The Monogram Murders: The New Hercule Poirot Mystery

by Sophie Hannah

  “Merci, madame.”

  When she returned five minutes later, she had her hand over her mouth and pink spots on her cheeks. “Oh, dear, Mr. Poirot,” she said. “Oh, this is bad news for all of us! I don’t know what’s wrong with people, I really don’t.”

  “What news?”

  “I telephoned to Scotland Yard, like you asked—they said they’ll send someone to collect your envelope. Then the phone rang again, right after I’d put it down. Oh, Mr. Poirot, it’s dreadful!”

  “Calm yourself, madame. Tell me, please.”

  “There’s been another murder at the Bloxham! I don’t know what’s wrong with some of these fancy hotels, I really don’t.”

  The Mind in the Mirror

  ON ARRIVING BACK IN London, I proceeded to Pleasant’s, thinking I might find Poirot there, but the only familiar face in the coffee house was that of the waitress with what Poirot calls “the flyaway hair.” I had always found her to be a tonic and enjoyed Pleasant’s on account of her presence as much as anything else. What was her name? Poirot had told me. Oh yes: Fee Spring, short for Euphemia.

  I liked her chiefly for her comforting habit of saying the same two things every time she saw me. She said them now. The first was about her long-standing ambition to change the name of Pleasant’s from “Coffee House” to “Tea Rooms,” to reflect the relative merits of the two beverages, and the second was: “How’s Scotland Yard treating you, then? I’d like to work there—only if I could be in charge, mind.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you would be leading the troops in no time,” I told her. “Just as I suspect that one day I shall arrive here to find ‘Pleasant’s Tea Rooms’ on the sign outside.”

  “Not likely. It’s the only thing they won’t let me change. Mr. Poirot wouldn’t like it, would he?”

  “He would be aghast.”

  “You’re not to tell him, or anyone.” Fee’s proposed change of name for her place of work was something she professed to have told nobody but me.

  “I shan’t,” I assured her. “I tell you what: come and work with me solving crimes and I’ll ask my boss if we can change our name to Scotland Yard Tea Rooms. We do drink tea there, so it wouldn’t be altogether unsuitable.”

  “Hmph.” Fee wasn’t impressed. “I’ve heard women police aren’t allowed to stay on if they marry. That’s all right; I’d rather solve crimes with you than have a husband to look after.”

  “There you are, then!”

  “So don’t go proposing to me.”

  “No fear!”

  “Charming, aren’t you?”

  To dig myself out of the hole, I said, “I shan’t be proposing to anybody, but if my parents ever put a gun to my head, I shall ask you before any other girl—how’s that?”

  “Better me than some dreamer with notions of romance in her head. She’d be disappointed, all right.”

  I did not want to discuss romance. I said, “As far as our crime-solving partnership goes . . . I don’t suppose you’re expecting Poirot, are you? I hoped he might be here waiting for Jennie Hobbs to reappear.”

  “Jennie Hobbs, is it? So you’ve found a family name for her. Mr. Poirot’ll be pleased to know who he’s been fretting over all this time. Maybe now he’ll stop pestering me. Every time I turn around, there he is under my feet, asking me all the same questions about Jennie that he’s already asked me. I never ask him where you are—never!”

  I was rather stumped by this last statement. “Why would you?” I said.

  “I wouldn’t and I don’t. You’ve got to be careful what questions you ask the question-asking sort. Did you find out anything else about Jennie?”

  “Nothing I can tell you, I’m afraid.”

  “Then why don’t I tell you something instead? Mr. Poirot’ll want to know.” Fee propelled me toward an unoccupied table. We sat down. She said, “That night Jennie came in, when she was all sixes and sevens—last Thursday. I told Mr. Poirot I noticed something, and then it escaped me. Well, I’ve remembered what it was. It was dark, and I hadn’t pulled the curtains across. I never do. Might as well light up the alley, I always think. And folk who can see in are more likely to come in.”

  “Especially if they catch sight of you in the window,” I teased her.

  Her eyes widened. “That’s just it,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “After I made her shut the door, Jennie darted over to the window and stared out. She was acting as if someone out there was after her. She stared and stared out of the window, but all she would have seen was herself, this room, and me—my reflection, I mean. And I saw her. That’s how I knew who she was. You ask Mr. Poirot, he’ll tell you. I said, ‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ before she’d turned round. The window was like a mirror, see, with it being all lit up in here and dark outside. Now, you might say that maybe she was trying to see outside even if she wasn’t having much luck, but that’s not true.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She wasn’t looking out for anyone following her. She was watching me, like I was watching her. My eyes could see hers reflected, and hers could see mine—like with a mirror, if you know how that is?”

  I nodded. “Whenever you can see someone in a mirror, they can always see you too.”

  “Right enough. And Jennie was watching me, I swear: waiting to see what I’d say or do about her coming in all of a pet. This’ll sound funny, Mr. Catchpool, but it was like I could see more than her eyes. I could see her mind, if that don’t sound too fanciful. I’d swear she was waiting for me to take charge.”

  “Anyone sensible would wait for you to take charge.” I smiled.

  “Tschk.” Fee made a noise that suggested irritation. “I don’t know how I forgot it, if you must know. I want to grab hold of me and give me a good shaking for not remembering before now. I swear I didn’t imagine it. Her reflection was staring mine right in the eyes, as if . . .” Fee frowned. “As if I was the danger and not nobody outside on the street. But why would she look at me that way? Can you make sense of it? I can’t.”

  AFTER LOOKING IN ON things at Scotland Yard, I returned to the lodging house to find Poirot endeavoring to leave it. He was standing by the open front door in his hat and coat, with high color in his face and an unsettled air about him, as if he was having trouble keeping still. This was a problem that did not normally afflict him. Unusually for her, Blanche Unsworth showed no interest in my arrival, and was instead fussing about a car that was late. She too was pink-faced.

  “We must leave at once for the Bloxham Hotel, Catchpool,” said Poirot, adjusting his mustache with gloved fingers. “As soon as the car arrives.”

  “It should have been here ten minutes ago,” said Blanche. “I suppose the boon of it being late is you can take Mr. Catchpool with you.”

  “What is the emergency?” I asked.

  “There has been another murder,” said Poirot. “At the Bloxham Hotel.”

  “Oh, dear.” For several seconds, abject panic coursed through my veins. On it went: the laying out of the dead. One, two, three, four . . .

  Eight lifeless hands, palms facing down . . .

  “Hold his hand, Edward . . .”

  “Is it Jennie Hobbs?” I asked Poirot, as the blood pounded in my ears.

  I should have listened to him about the danger. Why didn’t I take him seriously?

  “I do not know. Ah! So you too know her name. Signor Lazzari sent a summons by telephone, since when I have been unable to contact him. Bon, here at last is the car.”

  As I moved toward it, I felt myself pulled back. Blanche Unsworth was tugging at my coat sleeve. “Be careful at that hotel, won’t you, Mr. Catchpool. I couldn’t bear it if you were to come to any harm.”

  “I shall, of course.”

  Her face set in a ferocious grimace. “You shouldn’t have to go there, if you ask me. What was this fellow doing there anyway, the one that got himself killed this time? Three people have been murdered already at the Bloxham, and only
last week! Why didn’t he go and stay somewhere else if he didn’t want the same to happen to him? It’s not right, him ignoring the danger signs and putting you to all this bother.”

  “I shall say so to his corpse in no uncertain terms.” I reasoned to myself that if I smiled and said all the right words, I might soon feel more settled.

  “Say something to the other guests while you’re about it,” Blanche advised. “Tell them I’ve two spare rooms here. It might not be as grand as the Bloxham, but everybody’s still alive when they wake up in the morning.”

  “Catchpool, please hurry,” Poirot called from the car.

  Hurriedly, I handed my cases to Blanche and did as I was told.

  Once we were on our way, Poirot said, “I hoped very much to prevent a fourth murder, mon ami. I have failed.”

  “I wouldn’t look at it that way,” I said.

  “Non?”

  “You did all you could. Just because the killer succeeded, it does not mean you failed.”

  Poirot’s face was a mask of contempt. “If that is your opinion, then you must be every murderer’s favorite policeman. Of course I have failed!” He raised his hand to stop me from speaking. “Please, say no more absurd things. Tell me about your stay in Great Holling. What did you discover, apart from the surname of Jennie?”

  I told him all about my trip, feeling gradually more like my normal self as I went on, making sure to leave out no detail that a thorough chap like Poirot might consider relevant. As I spoke, I noticed the strangest thing: his eyes were growing greener. It was as if someone were shining small torches on them from inside his head, to make them glow brighter.

  When I had finished, he said, “So, Jennie was a bed-maker for Patrick Ive at the University of Cambridge’s Saviour College. That is most interesting.”

  “Why?”

  No answer was forthcoming, only another question.

  “You did not lie in wait for Margaret Ernst and follow her, after your first visit to her cottage?”

  “Follow her? No. I had no reason to think that she would go anywhere. She seems to spend all her time staring out of her window at the Ives’ gravestone.”

  “You had every reason to think she would go somewhere, or that someone would come to her,” said Poirot severely. “Think, Catchpool. She would not tell you about Patrick and Frances Ive on the first day that you spoke to her, n’est-ce pas? ‘Come back tomorrow,’ she said. When you did, she told you the whole story. Did it not strike you that the reason for this postponement might have been her desire to consult with another person?”

  “No. As a matter of fact, it didn’t. She struck me as a woman who would want to think carefully and not rush an important decision. Also as a woman determined to make up her own mind, not one who would rush to a friend for advice. Hence, I suspected nothing.”

  “I, on the other hand, suspect,” said Poirot. “I suspect that Margaret Ernst wished to discuss with Dr. Ambrose Flowerday what she ought to say.”

  “Well, it would likely be him if it were anyone,” I conceded. “She certainly brought his name into the conversation plenty of times. She clearly admires him.”

  “Yet you did not go in search of Dr. Flowerday.” Poirot made a small snorting sound. “You were too honorable to do so, having made your vow of silence. And is it your English sense of decorum that causes you to substitute the word ‘admire’ for the word ‘love?’ Margaret Ernst loves Ambrose Flowerday—this is clear from what you have told me! She is filled with passionate emotion when discussing this vicar and his wife that she never once met? No, her passion is for Dr. Flowerday—she feels his feelings about the tragically deceased Reverend Ive and his wife—they were his dear friends. Do you see, Catchpool?”

  I gave a noncommittal grunt. Margaret Ernst had seemed to me to be passionate about the principles at stake as much as anything else—about the idea of the injustice that had been done to the Ives—but I knew that to say so would be foolish. Poirot would only lecture me about my inability to recognize amorous feelings. To give him something to think about apart from my countless mistakes and inadequacies, I told him about my visit to Pleasant’s, and what Fee Spring had told me. “What do you think it means?” I asked as our car bumped over something bulky that must have been lying on the road.

  Once more, Poirot ignored my question. He asked me if I had told him everything.

  “Everything that took place in Great Holling, yes. The only other news is the inquest, which was today. The three victims were poisoned. Cyanide, as we thought. Here’s a strange puzzle, though: no recently consumed food was found in their stomach contents. Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus had not eaten for several hours before they were murdered. Which means we have a missing afternoon tea for three to account for.”

  “Ah! That is one mystery solved.”

  “Solved? I’d say it was a mystery created. Am I wrong?”

  “Oh, Catchpool,” said Poirot sadly. “If I tell you the answer, if I take pity on you, you will not hone your ability to think for yourself—and you must! I have a very good friend that I have not spoken of to you. Hastings is his name. Often I entreat him to use his little gray cells, but I know that they will never be a match for mine.”

  I thought he was limbering up to give me a compliment—“You, on the other hand . . .” —but then he said, “Yours, too, will never match mine. It is not the intelligence that you lack, nor the sensitivity, nor even the originality. It is merely the confidence. Instead of looking for the answer, you look around for somebody to find it and tell it to you—eh bien, you find Hercule Poirot! But Poirot is not only a solver of puzzles, mon ami. He is also a guide, a teacher. He wishes you to learn to think for yourself, as he does. As does this woman that you describe, Margaret Ernst, who relies not upon the Bible but upon her own judgment.”

  “Yes. I thought that rather arrogant of her,” I said pointedly. I would have liked to elaborate, but we had arrived at the Bloxham Hotel.

  The Fourth Cufflink

  IN THE LOBBY OF the Bloxham, we nearly walked straight into Henry Negus, Richard Negus’s brother. He was carrying a small briefcase in one hand. In the other, he carried a very large suitcase, which he dropped in order to speak to us. “I wish I were a younger, stronger man,” he said, out of breath. “How is the case progressing, if I might enquire?”

  From his expression and tone of voice, I deduced that he was unaware that there had been a fourth murder. I said nothing, interested to see what Poirot would do.

  “We are confident of success,” said Poirot with deliberate vagueness. “You have spent the night here, monsieur?”

  “Night? Oh, the suitcase. No, I stayed at the Langham. Couldn’t face this place, though Mr. Lazzari was good enough to offer. I am here only to collect Richard’s belongings.” Henry Negus inclined his head toward the suitcase but kept his eyes averted, as if he didn’t want to see it himself. I looked at the stiff card label attached to its handle: Mr. R. Negus.

  “Well, I had better make haste,” said Negus. “Please keep me informed.”

  “We will,” I said. “Goodbye, Mr. Negus. I am so very sorry about your brother.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Catchpool. Monsieur Poirot.” Negus looked embarrassed, perhaps even angry. I thought I understood why: in the face of tragedy, he had decided to be efficient and did not wish to be reminded of his own sadness while he was trying to focus on the practicalities.

  As he walked out onto the street, I saw Luca Lazzari rushing toward us, clutching at his hair. A sheen of sweat covered his face. “Ah, Monsieur Poirot, Mr. Catchpool! At last! You have heard the disastrous news? Unhappy days at the Bloxham Hotel! Oh, unhappy days!”

  Was it my imagination, or had he styled his mustache to resemble Poirot’s? It was a pale imitation, if imitation it was. I found it fascinating that a fourth murder in his hotel had produced in him such a mournful disposition. When only three guests had been murdered at the Bloxham, he had remained chipper. A thought occurred to
me: maybe this time the victim was an employee of the hotel and not a guest. I asked who had been killed.

  “I do not know who she is or where she is now,” said Lazzari. “Come, follow me. You will see for yourselves.”

  “You do not know where she is?” Poirot demanded as we followed the hotel manager to the lift. “What do you mean? Is she not here, in the hotel?”

  “Ah, but where in the hotel? She could be anywhere!” Lazzari wailed.

  Rafal Bobak inclined his head in greeting as he came toward us, pushing a large cart on wheels full of what looked like sheets in need of laundering. “Monsieur Poirot,” he said, stopping when he saw us. “I have been going over and over it in my mind, to see if I can remember any more of what was said in Room 317 on the night of the murders.”

  “Oui?” Poirot sounded hopeful.

  “I haven’t remembered anything else, sir. I’m sorry.”

  “Never mind. Thank you for trying, Mr. Bobak.”

  “Look,” said Lazzari. “Here comes the lift, and I am afraid to step into it! In my own hotel! I do not know, any more, what I will find, or not find. I am afraid to turn one more corner, to open one more door . . . I fear the shadows in the corridors, the creaks of the floorboards . . .”

  As we went up in the lift, Poirot tried to get some sense out of the distraught hotel manager, but to no avail. Lazzari seemed unable to manage more than six linked words at a time: “Miss Jennie Hobbs reserved the room . . . What? Yes, fair hair . . . But then where did she go? . . . Yes, brown hat . . . We have lost her! . . . She was without cases . . . I saw her myself, yes . . . I was too late to the room! . . . What? Yes, a coat. Pale brown . . .”

  On the fourth floor, we followed Lazzari as he hurried ahead of us along the corridor. “Harriet Sippel was on the first floor, remember?” I said to Poirot. “Richard Negus was on the second and Ida Gransbury on the third. I wonder if it means anything.”

  By the time we caught up with Lazzari, he had unlocked the door to Room 402. “Gentlemen, you are about to see a most anomalous scene of ugliness in the beautiful Bloxham Hotel. Please prepare yourselves.” Having issued this warning, he flung open the door so that it banged against the wall inside the room.