The Monogram Murders(90)
“How the devil can you possibly know that?” St. John Wallace demanded.
“A lucky guess, monsieur. Nancy Ducane told you that she wanted these plants for the purpose of her art, did she not? And you believed her.” To the sea of open-mouthed faces, Poirot said, “The truth is that neither Lord nor Lady Wallace would ever believe a good friend of theirs capable of murder. It would reflect so badly upon them. Their social standing—imagine it! Even now, when everything I say fits perfectly with what they know to be true, St. John and Louisa Wallace tell themselves that he must be wrong, this opinionated detective from the Continent. Such is the perversity of the human mind, particularly where snobbish idées fixes are concerned!”
“Monsieur Poirot, I have not killed anyone,” said Nancy Ducane. “I know that you know I am telling the truth. Please make it clear to everybody gathered in this room that I am not a murderer.”
“I cannot do that, madame. Je suis désolé. You did not administer the poison yourself, but you conspired to end three lives.”
“Yes, but only to save another,” said Nancy earnestly. “I am guilty of nothing! Come, Jennie, let us tell him our story—the true story. Once he has heard it, he will have to concede that we did only what we had to do to save our own lives.”
The room was completely still. Everyone sat in silence. I did not think Jennie was going to move, but eventually, slowly, she rose to her feet. Clutching her bag in front of her with both hands, she walked across the room toward Nancy. “Our lives were not worth saving,” she said.
“Jennie!” Sam Kidd cried out, and suddenly he too was out of his chair and moving toward her. As I watched him, I had the peculiar sense of time having slowed down. Why was Kidd running? What was the danger? He clearly thought there was one, and, though I did not understand why, my heart had started to beat hard and fast. Something terrible was about to happen. I started to run toward Jennie.
She opened her bag. “So you want to be reunited with Patrick, do you?” she said to Nancy. I recognized the voice as hers, but at the same time it was not hers. It was the sound of unremitting darkness molded into words. I hope never again to hear anything like it, as long as I live.
Poirot had also started to move, but both of us were too far away. “Poirot!” I called, and then, “Someone stop her!” I saw metal, and light dancing upon it. Two men at the table next to Nancy’s rose to their feet, but they were not moving fast enough. “No!” I called out. There was a rapid movement—Jennie’s hand—and then blood, a rush of it, flowing down Nancy’s dress and on to the floor. Nancy fell to the ground. Somewhere at the back of the room, a woman started to scream.
Poirot had stopped moving, and now stood perfectly still. “Mon Dieu,” he said, and closed his eyes.
Samuel Kidd reached Nancy before I could. “She’s dead,” he said, staring down at her body on the floor.
“Yes, she is,” said Jennie. “I stabbed her in the heart. Right in the heart.”
If Murder Began with a D
I LEARNED THAT DAY that I am not afraid of death. It is a state that contains no energy; it exerts no force. I see dead bodies in the course of my work, and it has never bothered me unduly. No, the thing I dread above all else is proximity to death in the living: the sound of Jennie Hobbs’s voice when the desire to kill has consumed her; the state of mind of a murderer who would, with cold calculation, put three monogrammed cufflinks in his victims’ mouths and take the trouble to lay them out: straightening their limbs and their fingers, placing their lifeless hands palms downward on the floor.
“Hold his hand, Edward.”
How can the living hold the hands of the dying and not fear being pulled toward death themselves?
If I had my way, no person, while alive and vital, would have any involvement with death at all. I accept that this is an unrealistic hope.
After she had stabbed Nancy, I did not wish to be near Jennie Hobbs. I was not curious to learn why she had done it; I simply wanted to go home, sit by one of Blanche Unsworth’s roaring fires, work on my crossword puzzle and forget all about the Bloxham Hotel Murders or Monogram Murders or whatever anybody wanted to call them.
Poirot, however, had enough curiosity for both of us, and his will was stronger than mine. He insisted that I stay. This was my case, he said—I had to tie it up neatly. He made a gesture with his hands that suggested meticulous wrapping, as if a murder investigation were a parcel.
So it was that several hours later, he and I were seated in a small, square room at Scotland Yard, with Jennie Hobbs across the table from us. Samuel Kidd had also been arrested and was being questioned by Stanley Beer. I would have given anything to tackle Kidd instead, who was a crook and a rotten egg for sure, but in whose voice I had never heard the extinction of all hope.
On the subject of voices, I was surprised by the gentleness of Poirot’s as he spoke. “Why did you do it, mademoiselle? Why kill Nancy Ducane, when the two of you have been friends and allies for so long?”
“Nancy and Patrick were lovers in every sense of the word. I did not know that until I heard her say so today. I always thought she and I were the same: we both loved Patrick, but knew we could not be with him in that way—had not been with him in that way. All these years, I have believed that their love was chaste, but that was a lie. If Nancy had really loved Patrick, she would not have made an adulterer of him and sullied his moral character.”