The Monogram Murders(93)

“It was my safeguard, to be used if needed,” said Jennie. “I hoped you would never find me, but I feared you might.”

“And if I did, you expected that your alibi for between quarter past seven and ten past eight would work, and Nancy Ducane’s also. You and Samuel Kidd would be charged with attempting to frame an innocent woman, but not with murder or conspiracy to commit murder. It is clever: you confess to wrongdoing in order to avoid punishment for far more serious crimes. Your enemies are murdered, and no one hangs because we believe your story: Ida Gransbury killed Harriet Sippel, and Richard Negus killed Ida Gransbury and then himself. Your plan was ingenious, mademoiselle—but not as ingenious as Hercule Poirot!”

“Richard wanted to die,” said Jennie angrily. “He was not murdered. He was determined to die.”

“Yes,” said Poirot. “This was the truth in the lie.”

“It’s his fault, this whole horrible mess. I would never have killed anybody if it were not for Richard.”

“But you did kill—several times. It was Catchpool who, once again, set me on the right track, by uttering a few innocent words.”

“What words?” Jennie asked.

“He said, ‘If murder began with a D . . .’ ”

IT WAS UNSETTLING TO listen to Poirot’s appreciation of my helpfulness. I didn’t understand how a few careless words of mine could have been so momentous.

Poirot was in full flow. “After we had heard your story, mademoiselle, we left Samuel Kidd’s house and, naturally, we discussed what you had told us: your supposed plan that you made together with Richard Negus . . . If I may say so, it was a compelling idea. There was a neatness about it—like the falling dominoes, except, when I thought carefully, it was not like that at all because the order of knocking over is altered. Not D falls down, then C, then B, then A; instead, B knocks A down, then C knocks B . . . But that is beside the point.”

What on earth was he talking about? Jennie looked as if she was wondering the same thing.

“Ah, I must be more lucid in my explanation,” said Poirot. “To enable myself to imagine the order of events more easily, mademoiselle, I substituted letters for names. Your plan, as you told it to us at Samuel Kidd’s house, was as follows: B kills A, C then kills B, D then kills C. Afterwards, D waits for E to be blamed and hanged for the murders of A, B and C, and then D kills herself. Do you see, Miss Hobbs, that you are D in this arrangement, according to the story you told us?”

Jennie nodded.

“Bon. Now, by chance, Catchpool here is a devotee of the crossword puzzle, and it was in connection with this hobby that he asked me to think of a word that had six letters and meant ‘death.’ I suggested ‘murder.’ No, said Catchpool, my suggestion would only work ‘if murder began with a D.’ I recalled his words some time later and made the idle speculation in my mind: what if murder did begin with a D? What if the first to kill was not Ida Gransbury but you, Miss Hobbs?

“Over time, this speculation hardened into certainty. I understood why it must have been you who killed Harriet Sippel. She and Ida Gransbury shared neither a train nor a car from Great Holling to the Bloxham Hotel. Therefore each was unaware of the presence of the other, and there was no plan agreed by all for one to kill the other. That had to be a lie.”

“What was the truth?” I asked rather desperately.

“Harriet Sippel believed, and so did Ida Gransbury, that she alone was going to London, for a very private reason. Harriet had been contacted by Jennie, who said she needed to meet with her urgently. The highest level of secrecy was required. Jennie told Harriet that a room at the Bloxham Hotel was booked and paid for, and that she, Jennie, would come to the hotel on Thursday afternoon, perhaps at half past three or four o’clock, so that they could conduct their important business. Harriet accepted Jennie’s invitation because Jennie had written in her letter of invitation something that Harriet could not resist.

“You offered her what Patrick Ive had refused her all those years ago, n’est-ce pas, mademoiselle? Communication with her late beloved husband. You told her that George Sippel had sought to speak to her through you—you, who had tried to help him reach her sixteen years earlier, and failed. And now, again, George was trying to send a message to his dearest wife, using you as his channel. He had spoken to you from the afterlife! Oh, I have no doubt that you made it extremely convincing! Harriet was unable to resist. She believed because she so ardently wished it to be true. The lie you had told her so long ago, about the souls of dead loved ones making contact with the living—she believed it then, and she had never stopped believing it.”

“Clever old you, Monsieur Poirot,” said Jennie. “Top marks.”

“Catchpool, tell me: do you understand now about the old woman enamored of a man possibly young enough to be her son? These people with whom you became so obsessed, who featured in the gossip between Nancy Ducane and Samuel Kidd in Room 317?”

“I’d hardly say obsessed. And, no, I don’t understand.”

“Let us recall précisément what Rafal Bobak told us. He heard Nancy Ducane, posing as Harriet Sippel, say, ‘She’s no longer the one he confides in. He’d hardly be interested in her now—she’s let herself go, and she’s old enough to be his mother.’ Think about those words: ‘he’d hardly be interested in her now’—that fact is asserted first, before the two reasons for his lack of interest are given. One of these is that she is old enough to be his mother. Now, she is old enough to be his mother. Do you not see, Catchpool? If she is old enough to be his mother now, then she must always have been old enough to be his mother. Nothing else is possible!”