The Monogram Murders (29 page)

The Fourth Cufflink

IN THE LOBBY OF the Bloxham, we nearly walked

straight into Henry Negus, Richard Negus’s brother.

He was carrying a small briefcase in one hand. In the

other, he carried a very large suitcase, which he

dropped in order to speak to us. “I wish I were a

younger, stronger man,” he said, out of breath. “How

is the case progressing, if I might enquire?”

From his expression and tone of voice, I deduced

that he was unaware that there had been a fourth

murder. I said nothing, interested to see what Poirot

would do.

“We are confident of success,” said Poirot with

deliberate vagueness. “You have spent the night here,

monsieur?”

“Night? Oh, the suitcase. No, I stayed at the

Langham. Couldn’t face this place, though Mr. Lazzari

was good enough to offer. I am here only to collect

Richard’s belongings.” Henry Negus inclined his head

toward the suitcase but kept his eyes averted, as if he

didn’t want to see it himself. I looked at the stiff card

label attached to its handle:
Mr. R. Negus
.

“Well, I had better make haste,” said Negus.

“Please keep me informed.”

“We will,” I said. “Goodbye, Mr. Negus. I am so

very sorry about your brother.”

“Thank you, Mr. Catchpool. Monsieur Poirot.”

Negus looked embarrassed, perhaps even angry. I

thought I understood why: in the face of tragedy, he

had decided to be efficient and did not wish to be

reminded of his own sadness while he was trying to

focus on the practicalities.

As he walked out onto the street, I saw Luca

Lazzari rushing toward us, clutching at his hair. A

sheen of sweat covered his face. “Ah, Monsieur

Poirot, Mr. Catchpool! At last! You have heard the

disastrous news? Unhappy days at the Bloxham Hotel!

Oh, unhappy days!”

Was it my imagination, or had he styled his

mustache to resemble Poirot’s? It was a pale

imitation, if imitation it was. I found it fascinating that

a fourth murder in his hotel had produced in him such

a mournful disposition. When only three guests had

been murdered at the Bloxham, he had remained

chipper. A thought occurred to me: maybe this time

the victim was an employee of the hotel and not a

guest. I asked who had been killed.

“I do not know who she is or where she is now,”

said Lazzari. “Come, follow me. You will see for

yourselves.”

“You do not know where she is?” Poirot demanded

as we followed the hotel manager to the lift. “What do

you mean? Is she not here, in the hotel?”

“Ah, but where in the hotel? She could be

anywhere!” Lazzari wailed.

Rafal Bobak inclined his head in greeting as he

came toward us, pushing a large cart on wheels full of

what looked like sheets in need of laundering.

“Monsieur Poirot,” he said, stopping when he saw us.

“I have been going over and over it in my mind, to see

if I can remember any more of what was said in Room

317 on the night of the murders.”

“
Oui?
” Poirot sounded hopeful.

“I haven’t remembered anything else, sir. I’m

sorry.”

“Never mind. Thank you for trying, Mr. Bobak.”

“Look,” said Lazzari. “Here comes the lift, and I

am afraid to step into it! In my own hotel! I do not

know, any more, what I will find, or not find. I am

afraid to turn one more corner, to open one more door

. . . I fear the shadows in the corridors, the creaks of

the floorboards . . .”

As we went up in the lift, Poirot tried to get some

sense out of the distraught hotel manager, but to no

avail. Lazzari seemed unable to manage more than six

linked words at a time: “Miss Jennie Hobbs reserved

the room . . . What? Yes, fair hair . . . But then where

did she go? . . . Yes, brown hat . . . We have
lost
her!

. . . She was without cases . . . I saw her myself, yes

. . . I was too late to the room! . . . What? Yes, a coat.

Pale brown . . .”

On the fourth floor, we followed Lazzari as he

hurried ahead of us along the corridor. “Harriet

Sippel was on the first floor, remember?” I said to

Poirot. “Richard Negus was on the second and Ida

Gransbury on the third. I wonder if it means

anything.”

By the time we caught up with Lazzari, he had

unlocked the door to Room 402. “Gentlemen, you are

about to see a most anomalous scene of ugliness in the

beautiful Bloxham Hotel. Please prepare yourselves.”

Having issued this warning, he flung open the door so

that it banged against the wall inside the room.

“But . . . Where is the body?” I asked. It was not

inside the room, laid out like the others. Immense

relief suffused me.

“Nobody knows, Catchpool.” Poirot’s voice was

quiet but there was anger in it. Or it might have been

fear.

Between a chair and a small occasional table—

positioned exactly where the bodies had been in

rooms 121, 238 and 317—there was a pool of blood

on the floor, with a long smear mark at one side, as if

something had been dragged through part of it. Jennie

Hobbs’s body? An arm perhaps, from the shape of the

smear. There were small lines breaking up the red that

might have been fingermarks . . .

I turned away, sickened by the sight.

“Poirot, look.” In one corner of the room there was

a dark brown hat, upturned. There was something

inside it, a small metal object. Could it be . . . ?

“Jennie’s hat,” said Poirot, a tremor in his voice.

“My worst fear, it has come to pass, Catchpool. And

inside the hat . . .” He walked over, very slowly.

“Yes, it is as I thought: a cufflink. The fourth cufflink,

also with the monogram PIJ.”

His mustache began to move with some energy,

and I could only imagine the grimaces it concealed.

“Poirot, he has been a fool—a contemptible fool—to

allow this to happen!”

“Poirot, no one could possibly accuse you of—” I

began.

“
Non!
Do not try to console me! Always you want

to turn away from pain and suffering, but I am not like

you, Catchpool! I cannot countenance such . . .

cowardice. I want to regret what I regret, without you

trying to stop me. It is necessary!”

I stood as still as a statue. He had wanted to

silence me, and he had succeeded.

“Catchpool,” he said my name abruptly, as if he

thought my attention might have wandered far from the

matter at hand. “Observe the marks made by the blood

here. The body was pulled through it to leave this . . .

trail. Does that make sense to you?” he demanded.

“Well . . . yes, I’d say so.”

“Look at the direction of movement: not toward the

window, but away from it.”

“Which means what?” I asked.

“Since Jennie’s body is not here, it must have been

removed from the room. The trail of blood is going

not toward the window but toward the corridor
, so

. . .” Poirot stared at me expectantly.

“So?” I said tentatively. Then, as clarity dawned,

“Oh, I see what you mean: the marks, the smears,

were made when the killer pulled Jennie Hobbs’s

body from the pool of blood toward the door?”

“
Non.
Look at the width of the doorway,

Catchpool. Look at it: it is
wide.
What does this tell

you?”

“Not an awful lot,” I said, thinking it best to be

candid. “A murderer wishing to remove his victim’s

body from a hotel room would hardly care whether

the doorway of that room was wide or narrow.”

Poirot shook his head disconsolately, muttering

under his breath.

He turned to Lazzari. “Signor, please tell me

everything you know, from the beginning.”

“Of course. Certainly.” Lazzari cleared his throat

in preparation. “A room was taken by a woman

named Jennie Hobbs. Monsieur Poirot, she ran into

the hotel as if a calamity had befallen her and threw

money down on the desk. She requested a room as if

escaping from a pursuing demon! I showed her to the

room myself, then went away to commence the

consideration: what ought I to do? Should I inform the

police that a woman with the name Jennie has arrived

at the hotel? You had asked me about that name in

particular, Monsieur Poirot, but there must be many

women in London with the name Jennie, and more

than one of those Jennies must have cause for great

unhappiness that is nothing to do with a murder case.

How am I to know if—”

“Please, signor, arrive at the point,” said Poirot,

interrupting his flow. “What did you do?”

“I waited about thirty minutes, then came up here

to the fourth floor and knocked at the door. No

answer! So I went back downstairs to get a key.”

As Lazzari spoke, I walked over to the window

and looked out. Anything was preferable to the sight

of the blood and the hat and the wretched

monogrammed cufflink. Room 402, like Richard

Negus’s room, 238, was on the garden side of the

hotel. I stared at the pleached limes, but soon had to

look away, as even they looked sinister to me: a row

of inanimate objects fused together, as if they had held

hands for too long.

I was about to turn back to Poirot and Lazzari

when I spotted two people in the garden beneath the

window. They stood beside a brown wheelbarrow. I

could see only the tops of their heads. One was a man

and the other a woman, and they were locked together

in an embrace. The woman seemed to stumble or

slump, her head tilting to one side. Her companion

grasped her more tightly. I took a step back, but I was

not fast enough: the man had looked up and seen me. It

was Thomas Brignell, the assistant clerk. His face

instantly turned beet red. I took another step back so

that I could no longer see the gardens at all. Poor

Brignell, I thought; given his reluctance to stand up

and speak in public, I could well imagine how

painfully embarrassed he must be to be caught

canoodling.

Lazzari continued with his account: “When I

returned with a master key, I knocked again, to make

sure I was not about to intrude upon the young lady’s

privacy, and still she did not open the door! So I

unlocked it myself . . . and this is what I found!”

“Did Jennie Hobbs specifically request a room on

the fourth floor?” I asked.

“No, she did not. I assisted her myself, since my

dear trusty clerk John Goode was otherwise

occupied. Miss Hobbs said, “Put me in any room, but

quickly
! Quickly, I beg of you.”

“Was any sort of note left at the front desk to

announce the fourth murder?” asked Poirot.

“No. This time, there was not the note,” said

Lazzari.

“Were any food or beverages served to the room,

or requested?”

“No. None.”

“You have checked with everybody who works in

the hotel?”

“Every single person, yes. Monsieur Poirot, we

have looked everywhere . . .”

“Signor, a few moments ago you described Jennie

Hobbs as a young lady. How old was she, would you

say?”

“Oh . . . I must beg your pardon. No, she was not

young. But she was not old.”

“Was she, perhaps, thirty?” Poirot asked.

“I believe she might have been forty, but a

woman’s age is a difficult thing to estimate.”

Poirot nodded. “A brown hat and a pale brown

coat. Fair hair. Panic and distress, and an age that

might be forty. The Jennie Hobbs you describe sounds

like the Jennie Hobbs I encountered at Pleasant’s

Coffee House last Thursday evening. But can we say

for certain that it was she? Two sightings by two

different people . . .” Suddenly, he fell silent though

his mouth continued to move.

“Poirot?” I said.

He had eyes—intensely green eyes, at that precise

moment—only for Lazzari. “Signor, I must speak to

that most observant waiter again, Mr. Rafal Bobak.

And Thomas Brignell, and John Goode. In fact, I must

speak to
every single member
of your staff
as soon as

possible and ask how many times they each saw

Harriet Sippel, Richard Negus and Ida Gransbury—