The Monogram Murders (46 page)

“Yes, she is,” said Jennie. “I stabbed her in the

heart. Right in the heart.”

If Murder Began with a D

I LEARNED THAT DAY that I am not afraid of death. It is

a state that contains no energy; it exerts no force. I see

dead bodies in the course of my work, and it has

never bothered me unduly. No, the thing I dread above

all else is
proximity to death in the living
: the sound

of Jennie Hobbs’s voice when the desire to kill has

consumed her; the state of mind of a murderer who

would, with cold calculation, put three monogrammed

cufflinks in his victims’ mouths and take the trouble to

lay them out: straightening their limbs and their

fingers, placing their lifeless hands palms downward

on the floor.

“Hold his hand, Edward.”

How can the living hold the hands of the dying and

not fear being pulled toward death themselves?

If I had my way, no person, while alive and vital,

would have any involvement with death at all. I

accept that this is an unrealistic hope.

After she had stabbed Nancy, I did not wish to be

near Jennie Hobbs. I was not curious to learn why she

had done it; I simply wanted to go home, sit by one of

Blanche Unsworth’s roaring fires, work on my

crossword puzzle and forget all about the Bloxham

Hotel Murders or Monogram Murders or whatever

anybody wanted to call them.

Poirot, however, had enough curiosity for both of

us, and his will was stronger than mine. He insisted

that I stay. This was my case, he said—I had to tie it

up neatly. He made a gesture with his hands that

suggested meticulous wrapping, as if a murder

investigation were a parcel.

So it was that several hours later, he and I were

seated in a small, square room at Scotland Yard, with

Jennie Hobbs across the table from us. Samuel Kidd

had also been arrested and was being questioned by

Stanley Beer. I would have given anything to tackle

Kidd instead, who was a crook and a rotten egg for

sure, but in whose voice I had never heard the

extinction of all hope.

On the subject of voices, I was surprised by the

gentleness of Poirot’s as he spoke. “Why did you do

it, mademoiselle? Why kill Nancy Ducane, when the

two of you have been friends and allies for so long?”

“Nancy and Patrick were lovers in every sense of

the word. I did not know that until I heard her say so

today. I always thought she and I were the same: we

both loved Patrick, but knew we could not be with

him in that way—
had not
been with him in that way.

All these years, I have believed that their love was

chaste, but that was a lie. If Nancy had really loved

Patrick, she would not have made an adulterer of him

and sullied his moral character.”

Jennie wiped away a tear. “I believe I did her a

favor. You heard her express the desire to be reunited

with Patrick. I helped her with that, didn’t I?”

“Catchpool,” said Poirot. “Do you recall that I

said to you, after we found the blood in the Room 402

of the Bloxham Hotel, that it was too late for me to

save Mademoiselle Jennie?”

“Yes.”

“You thought I meant that she was dead, but you

misunderstood me. You see, I knew even then that

Jennie was beyond help. She had already done things

so terrible that her own death was guaranteed, I

feared. That was my meaning.”

“In every way that counts, I have been dead since

Patrick died,” Jennie said in that same tone of

unending hopelessness.

I knew there was only one way that I could get

through this ordeal, and that was by concentrating all

my attention on questions of logic. Had Poirot solved

the puzzle? He seemed to think he had, but I was still

in the dark. Who, for instance, had killed Harriet

Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus, and why

had they done so? I asked these questions of Poirot.

“Ah,” he said, smiling fondly, as if I had reminded

him of a joke we had once shared. “I see your

dilemma,
mon ami.
You listen to Poirot declaim at

great length and then, a few minutes before the

conclusion, there is the interruption of another murder,

and you do not, after all, hear the answers that you

have been waiting for.
Dommage.
”

“Please tell me at once, and let the
dommage
end

here,” I said as forcefully as I could.

“It is quite simple. Jennie Hobbs and Nancy

Ducane, with the help of Samuel Kidd, conspired to

murder Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard

Negus. However, while collaborating with Nancy,

Jennie
pretended to be part of a quite different

conspiracy
. She allowed Richard Negus to believe

that
he
was the one with whom she conspired.”

“That does not sound ‘quite simple’ to me,” I said.

“It sounds inordinately complicated.”

“No, no, my friend.
Vraiment,
it is not at all. You

are having trouble reconciling the different versions

of the story that you have heard, but you must forget

all that Jennie told us when we visited her at Samuel

Kidd’s house—banish it from your mind completely.

It was a lie from start to finish, though I do not doubt

that it contained some elements of veracity. The best

lies always do. In a moment, Jennie will tell us the

whole truth, now that she has nothing to lose, but first,

my friend, I must pay you the compliment that you

deserve. It was
you,
in the end, who helped me to see

clearly with your suggestion in the graveyard of Holy

Saints Church.”

Poirot turned to Jennie. He said, “The lie you told

to Harriet Sippel: that Patrick Ive took money from

parishioners and, in return, conveyed to them

messages from their dead loved ones; that Nancy

Ducane had visited him in the vicarage at night for

that reason—in the hope of communicating with her

deceased husband, William. Ah, how often has Poirot

heard about this terrible, wicked lie? Many, many

times. You yourself admitted to us the other day, Miss

Hobbs, that you told the lie in a moment of weakness,

inspired by jealousy. But this was not the truth!

“Standing by Patrick and Frances Ive’s desecrated

grave, Catchpool said to me, ‘What if Jennie Hobbs

lied about Patrick Ive not to hurt him but to help him?’

Catchpool had realized the significance of something

that I had taken for granted—a fact that had never

been in dispute, and so I had failed to examine it:

Harriet Sippel’s passionate love for her late

husband, George, who died tragically young.
Had

Poirot not been told how much Harriet had loved

George? Or how the death of George had turned

Harriet from a happy, warm-hearted woman into a

bitter, spiteful monster? One can hardly imagine a

loss so terrible, so devastating, that it extinguishes all

joy and destroys all that is good in a person.
Oui,

bien sûr,
I knew that Harriet Sippel had suffered such

a loss. I knew it so surely that I thought no further

about it!

“I knew, also, that Jennie Hobbs loved Patrick Ive

enough to abandon Samuel Kidd, her fiancé, in order

to remain in the service of Reverend Ive and his wife.

This is a very self-sacrificing love: content to serve,

and receive little in return. Yet the story told to us by

both Jennie and Nancy offered Jennie’s jealousy as

her reason for telling the terrible lie that she told—

jealousy of Patrick’s love for Nancy. But this cannot

be true! It is not consistent! We must think not only of

the physical facts but of the psychological. Jennie did

nothing to punish Patrick Ive for his marriage to

Frances. She accepted with good grace that he

belonged to another woman. She continued as his

loyal servant and was a great help to him and his wife

at the vicarage, and they, in turn, were devoted to her.

Why then all of a sudden, after many years of self-

sacrificing love and service, would Patrick Ive’s love

for Nancy Ducane inspire Jennie to slander him, and

to set in motion a chain of events that would destroy

him? The answer is that it would not, and
did
not.

“It was not the eruption of envy and longing locked

inside for so long that prompted Jennie to tell her lie.

It was something altogether different. You were trying

—were you not, Miss Hobbs?—to help the man you

loved. To save him, even. As soon as I heard the

theory of my clever friend Catchpool, I knew it was

the truth. It was so obvious, and Poirot, he had been

imbécile
not to see!”

Jennie looked at me. “What theory?” she asked.

I opened my mouth to answer, but Poirot was too

quick for me. “When Harriet Sippel told you she had

seen Nancy Ducane visiting the vicarage late at night,

you were straight away alert to the danger. You knew

about these trysts—how could you not, when you

lived at the vicarage—and you were anxious to

protect Patrick Ive’s good name. How could this be

achieved? Harriet Sippel, once she had sniffed out a

scandal, would relish the opportunity to bring public

shame to a sinner. How could you explain the

presence of Nancy Ducane at the vicarage on nights

when Frances Ive was
not
there, except with the

truth? What other story would pass the muster? And

then, as if by magic, when you had almost given up

hope, you thought of something that might work. You

decided to use temptation and false hope to eliminate

the threat that Harriet represented.”

Jennie stared blankly ahead. She said nothing.

“Harriet Sippel and Nancy Ducane had something

in common,” Poirot went on. “They had both lost their

husbands to early tragic death. You told Harriet that,

with the help of Patrick Ive, Nancy had been able to

communicate with the deceased William Ducane—

that money had changed hands. Of course, it would

have to be kept secret from the Church and from

everybody in the village, but you suggested to Harriet

that, if she so wished, Patrick would be able to do for

her what he was doing for Nancy. She and George

could be . . . well, if not together again then at least

there could be communication of a kind between

them. Tell me, how did Harriet respond when you

said this to her?”

A long silence followed. Then Jennie said, “She

was foaming at the mouth for it to happen as soon as

possible. She would pay any price, she said, to be

able to speak to George again. You cannot imagine

how much she loved that man, Monsieur Poirot.

Watching her face as I spoke . . . it was like seeing a

dead woman come back to life. I tried to explain it all

to Patrick: that there had been a problem, but I had

solved it. I made the offer to Harriet without asking

him first, you see. Oh, I think I knew in my heart that

Patrick would never consent to it, but I was

desperate! I didn’t want to give him the chance to

forbid me. Can you understand that?”

“
Oui, mademoiselle.
”

“I hoped I would be able to persuade him to agree.

He was a principled man, but I knew he would want