The Monogram Murders(29)
After dictating a list of everything we knew, Poirot followed the same procedure for everything we didn’t know but were hoping to find out. (I considered reproducing these two lists here, but I do not wish to bore or infuriate others as I was bored and infuriated.)
To be fair to Poirot, once I had scribbled it all down and looked over what I had written, I did feel that I had a clearer view of things: clear, and inordinately discouraging. I put down my pen and said with a sigh, “I’m not sure I want to carry around with me an endless list of questions I can’t answer and probably have no hope of ever answering.”
“You lack the confidence, Catchpool.”
“Yes. What does one do about that?”
“I do not know. It is not a problem that I suffer from. I do not worry that I will meet a problem for which I will be unable to find the solution.”
“Do you think you’ll be able to find the solution for this one?”
Poirot smiled. “You wish me to encourage you to have confidence in me, since you have none in yourself? Mon ami, you know more than you are aware of knowing. Do you remember you made a joke, at the hotel, about all three victims arriving on Wednesday, the day before the murders? You said, ‘It’s almost as if they had an invitation to present themselves for slaughter, one that said, “Please come to the day before, so that Thursday can be devoted entirely to your getting murdered.’ ”
“Well, what about it?”
“Your joke relied on the idea that getting murdered is more than enough activity for one day—to travel across the country by train and get murdered on the same day, that would be too much for anyone! And the killer does not want his victims to have to exert themselves unduly! This is funny!”
Poirot smoothed his mustache, as if he imagined that laughing might have shaken it out of shape.
“Your words made me wonder, my friend: since getting murdered is really no effort for the victim, and since no killer is so considerate of those he intends to poison, why does he not kill the three victims on the Wednesday night?”
“He might have been busy on Wednesday night,” I said.
“Then why not arrange for the three victims to arrive at the hotel on Thursday morning and afternoon instead of Wednesday morning and afternoon? The killer would still have been able to kill them when he did, n’est-ce pas? On Thursday evening, between a quarter past seven and ten past eight?”
I did my best to look patient. “You’re overcomplicating things, Poirot. If the victims all knew each other, which we know they did, maybe they had a reason for all being in London for two nights, a reason that had nothing to do with the killer. He chose to kill them on the second night because it was more convenient for him. He didn’t invite them to the Bloxham; he simply knew that they would be there, and when. Also. . .” I stopped. “No, never mind. It’s silly.”
“Tell me the thing that is silly,” Poirot ordered.
“Well, it’s possible that if the murderer is a meticulous planner by nature, he would not plan the murders for the same day that he knew his victims would be traveling to London, in case their trains were delayed.”
“Perhaps the killer also had to travel to London, from Great Holling or somewhere else. It is possible that he—or she, for it might be a woman—did not want to make a long, tiring journey and commit three murders on the same day.”
“Even if that’s so, the victims could still have arrived on the Thursday, couldn’t they?”
“They did not,” said Poirot simply. “We know that they arrived the day before, on Wednesday. So, I begin to wonder: did something need to happen that involved the murderer and all three victims before the murders could be committed? If so, then perhaps the murderer did not travel from far to come here, but lives here in London.”
“Could be,” I said. “All of which is a long-winded way of saying that we have not the faintest idea of what happened or why. I seem to remember that being my original assessment of the situation. Oh, and Poirot . . . ?”
“Yes, mon ami?”
“I haven’t had the heart to tell you before now, and I know you’re not going to like it. The monogrammed cufflinks . . .”
“Oui?”
“You asked Henry Negus about PIJ. I don’t think those are the chap’s initials, whoever he is—the owner of the cufflinks. I think his initials are PJI. Look.” I reproduced the monogram on the back of one of my pieces of paper. As closely as I could from memory, I replicated the way the letters appeared on the cufflinks. “Do you see that the ‘I’ is larger and the ‘P’ and the ‘J’ on either side are considerably smaller? That’s a popular style of monogram. The larger initial signifies the surname and is in the middle.”
Poirot was frowning and shaking his head. “The initials in the monogram are in the wrong order, deliberately? I have never heard of this. Who would have such an idea? It is nonsensical!”
“Common practice, I’m afraid. Trust me on this one. Chaps at work have monogrammed cufflinks of this sort.”
“Incroyable. The English have no sense of the proper order of things.”
“Yes, well, be that as it may . . . It’s PJI we’ll need to be asking about when we go to Great Holling, not PIJ.”
It was a feeble effort, and one that Poirot saw through straight away. “You, my friend, will go to Great Holling,” he said. “Poirot will stay in London.”