The Monogram Murders

by Sophie Hannah

  “It was a very neat plan they made, was it not? Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury, Richard Negus and Jennie Hobbs. Let us call them A, B, C and D for the moment, and we will see the neatness of their plan more clearly.”

  “Why should we not call them by their names?” I asked.

  Poirot ignored me. “A, B, C and D—all plagued by guilt and seeking the redemption of the soul. They agree that they must pay for a past sin with their own lives, and so they plan to kill one another: B kills A, then C kills B, then D kills C.”

  “Except that D didn’t kill C, did she? D is Jennie Hobbs, and she didn’t kill Richard Negus.”

  “Perhaps not, but she was supposed to. That was the plan. Also that D would stay alive to see E—Nancy Ducane—hang for the murders of A, B, and C. Only then could D . . .” Poirot stopped. “D,” he repeated. “Demise. That is the correct word.”

  “What?”

  “For your crossword puzzle. A word that means death and has six letters. Do you recall? I suggested ‘murder’ and you said that would only work if murder began . . .” He fell silent, shaking his head.

  “If murder began with a D. Yes, I remember. Poirot, are you all right?” His eyes had that strange green glow about them that they sometimes acquire.

  “Comment? Mais bien évidemment! If murder began with a D! Of course! That is it! Mon ami, you do not know how you have helped me. Now I think . . . yes, that is it. That must be it. The younger man and the older woman—ah, but it is so clear to me now!”

  “Please explain.”

  “Yes, yes. When I am ready.”

  “Why are you not ready now? What are you waiting for?”

  “You must allow me more than twenty seconds to compose and arrange my ideas, Catchpool. That is necessary if I am to explain to you, who do not understand a thing. Your every word shows me that you comprehend nothing. You talk about having all the answers, but the story we heard from Jennie Hobbs this morning was an elaborate embroidery of lies! Do you not see this?”

  “Well . . . I mean . . . um . . .”

  “Richard Negus agrees with Harriet Sippel that perhaps Nancy Ducane should hang for three murders she did not commit? He is willing to leave Nancy’s fate to be decided by Jennie Hobbs? Richard Negus the leader, the respected authority figure—the same Richard Negus who, for sixteen years, has felt so terribly guilty for unjustly condemning Patrick Ive? The Richard Negus who realized too late that it is wrong to condemn and persecute a man for understandable human weaknesses? Who ended his engagement to Ida Gransbury because she dogmatically insisted that every transgression must be punished with the utmost harshness—this Richard Negus would entertain the idea of allowing Nancy Ducane, whose only crime was to love a man who could never belong to her, to be condemned by law and face the gallows for three murders of which she is innocent? Pah! It is nonsense! There is no consistency. It is a fantasy dreamed up by Jennie Hobbs to mislead us yet again.”

  I listened to most of this with my mouth open. “Are you sure, Poirot? I believed her, I have to say.”

  “Of course I am sure. Did not Henry Negus tell us that his brother Richard spent sixteen years in his home as a recluse, seeing and speaking to nobody? Yet according to Jennie Hobbs, he spent these same years persuading Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury that they were responsible for Patrick and Frances Ive’s deaths and must pay the price. How was Richard Negus able to do this persuading without his brother Henry noticing his regular communications with two women from Great Holling?”

  “You might have a point there. I didn’t think of that.”

  “It is a minor point. Surely you noticed all that was more substantially wrong with Jennie’s story?”

  “To frame an innocent person for murder is unquestionably wrong,” I said.

  “Catchpool, I am talking not about morally wrong but about factually impossible. Is this how you force me to explain before I am ready, by exasperating me? Bien, I will draw one detail to your attention in the hope that it will lead you to others. According to Jennie Hobbs, how did the keys to rooms 121 and 317 of the Bloxham Hotel end up in Nancy Ducane’s blue coat?”

  “Samuel Kidd planted them there. To frame Nancy.”

  “He slipped them into her pocket on the street?”

  “It’s easy enough to do, I imagine.”

  “Yes, but how did Mr. Kidd get hold of the two keys? Jennie was supposed to find both, along with Richard Negus’s key, in Room 238 when she went there to kill Richard Negus. She was supposed to pass all three keys to Samuel Kidd after she had left and locked Room 238. Yet according to her, she did not go to Richard Negus’s room or to the Bloxham Hotel at all on the night of the murders. Mr. Negus locked his door from the inside and killed himself, having hidden his key behind a loose tile in the fireplace. So how did Samuel Kidd get his hands on the other two keys?”

  I waited a few moments in case the answer came to me. It didn’t. “I don’t know.”

  “Perhaps when Jennie Hobbs did not arrive, Samuel Kidd and Richard Negus improvised: the former killed the latter, then took Harriet Sippel’s and Ida Gransbury’s keys from Mr. Negus’s hotel room. In which case, why not also take Mr. Negus’s key? Why hide it behind the loose tile in the fireplace? The only reasonable explanation is that Richard Negus wanted his suicide to look like murder. Mon ami, this could have been achieved just as easily by having Samuel Kidd remove the key from the room. There would have been then no need for the open window to give the impression of the murderer escaping from the room in that way.”

  I saw the strength of his argument. “Since Richard Negus locked his door from the inside, how did Samuel Kidd get into room 238 in order to remove the keys to rooms 121 and 317?”

  “Précisément.”

  “What if he climbed in through the open window, having first climbed a tree?”

  “Catchpool—think. Jennie Hobbs says she did not go to the Bloxham Hotel that night. So, either Samuel Kidd cooperated with Richard Negus to make the plan work without her, or else the two men did not cooperate. If they did not, then why would Mr. Kidd enter Mr. Negus’s hotel room uninvited, by an open window, and remove two keys from it? What reason would he have for doing so? And if the two men did cooperate, surely Samuel Kidd would have ended up with three keys to place in Nancy Ducane’s pocket rather than two. Additionally . . . if Richard Negus committed suicide, as you now believe, causing the cufflink to fall far back in his mouth, then who arranged his body in the perfectly straight line? Do you believe that a man could swallow poison and then contrive to die in that exceptionally neat position? Non! Ce n’est pas possible.”

  “I shall need to think about this another time,” I said. “You’ve made my head spin. It’s full of a jumble of questions that weren’t there before.”

  “For example?”

  “Why did our three murder victims order sandwiches, cakes and scones and then not eat any of them? And if they didn’t eat the food, why wasn’t it still on the plates in Ida Gransbury’s room? What happened to it?”

  “Ah! Now you think like a proper detective. Hercule Poirot is educating you in how to use the little gray cells.”

  “Did you think of that—the food discrepancy?”

  “Bien sûr. Why did I not ask Jennie Hobbs to account for it, when I asked her to explain many other inconsistencies? I did not do so because I wanted her to imagine that we believed her story by the time we left her. Therefore, I could not ask her a question for which she would be unable to provide an answer.”

  “Poirot! Samuel Kidd’s face!”

  “Where, mon ami?”

  “No, I don’t mean that I can see his face, I mean . . . Remember the first time you met him at Pleasant’s, he had cut himself shaving? There was a cut on a small shaved area of his cheek, while the rest was covered by a growth of beard?”

  Poirot nodded.

  “What if that was not a shaving cut that we saw but a cut from a sharp branch of a tree? What if Samuel Kidd cut himself on his way into or out
of the open window of Room 238? He knew that he was going to approach us with his lie about having seen Nancy Ducane run from the hotel, and he didn’t want us to connect the mysterious scratch on his face with the tree outside Richard Negus’s open window, so he shaved a small patch of skin.”

  “Knowing that we would assume he had started to shave, cut himself badly and stopped,” said Poirot. “And then, when he visited me at the lodging house, his beard had disappeared and his face was covered in cuts: to remind me that he cannot shave without lacerating his face. Eh, bien, if I believe this then I will assume that every cut I see upon his face is caused by shaving.”

  “Why don’t you sound more excited?” I asked.

  “Because it is so obvious. I arrived at this conclusion more than two hours ago.”

  “Oh.” I felt deflated. “Wait a minute—if Samuel Kidd scratched his face on the tree outside Richard Negus’s open window, that means he might have climbed into the room and got his hands on the keys to 121 and 317. Doesn’t it?”

  “There is no time to discuss the meaning now,” said Poirot in a stern voice. “We arrive at the station. It is clear from your question that you have not listened carefully.”

  DR. AMBROSE FLOWERDAY TURNED OUT to be a tall, thick-set man of around fifty with wiry dark hair that was graying at the temples. His shirt was crumpled and missing a button. He had passed on instructions for us to go to the vicarage, so that was where we were, standing in a chilly hall with a high ceiling and a splintering wooden floor.

  The whole place seemed to have been given over to Dr. Flowerday for him to use as a temporary hospital for one patient. The door had been opened by a nurse in uniform. Under different circumstances I might have been curious about this arrangement, but all I could think of was poor Margaret Ernst.

  “How is she?” I asked, once the introductions were over.

  The doctor’s face twisted in anguish. Then he composed himself. “I am allowed to say only that she is doing well in the circumstances.”

  “Allowed by whom?” asked Poirot.

  “Margaret. She will not tolerate defeatist talk.”

  “And is it true, what she asks you to tell us?”

  After a short pause, Dr. Flowerday gave a small nod. “Most people would not survive for this long after such an assault. Margaret has a strong constitution and a strong mind. It was a serious attack, but, damn it, I shall keep her alive if it kills me.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Two thoroughly bad pennies from the top end of the village came to the churchyard in the middle of the night and . . . well, they did things to the Ives’ grave that do not bear repeating. Margaret heard them. Even in her sleep she is vigilant. She heard metal smashing against stone. When she ran out to try to stop them, they attacked her with a spade they had brought with them. They didn’t care if they beat her to death! That much was obvious to the village constable, when he arrested them some hours later.”

  Poirot said, “Pardon me, Doctor. You know who did this to Mrs. Ernst? The two bad pennies that you refer to . . . they confessed?”

  “Proudly,” said Dr. Flowerday through gritted teeth.

  “So they are arrested?”

  “Oh, yes, the police have got them.”

  “Who are they?” I asked.

  “Frederick and Tobias Clutton, father and son. Drunken good-for-nothings, the pair of them.”

  I wondered if the son was the ne’er-do-well I had seen drinking with Walter Stoakley in the King’s Head. (I later discovered that I was right: he was.)

  “Margaret got in their way, they said. As for the Ives’ grave . . .” Dr. Flowerday turned to me. “Please understand that I am not blaming you for this, but your visit stirred things up. You were seen going to Margaret’s cottage. All the villagers know where she stands with regard to the Ives. They knew that the story you were hearing inside that house was one that painted Patrick Ive not as a promiscuous charlatan but as the victim of a sustained campaign of cruelty and slander—theirs. It made them want to punish Patrick all over again. He is dead and beyond their reach, so they desecrated his grave instead. Margaret has always said it would happen one day. She sits by her window day in and day out, hoping to catch them and stop them. Do you know she never met Patrick or Frances Ive? Did she tell you that? They were my friends. Their tragedy was my sorrow, the injustice of it my obsession. Yet, from the first, they mattered to Margaret. It horrified her to think that such a thing could happen in her husband’s new parish. She made sure that it mattered to him, too. It was the most incredible good fortune, that Margaret and Charles came to Great Holling. One couldn’t wish for a better ally. Allies,” Dr. Flowerday corrected himself.

  “May we speak to Margaret?” I asked. If she was about to die—and I had the sense that she was, in spite of the doctor’s determination that she should not—then I wanted to hear what she had to say while there was still time.

  “Of course,” said Ambrose Flowerday. “She would be furious with me for keeping you from her.”

  Poirot, the nurse and I followed him up a flight of uncarpeted wooden stairs and into one of the bedrooms. I tried not to show my shock when I saw bandages, blood, and the purple and blue welts and lumps that covered Margaret Ernst’s face. Tears came to my eyes.

  “Are they here, Ambrose?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Bonjour, Madame Ernst. I am Hercule Poirot. Words cannot express how sorry I am—”

  “Please call me Margaret. Is Mr. Catchpool with you?”

  “Yes, I’m here,” I managed to say. How any man or men could inflict such injury upon a woman was quite beyond me. It was not the act of human beings but of beasts. Monsters.

  “Are you both striving for polite expressions that won’t alarm me?” Margaret asked. “My eyes are swollen shut, so I can’t see your faces. I expect Ambrose has told you I’m about to die?”

  “Non, madame. He has said no such thing.”

  “Hasn’t he? Well, it’s what he believes.”

  “Margaret, dear—”

  “He is wrong. I am far too angry to die.”

  “You have something that you wish to tell us?” Poirot asked.

  A peculiar noise emerged from Margaret’s throat. It had a derisory quality. “Yes, I do, but I wish you wouldn’t ask me so soon and so urgently, as if there’s a scrambling hurry about it all—as if my next breath might be my last! Ambrose has given you quite the wrong impression if that is what you believe. Now, I need to rest. I shall no doubt have to defend myself many more times today against unwarranted accusations of dying! Ambrose, you’ll tell them what they need to know, won’t you?” Her eyelids flickered.

  “Yes. If that’s what you would prefer.” His eyes widened in alarm and he grabbed her hand. “Margaret? Margaret!”

  “Leave her,” the nurse said, speaking for the first time. “Let her sleep.”

  “Sleep,” Dr. Flowerday repeated, looking confused. “Yes, of course. She needs to sleep.”

  “What is it that she wishes you to tell us, Doctor?” Poirot asked.

  “You might like to take your visitors to the drawing room?” suggested the nurse.

  “No,” said Flowerday. “I won’t leave her. And I need to speak to these gentleman in private, so if you would be kind enough to give us a few moments, Nurse?”

  The young woman nodded and left the room.

  Flowerday addressed me. “She told you most of it, I dare say? What this hell-pit of a village did to Patrick and Frances?”

  “We know, perhaps, more of the story than you think,” said Poirot. “I have spoken to both Nancy Ducane and Jennie Hobbs. They tell me that the inquest found Patrick and Frances Ive’s deaths to be accidental. Yet Margaret Ernst told Catchpool that they swallowed poison deliberately to end their lives: she first, and he second. A poison called abrin.”

  Flowerday nodded. “That’s the truth. Frances and Patrick both left notes: their last words to the world. I told the authorities th
at in my opinion the deaths were accidental. I lied.”

  “Why?” Poirot asked.

  “Suicide is a sin in the eyes of the Church. After the battering that Patrick’s good name had taken, I could not bear for there to be another mark against him. And poor Frances, who had done nothing wrong and was a good Christian . . .”

  “Oui. Je comprends.”

  “I knew several people who would have reveled in their achievement if told their actions had driven the Ives to suicide. I was unwilling to afford them that satisfaction. Harriet Sippel in particular.”

  Poirot said, “May I ask you something, Dr. Flowerday? If I were to say to you that Harriet Sippel came to regret her despicable treatment of Patrick Ive, would you believe that to be possible?”

  “Regret it?” Ambrose Flowerday laughed mirthlessly. “Why, Monsieur Poirot, I should think you had taken leave of your senses. Harriet regretted nothing that she had done. Neither do I, if you must know. I am glad that I lied sixteen years ago. I would do the same again. Let me tell you: the mob led by Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury against Patrick Ive was evil. There is no other word for it. I imagine that, as a cultured man you are familiar with The Tempest? ‘Hell is empty’?”

  “‘And all the devils are here,’” Poirot completed the quotation.

  “Quite so.” Dr. Flowerday turned then to me. “This is why Margaret did not want you to speak to me, Mr. Catchpool. She too is proud that we lied for Patrick and Frances’s sake, but she is more cautious than I am. She feared that I would boast to you of my defiant act, as I just have.” He smiled sadly. “I know that I must now face the consequences. I will lose my medical practice and possibly my liberty, and perhaps I deserve to. The lie I told killed Charles.”

  “Margaret’s late husband?” I said.

  The doctor nodded. “Margaret and I didn’t care if people whispered ‘Liar!’ after us in the street, but Charles minded dreadfully. His health deteriorated. If I had been less determined to fight the evil in the village, Charles might still be alive today.”

  “Where are the Ives’ suicide notes now?” Poirot asked.

  “I don’t know. I gave them to Margaret sixteen years ago. I haven’t asked her about them since.”