The Monogram Murders by Sophie Hannah
Acknowledgments
I am enormously grateful to the following people: the inimitable Peter Straus, who is to literary agenting what Poirot is to mystery-solving; Mathew and James Prichard, who have been so inspiring, kind, helpful and supportive throughout this whole process; the brilliant Hilary Strong, who is a joy both to work with and to have fun with; the wonderful teams at HarperCollins UK and US, especially Kate Elton and Natasha Hughes (for enthusiastic and incisive editorial input), David Brawn (for the same, and also for many conversations about dogs, and for fielding the odd cryptic, semi-hysterical phone call! As David handles literary estates, it’s rare that an author who isn’t dead gets to work with him, and all those not-dead authors are missing a treat, let me tell you.) Thanks to Louisa Joyner, who was so lovely and enthusiastic about this book in advance and who played a significant part in getting it off the ground. Thank you to Lou Swannell, Kathy Turtle, Jennifer Hart, Anne O’Brien, Heike Schüssler, Danielle Bartlett, Damon Greeney, Margaux Weisman, Kaitlin Harri, Josh Marwell, Charlie Redmayne, Virginia Stanley, Laura Di Giuseppe, Liate Stehlik, Kathryn Gordon, and all the other fantastic people who have been involved—you have all made this an amazingly wonderful experience. (There is no such thing as too many adjectives on an Acknowledgments page.) And thanks to Four Colman Getty, who did a brilliant job of marketing the book.
A special bursting-into-song kind of thank you, requiring its own paragraph, to the inspirational Dan Mallory, who has reminded me of everything I love about writing and books.
Thank you to Tamsen Harward for making a crucial plot suggestion just in time.
Hodder & Stoughton, who publish my psychological thrillers, have been exceptionally jolly and excited about my fleeting elopement with Poirot, and asked only that I return to Hodder Towers without a big swirly moustache. I am enormously grateful to them.
Thank you to everybody who has been lovely about this book on Twitter and in the real world—Jamie Bernthal and Scott Wallace Baker spring to mind particularly, and I am very grateful to both of them for welcoming me into the world of Agatha fandom.
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 house 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 up with her.
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 everything 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.”