The Monogram Murders(71)
I don’t suppose this matters, but Patrick Ive never wore monogrammed cufflinks. He didn’t own a pair as far as I ever knew. Richard Negus ordered all the cufflinks to be specially made, to set the police on the right track. The leaving of the blood and my hat inside the fourth hotel room was also part of our plan, designed to make you believe I had been murdered in that room—that Nancy Ducane had avenged her dead love by killing all four of us. Richard was happy to leave it to Sammy to provide the blood. It came from a stray cat, if you want to know. It was also Sammy’s job to leave the note on the hotel’s front desk on the night of the killings: “MAY THEY NEVER REST IN PEACE” and then the three room numbers. He was to place it on the reception desk when no one was looking, shortly after eight o’clock. My task, meanwhile, was to stay alive and make sure that Nancy Ducane hanged for the three murders, and possibly four if the police believed that I too was dead.
How was I to accomplish this? Well, as the fourth person that Nancy would wish to kill—the fourth person responsible for what happened to Patrick—I was to let the police know that I feared for my life. This I did at Pleasant’s Coffee House, and you were my audience, Monsieur Poirot. You are quite right: I deceived you. You are right too that I had heard the waitresses at Pleasant’s discussing the detective from the Continent who comes in every Thursday evening at precisely half past seven, and who sometimes dines with his much younger friend from Scotland Yard. As soon as I heard the girls talking about you, I knew you would be perfect.
But Monsieur Poirot, one of the conclusions you have drawn is incorrect. You said that my saying, “Once I am dead, justice will have been done, finally” meant that I knew the other three were already dead, but I absolutely did not know whether Richard, Harriet and Ida were dead or alive, because by then I had ruined everything. I was merely thinking, when I spoke those words, that according to the plan Richard and I made, I would outlive them. So you see, they might well still have been alive when I uttered those words.
I should make it clear: there were two plans—one that Harriet and Ida agreed to, and a quite different one known only to Richard and me. As far as Harriet and Ida were concerned it would go like this: Ida would kill Harriet, Richard would kill Ida, I would kill Richard. Then I would fake my own murder, at the Bloxham, using the blood that Sammy would get hold of. I would live only as long as it took to see Nancy Ducane hanged, and then I would take my own life. If by some chance Nancy did not hang, I was to kill her and then take my own life. I had to be the last to die, because of the acting involved. I am a good actress when I want to be. When I contrived to meet you at the coffee house, Monsieur Poirot . . . Harriet Sippel could not have produced such a performance. Neither could Ida, or Richard. So you see, I had to be the one to stay alive.
The plan that Harriet and Ida were party to was not Richard’s true plan. When he came to see me alone, two weeks after our first meeting in London with Harriet and Ida, he told me that the question of whether Nancy ought to die had been concerning him greatly. Like me, he did not believe Nancy had admitted to Harriet that she had spoken up at the King’s Head for any reason apart from to defend Patrick against lies.
On the other hand, Richard could see Harriet’s point. Patrick and Frances Ive’s deaths had been caused by the ill-judged behavior of several people, and it was hard not to count Nancy Ducane among those responsible.
I could not have been more surprised, or frightened, when Richard confessed that he had been unable to reach a decision in the matter of Nancy, and that therefore he had decided to leave it up to me. After he, Harriet and Ida were dead, he said, I was free to choose: either to do my best to ensure that Nancy hanged, or to take my own life and leave a different note for the hotel staff to find—not “MAY THEY NEVER REST IN PEACE,” but a note containing the truth about our deaths.
I begged Richard not to force me to decide alone. Why me? I demanded to know.
“Because, Jennie,” he said—and I shall never forget this—“because you are the best of us. You were never inflated with a sense of your own virtue. Yes, you told a lie, but you realized your error as soon as the words had left your mouth. I believed your falsehood for an inexcusably long time when I had no proof, and I helped to gather support for a campaign against a good, innocent man. A flawed man, yes—not a saint. But who among us is perfect?”
“All right,” I told Richard. “I will make the choice that you have entrusted to me.” I was flattered to be so praised, I suppose.
And so our plans were made. Now, would you like me to tell you how it all went wrong?
How It All Went Wrong
“INDEED,” SAID POIROT. “TELL us. Catchpool and I, we are agog.”
“It was my fault,” said Jennie, whose voice was hoarse by now. “I am a coward. I was afraid to die. Desolate as I was without Patrick, I had grown comfortable in my unhappiness and I didn’t want my life to end. Any sort of life, even one filled with torment, is preferable to a state of nothingness! Please don’t condemn me as unchristian for saying so, but I’m not sure I believe in an afterlife. I grew more and more afraid as the agreed date for the executions came closer—afraid of having to kill. I thought about what would be involved, imagined standing in a locked room and watching Richard drink poison, and I didn’t want to have to do it. But I had agreed! I had promised.”