The Monogram Murders(79)
Patrick Ive was in love with Nancy Ducane, but in death, in their shared grave, he was with the woman to whom he had rightfully belonged in life: his wife, Frances. Had his soul found peace, or was it pining for Nancy? Did Nancy ask herself this? Did she wish, loving Patrick as she did, that the dead could speak to the living? Anybody who had loved and lost someone precious to them might wish that . . .
“Catchpool! What is in your mind at this moment? I must know.”
“Poirot, I’ve had the most preposterous idea. Let me tell you, quickly, so that you can tell me I am crazy.” I babbled excitedly until he had heard the whole of it. “I’m wrong, of course,” I concluded.
“Oh, no, no, no. No, mon ami, you are not wrong.” He gasped. “Of course! How, how did I fail to see it? Mon Dieu! Do you see what this means? What we must now conclude?”
“No, I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Ah. Dommage.”
“For pity’s sake, Poirot! It’s hardly fair to make me lay out my idea and then withhold yours.”
“There is not time for discussion now. We must hurry back to London, where you will pack up the clothes and personal effects of Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury.”
“What?” I frowned in confusion, wondering if my ears were deceiving me.
“Oui. Mr. Negus has already had his belongings removed by his brother, if you recall.”
“I do, but . . .”
“Do not argue, Catchpool. It will take you hardly any time to pack two ladies” cases with the clothes in their hotel rooms. Ah, now I see it, I see all of it, at last. All the solutions to the many little puzzles, they are in place! You know, it is rather like the crossword puzzle.”
“Please don’t make the comparison,” I said. “You’re likely to put me off my favorite pastime if you compare it to this case.”
“Only when one sees all the answers together does one know for certain that one is right,” Poirot went on, ignoring me. “Until then, for as long as some answers are missing, one may yet discover that a detail that seems to fit in fact does not fit at all.”
“In that case, think of me as an empty crossword grid, with no words filled in,” I said.
“Not for long, my friend—not for long. Poirot, he will require the dining room of the Bloxham Hotel one last time!”
The Monogram Murders
THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON AT a quarter past four, Poirot and I stood at one end of the Bloxham Hotel’s dining room and waited as people took their places at the various tables. The hotel staff had all arrived promptly at four o’clock as Luca Lazzari had promised they would. I smiled at the familiar faces: John Goode, Thomas Brignell, Rafal Bobak. They acknowledged me with nervous nods.
Lazzari was standing by the door, throwing his arms around in wild gesticulation as he spoke to Constable Stanley Beer. Beer kept having to duck and step back in order to avoid being clonked in the face. I was too far away to catch most of what Lazzari was saying, and the room was too noisy, but I did hear “these Monogram Murders” more than once.
Was that what Lazzari had decided to call them? Everybody else in the country was calling them by the name the newspapers had chosen from the first day: the Bloxham Hotel Murders. Evidently Lazzari had come up with a more imaginative alternative, in the hope that his beloved establishment would not be forever tarnished by association. I found this so transparent as to be irritating, but I knew that my mood was colored by my failure on the suitcase-packing front. I am easily capable of packing for myself before a trip, but that is because I take as little as possible when I travel. Ida Gransbury’s clothes must have expanded during her short stay at the Bloxham; I had spent an infuriating time pressing and leaning down with my full weight, and still I could not fit many of her clothes in her case. No doubt there is a feminine knack to these things that oafish men like me will never master. I was exceedingly relieved to be told by Poirot that I must stop trying and make my way to the hotel’s dining room at the appointed hour of four o’clock.
Samuel Kidd, in a smart gray flannel suit, had arrived with a pale-faced Jennie Hobbs on his arm at five minutes past four, followed two minutes later by Henry Negus, Richard’s brother, and ten minutes after that by a group of four: a man and three women, one of whom was Nancy Ducane. The skin around her tear-filled eyes was red raw. As she entered the room, she tried unsuccessfully to conceal her face behind a scarf made of diaphanous material.
I muttered to Poirot, “She doesn’t want people to see that she has been crying.”
“No,” he said. “She wears the scarf because she hopes not to be recognized, not because she is ashamed of her tears. There is nothing reprehensible in allowing a feeling to show outwardly, contrary to what you Englishmen seem to believe.”
I had no wish to be diverted to the topic of myself when I had been talking about Nancy Ducane, in whom I was far more interested. “I suppose the last thing she wants is to be set upon by eager fans, all falling in an adoring heap at her faraway feet.”
Poirot, as a somewhat famous person himself who should have liked nothing better than a pile of admirers draped all over his spats, looked as if he was about to take issue with this point as well.
I distracted him with a question: “Who are the three people who came in with Nancy Ducane?”