wanted to be the one in control until the end.
“Nancy told me I had to persuade Richard that I
should kill him rather than have him kill me.
‘Impossible!’ I said. ‘He will never agree.’ But Nancy
said that he would if I approached him in the right
way. I had to pretend to be more committed to our
goal than he was. She was right. It worked. I went to
Richard and said that it was not enough for the four of
us to die: me, him, Harriet and Ida. Nancy had to be
punished too. I pretended that I would be happy to die
only once she was dead. She was more evil than
Harriet, I said. I related an elaborate tale of how
Nancy had callously plotted to seduce Patrick away
from his wife, and would not take no for an answer. I
told Richard she had confessed to me that her true
motive for speaking up at the King’s Head was not to
help Patrick but to hurt Frances. She hoped that
Frances would take her own life, or abandon Patrick
at the very least and return to her father in Cambridge,
leaving the way clear for Nancy.”
“More lies,” said Poirot.
“Yes, of course, more lies—but ones suggested to
me by Nancy herself, and ones that did the trick!
Richard agreed to die before me.”
“And he did not know that Samuel Kidd was
involved, did he?” said Poirot.
“No. Nancy and I brought Sam into it. He was part
of our plan. Neither of us wanted to climb out of that
window and down the tree—we both feared we
would fall and break our necks—and after locking the
door from the inside and hiding the key behind the
tile, that was the only way to leave Room 238. That’s
why Sam was needed—that and the impersonation of
Richard.”
“And the key had to be hidden behind the tile, ” I
muttered to myself, checking I had it all straight in my
mind. “So that, when you came to tell us your story—
the one we heard at Mr. Kidd’s house—it all
appeared to fit: Richard Negus hid the key to make it
look as if a murderer had taken it because he was
involved in a plan to frame Nancy Ducane.”
“Which he was,” said Poirot. “Or rather, he
thought he was. When Jennie handed him a glass of
poisoned water, as agreed, he believed she would
stay alive and do her best to ensure that Nancy was
found guilty of the three Bloxham Hotel murders. He
believed that she would speak to the police in such a
way as to ensure that they suspected Nancy. He did
not know that Nancy had arranged a cast-iron alibi
with Lord and Lady Wallace! Or that, after his death,
the cufflink would be pushed to the back of his mouth,
the key hidden behind the tile, the window opened . . .
He did not know that Jennie Hobbs, Nancy Ducane
and Samuel Kidd would arrange it so that it appeared
to the police that the killings must have taken place
between a quarter past seven and ten minutes past
eight!”
“No, Richard was not privy to those details,”
Jennie agreed. “Now you can see why I described
Nancy’s plan as brilliant, Monsieur Poirot.”
“She was a talented artist, mademoiselle. The best
artists, they have the eye for detail and for structure:
how all the components fit together.”
Jennie turned to me. “Neither Nancy nor I wanted
any of this. You have to believe me, Mr. Catchpool.
Richard would have killed me if I had resisted him.”
She sighed. “We had it all worked out. Nancy was
supposed to get off scot-free, and Sam and I were to
be punished for trying to frame Nancy, but not by
death. A short term of imprisonment would suffice,
we hoped. After which we intended to marry.” Seeing
our surprised faces, Jennie added, “Oh, I don’t love
Sam as I loved Patrick, but I am very fond of him. He
would have made a good companion if I had not
ruined it all by stabbing Nancy.”
“It was already ruined, mademoiselle. I knew that
you had murdered Harriet Sippel and Richard
Negus.”
“I did not murder Richard, Monsieur Poirot. That’s
one thing you’re wrong about. Richard wanted to die.
I gave him the poison with his full consent.”
“Yes, but under false pretenses. Richard Negus
agreed to die because you agreed to his plan that all
four of you would die. Then it became five when you
involved Nancy Ducane. But you did not really agree.
You betrayed him and plotted behind his back. Who
knows whether Richard Negus would have chosen to
die at that moment and in that way if you had told him
the truth of your secret pact with Nancy Ducane.”
Jennie’s expression hardened. “I did not murder
Richard Negus. I killed him as an act of self-defense.
He would have murdered me otherwise.”
“You said that he did not explicitly threaten this.”
“No—but I knew it. What do you think, Mr.
Catchpool? Did I murder Richard Negus or not?”
“I don’t know,” I said, confused.
“Catchpool, mon ami, do not be absurd.”
“He is not being absurd,” said Jennie. “He is using
his brain where you refuse to, Monsieur Poirot.
Please think about it, I beg of you. Before I hang, I
hope to hear you say that I did not murder Richard
Negus.”
I stood up. “Let us leave now, Poirot.” I wanted to
end the interview while the word “hope” still hung in
the air.
Epilogue
FOUR DAYS LATER I was sitting in front of one of
Blanche Unsworth’s roaring fires, sipping a glass of
brandy and working on my crossword puzzle, when
Poirot walked into the drawing room. He stood
silently by my side for several minutes. I did not look
up.
Eventually
he
cleared
his
throat.
“Still,
Catchpool,” he said. “Still you avoid the discussion
of whether or not Richard Negus was murdered, was
assisted in taking his own life, or was killed in self-
defense.”
“I hardly see that it would be a profitable debate,”
I said, as my stomach clenched. I did not want to talk
about the Bloxham Murders ever again. What I
wanted—needed — was to write about them, to set
down on paper every detail of what had happened. It
mystified me that I was so eager to do the latter and
so reluctant to undertake the former. Why should
writing about a thing be so different from speaking
about it?
“Do not alarm yourself, mon ami,” said Poirot. “I
will not raise the matter again. We will talk of other
things. For example, I visited Pleasant’s Coffee
House this morning. Fee Spring asked me to pass the
message to you that she would like to speak to you at
your earliest convenience. She is displeased.”
“With me?”
“Yes. One moment, she says, she is sitting in the
Bloxham Hotel’s dining room hearing the explanation
of everything, and the next it is all over. A murder
takes place in front of all our eyes, and the story, for
our audience, is left incomplete. Mademoiselle Fee
wishes you to relate the tale to her in its fullest form.”
“It’s hardly my fault that there was another
murder,” I muttered under my breath. “Can she not
read the story in the newspapers like everybody
else?”
“Non. She wishes to discuss it with you in
particular. For a waitress, her intelligence is
impressive. She is an estimable young woman. Do
you not think so, mon ami?”
“I know your game, Poirot,” I said wearily.
“Really, you must desist. You are wasting your time,
as is Fee Spring, assuming . . . Look, buzz off, can’t
you?”
“You are angry with me.”
“A little, yes,” I admitted. “Henry Negus and the
suitcase, Rafal Bobak and the laundry cart, Thomas
Brignell and his lady friend in the hotel garden, who
happened to be wearing a light brown coat like half
the women in England. The wheelbarrow . . .”
“Ah!”
“Yes, ‘ah.’ You knew perfectly well that Jennie
Hobbs wasn’t dead, so why make such an effort to
mislead me into suspecting that her body might have
been removed from room 402 by three of the most
unlikely means imaginable?”
“Because, my friend, I wanted to encourage you to
imagine. If you do not consider the unlikeliest of
possibilities, you will not be the best detective that
you can be. It is the education for the little gray cells,
to force them to move in unusual directions. From this
comes the inspiration.”
“If you insist,” I said doubtfully.
“Poirot, he goes too far, you think—beyond what is
necessary. Perhaps.”
“All that fuss you made about the trail of blood in
room 402 leading from the pool of blood in the center
of the room toward the door, all your exclaiming
about the width of the doorway—what was that
about? You knew that Jennie Hobbs had not been
murdered and dragged anywhere!”
“I did, but you did not. You believed, as did our
friend Signor Lazzari, that Mademoiselle Jennie was
dead and that it was her blood on the floor. Alors, I
wanted you to demand of yourself: a suitcase, a
laundry cart on wheels—both of these are objects that
could have been brought into room 402, right to the
spot where the dead body was. Why, then, would a
killer pull the body toward the door? He would not!
She would not! The trail of blood going in the
direction of the door was a hoax; its aim was to
suggest to us that the body had been dragged out of the
room, since it was not in the room. It was the small
detail of verisimilitude, so important to lend credence
to the murder scene.
“But for Hercule Poirot, it was a detail that
allowed him to know what he already strongly
suspected: that Jennie Hobbs had not been murdered
in that room and neither had anybody else. I could
imagine no method of removing a corpse that would
necessitate the trail of blood smears going toward the
door. No killer would take his victim’s body out into
the public corridor of a hotel without first hiding it
inside some sort of receptacle—a container. Every
container I could think of could easily have been
taken into the room, traveling toward the body rather
than requiring the body to travel toward it. It was such
simple logic, Catchpool. I was surprised you did not
grasp this point at once.”
“Handy tip for you, Poirot,” I said. “Next time
you’d like me to grasp something at once, open your
mouth and tell me facts, whatever they are. Be
straightforward about it. You’ll find it saves a lot of
bother.”
He smiled. “Bien. From my good friend
Catchpool,
I
shall
endeavor
to
learn
the
c omportement straightforward. I start immediately!”
He produced an envelope from his pocket. “This
arrived for me an hour ago. You might not welcome
my interference in your personal affairs, Catchpool—
you may think, ‘Poirot, he sticks in his oar where it is
not wanted’—but this letter expresses gratitude for
that very vice of mine that you find so intolerable.”
“If you’re referring to Fee Spring, she is not my
‘personal affairs’ and never will be,” I said, eyeing
the missive in his hand. “Which poor stick’s private
business have you meddled in now? And gratitude for
what?”
“For bringing together two people who love each
other very much.”
“Who is the letter from?”
Poirot
smiled.
“Dr.
and
Mrs.
Ambrose
Flowerday,” he said. And he handed it to me to read.
THE END
About the Author
SOPHIE HANNAH is the internationally bestselling
author of nine psychological thrillers, which have
been published in more than twenty countries and
adapted for television. Sophie is an Honorary Fellow
of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive
information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.
www.agathachristie.com
www.sophiehannah.com
Also by Sophie Hannah
Little Face
The Truth-Teller’s Lie
The Wrong Mother
The Dead Lie Down
The Cradle in the Grave
The Other Woman’s House
Kind of Cruel
Also by Agatha Christie
Mysteries
The Man in the Brown Suit
The Secret of Chimneys
The Seven Dials Mystery
The Mysterious Mr. Quin
The Sittaford Mystery
The Hound of Death
The Listerdale Mystery
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?
Parker Pyne Investigates
Murder Is Easy
And Then There Were None
Towards Zero
Death Comes as the End
Sparkling Cyanide
Crooked House
They Came to Baghdad
Destination Unknown
Spider’s Web*
The Unexpected Guest*
Ordeal by Innocence
The Pale Horse
Endless Night
Passenger to Frankfurt
Problem at Pollensa Bay
While the Light Lasts
Poirot
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
The Murder on the Links
Poirot Investigates
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The Big Four
The Mystery of the Blue Train
Black Coffee*
Peril at End House
Lord Edgware Dies
Murder on the Orient Express
Three Act Tragedy
Death in the Clouds
The ABC Murders
Murder in Mesopotamia
Cards on the Table
Murder in the Mews
Dumb Witness
Death on the Nile
Appointment with Death
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas
Sad Cypress
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe
Evil under the Sun
Five Little Pigs
The Hollow
The Labours of Hercules
Taken at the Flood
Mrs. McGinty’s Dead
After the Funeral
Hickory Dickory Dock
Dead Man’s Folly
Cat Among the Pigeons
The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
The Clocks
Third Girl
Hallowe’en Party
Elephants Can Remember
Poirot’s Early Cases
Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case
Marple
The Murder at the Vicarage
The Thirteen Problems
The Body in the Library
The Moving Finger
A Murder Is Announced
They Do It with Mirrors
A Pocket Full of Rye
4:50 from Paddington
The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side
A Caribbean Mystery
At Bertram’s Hotel
Nemesis
Sleeping Murder
Miss Marple’s Final Cases
Tommy & Tuppence
The Secret Adversary
Partners in Crime
N or M?
By the Pricking of My Thumbs
Postern of Fate
Published as Mary Westmacott
Giant’s Bread
Unfinished Portrait
Absent in the Spring
The Rose and the Yew Tree
A Daughter’s a Daughter
The Burden
Memoirs
An Autobiography
Come, Tell Me How You Live
The Grand Tour
Plays and Stories
