The Monogram Murders Read online

  “But . . . Where is the body?” I asked. It was not inside the room, laid out like the others. Immense relief suffused me.

  “Nobody knows, Catchpool.” Poirot’s voice was quiet but there was anger in it. Or it might have been fear.

  Between a chair and a small occasional table—positioned exactly where the bodies had been in rooms 121, 238 and 317—there was a pool of blood on the floor, with a long smear mark at one side, as if something had been dragged through part of it. Jennie Hobbs’s body? An arm perhaps, from the shape of the smear. There were small lines breaking up the red that might have been fingermarks . . .

  I turned away, sickened by the sight.

  “Poirot, look.” In one corner of the room there was a dark brown hat, upturned. There was something inside it, a small metal object. Could it be . . . ?

  “Jennie’s hat,” said Poirot, a tremor in his voice. “My worst fear, it has come to pass, Catchpool. And inside the hat . . .” He walked over, very slowly. “Yes, it is as I thought: a cufflink. The fourth cufflink, also with the monogram PIJ.”

  His mustache began to move with some energy, and I could only imagine the grimaces it concealed. “Poirot, he has been a fool—a contemptible fool—to allow this to happen!”

  “Poirot, no one could possibly accuse you of—” I began.

  “Non! Do not try to console me! Always you want to turn away from pain and suffering, but I am not like you, Catchpool! I cannot countenance such . . . cowardice. I want to regret what I regret, without you trying to stop me. It is necessary!”

  I stood as still as a statue. He had wanted to silence me, and he had succeeded.

  “Catchpool,” he said my name abruptly, as if he thought my attention might have wandered far from the matter at hand. “Observe the marks made by the blood here. The body was pulled through it to leave this . . . trail. Does that make sense to you?” he demanded.

  “Well . . . yes, I’d say so.”

  “Look at the direction of movement: not toward the window, but away from it.”

  “Which means what?” I asked.

  “Since Jennie’s body is not here, it must have been removed from the room. The trail of blood is going not toward the window but toward the corridor, so . . .” Poirot stared at me expectantly.

  “So?” I said tentatively. Then, as clarity dawned, “Oh, I see what you mean: the marks, the smears, were made when the killer pulled Jennie Hobbs’s body from the pool of blood toward the door?”

  “Non. Look at the width of the doorway, Catchpool. Look at it: it is wide. What does this tell you?”

  “Not an awful lot,” I said, thinking it best to be candid. “A murderer wishing to remove his victim’s body from a hotel room would hardly care whether the doorway of that room was wide or narrow.”

  Poirot shook his head disconsolately, muttering under his breath.

  He turned to Lazzari. “Signor, please tell me everything you know, from the beginning.”

  “Of course. Certainly.” Lazzari cleared his throat in preparation. “A room was taken by a woman named Jennie Hobbs. Monsieur Poirot, she ran into the hotel as if a calamity had befallen her and threw money down on the desk. She requested a room as if escaping from a pursuing demon! I showed her to the room myself, then went away to commence the consideration: what ought I to do? Should I inform the police that a woman with the name Jennie has arrived at the hotel? You had asked me about that name in particular, Monsieur Poirot, but there must be many women in London with the name Jennie, and more than one of those Jennies must have cause for great unhappiness that is nothing to do with a murder case. How am I to know if—”

  “Please, signor, arrive at the point,” said Poirot, interrupting his flow. “What did you do?”

  “I waited about thirty minutes, then came up here to the fourth floor and knocked at the door. No answer! So I went back downstairs to get a key.”

  As Lazzari spoke, I walked over to the window and looked out. Anything was preferable to the sight of the blood and the hat and the wretched monogrammed cufflink. Room 402, like Richard Negus’s room, 238, was on the garden side of the hotel. I stared at the pleached limes, but soon had to look away, as even they looked sinister to me: a row of inanimate objects fused together, as if they had held hands for too long.

  I was about to turn back to Poirot and Lazzari when I spotted two people in the garden beneath the window. They stood beside a brown wheelbarrow. I could see only the tops of their heads. One was a man and the other a woman, and they were locked together in an embrace. The woman seemed to stumble or slump, her head tilting to one side. Her companion grasped her more tightly. I took a step back, but I was not fast enough: the man had looked up and seen me. It was Thomas Brignell, the assistant clerk. His face instantly turned beet red. I took another step back so that I could no longer see the gardens at all. Poor Brignell, I thought; given his reluctance to stand up and speak in public, I could well imagine how painfully embarrassed he must be to be caught canoodling.

  Lazzari continued with his account: “When I returned with a master key, I knocked again, to make sure I was not about to intrude upon the young lady’s privacy, and still she did not open the door! So I unlocked it myself . . . and this is what I found!”

  “Did Jennie Hobbs specifically request a room on the fourth floor?” I asked.

  “No, she did not. I assisted her myself, since my dear trusty clerk John Goode was otherwise occupied. Miss Hobbs said, “Put me in any room, but quickly! Quickly, I beg of you.”

  “Was any sort of note left at the front desk to announce the fourth murder?” asked Poirot.

  “No. This time, there was not the note,” said Lazzari.

  “Were any food or beverages served to the room, or requested?”

  “No. None.”

  “You have checked with everybody who works in the hotel?”

  “Every single person, yes. Monsieur Poirot, we have looked everywhere . . .”

  “Signor, a few moments ago you described Jennie Hobbs as a young lady. How old was she, would you say?”

  “Oh . . . I must beg your pardon. No, she was not young. But she was not old.”

  “Was she, perhaps, thirty?” Poirot asked.

  “I believe she might have been forty, but a woman’s age is a difficult thing to estimate.”

  Poirot nodded. “A brown hat and a pale brown coat. Fair hair. Panic and distress, and an age that might be forty. The Jennie Hobbs you describe sounds like the Jennie Hobbs I encountered at Pleasant’s Coffee House last Thursday evening. But can we say for certain that it was she? Two sightings by two different people . . .” Suddenly, he fell silent though his mouth continued to move.

  “Poirot?” I said.

  He had eyes—intensely green eyes, at that precise moment—only for Lazzari. “Signor, I must speak to that most observant waiter again, Mr. Rafal Bobak. And Thomas Brignell, and John Goode. In fact, I must speak to every single member of your staff as soon as possible and ask how many times they each saw Harriet Sippel, Richard Negus and Ida Gransbury—dead or alive.”

  He had evidently realized something important. As I reached this conclusion, I heard myself gasp as I too made a mental leap. “Poirot,” I murmured.

  “What is it, my friend? You have put some pieces of our puzzle together? Poirot, he understands now something that did not strike him before, but there are still questions, still pieces that cannot be made to fit.”

  “I have . . .” I cleared my throat. Speaking, for some reason, was proving rather difficult. “I have just seen a woman in the hotel gardens.” I could not, at that moment, bring myself to say that she had been in the arms of Thomas Brignell, or to describe the strange way in which she had seemed to crumple, her head falling to one side. It was simply too . . . peculiar. The suspicion running through my mind was one I would have felt embarrassed to utter aloud.

  Thankfully, however, I did feel able to divulge one important detail. “She was wearing a pale brown coat,” I told P
oirot.

  A Lie for a Lie

  I WAS ENGROSSED IN my crossword puzzle when Poirot returned from the hotel to the lodging house several hours later. “Catchpool,” he said severely. “Why do you sit in almost total darkness? I do not believe you can see to write.”

  “The fire provides enough light. Besides, I’m not writing at the moment—I’m thinking. Not that it’s getting me very far. I don’t know how these chaps do it, the ones who invent crosswords for the newspapers. I’ve been working on this one for months, and I still can’t get it to fit together. I say, you might be able to help. Can you think of a word that means death and has six letters?”

  “Catchpool.” Now Poirot’s tone was even sterner.

  “Hm?” I said.

  “Do you take me to be the fool, or is it that you are a fool yourself? A word for death that has six letters is murder.”

  “Yes, that one’s rather obvious. That was my first thought.”

  “I am relieved to hear it, mon ami.”

  “That would be perfect, if murder began with a D. Since it doesn’t, and since I’m stuck with this D from another word . . .” I shook my head in consternation.

  “Forget crossword puzzles. We have much to discuss.”

  “I don’t believe, and won’t believe, that Thomas Brignell murdered Jennie Hobbs,” I said firmly.

  “You feel sympathy for him,” said Poirot.

  “I do, and I also would bet my last penny that he is no murderer. Who’s to say that he doesn’t have a girlfriend with a pale brown coat? Brown is a popular color for coats!”

  “He is the assistant clerk,” said Poirot. “Why would he stand in the gardens beside a wheelbarrow?”

  “Perhaps the wheelbarrow was simply there!”

  “And Mr. Brignell stands with his lady friend right beside it?”

  “Well, why not?” I said, exasperated. “Isn’t that more plausible than the idea that Brignell took Jennie Hobbs’s dead body out to the gardens with a plan to wheel it off somewhere in a wheelbarrow, then pretended to embrace her when he saw me looking out of the window? One might just as well say . . .” I stopped and inhaled sharply. “Oh, goodness,” I said. “You are going to say it, aren’t you?”

  “What, mon ami? What do you think Poirot will say?”

  “Rafal Bobak is a waiter, so why was he pushing a laundry cart?”

  “Exactement. And why does he push the laundry through the elegant lobby in the direction of the front doors? Is the laundry not washed inside the hotel? Signor Lazzari, he would surely have noticed this if he had not been so concerned about the missing fourth murder victim. Of course, he would not be suspicious of Mr. Bobak—all of his staff are beyond reproach in his eyes.”

  “Wait a second.” I finally laid down my crossword on the table beside me. “That was what you meant about the width of the doorway, wasn’t it? That laundry cart could easily have been pushed into room 402, so why not wheel it all the way in? Why drag the body instead, which would take more effort?”

  Poirot nodded with satisfaction. “Indeed, mon ami. These are the questions I hoped you might ask yourself.”

  “But . . . are you honestly saying that Rafal Bobak might have murdered Jennie Hobbs, thrown her body in with the laundry and pushed it out onto the street, right past us? He stopped to talk to us, for pity’s sake!”

  “Indeed—even though he has nothing to say. What is it? You think I am uncharitable, thinking the bad thoughts about those who have been so helpful to us?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Giving everybody the benefit of the doubt is laudable, my friend, but it is no way to apprehend a murderer. While you are displeased with me, let me put one more thought into your head: Mr. Henry Negus. He had with him a very large suitcase, did he not? Large enough to contain the body of a slender woman.”

  I covered my face with my hands. “I can’t bear much more of this,” I said. “Henry Negus? No. I’m sorry, but no. He was in Devon on the night of the murders. He struck me as absolutely trustworthy.”

  “You mean that both he and his wife say that he was in Devon,” Poirot briskly corrected me. “To return to the matter of the trail of blood, suggesting that the body had been dragged to the door . . . Of course, an empty suitcase can be carried into the middle of a room, to where a dead body waits to be placed inside it. So, again, we must wonder: why pull Jennie Hobbs’s body in the direction of the door?”

  “Please, Poirot. If we must have this conversation, let us have it some other time. Not now.”

  He looked put out by my discomfort. “Very well,” he said brusquely. “Since you are in no mood to debate the possibilities, let me tell you what occurred here in London while you were in Great Holling. Perhaps you will feel more comfortable with facts.”

  “A great deal more comfortable, yes,” I said.

  After making minor adjustments to his mustache, Poirot lowered himself into an armchair and launched into an account of the conversations he’d had with Rafal Bobak, Samuel Kidd, Nancy Ducane and Louisa Wallace while I was in Great Holling. My mind was reeling by the time he had finished. I risked urging him on to further loquacity by saying, “Haven’t you left out some rather important things?”

  “Such as what?”

  “Well, this useless, clumsy maid at Louisa Wallace’s house—Dorcas. You implied that while you and she were standing together on the upstairs landing, you realized something important, but you didn’t say what it was that you realized.”

  “That is true. I did not.”

  “And this mysterious picture you drew and had delivered to Scotland Yard—what’s that all about? What was the picture of? And what is Stanley Beer supposed to do with it?”

  “That, also, I did not tell you.” Poirot had the nerve to look apologetic, as if he had himself had no choice in the matter.

  Foolishly, I persisted. “And why did you want to know how many times each and every Bloxham Hotel employee saw Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus alive or dead? How is that pertinent to anything? You didn’t explain that either.”

  “Poirot, he leaves the gaps all over the place!”

  “Not to forget your earlier omissions. What, for instance, were the two most unusual features shared by the Bloxham murders and Jennie Hobbs’s outburst in Pleasant’s Coffee House? You said they had two highly unusual things in common.”

  “Indeed I did. Mon ami, I do not tell you these things because I want to make of you a detective.”

  “This case will make nothing of me but a miserable wretch, of no use to anyone,” I said, allowing my true feelings to have an outing for once in my life. “It’s the most maddening thing.”

  I heard a noise that might or might not have been a knock at the drawing-room door. “Is somebody there?” I called out.

  “Yes,” came Blanche Unsworth’s apprehensive voice from the hall. “I’m sorry to disturb you at this time, gentlemen, but there’s a lady to see Mr. Poirot. She says it can’t wait.”

  “Show her in, madame.”

  A few seconds later, I found myself face to face with the artist Nancy Ducane. Most men, I knew, would have thought her startlingly beautiful.

  Poirot made the introductions with perfect courtesy.

  “Thank you for seeing me.” Nancy Ducane’s swollen eyes suggested that she had done a fair amount of crying. She was wearing a dark green coat that looked expensive. “I feel dreadful, barging in on you like this. Please pardon the intrusion. I tried to persuade myself not to come, but . . . as you can see, I failed.”

  “Please sit down, Mrs. Ducane,” said Poirot. “How did you find us?”

  “With help from Scotland Yard, like a proper bona fide detective.” Nancy attempted a smile.

  “Ah! Poirot, he chooses a house where he thinks no one will find him, and the police send the crowds to his door! No matter, madame. I am delighted to see you, if a little surprised.”

  “I would like to tell you what happened in Great Holling sixteen years a
go,” said Nancy. “I should have done so before, but you gave me such a shock when you mentioned all those names I had hoped never to hear again.”

  She unbuttoned her coat and took it off. I gestured toward an armchair.

  She sat down. “It’s not a happy tale,” she said.

  NANCY DUCANE SPOKE IN a quiet voice and with a haunted look in her eyes. She told us the same story that Margaret Ernst had told me in Great Holling, about the cruel and slanderous treatment of Reverend Patrick Ive. When she spoke of Jennie Hobbs, her voice shook. “She was the worst of them. She was in love with Patrick, you see. Oh, I can’t prove it, but I shall always believe it. She did what she did to him as someone who loved him: told an unforgivable lie because she was jealous. He was in love with me, and she wanted to wound him. To punish him. Then when Harriet seized on the lie, and Jennie saw the harm she had done and felt sick about it—and I do believe she felt dreadfully ashamed, and must have hated herself—she did nothing to remedy what she had set in motion, nothing! She slunk off into the shadows and hoped not to be noticed. However afraid she was of Harriet, she should have forced herself to stand up and say, “I told a terrible lie and I’m sorry for it.”

  “Pardon, madame. You say you cannot prove that Jennie was in love with Patrick Ive. May I ask: how do you know that she was? As you suggest, it is unthinkable that one who loved him would start so damaging a rumor.”

  “There is no doubt in my mind that Jennie loved Patrick,” said Nancy stubbornly. “She left behind a sweetheart in Cambridge when she moved to Great Holling with Patrick and Frances—did you know that?”

  We shook our heads.

  “They were supposed to get married. The date was set, I believe. Jennie couldn’t bear to let Patrick go, so she canceled her wedding and went with him.”

  “Could it not have been Frances Ive to whom she was so attached?” Poirot asked. “Or to both of the Ives? It might have been loyalty and not romantic love that she felt.”

  “I don’t believe many women would put loyalty to their employers above their own marriage prospects, do you?” said Nancy.