The Monogram Murders (47 page)

to shield Frances from a scandal, and protect Nancy,

and this was a certain way to guarantee Harriet’s

silence. It was the
only
way! All Patrick would have

had to do was say some comforting words to Harriet

once in a while and pretend that those words came

from George Sippel. There was no need for him to

take her money, even. I said all this to him, but he

wouldn’t hear of it. He was horrified.”

“He was entirely right to be,” said Poirot quietly.

“Continue, please.”

“He said it would be immoral and unfair to do to

Harriet what I was proposing; he would sooner face

personal ruin. I begged him to reconsider. What harm

would it do, if it would make Harriet happy? But

Patrick was resolute. He asked me to give her the

message that what I had proposed would not, after all,

be possible. He was very specific. ‘Do not say that

you lied, Jennie, or else she will revert to suspecting

the truth,’ he said. My instructions were to tell Harriet

only that she could not have what she wanted.”

“So you had no choice but to tell her,” I said.

“No choice at all.” Jennie started to cry. “And

from the moment I told Harriet that Patrick had

refused her request, she made herself his enemy,

repeating my lie to the whole village. Patrick could

have ruined her reputation in return, by making it

known that she had been eager to avail herself of his

unwholesome services, and only started to call them

blasphemous and unchristian once she had been

thwarted, but he wouldn’t do it. He said that no matter

how maliciously Harriet attacked him, he would not

blacken her name. Foolish man! He could have shut

her up in an instant, but he was too noble for his own

good!”

“Was that when you went to Nancy Ducane for

advice?” Poirot asked.

“Yes. I didn’t see why Patrick and I should be the

only ones to fret. Nancy was part of it too. I asked her

if I should publicly admit to my lie, but she advised

me not to. She said, ‘I fear that trouble is coming to

Patrick now one way or another, and to me. You

would be wise to recede into the background and say

nothing, Jennie. Do not sacrifice yourself. I am not

sure you would be strong enough to withstand

Harriet’s vilification.’ She underestimated me. I was

upset, you see—I suppose I sort of fell apart a bit,

because I was so frightened for Patrick, with Harriet

determined to destroy him—but I am not a weak

person, Monsieur Poirot.”

“I see that you are not afraid.”

“No. I draw strength from the knowledge that

Harriet Sippel—that loathsome hypocrite—is dead.

Her killer did the world a great service.”

“Which leads us to the question of that killer’s

identity, mademoiselle. Who killed Harriet Sippel?

You told us that it was Ida Gransbury, but that was a

lie.”

“I hardly need tell you the truth, Monsieur Poirot,

when you know it as well as I do.”

“Then I must ask you to take pity on poor Mr.

Catchpool here. He does not yet know the whole

story.”

“You’d better tell him, then, hadn’t you?” Jennie

smiled an absent sort of smile, and I suddenly felt as

if there was less of her in the room than there had

been only moments ago; she had taken herself away.

“
Très bien,
” said Poirot. “I will start with Harriet

Sippel and Ida Gransbury: two inflexible women so

convinced of their own rectitude that they were

willing to hound a good man into an early grave. Did

they express sorrow after his death? No, instead they

objected to his burial in consecrated ground. Did

these two women, after much persuasion by Richard

Negus, come to regret their treatment of Patrick Ive?

No, of course they did not. It is not plausible that they

would. That, Mademoiselle Jennie, was when I knew

that you were lying: at that point in your story.”

Jennie shrugged. “Anything is possible,” she said.

“
Non.
Only the truth is possible. I knew that

Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury would never have

agreed to the plan of voluntary execution that you

described to me. Therefore, they were murdered.

How convenient, to pass off their murders as a kind of

delegated suicide! You hoped Poirot might disengage

his little gray cells once he heard that all the dead had

been so willing to die. It was their great opportunity

for redemption! What an imaginative and unusual

story—the sort that one hears and assumes must be the

truth, for who would think to invent such a

fabrication?”

“It was my safeguard, to be used if needed,” said

Jennie. “I hoped you would never find me, but I

feared you might.”

“And if I did, you expected that your alibi for

between quarter past seven and ten past eight would

work, and Nancy Ducane’s also. You and Samuel

Kidd would be charged with attempting to frame an

innocent woman, but not with murder or conspiracy to

commit murder. It is clever: you confess to

wrongdoing in order to avoid punishment for far more

serious crimes. Your enemies are murdered, and no

one hangs because we believe your story: Ida

Gransbury killed Harriet Sippel, and Richard Negus

killed Ida Gransbury and then himself. Your plan was

ingenious, mademoiselle—but not as ingenious as

Hercule Poirot!”

“Richard wanted to die,” said Jennie angrily. “He

was not murdered. He was
determined
to die.”

“Yes,” said Poirot. “This was the truth in the lie.”

“It’s his fault, this whole horrible mess. I would

never have killed anybody if it were not for Richard.”

“But you did kill—several times. It was Catchpool

who, once again, set me on the right track, by uttering

a few innocent words.”

“What words?” Jennie asked.

“He said, ‘If murder began with a D . . .’ ”

IT WAS UNSETTLING TO listen to Poirot’s appreciation

of my helpfulness. I didn’t understand how a few

careless words of mine could have been so

momentous.

Poirot was in full flow. “After we had heard your

story, mademoiselle, we left Samuel Kidd’s house

and, naturally, we discussed what you had told us:

your supposed plan that you made together with

Richard Negus . . . If I may say so, it was a

compelling idea. There was a neatness about it—like

the falling dominoes, except, when I thought carefully,

it was not like that at all because the order of

knocking over is altered. Not D falls down, then C,

then B, then A; instead, B knocks A down, then C

knocks B . . . But that is beside the point.”

What on earth was he talking about? Jennie looked

as if she was wondering the same thing.

“Ah, I must be more lucid in my explanation,” said

Poirot. “To enable myself to imagine the order of

events more easily, mademoiselle, I substituted letters

for names. Your plan, as you told it to us at Samuel

Kidd’s house, was as follows: B kills A, C then kills

B, D then kills C. Afterwards, D waits for E to be

blamed and hanged for the murders of A, B and C,

and then D kills herself. Do you see, Miss Hobbs, that

you are D in this arrangement, according to the story

you told us?”

Jennie nodded.

“
Bon.
Now, by chance, Catchpool here is a

devotee of the crossword puzzle, and it was in

connection with this hobby that he asked me to think

of a word that had six letters and meant ‘death.’ I

suggested ‘murder.’ No, said Catchpool, my

suggestion would only work ‘if murder began with a

D.’ I recalled his words some time later and made the

idle speculation in my mind: what if murder
did
begin

with a D? What if the first to kill was not Ida

Gransbury but you, Miss Hobbs?

“Over time, this speculation hardened into

certainty. I understood why it must have been you who

killed Harriet Sippel. She and Ida Gransbury shared

neither a train nor a car from Great Holling to the

Bloxham Hotel. Therefore each was unaware of the

presence of the other, and there was no plan agreed by

all for one to kill the other. That had to be a lie.”

“What was the truth?” I asked rather desperately.

“Harriet Sippel believed, and so did Ida

Gransbury, that she alone was going to London, for a

very private reason. Harriet had been contacted by

Jennie, who said she needed to meet with her

urgently. The highest level of secrecy was required.

Jennie told Harriet that a room at the Bloxham Hotel

was booked and paid for, and that she, Jennie, would

come to the hotel on Thursday afternoon, perhaps at

half past three or four o’clock, so that they could

conduct their important business. Harriet accepted

Jennie’s invitation
because Jennie had written in her

letter of invitation something that Harriet could not

resist.

“You offered her what Patrick Ive had refused her

all those years ago,
n’est-ce pas, mademoiselle
?

Communication with her late beloved husband. You

told her that George Sippel had sought to speak to her

through you—you, who had tried to help him reach

her sixteen years earlier, and failed. And now, again,

George was trying to send a message to his dearest

wife, using you as his channel. He had spoken to you

from the afterlife! Oh, I have no doubt that you made it

extremely convincing! Harriet was unable to resist.

She believed because she so ardently wished it to be

true. The lie you had told her so long ago, about the

souls of dead loved ones making contact with the

living—she believed it then, and she had never

stopped believing it.”

“Clever old you, Monsieur Poirot,” said Jennie.

“Top marks.”

“Catchpool, tell me: do you understand now about

the old woman enamored of a man possibly young

enough to be her son? These people with whom you

became so obsessed, who featured in the gossip

between Nancy Ducane and Samuel Kidd in Room

317?”

“I’d hardly say obsessed. And, no, I don’t

understand.”

“Let us recall
précisément
what Rafal Bobak told

us. He heard Nancy Ducane, posing as Harriet Sippel,

say, ‘She’s no longer the one he confides in. He’d

hardly be interested in her now—she’s let herself go,

and she’s old enough to be his mother.’ Think about

those words: ‘he’d hardly be interested in her

now
’
—
that fact is asserted first, before the two

reasons for his lack of interest are given. One of these

is that she is old enough to be his mother.
Now,
she is

old enough to be his mother. Do you not see,

Catchpool?
If she is old enough to be his mother

now, then she must always have been old enough to

be his mother
. Nothing else is possible!”

“Isn’t that stretching it a bit?” I said. “I mean,

without the ‘now’ it makes perfect sense: he’d hardly

be interested in her—she’s let herself go and she’s

old enough to be his mother.”

“But,
mon ami,
what you say, it is ridiculous,”

Poirot spluttered. “It is not logical. The ‘now’ was

there, in the sentence. We cannot pretend to be without

it when we are with it. We cannot ignore a ‘now’ that

is right in front of our ears!”

“I’m afraid I disagree with you,” I said with some

trepidation. “If I had to guess, I should say that the

intended meaning was something along these lines:

before she let herself go, this chap didn’t especially

mind or notice the age difference between them.

Maybe it wasn’t quite so visible. However, now that

she is no longer in tip-top shape, the chap has moved

on to a younger, more attractive companion, the one

he now confides in—”

Poirot had begun to speak over me, red faced and

impatient. “There is no point in your
guessing,

Catchpool, when I
know
! Listen to Poirot! Listen one

more time to exactly what was said, and in what

order: ‘He’d hardly be interested in her
now—
she’s