that this is true,” said Lazzari.
Poirot said that he would like to perform his own
thorough search of the three rooms. Lazzari joyously
agreed, as if Poirot had proposed a tea party followed
by dancing.
“Check all you like, but you won’t find the three
room keys,” I said. “I’m telling you, the murderer took
them. I don’t know what he did with them, but—”
“Perhaps he put them in his coat pocket, with one,
or three, or five monogrammed cufflinks,” Poirot said
coolly.
“Ah, now I see why they speak of you as the most
splendid detective, Monsieur Poirot!” Lazzari
exclaimed, though he can’t have understood Poirot’s
remark. “You have a superb mind, they say!”
“Cause of death is looking very much like
poisoning,” I said, disinclined to linger over
descriptions of Poirot’s brilliance. “We think cyanide,
which can work with great speed if the quantities are
sufficient. The inquest’ll tell us for sure, but . . .
almost certainly their drinks were poisoned. In the
case of Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury, that drink
was a cup of tea. In the case of Richard Negus, it was
sherry.”
“How is this known?” Poirot asked. “The drinks
are still there in the rooms?”
“The cups are, yes, and Negus’s sherry glass. Only
the remaining few drops of the drinks themselves, but
it’s easy enough to tell tea from coffee. We will find
cyanide in those drops, I’ll wager.”
“And the time of death?”
“According to the police doctor, all three were
murdered between four o’clock in the afternoon and
half past eight in the evening. Luckily, we’ve managed
to narrow it down further: to between a quarter past
seven and ten minutes past eight.”
“A stroke of luck indeed!” Lazzari agreed. “Each
of the . . . ah . . . deceased guests was last seen alive
at fifteen minutes after seven o’clock, by three
unquestionably dependable representatives of this
hotel—so we know this must be true! I myself found
the deceased persons—so terrible, this tragedy!—at
between fifteen and twenty minutes after eight
o’clock.”
“But they must have been dead by ten past eight,” I
told Poirot. “That was when the note announcing the
murders was found on the front desk.”
“Wait, please,” said Poirot. “We will get to this
note in due course. Monsieur Lazzari, it is surely not
possible that each of the murder victims was last seen
alive by a member of hotel staff at a quarter past
seven precisely?”
“Yes.” Lazzari nodded so hard, I feared his head
might fall off his neck. “It is very, very true. All three
ordered dinner to be brought to their rooms at a
quarter past the hour, and all three deliveries were
exceptionally prompt. That is the way of the Bloxham
Hotel.”
Poirot turned to me. “This is another coincidence
énorme, ” he said. “Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and
Richard Negus all arrive at the hotel on the same day,
the day before they are murdered. Then on the day of
the murders they all order dinner to be brought to
their rooms at a quarter past seven exactly? It does
not seem very likely.”
“Poirot, there’s no point debating the likelihood of
something we know happened.”
“Non. But there is a point in making sure that it
happened in the way that we have heard. Monsieur
Lazzari, I have no doubt that your hotel contains at
least one very large room. Please assemble in that
room everybody who works here, and I will speak to
them all at their—and your—earliest convenience.
While you do this, Mr. Catchpool and I will begin the
inspection of the three victims” rooms.”
“Yes, and we’d better be quick about it, before
they come for the bodies,” I said. “In normal
circumstances, they would have been removed by
now.” I did not mention that the delay in this instance
had been caused by my own dereliction of duty. In my
hurry to put distance between myself and the Bloxham
Hotel last night, and to think about something—
anything—more pleasant than these three murders, I
had neglected to make the necessary arrangements.
I HOPED POIROT MIGHT warm up a few degrees once
Lazzari had left us alone, but there was no change to
his stern demeanor, and I realized that he was
probably always like this “at work,” as it were—
which seemed a bit rich since it was my work and not
his, and he was doing nothing to lift my spirits.
I had a master key, and we visited the three rooms
one by one. As we waited for the lift’s elaborate gold
doors to open, Poirot said, “We can agree on one
thing, I hope: Monsieur Lazzari’s word cannot be
relied upon with regard to those working in the hotel.
He speaks of them as if they are above suspicion,
which they cannot be if they were here yesterday
when the murders were committed. The loyalty of
Monsieur Lazzari is commendable, but he is a fool if
he believes that all the staff of the Bloxham Hotel are
des anges. ”
Something had been bothering me, so I made a
clean breast of it: “I hope you don’t also think I’m a
fool. What I said before about plenty of other guests
also arriving on Wednesday . . . That was a
harebrained thing to say. Any guests that arrived on
Wednesday and didn’t get murdered on Thursday are
irrelevant, aren’t they? I mean, it’s only a noteworthy
coincidence that three or any number of apparently
unconnected guests arrive on the same day if they also
get murdered on the same evening.”
“Oui. ” Poirot smiled at me with genuine warmth as
we stepped into the lift. “You have restored my faith
in your mental acuity, my friend. And you hit the head
of the nail when you say ‘apparently unconnected.’
The three murder victims will turn out to be
connected. I will swear to it now. They were not
selected at random from among the hotel’s guests. The
three were killed for one reason—a reason connected
with the initials PIJ. It is for the same reason that they
all came to the hotel on the same day.”
“It’s almost as if they received an invitation to
present themselves for slaughter,” I said in a cavalier
fashion. “Invitation reads: ‘Please arrive the day
before, so that Thursday can be devoted entirely to
your getting murdered.’ ”
It was perhaps undignified to joke about it, but
joking is what I do when I feel despondent, I’m
afraid. Sometimes I succeed in tricking myself into
imagining that I feel all right about things. It didn’t
work on this occasion.
“Devoted entirely . . .” Poirot muttered. “Yes, that
is an idea, mon ami. You were not being serious, I
understand. Nevertheless, you make a point that is
very interesting.”
I did not think I had. It was an asinine joke and
nothing more. Poirot seemed intent on congratulating
me for my most absurd notions.
“One, two, three,” said Poirot as we went up in the
lift. “Harriet Sippel, Room 121. Richard Negus,
Room 238. Ida Gransbury, Room 317. The hotel has a
fourth and a fifth floor also, but our three murder
victims are on the consecutive floors 1, 2 and 3. It is
very neat.” Poirot usually approved of things that
were neat, but he looked worried about this one.
We examined the three rooms, which were
identical in almost every respect. Each contained a
bed, cupboards, a basin with an upturned glass sitting
on one corner, several armchairs, a table, a desk, a
tiled fireplace, a radiator, a larger table over by the
window, a suitcase, clothes and personal effects, and
a dead person.
Each room’s door closed with a thud, trapping me
inside . . .
“Hold his hand, Edward.”
I couldn’t bring myself to look too closely at the
bodies. All three were lying on their backs, perfectly
straight, with their arms flat by their sides and their
feet pointing toward the door. Formally laid out.
(Even writing these words, describing the posture
of the bodies, produces in me an intolerable
sensation. Is it any wonder I could not look closely at
the three victims’ faces for more than a few seconds at
a time? The blue undertone to the skin; the still, heavy
tongues; the shriveled lips? Though I would have
studied their faces in detail rather than look at their
lifeless hands, and I would have done anything at all
rather than wonder what I could not help wondering:
whether Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard
Negus would have wanted somebody to hold their
hands once they were dead, or whether the idea
would have horrified them. Alas, the human mind is a
perverse, uncontrollable organ, and the contemplation
of this matter pained me greatly.)
Formally laid out . . .
A thought struck me with great force. That was
what was so grotesque about these three murder
scenes, I realized: that the bodies had been laid out as
a doctor might lay out his deceased patient, after
tending him in his illness for many months. The
bodies of Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard
Negus had been arranged with meticulous care—or so
it seemed to me. Their killer had ministered to them
after their deaths, which made it all the more chilling
that he had murdered them in cold blood.
No sooner had I had this thought than I told myself
I was quite wrong. It was not ministration that had
taken place here; far from it. I was confusing the
present and the past, mixing up this business at the
Bloxham with my unhappiest childhood memories. I
ordered myself to think only about what was here in
front of me, and nothing else. I tried to see it all
through Poirot’s eyes, without the distortion of my
own experience.
Each of the murder victims lay between a wing-
backed armchair and a small table. On the three tables
were two teacups with saucers (Harriet Sippel’s and
Ida Gransbury’s) and one sherry glass (Richard
Negus’s). In Ida Gransbury’s room, 317, there was a
tray on the larger table by the window, loaded with
empty plates and one more teacup and saucer. This
cup was also empty. There was nothing on the plates
but crumbs.
“Aha,” said Poirot. “So in this room we have two
teacups and many plates. Miss Ida Gransbury had
company for her evening meal, most certainly.
Perhaps she had the murderer’s company. But why is
the tray still here, when the trays have been removed
from the rooms of Harriet Sippel and Richard
Negus?”
“They might not have ordered food,” I said.
“Maybe they only wanted drinks—the tea and the
sherry—and no trays were left in their rooms in the
first place. Ida Gransbury also brought twice as many
clothes with her as the other two.” I gestured toward
the cupboard, which contained an impressive array of
dresses. “Have a look in there—there isn’t room to
squeeze in even one petticoat because of the number
of garments she brought with her. She wanted to be
certain of looking her best, that’s for sure.”
“You are right,” said Poirot. “Lazzari said that they
all ordered dinner, but we will check exactly what
was ordered to each room. Poirot, he would not make
the mistake of the assumption if it were not for Jennie
weighing on his mind—Jennie, whose whereabouts he
does not know! Jennie, who is more or less the same
age as the three we have here—between forty and
forty-five, I think.”
I turned away while Poirot did whatever he did
with the mouths and the cufflinks. While he conducted
his forays and emitted various exclamations, I stared
into fireplaces and out of windows, avoided thinking
about hands that would never again be held, and
pondered my crossword puzzle and where I might be
going wrong. For some weeks I had been trying to
compose one that was good enough to be sent to a
newspaper to be considered for publication, but I
wasn’t having much success.
After we had looked at all three rooms, Poirot
insisted that we return to the one on the second floor
—Richard Negus’s, number 238. Would I find it any
easier to enter these rooms, I wondered, the more I
did it? So far the answer was no. Walking once again
into Negus’s hotel room felt like forcing my heart to
climb the most perilous mountain, in the certain
knowledge that it would be left stranded as soon as it
reached the top.
Poirot—unaware of my distress, which I
concealed effectively, I hope—stood in the middle of
the room and said, “Bon. This is the one that is most
different from the others, n’est-ce pas? Ida Gransbury
has the tray and the additional teacup in her room, it is
true, but here there is the sherry glass instead of the
teacup, and here we have one window open to its full
capacity, while in the other two rooms all the
windows are closed. Mr. Negus’s room is intolerably
cold.”
“This is how it was when Monsieur Lazzari
walked in and found Negus dead,” I said. “Nothing’s
been altered in any way.”
Poirot walked over to the open window. “Here is
Monsieur Lazzari’s wonderful view that he offered to
show me—of the hotel’s gardens. Both Harriet Sippel
and Ida Gransbury had rooms on the other side of the
hotel, with views of the ‘splendid London.’ Do you
see these trees, Catchpool?”
I told him that I did, wondering if he had me down
as a colossal idiot. How could I fail to see trees that
were directly outside the window?
“Another difference here is the position of the
cufflink,” said Poirot. “Did you notice that? In Harriet
Sippel’s and Ida Gransbury’s mouths, the cufflink is
slightly protruding between the lips. Whereas Richard
Negus has the cufflink much farther back, almost at the
entrance to the throat.”
I opened my mouth to object, then changed my
mind, but it was too late. Poirot had seen the argument
in my eyes. “What is it?” he asked.
“I think you’re being a touch pedantic,” I said. “All
three victims have monogrammed cufflinks in their
mouths—the same initials on each one, PIJ. That’s
something they have in common. It isn’t a difference.
No matter which of their teeth the cufflink happens to
be next to.”
“But it is a very big difference! The lips, the
entrance to the throat—these are not the same place,
not at all.” Poirot walked over so that he was standing
right in front of me. “Catchpool, please remember
