date. Why? Because it was not a recent one. You
needed me to believe that you had delivered the
portrait to Lady Wallace on the night of the murders,
and that, therefore, it was a newly completed portrait.
I asked myself why you did not paint on a new, false
date, and the answer was obvious: if your work
survives for hundreds of years, and if art historians
take an interest in it, as they surely will, you do not
wish actively to mislead them, these people who care
about your work. No, the only people you wish to
mislead are Hercule Poirot and the police!”
Nancy Ducane tilted her head to one side. In a
thoughtful voice, she said, “How perceptive you are,
Monsieur Poirot. You really do understand, don’t
you?”
“Oui, madame. I understand that you found
employment for Jennie Hobbs in the home of your
friend Louisa Wallace—to help Jennie, when she
came to London and needed a job. I understand that
Jennie was never part of any plan to frame you for
murder, though she allowed Richard Negus to believe
otherwise. In fact, ladies and gentleman, Jennie
Hobbs and Nancy Ducane have been friends and
allies ever since they both lived in Great Holling.
The
two
women
who
loved
Patrick
Ive
unconditionally and beyond reason are the ones who
formulated a plan nearly clever enough to fool me,
Hercule Poirot—but not quite clever enough!”
“Lies, all lies!” Jennie wept.
Nancy said nothing.
Poirot said, “Let me return for a moment to the
home of the Wallaces. In Nancy Ducane’s portrait of
Lady Louisa that I inspected so closely and for so
long, there is a blue jug and bowl set. When I walked
up and down the room and looked at it in different
lights, the blue of the jug and bowl remained a solid
block of color, bland and uninteresting. Every other
color on that canvas changed subtly as I moved
around, depending on the light. Nancy Ducane is a
sophisticated artist. She is a genius when it comes to
color—except when she is in a hurry and thinking not
about art but about protecting herself and her friend
Jennie Hobbs. To conceal information, Nancy quickly
painted blue a jug and bowl set that was not formerly
blue. Why did she do this?”
“To paint out the date?” I suggested.
“Non. The jug and bowl were in the top half of the
picture, and Nancy Ducane always paints the date in
the bottom right-hand corner,” said Poirot. “Lady
Wallace, you did not expect me to ask to be shown
round your home from bottom to top. You thought that
once we had spoken and I had seen Nancy Ducane’s
portrait of you, I would be satisfied and leave. But I
wanted to see if I could find this blue jug and bowl
that were in the portrait, and painted with so much
less subtlety than the rest of the picture. And I did find
them! Lady Wallace seemed to be puzzled because
they were missing, but her puzzlement was a pretense.
In an upstairs bedroom, there was a white jug and
bowl set with a crest on it. This, I thought, might be
the jug and bowl set in the portrait—yet it was not
blue. Mademoiselle Dorcas, Lady Wallace told me
that you must have smashed or stolen the blue jug and
bowl.”
“I never did!” said a stricken Dorcas. “I ain’t
never seen no blue jug and bowl in the house!”
“Because, young lady, there has never been one
there!” said Poirot. “Why, I asked myself, would
Nancy Ducane hurriedly paint over the white jug and
bowl with blue paint? What did she hope to hide? It
had surely to be the crest, I concluded. Crests are not
purely decorative; they belong to families, sometimes,
or, at other times, to colleges of famous universities.”
“Saviour College, Cambridge,” I said before I
could stop myself. I remembered that just before
Poirot and I had left London for Great Holling,
Stanley Beer had referred to a crest.
“Oui, Catchpool. When I left the Wallaces’ home, I
drew a picture of the crest so that I would not forget
it. I am no artist, but it was accurate enough. I asked
Constable Beer to find out for me where it came from.
As you have all heard my friend Catchpool say, the
crest on the white jug and bowl set in the Wallaces’
house is that of Saviour College, Cambridge, where
Jennie Hobbs used to work as a bed-maker for the
Reverend Patrick Ive. It was a leaving present to you,
was it not, Miss Hobbs, when you left Saviour
College and went to Great Holling with Patrick and
Frances Ive? And then when you moved into the home
of Lord and Lady Wallace, you took it with you. When
you left that house in a hurry and went to hide at Mr.
Kidd’s house, you did not take the jug and bowl—you
were in no state of mind to think of such things. I
believe that Louisa Wallace, at that point, moved the
jug and bowl set from the servant’s quarters you had
previously occupied into a guest bedroom, where it
might be admired by those she wished to impress.”
Jennie didn’t answer. Her face was blank and
expressionless.
“Nancy Ducane did not want to take even the
tiniest risk,” said Poirot. “She knew that, after the
murders in this hotel, Catchpool and I would ask
questions in the village of Great Holling. What if the
old drunkard Walter Stoakley, formerly Master of
Saviour College, mentioned to us that he gave Jennie
Hobbs a crested jug and bowl as a leaving present? If
we then saw a crest in the portrait of Lady Wallace,
we might discover the connection to Jennie Hobbs
and, by extension, the link between Nancy Ducane and
Jennie Hobbs, which was not one of enmity and envy,
as we had been told by both women, but one of
friendship and collusion. Madame Ducane could not
take the chance that we would arrive at this suspicion
because of the crest in the portrait, and so the white
jug and bowl set was painted blue—hurriedly, and
with little artistry.”
“Not all of one’s work can be one’s best work,
Monsieur Poirot,” said Nancy. It alarmed me to hear
how reasonable she sounded—to see somebody who
had conspired in three unlawful killings being so
polite and rational in conversation.
“Perhaps you would agree with Mrs. Ducane, Lord
Wallace?” said Poirot. “You too are a painter, though
of a very different kind. Ladies and gentlemen, St.
John Wallace is a botanical artist. I saw his work in
every room of his house when I visited—Lady
Wallace was gracious enough to show me around, just
as she was generous enough to provide a false alibi
for Nancy Ducane. Lady Wallace, you see, is a good
woman. She is the most dangerous kind of good: so
far removed from evil that she does not notice it when
it is right in front of her! Lady Wallace believed in
Nancy Ducane’s innocence and provided an alibi to
protect her. Ah, the lovely, talented Nancy, she is most
convincing! She convinced St. John Wallace that she
was eager to try her hand at his sort of painting. Lord
Wallace is well connected and well known, therefore
easily able to obtain what plants he needs for his
work. Nancy Ducane asked him to obtain for her some
cassava plants—from which the cyanide is made!”
“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.”
Jennie wiped away a tear. “I believe I did her a
favor. You heard her express the desire to be reunited
with Patrick. I helped her with that, didn’t I?”
“Catchpool,” said Poirot. “Do you recall that I
said to you, after we found the blood in the Room 402
of the Bloxham Hotel, that it was too late for me to
save Mademoiselle Jennie?”
“Yes.”
“You thought I meant that she was dead, but you
misunderstood me. You see, I knew even then that
Jennie was beyond help. She had already done things
so terrible that her own death was guaranteed, I
feared. That was my meaning.”
“In every way that counts, I have been dead since
Patrick died,” Jennie said in that same tone of
unending hopelessness.
I knew there was only one way that I could get
through this ordeal, and that was by concentrating all
my attention on questions of logic. Had Poirot solved
the puzzle? He seemed to think he had, but I was still
in the dark. Who, for instance, had killed Harriet
Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus, and why
had they done so? I asked these questions of Poirot.
“Ah,” he said, smiling fondly, as if I had reminded
him of a joke we had once shared. “I see your
dilemma, mon ami. You listen to Poirot declaim at
