what I am about to tell you. When three murders are
almost identical, the smallest divergent details are of
the utmost importance.”
Was I supposed to remember these wise words
even if I disagreed with them? Poirot needn’t have
worried. I remember nearly every word he has
spoken in my presence, and the ones that infuriated me
most are the ones I remember best of all.
“All three cufflinks were in the mouths of the
victims,” I repeated with determined obstinacy.
“That’s good enough for me.”
“This I see,” said Poirot with an air of dejection.
“Good enough for you, and good enough also for your
hundred people that you might ask, and also, I have no
doubt, for your bosses at Scotland Yard. But not good
enough for Hercule Poirot!”
I had to remind myself that he was talking about
definitions of similarity and difference, and not about
me personally.
“What about the open window, when all the
windows in the other two rooms are closed?” he
asked. “Is that a difference worth noting?”
“It’s unlikely to be relevant,” I said. “Richard
Negus might have opened the window himself. There
would be no reason for the murderer to close it.
You’ve said it often yourself, Poirot—we Englishmen
open windows in the dead of winter because we
believe it’s good for our character.”
“Mon ami, ” said Poirot patiently. “Consider: these
three people did not drink poison, fall out of their
armchairs and quite naturally land flat on their backs
with their arms at their sides and their feet pointing
toward the door. It is impossible. Why would one not
stagger across the room? Why would one not fall out
of the chair on the other side? The killer, he arranged
the bodies so that each one was in the same position,
at an equal distance from the chair and from the little
table. Eh bien, if he cares so much to arrange his
three murder scenes to look exactly the same, why
does he not wish to close the window that, yes,
perhaps Mr. Richard Negus has opened—but why
does the murderer not close it in order to make it
conform with the appearance of the windows in the
other two rooms?”
I had to think about this. Poirot was right: the
bodies had been laid out in this way deliberately. The
killer must have wanted them all to look the same.
Laying out the dead . . .
“I suppose it depends where you choose to draw
your frame around the scene of the crime,” I said
hurriedly, as my mind tried to drag me back to my
childhood’s darkest room. “Depends whether you
want to extend it as far as the window.”
“Frame?”
“Yes. Not a real frame, a theoretical one. Perhaps
our murderer’s frame for his creations was no larger
than a square like this.” I walked around Richard
Negus’s body, turning corners when necessary. “You
see? I’ve just walked a small frame around Negus,
and the window is outside the frame.”
Poirot was smiling and trying to hide it beneath his
mustache. “A theoretical frame around the murder.
Yes, I see. Where does the scene of a crime begin and
where does it end? This is the question. Can it be
smaller than the room that contains it? This is a
fascinating matter for the philosophers.”
“Thank you.”
“Pas du tout. Catchpool, will you please tell me
what you believe happened here at the Bloxham Hotel
yesterday evening? Let us leave motive to one side
for the moment. Tell me what you think the killer did.
First, and next, and next, and so on.”
“I have no idea.”
“Try to have an idea, Catchpool.”
“Well . . . I suppose he came to the hotel, cufflinks
in pocket, and went to each of the three rooms in turn.
He probably started where we did, with Ida
Gransbury in Room 317, and worked his way down
so that he would be able to leave the hotel fairly
quickly after killing his final victim—Harriet Sippel
in Room 121, on the first floor. Only one floor down
and he can escape.”
“And what does he do in the three rooms?”
I sighed. “You know the answer to that. He
commits a murder and arranges the body in a straight
line. He places a cufflink in the person’s mouth. Then
he closes and locks the door and leaves.”
“And to each room he is admitted without
question? In each room, he finds his victim waiting
with a most convenient drink for him to drop his
poison into—drinks that were delivered by hotel staff
at precisely a quarter past seven? He stands beside
his victim, watching as the drink is consumed, and
then he stands for a little longer as he waits for each
one to die? And he stops to eat supper with one of
them, Ida Gransbury, who has ordered a cup of tea for
him too? All these visits to rooms, all these murders
and putting of cufflinks in mouths and very formal
arranging of bodies in straight lines, with feet pointing
toward the door, he is able to do between a quarter
past seven and ten past eight? This seems most
unlikely, my friend. Most unlikely indeed.”
“Yes, it does. Have you got any better ideas,
Poirot? That’s why you’re here—to have better ideas
than mine. Do please start any time you wish.” I was
regretting my outburst by the time I’d finished the
sentence.
“I started long ago,” said Poirot, who thankfully
had not taken umbrage. “You said that the killer left a
note on the front desk, informing of his crimes—show
it to me.”
I took it out of my pocket and passed it across to
him. John Goode, Lazzari’s idea of perfection in the
form of a hotel clerk, had found it on the front desk ten
minutes after eight o’clock. It read, “MAY THEY
NEVER REST IN PEACE. 121. 238. 317.”
“So the murderer, or an accomplice of the
murderer, was brazen enough to approach the desk—
the main desk in the lobby of the hotel—with a note
that would incriminate him if anyone saw him leaving
it,” said Poirot. “He is audacious. Confident. He did
not disappear into the shadows, using the back door.”
“After Lazzari read the note, he checked the three
rooms and found the bodies,” I said. “Then he
checked all the other rooms in the hotel, he was very
proud to tell me. Fortunately, no other dead guests
were found.”
I knew I oughtn’t to say vulgar things, but it made
me feel better somehow. If Poirot had been English, I
probably would have made a greater effort to keep
myself in check.
“And did it occur to Monsieur Lazzari that one of
his still-living guests might be a murderer? Non. It did
not. Any person who chooses to stay at the Bloxham
Hotel must have a character of the utmost virtue and
integrity!”
I coughed and inclined my head toward the door.
Poirot turned. Lazzari had let himself into the room
and was standing in the doorway. He could hardly
have looked happier. “So true, so true, Monsieur
Poirot,” he said.
“Every single person who was in this hotel on
Thursday must speak to Mr. Catchpool and account
for their movements,” Poirot told him sternly. “Every
guest, everyone who was here to work. All of them.”
“With the greatest pleasure, you may speak to
whomsoever you wish, Mr. Catchpool.” Lazzari
bowed in deference. “And our dining room will soon
be at your disposal, once we have cleared away the
breakfast—ah, how do you say?— paraphernalia, and
gathered everybody together.”
“Merci. Meanwhile, I will conduct a thorough
examination of the three rooms,” said Poirot. This
came as a surprise to me. I thought that was what we
had just done. “Catchpool, find out the addresses of
Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus.
Find out who in the hotel took their reservations, what
food and drinks they each requested to be delivered to
their rooms, and when. And from whom.”
I started to edge toward the door, fearing that
Poirot would never stop dreaming up more tasks to
add to the list.
He called after me, “Find out if anyone by the
name of Jennie is staying in the hotel, or working
here.”
“There is not a Jennie employed at the Bloxham,
Monsieur Poirot,” said Lazzari. “Instead of asking
Mr. Catchpool you should ask me. Everybody here is
well known to me. We are a very large happy family
here at the Bloxham Hotel!”
The Frame Widens
SOMETIMES, REMEMBERING SOMETHING A person said
months or even years ago still makes you chuckle, and
this, for me, is true of what Poirot said to me at some
point later on that day: “It is hard for even the most
ingenious detective to know what to do if his desire is
to be free of Signor Lazzari. If one’s praise of his
hotel is insufficient, he stays by one’s side and
supplements it with his own; if one’s praise is
fulsome and lengthy, he stays to listen.”
Poirot’s efforts were eventually successful, and he
finally managed to persuade Lazzari to leave him to
his own devices in Room 238. He walked over to the
door that the hotel manager had left open, closed it,
and sighed with relief. How much easier it was to
think clearly when there was no babble of voices.
He made straight for the window. An open
window, he thought as he stared out of it. The
murderer might have opened it to escape after killing
Richard Negus. He could have climbed down a tree.
Why escape thus? Why not simply leave the room
in the expected way, using the corridor? Perhaps the
killer heard voices outside Negus’s room and did not
want to risk being seen. Yes, that was a possibility.
And yet when he strolled up to the front desk to leave
his note announcing his three murders, he risked being
seen. More than seen—he risked being caught in the
act of leaving incriminating evidence.
Poirot looked down at the body on the floor. No
gleam of metal between the lips. Richard Negus alone
of the three victims had the cufflink right at the back
of his mouth. It was an anomaly. Too many things
about this room were anomalous. For this reason,
Poirot decided he would search Room 238 first. He
was . . . Yes, there was no virtue in denying it—he
was suspicious of this room. Of the three, it was his
least favorite. There was something disorganized
about it, something a little unruly.
Poirot stood beside Negus’s body and frowned.
Even by his exacting standards, one open window
was not enough to render a room chaotic, so what was
it that was giving him this impression? He looked
around, turning in a slow circle. No, he must be
mistaken. Hercule Poirot was not often wrong, but it
did happen very occasionally, and this must be one
such instance, because 238 was an undeniably tidy
room. There was no mess or muddle. It was as tidy as
Harriet Sippel’s room and Ida Gransbury’s.
“I shall shut the window and see if that makes a
difference,” said Poirot to himself. He did so and
surveyed the territory anew. Something was still not
right. He did not like Room 238. He would not have
felt comfortable if he had arrived at the Bloxham
Hotel and been shown to this . . .
Suddenly the problem leapt out at him, putting an
abrupt end to his meditations. The fireplace! One of
the tiles was not aligned correctly. It was not straight;
it jutted out. A loose tile; Poirot could not sleep in a
room with such a thing. He eyed the body of Richard
Negus. “If I were in the condition that you are in, oui,
but not otherwise,” he said to it.
His only thought as he bent to touch the tile was
that he might straighten it and push it back in so that it
was flush with the others. To spare future guests the
torment of knowing that there was something amiss in
the room and being unable to work out what it was—
what a service that would be! And to Signor Lazzari
also!
When Poirot touched it, the tile fell clean out, and
something else fell with it: a key with a number on it:
238. “Sacre tonnerre, ” Poirot whispered. “So the
thorough search was not so thorough after all.”
Poirot replaced the key where he had found it, then
set about inspecting the rest of the room, inch by inch.
He discovered nothing else of interest, so he
proceeded to Room 317 and then to Room 121, which
was where I found him when I returned from my
errands with exciting news of my own.
Poirot being Poirot, he insisted on telling me his
news first, about his finding of the key. All I can say
is, in Belgium it is evidently not considered unseemly
to gloat. He was quite puffed up with pride. “Do you
see what this means, mon ami? The open window
was not opened by Richard Negus, it was opened
after his death! Having locked the door of Room 238
from the inside, the murderer needed to escape. He
did so using the tree outside Mr. Negus’s window,
after he had hidden the key behind a tile in the
fireplace that had come loose. He perhaps loosened it
himself.”
“Why not conceal it in his clothing, take it with
him and leave the room in the customary way?” I
asked.
“That is a question I have been asking myself—one
that, for now, I am unable to answer,” Poirot said. “I
have satisfied myself that there is no hidden key in
this room, 121. Nor is there a key anywhere in Room
317. The killer must have taken two keys with him
when he left the Bloxham Hotel, so why not the third?
Why is the treatment of Richard Negus different?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” I said. “Listen, I’ve
been talking to John Goode, the clerk—”
“The most dependable clerk,” Poirot amended
with a twinkle in his eye.
“Yes, well . . . dependable or not, he’s certainly
come up trumps for us on the information front. You
were right: the three victims are connected. I’ve seen
their addresses. Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury
both lived in a place called Great Holling, in the
Culver Valley.”
“Bon. And Richard Negus?”
“No, he lives in Devon—place called Beaworthy.
But he’s connected too. He booked all three hotel
rooms—Ida’s, Harriet’s and his own—and he paid
for them ahead of time.”
“Did he indeed? This I find very interesting . . .”
Poirot murmured, stroking his mustache.
“Bit puzzling, if you ask me,” I said. “The main
puzzle being: why, if they were coming from the same
village on the same day, did Harriet Sippel and Ida
