A Lie for a Lie
I WAS ENGROSSED IN my crossword puzzle when Poirot returned from the hotel to the lodging house several hours later. “Catchpool,” he said severely. “Why do you sit in almost total darkness? I do not believe you can see to write.”
“The fire provides enough light. Besides, I’m not writing at the moment—I’m thinking. Not that it’s getting me very far. I don’t know how these chaps do it, the ones who invent crosswords for the newspapers. I’ve been working on this one for months, and I still can’t get it to fit together. I say, you might be able to help. Can you think of a word that means death and has six letters?”
“Catchpool.” Now Poirot’s tone was even sterner.
“Hm?” I said.
“Do you take me to be the fool, or is it that you are a fool yourself? A word for death that has six letters is murder.”
“Yes, that one’s rather obvious. That was my first thought.”
“I am relieved to hear it, mon ami.”
“That would be perfect, if murder began with a D. Since it doesn’t, and since I’m stuck with this D from another word . . .” I shook my head in consternation.
“Forget crossword puzzles. We have much to discuss.”
“I don’t believe, and won’t believe, that Thomas Brignell murdered Jennie Hobbs,” I said firmly.
“You feel sympathy for him,” said Poirot.
“I do, and I also would bet my last penny that he is no murderer. Who’s to say that he doesn’t have a girlfriend with a pale brown coat? Brown is a popular color for coats!”
“He is the assistant clerk,” said Poirot. “Why would he stand in the gardens beside a wheelbarrow?”
“Perhaps the wheelbarrow was simply there!”
“And Mr. Brignell stands with his lady friend right beside it?”
“Well, why not?” I said, exasperated. “Isn’t that more plausible than the idea that Brignell took Jennie Hobbs’s dead body out to the gardens with a plan to wheel it off somewhere in a wheelbarrow, then pretended to embrace her when he saw me looking out of the window? One might just as well say . . .” I stopped and inhaled sharply. “Oh, goodness,” I said. “You are going to say it, aren’t you?”
“What, mon ami? What do you think Poirot will say?”
“Rafal Bobak is a waiter, so why was he pushing a laundry cart?”
“Exactement. And why does he push the laundry through the elegant lobby in the direction of the front doors? Is the laundry not washed inside the hotel? Signor Lazzari, he would surely have noticed this if he had not been so concerned about the missing fourth murder victim. Of course, he would not be suspicious of Mr. Bobak—all of his staff are beyond reproach in his eyes.”
“Wait a second.” I finally laid down my crossword on the table beside me. “That was what you meant about the width of the doorway, wasn’t it? That laundry cart could easily have been pushed into room 402, so why not wheel it all the way in? Why drag the body instead, which would take more effort?”
Poirot nodded with satisfaction. “Indeed, mon ami. These are the questions I hoped you might ask yourself.”
“But . . . are you honestly saying that Rafal Bobak might have murdered Jennie Hobbs, thrown her body in with the laundry and pushed it out onto the street, right past us? He stopped to talk to us, for pity’s sake!”
“Indeed—even though he has nothing to say. What is it? You think I am uncharitable, thinking the bad thoughts about those who have been so helpful to us?”
“Well . . .”
“Giving everybody the benefit of the doubt is laudable, my friend, but it is no way to apprehend a murderer. While you are displeased with me, let me put one more thought into your head: Mr. Henry Negus. He had with him a very large suitcase, did he not? Large enough to contain the body of a slender woman.”
I covered my face with my hands. “I can’t bear much more of this,” I said. “Henry Negus? No. I’m sorry, but no. He was in Devon on the night of the murders. He struck me as absolutely trustworthy.”
“You mean that both he and his wife say that he was in Devon,” Poirot briskly corrected me. “To return to the matter of the trail of blood, suggesting that the body had been dragged to the door . . . Of course, an empty suitcase can be carried into the middle of a room, to where a dead body waits to be placed inside it. So, again, we must wonder: why pull Jennie Hobbs’s body in the direction of the door?”
“Please, Poirot. If we must have this conversation, let us have it some other time. Not now.”
He looked put out by my discomfort. “Very well,” he said brusquely. “Since you are in no mood to debate the possibilities, let me tell you what occurred here in London while you were in Great Holling. Perhaps you will feel more comfortable with facts.”
“A great deal more comfortable, yes,” I said.
After making minor adjustments to his mustache, Poirot lowered himself into an armchair and launched into an account of the conversations he’d had with Rafal Bobak, Samuel Kidd, Nancy Ducane and Louisa Wallace while I was in Great Holling. My mind was reeling by the time he had finished. I risked urging him on to further loquacity by saying, “Haven’t you left out some rather important things?”
“Such as what?”
“Well, this useless, clumsy maid at Louisa Wallace’s house—Dorcas. You implied that while you and she were standing together on the upstairs landing, you realized something important, but you didn’t say what it was that you realized.”
“That is true. I did not.”
“And this mysterious picture you drew and had delivered to Scotland Yard—what’s that all about? What was the picture of? And what is Stanley Beer supposed to do with it?”
“That, also, I did not tell you.” Poirot had the nerve to look apologetic, as if he had himself had no choice in the matter.
Foolishly, I persisted. “And why did you want to know how many times each and every Bloxham Hotel employee saw Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus alive or dead? How is that pertinent to anything? You didn’t explain that either.”
“Poirot, he leaves the gaps all over the place!”
“Not to forget your earlier omissions. What, for instance, were the two most unusual features shared by the Bloxham murders and Jennie Hobbs’s outburst in Pleasant’s Coffee House? You said they had two highly unusual things in common.”
“Indeed I did. Mon ami, I do not tell you these things because I want to make of you a detective.”
“This case will make nothing of me but a miserable wretch, of no use to anyone,” I said, allowing my true feelings to have an outing for once in my life. “It’s the most maddening thing.”
I heard a noise that might or might not have been a knock at the drawing-room door. “Is somebody there?” I called out.
“Yes,” came Blanche Unsworth’s apprehensive voice from the hall. “I’m sorry to disturb you at this time, gentlemen, but there’s a lady to see Mr. Poirot. She says it can’t wait.”
“Show her in, madame.”
A few seconds later, I found myself face to face with the artist Nancy Ducane. Most men, I knew, would have thought her startlingly beautiful.
Poirot made the introductions with perfect courtesy.
“Thank you for seeing me.” Nancy Ducane’s swollen eyes suggested that she had done a fair amount of crying. She was wearing a dark green coat that looked expensive. “I feel dreadful, barging in on you like this. Please pardon the intrusion. I tried to persuade myself not to come, but . . . as you can see, I failed.”
“Please sit down, Mrs. Ducane,” said Poirot. “How did you find us?”
“With help from Scotland Yard, like a proper bona fide detective.” Nancy attempted a smile.
“Ah! Poirot, he chooses a house where he thinks no one will find him, and the police send the crowds to his door! No matter, madame. I am delighted to see you, if a little surprised.”
“I would like to tell you what happened in Great Holling sixteen years ago,” said Nancy. “I should have done so before, but you gave me such a shock when you mentioned all those names I had hoped never to hear again.”
She unbuttoned her coat and took it off. I gestured toward an armchair.
She sat down. “It’s not a happy tale,” she said.
NANCY DUCANE SPOKE IN a quiet voice and with a haunted look in her eyes. She told us the same story that Margaret Ernst had told me in Great Holling, about the cruel and slanderous treatment of Reverend Patrick Ive. When she spoke of Jennie Hobbs, her voice shook. “She was the worst of them. She was in love with Patrick, you see. Oh, I can’t prove it, but I shall always believe it. She did what she did to him as someone who loved him: told an unforgivable lie because she was jealous. He was in love with me, and she wanted to wound him. To punish him. Then when Harriet seized on the lie, and Jennie saw the harm she had done and felt sick about it—and I do believe she felt dreadfully ashamed, and must have hated herself—she did nothing to remedy what she had set in motion, nothing! She slunk off into the shadows and hoped not to be noticed. However afraid she was of Harriet, she should have forced herself to stand up and say, “I told a terrible lie and I’m sorry for it.”
“Pardon, madame. You say you cannot prove that Jennie was in love with Patrick Ive. May I ask: how do you know that she was? As you suggest, it is unthinkable that one who loved him would start so damaging a rumor.”
“There is no doubt in my mind that Jennie loved Patrick,” said Nancy stubbornly. “She left behind a sweetheart in Cambridge when she moved to Great Holling with Patrick and Frances—did you know that?”
We shook our heads.
“They were supposed to get married. The date was set, I believe. Jennie couldn’t bear to let Patrick go, so she canceled her wedding and went with him.”
“Could it not have been Frances Ive to whom she was so attached?” Poirot asked. “Or to both of the Ives? It might have been loyalty and not romantic love that she felt.”
“I don’t believe many women would put loyalty to their employers above their own marriage prospects, do you?” said Nancy.
“Assuredly not, madame. But what you tell me does not quite fit. If Jennie were inclined toward jealousy, why was she moved to tell this terrible lie only when Patrick Ive fell in love with you? Why did his marriage to Frances Ive, long before then, not provoke her envy?”
“How do you know that it did not? Patrick lived in Cambridge when he and Frances met and married. Jennie Hobbs was his servant then too. Perhaps she whispered something malicious about him in a friend’s ear and that friend, not being Harriet Sippel, chose to spread the malice no further.”
Poirot nodded. “You are right. It is a possibility.”
“Most people prefer not to spread ill will, and thank goodness for that,” said Nancy. “Perhaps in Cambridge there is nobody as malevolent as the person Harriet Sippel turned into, and nobody as eager as Ida Gransbury to lead a pious moral crusade.”
“I notice you do not mention Richard Negus.”
Nancy looked troubled. “Richard was a good man. He came to regret his contribution to the whole awful business. Oh, he regretted it deeply once he understood that Jennie had told a despicable lie, and once he saw Ida for the pitiless creature she was. He wrote to me a few years ago, from Devon, to say that the matter had been preying on his mind. Patrick and I were quite wrong to conduct ourselves as we did, he said, and he would never change his mind about that—marriage vows were marriage vows—but he had come to believe that punishment was not always the right path to follow, even when one knows that an offense has taken place.”
“That is what he wrote to you?” Poirot raised his eyebrows.
“Yes. I expect you disagree.”
“These affairs are complicated, madame.”
“What if, in punishing somebody for the sin of falling in love with the wrong person, one only brings greater sin into the world? And more evil: two deaths—one, of a person who has committed no sin.”
“Oui. This is precisely the sort of dilemma that creates the complication.”
“In his letter to me, Richard wrote that, Christian as he was, he could not bring himself to believe that God would wish him to persecute a sweet-natured man like Patrick.”
“Punishment and persecution are two separate things,” said Poirot. “There is also the question: has a rule or law been broken? Falling in love . . . enfin, we cannot help how we feel, but we can choose whether or not to act upon those feelings. If a crime has been committed, one must ensure that the criminal is dealt with by the law in an appropriate fashion, but always without personal venom and spite—always without the lust for vengeance, which contaminates everything and is indeed evil.”
“Lust for vengeance,” Nancy Ducane repeated with a shudder. “That was it exactly. Harriet Sippel was filled with it. It was sickening.”
“And yet, in telling the story, you have not once spoken angrily of Harriet Sippel,” I said. “You describe her behavior as sickening, as if it saddens you. You do not seem angry with her as you are with Jennie Hobbs.”
“I suppose that’s true.” Nancy sighed. “I used to be devoted to Harriet. When my husband William and I moved to Great Holling, Harriet and George Sippel were our dearest friends. Then George died, and Harriet became a monster. But once you have been very fond of a person, it’s difficult to condemn them, don’t you find?”
“It is either impossible, or irresistible,” said Poirot.
“Impossible, I should say. You imagine that their worst behavior is a symptom of an ailment and not their true self. I couldn’t forgive Harriet’s treatment of Patrick. I couldn’t persuade myself to try. At the same time, I felt that it must have been as horrible for her as it was for anybody else—to have turned into that.”
“You saw her as a victim?”
“Of the tragedy of losing a beloved husband, yes—and so young! One can be both victim and villain, I think.”
“It was something that you and Harriet had in common,” said Poirot. “The loss of a husband when you were far too young.”
“This will sound heartless, but there is really no comparison,” said Nancy. “George Sippel was everything to Harriet, her whole world. I married William because he was wise and safe, and I needed to escape from my father’s home.”
“Ah, yes. Albinus Johnson,” said Poirot. “It came back to me after I left your house that I do indeed know the name. Your father was one of a circle of English and Russian agitators in London at the end of the last century. He spent a period of time in prison.”
“He was a dangerous man,” said Nancy. “I couldn’t bear to speak to him about his . . . ideas, but I know that he believed it was acceptable to murder any number of people if those people were delaying the cause of making the world a better place—better only according to his definition! How in the name of heaven can anything ever be made better by bloodshed and mass slaughter? How can any improvement be brought about by men who wish only to smash and destroy, who cannot speak of their hopes and dreams without their faces twisting in hatred and anger?”
“I agree with you absolutely, madame. A movement driven by fury and resentment will not change any of our lives for the better. Ce n’est pas possible. It is corrupt at the source.”
I nearly said that I too agreed, but I stopped myself. Nobody was interested in my ideas.
Nancy said, “When I met William Ducane, I did not fall in love with him, but I liked him. I respected him. He was calm and courteous; he never behaved or spoke intemperately. If he failed to return a book to the library when it was due to be returned, he would suffer agonies of remorse.”
“A man with a conscience.”
“Yes, and a sense of proportion, and humility. If something stood in his way, he would consider moving himself before he would consider moving the obstacle. I knew that he would not fill our home with men intent on making the world uglier with their violent acts. William appreciated art and beautiful things. He was like me in that respect.”
“I understand, madame. But you did not love William Ducane passionately, in the way that Harriet Sippel loved her husband?”
“No. The man I loved passionately was Patrick Ive. From the first moment I saw him, my heart belonged to him alone. I would have laid down my life for him. When I lost him, I finally understood how Harriet had felt when she had lost George. One thinks one can imagine, but one can’t. I remember thinking Harriet morbid when she begged me, after George’s funeral, to pray for her death so that she might be quickly reunited with him. I refused to do as she asked. The passing of time would ease her pain, I told her, and one day she would find something else to live for.”
Nancy stopped to compose herself before continuing. “Regrettably, she did. She found a delight in the suffering of others. Harriet the widow was a joyless harridan. That was the woman who was killed at the Bloxham Hotel in London recently. The Harriet I knew and loved died with her husband George.” She looked at me suddenly. “You observed that I am angry with Jennie. I have no right to be. I am as guilty as she is of letting Patrick down.” Nancy started to cry and covered her face with her hands.
“Come, come, madame. Here.” Poirot passed her a handkerchief. “How did you let down Patrick Ive? You have told us that you would have sacrificed your life for him.”
“I am as bad as Jennie: a disgusting coward! When I stood up in the King’s Head Inn and confessed that Patrick and I were in love and had been meeting in secret, I did not tell the truth. Oh, the secret meetings were real enough, and Patrick and I were desperately in love—that was true too. But . . .” Nancy appeared too distressed to continue. Her shoulders shook as she wept into the handkerchief.
“I think I comprehend, madame. That day at the King’s Head Inn, you told the villagers that your relations with Patrick Ive had been chaste. That was your lie. Poirot, he guesses correctly?”
Nancy let out a wail of despair. “I couldn’t bear the rumors,” she cried. “All those whispered macabre tales of encounters with the souls of the dead in exchange for money; little children hissing in the street about blasphemy . . . I was appalled! You cannot imagine the horror of so many voices of accusation and condemnation, all rounding on one man, a good man!”
I could imagine. I could imagine it so vividly that I wished she would stop talking about it.
“I had to do something, Monsieur Poirot. So I thought, “I shall fight these lies with something pure and good: the truth.” The truth was my love for Patrick and his for me, but I was afraid, and I tarnished our truth with lies! That was my mistake. In my frenzy, I could not think clearly. I sullied the beauty of my love for Patrick with faint-hearted dishonesty. Relations between us were not chaste, but I said that they were. I imagined that I had no choice but to lie. That was craven of me. Despicable!”
“You are hard on yourself,” said Poirot. “Unnecessarily so.”
Nancy dabbed at her eyes. “How I wish I could believe you,” she said. “Why did I not tell the whole truth? My defense of Patrick against those horrible accusations should have been a noble thing, and I ruined it. For that, I curse myself every day of my life. Those braying, spittle-flecked sin-hunters at the King’s Head, they all disapproved of me anyway—thought I was a fallen woman, and Patrick the very devil. What would it have mattered if they had disapproved a little more? In point of fact, I’m not sure there was a higher peak of opprobrium for them to ascend to.”
“Why, then, did you not tell the truth?” Poirot asked.
“I hoped to make the ordeal more bearable for Frances, I suppose. To avoid a bigger scandal. But then Frances and Patrick took their own lives, and all hope of ever making anything better was lost. I know they killed themselves, whatever anybody says,” Nancy added as an apparent afterthought.
“Is this a fact that has been disputed?” asked Poirot.
“According to the doctor and all official records, their deaths were accidental, but nobody in Great Holling believed that. Suicide is a sin in the eyes of the Church. The village doctor wanted to protect Patrick and Frances’s reputations from greater damage, I think. He liked them very much and stood up for them when no one else would. He’s a good egg, Dr. Flowerday—one of very few in Great Holling. He knew a wicked lie when he heard one.” Nancy laughed through her tears. “A lie for a lie and a tooth for a tooth.”
“Or a truth for a truth?” Poirot suggested.
“Oh. Yes, indeed.” Nancy looked surprised. “Oh, dear, I’ve quite ruined your handkerchief.”
“It is not important. I have others. There is one more question I should like to ask you, madame: is the name Samuel Kidd familiar to you?”
“No. Should it be?”
“He did not live in Great Holling when you lived there?”
“No, he did not. Lucky old him, whoever he is,” said Nancy bitterly.