The Monogram Murders(58)

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.