The Monogram Murders(89)
“Oui, madame. I understand that you found employment for Jennie Hobbs in the home of your friend Louisa Wallace—to help Jennie, when she came to London and needed a job. I understand that Jennie was never part of any plan to frame you for murder, though she allowed Richard Negus to believe otherwise. In fact, ladies and gentleman, Jennie Hobbs and Nancy Ducane have been friends and allies ever since they both lived in Great Holling. The two women who loved Patrick Ive unconditionally and beyond reason are the ones who formulated a plan nearly clever enough to fool me, Hercule Poirot—but not quite clever enough!”
“Lies, all lies!” Jennie wept.
Nancy said nothing.
Poirot said, “Let me return for a moment to the home of the Wallaces. In Nancy Ducane’s portrait of Lady Louisa that I inspected so closely and for so long, there is a blue jug and bowl set. When I walked up and down the room and looked at it in different lights, the blue of the jug and bowl remained a solid block of color, bland and uninteresting. Every other color on that canvas changed subtly as I moved around, depending on the light. Nancy Ducane is a sophisticated artist. She is a genius when it comes to color—except when she is in a hurry and thinking not about art but about protecting herself and her friend Jennie Hobbs. To conceal information, Nancy quickly painted blue a jug and bowl set that was not formerly blue. Why did she do this?”
“To paint out the date?” I suggested.
“Non. The jug and bowl were in the top half of the picture, and Nancy Ducane always paints the date in the bottom right-hand corner,” said Poirot. “Lady Wallace, you did not expect me to ask to be shown round your home from bottom to top. You thought that once we had spoken and I had seen Nancy Ducane’s portrait of you, I would be satisfied and leave. But I wanted to see if I could find this blue jug and bowl that were in the portrait, and painted with so much less subtlety than the rest of the picture. And I did find them! Lady Wallace seemed to be puzzled because they were missing, but her puzzlement was a pretense. In an upstairs bedroom, there was a white jug and bowl set with a crest on it. This, I thought, might be the jug and bowl set in the portrait—yet it was not blue. Mademoiselle Dorcas, Lady Wallace told me that you must have smashed or stolen the blue jug and bowl.”
“I never did!” said a stricken Dorcas. “I ain’t never seen no blue jug and bowl in the house!”
“Because, young lady, there has never been one there!” said Poirot. “Why, I asked myself, would Nancy Ducane hurriedly paint over the white jug and bowl with blue paint? What did she hope to hide? It had surely to be the crest, I concluded. Crests are not purely decorative; they belong to families, sometimes, or, at other times, to colleges of famous universities.”
“Saviour College, Cambridge,” I said before I could stop myself. I remembered that just before Poirot and I had left London for Great Holling, Stanley Beer had referred to a crest.
“Oui, Catchpool. When I left the Wallaces’ home, I drew a picture of the crest so that I would not forget it. I am no artist, but it was accurate enough. I asked Constable Beer to find out for me where it came from. As you have all heard my friend Catchpool say, the crest on the white jug and bowl set in the Wallaces’ house is that of Saviour College, Cambridge, where Jennie Hobbs used to work as a bed-maker for the Reverend Patrick Ive. It was a leaving present to you, was it not, Miss Hobbs, when you left Saviour College and went to Great Holling with Patrick and Frances Ive? And then when you moved into the home of Lord and Lady Wallace, you took it with you. When you left that house in a hurry and went to hide at Mr. Kidd’s house, you did not take the jug and bowl—you were in no state of mind to think of such things. I believe that Louisa Wallace, at that point, moved the jug and bowl set from the servant’s quarters you had previously occupied into a guest bedroom, where it might be admired by those she wished to impress.”
Jennie didn’t answer. Her face was blank and expressionless.
“Nancy Ducane did not want to take even the tiniest risk,” said Poirot. “She knew that, after the murders in this hotel, Catchpool and I would ask questions in the village of Great Holling. What if the old drunkard Walter Stoakley, formerly Master of Saviour College, mentioned to us that he gave Jennie Hobbs a crested jug and bowl as a leaving present? If we then saw a crest in the portrait of Lady Wallace, we might discover the connection to Jennie Hobbs and, by extension, the link between Nancy Ducane and Jennie Hobbs, which was not one of enmity and envy, as we had been told by both women, but one of friendship and collusion. Madame Ducane could not take the chance that we would arrive at this suspicion because of the crest in the portrait, and so the white jug and bowl set was painted blue—hurriedly, and with little artistry.”
“Not all of one’s work can be one’s best work, Monsieur Poirot,” said Nancy. It alarmed me to hear how reasonable she sounded—to see somebody who had conspired in three unlawful killings being so polite and rational in conversation.
“Perhaps you would agree with Mrs. Ducane, Lord Wallace?” said Poirot. “You too are a painter, though of a very different kind. Ladies and gentlemen, St. John Wallace is a botanical artist. I saw his work in every room of his house when I visited—Lady Wallace was gracious enough to show me around, just as she was generous enough to provide a false alibi for Nancy Ducane. Lady Wallace, you see, is a good woman. She is the most dangerous kind of good: so far removed from evil that she does not notice it when it is right in front of her! Lady Wallace believed in Nancy Ducane’s innocence and provided an alibi to protect her. Ah, the lovely, talented Nancy, she is most convincing! She convinced St. John Wallace that she was eager to try her hand at his sort of painting. Lord Wallace is well connected and well known, therefore easily able to obtain what plants he needs for his work. Nancy Ducane asked him to obtain for her some cassava plants—from which the cyanide is made!”