,’ said Lazzari, beaming. ‘Luca Lazzari, at your disposal. Have you visited the Bloxham Hotel before, Monsieur Poirot?’

‘Non.’

‘Is it not superb? Like a palace of the belle époque, no? Majestic! I hope you notice and admire the artistic masterpieces that are all around us!’

‘Oui. It is superior to the lodging house of Mrs Blanche Unsworth, though that house has the better view from the window,’ Poirot said briskly. His glum spirits had certainly dug themselves in.

‘Ah, the views from my charming hotel!’ Lazzari clasped his hands together in delight. ‘From the rooms facing the hotel gardens there are sights of great beauty, and on the other side there is splendid London—another exquisite scene! Later I will show you.’

‘I would prefer to be shown the three rooms in which murders have taken place,’ Poirot told him.

That put a momentary crimp in Lazzari’s smile. ‘Monsieur Poirot, you may rest assured that this terrible crime—three murders on one night, it is scarcely credible to me!—that this will never happen again at the world-renowned Bloxham Hotel.’

Poirot and I exchanged a look. The point was not so much preventing it from happening again but dealing with the fact that it had happened on this occasion.

I decided I had better take the reins and not allow Lazzari the chance to say too much more. Poirot’s moustaches were already twitching with suppressed rage.

‘The victims’ names are Mrs Harriet Sippel, Miss Ida Gransbury and Mr Richard Negus,’ I told Poirot. ‘All three were guests in the hotel and each one was the sole occupant of his or her room.’

‘Each one? His or her room, you say?’ Poirot smiled at his little joke. I attributed the rapid improvement in his spirits to the fact that Lazzari had fallen silent. ‘I do not mean to interrupt you, Catchpool. Continue.’

‘All three victims arrived here at the hotel on Wednesday, the day before they were murdered.’

‘Did they arrive together?’

‘No.’

‘Most definitely not,’ said Lazzari. ‘They arrived separately, one by one. They checked in one by one.’

‘And they were murdered one by one,’ said Poirot, which happened to be exactly what I was thinking. ‘You are certain of this?’ he asked Lazzari.

‘I could not be more so. I have the word of my clerk, Mr John Goode, the most dependable man of my entire acquaintance. You will meet him. We have only the most impeccable persons working here at the Bloxham Hotel, Monsieur Poirot, and when my clerk tells me a thing is so, I know that it is so. From across the country and across the world, people come to ask if they can work at the Bloxham Hotel. I say yes only to the best.’

It’s funny but I didn’t realize how well I had come to know Poirot until that moment—until I saw that Lazzari did not know how to manage him at all. If he had written ‘Suspect This Man of Murder’ on a large sign and hung it around Mr John Goode’s neck, he could not have done a better job of inciting Poirot to distrust the fellow. Hercule Poirot will not allow anyone else to dictate to him what his opinion should be; he will, rather, determine to believe the opposite, contrary old cove that he is.

‘So,’ he said now, ‘it is a remarkable coincidence, is it not? Our three murder victims—Mrs Harriet Sippel, Miss Ida Gransbury and Mr Richard Negus—they arrive separately and appear to have nothing to do with one another. And yet all three share not merely the date of their deaths, which was yesterday, but also their date of arrival at the Bloxham Hotel: Wednesday.’

‘What’s remarkable about it?’ I asked. ‘Plenty of other guests must also have arrived on Wednesday, in a hotel of this size. I mean, ones that have not been murdered.’

Poirot’s eyes looked as if they were about to burst forth from his head. I couldn’t see that I had said anything particularly shocking, so I pretended not to notice his consternation, and continued to tell him the facts of the case.

‘Each of the victims was found inside his or her locked bedroom,’ I said, feeling rather self-conscious about the ‘his or her’ part. ‘The killer locked all three doors and made off with the keys—’

‘Attendez,’ Poirot interrupted. ‘You mean that the keys are missing. You cannot know that the murderer took them or has them now.’

I took a deep breath. ‘We suspect that the killer took the keys away with him. We’ve done a thorough search, and they are certainly not inside the rooms, nor anywhere else in the hotel.’

‘My excellent staff have checked and confirmed that this is true,’ said Lazzari.

Poirot said that he would like to perform his own thorough search of the three rooms. Lazzari joyously agreed, as if Poirot had proposed a tea party followed by dancing.

‘Check all you like, but you won’t find the three room keys,’ I said. ‘I’m telling you, the murderer took them. I don’t know what he did with them, but—’

‘Perhaps he put them in his coat pocket, with one, or three, or five monogrammed cufflinks,’ Poirot said coolly.

‘Ah, now I see why they speak of you as the most splendid detective, Monsieur Poirot!’ Lazzari exclaimed, though he can’t have understood Poirot’s remark. ‘You have a superb mind, they say!’

‘Cause of death is looking very much like poisoning,’ I said, disinclined to linger over descriptions of Poirot’s brilliance. ‘We think cyanide, which can work with great speed if the quantities are sufficient. The inquest’ll tell us for sure, but … almost certainly their drinks were poisoned. In the case of Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury, that drink was a cup of tea. In the case of Richard Negus it was sherry.’

‘How is this known?’ Poirot asked. ‘The drinks are still there in the rooms?’

‘The cups are, yes, and Negus’s sherry glass. Only the remaining few drops of the drinks themselves, but it’s easy enough to tell tea from coffee. We will find cyanide in those drops, I’ll wager.’

‘And the time of death?’

‘According to the police doctor, all three were murdered between four o’clock in the afternoon and half past eight in the evening. Luckily, we’ve managed to narrow it down further: to between a quarter past seven and ten minutes past eight.’

‘A stroke of luck indeed!’ Lazzari agreed. ‘Each of the … ah … deceased guests was last seen alive at fifteen minutes after seven o’clock, by three unquestionably dependable representatives of this hotel—so we know this must be true! I myself found the deceased persons—so terrible, this tragedy!—at between fifteen and twenty minutes after eight o’clock.’

‘But they must have been dead by ten past eight,’ I told Poirot. ‘That was when the note announcing the murders was found on the front desk.’

‘Wait, please,’ said Poirot. ‘We will get to this note in due course. Monsieur Lazzari, it is surely not possible that each of the murder victims was last seen alive by a member of hotel staff at a quarter past seven precisely?’

‘Yes.’ Lazzari nodded so hard, I feared his head might fall off his neck. ‘It is very, very true. All three ordered dinner to be brought to their rooms at a quarter past the hour, and all three deliveries were exceptionally prompt. That is the way of the Bloxham Hotel.’

Poirot turned to me. ‘This is another coincidence énorme,’ he said. ‘Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus all arrive at the hotel on the same day, the day before they are murdered. Then on the day of the murders they all order dinner to be brought to their rooms at a quarter past seven exactly? It does not seem very likely.’

‘Poirot, there’s no point debating the likelihood of something we know happened.’

‘Non. But there is a point in making sure that it happened in the way that we have heard. Monsieur Lazzari, I have no doubt that your hotel contains at least one very large room. Please assemble in that room everybody who works here, and I will speak to them all at their—and your—earliest convenience. While you do this, Mr Catchpool and I will begin the inspection of the three victims’ rooms.’

‘Yes, and we’d better be quick about it, before they come for the bodies,’ I said. ‘In normal circumstances, they would have been removed by now.’ I did not mention that the delay in this instance had been caused by my own dereliction of duty. In my hurry to put distance between myself and the Bloxham Hotel last night, and to think about something—anything—more pleasant than these three murders, I had neglected to make the necessary arrangements.

I hoped Poirot might warm up a few degrees once Lazzari had left us alone, but there was no change to his stern demeanour, and I realized that he was probably always like this ‘at work’, as it were—which seemed a bit rich since it was my work and not his, and he was doing nothing to lift my spirits.

I had a master key, and we visited the three rooms one by one. As we waited for the lift’s elaborate gold doors to open, Poirot said, ‘We can agree on one thing, I hope: Monsieur Lazzari’s word cannot be relied upon with regard to those working in the hotel. He speaks of them as if they are above suspicion, which they cannot be if they were here yesterday when the murders were committed. The loyalty of Monsieur Lazzari is commendable, but he is a fool if he believes that all the staff of the Bloxham Hotel are des anges.’

Something had been bothering me, so I made a clean breast of it: ‘I hope you don’t also think I’m a fool. What I said before about plenty of other guests also arriving on Wednesday … That was a hare-brained thing to say. Any guests that arrived on Wednesday and didn’t get murdered on Thursday are irrelevant, aren’t they? I mean, it’s only a noteworthy coincidence that three or any number of apparently unconnected guests arrive on the same day if they also get murdered on the same evening.’

‘Oui.’ Poirot smiled at me with genuine warmth as we stepped into the lift. ‘You have restored my faith in your mental acuity, my friend. And you hit the head of the nail when you say “apparently unconnected”. The three murder victims will turn out to be connected. I will swear to it now. They were not selected at random from among the hotel’s guests. The three were killed for one reason—a reason connected with the initials PIJ. It is for the same reason that they all came to the hotel on the same day.’

‘It’s almost as if they received an invitation to present themselves for slaughter,’ I said in a cavalier fashion. ‘Invitation reads: “Please arrive the day before, so that Thursday can be devoted entirely to your getting murdered.”’

It was perhaps undignified to joke about it, but joking is what I do when I feel despondent, I’m afraid. Sometimes I succeed in tricking myself into imagining that I feel all right about things. It didn’t work on this occasion.

‘Devoted entirely …’ Poirot muttered. ‘Yes, that is an idea, mon ami. You were not being serious, I understand. Nevertheless, you make a point that is very interesting.’

I did not think I had. It was an asinine joke and nothing more. Poirot seemed intent on congratulating me for my most absurd notions.

‘One, two, three,’ said Poirot as we went up in the lift. ‘Harriet Sippel, Room 121. Richard Negus, Room 238. Ida Gransbury, Room 317. The hotel has a fourth and a fifth floor also, but our three murder victims are on the consecutive floors 1, 2 and 3. It is very neat.’ Poirot usually approved of things that were neat, but he looked worried about this one.

We examined the three rooms, which were identical in almost every respect. Each contained a bed, cupboards, a basin with an upturned glass sitting on one corner, several armchairs, a table, a desk, a tiled fireplace, a radiator, a larger table over by the window, a suitcase, clothes and personal effects, and a dead person.

Each room’s door closed with a thud, trapping me inside …

‘Hold his hand, Edward.’

I couldn’t bring myself to look too closely at the bodies. All three were lying on their backs, perfectly straight, with their arms flat by their sides and their feet pointing towards the door. Formally laid out.

(Even writing these words, describing the posture of the bodies, produces in me an intolerable sensation. Is it any wonder I could not look closely at the three victims’ faces for more than a few seconds at a time? The blue undertone to the skin; the still, heavy tongues; the shrivelled lips? Though I would have studied their faces in detail rather than look at their lifeless hands, and I would have done anything at all rather than wonder what I could not help wondering: whether Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus would have wanted somebody to hold their hands once they were dead, or whether the idea would have horrified them. Alas, the human mind is a perverse, uncontrollable organ, and the contemplation of this matter pained me greatly.)

Formally laid out …

A thought struck me with great force. That was what was so grotesque about these three murder scenes, I realized: that the bodies had been laid out as a doctor might lay out his deceased patient, after tending him in his illness for many months. The bodies of Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus had been arranged with meticulous care—or so it seemed to me. Their killer had ministered to them after their deaths, which made it all the more chilling that he had murdered them in cold blood.

No sooner had I had this thought than I told myself I was quite wrong. It was not ministration that had taken place here; far from it. I was confusing the present and the past, mixing up this business at the Bloxham with my unhappiest childhood memories. I ordered myself to think only about what was here in front of me, and nothing else. I tried to see it all through Poirot’s eyes, without the distortion of my own experience.

Each of the murder victims lay between a wing-backed armchair and a small table. On the three tables were two teacups with saucers (Harriet Sippel’s and Ida Gransbury’s) and one sherry glass (Richard Negus’s). In Ida Gransbury’s room, 317, there was a tray on the larger table by the window, loaded with empty plates and one more teacup and saucer. This cup was also empty. There was nothing on the plates but crumbs.

‘Aha,’ said Poirot. ‘So in this room we have two teacups, and many plates. Miss Ida Gransbury had company for her evening meal, most certainly. Perhaps she had the murderer’s company. But why is the tray still here, when the trays have been removed from the rooms of Harriet Sippel and Richard Negus?’

‘They might not have ordered food,’ I said. ‘Maybe they only wanted drinks—the tea and the sherry—and no trays were left in their rooms in the first place. Ida Gransbury also brought twice as many clothes with her as the other two.’ I gestured towards the cupboard, which contained an impressive array of dresses. ‘Have a look in there—there isn’t room to squeeze in even one petticoat, the number of garments she brought with her. She wanted to be certain of looking her best, that’s for sure.’

‘You are right,’ said Poirot. ‘Lazzari said that they all ordered dinner, but we will check exactly what was ordered to each room. Poirot, he would not make the mistake of the assumption if it were not for Jennie weighing on his mind—Jennie, whose whereabouts he does not know! Jennie who is more or less the same age as the three we have here—between forty and forty-five, I think.’

I turned away while Poirot did whatever he did with the mouths and the cufflinks. While he conducted his forays and emitted various exclamations, I stared into fireplaces and out of windows, avoided thinking about hands that would never again be held, and pondered my crossword puzzle and where I might be going wrong. For some weeks I had been trying to compose one that was good enough to be sent to a newspaper to be considered for publication, but I wasn’t having much success.

After we had looked at all three rooms, Poirot insisted that we return to the one on the second floor—Richard Negus’s, number 238. Would I find it any easier to enter these rooms, I wondered, the more I did it? So far the answer was no. Walking once again into Negus’s hotel room felt like forcing my heart to climb the most perilous mountain, in the certain knowledge that it will be left stranded as soon as it reaches the top.

Poirot—unaware of my distress, which I concealed effectively, I hope—stood in the middle of the room and said, ‘Bon. This is the one that is most different from the others, n’est-ce pas? Ida Gransbury has the tray and the additional teacup in her room, it is true, but here there is the sherry glass instead of the teacup, and here we have one window open to its full capacity, while in the other two rooms all the windows are closed. Mr Negus’s room is intolerably cold.’

‘This is how it was when Monsieur Lazzari walked in and found Negus dead,’ I said. ‘Nothing’s been altered in any way.’

Poirot walked over to the open window. ‘Here is Monsieur Lazzari’s wonderful view that he offered to show me—of the hotel’s gardens. Both Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury had rooms on the other side of the hotel, with views of the “splendid London”. Do you see these trees, Catchpool?’

I told him that I did, wondering if he had me down as a colossal idiot. How could I fail to see trees that were directly outside the window?

‘Another difference here is the position of the cufflink,’ said Poirot. ‘Did you notice that? In Harriet Sippel’s and Ida Gransbury’s mouths, the cufflink is slightly protruding between the lips. Whereas Richard Negus has the cufflink much further back, almost at the entrance to the throat.’

I opened my mouth to object, then changed my mind, but it was too late. Poirot had seen the argument in my eyes. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘I think you’re being a touch pedantic,’ I said. ‘All three victims have monogrammed cufflinks in their mouths—the same initials on each one, PIJ. That’s something they have in common. It isn’t a difference. No matter which of their teeth the cufflink happens to be next to.’

‘But it is a very big difference! The lips, the entrance to the throat—these are not the same place, not at all.’ Poirot walked over so that he was standing right in front of me. ‘Catchpool, please remember what I am about to tell you. When three murders are almost identical, the smallest divergent details are of the utmost importance.’

Was I supposed to remember these wise words even if I disagreed with them? Poirot needn’t have worried. I remember nearly every word he has spoken in my presence, and the ones that infuriated me most are the ones I remember best of all.

‘All three cufflinks were in the mouths of the victims,’ I repeated with determined obstinacy. ‘That’s good enough for me.’

‘This I see,’ said Poirot with an air of dejection. ‘Good enough for you, and good enough also for your hundred people that you might ask, and also, I have no doubt, for your bosses at Scotland Yard. But not good enough for Hercule Poirot!’

I had to remind myself that he was talking about definitions of similarity and difference, and not about me personally.

‘What about the open window, when all the windows in the other two rooms are closed?’ he asked. ‘Is that a difference worth noting?’

‘It’s unlikely to be relevant,’ I said. ‘Richard Negus might have opened the window himself. There would be no reason for the murderer to close it. You’ve said it often yourself, Poirot—we Englishmen open windows in the dead of winter because we believe it’s good for our character.’

‘Mon ami,’ said Poirot patiently. ‘Consider: these three people did not drink poison, fall out of their armchairs and quite naturally land flat on their backs with their arms at their sides and their feet pointing towards the door. It is impossible. Why would one not stagger across the room? Why would one not fall out of the chair on the other side? The killer, he arranged the bodies so that each one was in the same position, at an equal distance from the chair and from the little table. Eh bien, if he cares so much to arrange his three murder scenes to look exactly the same, why does he not wish to close the window that, yes, perhaps Mr Richard Negus has opened—but why does the murderer not close it in order to make it conform with the appearance of the windows in the other two rooms?’

I had to think about this. Poirot was right: the bodies had been laid out in this way deliberately. The killer must have wanted them all to look the same.

Laying out the dead …

‘I suppose it depends where you choose to draw your frame around the scene of the crime,’ I said hurriedly, as my mind tried to drag me back to my childhood’s darkest room. ‘Depends whether you want to extend it as far as the window.’

‘Frame?’

‘Yes. Not a real frame, a theoretical one. Perhaps our murderer’s frame for his creations was no larger than a square like this.’ I walked around Richard Negus’s body, turning corners when necessary. ‘You see? I’ve just walked a small frame around Negus, and the window is outside the frame.’

Poirot was smiling and trying to hide it beneath his moustaches. ‘A theoretical frame around the murder. Yes, I see. Where does the scene of a crime begin and where does it end? This is the question. Can it be smaller than the room that contains it? This is a fascinating matter for the philosophers.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Pas du tout. Catchpool, will you please tell me what you believe happened here at the Bloxham Hotel yesterday evening? Let us leave motive to one side for the moment. Tell me what you think the killer did. First, and next, and next, and so on.’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Try to have an idea, Catchpool.’

‘Well … I suppose he came to the hotel, cufflinks in pocket, and went to each of the three rooms in turn. He probably started where we did, with Ida Gransbury in Room 317, and worked his way down so that he would be able to leave the hotel fairly quickly after killing his final victim—Harriet Sippel in Room 121, on the first floor. Only one floor down and he can escape.’

‘And what does he do in the three rooms?’

I sighed. ‘You know the answer to that. He commits a murder and arranges the body in a straight line. He places a cufflink in the person’s mouth. Then he closes and locks the door and leaves.’

‘And to each room he is admitted without question? In each room, he finds his victim waiting with a most convenient drink for him to drop his poison into—drinks that were delivered by hotel staff at precisely a quarter past seven? He stands beside his victim, watching as the drink is consumed, and then he stands for a little longer as he waits for each one to die? And he stops to eat supper with one of them, Ida Gransbury, who has ordered a cup of tea for him too? All these visits to rooms, all these murders and putting of cufflinks in mouths and very formal arranging of bodies in straight lines, with feet pointing towards the door, he is able to do between a quarter past seven and ten past eight? This seems most unlikely, my friend. Most unlikely indeed.’

‘Yes, it does. Have you got any better ideas, Poirot? That’s why you’re here—to have better ideas than mine. Do please start any time you wish.’ I was regretting my outburst by the time I’d finished the sentence.

‘I started long ago,’ said Poirot, who thankfully had not taken umbrage. ‘You said that the killer left a note on the front desk, informing of his crimes—show it to me.’

I took it out of my pocket and passed it across to him. John Goode, Lazzari’s idea of perfection in the form of a hotel clerk, had found it on the front desk ten minutes after eight o’clock. It read, ‘MAY THEY NEVER REST IN PEACE. 121. 238. 317.’

‘So the murderer, or an accomplice of the murderer, was brazen enough to approach the desk—the main desk in the lobby of the hotel—with a note that would incriminate him if anyone saw him leaving it,’ said Poirot. ‘He is audacious. Confident. He did not disappear into the shadows, using the back door.’

‘After Lazzari read the note, he checked the three rooms and found the bodies,’ I said. ‘Then he checked all the other rooms in the hotel, he was very proud to tell me. Fortunately no other dead guests were found.’

I knew I oughtn’t to say vulgar things, but it made me feel better somehow. If Poirot had been English, I probably would have made a greater effort to keep myself in check.

‘And did it occur to Monsieur Lazzari that one of his still-living guests might be a murderer? Non. It did not. Any person who chooses to stay at the Bloxham Hotel must have a character of the utmost virtue and integrity!’

I coughed and inclined my head towards the door. Poirot turned. Lazzari had let himself into the room and was standing in the doorway. He could hardly have looked happier. ‘So true, so true, Monsieur Poirot,’ he said.

‘Every single person who was in this hotel on Thursday must speak to Mr Catchpool and account for their movements,’ Poirot told him sternly. ‘Every guest, everyone who was here to work. All of them.’

‘With the greatest pleasure, you may speak to whomsoever you wish, Mr Catchpool.’ Lazzari bowed in deference. ‘And our dining room will soon be at your disposal, once we have cleared away the breakfast—ah, how do you say?—paraphernalia, and gathered everybody together.’

‘Merci. Meanwhile, I will conduct a thorough examination of the three rooms,’ said Poirot. This came as a surprise to me. I thought that was what we had just done. ‘Catchpool, find out the addresses of Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus. Find out who in the hotel took their reservations, what food and drinks they each requested to be delivered to their rooms, and when. And from whom.’

I started to edge towards the door, fearing that Poirot would never stop dreaming up more tasks to add to the list.

He called after me, ‘Find out if anyone by the name of Jennie is staying in the hotel, or working here.’

‘There is not a Jennie employed at the Bloxham, Monsieur Poirot,’ said Lazzari. ‘Instead of asking Mr Catchpool you should ask me. Everybody here is well known to me. We are a very large happy family here at the Bloxham Hotel!’

CHAPTER 4
The Frame Widens

Sometimes, remembering something a person said months or even years ago still makes you chuckle, and this, for me, is true of what Poirot said to me at some point later on that day: ‘It is hard for even the most ingenious detective to know what to do if his desire is to be free of Signor Lazzari. If one’s praise of his hotel is insufficient, he stays by one’s side and supplements it with his own; if one’s praise is fulsome and lengthy, he stays to listen.’

Poirot’s efforts were eventually successful, and he finally managed to persuade Lazzari to leave him to his own devices in Room 238. He walked over to the door that the hotel manager had left open, closed it, and sighed with relief. How much easier it was to think clearly when there was no babble of voices.

He made straight for the window. An open window, he thought as he stared out of it. The murderer might have opened it to escape, after killing Richard Negus. He could have climbed down a tree.

Why escape thus? Why not simply leave the room in the expected way, using the corridor? Perhaps the killer heard voices outside Negus’s room and did not want to risk being seen. Yes, that was a possibility. And yet when he strolled up to the front desk to leave his note announcing his three murders, he risked being seen. More than seen—he risked being caught in the act of leaving incriminating evidence.

Poirot looked down at the body on the floor. No gleam of metal between the lips. Richard Negus alone of the three victims had the cufflink right at the back of his mouth. It was an anomaly. Too many things about this room were anomalous. For this reason, Poirot decided he would search Room 238 first. He was … Yes, there was no virtue in denying it—he was suspicious of this room. Of the three, it was his least favourite. There was something disorganized about it, something a little unruly.

Poirot stood beside Negus’s body and frowned. Even by his exacting standards, one open window was not enough to render a room chaotic, so what was it that was giving him this impression? He looked around, turning in a slow circle. No, he must be mistaken. Hercule Poirot was not often wrong but it did happen very occasionally, and this must be one such instance, because 238 was an undeniably tidy room. There was no mess or muddle. It was as tidy as Harriet Sippel’s room and Ida Gransbury’s.

‘I shall shut the window and see if that makes a difference,’ said Poirot to himself. He did so, and surveyed the territory anew. Something was still not right. He did not like Room 238. He would not have felt comfortable if he had arrived at the Bloxham Hotel and been shown to this …

Suddenly the problem leapt out at him, putting an abrupt end to his meditations. The fireplace! One of the tiles was not aligned correctly. It was not straight; it jutted out. A loose tile; Poirot could not sleep in a room with such a thing. He eyed the body of Richard Negus. ‘If I were in the condition that you are in, oui, but not otherwise,’ he said to it.

His only thought as he bent to touch the tile was that he might straighten it and push it back in so that it was flush with the others. To spare future guests the torment of knowing that there was something amiss in the room and being unable to work out what it was—what a service that would be! And to Signor Lazzari also!

When Poirot touched it, the tile fell clean out, and something else fell with it: a key with a number on it: 238. ‘Sacre tonnerre,’ Poirot whispered. ‘So the thorough search was not so thorough after all.’

Poirot replaced the key where he had found it, then set about inspecting the rest of the room, inch by inch. He discovered nothing else of interest, so he proceeded to Room 317 and then to Room 121, which was where I found him when I returned from my errands with exciting news of my own.

Poirot being Poirot, he insisted on telling me his news first, about his finding of the key. All I can say is, in Belgium it is evidently not considered unseemly to gloat. He was quite puffed up with pride. ‘Do you see what this means, mon ami? The open window was not opened by Richard Negus, it was opened after his death! Having locked the door of Room 238 from the inside, the murderer needed to escape. He did so using the tree outside Mr Negus’s window, after he had hidden the key behind a tile in the fireplace that had come loose. He perhaps loosened it himself.’

‘Why not conceal it in his clothing, take it with him and leave the room in the customary way?’ I asked.

‘That is a question I have been asking myself—one that, for now, I am unable to answer,’ Poirot said. ‘I have satisfied myself that there is no hidden key in this room, 121. Nor is there a key anywhere in Room 317. The killer must have taken two keys with him when he left the Bloxham Hotel, so why not the third? Why is the treatment of Richard Negus different?’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ I said. ‘Listen, I’ve been talking to John Goode, the clerk—’

‘The most dependable clerk,’ Poirot amended with a twinkle in his eye.

‘Yes, well … dependable or not, he’s certainly come up trumps for us on the information front. You were right: the three victims are connected. I’ve seen their addresses. Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury both lived in a place called Great Holling, in the Culver Valley.’

‘Bon. And Richard Negus?’

‘No, he lives in Devon—place called Beaworthy. But he’s connected too. He booked all three hotel rooms—Ida’s, Harriet’s and his own—and he paid for them ahead of time.’

‘Did he indeed? This I find very interesting …’ Poirot murmured, stroking his moustaches.

‘Bit puzzling, if you ask me,’ I said. ‘The main puzzle being: why, if they were coming from the same village on the same day, did Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury not travel together? Why did they not arrive together? I went over it several times with John Goode and he is adamant: Harriet arrived two hours before Ida on Wednesday—two full hours.’

‘And Richard Negus?’

I resolved henceforth to include all details relating to Negus at the earliest opportunity, if only so that I wouldn’t have to hear Poirot say, ‘And Richard Negus?’ over and over again.

‘He turned up an hour before Harriet Sippel. He was the first of the three to arrive, but it wasn’t John Goode who dealt with him. It was a junior clerk, a Mr Thomas Brignell. I also found out that all three of our murder victims travelled to London by train, not car. I’m not sure if you wanted to know that, but—’

‘I must know everything,’ said Poirot.

His obvious desire to be in charge and make the investigation his own both irritated and reassured me. ‘The Bloxham has some cars that it sends out to fetch guests from the station,’ I told him. ‘It’s not cheap, but they’re happy to sort it out for you. Three weeks ago, Richard Negus made arrangements with John Goode for the hotel’s cars to meet him, Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury. Separately; a car each. All of it—the rooms, the cars—it was all paid for in advance, by Negus.’

‘I wonder if he was a wealthy man,’ Poirot mused aloud. ‘So often, murder turns out to be about money. What are your thoughts, Catchpool, now that we know a little more?’

‘Well …’ I decided to throw myself into it, since he’d asked. Imagining what was possible was a good thing in Poirot’s book, so I would allow myself to concoct a theory, using the facts as a starting point. ‘Richard Negus must have known about all three arrivals, since he reserved and paid for the rooms, but perhaps Harriet Sippel didn’t know that Ida Gransbury was also coming to the Bloxham. And perhaps Ida didn’t know that Harriet was.’

‘Oui, c’est possible.’

Encouraged, I went on: ‘Maybe it was essential to the murderer’s plan that neither Ida nor Harriet should know about the presence of the other one. But if that’s so, and if Richard Negus, meanwhile, knew that he and both women would be guests at the Bloxham …’ My well of ideas ran dry at that point.

Poirot took over: ‘Our trains of thought proceed along similar tracks, my friend. Was Richard Negus an unwitting accomplice in his own murder? Perhaps the killer persuaded him to entice the victims to the Bloxham Hotel supposedly for another reason, when all along he planned to murder all three of them. The question is this: was it vital for some reason that Ida and Harriet should each be ignorant of the presence of the other in the hotel? And if so, was it important to Richard Negus, to the murderer, or to both?’

‘Perhaps Richard Negus had one plan, and the murderer had another?’

‘Quite so,’ said Poirot. ‘The next thing is to find out all that we can about Harriet Sippel, Richard Negus and Ida Gransbury. Who were they when they were alive? What were their hopes, their grievances, their secrets? The village, Great Holling—this is where we will look for our answers. Perhaps we will also find Jennie there, and PIJ—le mystérieux!’

‘There’s no guest here called Jennie, now or last night. I checked.’

‘No, I did not think that there would be. Fee Spring, the waitress, told me that Jennie lives in a house across town from Pleasant’s Coffee House. That means in London—not Devon and not the Culver Valley. Jennie has no need of a room at the Bloxham Hotel when she lives only “across town”.’

‘Speaking of which, Henry Negus, Richard’s brother, is on his way here from Devon. Richard Negus lived with Henry and his family. And I’ve got some of my best men lined up to interview all the hotel guests.’

‘You have been very efficient, Catchpool.’ Poirot patted my arm.

I felt obliged to advise Poirot of my one failure. ‘This business with the dinners in the rooms is proving difficult to pin down,’ I said. ‘I can’t find anyone who was personally involved in taking the orders or making the deliveries. There seems to be some confusion.’

‘Do not worry,’ said Poirot. ‘I will do the necessary pinning when we gather in the dining room. In the meantime, let us take a walk around the hotel gardens. Sometimes a gentle perambulation causes a new idea to rise to the surface of one’s thoughts.’

As soon as we got outside, Poirot started to complain about the weather, which did seem to have taken a turn for the worse. ‘Shall we go back inside?’ I suggested.

‘No, no. Not yet. The change of environment is good for the little grey cells, and perhaps the trees will afford some shelter from the wind. I do not mind the cold, but there is the good kind and the bad kind, and this, today, is the bad kind.’

We stopped as we came to the entrance to the Bloxham’s gardens. Luca Lazzari had not exaggerated their beauty, I thought, as I stared at rows of pleached limes and, at the furthest end, the most artful topiary I had ever seen in London. This was nature not merely tamed but forced into stunning submission. Even in a biting wind, it was exceptionally pleasing to the eye.

‘Well?’ I asked Poirot. ‘Are we going in or not?’ It would be satisfying, I thought, to stroll up and down the green pathways between the trees, which were Roman-road straight.

‘I do not know.’ Poirot frowned. ‘This weather …’ He shivered.

‘… will extend, unavoidably, to the gardens,’ I completed his sentence somewhat impatiently. ‘There are only two places we can be, Poirot: inside the hotel or outside it. Which do you prefer?’

‘I have a better idea!’ he announced triumphantly. ‘We will catch a bus!’

‘A bus? To where?’

‘To nowhere, or somewhere! It does not matter. We will soon get off the bus and return on a different one. It will give us the change of scenery without the cold! Come. We will look out of the windows at the city. Who knows what we might observe?’ He set off determinedly.

I followed, shaking my head. ‘You’re thinking of Jennie, aren’t you?’ I said. ‘It’s extremely unlikely that we will see her—’

‘It is more likely than if we stand here looking at twigs and grass!’ said Poirot fiercely.

Ten minutes later we found ourselves trundling along on a bus with windows so fogged up that it was impossible to see anything through them. Wiping them with a handkerchief didn’t help.

I tried to talk some sense into Poirot. ‘About Jennie …’ I began.

‘Oui?’

‘She might well be in danger, but, really, she’s nothing to do with this business at the Bloxham. There’s no evidence of a connection between the two. None at all.’

‘I disagree, my friend,’ said Poirot sorrowfully. ‘I am more than ever convinced of a connection.’

‘You are? Dash it all, Poirot—why?’

‘Because of the two most unusual features that the … situations have in common.’

‘And what are those?’

‘They will come to you, Catchpool. Really, they cannot fail to strike you if you open your mind and think about what you know.’

In the seats behind us, an elderly mother and her middle-aged daughter were discussing what made the difference between pastry that was merely good and pastry that was excellent.

‘Do you hear that, Catchpool?’ whispered Poirot. ‘La différence! Let us focus not on similarities but on differences—this is what will point us towards our murderer.’

‘What sort of differences?’ I asked.

‘Between two of the murders at the hotel and the third. Why are the circumstantial details so different in the case of Richard Negus? Why did the killer lock the door from the inside of the room instead of from the outside? Why did he hide the key behind a loose tile in the fireplace instead of taking it with him? Why did he leave by the window, with the help of a tree, instead of by walking along the corridor in the normal way? At first I wondered if perhaps he heard voices in the corridor and did not want to risk being seen leaving Mr Negus’s room.’

‘That seems reasonable,’ I said.

‘Non. I do not, after all, think that was the reason.’

‘Oh. Why not?’

‘Because of the positioning of the cufflink in Richard Negus’s mouth, which was also different in this one case: fully inside the mouth, near the throat, instead of between the lips.’

I groaned. ‘Not this again. I really don’t think—’

‘Ah! Wait, Catchpool. Let us see …’

The bus had stopped. Poirot craned his neck to inspect the new passengers who boarded, and sighed when the last one—a slender man in a tweed suit with more hair growing from his ears than on his head—was in.

‘You’re disappointed because none of them is Jennie,’ I said. I needed to say it aloud in order to believe it, I think.

‘Non, mon ami. You are correct about the sentiment, but not about its cause. I feel the disappointment every time I think that, in a city as énorme as London, I am unlikely ever to see Jennie again. And yet … I hope.’

‘For all your talk of scientific method, you’re a bit of a dreamer, aren’t you?’

‘You believe hope to be the enemy of science and not its driving force? If so, I disagree, just as I disagree with you about the cufflink. It is a significant difference in the case of Richard Negus from the other two, the women. The difference of the position of the cufflink in Mr Negus’s mouth cannot be explained by the killer hearing the voices of people in the corridor and wanting to avoid them,’ Poirot spoke over me. ‘Therefore there must be another explanation. Until we know what it is, we cannot be certain that it does not also apply to the open window, the key hidden in the room and the door locked from the inside.’

There comes a point in most cases—and by no means only those in which Hercule Poirot has involved himself—when one starts to feel that it would be a greater comfort, and actually no less effective, to talk only to oneself, and dispense with all attempts to communicate with the outside world.

In my head, to a sensible and appreciative audience of one, I silently made the following point: the cufflink being in a slightly different part of Richard Negus’s mouth was of absolutely no consequence. A mouth is a mouth, and that was all there was to it. In the murderer’s mind, he had done the same thing to each of his three victims: he had opened their mouths and placed a monogrammed gold cufflink inside each one.

I could not think of any explanation for the hiding of the key behind the loose fireplace tile. It would have been quicker and easier for the murderer to take it with him, or drop it on the carpet after wiping it clean of his fingerprints.

Behind us, the mother and daughter had exhausted the topic of pastry and moved on to suet.

‘We ought to think about returning to the hotel,’ said Poirot.

‘But we’ve only just got on the bus!’ I protested.

‘Oui, c’est vrai, but we do not want to stray too far from the Bloxham. We will soon be needed in the dining room.’

I exhaled slowly, knowing it would be pointless to ask why, in that case, he had felt it necessary to leave the hotel in the first place.

‘We must get off this bus and catch another,’ he said. ‘Perhaps there will be better views from the next one.’

There were. Poirot saw no sign of Jennie, much to his consternation, but I saw some amusing sights that made me realize all over again why I loved London: a man dressed in a clown costume, juggling about as badly as I had ever seen a person juggle. Still, passers-by were throwing coins into the hat by his feet. Other highlights were a poodle that had a face exactly like a prominent politician, and a vagrant sitting on the pavement with an open suitcase beside him, eating food out of it as if it were his very own mobile tuck shop. ‘Look, Poirot,’ I said. ‘That chap doesn’t care about the cold—he’s as happy as the cat that got the cream. The tramp that got the cream, I should say. Poirot, look at that poodle—does it remind you of anyone? Somebody famous. Go on, look, you can’t fail to see it.’

‘Catchpool,’ Poirot said severely. ‘Stand up, or we will miss our stop. Always you look away, seeking the diversion.’

I rose to my feet. As soon as we were off the bus, I said, ‘You’re the one who took me on a pointless sightseeing tour of London. You can hardly blame me for taking an interest in the sights.’

Poirot stopped walking. ‘Tell me something. Why will you not look at the three bodies in the hotel? What is it that you cannot bear to observe?’

‘Nothing. I’ve looked at the bodies as much as you have—I did quite a lot of my looking before you turned up, as a matter of fact.’

‘If you do not wish to discuss it with me, you only need to say so, mon ami.’

‘There is nothing to discuss. I don’t know anybody who would stare at a deceased person for any longer than necessary. That’s all there is to it.’

‘Non,’ said Poirot quietly. ‘It is not all.’

I dare say I ought to have told him, and I still don’t know why I didn’t. My grandfather died when I was five. He was dying for a long time, in a room in our house. I didn’t like going to visit him in his room every day, but my parents insisted that it was important to him, and so I did it to please them, and for his sake also. I watched his skin turn gradually yellower, and listened as his breathing became more shallow and his eyes less focused. I didn’t think of it then as fear, but I remember, every day, counting the seconds that I had to spend in that room, knowing that eventually I would be able to leave, close the door behind me and stop counting.

When he died, I felt as if I had been released from prison and could be fully alive again. He would be taken away, and there would be no more death in the house. And then my mother told me that I must go and see Grandfather one last time, in his room. She would come with me, she said. It would be all right.

The doctor had laid him out. My mother explained to me about the laying out of the dead. I counted the seconds in silence. More seconds than usual. A hundred and thirty at least, standing by my mother’s side, looking at Grandpa’s still, shrunken body. ‘Hold his hand, Edward,’ my mother said. When I said I didn’t want to, she started to weep as if she would never stop.

So I held Grandpa’s dead, bony hand. I wanted more than anything to drop it and run away, but I clung to it until my mother stopped crying and said we could go back downstairs.

Hold his hand, Edward. Hold his hand.

CHAPTER 5
Ask a Hundred People

I barely noticed the large crowd gathered in the Bloxham Hotel’s dining room as Poirot and I walked in. The room itself was so striking that I couldn’t help but be diverted by its grandeur. I stopped in the doorway and stared up at the high, lavishly ornamented ceiling with its many emblems and carvings. It was strange to think of people eating ordinary things like toast and marmalade at the tables below a work of art such as this—not even looking up, perhaps, as they sliced the tops off their boiled eggs.

I was trying to make sense of the complete design, and how the different parts of the ceiling related to one another, when a disconsolate Luca Lazzari rushed towards me, interrupting my admiration of the artistic symmetry above my head with his loud lament. ‘Mr Catchpool, Monsieur Poirot, I must apologize to you most profusely! I have hurried to assist you in your important work, and, in doing so, I have put forward a falsehood! It was simply, you see, that I heard many accounts, and my first attempt to collate them was not successful. My own foolishness was responsible! No one else was at fault. Ah—’

Lazzari broke off and looked over his shoulder at the hundred or so men and women in the room. Then he moved to his left, so that he was standing directly in front of Poirot, and stuck out his chest in a funny sort of way. He put his hands on his hips. I think he was hoping to hide his entire staff from Poirot’s disapproving eye, on the principle that if they couldn’t be seen, they couldn’t be blamed for anything.

‘What was your mistake, Signor Lazzari?’ Poirot asked.

‘It was a grave error! You observed that it was surely not possible, and you were right. But I want you to understand that my excellent staff, whom you see here before you, told me the truth of what took place, and it was I who twisted that truth to mislead—but I did not do it deliberately!’

‘Je comprends. Now, to correct the mistake …?’ said Poirot hopefully.

The ‘excellent’ staff, meanwhile, sat silently at large round tables, listening carefully to every word. The mood was sombre. I made a quick survey of the faces and saw not a single smile.

‘I told you that the three deceased guests asked to have dinner served in their rooms at a quarter past seven yesterday evening—each separately,’ Lazzari said. ‘This is not true! The three were together! They dined as a group! All in one room, Ida Gransbury’s room, number 317. One waiter, not three, saw them alive and well at a quarter past seven. Do you see, Monsieur Poirot? It is not the great coincidence that I conveyed to you, but, instead, a commonplace occurrence: three guests taking dinner together in the room of one!’

‘Bon.’ Poirot sounded satisfied. ‘That makes sense of that. And who was this one waiter?’

A stout, bald man seated at one of the tables rose to his feet. He looked to be around fifty, and had the jowlish tendency and mournful eyes of a Basset Hound. ‘It was I, sir,’ he said.

‘What is your name, monsieur?’

‘Rafal Bobak, sir.’

‘You served dinner to Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus in Room 317 at fifteen minutes past seven yesterday evening?’ Poirot asked him.

‘Not dinner, sir,’ said Bobak. ‘Afternoon tea—that was what Mr Negus ordered. Afternoon tea at dinner time. He asked if that was all right or if I was going to force them to have what he called “a dinner sort of dinner”. Told me that he and his friends were of one mind as not being in the mood for one of those. Said they’d rather have afternoon tea. I told him he could have whatever he wanted, sir. He asked for sandwiches—ham, cheese, salmon and cucumber—and an assortment of cakes. And scones, sir, with jam and cream.’

‘And beverages?’ Poirot asked.

‘Tea, sir. For all three of them.’

‘D’accord. And the sherry for Richard Negus?’

Rafal Bobak shook his head. ‘No, sir. No sherry. Mr Negus didn’t ask me for a sherry. I didn’t take a glass of sherry up to Room 317.’

‘You are certain of this?’

‘Absolutely, sir.’

Being on display in front of all those pairs of eyes was making me feel a touch awkward. I was painfully aware that I had not yet asked a question. Letting Poirot run the show was all very well, but if I didn’t participate at all, I would look feeble. I cleared my throat and addressed the room: ‘Did any of you take a cup of tea to Harriet Sippel’s room, number 121, at any point? Or a sherry to Richard Negus’s room? Either yesterday or Wednesday, the day before?’

Heads began to shake. Unless someone was lying, it seemed that the only delivery to any of the three victims’ rooms was the one of afternoon-tea-for-dinner made by Rafal Bobak to Room 317 at 7.15 p.m. on Thursday.

I tried to sort it out in my mind: the teacup in Harriet Sippel’s room wasn’t a problem. That must have been one of the three brought by Bobak, since only two cups were found in Ida Gransbury’s room after the murders. But how did the sherry glass make its way to Richard Negus’s room unless transported there by a waiter?

Did the killer arrive at the Bloxham with a glass of Harvey’s Bristol Cream in his hand, as well as a pocket full of monogrammed cufflinks and poison? It seemed far-fetched.

Poirot appeared to have fixed on the same problem. ‘To be absolutely clear: not one of you gave a glass of sherry to Mr Richard Negus, either in his room or anywhere else in the hotel?’

There was more head-shaking.

‘Signor Lazzari, can you tell me please, was the glass found in Mr Negus’s room one that belonged to the Bloxham Hotel?’

‘Yes, it was, Monsieur Poirot. This is all very perplexing. I would suggest that perhaps a waiter who is absent today gave the glass of sherry to Mr Negus on Thursday or Wednesday, but everybody is here now who was here then.’

‘It is, as you say, perplexing,’ Poirot agreed. ‘Mr Bobak, perhaps you could tell us what happened when you took the evening-afternoon-tea to Ida Gransbury’s room.’

‘I set it out on the table and then I left them to it, sir.’

‘They were all three in the room? Mrs Sippel, Miss Gransbury and Mr Negus?’

‘They were, yes, sir.’

‘Describe to us the scene.’

‘The scene, sir?’

Seeing that Rafal Bobak was at a loss, I chipped in with: ‘Which one of them opened the door?’

‘Mr Negus opened the door, sir.’

‘And where were the two women?’ I asked.

‘Oh, they were sitting in the two chairs over by the fireplace. Talking to each other. I had no dealings with them. I spoke only to Mr Negus. Laid everything out on the table by the window, and then I left, sir.’

‘Can you recall what the two ladies talked about?’ asked Poirot.

Bobak lowered his eyes. ‘Well, sir …’

‘It is important, monsieur. Every detail that you can tell me about these three people is important.’

‘Well … they were being a bit cattish, sir. Laughing about it, too.’

‘You mean they were being spiteful? How so?’

‘One of them was, yes. And Mr Negus, he seemed to find it entertaining. It was something about an older woman and a younger man. It wasn’t my business so I didn’t listen.’

‘Do you remember what precisely was said? At whom was the cattishness directed?’

‘I couldn’t tell you, sir, I’m sorry. An old woman that might be pining for the love of a young man, that was the sense I got. It sounded like gossip to me.’

‘Monsieur,’ said Poirot in his most authoritative voice. ‘If you should happen to remember anything else about this conversation, anything at all, please inform me without delay.’

‘I shall, sir. Now that I think about it, the young man might have deserted the older woman and eloped with another woman. Idle gossip, that’s all it was.’

‘So …’ Poirot started to pace the length of the room. It was strange to see more than a hundred heads turn slowly, then turn back as he retraced his steps. ‘We have Richard Negus, Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury—one man and two women—in Room 317, talking cattishly about one man and two women!’

‘But what’s the significance of that, Poirot?’ I asked.

‘It might not be significant. It is interesting, however. And the idle gossip, the laughter, the afternoon tea for dinner … This tells us that our three murder victims were not strangers but acquaintances on friendly terms, unaware of the fate that would shortly befall them.’

A sudden movement startled me. At the table immediately in front of where Poirot and I were standing, a black-haired, pale-faced young man had bounced out of his seat as if propelled from underneath. I would have assumed he was eager to say something were it not for the terror-frozen expression on his face.

‘This is one of our junior clerks, Mr Thomas Brignell,’ said Lazzari, presenting the man with a flourish of his hand.

‘They were more than on friendly terms, sir,’ Brignell breathed after a protracted silence. No one sitting behind him could have heard what he said, his voice was so quiet. ‘They were good friends. They knew each other well.’

‘Of course they were good friends!’ Lazzari announced to the room. ‘They ate a meal together!’

‘Many people eat meals every day with those they dislike profoundly,’ said Poirot. ‘Please continue, Mr Brignell.’

‘When I met Mr Negus last night, he was concerned for the two ladies as only a good friend would be,’ Thomas Brignell whispered at us.

‘You met him?’ I said. ‘When? Where?’

‘Half past seven, sir.’ He pointed towards the dining room’s double doors. I noticed that his arm was shaking. ‘Right outside here. I walked out and saw him going towards the lift. He saw me and stopped, called me over. I assumed he was making his way back to his room.’

‘What did he say to you?’ Poirot asked.

‘He … he asked me to make sure that the meal was charged to him and not to either of the ladies. He could afford it, he said, but Mrs Sippel and Miss Gransbury could not.’

‘Was that all he said, monsieur?’

‘Yes.’ Brignell looked as if he might faint if he was required to produce one more word.

‘Thank you, Mr Brignell,’ I said as warmly as I could. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’ Immediately I felt guilty for not having thanked Rafal Bobak in a similar manner, so I added, ‘As have you, Mr Bobak. As have you all.’

‘Catchpool,’ Poirot murmured. ‘Most people in this room have said nothing.’

‘They have listened attentively and applied their minds to the problems presented to them. I think they deserve credit for that.’

‘You have faith in their minds, yes? Perhaps these are the hundred people you call upon when we disagree? Bien, if we were to ask these hundred people …’ Poirot turned back to the crowd. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we have heard that Richard Negus, Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury were friends, and that their food was delivered to Room 317 at fifteen minutes past seven. Yet at half past seven, Mr Brignell saw Richard Negus on this floor of the hotel, walking towards the lift. Mr Negus must have been returning, n’est-ce pas, either to his own room, 238, or to Room 317 to join his two friends? But returning from where? His sandwiches and cakes were delivered only fifteen minutes earlier! Did he abandon them immediately and set off somewhere? Or did he eat his share of the food in only three or four minutes before rushing off? And to where did he rush? What was the important errand for which he left Room 317? Was it to ensure that the food should not end up on the bill of Harriet Sippel or Ida Gransbury? He could not wait twenty or thirty minutes, or an hour, before setting off to attend to this matter?’

A sturdily built woman with curly brown hair and severe eyebrows sprang to her feet at the back of the room. ‘You keep asking all these questions as if I might know the answer, as if we all might know the answers, and we don’t know nothing!’ Her eyes darted around the room as she spoke, settling on one person after another, though her words were addressed to Poirot. ‘I want to go home, Mr Lazzari,’ she wailed. ‘I want to look in on my kiddies and see that they’re safe!’

A younger woman sitting beside her put a hand on her arm and tried to calm her. ‘Sit down, Tessie,’ she said. ‘The gentleman’s only trying to help. Your bairns won’t have come to any harm, not if they’ve been nowhere near the Bloxham.’

At this remark, intended as a comfort, both Luca Lazzari and Sturdy Tessie made anguished noises.

‘We won’t keep you much longer, madam,’ I said. ‘And I’m sure Mr Lazzari will allow you to pay a visit to your children afterwards, if that is what you feel you need to do.’

Lazzari indicated that this would be permissible, and Tessie sat down, slightly mollified.

I turned to Poirot and said, ‘Richard Negus did not leave Room 317 in order to clear up the matter of the bill. He ran into Thomas Brignell on his way back from somewhere, so he had already done whatever it was that he set out to do by that point. He then happened to spot Mr Brignell and decided to clear up the matter of the bill.’ I hoped, with this little speech, to demonstrate to all present that we had answers as well as questions. Perhaps not all the answers, yet, but some, and some was better than none.

‘Monsieur Brignell, did you have the impression that Mr Negus happened to see you and take his opportunity, as Mr Catchpool describes? He was not looking for you? It was you who attended to him when he arrived at the hotel on Wednesday, yes?

‘That’s right, sir. No, he wasn’t looking for me.’ Brignell seemed happier about speaking while seated. ‘He chanced upon me and thought, “Oh, there’s that chap again”, if you know what I mean, sir.’

‘Indeed. Ladies and gentlemen,’ Poirot raised his voice. ‘After committing three murders in this hotel yesterday evening, the killer, or somebody who knows the identity of the killer and conspired with him, left a note on the front desk: “MAY THEY NEVER REST IN PEACE. 121. 238. 317.” Did anybody happen to observe the leaving of this note that I show to you now?’ Poirot produced the small white card from his pocket and held it up in the air. ‘It was found by the clerk, Mr John Goode, at ten minutes past eight. Did any of you, perhaps, notice a person or persons near the desk who seemed to be conducting themselves in an unusual way? Think hard! Someone must have seen something!’

Stout Tessie had screwed her eyes shut and was leaning against her friend. The room had filled with whispers and gasps, but it was only the shock and excitement of seeing the handwriting of a killer—a souvenir that made the three deaths seem more vividly real.

Nobody had anything more to tell us. It turned out that if you asked a hundred people, you were likely to be disappointed.

CHAPTER 6
The Sherry Conundrum

Half an hour later, Poirot and I sat drinking coffee in front of a roaring fire in what Lazzari had called ‘our hidden lounge’, a room that was behind the dining room and not accessible from any public corridor. The walls were covered with portraits which I tried to ignore. Give me a sunny landscape any day of the week, or even a cloudy one. It’s the eyes that bother me when people are depicted; it doesn’t seem to matter who the artist is. I’ve yet to see a portrait and not be convinced that its subject is regarding me with searing scorn.

After his exuberant performance as master of ceremonies in the dining room, Poirot had lapsed once more into quiet gloom. ‘You’re fretting about Jennie again, aren’t you?’ I asked him.

He admitted that he was. ‘I do not want to hear that she has been found with a cufflink in her mouth, with the monogram PIJ. That is the news I dread.’

‘Since there is nothing you can do about Jennie for the time being, I suggest you think about something else,’ I advised.

‘How practical you are, Catchpool. Very well. Let us think about teacups.’

‘Teacups?’

‘Yes. What do you make of them?’

After some consideration, I said, ‘I believe I have no opinions whatever on the subject of teacups.’

Poirot made an impatient noise. ‘Three teacups are brought to Ida Gransbury’s room by the waiter Rafal Bobak. Three teacups for three people, as one would expect. But when the bodies of the three are found, there are only two teacups in the room.’

‘The other one is in Harriet Sippel’s room with Harriet Sippel’s dead body,’ I said.

‘Exactement. And this is most curious, is it not? Did Mrs Sippel carry her teacup and saucer back to her room before or after the poison was put into it? In either scenario, who would carry a cup of tea along a hotel corridor, and then take it into a lift or walk down two flights of stairs with it in their hands? Either it is full and there is a risk of spillage, or it is half full or almost empty, and hardly worth transporting. Usually one drinks a cup of tea in the room in which one pours the cup of tea, n’est-ce pas?’

‘Usually, yes. This killer strikes me as being as far from usual as it’s possible to be,’ I said with some vehemence.

‘And his victims? Are they not ordinary people? What about their behaviour? Do you ask me to believe that Harriet Sippel carries her tea down to her room, sits in a chair to drink it, and then almost immediately the murderer knocks on her door, finds an opportunity to put cyanide in her drink? And Richard Negus, remember, has also left Ida Gransbury’s room for some unknown reason, but he arranges to be back in his own room soon afterwards, with a glass of sherry that nobody at the hotel gave him.’

‘I suppose when you put it like that …’ I said.

Poirot carried on as if I had not just conceded the point. ‘Ah, yes, Richard Negus too, he is sitting alone with his drink when the killer pays him a visit. He too says, “By all means, drop your poison into my sherry.” And Ida Gransbury, she is all the while waiting patiently in Room 317, alone, for the murderer to come calling? She sips her tea very slowly. It would be inconsiderate of her to finish it before the killer arrives, of course—how then would he poison her? Where would he put his cyanide?’

‘Damn it, Poirot—what do you want me to say? I don’t understand it any more than you do! Look, it seems to me that the three murder victims must have had some kind of altercation. Why else would they plan to dine together and then all go their separate ways?’

‘I do not think a woman leaving a room in anger would take a half-finished cup of tea with her,’ said Poirot. ‘Would it not in any case be cold by the time it reached Room 121?’

‘I often drink tea cold,’ I said. ‘I quite like it.’

Poirot raised his eyebrows. ‘If I did not know you to be an honest man, I should not believe it possible. Cold tea! Déguelasse!’

‘Well, I should say I’ve grown to like it,’ I added in my defence. ‘There’s no hurry, with cold tea. You can drink it at a time to suit you, and nothing bad’s going to happen to it if you take a while. There’s no time constraint and no pressure. That counts for a lot, in my book.’

There was a knock at the door. ‘That will be Lazzari, coming to check that no one has disturbed us during our important conversation,’ I said.

‘Enter, please,’ Poirot called out.

It was not Luca Lazzari but Thomas Brignell, the junior clerk who had spoken up about having seen Richard Negus by the lift at half past seven. ‘Ah, Monsieur Brignell,’ said Poirot. ‘Do join us. Your account of yesterday evening was most helpful. Mr Catchpool and I are grateful.’

‘Yes, very much so,’ I said heartily. I’d have said almost anything to make it easier for Brignell to cough up whatever was bothering him. It was obvious that something was. The poor chap looked no more confident now than he had in the dining room. He rubbed the palms of his hands together, sliding them up and down. I could see sweat on his forehead, and he looked paler than he had before.

‘I’ve let you down,’ he said. ‘I’ve let Mr Lazzari down, and he’s been so good to me, he has. I didn’t … in the dining room before, I didn’t …’ He broke off and rubbed his palms together some more.

‘You did not tell us the truth?’ Poirot suggested.

‘Every word I spoke was the truth, sir!’ said Thomas Brignell indignantly. ‘I’d be no better than the murderer myself if I lied to the police on a matter as important as this.’

‘I do not think that you would be quite as guilty as him, monsieur.’

‘There were two things I neglected to mention. I can’t tell you how sorry I am, sir. You see, speaking in front of a room full of people isn’t something as comes easy to me. I’ve always been that way. And what made it harder in there, before’—he nodded in the direction of the dining room—‘was that I’d have been reluctant to say the other thing Mr Negus said to me because he paid me a compliment.

‘What compliment?’

‘It wasn’t one I’d done anything to deserve, sir, I’m sure. I’m just an ordinary man. There’s nothing notable about me at all. I do my job, as I’m paid to, and I try to do my best but there’s no reason for anyone to single me out for special praise.’

‘And Mr Negus did this?’ asked Poirot. ‘He singled you out for praise?’

Brignell winced. ‘Yes, sir. Like I said: I didn’t ask for it and I’m sure I’d done nothing to earn it. But when I saw him and he saw me, he said, “Ah, Mr Brignell, you seem a most efficient fellow. I know I can trust you with this.” Then he proceeded to discuss the matter I mentioned before, sir—about the bill, and him wanting to pay it.’

‘And you did not want to repeat the compliment you had received in front of everybody else, is that right?’ I said. ‘You feared it might sound boastful?’

‘Yes, I did, sir. I did indeed. There’s something else, too. Once we’d agreed the matter of the bill, Mr Negus asked me to fetch him a sherry. I was the person that did that. I offered to take it up to his room, but he said he was happy to wait. I brought it to him, and then up he went with it, in the lift.’

Poirot sat forward in his chair. ‘Yet you said nothing when I asked if anyone in the room had given Richard Negus a glass of sherry?’

Brignell looked confused and frustrated—as if the right answer was on the tip of his tongue, but still, somehow, eluded him. ‘I ought to have done, sir. I ought to have offered a full account of the incident as soon as you asked. I deeply regret that I failed in my duty to you and to the three deceased guests, God rest their souls. I can only hope that by coming to you now I’ve made a small amends.’

‘Indeed, indeed. But, monsieur, I am curious about why you did not speak up in the dining room. When I asked, “Who here took Richard Negus a glass of sherry?”, what was it that caused you to remain silent?’

The poor clerk had started to tremble. ‘I swear on my dear late mother’s grave, Mr Poirot, I’ve now told you every particular of my encounter with Mr Negus yesterday evening. Every last particular. You couldn’t have a more complete knowledge of what transpired—of that you may rest assured.’

Poirot opened his mouth to ask another question, but I leapt in before him and said, ‘Thank you very much, Mr Brignell. Please don’t worry about not having told us sooner. I understand how hard it is to stand up and speak in front of a crowd. I don’t much like it myself.’

Once dismissed, Brignell hurried to the door like a fox fleeing from hounds.

‘I believe him,’ I said when he had gone. ‘He’s told us everything he knows.’

‘About his meeting with Richard Negus beside the hotel lift, yes. The detail he conceals relates to himself. Why did he not speak up in the dining room about the sherry? I asked him that question twice, and still he did not answer. Instead, he elaborated upon his remorse, which was sincere. He would not lie, but he cannot bring himself to speak the truth. Ah, how he withholds! It is a form of lying—a very effective one, for there is no spoken lie to be contested.’

Poirot chuckled suddenly. ‘And, you, Catchpool, you seek to protect him from Hercule Poirot, who would press him again and again, eh, for the information?’

‘He looked as if he had reached his limit. And, frankly, if he is keeping quiet about anything, it’s something that he thinks is of no consequence to us and yet it’s a cause of great embarrassment to him. He’s a fretful, conscientious sort. His sense of duty would oblige him to tell us if he thought it mattered.’

‘And because you sent him away, I did not have the chance to explain to him that the information he withholds might be vital.’ Having raised his voice, Poirot glared at me, to make sure I noted his annoyance. ‘Even I, Hercule Poirot, do not yet know what matters and what is irrelevant. This is why I must know everything.’ He stood up. ‘And now, I will return to Pleasant’s,’ he said abruptly. ‘The coffee there is far better than Signor Lazzari’s.’

‘But Richard Negus’s brother Henry is on his way,’ I protested. ‘I thought you would want to speak to him.’

‘I need a change of scenery, Catchpool. I must revitalize my little grey cells. They will begin to stagnate if I do not take them elsewhere.’

‘Poppycock! You’re hoping to bump into Jennie, or hear news of her,’ I said. ‘Poirot, I do think you’re on a desperate goose chase with this Jennie business. You know it too, or else you would admit you’re going to Pleasant’s in the hope of finding her.’

‘Maybe so. But if there is a goose killer at large, what else is one to do? Bring Mr Henry Negus to Pleasant’s. I will talk to him there.’

‘What? He’s coming all the way from Devon. He’s not going to want to arrive and then leave at once for—’

‘But does he want the dead goose?’ Poirot demanded. ‘Ask him that!’

I resolved to ask Henry Negus no such thing, for fear he might turn on his heel and go straight back whence he came, having decided that Scotland Yard had been taken over by madmen.

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