toast!’ And don’t think he has to speak to set her off!
He sits down at the first table he comes to and she
says, ‘Oh, Cecil, not this table!’ ’Course, he ought to
say he wants what he don’t want, and don’t want what
he wants. That’s what I’d do. I keep waiting for him
to tumble to it but he’s a useless old lump, truth be
told. Brain like a moldy cabbage. I expect that’s what
started her Oh-Cecil-ing.”
“If he does not leave soon, I shall say ‘Oh, Cecil’
to him myself,” said Poirot, whose legs were already
aching from a combination of standing and the
thwarted desire to be seated.
“They’ll be gone before your coffee’s ready,” Fee
said. “She’s finished her meal, see. She’ll Oh-Cecil
him out of here in no time. What you doing here at
lunchtime anyway? Wait, I know what you’re up to!
Looking for Jennie, aren’t you? I heard you were in
first thing this morning too.”
“How did you hear it?” Poirot asked. “You have
only just arrived, n’est-ce pas?”
“I’m never far away,” said Fee enigmatically. “No
one’s seen hide nor hair of Jennie, but d’you know,
Mr. Poirot, I’ve got her stuck in my mind same as
she’s stuck in yours.”
“You too are worried?”
“Oh, not about her being in danger. It’s not up to
me to save her.”
“Non. ”
“Nor’s it up to you.”
“Ah, but Hercule Poirot, he has saved lives. He
has saved innocent men from the gallows.”
“A good half of them’s probably guilty,” said Fee
cheerfully, as if the idea amused her.
“Non, mademoiselle. Vous êtes misanthrope. ”
“If you say so. All’s I know is, if I worried about
everyone as comes in here needing to be worried
about, I’d not have a moment’s peace. It’s one sorry
predicament after another and most of it’s coming
from their own heads, not real problems.”
“If something is in a person’s head, then it is real,”
Poirot said.
“Not if it’s daft nonsense dreamed up out of
nowhere, which it often is,” said Fee. “No, what I
meant about Jennie is, I noticed something last night
. . . except I can’t think what it might be. I remember
thinking, ‘It’s funny Jennie doing that, or saying that
. . .’ Only trouble is, I can’t remember what set me off
thinking it—what she did, or what she said. I’ve tried
and tried till it’s made my head spin! Ah, look, they’re
going, Mr. and Mrs. Oh-Cecil. You go and sit yourself
down. Coffee?”
“Yes, please. Mademoiselle, will you please
continue in your efforts to remember what Jennie did
or said? It matters more than I can express.”
“More than straight shelves?” Fee asked with
sudden sharpness. “More than cutlery laid out square
on the table?”
“Ah. You think these things are the dreamed-up
nonsense?” Poirot asked.
Fee’s face reddened. “Sorry if I spoke out of turn,”
she said. “It’s only . . . well, you’d be a good deal
happier, wouldn’t you, if you stopped fussing about
how a fork sits on a tablecloth?”
Poirot gave her the benefit of his best polite smile.
“I would be very much happier if you were to
remember what it was about Mademoiselle Jennie
that has stuck in your mind.” With that, he made a
dignified exit from the conversation and sat down at
his table.
He waited for an hour and a half, during which
time he ate a good lunch but saw no sign of Jennie.
It was nearly two o’clock when I arrived at
Pleasant’s with a man in tow whom Poirot at first
took to be Henry Negus, Richard’s brother. There was
some confusion as I explained that I had left
Constable Stanley Beer to wait for Negus and bring
him along when he arrived, and that I had done so
because the only person I could think about at the
moment was the man standing beside me.
I
introduced
him—Mr.
Samuel
Kidd,
a
boilermaker—and watched with amusement as Poirot
recoiled from the dirt-marked shirt with the missing
button, and the partly unshaven face. Mr. Kidd had
nothing as ordinary as a beard or a mustache, but he
plainly had trouble using a razor. The evidence
suggested that he had started to shave, cut himself
badly, and abandoned the enterprise. As a
consequence, one side of his face was smooth and
hairless but wounded, while the other was injury free
and covered with dark bristles. Which side looked
worse was not an easy question to settle. “Mr. Kidd
has a very interesting story to tell us,” I said. “I was
standing outside the Bloxham waiting for Henry
Negus, when—”
“Ah!” Poirot interrupted me. “You and Mr. Kidd
have come now from the Bloxham Hotel?”
“Yes.” Where did he think I had come from?
Timbuktu?
“How did you travel?”
“Lazzari let me have one of the hotel’s cars.”
“How long did the journey take?”
“Thirty minutes on the nose.”
“How were the roads? Were there many cars?”
“No. Hardly anyone about, as a matter of fact.”
“Do you think that in different conditions you could
have made the journey in less time?” Poirot asked.
“Not unless I grew wings. Thirty minutes is jolly
good going, I’d say.”
“Bon. Mr. Kidd, please sit down and tell Poirot
your very interesting story.”
To my astonishment, instead of sitting, Samuel
Kidd laughed and repeated the very words Poirot had
spoken in an exaggerated French accent, or Belgian
accent, or however it is that Poirot speaks: “Meester
Keedd, please sit down and tell Poirr-oh your very
interesting storrie. ”
Poirot looked affronted to have his voice mocked.
I felt a pang of sympathy for him, until he said, “Mr.
Kidd pronounces my name better than you do,
Catchpool.”
“Meester Keedd,” the disheveled man said with a
guffaw. “Oh, don’t mind me, sir. I’m only entertaining
meself. Meester Keedd! ”
“We are not here to entertain ourselves,” I told
him, tired of his antics already. “Please repeat what
you told me outside the hotel.”
Kidd took ten minutes to tell a story that could
have been distilled into three, but it was worth it.
Walking past the Bloxham shortly after eight o’clock
the previous evening, he had seen a woman run out of
the hotel, down the steps and onto the street. She was
panting and looked frightful. He had started to make
his way toward her to ask if she needed help, but she
was too fast for him and ran away before he could get
to her. As she ran, she dropped something on the
ground: two gold-colored keys. Realizing she had
dropped them, she turned around and hurried back to
retrieve them. Then, clutching them in her gloved
hand, she had disappeared into the night.
“I said to meself, that’s strange, that is, her taking
off like that,” Samuel Kidd mused. “And then this
morning I seen police everywhere and I asked one of
’em what was the big to-do. When I heard about these
murders, I thought to meself, ‘That could have been a
murderer that you saw, Sammy.’ She looked frightful,
did the lady—frightful!”
Poirot was staring at one of the many stains on the
man’s shirt. “Frightful,” he murmured. “Your story is
most intriguing, Mr. Kidd. Two keys, you say?”
“That’s right, sir. Two gold keys.”
“You were close enough to see, yes?”
“Oh, yes, sir—the street’s nicely lit up outside the
Bloxham. It was no trouble seeing.”
“Can you tell me anything else about these keys
apart from their gold color?”
“Yes. They had numbers on ’em.”
“Numbers?” I said. This was a detail that Samuel
Kidd had not revealed to me in his first telling of the
story outside the hotel, nor in his second, on the way
here in the car. And . . . dash it all, I should have
thought to ask him. I had seen Richard Negus’s key,
the one that Poirot had found behind the loose
fireplace tile. It had the number 238 on it.
“Yes, sir, numbers. Like, you know, one hundred,
two hundred . . .”
“I know what numbers are,” I said brusquely.
“Were those, in fact, the numbers you saw on the
keys, Mr. Kidd?” Poirot asked. “One hundred and two
hundred?”
“No, sir. One of them was a hundred and summat,
if I’m not mistaking. The other . . .” Kidd scratched
his head vigorously. Poirot averted his eyes. “It was
three hundred and summat, I think, sir. Though I
couldn’t swear to it, you understand. But that’s what
I’m seeing now in my mind’s eye: one hundred and
summat, three hundred and summat.”
Room 121, Harriet Sippel’s room. And Ida
Gransbury’s, Room 317.
I felt a hollow space open up in my stomach. I
recognized the sensation: it was how I had felt when I
first saw the three dead bodies and was told by the
police doctor that a gold monogrammed cufflink had
been found in each of their mouths.
It now seemed likely that Samuel Kidd had been
within inches of the murderer last night. A frightful-
looking lady. I shivered.
“This woman that you saw,” said Poirot, “did she
have fair hair and a brown hat and coat?”
He was, of course, thinking of Jennie. I still
believed there was no link, but I could see Poirot’s
reasoning: Jennie had been running around London
last night in a state of great agitation and so had this
other lady. It was just about possible they were one
and the same person.
“No, sir. She had a hat on but it were pale blue,
and her hair were dark. Curled and dark.”
“How old was she?”
“Wouldn’t like to guess a lady’s age, sir. Between
young and old, I’d say.”
“Apart from the blue hat, what was she wearing?”
“Can’t say I took that in, sir. I was too busy
looking at her face when I could.”
“Was she pretty?” I asked.
“Yes, but I wasn’t looking for that reason, sir. I
was looking because I know her, see. I took one look
and I thought to meself, ‘Sammy, you know that lady.’
”
Poirot shifted in his chair. He looked at me, then
back at Kidd. “If you know her, Mr. Kidd, please tell
us who she is.”
“I can’t, sir. That’s what I was trying to get straight
in my head when she ran away. I don’t know how I
know her, or her name, or nothing like that. It’s not
from making boilers I know her, I can say that much.
She looked refined. A proper lady. I don’t know
anybody like that, but I do know her. That face—it’s
not a face I saw last night for the first time. No, sir.”
Samuel Kidd shook his head. “It’s a puzzle all right. I
might have asked her, if she’d not run away.”
I wondered, out of all the people who ever ran
away, how many did so for that very reason: because
they would rather not be asked, whatever the question
might be.
SHORTLY AFTER I HAD sent Samuel Kidd packing with
orders to search his memory for the name of this
mysterious woman and details of where and when he
might have made her acquaintance, Constable Stanley
Beer delivered Henry Negus to Pleasant’s.
Mr. Negus was considerably more pleasing to the
eye than Samuel Kidd: a handsome man of around
fifty with iron-gray hair and a wise face. He was
smartly dressed and soft spoken. I liked him instantly.
His grief at the loss of his brother was palpable,
though he was a model of self-control throughout our
conversation.
“Please accept my condolences, Mr. Negus,” said
Poirot. “I am so sorry. It is a terrible thing to lose one
so close as a brother.”
Negus nodded his gratitude. “Anything I can do to
help—anything at all—I will gladly do. Mr.
Catchpool says that you have questions for me?”
“Yes, monsieur. The names Harriet Sippel and Ida
Gransbury—they are familiar to you?”
“Were they the other two who were. . . ?” Henry
Negus stopped talking as Fee Spring approached with
the cup of tea he had asked for on arrival.
Once she had retreated, Poirot said, “Yes. Harriet
Sippel and Ida Gransbury were also murdered at the
Bloxham Hotel yesterday evening.”
“The name Harriet Sippel means nothing to me. Ida
Gransbury and my brother were engaged to be
married years ago.”
“So you knew Mademoiselle Gransbury?” I heard
the flare of excitement in Poirot’s voice.
“No, I never met her,” said Henry Negus. “I knew
her name, of course, from Richard’s letters. He and I
rarely saw one another while he lived in Great
Holling. We wrote instead.”
I felt another piece of the puzzle slide into position
with a satisfying click. “Richard lived in Great
Holling?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice even.
If Poirot shared my surprise at this discovery, he did
not show it.
One village, linking all three murder victims. I
repeated its name several times in my mind: Great
Holling, Great Holling, Great Holling. Everything
seemed to point in its direction.
“Yes, Richard lived there until 1913,” said Negus.
“He had a law practice in the Culver Valley. It’s
where he and I grew up—in Silsford. Then in 1913 he
came to live in Devon with me, where he’s lived ever
since. I mean . . . where he lived,” he corrected
himself. His face looked suddenly haggard, as if the
knowledge of his brother’s death had landed violently
upon him once again, crushing him.
“Did Richard ever mention to you anyone from the
Culver Valley by the name of Jennie?” asked Poirot.
“Or anyone at all with that name, perhaps from Great
Holling or perhaps not?”
There was a pause that stretched forward. Then
Henry Negus said, “No.”
“What about a person with the initials PIJ?”
“No. The only one from the village that he ever
mentioned was Ida, his fiancée.”
“If I may ask a delicate question, monsieur: why
did your brother’s engagement not result in a
marriage?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know. Richard and I were close
but we tended to discuss ideas more than anything
else. Philosophy, politics, theology . . . We did not
generally inquire into one another’s private business.
All he told me about Ida was that he was engaged to
be married to her, and then, in 1913, that they were no
longer engaged.”
“Attendez. In 1913, his engagement to Ida
Gransbury ends, and also he leaves Great Holling to
move to Devon and live with you?”
“And my wife and children, yes.”
“Did he leave Great Holling in order to put more
distance between himself and Miss Gransbury?”
Henry Negus considered the question. “I think that
was part of it, but it wasn’t the whole story. Richard
