The Monogram Murders

by Sophie Hannah

  “Assuredly not, madame. But what you tell me does not quite fit. If Jennie were inclined toward jealousy, why was she moved to tell this terrible lie only when Patrick Ive fell in love with you? Why did his marriage to Frances Ive, long before then, not provoke her envy?”

  “How do you know that it did not? Patrick lived in Cambridge when he and Frances met and married. Jennie Hobbs was his servant then too. Perhaps she whispered something malicious about him in a friend’s ear and that friend, not being Harriet Sippel, chose to spread the malice no further.”

  Poirot nodded. “You are right. It is a possibility.”

  “Most people prefer not to spread ill will, and thank goodness for that,” said Nancy. “Perhaps in Cambridge there is nobody as malevolent as the person Harriet Sippel turned into, and nobody as eager as Ida Gransbury to lead a pious moral crusade.”

  “I notice you do not mention Richard Negus.”

  Nancy looked troubled. “Richard was a good man. He came to regret his contribution to the whole awful business. Oh, he regretted it deeply once he understood that Jennie had told a despicable lie, and once he saw Ida for the pitiless creature she was. He wrote to me a few years ago, from Devon, to say that the matter had been preying on his mind. Patrick and I were quite wrong to conduct ourselves as we did, he said, and he would never change his mind about that—marriage vows were marriage vows—but he had come to believe that punishment was not always the right path to follow, even when one knows that an offense has taken place.”

  “That is what he wrote to you?” Poirot raised his eyebrows.

  “Yes. I expect you disagree.”

  “These affairs are complicated, madame.”

  “What if, in punishing somebody for the sin of falling in love with the wrong person, one only brings greater sin into the world? And more evil: two deaths—one, of a person who has committed no sin.”

  “Oui. This is precisely the sort of dilemma that creates the complication.”

  “In his letter to me, Richard wrote that, Christian as he was, he could not bring himself to believe that God would wish him to persecute a sweet-natured man like Patrick.”

  “Punishment and persecution are two separate things,” said Poirot. “There is also the question: has a rule or law been broken? Falling in love . . . enfin, we cannot help how we feel, but we can choose whether or not to act upon those feelings. If a crime has been committed, one must ensure that the criminal is dealt with by the law in an appropriate fashion, but always without personal venom and spite—always without the lust for vengeance, which contaminates everything and is indeed evil.”

  “Lust for vengeance,” Nancy Ducane repeated with a shudder. “That was it exactly. Harriet Sippel was filled with it. It was sickening.”

  “And yet, in telling the story, you have not once spoken angrily of Harriet Sippel,” I said. “You describe her behavior as sickening, as if it saddens you. You do not seem angry with her as you are with Jennie Hobbs.”

  “I suppose that’s true.” Nancy sighed. “I used to be devoted to Harriet. When my husband William and I moved to Great Holling, Harriet and George Sippel were our dearest friends. Then George died, and Harriet became a monster. But once you have been very fond of a person, it’s difficult to condemn them, don’t you find?”

  “It is either impossible, or irresistible,” said Poirot.

  “Impossible, I should say. You imagine that their worst behavior is a symptom of an ailment and not their true self. I couldn’t forgive Harriet’s treatment of Patrick. I couldn’t persuade myself to try. At the same time, I felt that it must have been as horrible for her as it was for anybody else—to have turned into that.”

  “You saw her as a victim?”

  “Of the tragedy of losing a beloved husband, yes—and so young! One can be both victim and villain, I think.”

  “It was something that you and Harriet had in common,” said Poirot. “The loss of a husband when you were far too young.”

  “This will sound heartless, but there is really no comparison,” said Nancy. “George Sippel was everything to Harriet, her whole world. I married William because he was wise and safe, and I needed to escape from my father’s home.”

  “Ah, yes. Albinus Johnson,” said Poirot. “It came back to me after I left your house that I do indeed know the name. Your father was one of a circle of English and Russian agitators in London at the end of the last century. He spent a period of time in prison.”

  “He was a dangerous man,” said Nancy. “I couldn’t bear to speak to him about his . . . ideas, but I know that he believed it was acceptable to murder any number of people if those people were delaying the cause of making the world a better place—better only according to his definition! How in the name of heaven can anything ever be made better by bloodshed and mass slaughter? How can any improvement be brought about by men who wish only to smash and destroy, who cannot speak of their hopes and dreams without their faces twisting in hatred and anger?”

  “I agree with you absolutely, madame. A movement driven by fury and resentment will not change any of our lives for the better. Ce n’est pas possible. It is corrupt at the source.”

  I nearly said that I too agreed, but I stopped myself. Nobody was interested in my ideas.

  Nancy said, “When I met William Ducane, I did not fall in love with him, but I liked him. I respected him. He was calm and courteous; he never behaved or spoke intemperately. If he failed to return a book to the library when it was due to be returned, he would suffer agonies of remorse.”

  “A man with a conscience.”

  “Yes, and a sense of proportion, and humility. If something stood in his way, he would consider moving himself before he would consider moving the obstacle. I knew that he would not fill our home with men intent on making the world uglier with their violent acts. William appreciated art and beautiful things. He was like me in that respect.”

  “I understand, madame. But you did not love William Ducane passionately, in the way that Harriet Sippel loved her husband?”

  “No. The man I loved passionately was Patrick Ive. From the first moment I saw him, my heart belonged to him alone. I would have laid down my life for him. When I lost him, I finally understood how Harriet had felt when she had lost George. One thinks one can imagine, but one can’t. I remember thinking Harriet morbid when she begged me, after George’s funeral, to pray for her death so that she might be quickly reunited with him. I refused to do as she asked. The passing of time would ease her pain, I told her, and one day she would find something else to live for.”

  Nancy stopped to compose herself before continuing. “Regrettably, she did. She found a delight in the suffering of others. Harriet the widow was a joyless harridan. That was the woman who was killed at the Bloxham Hotel in London recently. The Harriet I knew and loved died with her husband George.” She looked at me suddenly. “You observed that I am angry with Jennie. I have no right to be. I am as guilty as she is of letting Patrick down.” Nancy started to cry and covered her face with her hands.

  “Come, come, madame. Here.” Poirot passed her a handkerchief. “How did you let down Patrick Ive? You have told us that you would have sacrificed your life for him.”

  “I am as bad as Jennie: a disgusting coward! When I stood up in the King’s Head Inn and confessed that Patrick and I were in love and had been meeting in secret, I did not tell the truth. Oh, the secret meetings were real enough, and Patrick and I were desperately in love—that was true too. But . . .” Nancy appeared too distressed to continue. Her shoulders shook as she wept into the handkerchief.

  “I think I comprehend, madame. That day at the King’s Head Inn, you told the villagers that your relations with Patrick Ive had been chaste. That was your lie. Poirot, he guesses correctly?”

  Nancy let out a wail of despair. “I couldn’t bear the rumors,” she cried. “All those whispered macabre tales of encounters with the souls of the dead in exchange for money; little children hissing in the street
about blasphemy . . . I was appalled! You cannot imagine the horror of so many voices of accusation and condemnation, all rounding on one man, a good man!”

  I could imagine. I could imagine it so vividly that I wished she would stop talking about it.

  “I had to do something, Monsieur Poirot. So I thought, “I shall fight these lies with something pure and good: the truth.” The truth was my love for Patrick and his for me, but I was afraid, and I tarnished our truth with lies! That was my mistake. In my frenzy, I could not think clearly. I sullied the beauty of my love for Patrick with faint-hearted dishonesty. Relations between us were not chaste, but I said that they were. I imagined that I had no choice but to lie. That was craven of me. Despicable!”

  “You are hard on yourself,” said Poirot. “Unnecessarily so.”

  Nancy dabbed at her eyes. “How I wish I could believe you,” she said. “Why did I not tell the whole truth? My defense of Patrick against those horrible accusations should have been a noble thing, and I ruined it. For that, I curse myself every day of my life. Those braying, spittle-flecked sin-hunters at the King’s Head, they all disapproved of me anyway—thought I was a fallen woman, and Patrick the very devil. What would it have mattered if they had disapproved a little more? In point of fact, I’m not sure there was a higher peak of opprobrium for them to ascend to.”

  “Why, then, did you not tell the truth?” Poirot asked.

  “I hoped to make the ordeal more bearable for Frances, I suppose. To avoid a bigger scandal. But then Frances and Patrick took their own lives, and all hope of ever making anything better was lost. I know they killed themselves, whatever anybody says,” Nancy added as an apparent afterthought.

  “Is this a fact that has been disputed?” asked Poirot.

  “According to the doctor and all official records, their deaths were accidental, but nobody in Great Holling believed that. Suicide is a sin in the eyes of the Church. The village doctor wanted to protect Patrick and Frances’s reputations from greater damage, I think. He liked them very much and stood up for them when no one else would. He’s a good egg, Dr. Flowerday—one of very few in Great Holling. He knew a wicked lie when he heard one.” Nancy laughed through her tears. “A lie for a lie and a tooth for a tooth.”

  “Or a truth for a truth?” Poirot suggested.

  “Oh. Yes, indeed.” Nancy looked surprised. “Oh, dear, I’ve quite ruined your handkerchief.”

  “It is not important. I have others. There is one more question I should like to ask you, madame: is the name Samuel Kidd familiar to you?”

  “No. Should it be?”

  “He did not live in Great Holling when you lived there?”

  “No, he did not. Lucky old him, whoever he is,” said Nancy bitterly.

  The Older Woman and the Younger Man

  “SO,” SAID POIROT ONCE our visitor had left us and we were alone. “Nancy Ducane agrees with Margaret Ernst that the Ives committed suicide, but the official record is of two accidental deaths. Ambrose Flowerday told this lie in order to protect the reputations of Patrick and Frances Ive from further damage.”

  “How extraordinary,” I said. “Margaret Ernst said nothing about that.”

  “I wonder, then, if we have found the reason why she made you promise not to speak to the doctor. What if Ambrose Flowerday is proud of the lie he told—proud enough, maybe, to confess if asked. If Margaret Ernst wished to protect him . . .”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “That could have been the reason she wanted to steer me away from him.”

  “The desire to protect—this I understand only too well!” Poirot’s voice was fierce with emotion.

  “You mustn’t blame yourself about Jennie, Poirot. You could not have protected her.”

  “There you have the wisdom, Catchpool. Protecting Jennie would have been impossible for anyone, even Hercule Poirot. It was too late to save her even before I met her—this I now understand. Much, much too late.” He sighed. “It is interesting, is it not, that this time there is blood, when before there was poison and no blood?”

  “What I keep wondering is: where is Jennie’s body? The Bloxham has been searched from top to bottom, and nothing!”

  “Do not ask yourself where, Catchpool. Where does not matter. Ask yourself why. Whether the body was removed from the hotel by laundry cart, suitcase or wheelbarrow, why was it removed? Why was it not left in the hotel room, as the other three were?”

  “Well? What’s the answer? You know what it is, so tell me.”

  “Indeed,” said Poirot. “All of this can be explained, but I am afraid it is not a happy explanation.”

  “Happy or not, I’d like to hear it.”

  “In the fullness of time you will hear everything. For now I will tell you this: no employee of the Bloxham Hotel saw either Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury or Richard Negus more than once, apart from one man: Thomas Brignell. He saw Richard Negus twice: once when Negus arrived at the hotel on the Wednesday and Brignell attended to him, and again on Thursday evening when he bumped into Mr. Negus in the corridor and Mr. Negus asked him for a sherry.” Poirot gave a self-satisfied little chuckle. “Reflect upon that, Catchpool. Do you start to see what is suggested by that fact?”

  “No.”

  “Ah!”

  “For pity’s sake, Poirot!” Never had one syllable—Ah!—been enunciated in such an infuriating fashion.

  “I have told you, my friend: do not expect always to be given the answer.”

  “I’m well and truly stumped! From several angles, it looks as if Nancy Ducane must be our killer, but she has an alibi from Lady Louisa Wallace. So. Who else might want to kill Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury, Richard Negus and now Jennie Hobbs too?” I stamped up and down the drawing room, angry with myself because I couldn’t see a way out of the bind. “And—though I still think you’re crazy to suspect them—if the murderer is Henry Negus, or Rafal Bobak, or Thomas Brignell, what could the motive have been? What connection do any of those people have to the tragic events in Great Holling sixteen years ago?”

  “Henry Negus has the oldest and most common motive in the world: money. He told us, did he not, that his brother Richard had been squandering his wealth? He told us, also, that his wife would on no account banish Richard from her home. If Richard Negus dies, Henry Negus does not have to pay for his upkeep. If Richard does not die, he might end up costing his brother a small fortune.”

  “And Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury? Jennie Hobbs? Why would Henry Negus kill them too?”

  “I do not know, though I could speculate,” said Poirot. “As for Rafal Bobak and Thomas Brignell—I can think of no possible motive for either man, unless one of them is not who he purports to be.”

  “I suppose we could do a bit of digging around,” I said.

  “While we are compiling a list of possible suspects, what about Margaret Ernst and Dr. Ambrose Flowerday?” Poirot suggested. “They were not in love with Patrick Ive, but they might nevertheless have been motivated by the desire to avenge him. Margaret Ernst was, by her own account, sitting in her house alone on the night of the murders. And we do not know where Dr. Flowerday was because you promised you would not seek him out and—alas!—you kept your promise. Poirot will have to go to Great Holling himself.”

  “I did say that you ought to come with me,” I reminded him. “But I suppose if you had, you wouldn’t have been able to talk to Nancy Ducane and Rafal Bobak and the others. Incidentally, this younger man and older woman that Bobak overheard Harriet, Ida and Richard Negus talking about, assuming we believe his account—I’ve been pondering, and I’ve even made a list of all the romantically linked couples I can think of.” I produced the list from my pocket. (I will admit that I was hoping to impress Poirot, but either he wasn’t impressed or else he hid it well.)

  “George and Harriet Sippel,” I read aloud. “Patrick and Frances Ive. Patrick Ive and Nancy Ducane. William Ducane and Nancy Ducane. Charles and Margaret Ernst. Richard Negus and Ida Gransbury. In none of the
se pairings is the woman older than the man, certainly not by enough to be described as ‘old enough to be his mother.’ ”

  “Tsk,” said Poirot impatiently. “You do not think, my friend. How do you know that this couple exists, with the older woman and the younger man?”

  I stared at him, wondering if he had lost his reason. “Well, Walter Stoakley talked about them at the King’s Head, and Rafal Bobak overheard—”

  “Non, non,” Poirot interrupted gracelessly. “You do not pay attention to the details: in the King’s Head Inn, Walter Stoakley spoke of the woman putting an end to her romantic involvement with the man, did he not? Whereas the conversation that Rafal Bobak overheard between the three murder victims was about a man no longer romantically interested in a woman who still craved his love. How can these be the same people, the same couple? The very opposite must be true: they cannot possibly be the same people!”

  “You’re right,” I said, dejected. “I didn’t think of that.”

  “You were too delighted with your pattern—that is why. A much older woman and much younger man over here, and a much older woman and much younger man over there. Voilà, you assume they must be the same!”

  “Yes, I did. Perhaps I’m in the wrong job.”

  “Non. You are perceptive, Catchpool. Not always, but sometimes. You have helped to steer me through the tunnel of confusion. Do you remember when you said that whatever Thomas Brignell was withholding, he was doing so for reasons of personal embarrassment? That was a remark that proved very helpful to me—very helpful indeed!”

  “Well, I’m afraid I’m still in the tunnel and can’t see a flicker of light at either end.”

  “I will make you a promise,” said Poirot. “Tomorrow, immediately after breakfast, we will pay a little visit, you and I. After that, you will comprehend more than you do now. I hope that I will also.”

  “I don’t suppose I am permitted to ask whom we will be visiting?”

  “You may ask, mon ami.” Poirot smiled. “I telephoned to Scotland Yard for the address. It is one you would recognize, I think, if I told it to you.”