The Monogram Murders (8 page)

not. Any person who chooses to stay at the Bloxham

Hotel must have a character of the utmost virtue and

integrity!”

I coughed and inclined my head toward the door.

Poirot turned. Lazzari had let himself into the room

and was standing in the doorway. He could hardly

have looked happier. “So true, so true, Monsieur

Poirot,” he said.

“Every single person who was in this hotel on

Thursday must speak to Mr. Catchpool and account

for their movements,” Poirot told him sternly. “Every

guest, everyone who was here to work. All of them.”

“With the greatest pleasure, you may speak to

whomsoever you wish, Mr. Catchpool.” Lazzari

bowed in deference. “And our dining room will soon

be at your disposal, once we have cleared away the

breakfast—ah, how do you say?—
paraphernalia,
and

gathered everybody together.”

“
Merci.
Meanwhile, I will conduct a thorough

examination of the three rooms,” said Poirot. This

came as a surprise to me. I thought that was what we

had just done. “Catchpool, find out the addresses of

Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus.

Find out who in the hotel took their reservations, what

food and drinks they each requested to be delivered to

their rooms, and when. And from whom.”

I started to edge toward the door, fearing that

Poirot would never stop dreaming up more tasks to

add to the list.

He called after me, “Find out if anyone by the

name of Jennie is staying in the hotel, or working

here.”

“There is not a Jennie employed at the Bloxham,

Monsieur Poirot,” said Lazzari. “Instead of asking

Mr. Catchpool you should ask
me.
Everybody here is

well known to me. We are a very large happy family

here at the Bloxham Hotel!”

The Frame Widens

SOMETIMES, REMEMBERING SOMETHING A person said

months or even years ago still makes you chuckle, and

this, for me, is true of what Poirot said to me at some

point later on that day: “It is hard for even the most

ingenious detective to know what to do if his desire is

to be free of Signor Lazzari. If one’s praise of his

hotel is insufficient, he stays by one’s side and

supplements it with his own; if one’s praise is

fulsome and lengthy, he stays to listen.”

Poirot’s efforts were eventually successful, and he

finally managed to persuade Lazzari to leave him to

his own devices in Room 238. He walked over to the

door that the hotel manager had left open, closed it,

and sighed with relief. How much easier it was to

think clearly when there was no babble of voices.

He made straight for the window. An open

window, he thought as he stared out of it. The

murderer might have opened it to escape after killing

Richard Negus. He could have climbed down a tree.

Why escape thus? Why not simply leave the room

in the expected way, using the corridor? Perhaps the

killer heard voices outside Negus’s room and did not

want to risk being seen. Yes, that was a possibility.

And yet when he strolled up to the front desk to leave

his note announcing his three murders, he risked being

seen. More than seen—he risked being caught in the

act of leaving incriminating evidence.

Poirot looked down at the body on the floor. No

gleam of metal between the lips. Richard Negus alone

of the three victims had the cufflink right at the back

of his mouth. It was an anomaly. Too many things

about this room were anomalous. For this reason,

Poirot decided he would search Room 238 first. He

was . . . Yes, there was no virtue in denying it—he

was
suspicious
of this room. Of the three, it was his

least favorite. There was something disorganized

about it, something a little unruly.

Poirot stood beside Negus’s body and frowned.

Even by his exacting standards, one open window

was not enough to render a room chaotic, so what was

it that was giving him this impression? He looked

around, turning in a slow circle. No, he must be

mistaken. Hercule Poirot was not often wrong, but it

did happen very occasionally, and this must be one

such instance, because 238 was an undeniably tidy

room. There was no mess or muddle. It was as tidy as

Harriet Sippel’s room and Ida Gransbury’s.

“I shall shut the window and see if that makes a

difference,” said Poirot to himself. He did so and

surveyed the territory anew. Something was still not

right. He did not like Room 238. He would not have

felt comfortable if he had arrived at the Bloxham

Hotel and been shown to this . . .

Suddenly the problem leapt out at him, putting an

abrupt end to his meditations. The fireplace! One of

the tiles was not aligned correctly. It was not straight;

it jutted out. A loose tile; Poirot could not sleep in a

room with such a thing. He eyed the body of Richard

Negus. “If I were in the condition that you are in,
oui,

but not otherwise,” he said to it.

His only thought as he bent to touch the tile was

that he might straighten it and push it back in so that it

was flush with the others. To spare future guests the

torment of knowing that there was something amiss in

the room and being unable to work out what it was—

what a service that would be! And to Signor Lazzari

also!

When Poirot touched it, the tile fell clean out, and

something else fell with it: a key with a number on it:

238. “
Sacre tonnerre,
” Poirot whispered. “So the

thorough search was not so thorough after all.”

Poirot replaced the key where he had found it, then

set about inspecting the rest of the room, inch by inch.

He discovered nothing else of interest, so he

proceeded to Room 317 and then to Room 121, which

was where I found him when I returned from my

errands with exciting news of my own.

Poirot being Poirot, he insisted on telling me his

news first, about his finding of the key. All I can say

is, in Belgium it is evidently not considered unseemly

to gloat. He was quite puffed up with pride. “Do you

see what this means,
mon ami
? The open window

was not opened by Richard Negus, it was opened

after his death! Having locked the door of Room 238

from the
inside
, the murderer needed to escape. He

did so using the tree outside Mr. Negus’s window,

after he had hidden the key behind a tile in the

fireplace that had come loose. He perhaps loosened it

himself.”

“Why not conceal it in his clothing, take it with

him and leave the room in the customary way?” I

asked.

“That is a question I have been asking myself—one

that, for now, I am unable to answer,” Poirot said. “I

have satisfied myself that there is no hidden key in

this room, 121. Nor is there a key anywhere in Room

317. The killer must have taken two keys with him

when he left the Bloxham Hotel, so why not the third?

Why is the treatment of Richard Negus different?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” I said. “Listen, I’ve

been talking to John Goode, the clerk—”

“The most dependable clerk,” Poirot amended

with a twinkle in his eye.

“Yes, well . . . dependable or not, he’s certainly

come up trumps for us on the information front. You

were right: the three victims
are
connected. I’ve seen

their addresses. Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury

both lived in a place called Great Holling, in the

Culver Valley.”

“
Bon.
And Richard Negus?”

“No, he lives in Devon—place called Beaworthy.

But he’s connected too. He booked all three hotel

rooms—Ida’s, Harriet’s and his own—and he paid

for them ahead of time.”

“Did he indeed? This I find very interesting . . .”

Poirot murmured, stroking his mustache.

“Bit puzzling, if you ask me,” I said. “The main

puzzle being: why, if they were coming from the same

village on the same day, did Harriet Sippel and Ida

Gransbury not travel together? Why did they not

arrive together? I went over it several times with John

Goode and he is adamant: Harriet arrived two hours

before Ida on Wednesday—two full hours.”

“And Richard Negus?”

I resolved henceforth to include all details relating

to Negus at the earliest opportunity, if only so that I

wouldn’t have to hear Poirot say, “And Richard

Negus?” over and over again.

“He turned up an hour
before
Harriet Sippel. He

was the first of the three to arrive, but it wasn’t John

Goode who dealt with him. It was a junior clerk, a

Mr. Thomas Brignell. I also found out that all three of

our murder victims traveled to London by train, not

car. I’m not sure if you wanted to know that, but—”

“I must know everything,” said Poirot.

His obvious desire to be in charge and make the

investigation his own both irritated and reassured me.

“The Bloxham has some cars that it sends out to fetch

guests from the station,” I told him. “It’s not cheap,

but they’re happy to sort it out for you. Three weeks

ago, Richard Negus made arrangements with John

Goode for the hotel’s cars to meet him, Harriet Sippel

and Ida Gransbury. Separately; a car each. All of it—

the rooms, the cars—it was all paid for in advance,

by Negus.”

“I wonder if he was a wealthy man,” Poirot mused

aloud. “So often, murder turns out to be about money.

What are your thoughts, Catchpool, now that we know

a little more?”

“Well . . .” I decided to throw myself into it, since

he’d asked. Imagining what was possible was a good

thing in Poirot’s book, so I would allow myself to

concoct a theory, using the facts as a starting point.

“Richard Negus must have known about all three

arrivals, since he reserved and paid for the rooms, but

perhaps Harriet Sippel didn’t know that Ida

Gransbury was also coming to the Bloxham. And

perhaps Ida didn’t know that Harriet was.”

“
Oui, c’est possible.
”

Encouraged, I went on: “Maybe it was essential to

the murderer’s plan that neither Ida nor Harriet should

know about the presence of the other one. But if that’s

so, and if Richard Negus, meanwhile, knew that he

and both women would be guests at the Bloxham . . .”

My well of ideas ran dry at that point.

Poirot took over: “Our trains of thought proceed

along similar tracks, my friend. Was Richard Negus

an unwitting accomplice in his own murder? Perhaps

the killer persuaded him to entice the victims to the

Bloxham Hotel supposedly for another reason, when

all along he planned to murder all three of them. The

question is this:
was it vital for some reason that Ida

and Harriet should each be ignorant of the presence

of the other in the hotel?
And if so, was it important

to Richard Negus, to the murderer, or to both?”

“Perhaps Richard Negus had one plan, and the

murderer had another?”

“Quite so,” said Poirot. “The next thing is to find

out all that we can about Harriet Sippel, Richard

Negus and Ida Gransbury. Who were they when they

were alive? What were their hopes, their grievances,

their secrets? The village, Great Holling—this is