The Monogram Murders

by Sophie Hannah

  “Oh, I see what you’re driving at.”

  “Bon. Alors, Richard Negus then takes himself to Devon where for many years he pursues the decline, during which time his brother does not make any unwelcome intrusion that might save him from the devastation he wreaks upon himself—”

  “You think Henry Negus was negligent in that respect?”

  “It is not his fault,” said Poirot with a wave of his hand. “He is English. You English would sit by in polite silence while every species of avoidable disaster takes place in front of your eyes rather than make the social lapse of being seen to interfere!”

  “I’m not sure that’s quite fair.” I raised my voice to make myself heard against the bluster of the wind and the voices of other people on the busy London street.

  Poirot ignored my complaint. “For many years, Henry Negus worries in silence about his brother. He hopes, and no doubt also he prays, and when he has almost given up hope, it appears that his prayers are answered: Richard Negus has the visible upward perking a few months ago. He seems to be planning something. Perhaps the plan involved booking three rooms at the Bloxham Hotel in London for himself and two women he knew from his days in Great Holling, since we know that this is what he did. And then last night he is found dead at the Bloxham Hotel with a mongrammed cufflink in his mouth, in close proximity to his former fiancée, Ida Gransbury, and to Harriet Sippel, another villager who was once his neighbor. Both women have been murdered in the same way.”

  Poirot came to a standstill. He had been walking too fast and was out of breath. “Catchpool,” he gasped, mopping his brow with a neatly folded handkerchief that he had pulled from his vest pocket. “Ask yourself what is the first event in this chain of events that I have presented to you. Is it not the tragic deaths of the vicar and his wife?”

  “Well, yes, but only if we allow that they’re part of the same story as the three Bloxham murders. There’s no evidence of that, Poirot. I still contend that this poor vicar chap might be neither here nor there.”

  “Just as la pauvre Jennie may be neither there nor here?”

  “Exactly.”

  We continued along the street.

  “Have you ever tried to do a crossword puzzle, Poirot? Because . . . well, you know I’m trying to knock one together at the moment, one of my own?”

  “It would be impossible to reside in such proximity to you as I do and not know, mon ami.”

  “Yes. Right. Well, I’ve noticed something that happens when you’re trying to puzzle out a crossword clue. It’s interesting. Let’s say you have the clue ‘Kitchen utensil, three letters,’ and you have the letter ‘P’ as the first letter. It’s very easy to think, ‘Well, it has to be “pot” because that has three letters and begins with “P,” and a pot is a kitchen utensil.’ So you tell yourself it must be true, when all the while the right answer is ‘pan’—also three letters, also a kitchen utensil beginning with P. Do you see?”

  “That example does not serve you well, Catchpool. In the situation you describe, I would think of both ‘pot’ and ‘pan’ as being equally likely to be correct. Only a fool would consider one and not the other when both fit perfectly.”

  “All right, if you want something equally likely to be correct, how about this theory: Richard Negus refused to go to church or have a Bible in his room because whatever misfortune had afflicted him in Great Holling had dented his faith a little? Doesn’t that sound as if it could also be a perfect fit? And it might have nothing to do with the deaths of the vicar and his wife. Richard Negus wouldn’t be the first to find himself in sore straits and wonder if God loved him quite as much as he seems to love everyone else!” That came out more vehemently than I had intended.

  “Have you wondered this yourself, Catchpool?” Poirot laid his hand on my sleeve to stop me marching along. I sometimes forget that my legs are much longer than his.

  “As a matter of fact, I have. It didn’t stop me going to church, but I can see how it would with some people.” For instance, those who would object rather than silently concur if told their brains were pincushions, I thought. To Poirot I said, “I suppose it all depends whether you hold yourself or God responsible for your problems.”

  “Did your predicament involve a woman?”

  “Several fine specimens, all of whom my parents fervently hoped I would marry. I stood firm and inflicted myself upon none of them.” I started to walk again, briskly.

  Poirot hurried to catch me up. “So according to your wisdom, we must forget about the tragically deceased vicar and his wife? We must pretend we do not know about this event in case we are led by it to a mistaken conclusion? And we must forget about Jennie for the same reason?”

  “Well, no, I wouldn’t say that’s the right course of action. I’m not suggesting we forget anything, only that—”

  “I will tell you the right action! You must go to Great Holling. Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus, they are not simply three pieces of a puzzle. They are not merely objects we move around in an attempt to fit them into a pattern. Before their deaths, they were people with lives and emotions: the foolish predispositions, perhaps the moments of great wisdom and insight. You must go to the village where they all lived and find out who they are, Catchpool.”

  “Me? You mean us?”

  “Non, mon ami. Poirot, he will stay in London. I need only to move my mind, not my body, in order to make progress. No, you will go, and you will bring back to me the fullest account of your travels. That will be sufficient. Take with you two lists of names: guests at the Bloxham Hotel on Wednesday and Thursday nights, and employees of the Bloxham Hotel. Find out if anyone in this cursed village recognizes any of the names. Ask about Jennie and PIJ. Make sure not to return until you have discovered the story about this vicar and his wife and their tragic deaths in 1913.”

  “Poirot, you’ve got to come with me,” I said rather desperately. “I’m out of my depth with this Bloxham business. I am relying on you.”

  “You may continue to do so, mon ami. We will go to the house of Mrs. Blanche Unsworth and there we will assemble our thoughts so that you do not arrive in Great Holling unprepared.”

  He always called it “the house of Mrs. Blanche Unsworth.” Every time he did, it reminded me that I too had once thought of it in those terms, before I started to call it “home.”

  “ASSEMBLING OUR THOUGHTS” TURNED out to mean Poirot standing by the fire in the excessively lavender-fringed drawing room and dictating to me, while I sat in a chair nearby and wrote down every word he said. I have never, before or since, heard anyone speak in such a perfectly orderly way. I tried to protest that he was making me write down many things of which I was already fully aware, and I got the benefit of his long and earnest disquisition on the subject of “the importance of the method.” Apparently my pincushion brain cannot be expected to remember anything, so I need a written record to refer to.

  After dictating a list of everything we knew, Poirot followed the same procedure for everything we didn’t know but were hoping to find out. (I considered reproducing these two lists here, but I do not wish to bore or infuriate others as I was bored and infuriated.)

  To be fair to Poirot, once I had scribbled it all down and looked over what I had written, I did feel that I had a clearer view of things: clear, and inordinately discouraging. I put down my pen and said with a sigh, “I’m not sure I want to carry around with me an endless list of questions I can’t answer and probably have no hope of ever answering.”

  “You lack the confidence, Catchpool.”

  “Yes. What does one do about that?”

  “I do not know. It is not a problem that I suffer from. I do not worry that I will meet a problem for which I will be unable to find the solution.”

  “Do you think you’ll be able to find the solution for this one?”

  Poirot smiled. “You wish me to encourage you to have confidence in me, since you have none in yourself? Mon ami, you know more than you are aware
of knowing. Do you remember you made a joke, at the hotel, about all three victims arriving on Wednesday, the day before the murders? You said, ‘It’s almost as if they had an invitation to present themselves for slaughter, one that said, “Please come to the day before, so that Thursday can be devoted entirely to your getting murdered.’ ”

  “Well, what about it?”

  “Your joke relied on the idea that getting murdered is more than enough activity for one day—to travel across the country by train and get murdered on the same day, that would be too much for anyone! And the killer does not want his victims to have to exert themselves unduly! This is funny!”

  Poirot smoothed his mustache, as if he imagined that laughing might have shaken it out of shape.

  “Your words made me wonder, my friend: since getting murdered is really no effort for the victim, and since no killer is so considerate of those he intends to poison, why does he not kill the three victims on the Wednesday night?”

  “He might have been busy on Wednesday night,” I said.

  “Then why not arrange for the three victims to arrive at the hotel on Thursday morning and afternoon instead of Wednesday morning and afternoon? The killer would still have been able to kill them when he did, n’est-ce pas? On Thursday evening, between a quarter past seven and ten past eight?”

  I did my best to look patient. “You’re overcomplicating things, Poirot. If the victims all knew each other, which we know they did, maybe they had a reason for all being in London for two nights, a reason that had nothing to do with the killer. He chose to kill them on the second night because it was more convenient for him. He didn’t invite them to the Bloxham; he simply knew that they would be there, and when. Also. . .” I stopped. “No, never mind. It’s silly.”

  “Tell me the thing that is silly,” Poirot ordered.

  “Well, it’s possible that if the murderer is a meticulous planner by nature, he would not plan the murders for the same day that he knew his victims would be traveling to London, in case their trains were delayed.”

  “Perhaps the killer also had to travel to London, from Great Holling or somewhere else. It is possible that he—or she, for it might be a woman—did not want to make a long, tiring journey and commit three murders on the same day.”

  “Even if that’s so, the victims could still have arrived on the Thursday, couldn’t they?”

  “They did not,” said Poirot simply. “We know that they arrived the day before, on Wednesday. So, I begin to wonder: did something need to happen that involved the murderer and all three victims before the murders could be committed? If so, then perhaps the murderer did not travel from far to come here, but lives here in London.”

  “Could be,” I said. “All of which is a long-winded way of saying that we have not the faintest idea of what happened or why. I seem to remember that being my original assessment of the situation. Oh, and Poirot . . . ?”

  “Yes, mon ami?”

  “I haven’t had the heart to tell you before now, and I know you’re not going to like it. The monogrammed cufflinks . . .”

  “Oui?”

  “You asked Henry Negus about PIJ. I don’t think those are the chap’s initials, whoever he is—the owner of the cufflinks. I think his initials are PJI. Look.” I reproduced the monogram on the back of one of my pieces of paper. As closely as I could from memory, I replicated the way the letters appeared on the cufflinks. “Do you see that the ‘I’ is larger and the ‘P’ and the ‘J’ on either side are considerably smaller? That’s a popular style of monogram. The larger initial signifies the surname and is in the middle.”

  Poirot was frowning and shaking his head. “The initials in the monogram are in the wrong order, deliberately? I have never heard of this. Who would have such an idea? It is nonsensical!”

  “Common practice, I’m afraid. Trust me on this one. Chaps at work have monogrammed cufflinks of this sort.”

  “Incroyable. The English have no sense of the proper order of things.”

  “Yes, well, be that as it may . . . It’s PJI we’ll need to be asking about when we go to Great Holling, not PIJ.”

  It was a feeble effort, and one that Poirot saw through straight away. “You, my friend, will go to Great Holling,” he said. “Poirot will stay in London.”

  A Visit to Great Holling

  THE FOLLOWING MONDAY MORNING, I set off to Great Holling as instructed. My impression upon arrival was that it was similar to many other English villages I had visited, and that there was not much more to say about it than that. There is, I think, more difference between cities than between villages, as well as more to say about cities. I could certainly talk at length about the intricacies of London. Perhaps it is simply that I am not as finely attuned to places such as Great Holling. They make me feel out of my element—if I have an element, that is. I’m not convinced that I do.

  I had been told that I could not fail to spot the King’s Head Inn, where I would be staying, but fail I did. Luckily, a bespectacled young man with a boomerang-shaped scattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose and a newspaper tucked under his arm was on hand to help me. He appeared at first behind me, startling me. “Lost, are you?” he said.

  “I believe I am, yes. I’m looking for the King’s Head.”

  “Ah!” He grinned. “Thought so, with your case and all. You’re not a native, then? King’s Head looks like a house from the street, so you’d not notice it, not unless you went along the lane there—see? Go down there, turn right and you’ll see the sign and the way in.”

  I thanked him and was about to follow his advice when he called me back with, “So where are you from, then?”

  I told him, and he said, “I’ve never been to London. What brings you to our neck of the woods, then?”

  “Work,” I said. “Listen, I hope this doesn’t sound rude, and I’d be glad to talk to you later, but I’d like to get myself settled in first.”

  “Well, don’t let me keep you, then,” he said. “What kind of work is it you do? Oh—there I go again, asking another question. Maybe I’ll ask you later.” He waved and set off down the street.

  I tried again to proceed to the King’s Head and he shouted after me, “Down the lane and turn right!” More jovial waving followed.

  He was trying to be friendly and helpful, and I should have been grateful. Normally I would have been, except . . .

  Well, I’ll admit it: I don’t like villages. I didn’t say so to Poirot before I left, but I said it to myself many times during the train journey, and then again when I got off at the pretty little station. I didn’t like this charming narrow street in which I stood, which curved in the exact shape of a letter S and had tiny cottages on both sides that looked more suitable for whiskery woodland creatures than for human beings.

  I didn’t like being asked presumptuous questions by complete strangers on the street, though I was fully aware of my own hypocrisy since I was here in Great Holling to interrogate strangers myself.

  Now that the bespectacled man had gone on his way, there was not a sound to be heard apart from the occasional bird and my own breathing. Beyond the houses I saw empty fields and hills in the distance that, combined with the silence, made me feel immediately lonely. Cities, of course, can also make a person feel alone. In London, you look at those who pass you by and you have no idea what is going on in their minds. Each one looks utterly closed to you and mysterious. In villages the same rule applies, except that you suspect it is the same thing going on in every mind.

  The owner of the King’s Head turned out to be a Mr. Victor Meakin, who looked to be between fifty and sixty and had thin gray hair through which the tops of his ears poked pinkly on both sides. He too seemed eager to discuss London. “Were you born there, if you don’t mind my asking, Mr. Catchpool? How many people live there now? What’s the size of the population? Is it very dirty there? My aunt went there once—said it was very dirty. Still, I’ve always thought I’d like to go one day. I never said so to my a
unt, though—I’d have had an argument from her, God rest her soul. Does everybody in London have a car of their own?”

  I was relieved that his stream of chatter allowed me no time to answer. My luck ran out when he got to the question that really interested him: “What brings you to Great Holling, Mr. Catchpool? I can’t think what business you might have here.”

  At that point he stopped, and I had no choice but to answer. “I’m a policeman,” I told him. “From Scotland Yard.”

  “Policeman?” He maintained a determined smile, but he looked at me now with very different eyes: hard, probing and disdainful—as if he was speculating about me and drawing conclusions that were to my disadvantage. “A policeman,” he said, more to himself than me. “Now, why would a policeman be here? An important policeman from London, too.” Since he seemed not to be asking me directly, I neglected to reply.

  As he carried my cases up the winding wooden stairs, he stopped three times and turned to peer at me for no discernible reason.

  The room he had allocated to me was agreeably sparse and chilly—a welcome change from Blanche Unsworth’s frilly, fringed extravagance. Here, thankfully, no hot water bottle with a knitted cover had been laid out for my use. I can’t bear the things; even the sight of them irks me. The warmest thing in any bed should always be a person, in my opinion.

  Meakin pointed out some features of the room that I might have spotted myself, such as the bed and the large wooden cupboard. I tried to respond with the appropriate mixture of surprise and delight. Then, because I knew I would have to do so at some point, I told him the nature of my business in Great Holling, hoping this would satisfy his curiosity and allow him to look at me henceforth in a less penetrating way. I told him about the Bloxham Hotel murders.