The Monogram Murders (6 page)

smiled at his little joke. I attributed the rapid

improvement in his spirits to the fact that Lazzari had

fallen silent. “I do not mean to interrupt you,

Catchpool. Continue.”

“All three victims arrived here at the hotel on

Wednesday, the day before they were murdered.”

“Did they arrive together?”

“No.”

“Most definitely not,” said Lazzari. “They arrived

separately, one by one. They checked in one by one.”

“And they were murdered one by one,” said

Poirot, which happened to be exactly what I was

thinking. “You are certain of this?” he asked Lazzari.

“I could not be more so. I have the word of my

clerk, Mr. John Goode, the most dependable man of

my entire acquaintance. You will meet him. We have

only the most impeccable persons working here at the

Bloxham Hotel, Monsieur Poirot, and when my clerk

tells me a thing is so, I know that it is so. From across

the country and across the world, people come to ask

if they can work at the Bloxham Hotel. I say yes only

to the best.”

It’s funny but I didn’t realize how well I had come

to know Poirot until that moment—until I saw that

Lazzari did not know how to manage him at all. If he

had written “Suspect This Man of Murder” on a large

sign and hung it around Mr. John Goode’s neck, he

could not have done a better job of inciting Poirot to

distrust the fellow. Hercule Poirot will not allow

anyone else to dictate to him what his opinion should

be; he will, rather, determine to believe the opposite,

contrary old cove that he is.

“So,” he said now, “it is a remarkable

coincidence, is it not? Our three murder victims—

Mrs. Harriet Sippel, Miss Ida Gransbury and Mr.

Richard Negus—they arrive separately and appear to

have nothing to do with one another. And yet all three

share not merely the date of their deaths, which was

yesterday, but also their date of arrival at the Bloxham

Hotel: Wednesday.”

“What’s remarkable about it?” I asked. “Plenty of

other guests must also have arrived on Wednesday in

a hotel of this size. I mean, ones that have not been

murdered.”

Poirot’s eyes looked as if they were about to burst

forth from his head. I couldn’t see that I had said

anything particularly shocking, so I pretended not to

notice his consternation, and continued to tell him the

facts of the case.

“Each of the victims was found inside his or her

locked bedroom,” I said, feeling rather self-conscious

about the “his or her” part. “The killer locked all

three doors and made off with the keys—”

“
Attendez,
” Poirot interrupted. “You mean that the

keys are missing. You cannot know that the murderer

took them or has them now.”

I took a deep breath. “We
suspect
that the killer

took the keys away with him. We’ve done a thorough

search, and they are certainly not inside the rooms,

nor anywhere else in the hotel.”

“My excellent staff have checked and confirmed

that this is true,” said Lazzari.

Poirot said that he would like to perform his own

thorough search of the three rooms. Lazzari joyously

agreed, as if Poirot had proposed a tea party followed

by dancing.

“Check all you like, but you won’t find the three

room keys,” I said. “I’m telling you, the murderer took

them. I don’t know what he did with them, but—”

“Perhaps he put them in his coat pocket, with one,

or three, or five monogrammed cufflinks,” Poirot said

coolly.

“Ah, now I see why they speak of you as the most

splendid detective, Monsieur Poirot!” Lazzari

exclaimed, though he can’t have understood Poirot’s

remark. “You have a superb mind, they say!”

“Cause of death is looking very much like

poisoning,” I said, disinclined to linger over

descriptions of Poirot’s brilliance. “We think cyanide,

which can work with great speed if the quantities are

sufficient. The inquest’ll tell us for sure, but . . .

almost certainly their drinks were poisoned. In the

case of Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury, that drink

was a cup of tea. In the case of Richard Negus, it was

sherry.”

“How is this known?” Poirot asked. “The drinks

are still there in the rooms?”

“The cups are, yes, and Negus’s sherry glass. Only

the remaining few drops of the drinks themselves, but

it’s easy enough to tell tea from coffee. We will find

cyanide in those drops, I’ll wager.”

“And the time of death?”

“According to the police doctor, all three were

murdered between four o’clock in the afternoon and

half past eight in the evening. Luckily, we’ve managed

to narrow it down further: to between a quarter past

seven and ten minutes past eight.”

“A stroke of luck indeed!” Lazzari agreed. “Each

of the . . . ah . . . deceased guests was last seen alive

at fifteen minutes after seven o’clock, by three

unquestionably dependable representatives of this

hotel—so we know this must be true! I myself found

the deceased persons—so terrible, this tragedy!—at

between fifteen and twenty minutes after eight

o’clock.”

“But they must have been dead by ten past eight,” I

told Poirot. “That was when the note announcing the

murders was found on the front desk.”

“Wait, please,” said Poirot. “We will get to this

note in due course. Monsieur Lazzari, it is surely not

possible that each of the murder victims was last seen

alive by a member of hotel staff at
a quarter past

seven precisely
?”

“Yes.” Lazzari nodded so hard, I feared his head

might fall off his neck. “It is very, very true. All three

ordered dinner to be brought to their rooms at a

quarter past the hour, and all three deliveries were

exceptionally prompt. That is the way of the Bloxham

Hotel.”

Poirot turned to me. “This is another coincidence

énorme,
” he said. “Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and

Richard Negus all arrive at the hotel on the same day,

the day before they are murdered. Then on the day of

the murders
they all order dinner to be brought to

their rooms at a quarter past seven exactly
? It does

not seem very likely.”

“Poirot, there’s no point debating the likelihood of

something we know happened.”

“
Non.
But there is a point in making sure that it

happened in the way that we have heard. Monsieur

Lazzari, I have no doubt that your hotel contains at

least one very large room. Please assemble in that

room everybody who works here, and I will speak to

them all at their—and your—earliest convenience.

While you do this, Mr. Catchpool and I will begin the

inspection of the three victims” rooms.”

“Yes, and we’d better be quick about it, before

they come for the bodies,” I said. “In normal

circumstances, they would have been removed by

now.” I did not mention that the delay in this instance

had been caused by my own dereliction of duty. In my

hurry to put distance between myself and the Bloxham

Hotel last night, and to think about something—

anything—more pleasant than these three murders, I

had neglected to make the necessary arrangements.

I HOPED POIROT MIGHT warm up a few degrees once

Lazzari had left us alone, but there was no change to

his stern demeanor, and I realized that he was

probably always like this “at work,” as it were—

which seemed a bit rich since it was my work and not

his, and he was doing nothing to lift my spirits.

I had a master key, and we visited the three rooms

one by one. As we waited for the lift’s elaborate gold

doors to open, Poirot said, “We can agree on one

thing, I hope: Monsieur Lazzari’s word cannot be

relied upon with regard to those working in the hotel.

He speaks of them as if they are above suspicion,

which they cannot be if they were here yesterday

when the murders were committed. The loyalty of

Monsieur Lazzari is commendable, but he is a fool if

he believes that all the staff of the Bloxham Hotel are

des anges.
”

Something had been bothering me, so I made a

clean breast of it: “I hope you don’t also think I’m a

fool. What I said before about plenty of other guests

also arriving on Wednesday . . . That was a

harebrained thing to say. Any guests that arrived on

Wednesday and
didn’t
get murdered on Thursday are

irrelevant, aren’t they? I mean, it’s only a noteworthy

coincidence that three or any number of apparently

unconnected guests arrive on the same day if they also

get murdered on the same evening.”

“
Oui.
” Poirot smiled at me with genuine warmth as

we stepped into the lift. “You have restored my faith

in your mental acuity, my friend. And you hit the head

of the nail when you say ‘apparently unconnected.’

The three murder victims will turn out to be

connected. I will swear to it now. They were not

selected at random from among the hotel’s guests. The

three were killed for
one
reason—a reason connected

with the initials PIJ. It is for the same reason that they

all came to the hotel on the same day.”

“It’s almost as if they received an invitation to

present themselves for slaughter,” I said in a cavalier

fashion. “Invitation reads: ‘Please arrive the day

before, so that Thursday can be devoted entirely to

your getting murdered.’ ”

It was perhaps undignified to joke about it, but

joking is what I do when I feel despondent, I’m

afraid. Sometimes I succeed in tricking myself into

imagining that I feel all right about things. It didn’t

work on this occasion.

“Devoted entirely . . .” Poirot muttered. “Yes, that

is an idea,
mon ami.
You were not being serious, I

understand. Nevertheless, you make a point that is

very interesting.”

I did not think I had. It was an asinine joke and

nothing more. Poirot seemed intent on congratulating

me for my most absurd notions.

“One, two, three,” said Poirot as we went up in the

lift. “Harriet Sippel, Room 121. Richard Negus,

Room 238. Ida Gransbury, Room 317. The hotel has a

fourth and a fifth floor also, but our three murder

victims are on the consecutive floors 1, 2 and 3. It is

very neat.” Poirot usually approved of things that

were neat, but he looked worried about this one.

We examined the three rooms, which were

identical in almost every respect. Each contained a

bed, cupboards, a basin with an upturned glass sitting

on one corner, several armchairs, a table, a desk, a

tiled fireplace, a radiator, a larger table over by the

window, a suitcase, clothes and personal effects, and

a dead person.

Each room’s door closed with a thud, trapping me

inside
. . .

“Hold his hand, Edward.”

I couldn’t bring myself to look too closely at the

bodies. All three were lying on their backs, perfectly

straight, with their arms flat by their sides and their

feet pointing toward the door. Formally laid out.

(Even writing these words, describing the posture

of the bodies, produces in me an intolerable

sensation. Is it any wonder I could not look closely at

the three victims’ faces for more than a few seconds at

a time? The blue undertone to the skin; the still, heavy

tongues; the shriveled lips? Though I would have

studied their faces in detail rather than look at their

lifeless hands, and I would have done anything at all

rather than wonder what I could not help wondering:

whether Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard

Negus would have wanted somebody to hold their

hands once they were dead, or whether the idea

would have horrified them. Alas, the human mind is a

perverse, uncontrollable organ, and the contemplation

of this matter pained me greatly.)

Formally laid out
. . .

A thought struck me with great force. That was

what was so grotesque about these three murder

scenes, I realized: that the bodies had been laid out as

a doctor might lay out his deceased patient, after

tending him in his illness for many months. The