injustice that had been done to the Ives—but I knew
that to say so would be foolish. Poirot would only
lecture me about my inability to recognize amorous
feelings. To give him something to think about apart
from my countless mistakes and inadequacies, I told
him about my visit to Pleasant’s, and what Fee Spring
had told me. “What do you think it means?” I asked as
our car bumped over something bulky that must have
been lying on the road.
Once more, Poirot ignored my question. He asked
me if I had told him everything.
“Everything that took place in Great Holling, yes.
The only other news is the inquest, which was today.
The three victims were poisoned. Cyanide, as we
thought. Here’s a strange puzzle, though: no recently
consumed food was found in their stomach contents.
Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus had
not eaten for several hours before they were
murdered. Which means we have a missing afternoon
tea for three to account for.”
“Ah! That is one mystery solved.”
“Solved? I’d say it was a mystery created. Am I
wrong?”
“Oh, Catchpool,” said Poirot sadly. “If I tell you
the answer, if I take pity on you, you will not hone
your ability to think for yourself—and you must! I
have a very good friend that I have not spoken of to
you. Hastings is his name. Often I entreat him to use
his little gray cells, but I know that they will never be
a match for mine.”
I thought he was limbering up to give me a
compliment—“You, on the other hand . . .” —but then
he said, “Yours, too, will never match mine. It is not
the intelligence that you lack, nor the sensitivity, nor
even the originality. It is merely the confidence.
Instead of looking for the answer, you look around for
somebody to find it and tell it to you— eh bien, you
find Hercule Poirot! But Poirot is not only a solver of
puzzles, mon ami. He is also a guide, a teacher. He
wishes you to learn to think for yourself, as he does.
As does this woman that you describe, Margaret
Ernst, who relies not upon the Bible but upon her own
judgment.”
“Yes. I thought that rather arrogant of her,” I said
pointedly. I would have liked to elaborate, but we had
arrived at the Bloxham Hotel.
The Fourth Cufflink
IN THE LOBBY OF the Bloxham, we nearly walked
straight into Henry Negus, Richard Negus’s brother.
He was carrying a small briefcase in one hand. In the
other, he carried a very large suitcase, which he
dropped in order to speak to us. “I wish I were a
younger, stronger man,” he said, out of breath. “How
is the case progressing, if I might enquire?”
From his expression and tone of voice, I deduced
that he was unaware that there had been a fourth
murder. I said nothing, interested to see what Poirot
would do.
“We are confident of success,” said Poirot with
deliberate vagueness. “You have spent the night here,
monsieur?”
“Night? Oh, the suitcase. No, I stayed at the
Langham. Couldn’t face this place, though Mr. Lazzari
was good enough to offer. I am here only to collect
Richard’s belongings.” Henry Negus inclined his head
toward the suitcase but kept his eyes averted, as if he
didn’t want to see it himself. I looked at the stiff card
label attached to its handle: Mr. R. Negus.
“Well, I had better make haste,” said Negus.
“Please keep me informed.”
“We will,” I said. “Goodbye, Mr. Negus. I am so
very sorry about your brother.”
“Thank you, Mr. Catchpool. Monsieur Poirot.”
Negus looked embarrassed, perhaps even angry. I
thought I understood why: in the face of tragedy, he
had decided to be efficient and did not wish to be
reminded of his own sadness while he was trying to
focus on the practicalities.
As he walked out onto the street, I saw Luca
Lazzari rushing toward us, clutching at his hair. A
sheen of sweat covered his face. “Ah, Monsieur
Poirot, Mr. Catchpool! At last! You have heard the
disastrous news? Unhappy days at the Bloxham Hotel!
Oh, unhappy days!”
Was it my imagination, or had he styled his
mustache to resemble Poirot’s? It was a pale
imitation, if imitation it was. I found it fascinating that
a fourth murder in his hotel had produced in him such
a mournful disposition. When only three guests had
been murdered at the Bloxham, he had remained
chipper. A thought occurred to me: maybe this time
the victim was an employee of the hotel and not a
guest. I asked who had been killed.
“I do not know who she is or where she is now,”
said Lazzari. “Come, follow me. You will see for
yourselves.”
“You do not know where she is?” Poirot demanded
as we followed the hotel manager to the lift. “What do
you mean? Is she not here, in the hotel?”
“Ah, but where in the hotel? She could be
anywhere!” Lazzari wailed.
Rafal Bobak inclined his head in greeting as he
came toward us, pushing a large cart on wheels full of
what looked like sheets in need of laundering.
“Monsieur Poirot,” he said, stopping when he saw us.
“I have been going over and over it in my mind, to see
if I can remember any more of what was said in Room
317 on the night of the murders.”
“Oui? ” Poirot sounded hopeful.
“I haven’t remembered anything else, sir. I’m
sorry.”
“Never mind. Thank you for trying, Mr. Bobak.”
“Look,” said Lazzari. “Here comes the lift, and I
am afraid to step into it! In my own hotel! I do not
know, any more, what I will find, or not find. I am
afraid to turn one more corner, to open one more door
. . . I fear the shadows in the corridors, the creaks of
the floorboards . . .”
As we went up in the lift, Poirot tried to get some
sense out of the distraught hotel manager, but to no
avail. Lazzari seemed unable to manage more than six
linked words at a time: “Miss Jennie Hobbs reserved
the room . . . What? Yes, fair hair . . . But then where
did she go? . . . Yes, brown hat . . . We have lost her!
. . . She was without cases . . . I saw her myself, yes
. . . I was too late to the room! . . . What? Yes, a coat.
Pale brown . . .”
On the fourth floor, we followed Lazzari as he
hurried ahead of us along the corridor. “Harriet
Sippel was on the first floor, remember?” I said to
Poirot. “Richard Negus was on the second and Ida
Gransbury on the third. I wonder if it means
anything.”
By the time we caught up with Lazzari, he had
unlocked the door to Room 402. “Gentlemen, you are
about to see a most anomalous scene of ugliness in the
beautiful Bloxham Hotel. Please prepare yourselves.”
Having issued this warning, he flung open the door so
that it banged against the wall inside the room.
“But . . . Where is the body?” I asked. It was not
inside the room, laid out like the others. Immense
relief suffused me.
“Nobody knows, Catchpool.” Poirot’s voice was
quiet but there was anger in it. Or it might have been
fear.
Between a chair and a small occasional table—
positioned exactly where the bodies had been in
rooms 121, 238 and 317—there was a pool of blood
on the floor, with a long smear mark at one side, as if
something had been dragged through part of it. Jennie
Hobbs’s body? An arm perhaps, from the shape of the
smear. There were small lines breaking up the red that
might have been fingermarks . . .
I turned away, sickened by the sight.
“Poirot, look.” In one corner of the room there was
a dark brown hat, upturned. There was something
inside it, a small metal object. Could it be . . . ?
“Jennie’s hat,” said Poirot, a tremor in his voice.
“My worst fear, it has come to pass, Catchpool. And
inside the hat . . .” He walked over, very slowly.
“Yes, it is as I thought: a cufflink. The fourth cufflink,
also with the monogram PIJ.”
His mustache began to move with some energy,
and I could only imagine the grimaces it concealed.
“Poirot, he has been a fool—a contemptible fool—to
allow this to happen!”
“Poirot, no one could possibly accuse you of—” I
began.
“Non! Do not try to console me! Always you want
to turn away from pain and suffering, but I am not like
you, Catchpool! I cannot countenance such . . .
cowardice. I want to regret what I regret, without you
trying to stop me. It is necessary!”
I stood as still as a statue. He had wanted to
silence me, and he had succeeded.
“Catchpool,” he said my name abruptly, as if he
thought my attention might have wandered far from the
matter at hand. “Observe the marks made by the blood
here. The body was pulled through it to leave this . . .
trail. Does that make sense to you?” he demanded.
“Well . . . yes, I’d say so.”
“Look at the direction of movement: not toward the
window, but away from it.”
“Which means what?” I asked.
“Since Jennie’s body is not here, it must have been
removed from the room. The trail of blood is going
not toward the window but toward the corridor, so
. . .” Poirot stared at me expectantly.
“So?” I said tentatively. Then, as clarity dawned,
“Oh, I see what you mean: the marks, the smears,
were made when the killer pulled Jennie Hobbs’s
body from the pool of blood toward the door?”
“Non. Look at the width of the doorway,
Catchpool. Look at it: it is wide. What does this tell
you?”
“Not an awful lot,” I said, thinking it best to be
candid. “A murderer wishing to remove his victim’s
body from a hotel room would hardly care whether
the doorway of that room was wide or narrow.”
Poirot shook his head disconsolately, muttering
under his breath.
He turned to Lazzari. “Signor, please tell me
everything you know, from the beginning.”
“Of course. Certainly.” Lazzari cleared his throat
in preparation. “A room was taken by a woman
named Jennie Hobbs. Monsieur Poirot, she ran into
the hotel as if a calamity had befallen her and threw
money down on the desk. She requested a room as if
escaping from a pursuing demon! I showed her to the
room myself, then went away to commence the
consideration: what ought I to do? Should I inform the
police that a woman with the name Jennie has arrived
at the hotel? You had asked me about that name in
particular, Monsieur Poirot, but there must be many
women in London with the name Jennie, and more
than one of those Jennies must have cause for great
unhappiness that is nothing to do with a murder case.
How am I to know if—”
“Please, signor, arrive at the point,” said Poirot,
interrupting his flow. “What did you do?”
“I waited about thirty minutes, then came up here
to the fourth floor and knocked at the door. No
answer! So I went back downstairs to get a key.”
As Lazzari spoke, I walked over to the window
and looked out. Anything was preferable to the sight
of the blood and the hat and the wretched
monogrammed cufflink. Room 402, like Richard
Negus’s room, 238, was on the garden side of the
hotel. I stared at the pleached limes, but soon had to
look away, as even they looked sinister to me: a row
of inanimate objects fused together, as if they had held
hands for too long.
I was about to turn back to Poirot and Lazzari
when I spotted two people in the garden beneath the
window. They stood beside a brown wheelbarrow. I
could see only the tops of their heads. One was a man
and the other a woman, and they were locked together
in an embrace. The woman seemed to stumble or
slump, her head tilting to one side. Her companion
grasped her more tightly. I took a step back, but I was
not fast enough: the man had looked up and seen me. It
was Thomas Brignell, the assistant clerk. His face
instantly turned beet red. I took another step back so
that I could no longer see the gardens at all. Poor
Brignell, I thought; given his reluctance to stand up
and speak in public, I could well imagine how
painfully embarrassed he must be to be caught
canoodling.
Lazzari continued with his account: “When I
returned with a master key, I knocked again, to make
sure I was not about to intrude upon the young lady’s
privacy, and still she did not open the door! So I
unlocked it myself . . . and this is what I found!”
“Did Jennie Hobbs specifically request a room on
the fourth floor?” I asked.
“No, she did not. I assisted her myself, since my
dear trusty clerk John Goode was otherwise
occupied. Miss Hobbs said, “Put me in any room, but
quickly! Quickly, I beg of you.”
“Was any sort of note left at the front desk to
announce the fourth murder?” asked Poirot.
“No. This time, there was not the note,” said
Lazzari.
“Were any food or beverages served to the room,
or requested?”
“No. None.”
“You have checked with everybody who works in
the hotel?”
“Every single person, yes. Monsieur Poirot, we
have looked everywhere . . .”
“Signor, a few moments ago you described Jennie
Hobbs as a young lady. How old was she, would you
say?”
“Oh . . . I must beg your pardon. No, she was not
young. But she was not old.”
“Was she, perhaps, thirty?” Poirot asked.
“I believe she might have been forty, but a
woman’s age is a difficult thing to estimate.”
Poirot nodded. “A brown hat and a pale brown
coat. Fair hair. Panic and distress, and an age that
might be forty. The Jennie Hobbs you describe sounds
like the Jennie Hobbs I encountered at Pleasant’s
Coffee House last Thursday evening. But can we say
for certain that it was she? Two sightings by two
different people . . .” Suddenly, he fell silent though
his mouth continued to move.
“Poirot?” I said.
He had eyes—intensely green eyes, at that precise
moment—only for Lazzari. “Signor, I must speak to
that most observant waiter again, Mr. Rafal Bobak.
And Thomas Brignell, and John Goode. In fact, I must
speak to every single member of your staff as soon as
possible and ask how many times they each saw
Harriet Sippel, Richard Negus and Ida Gransbury—
dead or alive.”
He had evidently realized something important. As
I reached this conclusion, I heard myself gasp as I too
made a mental leap. “Poirot,” I murmured.
“What is it, my friend? You have put some pieces
