The Monogram Murders: The New Hercule Poirot Mystery Read online

  “I did, but you did not. You believed, as did our friend Signor Lazzari, that Mademoiselle Jennie was dead and that it was her blood on the floor. Alors, I wanted you to demand of yourself: a suitcase, a laundry cart on wheels—both of these are objects that could have been brought into room 402, right to the spot where the dead body was. Why, then, would a killer pull the body toward the door? He would not! She would not! The trail of blood going in the direction of the door was a hoax; its aim was to suggest to us that the body had been dragged out of the room, since it was not in the room. It was the small detail of verisimilitude, so important to lend credence to the murder scene.

  “But for Hercule Poirot, it was a detail that allowed him to know what he already strongly suspected: that Jennie Hobbs had not been murdered in that room and neither had anybody else. I could imagine no method of removing a corpse that would necessitate the trail of blood smears going toward the door. No killer would take his victim’s body out into the public corridor of a hotel without first hiding it inside some sort of receptacle—a container. Every container I could think of could easily have been taken into the room, traveling toward the body rather than requiring the body to travel toward it. It was such simple logic, Catchpool. I was surprised you did not grasp this point at once.”

  “Handy tip for you, Poirot,” I said. “Next time you’d like me to grasp something at once, open your mouth and tell me facts, whatever they are. Be straightforward about it. You’ll find it saves a lot of bother.”

  He smiled. “Bien. From my good friend Catchpool, I shall endeavor to learn the comportement straightforward. I start immediately!” He produced an envelope from his pocket. “This arrived for me an hour ago. You might not welcome my interference in your personal affairs, Catchpool—you may think, ‘Poirot, he sticks in his oar where it is not wanted’—but this letter expresses gratitude for that very vice of mine that you find so intolerable.”

  “If you’re referring to Fee Spring, she is not my ‘personal affairs’ and never will be,” I said, eyeing the missive in his hand. “Which poor stick’s private business have you meddled in now? And gratitude for what?”

  “For bringing together two people who love each other very much.”

  “Who is the letter from?”

  Poirot smiled. “Dr. and Mrs. Ambrose Flowerday,” he said. And he handed it to me to read.

  THE END

  About the Author

  SOPHIE HANNAH is the internationally bestselling author of nine psychological thrillers, which have been published in more than twenty countries and adapted for television. Sophie is an Honorary Fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  www.agathachristie.com

  www.sophiehannah.com

  Also by Sophie Hannah

  Little Face

  The Truth-Teller’s Lie

  The Wrong Mother

  The Dead Lie Down

  The Cradle in the Grave

  The Other Woman’s House

  Kind of Cruel

  Also by Agatha Christie

  Mysteries

  The Man in the Brown Suit

  The Secret of Chimneys

  The Seven Dials Mystery

  The Mysterious Mr. Quin

  The Sittaford Mystery

  The Hound of Death

  The Listerdale Mystery

  Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?

  Parker Pyne Investigates

  Murder Is Easy

  And Then There Were None

  Towards Zero

  Death Comes as the End

  Sparkling Cyanide

  Crooked House

  They Came to Baghdad

  Destination Unknown

  Spider’s Web*

  The Unexpected Guest*

  Ordeal by Innocence

  The Pale Horse

  Endless Night

  Passenger to Frankfurt

  Problem at Pollensa Bay

  While the Light Lasts

  Poirot

  The Mysterious Affair at Styles

  The Murder on the Links

  Poirot Investigates

  The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

  The Big Four

  The Mystery of the Blue Train

  Black Coffee*

  Peril at End House

  Lord Edgware Dies

  Murder on the Orient Express

  Three Act Tragedy

  Death in the Clouds

  The ABC Murders

  Murder in Mesopotamia

  Cards on the Table

  Murder in the Mews

  Dumb Witness

  Death on the Nile

  Appointment with Death

  Hercule Poirot’s Christmas

  Sad Cypress

  One, Two, Buckle My Shoe

  Evil under the Sun

  Five Little Pigs

  The Hollow

  The Labours of Hercules

  Taken at the Flood

  Mrs. McGinty’s Dead

  After the Funeral

  Hickory Dickory Dock

  Dead Man’s Folly

  Cat Among the Pigeons

  The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding

  The Clocks

  Third Girl

  Hallowe’en Party

  Elephants Can Remember

  Poirot’s Early Cases

  Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case

  Marple

  The Murder at the Vicarage

  The Thirteen Problems

  The Body in the Library

  The Moving Finger

  A Murder Is Announced

  They Do It with Mirrors

  A Pocket Full of Rye

  4:50 from Paddington

  The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side

  A Caribbean Mystery

  At Bertram’s Hotel

  Nemesis

  Sleeping Murder

  Miss Marple’s Final Cases

  Tommy & Tuppence

  The Secret Adversary

  Partners in Crime

  N or M?

  By the Pricking of My Thumbs

  Postern of Fate

  Published as Mary Westmacott

  Giant’s Bread

  Unfinished Portrait

  Absent in the Spring

  The Rose and the Yew Tree

  A Daughter’s a Daughter

  The Burden

  Memoirs

  An Autobiography

  Come, Tell Me How You Live

  The Grand Tour

  Plays and Stories

  Akhnaton

  The Mousetrap and Other Plays

  The Floating Admiral†

  Star Over Bethlehem

  Hercule Poirot and the Greenshore Folly

  * novelized by Charles Osborne

  † contributor

  Credits

  Cover design by Mary Schuck

  Author photograph by Philippa Gedge

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  AGATHA CHRISTIE and POIROT are registered trademarks of Agatha Christie Limited.

  THE MONOGRAM MURDERS. Copyright © 2014 by Agatha Christie Ltd. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  EPUB Edition September 2014 ISBN 9780062297235

  ISBN 9
78-0-06-229721-1

  14 15 16 17 18 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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