The Monogram Murders(40)
“He is no relative of mine,” said Poirot stiffly. “His name is Samuel Kidd and he is as English as you are, madame.”
“He’s got cuts all over his face,” said Blanche Unsworth. “From shaving, he said. I don’t think he must know how to do it properly, poor lamb. I told him I’d something to put on the cuts to help them heal, but all he did was laugh!”
“All over his face?” Poirot frowned. “The Mr. Kidd I met last Friday at Pleasant’s Coffee House had only one cut on his face, on a patch of skin that he had shaved. Tell me, does this man in the drawing room have a beard?”
“Oh, no. There’s not a hair on his face apart from his eyebrows. Not as much skin on his face as there should be either! I wish you’d teach him how to shave without causing himself lacerations, Mr. Poirot. Oh, I’m sorry.” Blanche clapped her hands over her mouth. “You did say he was no relation, didn’t you. I still have him down in my head as Belgian. He sounded exactly like you, the way he spoke. I thought he might be a younger brother. About forty, isn’t he?”
Affronted that anyone might take raggedy Samuel Kidd to be his kin, Poirot cut short his exchange with Blanche Unsworth somewhat abruptly, and proceeded to the drawing room.
Inside it, he found what he had been told he would find: a man—the same man he had met at Pleasant’s the previous Friday—who had removed all his facial hair and cut himself extensively in the process.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Poirr-oh.” Samuel Kidd rose to his feet. “I bet I fooled her, didn’t I, her what let me in? Did she think I was a native of your country?”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Kidd. I see that you have suffered much misfortune since the last time we met.”
“Misfortune?”
“The injuries to your face.”
“Ah, you’re right there, sir. Truth is, I don’t like thinking about a sharp blade so close to me eyes. I think about it cutting clean through the eyeball, and it gives me a shaky hand. I’m funny about eyes. I’ve tried telling meself to think about something different, but it don’t work. Always end up sliced to ribbons, I do.”
“So I see. May I ask: how did you know that you would find me at this address?”
“Mr. Lazzari at the hotel said that Constable Stanley Beer said that Mr. Catchpool lived here and you did too, sir. I’m sorry about disturbing you at home, but I’ve got good news for you and I thought you’d want to know it straight away.”
“What is the news?”
“The lady that dropped the two keys, the one I saw running from the hotel after the murders . . . I’ve remembered who she is! It came to me when I looked at a newspaper this morning. I don’t often look at a newspaper.”
“Who is the woman you saw, monsieur? You are right. Poirot, he would like to know her name straight away.”
Samuel Kidd traced an angry red ridge of scab on his left cheek with the tip of his finger as he mused, “Seems to me there’s not much time to read about other people’s lives and live your own while you’re at it. If I have to choose, and I reckon I do, I’ll choose living my own life over reading summat about someone else’s. But as I say, I did look at the newspaper this morning, because I wanted to see if there was anything about the Bloxham Hotel murders.”
“Oui,” said Poirot, struggling to remain patient. “And what did you see?”
“Oh, there was plenty about the murders, most of it saying the police aren’t getting very far and asking for anyone who saw summat to come forward. Well, I did, as you know, Mr. Poirot, and forward I came. But, like I said the other day, at first I couldn’t put a name to a face. Well, now I can!”
“That is excellent news, Mr. Kidd. It will be more excellent still if you can put that name into the next sentence that you speak, so that I may hear it.”
“That’s where I’ve seen her, you see: her photograph, in the newspaper. That’s why looking at a newspaper made me think of her. She’s a famous lady, sir. Her name’s Nancy Ducane.”
Poirot’s eyes widened. “Nancy Ducane the artist?”
“Yes, sir. She’s the one, and no other. I’d swear to it. Paints portraits, she does. And got a face worth painting of her own, which is probably why I remembered it. I said to meself, ‘Sammy, that was Nancy Ducane you saw running from the Bloxham Hotel on the night of the murders.’ And now I’m here saying it to you.”
A Grievous Wound
THE FOLLOWING DAY, IMMEDIATELY after breakfast, I set out for Margaret Ernst’s cottage next to Holy Saints churchyard in Great Holling. I found the front door ajar and knocked as lightly as I could, taking care not to push it open any farther.
There was no answer, so I knocked again, more volubly. “Mrs. Ernst?” I called out. “Margaret?”
Silence.
I don’t know why, but I turned, sensing some kind of movement behind me, but perhaps it was only the wind in the trees.
I pushed the door gently and it swung open with a creak. The first thing I saw was a scarf on the kitchen’s flagstone floor: blue and green silk, elaborately patterned. What was it doing there? I took a deep breath and was steeling myself to enter when a voice called out, “Come in, Mr. Catchpool.” I nearly jumped out of my skin.