The Monogram Murders (5 page)

forgive himself!”

I was alarmed to hear this. I felt a pressing sense

of responsibility for catching this killer as it was, and

I did not wish also to be responsible for Poirot’s

never forgiving himself. Did he really look at me and

see a man capable of apprehending a murderer with a

mind of this sort—a mind that would think to place

monogrammed cufflinks in the mouths of the dead? I

have always been a straightforward person and I

work best at straightforward things.

“I think you must go back to the hotel,” said Poirot.

He meant immediately.

I shuddered at the memory of those three rooms.

“First thing tomorrow will be soon enough,” I said,

studiously avoiding his gleaming eyes. “I should tell

you, I’m not going to make a fool of myself by

bringing up this Jennie person. It would only confuse

everybody. You have come up with a possible

meaning for what she said, and I have come up with

another. Yours is the more interesting, but mine is

twenty times more likely to be correct.”

“It is not” came the contradiction.

“We shall have to disagree about it,” I said firmly.

“If we were to ask a hundred people, they would all

agree with me and not with you, I suspect.”

“I too suspect this.” Poirot sighed. “Allow me to

convince you if I can. A few moments ago, you said to

me about the murders at the hotel, ‘Each of the victims

had something in
his or her
mouth,’ did you not?”

I agreed that I had.

“You did not say, ‘in
their
mouth,’ you said, ‘his or

her’—because you are an educated man and you

speak in the singular and not the plural: ‘his or her,’ to

go with ‘each’—it is grammatically correct.

Mademoiselle Jennie, she is a housemaid, but she has

the speech of an educated person and the vocabulary

also. She used the word ‘inevitable’ when talking

about her death, her murder. And then she said to me,

‘So you see, there is no help to be had,
and even if

there were, I should not deserve it.
’ She is a woman

who uses the English language as it should be used.

Therefore,
mon ami
. . .
” Poirot was up on his feet

again. “Therefore! If you are correct and Jennie meant

to say, ‘Please let no one open their mouths’ in the

sense of ‘Please let no one give information to the

police,’ why did she not say, ‘Please let no one open

his or her mouth?’ The word ‘no one’ requires the

singular, not the plural!”

I stared up at him with an ache in my neck, too

bewildered and weary to respond. Hadn’t he told me

himself that Jennie was in a frightful panic? In my

experience, people who are stricken with terror tend

not to fuss about grammar.

I had always thought of Poirot as among the most

intelligent of men, but perhaps I had been wrong. If

this was the sort of nonsense he was inclined to spout,

then no wonder he had judged it time to submit his

mind to a rest cure.

“Naturally, you will now tell me that Jennie was

distressed and was therefore not careful about her

speech,” Poirot went on. “However, she spoke with

perfect correctness apart from this one instance—

unless I am right and you are wrong, in which case

Jennie said nothing that was grammatically incorrect

at all!”

He clapped his hands together and seemed so

gratified by his announcement that I was moved to say

rather sharply, “That’s marvelous, Poirot. A man and

two women are murdered, and it’s my job to sort it

out, but I’m jolly pleased that Jennie, whoever she is,

didn’t slip up in her use of the English language.”

“And Poirot also, he is
jolly
pleased,
” said my

hard-to-discourage friend, “because a little progress

has been made, a little discovery.
Non.
” His smile

vanished and his expression became more serious.

“Mademoiselle Jennie did not make the error of

grammar. The meaning she intended was, ‘Please let

no one open the mouths of the three murdered people

—
their
mouths.’ ”

“If you insist,” I muttered.

“Tomorrow after breakfast you will return to the

Bloxham Hotel,” said Poirot. “I will join you there

later, after I look for Jennie.”

“You?” I said, somewhat perturbed. Words of

protest formed in my head, but I knew they would

never reach Poirot’s ears. Famous detective or not,

his ideas about the case had so far been, frankly,

ridiculous, but if he was offering his company, I

wouldn’t turn it down. He was very sure of himself

and I was not—that was what it boiled down to. I

already felt bolstered by the interest he was taking.

“
Oui,
” he said. “Three murders have been

committed that share an extremely unusual feature: the

monogrammed cufflink in the mouth. Most assuredly I

will go to the Bloxham Hotel.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be avoiding stimulation

and resting your brain?” I asked.

“
Oui. Précisément.”
Poirot glared at me. “It is not

restful for me to sit in this chair all day and think of

you omitting to mention to anybody my meeting with

Mademoiselle Jennie, a detail of the utmost

importance! It is not restful for me to consider that

Jennie runs around London giving her murderer every

opportunity to kill her and put his fourth cufflink in

her mouth.”

Poirot leaned forward in his chair. “Please tell me

that this at least has struck you: that cufflinks come in

pairs
?
You have three in the mouths of the dead at the

Bloxham Hotel. Where is the fourth, if not in the

pocket of the killer, waiting to go into the mouth of

Mademoiselle Jennie after her murder?”

I’m afraid I laughed. “Poirot, that’s just plain silly.

Yes, cufflinks normally come in pairs but really, it’s

quite simple: he wanted to kill three people, so he

only used three cufflinks. You can’t use the notion of

some dreamed-up fourth cufflink to prove anything—

certainly not to link the hotel murders to this Jennie

woman.”

Poirot’s face had taken on a stubborn cast. “When

you are a killer who decides to use cufflinks in this

way,
mon ami,
you invite the thought of the pairs. It is

the killer who has put before us the notion of the

fourth cufflink and the fourth victim, not Hercule

Poirot!”

“But . . . then how do we know he doesn’t have six

victims in mind, or eight? Who is to say that the

pocket of this killer doesn’t contain
five
more

cufflinks with the monogram PIJ?”

To my amazement, Poirot nodded and said, “You

make a good point.”

“No, Poirot, it’s not a good point,” I said

despondently. “I conjured it up out of nowhere. You

might enjoy my flights of fancy, but I can promise you

my bosses at Scotland Yard won’t.”

“Your bosses, they do not like you to consider

what is possible? No, of course they do not,” Poirot

answered himself. “And they are the people in charge

of catching this murderer. They, and you.
Bon.
This is

why Hercule Poirot must go tomorrow to the Bloxham

Hotel.”

At the Bloxham Hotel

THE FOLLOWING MORNING AT the Bloxham, I could not

help but feel unsettled, knowing that Poirot might

arrive at any moment to tell us simple police folk how

foolishly we were approaching the investigation of

our three murders. I was the only one who knew he

was coming, which set me rather on edge. His

presence would be my responsibility, and I was

afraid that he might demoralize the troops. If truth be

told, I feared that he might demoralize me. In the

optimistic light of an unusually bright February day,

and after a surprisingly satisfactory night’s sleep, I

couldn’t understand why I hadn’t forbidden him from

coming anywhere near the Bloxham.

I didn’t suppose it mattered, however; he would

not have listened to me if I had.

I was in the hotel’s opulent lobby, talking to a Mr.

Luca Lazzari, the hotel’s manager, when Poirot

arrived. Lazzari was a friendly, helpful and startlingly

enthusiastic man with black curly hair, a musical way

of speaking, and a mustache that was in no way the

equal of Poirot’s. Lazzari seemed determined that I

and my fellow policemen should enjoy our time at the

Bloxham every bit as much as the paying guests did—

those that did not end up getting murdered, that is.

I introduced him to Poirot, who nodded curtly. He

seemed out of sorts and I soon learned why. “I did not

find Jennie,” he said. “Half the morning I waited at

the coffee house! But she did not come.”

“Hardly ‘half the morning,’ Poirot,” I said, for he

was prone to exaggeration.

“Mademoiselle Fee also was not there. The other

waitresses, they were able to tell me nothing.”

“Bad luck,” I said, unsurprised by the news. I

hadn’t for a moment imagined that Jennie might revisit

the coffee house, and I felt guilty. I should perhaps

have tried harder to make Poirot see sense: she had

run away from him and from Pleasant’s, having

declared that confiding in him had been a mistake.

Why on earth would she return the following day and

allow him to take charge of protecting her?

“So!” Poirot looked at me expectantly. “What do

you have to tell me?”

“I too am here to provide the information you

need,” said Lazzari, beaming. “Luca Lazzari, at your

disposal. Have you visited the Bloxham Hotel before,

Monsieur Poirot?”

“
Non.
”

“Is it not superb? Like a palace of the belle

époque, no? Majestic! I hope you notice and admire

the artistic masterpieces that are all around us!”

“
Oui.
It is superior to the lodging house of Mrs.

Blanche Unsworth, though that house has the better

view from the window,” Poirot said briskly. His glum

spirits had certainly dug themselves in.

“Ah, the views from my charming hotel!” Lazzari

clasped his hands together in delight. “From the

rooms facing the hotel gardens there are sights of

great beauty, and on the other side there is splendid

London—another exquisite scene! Later I will show

you.”

“I would prefer to be shown the three rooms in

which murders have taken place,” Poirot told him.

That put a momentary crimp in Lazzari’s smile.

“Monsieur Poirot, you may rest assured that this

terrible crime—three murders on one night, it is

scarcely credible to me!—that this will
never
happen

again at the world-renowned Bloxham Hotel.”

Poirot and I exchanged a look. The point was not

so much preventing it from happening again but

dealing with the fact that it had happened on this

occasion.

I decided I had better take the reins and not allow

Lazzari the chance to say too much more. Poirot’s

mustache was already twitching with suppressed

rage.

“The victims’ names are Mrs. Harriet Sippel, Miss

Ida Gransbury and Mr. Richard Negus,” I told Poirot.

“All three were guests in the hotel and each one was

the sole occupant of his or her room.”

“Each one?
His or her
room, you say?” Poirot