The Monogram Murders (45 page)

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. Every 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.