The Monogram Murders

by Sophie Hannah

  “Ah, yes, the woman gossiping gleefully,” said Poirot. “I shall tell you who that was, my friend. That woman was Nancy Ducane.”

  LOUD CRIES OF SHOCK filled the room.

  “Oh, no, Monsieur Poirot,” said Luca Lazzari. “Signora Ducane is one of the country’s foremost artistic talents. She is also a most loyal friend of this hotel. You must be mistaken!”

  “I am not mistaken, mon ami.”

  I looked at Nancy Ducane, who sat with an air of quiet resignation. She denied nothing that Poirot had said.

  Famous artist Nancy Ducane conspiring with Samuel Kidd, Jennie Hobbs’s former fiancé? I had never been more flummoxed in my life than I was at that moment. What could it all mean?

  “Did I not tell you, Catchpool, that Madame Ducane wears the scarf over her face today because she does not wish to be recognized? You assumed that I meant ‘recognized as the celebrated portrait painter.’ No! She did not want be recognized by Rafal Bobak as the Harriet he saw in Room 317 on the night of the murders! Please stand and remove your scarf, Mrs. Ducane.”

  Nancy did so.

  “Mr. Bobak, was this the woman you saw?”

  “Yes, Mr. Poirot. It was.”

  It was quiet, but audible nonetheless: the sound of breath being drawn into lungs and held there. It filled the large room.

  “You did not recognize her as the famous portrait painter, Nancy Ducane?”

  “No, sir. I know nothing about art, and I only saw her in profile. She had her head turned away from me.”

  “I am sure she did, in case you happened to be an art enthusiast and able to identify her.”

  “I spotted her as soon as she walked in today, though—her and that Mr. Kidd chappy. I tried to tell you, sir, but you wouldn’t let me speak.”

  “Yes, and so did Thomas Brignell try to tell me that he recognized Samuel Kidd,” said Poirot.

  “Two of the three people I’d thought were murdered—alive and well and walking into the room!” From his voice, it was evident that Rafal Bobak had not yet recovered from the shock.

  “What about Nancy Ducane’s alibi from Lord and Lady Wallace?” I asked Poirot.

  “I’m afraid that wasn’t true,” said Nancy. “It is my fault. Please do not blame them. They are dear friends and were trying to help me. Neither St. John nor Louisa knew that I was at the Bloxham Hotel on the night of the murders. I swore to them that I had not been, and they trusted me. They are good, brave people who did not want to see me framed for three murders I did not commit. Monsieur Poirot, I believe you understand everything, so you must know that I have murdered nobody.”

  “To lie to the police in a murder investigation is not brave, madame. It is inexcusable. By the time I left your house, Lady Wallace, I knew you to be a liar!”

  “How dare you speak to my wife like that?” said St. John Wallace.

  “I am sorry if the truth is not to your taste, Lord Wallace.”

  “How did you know, Monsieur Poirot?” his wife asked.

  “You had a new servant girl: Dorcas. She is here with you today only because I asked you to bring her. She is important to this story. You told me that Dorcas had been with you for just a few days, and I saw for myself that she is a little clumsy. She brought me a cup of coffee and spilled most of it. Luckily not all was spilled, and so I was able to drink some. I immediately recognized it as the coffee made by Pleasant’s Coffee House. Their coffee is unmistakeable; there is no other like it, anywhere.”

  “Blimey!” said Fee Spring.

  “Indeed, mademoiselle. The effect upon my mind was profound: at once, I put together several things like pieces of a jigsaw that fit perfectly. The strong coffee, it is very good for the brain.” Poirot looked pointedly at Fee as he said this. She pursed her lips in disapproval.

  “This not very capable maid—pardon me, Mademoiselle Dorcas, I am sure you will improve, given time—she was new! I put this fact together with the coffee from Pleasant’s, and it gave me an idea: what if Jennie Hobbs was Louisa Wallace’s maid, before Dorcas? I knew from the waitresses at Pleasant’s that Jennie used to go there often to collect things for her employer, who was a posh society lady. Jennie spoke of her as ‘Her Ladyship.’ It would be interesting, would it not, if Jennie, until a few days ago, worked for the woman providing Nancy Ducane’s alibi? An extraordinary coincidence—or not a coincidence at all! At first, my thoughts on this matter proceeded along an incorrect track. I thought, ‘Nancy Ducane and Louisa Wallace are friends who have conspired to kill la pauvre Jennie.’ ”

  “What a suggestion!” said Louisa Wallace indignantly.

  “A shocking lie!” her husband St. John agreed.

  “Not a lie, pas du tout. A mistake. Jennie, as we see, is not dead. However, I was not mistaken to believe that she was a servant in the home of St. John and Louisa Wallace, replaced very recently by Mademoiselle Dorcas. After speaking to me at Pleasant’s on the night of the murders, Jennie had to leave the Wallaces’ house, and quickly. She knew that I would soon arrive there to ask for confirmation of Nancy Ducane’s alibi. If I had found her there, working for the woman providing that alibi, I would instantly have been suspicious. Catchpool, tell me—tell us all—what exactly would I have suspected?”

  I took a deep breath, praying I hadn’t got this all wrong, and said, “You would have suspected that Jennie Hobbs and Nancy Ducane were colluding to deceive us.”

  “Quite correct, mon ami.” Poirot beamed at me. To our audience, he said, “Shortly before I tasted the coffee and made the connection with Pleasant’s, I had been looking at a picture by St. John Wallace that was his wedding anniversary present to his wife. It was a picture of blue bindweed. It was dated—the fourth of August last year—and Lady Wallace remarked upon this. It was then that Poirot, he realized something: Nancy Ducane’s portrait of Louisa Wallace, which he had seen a few minutes earlier, was not dated. As an appreciator of art, I have attended countless exhibition premieres in London. I have seen the work of Mrs. Ducane before, many times. Her pictures always have the date in the bottom right-hand corner, as well as her initials: NAED.”

  “You pay more attention than most who attend the exhibitions,” Nancy said.

  “Hercule Poirot always pays attention—to everything. I believe, madame, that your portrait of Louisa Wallace was dated, until you painted out the date. Why? Because it was not a recent one. You needed me to believe that you had delivered the portrait to Lady Wallace on the night of the murders, and that, therefore, it was a newly completed portrait. I asked myself why you did not paint on a new, false date, and the answer was obvious: if your work survives for hundreds of years, and if art historians take an interest in it, as they surely will, you do not wish actively to mislead them, these people who care about your work. No, the only people you wish to mislead are Hercule Poirot and the police!”

  Nancy Ducane tilted her head to one side. In a thoughtful voice, she said, “How perceptive you are, Monsieur Poirot. You really do understand, don’t you?”

  “Oui, madame. I understand that you found employment for Jennie Hobbs in the home of your friend Louisa Wallace—to help Jennie, when she came to London and needed a job. I understand that Jennie was never part of any plan to frame you for murder, though she allowed Richard Negus to believe otherwise. In fact, ladies and gentleman, Jennie Hobbs and Nancy Ducane have been friends and allies ever since they both lived in Great Holling. The two women who loved Patrick Ive unconditionally and beyond reason are the ones who formulated a plan nearly clever enough to fool me, Hercule Poirot—but not quite clever enough!”

  “Lies, all lies!” Jennie wept.

  Nancy said nothing.

  Poirot said, “Let me return for a moment to the home of the Wallaces. In Nancy Ducane’s portrait of Lady Louisa that I inspected so closely and for so long, there is a blue jug and bowl set. When I walked up and down the room and looked at it in different lights, the blue of the jug and bowl remained a solid block of color, bland and uninteresting. E
very other color on that canvas changed subtly as I moved around, depending on the light. Nancy Ducane is a sophisticated artist. She is a genius when it comes to color—except when she is in a hurry and thinking not about art but about protecting herself and her friend Jennie Hobbs. To conceal information, Nancy quickly painted blue a jug and bowl set that was not formerly blue. Why did she do this?”

  “To paint out the date?” I suggested.

  “Non. The jug and bowl were in the top half of the picture, and Nancy Ducane always paints the date in the bottom right-hand corner,” said Poirot. “Lady Wallace, you did not expect me to ask to be shown round your home from bottom to top. You thought that once we had spoken and I had seen Nancy Ducane’s portrait of you, I would be satisfied and leave. But I wanted to see if I could find this blue jug and bowl that were in the portrait, and painted with so much less subtlety than the rest of the picture. And I did find them! Lady Wallace seemed to be puzzled because they were missing, but her puzzlement was a pretense. In an upstairs bedroom, there was a white jug and bowl set with a crest on it. This, I thought, might be the jug and bowl set in the portrait—yet it was not blue. Mademoiselle Dorcas, Lady Wallace told me that you must have smashed or stolen the blue jug and bowl.”

  “I never did!” said a stricken Dorcas. “I ain’t never seen no blue jug and bowl in the house!”

  “Because, young lady, there has never been one there!” said Poirot. “Why, I asked myself, would Nancy Ducane hurriedly paint over the white jug and bowl with blue paint? What did she hope to hide? It had surely to be the crest, I concluded. Crests are not purely decorative; they belong to families, sometimes, or, at other times, to colleges of famous universities.”

  “Saviour College, Cambridge,” I said before I could stop myself. I remembered that just before Poirot and I had left London for Great Holling, Stanley Beer had referred to a crest.

  “Oui, Catchpool. When I left the Wallaces’ home, I drew a picture of the crest so that I would not forget it. I am no artist, but it was accurate enough. I asked Constable Beer to find out for me where it came from. As you have all heard my friend Catchpool say, the crest on the white jug and bowl set in the Wallaces’ house is that of Saviour College, Cambridge, where Jennie Hobbs used to work as a bed-maker for the Reverend Patrick Ive. It was a leaving present to you, was it not, Miss Hobbs, when you left Saviour College and went to Great Holling with Patrick and Frances Ive? And then when you moved into the home of Lord and Lady Wallace, you took it with you. When you left that house in a hurry and went to hide at Mr. Kidd’s house, you did not take the jug and bowl—you were in no state of mind to think of such things. I believe that Louisa Wallace, at that point, moved the jug and bowl set from the servant’s quarters you had previously occupied into a guest bedroom, where it might be admired by those she wished to impress.”

  Jennie didn’t answer. Her face was blank and expressionless.

  “Nancy Ducane did not want to take even the tiniest risk,” said Poirot. “She knew that, after the murders in this hotel, Catchpool and I would ask questions in the village of Great Holling. What if the old drunkard Walter Stoakley, formerly Master of Saviour College, mentioned to us that he gave Jennie Hobbs a crested jug and bowl as a leaving present? If we then saw a crest in the portrait of Lady Wallace, we might discover the connection to Jennie Hobbs and, by extension, the link between Nancy Ducane and Jennie Hobbs, which was not one of enmity and envy, as we had been told by both women, but one of friendship and collusion. Madame Ducane could not take the chance that we would arrive at this suspicion because of the crest in the portrait, and so the white jug and bowl set was painted blue—hurriedly, and with little artistry.”

  “Not all of one’s work can be one’s best work, Monsieur Poirot,” said Nancy. It alarmed me to hear how reasonable she sounded—to see somebody who had conspired in three unlawful killings being so polite and rational in conversation.

  “Perhaps you would agree with Mrs. Ducane, Lord Wallace?” said Poirot. “You too are a painter, though of a very different kind. Ladies and gentlemen, St. John Wallace is a botanical artist. I saw his work in every room of his house when I visited—Lady Wallace was gracious enough to show me around, just as she was generous enough to provide a false alibi for Nancy Ducane. Lady Wallace, you see, is a good woman. She is the most dangerous kind of good: so far removed from evil that she does not notice it when it is right in front of her! Lady Wallace believed in Nancy Ducane’s innocence and provided an alibi to protect her. Ah, the lovely, talented Nancy, she is most convincing! She convinced St. John Wallace that she was eager to try her hand at his sort of painting. Lord Wallace is well connected and well known, therefore easily able to obtain what plants he needs for his work. Nancy Ducane asked him to obtain for her some cassava plants—from which the cyanide is made!”

  “How the devil can you possibly know that?” St. John Wallace demanded.

  “A lucky guess, monsieur. Nancy Ducane told you that she wanted these plants for the purpose of her art, did she not? And you believed her.” To the sea of open-mouthed faces, Poirot said, “The truth is that neither Lord nor Lady Wallace would ever believe a good friend of theirs capable of murder. It would reflect so badly upon them. Their social standing—imagine it! Even now, when everything I say fits perfectly with what they know to be true, St. John and Louisa Wallace tell themselves that he must be wrong, this opinionated detective from the Continent. Such is the perversity of the human mind, particularly where snobbish idées fixes are concerned!”

  “Monsieur Poirot, I have not killed anyone,” said Nancy Ducane. “I know that you know I am telling the truth. Please make it clear to everybody gathered in this room that I am not a murderer.”

  “I cannot do that, madame. Je suis désolé. You did not administer the poison yourself, but you conspired to end three lives.”

  “Yes, but only to save another,” said Nancy earnestly. “I am guilty of nothing! Come, Jennie, let us tell him our story—the true story. Once he has heard it, he will have to concede that we did only what we had to do to save our own lives.”

  The room was completely still. Everyone sat in silence. I did not think Jennie was going to move, but eventually, slowly, she rose to her feet. Clutching her bag in front of her with both hands, she walked across the room toward Nancy. “Our lives were not worth saving,” she said.

  “Jennie!” Sam Kidd cried out, and suddenly he too was out of his chair and moving toward her. As I watched him, I had the peculiar sense of time having slowed down. Why was Kidd running? What was the danger? He clearly thought there was one, and, though I did not understand why, my heart had started to beat hard and fast. Something terrible was about to happen. I started to run toward Jennie.

  She opened her bag. “So you want to be reunited with Patrick, do you?” she said to Nancy. I recognized the voice as hers, but at the same time it was not hers. It was the sound of unremitting darkness molded into words. I hope never again to hear anything like it, as long as I live.

  Poirot had also started to move, but both of us were too far away. “Poirot!” I called, and then, “Someone stop her!” I saw metal, and light dancing upon it. Two men at the table next to Nancy’s rose to their feet, but they were not moving fast enough. “No!” I called out. There was a rapid movement—Jennie’s hand—and then blood, a rush of it, flowing down Nancy’s dress and on to the floor. Nancy fell to the ground. Somewhere at the back of the room, a woman started to scream.

  Poirot had stopped moving, and now stood perfectly still. “Mon Dieu,” he said, and closed his eyes.

  Samuel Kidd reached Nancy before I could. “She’s dead,” he said, staring down at her body on the floor.

  “Yes, she is,” said Jennie. “I stabbed her in the heart. Right in the heart.”

  If Murder Began with a D

  I LEARNED THAT DAY that I am not afraid of death. It is a state that contains no energy; it exerts no force. I see dead bodies in the course of my work, and it has never bothered m
e unduly. No, the thing I dread above all else is proximity to death in the living: the sound of Jennie Hobbs’s voice when the desire to kill has consumed her; the state of mind of a murderer who would, with cold calculation, put three monogrammed cufflinks in his victims’ mouths and take the trouble to lay them out: straightening their limbs and their fingers, placing their lifeless hands palms downward on the floor.

  “Hold his hand, Edward.”

  How can the living hold the hands of the dying and not fear being pulled toward death themselves?

  If I had my way, no person, while alive and vital, would have any involvement with death at all. I accept that this is an unrealistic hope.

  After she had stabbed Nancy, I did not wish to be near Jennie Hobbs. I was not curious to learn why she had done it; I simply wanted to go home, sit by one of Blanche Unsworth’s roaring fires, work on my crossword puzzle and forget all about the Bloxham Hotel Murders or Monogram Murders or whatever anybody wanted to call them.

  Poirot, however, had enough curiosity for both of us, and his will was stronger than mine. He insisted that I stay. This was my case, he said—I had to tie it up neatly. He made a gesture with his hands that suggested meticulous wrapping, as if a murder investigation were a parcel.

  So it was that several hours later, he and I were seated in a small, square room at Scotland Yard, with Jennie Hobbs across the table from us. Samuel Kidd had also been arrested and was being questioned by Stanley Beer. I would have given anything to tackle Kidd instead, who was a crook and a rotten egg for sure, but in whose voice I had never heard the extinction of all hope.

  On the subject of voices, I was surprised by the gentleness of Poirot’s as he spoke. “Why did you do it, mademoiselle? Why kill Nancy Ducane, when the two of you have been friends and allies for so long?”

  “Nancy and Patrick were lovers in every sense of the word. I did not know that until I heard her say so today. I always thought she and I were the same: we both loved Patrick, but knew we could not be with him in that way—had not been with him in that way. All these years, I have believed that their love was chaste, but that was a lie. If Nancy had really loved Patrick, she would not have made an adulterer of him and sullied his moral character.”