The Monogram Murders (7 page)

bodies of Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard

Negus had been arranged with meticulous care—or so

it seemed to me. Their killer had ministered to them

after their deaths, which made it all the more chilling

that he had murdered them in cold blood.

No sooner had I had this thought than I told myself

I was quite wrong. It was not ministration that had

taken place here; far from it. I was confusing the

present and the past, mixing up this business at the

Bloxham with my unhappiest childhood memories. I

ordered myself to think only about what was here in

front of me, and nothing else. I tried to see it all

through Poirot’s eyes, without the distortion of my

own experience.

Each of the murder victims lay between a wing-

backed armchair and a small table. On the three tables

were two teacups with saucers (Harriet Sippel’s and

Ida Gransbury’s) and one sherry glass (Richard

Negus’s). In Ida Gransbury’s room, 317, there was a

tray on the larger table by the window, loaded with

empty plates and one more teacup and saucer. This

cup was also empty. There was nothing on the plates

but crumbs.

“Aha,” said Poirot. “So in this room we have two

teacups and many plates. Miss Ida Gransbury had

company for her evening meal, most certainly.

Perhaps she had the murderer’s company. But why is

the tray still here, when the trays have been removed

from the rooms of Harriet Sippel and Richard

Negus?”

“They might not have ordered food,” I said.

“Maybe they only wanted drinks—the tea and the

sherry—and no trays were left in their rooms in the

first place. Ida Gransbury also brought twice as many

clothes with her as the other two.” I gestured toward

the cupboard, which contained an impressive array of

dresses. “Have a look in there—there isn’t room to

squeeze in even one petticoat because of the number

of garments she brought with her. She wanted to be

certain of looking her best, that’s for sure.”

“You are right,” said Poirot. “Lazzari said that they

all ordered dinner, but we will check exactly what

was ordered to each room. Poirot, he would not make

the mistake of the assumption if it were not for Jennie

weighing on his mind—Jennie, whose whereabouts he

does not know! Jennie, who is more or less the same

age as the three we have here—between forty and

forty-five, I think.”

I turned away while Poirot did whatever he did

with the mouths and the cufflinks. While he conducted

his forays and emitted various exclamations, I stared

into fireplaces and out of windows, avoided thinking

about hands that would never again be held, and

pondered my crossword puzzle and where I might be

going wrong. For some weeks I had been trying to

compose one that was good enough to be sent to a

newspaper to be considered for publication, but I

wasn’t having much success.

After we had looked at all three rooms, Poirot

insisted that we return to the one on the second floor

—Richard Negus’s, number 238. Would I find it any

easier to enter these rooms, I wondered, the more I

did it? So far the answer was no. Walking once again

into Negus’s hotel room felt like forcing my heart to

climb the most perilous mountain, in the certain

knowledge that it would be left stranded as soon as it

reached the top.

Poirot—unaware of my distress, which I

concealed effectively, I hope—stood in the middle of

the room and said, “
Bon.
This is the one that is most

different from the others,
n’est-ce pas
? Ida Gransbury

has the tray and the additional teacup in her room, it is

true, but here there is the sherry glass instead of the

teacup, and here we have one window open to its full

capacity, while in the other two rooms all the

windows are closed. Mr. Negus’s room is intolerably

cold.”

“This is how it was when Monsieur Lazzari

walked in and found Negus dead,” I said. “Nothing’s

been altered in any way.”

Poirot walked over to the open window. “Here is

Monsieur Lazzari’s wonderful view that he offered to

show me—of the hotel’s gardens. Both Harriet Sippel

and Ida Gransbury had rooms on the other side of the

hotel, with views of the ‘splendid London.’ Do you

see these trees, Catchpool?”

I told him that I did, wondering if he had me down

as a colossal idiot. How could I fail to see trees that

were directly outside the window?

“Another difference here is the position of the

cufflink,” said Poirot. “Did you notice that? In Harriet

Sippel’s and Ida Gransbury’s mouths, the cufflink is

slightly protruding between the lips. Whereas Richard

Negus has the cufflink much farther back, almost at the

entrance to the throat.”

I opened my mouth to object, then changed my

mind, but it was too late. Poirot had seen the argument

in my eyes. “What is it?” he asked.

“I think you’re being a touch pedantic,” I said. “All

three victims have monogrammed cufflinks in their

mouths—the same initials on each one, PIJ. That’s

something they have in common. It isn’t a difference.

No matter which of their teeth the cufflink happens to

be next to.”

“But it is a very big difference! The lips, the

entrance to the throat—these are not the same place,

not at all.” Poirot walked over so that he was standing

right in front of me. “Catchpool, please remember

what I am about to tell you. When three murders are

almost identical, the smallest divergent details are of

the utmost importance.”

Was I supposed to remember these wise words

even if I disagreed with them? Poirot needn’t have

worried. I remember nearly every word he has

spoken in my presence, and the ones that infuriated me

most are the ones I remember best of all.

“All three cufflinks were in the mouths of the

victims,” I repeated with determined obstinacy.

“That’s good enough for me.”

“This I see,” said Poirot with an air of dejection.

“Good enough for you, and good enough also for your

hundred people that you might ask, and also, I have no

doubt, for your bosses at Scotland Yard. But not good

enough for Hercule Poirot!”

I had to remind myself that he was talking about

definitions of similarity and difference, and not about

me personally.

“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

toward 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

mustache. “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

toward 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.”

“So the 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