The Monogram Murders(60)
“You mean that both he and his wife say that he was in Devon,” Poirot briskly corrected me. “To return to the matter of the trail of blood, suggesting that the body had been dragged to the door . . . Of course, an empty suitcase can be carried into the middle of a room, to where a dead body waits to be placed inside it. So, again, we must wonder: why pull Jennie Hobbs’s body in the direction of the door?”
“Please, Poirot. If we must have this conversation, let us have it some other time. Not now.”
He looked put out by my discomfort. “Very well,” he said brusquely. “Since you are in no mood to debate the possibilities, let me tell you what occurred here in London while you were in Great Holling. Perhaps you will feel more comfortable with facts.”
“A great deal more comfortable, yes,” I said.
After making minor adjustments to his mustache, Poirot lowered himself into an armchair and launched into an account of the conversations he’d had with Rafal Bobak, Samuel Kidd, Nancy Ducane and Louisa Wallace while I was in Great Holling. My mind was reeling by the time he had finished. I risked urging him on to further loquacity by saying, “Haven’t you left out some rather important things?”
“Such as what?”
“Well, this useless, clumsy maid at Louisa Wallace’s house—Dorcas. You implied that while you and she were standing together on the upstairs landing, you realized something important, but you didn’t say what it was that you realized.”
“That is true. I did not.”
“And this mysterious picture you drew and had delivered to Scotland Yard—what’s that all about? What was the picture of? And what is Stanley Beer supposed to do with it?”
“That, also, I did not tell you.” Poirot had the nerve to look apologetic, as if he had himself had no choice in the matter.
Foolishly, I persisted. “And why did you want to know how many times each and every Bloxham Hotel employee saw Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus alive or dead? How is that pertinent to anything? You didn’t explain that either.”
“Poirot, he leaves the gaps all over the place!”
“Not to forget your earlier omissions. What, for instance, were the two most unusual features shared by the Bloxham murders and Jennie Hobbs’s outburst in Pleasant’s Coffee House? You said they had two highly unusual things in common.”
“Indeed I did. Mon ami, I do not tell you these things because I want to make of you a detective.”
“This case will make nothing of me but a miserable wretch, of no use to anyone,” I said, allowing my true feelings to have an outing for once in my life. “It’s the most maddening thing.”
I heard a noise that might or might not have been a knock at the drawing-room door. “Is somebody there?” I called out.
“Yes,” came Blanche Unsworth’s apprehensive voice from the hall. “I’m sorry to disturb you at this time, gentlemen, but there’s a lady to see Mr. Poirot. She says it can’t wait.”
“Show her in, madame.”
A few seconds later, I found myself face to face with the artist Nancy Ducane. Most men, I knew, would have thought her startlingly beautiful.
Poirot made the introductions with perfect courtesy.
“Thank you for seeing me.” Nancy Ducane’s swollen eyes suggested that she had done a fair amount of crying. She was wearing a dark green coat that looked expensive. “I feel dreadful, barging in on you like this. Please pardon the intrusion. I tried to persuade myself not to come, but . . . as you can see, I failed.”
“Please sit down, Mrs. Ducane,” said Poirot. “How did you find us?”
“With help from Scotland Yard, like a proper bona fide detective.” Nancy attempted a smile.
“Ah! Poirot, he chooses a house where he thinks no one will find him, and the police send the crowds to his door! No matter, madame. I am delighted to see you, if a little surprised.”
“I would like to tell you what happened in Great Holling sixteen years ago,” said Nancy. “I should have done so before, but you gave me such a shock when you mentioned all those names I had hoped never to hear again.”
She unbuttoned her coat and took it off. I gestured toward an armchair.
She sat down. “It’s not a happy tale,” she said.
NANCY DUCANE SPOKE IN a quiet voice and with a haunted look in her eyes. She told us the same story that Margaret Ernst had told me in Great Holling, about the cruel and slanderous treatment of Reverend Patrick Ive. When she spoke of Jennie Hobbs, her voice shook. “She was the worst of them. She was in love with Patrick, you see. Oh, I can’t prove it, but I shall always believe it. She did what she did to him as someone who loved him: told an unforgivable lie because she was jealous. He was in love with me, and she wanted to wound him. To punish him. Then when Harriet seized on the lie, and Jennie saw the harm she had done and felt sick about it—and I do believe she felt dreadfully ashamed, and must have hated herself—she did nothing to remedy what she had set in motion, nothing! She slunk off into the shadows and hoped not to be noticed. However afraid she was of Harriet, she should have forced herself to stand up and say, “I told a terrible lie and I’m sorry for it.”
“Pardon, madame. You say you cannot prove that Jennie was in love with Patrick Ive. May I ask: how do you know that she was? As you suggest, it is unthinkable that one who loved him would start so damaging a rumor.”