The Monogram Murders(67)
“Please let me speak, Monsieur Poirot! I will tell you the truth.”
“I prefer, for the time being, that I tell you the truth, mademoiselle. Forgive me, but I find myself to be more reliable. Before you told me your story, you asked me if I was retired, did you not? You made a great show of checking that I had no powers to arrest anybody or enforce the law in this country. Only then, once I had reassured you on this point, did you confide in me. But I had already told you that I had a friend at Scotland Yard. You spoke to me not because you believed me to be powerless to arrest a murderer, but because you knew perfectly well that I had influence with the police—because you wished to see Nancy Ducane framed and hanged for murder!”
“I wish no such thing!” Jennie turned her tear-streaked face to me. “Please, stop him!”
“I will stop when I am ready,” said Poirot. “You were a regular visitor to Pleasant’s Coffee House, mademoiselle. The waitresses have said so. They talk about their customers a great deal in their absence. I expect you heard them speak about me: the fussy European gentleman with the mustache who used to be a policeman on the Continent—and my friend Catchpool here, from Scotland Yard. You heard them say that I dine at Pleasant’s every Thursday evening at half past seven precisely. Oh, yes, mademoiselle, you knew where to find me, and you knew that Hercule Poirot would be perfect for your devious purposes! You arrived at the coffee house in an apparent state of terror, but it was all a lie, an act! You stared out of the window for a long time, as if fearful of someone in pursuit, but you cannot have seen anything out of that window except the reflection of the room that you were in. And one of the waitresses, she saw your eyes reflected and saw that you were watching her, not the street. You were calculating, were you not? ‘Will anyone suspect that I am feigning my state of distress? Will that sharp-eyed waitress guess the truth and prevent my plan from being successful?’ ”
I rose to my feet. “Poirot, I don’t doubt that you’re right, but you can’t simply go on at the poor woman without allowing her to say a word in her defense.”
“Be quiet, Catchpool. Have I not just explained to you that Miss Hobbs is excellent at creating an appearance of great unhappiness while, underneath, her true self is composed and calculating?”
“You are a cold-hearted man!” Jennie wailed.
“Au contraire, mademoiselle. In due course you will have your turn to speak, you may rest assured, but first I have another question for you. You said to me, ‘Oh, please let no one open their mouths!’ How did you know that Nancy Ducane, after killing her three victims, had placed cufflinks in their mouths? It seems to me odd that you should know this. Did Mrs. Ducane threaten that it would happen? I can imagine a murderer threatening violence in order to scare—‘If I catch you, I will cut your throat,’ or something of that nature—but I cannot imagine a killer saying, ‘After I have murdered you, I intend to place a monogrammed cufflink in your mouth.’ I cannot imagine any person saying that, and I am a man of considerable imagination!
“And—pardon me!—one final observation, mademoiselle. Whatever guilt was yours for the tragic fate of Patrick and Frances Ive, three people were as guilty as you if not more so: Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus. They were the people who believed your lie and turned the whole village against the Reverend Ive and his wife. Now, at Pleasant’s you said to me, ‘Once I am dead, justice will have been done, finally,’ and you placed the stress upon the ‘I’: ‘once I am dead.’ This indicates to me that you knew that Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus were already dead. But if I look at all the evidence as it has been presented to me, the three murders at the Bloxham Hotel might not yet have been committed.”
“Stop, please, stop!” Jennie cried, weeping.
“In a moment, with pleasure. Let me only say that it was approximately a quarter to eight when you spoke those words to me—‘Once I am dead, justice will have been done, finally’—and yet we know that the three Bloxham murders were only discovered by the hotel’s staff after ten minutes past eight. Yet somehow you, Jennie Hobbs, had advance knowledge of these murders. How?”
“If you will only stop accusing me, I shall tell you everything! I’ve been so desperate. Having to keep it all secret and lie constantly—it was a torment. I can’t bear it any longer!”
“Bon,” said Poirot quietly. He sounded suddenly kinder. “You have had a severe shock today, have you not? Perhaps you will now see that you cannot deceive Poirot?”
“I do see. Let me tell you the story, from the beginning. It will be such a relief to be able to tell the truth at last.”
Jennie spoke at length then, and neither I nor Poirot interrupted her until she indicated that she had finished. What follows is in her words, and is, I hope, a faithful and complete account of what she said.
The Truth at Last
I DESTROYED THE LIFE of the only man I have ever loved, and I destroyed my own life along with it.
I didn’t mean for things to take the turn they took. I would never have imagined that a few silly, cruel words spoken by me could lead to such disaster. I ought to have considered and kept my mouth shut, but I was feeling wounded and, in a moment of weakness, I allowed spite to get the better of me.
I loved Patrick Ive with every bone and muscle in my body. I tried not to. I was engaged to be married to Sam Kidd when I first started working for Patrick—as his bedder, at Saviour College in Cambridge, where he studied. I liked Sam well enough, but my heart belonged to Patrick within a few weeks of first meeting him, and I knew that no amount of trying to feel differently would change that. Patrick was everything good that a person could be. He was fond of me, but to him I was only a servant. Even after I learned to speak like the daughter of a master of a Cambridge college—like Frances Ive—I remained, in Patrick’s eyes, a loyal servant and nothing more.