The Monogram Murders: The New Hercule Poirot Mystery

‘What about the open window, when all the windows in the other two rooms are closed?’ he asked. ‘Is that a difference worth noting?’

‘It’s unlikely to be relevant,’ I said. ‘Richard Negus might have opened the window himself. There would be no reason for the murderer to close it. You’ve said it often yourself, Poirot—we Englishmen open windows in the dead of winter because we believe it’s good for our character.’

‘Mon ami,’ said Poirot patiently. ‘Consider: these three people did not drink poison, fall out of their armchairs and quite naturally land flat on their backs with their arms at their sides and their feet pointing towards the door. It is impossible. Why would one not stagger across the room? Why would one not fall out of the chair on the other side? The killer, he arranged the bodies so that each one was in the same position, at an equal distance from the chair and from the little table. Eh bien, if he cares so much to arrange his three murder scenes to look exactly the same, why does he not wish to close the window that, yes, perhaps Mr Richard Negus has opened—but why does the murderer not close it in order to make it conform with the appearance of the windows in the other two rooms?’

I had to think about this. Poirot was right: the bodies had been laid out in this way deliberately. The killer must have wanted them all to look the same.

Laying out the dead …

‘I suppose it depends where you choose to draw your frame around the scene of the crime,’ I said hurriedly, as my mind tried to drag me back to my childhood’s darkest room. ‘Depends whether you want to extend it as far as the window.’

‘Frame?’

‘Yes. Not a real frame, a theoretical one. Perhaps our murderer’s frame for his creations was no larger than a square like this.’ I walked around Richard Negus’s body, turning corners when necessary. ‘You see? I’ve just walked a small frame around Negus, and the window is outside the frame.’

Poirot was smiling and trying to hide it beneath his moustaches. ‘A theoretical frame around the murder. Yes, I see. Where does the scene of a crime begin and where does it end? This is the question. Can it be smaller than the room that contains it? This is a fascinating matter for the philosophers.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Pas du tout. Catchpool, will you please tell me what you believe happened here at the Bloxham Hotel yesterday evening? Let us leave motive to one side for the moment. Tell me what you think the killer did. First, and next, and next, and so on.’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Try to have an idea, Catchpool.’

‘Well … I suppose he came to the hotel, cufflinks in pocket, and went to each of the three rooms in turn. He probably started where we did, with Ida Gransbury in Room 317, and worked his way down so that he would be able to leave the hotel fairly quickly after killing his final victim—Harriet Sippel in Room 121, on the first floor. Only one floor down and he can escape.’

‘And what does he do in the three rooms?’

I sighed. ‘You know the answer to that. He commits a murder and arranges the body in a straight line. He places a cufflink in the person’s mouth. Then he closes and locks the door and leaves.’

‘And to each room he is admitted without question? In each room, he finds his victim waiting with a most convenient drink for him to drop his poison into—drinks that were delivered by hotel staff at precisely a quarter past seven? He stands beside his victim, watching as the drink is consumed, and then he stands for a little longer as he waits for each one to die? And he stops to eat supper with one of them, Ida Gransbury, who has ordered a cup of tea for him too? All these visits to rooms, all these murders and putting of cufflinks in mouths and very formal arranging of bodies in straight lines, with feet pointing towards the door, he is able to do between a quarter past seven and ten past eight? This seems most unlikely, my friend. Most unlikely indeed.’

‘Yes, it does. Have you got any better ideas, Poirot? That’s why you’re here—to have better ideas than mine. Do please start any time you wish.’ I was regretting my outburst by the time I’d finished the sentence.

‘I started long ago,’ said Poirot, who thankfully had not taken umbrage. ‘You said that the killer left a note on the front desk, informing of his crimes—show it to me.’

I took it out of my pocket and passed it across to him. John Goode, Lazzari’s idea of perfection in the form of a hotel clerk, had found it on the front desk ten minutes after eight o’clock. It read, ‘MAY THEY NEVER REST IN PEACE. 121. 238. 317.’

‘Sothe murderer, or an accomplice of the murderer, was brazen enough to approach the desk—the main desk in the lobby of the hotel—with a note that would incriminate him if anyone saw him leaving it,’ said Poirot. ‘He is audacious. Confident. He did not disappear into the shadows, using the back door.’

‘After Lazzari read the note, he checked the three rooms and found the bodies,’ I said. ‘Then he checked all the other rooms in the hotel, he was very proud to tell me. Fortunately no other dead guests were found.’

I knew I oughtn’t to say vulgar things, but it made me feel better somehow. If Poirot had been English, I probably would have made a greater effort to keep myself in check.

‘And did it occur to Monsieur Lazzari that one of his still-living guests might be a murderer? Non. It did 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 towards 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 towards 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!’

CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_314c707c-24c2-5dfa-ae92-f5d221d0c4ef)

The Frame Widens (#ulink_314c707c-24c2-5dfa-ae92-f5d221d0c4ef)

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 favourite. 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.’