Nancy Ducane
I DIDN’T KNOW, OF course, that Poirot was already aware of the probable involvement of Nancy Ducane in our three murders. As I made my escape from Great Holling by train, Poirot was busy making arrangements, with the help of Scotland Yard, to visit Mrs. Ducane in her London home.
This he managed to do later that same day, with Constable Stanley Beer as his escort. A young maid in a starched apron answered the door of the large white stucco townhouse in Belgravia. Poirot was expecting to be shown to a tasteful drawing room where he would wait to be seen, and he was surprised to find Nancy Ducane herself standing in the hall at the foot of the stairs.
“Monsieur Poirot? Welcome. I see you have brought a policeman with you. This all seems rather unusual, I must say.”
Stanley Beer made a strange noise in his throat and turned beet red. Nancy Ducane was an unusually beautiful woman with a peaches-and-cream complexion, lustrous dark hair and deep blue eyes with long lashes. She looked to be somewhere in the region of forty and was stylishly dressed in peacock blues and deep greens. For once in his life, Poirot was not the most elegantly attired person present.
“It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Madame Ducane.” He bowed. “I am in awe of your artistic abilities. I have been fortunate enough to see one or two of your paintings in exhibitions in recent years. You have a talent most rare.”
“Thank you. That is kind of you. Now, if you will give your overcoats and hats to Tabitha here, we can find somewhere comfortable to sit and talk. Would you care for some tea or coffee?”
“Non, merci.”
“Very well. Follow me.”
They proceeded to a small sitting room that I was pleased only to hear about later and not to have to sit in myself, since Poirot reported it as being full of portraits. All those watchful eyes hanging on the wall . . .
Poirot asked if all of the paintings were by Nancy Ducane.
“Oh, no,” she said. “Very few of these are mine. I buy as many as I sell, which is as it should be, I think. Art is my passion.”
“It is one of mine also,” Poirot told her.
“Looking at nothing but one’s own pictures would be unbearably lonely. I always think when I hang a painting by another artist that it’s like having a good friend on my wall.”
“D’accord. You put it succinctly, madame.”
Once they were all seated, Nancy said, “May I get straight to the point and ask what has brought you here? You said on the telephone that you would like to search my house. You are welcome to do so, but why is there a need?”
“You might have read in the newspapers, madame, that three guests of the Bloxham Hotel were murdered last Thursday night.”
“At the Bloxham?” Nancy laughed. Then her face fell. “Oh, heavens—you’re serious, aren’t you? Three? Are you sure? The Bloxham’s a super place, I’ve always thought. I can’t imagine murders happening there.”
“So you know the hotel?”
“Oh yes. I’m often there for afternoon tea. Lazzari, the manager—he’s a darling. They’re famous for their scones, you know—the best in London. I’m sorry . . .” She broke off. “I don’t mean to babble about scones if three people have really been murdered. That’s terrible. I don’t see what it has to do with me, though.”
“Then you have not read about these deaths in the newspapers?” Poirot asked.
“No.” Nancy Ducane’s mouth set in a line. “I don’t read newspapers and I won’t have them in the house. They are full of misery. I avoid misery if I can.”
“So you do not know the names of the three murder victims?”
“No. Nor do I wish to.” Nancy shuddered.
“I am afraid I must tell you whether you wish it or not. Their names were Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus.”
“Oh, no, no. Oh, Monsieur Poirot!” Nancy pressed her hand against her mouth. She was unable to speak for almost a full minute. Eventually she said, “This is not some sort of joke, is it? Please say that it is.”
“It is not a joke. I am very sorry, madame. I have distressed you.”
“Hearing those names has distressed me. Whether they’re dead or alive, it doesn’t matter to me, as long as I don’t have to think about them. You see, one tries to avoid upsetting things, but one doesn’t always succeed, and . . . I am more averse to unhappiness than most people.”
“You have suffered very much in your life?”
“I do not wish to discuss my private affairs.” Nancy turned away.
It would not have done Poirot any good whatever to state that his wishes were the precise opposite of hers in this respect. Nothing fascinated him more than the private passions of strangers he would probably never meet again.
Instead he said, “Then let us return to the business of the police investigation that brings me here. You are familiar with the names of the three murder victims?”
Nancy nodded. “I used to live in a village called Great Holling, in the Culver Valley. You won’t know it. Nobody does. Harriet, Ida and Richard were neighbors of mine. I haven’t seen or heard tell of them for years. Not since 1913, when I moved to London. Have they really been murdered?”
“Oui, madame.”
“At the Bloxham Hotel? But what were they doing there? Why had they come to London?”
“That is one of the many questions for which I do not yet have an answer,” Poirot told her.
“It makes no sense, them getting killed.” Nancy sprang up from her chair and started to walk back and forth between the door and the far wall. “The only person who would do it didn’t do it!”
“Who is that person?”
“Oh, pay no attention to me.” Nancy returned to her chair and sat down again. “I’m sorry. Your news has shocked me, as you see. I can’t help you. And . . . I don’t mean to be rude, but I think I should like you to leave now.”
“Were you referring to yourself, madame, as the only person who would commit these three murders? And yet you did not?”
“I did not . . .” Nancy said slowly, her eyes flitting around the room. “Ah, but now I see what you’re about. You’ve heard some story or other and you think I killed them. And that is why you wish to search my house. Well, I didn’t murder anybody. Search to your heart’s content, Monsieur Poirot. Ask Tabitha to take you through every room—there are so many, you’ll miss one if you don’t have her as a guide.”
“Thank you, madame.”
“You will find nothing incriminating because there’s nothing to find. I wish you would leave! I can’t tell you how you have upset me.”
Stanley Beer rose to his feet. “I’ll make a start,” he said. “Thank you for your cooperation, Mrs. Ducane.” He left the room, closing the door behind him.
“You’re clever, aren’t you?” Nancy Ducane said to Poirot as if this counted as a point against him. “As clever as people say you are. I can tell by your eyes.”
“I am thought to have a superior mind, oui.”
“How proud you sound. In my opinion, a superior mind counts for nothing unless accompanied by a superior heart.”
“Naturellement. As lovers of great art, we must believe this. Art speaks to the heart and soul more than to the mind.”
“I agree,” said Nancy quietly. “You know, Monsieur Poirot, your eyes . . . they are more than clever. They’re wise. They go back a long way. Oh, you won’t know what I mean by that, but it’s true. They would be wonderful in a painting, though I can never paint you, not now that you have brought those three dreaded names into my home.”
“That is unfortunate.”
“I blame you,” Nancy said bluntly. She clasped her hands together. “Oh, I suppose I might as well tell you: I was talking about myself before. I am the person who would murder Harriet, Ida and Richard if anyone did, but, as you heard me say, I did not. So I don’t understand what can have happened.”
“You disliked them?”
“Loathed them. Wished them dead many a time. Oh, my!” Nancy clapped her hands to her cheeks suddenly. “Are they really dead? I suppose I should feel thrilled, or relieved. I want to be happy about it, but I can’t be happy while thinking about Harriet, Richard and Ida. Isn’t that a fine irony?”
“Why did you dislike them so?”
“I would rather not discuss it.”
“Madame, I would not ask if I did not judge it necessary.”
“Nevertheless, I am unwilling to answer.”
Poirot sighed. “Where were you on Thursday evening of last week, between a quarter past seven and eight o’clock?”
Nancy frowned. “I haven’t the faintest idea. I have enough trouble remembering what I need to do this week. Oh, wait. Thursday, of course. I was across the road, at my friend Louisa’s house. Louisa Wallace. I had finished my portrait of her, so I took it round there and stayed for dinner. I think I was there from about six until nearly ten. I might have even stayed longer if Louisa’s husband St. John had not been there too. He’s an appalling snob. Louisa is such a darling, she’s incapable of recognizing fault in anyone—you must know the type. She likes to believe that St. John and I are desperately fond of one another because we’re both artists, but I can’t abide him. He’s certain that his sort of art is superior to mine, and he takes every opportunity to tell me so. Plants and fish—that’s what he paints. Dreary old leaves and chilly-eyed cods and haddocks!”
“He is a zoological and botanical artist?”
“I am not interested in any painter who never paints a human face,” said Nancy flatly. “I’m sorry, but there it is. St. John insists that you can’t paint a face without telling a story, and once you start to impose a story, you inevitably distort the visual data, or some such nonsense! What is wrong with telling a story, for heaven’s sake?”
“Will St. John Wallace tell me the same story that you have told me about last Thursday evening?” asked Poirot. “Will he confirm that you were in his house between six and nearly ten o’clock?”
“Of course. This is absurd, Monsieur Poirot. You’re asking me all the questions you would ask a murderer, and I’m not one. Who has told you that these murders must have been committed by me?”
“You were seen running from the Bloxham Hotel in a state of agitation shortly after eight o’clock. As you ran, you dropped two keys on the ground. You bent to pick them up, then ran away. The witness who saw you, he recognized your face from the newspapers and identified the famous artist Nancy Ducane.”
“That is simply impossible. Your witness is mistaken. Ask St. John and Louisa Wallace.”
“I shall, madame. Bon, now I have another question for you: are the initials PIJ familiar to you, or perhaps PJI? It could be somebody else from Great Holling.”
All the color drained from Nancy’s face. “Yes,” she whispered. “Patrick James Ive. He was the vicar.”
“Ah! This vicar, he died tragically, did he not? His wife too?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to them?”
“I won’t talk about it. I won’t!”
“It is of the utmost importance. I must implore you to tell me.”
“I shan’t!” cried Nancy. “I couldn’t if I tried. You don’t understand. I haven’t spoken of it for so long, I . . .” Her mouth opened and closed for a few seconds, while no words came out. Then her face twisted in pain. “What happened to Harriet, Ida and Richard?” she asked. “How were they killed?”
“With poison.”
“Oh, how awful! But fitting.”
“How so, madame? Did Patrick Ive and his wife die as a result of poisoning?”
“I won’t talk about them, I tell you!”
“Did you also know a Jennie in Great Holling?”
Nancy gasped and put her hand to her throat. “Jennie Hobbs. I have nothing to say about her, nothing whatsoever. Do not ask me another question!” She blinked away tears. “Why do people have to be so cruel, Monsieur Poirot? Do you understand it? No, don’t answer! Let us talk about something else, something uplifting. We must talk about art since we both love it.” Nancy stood and walked over to a large portrait that hung to the left of the window. It was of a man with unruly black hair, a wide mouth and a cleft chin. He was smiling. There was a suggestion of laughter.
“My father,” said Nancy. “Albinus Johnson. You might know the name.”
“It is familiar, though I cannot immediately place it,” said Poirot.
“He died two years ago. I last saw him when I was nineteen. I am now forty-two.”
“Please accept my condolences.”
“I didn’t paint it. I don’t know who did, or when. It isn’t signed or dated, so I don’t think much of the artist, whoever he is—an amateur—but . . . it’s my father smiling, and that’s why it’s up on the wall. If he had smiled more in real life . . .” Nancy broke off and turned to face Poirot. “You see?” she said. “St. John Wallace is wrong! It is the job of art to replace unhappy true stories with happier inventions.”
There was a loud knock at the door, followed by the reappearance of Constable Stanley Beer. Poirot knew what was coming from the way that Beer looked only at him and avoided Nancy’s eye. “I’ve found something, sir.”
“What is it?”
“Two keys. They were in a coat pocket, a dark blue coat with fur cuffs. The maid tells me it belongs to Mrs. Ducane.”
“Which two keys?” asked Nancy. “Let me see them. I don’t keep keys in coat pockets, ever. I have a drawer for them.”
Beer still didn’t look at her. Instead, he approached Poirot’s chair. When he was standing beside him, he opened his closed fist.
“What has he got there?” said Nancy impatiently.
“Two keys with room numbers engraved upon them, belonging to the Bloxham Hotel,” said Poirot in a solemn voice. “Room 121 and Room 317.”
“Should those numbers mean something to me?” Nancy asked.
“Two of the three murders were committed in those rooms, madame: 121 and 317. The witness who saw you run from the Bloxham Hotel on the night of the murders, he said that the two keys he saw you drop had numbers on them: one hundred and something, and three hundred and something.”
“Why, what an extraordinary coincidence! Oh, Monsieur Poirot!” Nancy laughed. “Are you sure you’re clever? Can’t you see what’s in front of your nose? Does that enormous mustache of yours impede your view? Someone has taken it upon himself to frame me for murder. It’s almost intriguing! I might have some fun trying to work out who it is—as soon as we’ve agreed I’m not on my way to the gallows.”
“Who has had the opportunity to put keys into your coat pocket between last Thursday and now?” Poirot asked her.
“How should I know? Anyone who passed me in the street, I dare say. I wear that blue coat a lot. You know, it’s ever so slightly irrational.”
“Please explain.”
For a few moments she appeared lost in a reverie. Then she came to and said, “Anyone who disliked Harriet, Ida and Richard enough to kill them . . . well, they would almost certainly be favorably disposed toward me. And yet here they are trying to frame me for murder.”
“Shall I arrest her, sir?” Stanley Beer asked Poirot. “Take her in?”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” said Nancy wearily. “I say ‘frame me for murder’ and you immediately assume you must do it? Are you a policeman or a parrot? If you want to arrest somebody, arrest your witness. What if he’s not only a liar but a murderer? Have you thought of that? You must go across the road at once and hear the truth from St. John and Louisa Wallace. That’s the only way to put a stop to this nonsense.”
Poirot lifted himself out of his chair with some difficulty; it was one of those armchairs that didn’t make it easy for a person of his size and shape. “We will do that précisément,” he said. Then, to Stanley Beer, “No one is to be arrested at the present time, Constable. I do not believe, madame, that you would keep these two keys if you had indeed committed murder in rooms 121 and 317 of the Bloxham Hotel. Why would you not dispose of them?”
“Quite. I would have disposed of them at the first opportunity, wouldn’t I?”
“I shall call upon Mr. and Mrs. Wallace immediately.”
“Actually,” said Nancy, “it’s Lord and Lady Wallace you’ll be calling on. Louisa wouldn’t care, but St. John won’t forgive you if you deprive him of his title.”
NOT LONG AFTERWARD, POIROT was standing by the side of Louisa Wallace as she stared, enraptured, at Nancy Ducane’s portrait of her that hung on the wall of her drawing room. “Isn’t it perfect?” she breathed. “Neither flattering nor insulting. With high color and a round face like mine, there is always a danger I shall end up looking like a farmer’s wife, but I don’t. I don’t look ravishing, but I do look quite nice, I think. St. John used the word ‘voluptuous,’ a word he has never used about me before—but the picture made him think of it.” She laughed. “Isn’t it wonderful that there are people in the world as talented as Nancy?”
Poirot was having trouble concentrating on the painting. Louisa Wallace’s equivalent of Nancy Ducane’s smartly starched maid Tabitha was a clumsy girl named Dorcas who had dropped Poirot’s coat twice so far, and once dropped and stood on his hat.
The Wallace home might have been beautiful under a different regime, but as Poirot found it that day, it left a lot to be desired. Apart from the heavier items of furniture that stood sensibly against walls, everything in the house looked as if it had been blown about by a strong wind before falling in a random and inconvenient place. Poirot couldn’t abide disorder; it prevented him from thinking clearly.
Eventually, having scooped up his coat and trodden-on hat, the maid Dorcas withdrew, and Poirot was left alone with Louisa Wallace. Stanley Beer had stayed at Nancy Ducane’s house to complete his search of the rooms, and His Lordship was not at home; he had apparently set off for the family’s country estate that morning. Poirot had spotted a few “dreary old leaves and chilly-eyed cods and haddocks” on the walls, as Nancy had called them, and he wondered if those pictures were the work of St. John Wallace.
“I’m so sorry about Dorcas,” Louisa said. “She’s very new and quite the most hopeless girl ever to inflict herself upon us, but I won’t admit defeat. It has only been three days. She will learn, with time and patience. If only she wouldn’t worry so! I know that’s what it is: she tells herself that she absolutely mustn’t drop the important gentleman’s hat and coat, and that puts the idea of dropping them into her mind, and then it happens. It’s maddening!”
“Quite so,” Poirot agreed. “Lady Wallace, about last Thursday . . .”
“Oh, yes, that’s where we’d got to—and then I brought you in here to show you the portrait. Yes, Nancy was here that evening.”
“From what time and until what time, madame?”
“I can’t recall precisely. I know we agreed that she would come at six to bring the painting, and I don’t remember noticing that she was late at all. I’m afraid I don’t remember when she left. If I had to guess, I would say ten o’clock or shortly thereafter.”
“And she was here that whole time—that is to say, until she left? She did not, for instance, leave and then return?”
“No.” Louisa Wallace looked puzzled. “She came at six with the picture, and then we were together until she left for good. What is this about?”
“Can you confirm that Mrs. Ducane left here no earlier than half past eight?”
“Oh, gracious, yes. She left much later than that. At half past eight we were still at the table.”
“Who is ‘we?’ ”
“Nancy, St. John and me.”
“Your husband, if I were to speak to him, would confirm this?”
“Yes. I hope you’re not suggesting that I’m not telling you the truth, Monsieur Poirot.”
“No, no. Pas du tout.”
“Good,” said Louisa Wallace decisively. She turned back to the picture of herself on the wall. “Color’s her special talent, you know. Oh, she can capture personality in a face, but her greatest strength is her use of color. Look at the way the light falls on my green dress.”
Poirot saw what she meant. The green seemed brighter one moment, then darker the next. There was not one consistent shade. The light seemed to change as one regarded the picture; such was Nancy Ducane’s skill. The portrait depicted Louisa Wallace sitting in a chair, wearing a green low-necked dress, with a blue jug and bowl set behind her on a wooden table. Poirot walked up and down the room, inspecting the picture from different angles and positions.
“I wanted to pay Nancy her usual rate for a portrait, but she wouldn’t hear of it,” said Louisa Wallace. “I’m so lucky to have such a generous friend. You know, I think my husband is a little jealous of it—the painting, I mean. The whole house is full of his pictures—we’ve barely a free wall left. Only his pictures, until this one arrived. He and Nancy have this silly rivalry between them. I take no notice. They’re both brilliant in their different ways.”
So Nancy Ducane had given the painting to Louisa Wallace as a gift, thought Poirot. Did she really want nothing in return, or did she perhaps hope for an alibi? Some loyal friends would be unable to resist if asked to tell one small, harmless lie after being given such a lavish present. Poirot wondered if he ought to tell Louisa Wallace that he was here in connection with a murder case. He had not yet done so.
He was distracted from his train of thought by the sudden appearance of Dorcas the maid, who bounded into the room with an air of urgency and anxiety. “Excuse me, sir!”
“What is the matter?” Poirot half expected her to say that she had accidentally set fire to his hat and coat.
“Would you like a cup of tea or coffee, sir?”
“This is what you have come to ask me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“There is nothing else? Nothing has happened?”
“No, sir.” Dorcas sounded confused.
“Bon. In that case, yes, please, I will take a coffee. Thank you.”
“Right you are, sir.”
“Did you see that?” Louisa Wallace grumbled as the girl lolloped out of the room. “Can you credit it? I thought she was about to announce that she had to leave at once for her mother’s deathbed! She really is the limit. I should dismiss her without further ado, but even help that’s no help at all is better than none. It’s impossible to find decent girls these days.”
Poirot made appropriate noises of concern. He did not wish to discuss domestic servants. He was far more interested in his own ideas, especially the one that had struck him while Louisa Wallace had been complaining about Dorcas and he had been staring at a blue painted jug and bowl set.
“Madame, if I might take a little more of your time . . . these other pictures here on the walls, they are by your husband?”
“Yes.”
“As you say, he too is an excellent artist. I would be honored, madame, if you would show me around your beautiful house. I would very much like to look at your husband’s paintings. You said they are on every wall?”
“Yes. I’ll happily give you the St. John Wallace art tour, and you will see that I wasn’t exaggerating.” Louisa beamed and clapped her hands together. “What fun! Though I do wish St. John were here—he would be able to tell you so much more about the pictures than I can. Still, I shall do my best. You would be amazed, Monsieur Poirot, by the number of people who come to the house and don’t look at the paintings or ask about them or anything. Dorcas is a case in point. There could be five hundred framed dishcloths hanging on the walls and she wouldn’t notice the difference. Let’s start in the hall, shall we?”
It was lucky, thought Poirot as he made the tour of the house and had many species of spider, plant and fish pointed out to him, that he was an appreciator of art. As far as the rivalry between St. John Wallace and Nancy Ducane went, he knew what he thought about that. Wallace’s pictures were meticulous and worthy, but they made one feel nothing. Nancy Ducane’s was the greater talent. She had encapsulated the essence of Louisa Wallace and made her live on canvas as vividly as she lived in real life. Poirot found himself wanting to look at the portrait again before he left the house, and not only to check that he was not mistaken about the important detail he thought he had noticed.
Dorcas appeared on the upstairs landing. “Your coffee, sir.” Poirot, who had been inside St. John Wallace’s study, stepped forward to take the cup from her hand. She lurched back as if she hadn’t expected him to move toward her, and spilled most of the drink on her white apron. “Oh, dear! I’m sorry, sir, I’m a right old butterfingers. I’ll make you another cup.”
“No, no, please. There is no need.” Poirot seized what was left of his coffee and ingested it in one gulp, before any more of it could be spilled.
“This one is my favorite, I think,” said Louisa Wallace, still in the study. She was pointing at a painting that Poirot couldn’t see. “Blue Bindweed: Solanum Dulcamara. The fourth of August last year, you see? This was my wedding anniversary present from St. John. Thirty years. Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like another cup of coffee, sir?” said Dorcas.
“The fourth of . . . Sacré tonnerre,” Poirot murmured to himself as a feeling of excitement started to grow inside him. He returned to the study and looked at the picture of blue bindweed.
“He has answered that question once, Dorcas. He does not want more coffee.”
“It’s no trouble, ma’am, honest it isn’t. He wanted coffee, and there was nothing left in the cup by the time he got it.”
“If nothing is there, one sees nothing,” mused Poirot cryptically. “One thinks of nothing. To notice a nothing—that is a difficult thing, even for Poirot, until one sees, somewhere else, the thing that should have been there.” He took Dorcas’s hand and kissed it. “My dear young lady, what you have brought to me is more valuable than coffee!”
“Ooh.” Dorcas tilted her head and stared. “Your eyes have gone all funny and green, sir.”
“Whatever can you mean, Monsieur Poirot?” Louisa Wallace asked. “Dorcas, go and get on with something useful.”
“Yes, madam.” The girl hurried away.
“I am indebted both to Dorcas and to you, madame,” said Poirot. “When I arrived here only—what is it?—half an hour ago, I did not see clearly. I saw only confusion and puzzles. Now, I begin to put things together . . . It is very important that I should think without interruption.”
“Oh.” Louisa looked disappointed. “Well, if you need to hurry off—”
“Oh, no, no, you misunderstand me. Pardon, madame. The fault is mine: I did not make myself clear. Of course we must finish the tour of the art. There is much still to explore! After that, I shall depart and do my thinking.”
“Are you sure?” Louisa regarded him with something akin to alarm. “Well, all right, then, if it’s not too much of a bore.” She recommenced her enthusiastic commentary on her husband’s pictures as Poirot and Louisa moved from room to room.
In one of the guest bedrooms, the last upstairs room that they came to, there was a white jug and bowl set with a red, green and white crest on it. There was also a wooden table, and a chair; Poirot recognized both from Nancy Ducane’s painting of Louisa. He said, “Pardon, madame, but where is the blue jug and bowl from the portrait?”
“The blue jug and bowl,” Louisa repeated, seemingly confused.
“I think you posed for Nancy Ducane’s painting in this room, n’est-ce pas?”
“Yes, I did. And . . . wait a minute! This jug and bowl set is the one from the other guest bedroom!”
“And yet it is not there. It is here.”
“So it is. But . . . then where is the blue jug and bowl?”
“I do not know, madame.”
“Well, it must be in a different bedroom. Mine, perhaps. Dorcas must have swapped them around.” She set off at a brisk pace in search of the missing items.
Poirot followed. “There is no other jug and bowl set in any of the bedrooms,” he said.
After a thorough check, Louisa Wallace said through gritted teeth, “That useless girl! I’ll tell you what’s happened, Monsieur Poirot. Dorcas has broken it and she’s too scared to tell me. Let us go and ask her, shall we? She will deny it, of course, but it’s the only possible explanation. Jugs and bowls don’t disappear, and they don’t move from room to room on their own.”
“When did you last see the blue jug and bowl, madame?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t noticed them in a long while. I hardly ever go into the guest bedrooms.”
“Is it possible that Nancy Ducane removed the blue jug and bowl when she left here on Thursday night?”
“No. Why would she? That’s silly! I stood at the door and said goodbye to her, and she was not holding anything apart from her house key. Besides, Nancy isn’t a thief. Dorcas, on the other hand . . . That will be it! She hasn’t broken it, she has stolen it, I’m sure—but how can I prove it? She’s bound to deny it.”
“Madame, do me one favor: do not accuse Dorcas of stealing or of anything else. I do not think she is guilty.”
“Well, then where is my blue jug and bowl?”
“This is what I must think about,” said Poirot. “I will leave you in peace in a moment, but first may I take a last look at Nancy Ducane’s remarkable portrait of you?”
“Yes, with pleasure.”
Together, Louisa Wallace and Hercule Poirot made their way back down to the drawing room. They stood in front of the painting. “Dratted girl,” muttered Louisa. “All I can see when I look at it now is the blue jug and bowl.”
“Oui. It stands out, does it not?”
“It used to be in my house, and now it isn’t, and all I can do is stare at a picture of it and wonder what became of it! Oh, dear, what an upsetting day this has turned out to be!”
BLANCHE UNSWORTH, AS WAS her custom, asked Poirot the moment he returned to the lodging house if there was anything she could get for him.
“Indeed there is,” he told her. “I should like a piece of paper and some pencils to draw with. Colored pencils.”
Blanche’s face fell. “I can bring you paper, but as for colored pencils, I can’t say as I’ve got any, unless you’re interested in the color of ordinary pencil lead.”
“Ah! Gray: the best of all.”
“Are you having me on, Mr. Poirot? Gray?”
“Oui.” Poirot tapped the side of his head. “The color of the little gray cells.”
“Oh, no. Give me a nice soft pink or lilac any day of the week.”
“Colors do not matter—a green dress, a blue jug and bowl set, a white one.”
“I’m not following you, Mr. Poirot.”
“I do not ask you to follow me, Mrs. Unsworth—only to bring me one of your ordinary pencils and a piece of paper, quickly. And an envelope. I have been talking at great length about art today. Hercule Poirot will attempt now to compose his own work of art!”
Twenty minutes later, seated at one of the tables in the dining room, Poirot called for Blanche Unsworth again. When she appeared, he handed her the envelope, which was sealed. “Please telephone to Scotland Yard for me,” he said. “Ask them to send somebody to collect this without delay and deliver it to Constable Stanley Beer. I have written his name on the envelope. Please explain that this is important. It is in connection with the Bloxham Hotel murders.”
“I thought you were drawing a picture,” said Blanche.
“My picture is sealed inside the envelope, accompanied by a letter.”
“Oh. Well, then, I can’t see the picture, can I?”
Poirot smiled. “It is not necessary for you to see it, madame, unless you work for Scotland Yard—which, to my knowledge, you do not.”
“Oh.” Blanche Unsworth looked vexed. “Well. I suppose I should make this call for you, then,” she said.
“Merci, madame.”
When she returned five minutes later, she had her hand over her mouth and pink spots on her cheeks. “Oh, dear, Mr. Poirot,” she said. “Oh, this is bad news for all of us! I don’t know what’s wrong with people, I really don’t.”
“What news?”
“I telephoned to Scotland Yard, like you asked—they said they’ll send someone to collect your envelope. Then the phone rang again, right after I’d put it down. Oh, Mr. Poirot, it’s dreadful!”
“Calm yourself, madame. Tell me, please.”
“There’s been another murder at the Bloxham! I don’t know what’s wrong with some of these fancy hotels, I really don’t.”