The Monogram Murders(80)
“Lord St. John Wallace, Lady Louisa Wallace and their servant Dorcas.” He looked at his watch and tutted. “We are fifteen minutes late in starting! Why cannot people arrive on time?”
I noticed that both Thomas Brignell and Rafal Bobak had risen to their feet, both apparently wanting to speak, although the proceedings were not yet officially underway.
“Please, gentlemen, sit down!” Poirot said.
“But Mr. Poirot, sir, I must—”
“But I—”
“Do not agitate yourselves, messieurs. These things that you are so determined to tell Poirot? You may be assured that he knows them already, and that he is about to tell you, and everybody gathered here, those very same things. Be patient, I beg of you.”
Mollified, Bobak and Brignell sat down. I was surprised to see the black-haired woman sitting next to Brignell reach for his hand. He squeezed hers, and they allowed their hands to remain entwined. I saw the look that passed between them, and it told me all I needed to know: they were sweethearts. This, however, was definitely not the woman I had seen Brignell canoodling with in the hotel gardens.
Poirot whispered in my ear, “The woman Brignell was kissing in the garden, beside the wheelbarrow—she had fair hair, non? The woman with the brown coat?” He gave me an enigmatic smile.
To the crowd, he said, “Now that everyone has arrived, please may I ask for silence and your full attention? Thank you. I am obliged to you all.”
As Poirot spoke, I cast my eyes over the faces in the room. Was that . . . Oh, my goodness! It was! Fee Spring, the waitress from Pleasant’s, was sitting at the back of the room. Like Nancy Ducane, she had made an effort to cover her face—with a fancy sort of hat—and like Nancy she had failed. She winked at me as if to say that it served me and Poirot right for stopping in for a drink and telling her where we were going next. Confound it all, why couldn’t the little minx stay in the coffee house where she belonged?
“I must ask for your forbearance today,” said Poirot. “There is much that you need to know and understand that you do not at present.”
Yes, I thought, that summed up my position perfectly. I knew scarcely more than the Bloxham’s chambermaids and cooks did. Perhaps even Fee Spring had a stronger grasp on the facts than I; Poirot had probably invited her to this grand event he had arranged. I must say, I did not and never would understand why he required such a sizeable audience. It was not a theatrical production. When I solved a crime—and I had been lucky enough to do so several times without Poirot’s help—I simply presented my conclusions to my boss and then arrested the miscreant in question.
I wondered, too late, if I ought to have demanded that Poirot tell me everything first, before staging this spectacle. Here I was, supposedly in charge of the investigation, and I had no inkling of what solution to the mystery he was about to present.
“Whatever he is about to say, please let it be brilliant,” I prayed. “If he gets it right and I am standing by his side, no one will suspect that I was once, and so late in the day, as unenlightened as I am now.”
“The story is too long for me to tell it without help,” Poirot addressed the room. “My voice, I would wear it out. Therefore I must ask you to listen to two other speakers. First, Mrs. Nancy Ducane, the famous portrait painter who has done us the honor of joining us here today, will speak.”
This was a surprise—though not to Nancy herself, I noticed. From her face, it was apparent that she had known Poirot would call upon her. The two of them had arranged it in advance.
Awed whispers filled the room as Nancy, with her scarf wrapped round her face, came to stand beside me where everyone could see her. “You’ve blown her cover with the adoring fans,” I whispered to Poirot.
“Oui.” He smiled. “Yet still she keeps the scarf around her face as she speaks.”
Everyone listened, rapt, as Nancy Ducane told the story of Patrick Ive: her forbidden love for him, her illicit visits to the vicarage at night, the wicked lies about his taking money from parishioners and, in exchange, passing on communications from their dead loved ones. She did not mention Jennie Hobbs by name when she referred to the rumor that had started all the trouble.
Nancy described how she finally spoke out, at the King’s Head Inn, and told the villagers of Great Holling about her love affair with Patrick Ive, which was not chaste, though she had pretended at the time that it was. Her voice shook as she told of the tragic deaths by poisoning of Patrick and Frances Ive. I noted that that was all she said about the cause of death: poisoning. She did not specify accident or suicide. I wondered if Poirot had asked her not to, for the sake of Ambrose Flowerday and Margaret Ernst.
Before sitting down, Nancy said, “I am as devoted to Patrick now as I ever was. I will never stop loving him. One day, he and I will be reunited.”
“Thank you, Madame Ducane.” Poirot bowed. “I must now without delay tell you something that I have recently discovered, for I believe it will be a comfort to you. Before his death, Patrick wrote . . . a letter. In it, he asked for you to be told that he loved you and always would.”
“Oh!” Nancy clapped her hands over her mouth and blinked many times. “Monsieur Poirot, you cannot imagine how happy you have made me.”
“Au contraire, madame. I can imagine only too well. The loving message, conveyed after the death of the loved one . . . It is an echo, is it not, of the untrue rumors about Patrick Ive: that he conveyed messages from beyond the grave? And who, I ask you, would not wish to receive such a message from one they have loved very much and lost?”