death, in their shared grave, he was with the woman
to whom he had rightfully belonged in life: his wife,
Frances. Had his soul found peace, or was it pining
for Nancy? Did Nancy ask herself this? Did she wish,
loving Patrick as she did, that the dead could speak to
the living? Anybody who had loved and lost someone
precious to them might wish that . . .
“Catchpool! What is in your mind at this moment? I
must know.”
“Poirot, I’ve had the most preposterous idea. Let
me tell you, quickly, so that you can tell me I am
crazy.” I babbled excitedly until he had heard the
whole of it. “I’m wrong, of course,” I concluded.
“Oh, no, no, no. No, mon ami, you are not wrong.”
He gasped. “Of course! How, how did I fail to see it?
Mon Dieu! Do you see what this means? What we
must now conclude?”
“No, I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Ah. Dommage. ”
“For pity’s sake, Poirot! It’s hardly fair to make me
lay out my idea and then withhold yours.”
“There is not time for discussion now. We must
hurry back to London, where you will pack up the
clothes and personal effects of Harriet Sippel and Ida
Gransbury.”
“What?” I frowned in confusion, wondering if my
ears were deceiving me.
“Oui. Mr. Negus has already had his belongings
removed by his brother, if you recall.”
“I do, but . . .”
“Do not argue, Catchpool. It will take you hardly
any time to pack two ladies” cases with the clothes in
their hotel rooms. Ah, now I see it, I see all of it, at
last. All the solutions to the many little puzzles, they
are in place! You know, it is rather like the crossword
puzzle.”
“Please don’t make the comparison,” I said.
“You’re likely to put me off my favorite pastime if
you compare it to this case.”
“Only when one sees all the answers together does
one know for certain that one is right,” Poirot went
on, ignoring me. “Until then, for as long as some
answers are missing, one may yet discover that a
detail that seems to fit in fact does not fit at all.”
“In that case, think of me as an empty crossword
grid, with no words filled in,” I said.
“Not for long, my friend—not for long. Poirot, he
will require the dining room of the Bloxham Hotel
one last time!”
The Monogram Murders
THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON AT a quarter past four,
Poirot and I stood at one end of the Bloxham Hotel’s
dining room and waited as people took their places at
the various tables. The hotel staff had all arrived
promptly at four o’clock as Luca Lazzari had
promised they would. I smiled at the familiar faces:
John Goode, Thomas Brignell, Rafal Bobak. They
acknowledged me with nervous nods.
Lazzari was standing by the door, throwing his
arms around in wild gesticulation as he spoke to
Constable Stanley Beer. Beer kept having to duck and
step back in order to avoid being clonked in the face.
I was too far away to catch most of what Lazzari was
saying, and the room was too noisy, but I did hear
“these Monogram Murders” more than once.
Was that what Lazzari had decided to call them?
Everybody else in the country was calling them by the
name the newspapers had chosen from the first day:
the Bloxham Hotel Murders. Evidently Lazzari had
come up with a more imaginative alternative, in the
hope that his beloved establishment would not be
forever tarnished by association. I found this so
transparent as to be irritating, but I knew that my
mood was colored by my failure on the suitcase-
packing front. I am easily capable of packing for
myself before a trip, but that is because I take as little
as possible when I travel. Ida Gransbury’s clothes
must have expanded during her short stay at the
Bloxham; I had spent an infuriating time pressing and
leaning down with my full weight, and still I could not
fit many of her clothes in her case. No doubt there is a
feminine knack to these things that oafish men like me
will never master. I was exceedingly relieved to be
told by Poirot that I must stop trying and make my way
to the hotel’s dining room at the appointed hour of
four o’clock.
Samuel Kidd, in a smart gray flannel suit, had
arrived with a pale-faced Jennie Hobbs on his arm at
five minutes past four, followed two minutes later by
Henry Negus, Richard’s brother, and ten minutes after
that by a group of four: a man and three women, one
of whom was Nancy Ducane. The skin around her
tear-filled eyes was red raw. As she entered the
room, she tried unsuccessfully to conceal her face
behind a scarf made of diaphanous material.
I muttered to Poirot, “She doesn’t want people to
see that she has been crying.”
“No,” he said. “She wears the scarf because she
hopes not to be recognized, not because she is
ashamed of her tears. There is nothing reprehensible
in allowing a feeling to show outwardly, contrary to
what you Englishmen seem to believe.”
I had no wish to be diverted to the topic of myself
when I had been talking about Nancy Ducane, in
whom I was far more interested. “I suppose the last
thing she wants is to be set upon by eager fans, all
falling in an adoring heap at her faraway feet.”
Poirot, as a somewhat famous person himself who
should have liked nothing better than a pile of
admirers draped all over his spats, looked as if he
was about to take issue with this point as well.
I distracted him with a question: “Who are the
three people who came in with Nancy Ducane?”
“Lord St. John Wallace, Lady Louisa Wallace and
their servant Dorcas.” He looked at his watch and
tutted. “We are fifteen minutes late in starting! Why
cannot people arrive on time?”
I noticed that both Thomas Brignell and Rafal
Bobak had risen to their feet, both apparently wanting
to speak, although the proceedings were not yet
officially underway.
“Please, gentlemen, sit down!” Poirot said.
“But Mr. Poirot, sir, I must—”
“But I—”
“Do not agitate yourselves, messieurs. These
things that you are so determined to tell Poirot? You
may be assured that he knows them already, and that
he is about to tell you, and everybody gathered here,
those very same things. Be patient, I beg of you.”
Mollified, Bobak and Brignell sat down. I was
surprised to see the black-haired woman sitting next
to Brignell reach for his hand. He squeezed hers, and
they allowed their hands to remain entwined. I saw
the look that passed between them, and it told me all I
needed to know: they were sweethearts. This,
however, was definitely not the woman I had seen
Brignell canoodling with in the hotel gardens.
Poirot whispered in my ear, “The woman Brignell
was kissing in the garden, beside the wheelbarrow—
she had fair hair, non? The woman with the brown
coat?” He gave me an enigmatic smile.
To the crowd, he said, “Now that everyone has
arrived, please may I ask for silence and your full
attention? Thank you. I am obliged to you all.”
As Poirot spoke, I cast my eyes over the faces in
the room. Was that . . . Oh, my goodness! It was! Fee
Spring, the waitress from Pleasant’s, was sitting at the
back of the room. Like Nancy Ducane, she had made
an effort to cover her face—with a fancy sort of hat—
and like Nancy she had failed. She winked at me as if
to say that it served me and Poirot right for stopping
in for a drink and telling her where we were going
next. Confound it all, why couldn’t the little minx stay
in the coffee house where she belonged?
“I must ask for your forbearance today,” said
Poirot. “There is much that you need to know and
understand that you do not at present.”
Yes, I thought, that summed up my position
perfectly. I knew scarcely more than the Bloxham’s
chambermaids and cooks did. Perhaps even Fee
Spring had a stronger grasp on the facts than I; Poirot
had probably invited her to this grand event he had
arranged. I must say, I did not and never would
understand why he required such a sizeable audience.
It was not a theatrical production. When I solved a
crime—and I had been lucky enough to do so several
times without Poirot’s help—I simply presented my
conclusions to my boss and then arrested the
miscreant in question.
I wondered, too late, if I ought to have demanded
that Poirot tell me everything first, before staging this
spectacle. Here I was, supposedly in charge of the
investigation, and I had no inkling of what solution to
the mystery he was about to present.
“Whatever he is about to say, please let it be
brilliant,” I prayed. “If he gets it right and I am
standing by his side, no one will suspect that I was
once, and so late in the day, as unenlightened as I am
now.”
“The story is too long for me to tell it without
help,” Poirot addressed the room. “My voice, I would
wear it out. Therefore I must ask you to listen to two
other speakers. First, Mrs. Nancy Ducane, the famous
portrait painter who has done us the honor of joining
us here today, will speak.”
This was a surprise—though not to Nancy herself,
I noticed. From her face, it was apparent that she had
known Poirot would call upon her. The two of them
had arranged it in advance.
Awed whispers filled the room as Nancy, with her
scarf wrapped round her face, came to stand beside
me where everyone could see her. “You’ve blown her
cover with the adoring fans,” I whispered to Poirot.
“Oui. ” He smiled. “Yet still she keeps the scarf
around her face as she speaks.”
Everyone listened, rapt, as Nancy Ducane told the
story of Patrick Ive: her forbidden love for him, her
illicit visits to the vicarage at night, the wicked lies
about his taking money from parishioners and, in
exchange, passing on communications from their dead
loved ones. She did not mention Jennie Hobbs by
name when she referred to the rumor that had started
all the trouble.
Nancy described how she finally spoke out, at the
King’s Head Inn, and told the villagers of Great
Holling about her love affair with Patrick Ive, which
was not chaste, though she had pretended at the time
that it was. Her voice shook as she told of the tragic
deaths by poisoning of Patrick and Frances Ive. I
noted that that was all she said about the cause of
death: poisoning. She did not specify accident or
suicide. I wondered if Poirot had asked her not to, for
the sake of Ambrose Flowerday and Margaret Ernst.
Before sitting down, Nancy said, “I am as devoted
to Patrick now as I ever was. I will never stop loving
him. One day, he and I will be reunited.”
“Thank you, Madame Ducane.” Poirot bowed. “I
must now without delay tell you something that I have
recently discovered, for I believe it will be a comfort
to you. Before his death, Patrick wrote . . . a letter. In
it, he asked for you to be told that he loved you and
always would.”
“Oh!” Nancy clapped her hands over her mouth
and blinked many times. “Monsieur Poirot, you cannot
imagine how happy you have made me.”
“Au contraire, madame. I can imagine only too
well. The loving message, conveyed after the death of
the loved one . . . It is an echo, is it not, of the untrue
rumors about Patrick Ive: that he conveyed messages
from beyond the grave? And who, I ask you, would
not wish to receive such a message from one they
have loved very much and lost?”
Nancy Ducane made her way back to her chair and
sat down. Louisa Wallace patted her arm.
“And now,” said Poirot, “another woman who
knew and loved Patrick Ive will speak: his former
servant, Jennie Hobbs. Mademoiselle Hobbs?”
Jennie stood up and went to stand where Nancy
had stood. She too looked unsurprised to be asked. In
a shaking voice, she said. “I loved Patrick Ive as
much as Nancy did. But he did not reciprocate my
love. To him, I was no more than a loyal servant. It
was I who started the wicked rumors about him. I told
an unforgivable lie. I was jealous because he loved
Nancy and not me. Although I did not kill him with my
own hands, I believe that, in slandering him as I did, I
caused his death. I and three others: Harriet Sippel,
Richard Negus and Ida Gransbury, the three people
who were murdered at this hotel. All four of us later
came to regret what we had done. We regretted it
profoundly. And so we made a plan to put things
right.”
I watched the astonished faces of the Bloxham
Hotel staff as Jennie described the same plan that she
had described to Poirot and me at Samuel Kidd’s
house, as well as how and why it went wrong. Louisa
Wallace squealed in horror at the part about framing
Nancy Ducane for the three murders and making sure
she hanged. “Arranging for an innocent woman to be
put to death for three murders she didn’t commit is not
righting a wrong!” St. John Wallace called out. “That
is depravity!”
Nobody disagreed with him, at least not out loud.
Fee Spring, I noticed, did not look as shocked as most
people did. She seemed to be listening intently.
“I never wanted to frame Nancy,” said Jennie.
“Never! You may believe that or not, as you wish.”
“Mr. Negus,” said Poirot. “Mr. Henry Negus—do
you think it likely that your brother Richard would
make such a plan as you have heard?”
Henry Negus stood up. “I would not like to say,
Monsieur Poirot. The Richard I knew would not have
dreamed of killing anyone, of course, but the Richard
who came to live with me in Devon sixteen years ago
was not the Richard I knew. Oh, the physicality of
him was the same, but he was not the same man on the
inside. I’m afraid to say that I never got to know the
man that he had become. I cannot, therefore, comment
on how likely he was to behave in a particular way.”
“Thank you, Mr. Negus. And thank you, Miss
Hobbs,” Poirot added with a marked absence of
enthusiasm. “You may now sit down.”
He turned to the crowd. “So you see, ladies and
gentlemen, that Miss Hobbs’s story, if true, leaves us
with no murderer to arrest and convict. Ida Gransbury
killed Harriet Sippel—with her permission. Richard
Negus killed Ida Gransbury—again, with her
permission—and then killed himself when Jennie
