The Blue Jug and Bowl
A FEW PEOPLE CRIED out in alarm. There is a strong chance that I was one of them. It is strange: I have seen many dead bodies, thanks to my work for Scotland Yard, and have on occasion found the sight of them disturbing—yet no regular corpse could be as horrifying a prospect as a dead woman propped up as if alive and partaking of a jolly afternoon tea with friends.
Poor Rafal Bobak looked rather shivery and wobbly lipped, no doubt reflecting that he had been closer to the monstrosity than any sane person would wish to be.
“This is why the food had to be delivered to Ida Gransbury’s room,” Poirot went on. “Richard Negus’s room, 238, would have been the most convenient meeting point for the three victims, as it was on the second floor between the other two rooms. The afternoon tea would then have been added to Mr. Negus’s bill without his having to make a point of requesting this. But of course Room 238 could not be the room in which our three murder victims were seen alive by Rafal Bobak at a quarter past seven! That would have involved carrying Ida Gransbury’s dead body from her room, 317, in which she had been killed some hours earlier, through the corridors of the hotel to Richard Negus’s room. It would have been too great a risk. Someone would almost certainly have seen.”
The shocked faces of the bewildered crowd were something to behold. I wondered if Luca Lazzari would soon be seeking new staff. I definitely had no intention of returning to the Bloxham once this unpleasant business was concluded, and I imagined that many in the room felt the same way.
Poirot proceeded with his explanations. “Reflect, ladies and gentlemen, upon the munificence, the largesse, of Mr. Richard Negus. Ah, how generous he was, insisting on paying for the food and the tea, also paying for Harriet and Ida each to travel alone to the hotel in a car. Why would they not come by train together and share a car to the hotel? And why should Richard Negus care so passionately about making sure that the bill for the food and beverages was sent to him, when he knew that he, Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury were all about to die?”
It was a very good question. All the points that Poirot was making were pertinent, and, moreover, were things I should have thought of myself. Somehow, I had failed to notice that so many aspects of Jennie Hobbs’s story did not fit with the facts of the case. How could I have missed such glaring inconsistencies?
Poirot said, “The man who impersonated Richard Negus at fifteen minutes past seven for the benefit of Rafal Bobak, and again at half past for the benefit of Mr. Thomas Brignell, did not care about any bill! He knew that neither he nor his accomplices would have to pay it. He had been outside to dispose of the food. How did he transport it? In a suitcase! Catchpool—do you remember the tramp you saw near the hotel, when we took our trip on a bus? A tramp eating food from a suitcase, non? You described him as ‘the tramp that got the cream.’ Tell me, did you see him eating cream specifically?”
“Oh, my goodness. Yes, I did! He was eating a . . . a cake, with cream in it.”
Poirot nodded. “From the suitcase he found discarded near the Bloxham Hotel, pleasingly full of afternoon tea for three! Now, here is another test for your memory, mon ami: do you remember telling me, on my first visit to the Bloxham, that Ida Gransbury had brought enough clothes with her to fill an entire wardrobe? And yet she had only one suitcase in her room—the same number as Richard Negus and Harriet Sippel, who had brought considerably fewer clothes with them. This afternoon, I asked you to pack Miss Gransbury’s garments into her case, and what did you find?”
“They wouldn’t fit,” I said, feeling like a prize chump. It seemed that I was doomed to feel idiotic in relation to Ida Gransbury’s suitcase, but now for a different reason from before.
“You blamed yourself,” said Poirot. “It is your preference to do so always, but in fact it was impossible for all the clothes to fit in, because they had been brought to the Bloxham in two suitcases. Even Hercule Poirot, he could not have made them fit!”
To the assembled hotel staff, he said, “It was on his way back from disposing of the suitcase full of food that this man met the Bloxham’s assistant clerk, Thomas Brignell, near the door to this room in which we are gathered. Why did he engage Brignell in discussion about the bill? For one reason only: to impress upon Brignell that Richard Negus was still alive at half past seven. Playing the role of Mr. Negus, he said something inaccurate: that Negus could afford to pay, whereas Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury could not. This was not true! Henry Negus, Richard’s brother, can confirm that Richard had no income and very little family money left. But the man impersonating Richard Negus did not know this. He assumed that since Richard Negus was a gentleman, once a lawyer by profession, he was bound to have plenty of money.
“When Henry Negus first spoke to Catchpool and myself, he told us that since moving to Devon, his brother Richard had been morose and doom laden. He was a recluse with no appetite for life—correct, Mr. Negus?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so,” said Henry Negus.
“A recluse! I ask you, does this sound like a man who would indulge himself in sherry and cake, and gossip in a cavalier fashion with two women in a fancy London hotel? No! The man who received the afternoon tea from Rafal Bobak, and for whom Thomas Brignell fetched the sherry, was not Richard Negus. This man, he complimented Mr. Brignell on his efficiency and said something approximating the following: ‘I know I can rely on you to sort this out, since you are so efficient—bill the food and beverages to me, Richard Negus, Room 238.’ His words were calculated to make Thomas Brignell believe that this man, this Richard Negus, was familiar with his level of efficiency, and that therefore they must have encountered one another before. Mr. Brignell might feel a little guilty, perhaps, because he does not remember his previous dealings with Mr. Negus—and he will resolve not to forget him again. He will remember from now on this man whom he has met twice. Naturally, working in a large London hotel, he meets people all the time, hundreds every day! It often happens, I am sure, that guests know his name and face while he has forgotten theirs—after all, they are simply, en masse, ‘the guests’!”
“Excuse me, Monsieur Poirot, I beg your pardon.” Luca Lazzari hurried forward. “Broadly speaking, you are quite right, but not, as chance would have it, in the case of Thomas Brignell. He has an exceptional memory for faces and names. Exceptional!”
Poirot smiled appreciatively. “Is that so? Bon. Then I am right.”
“About what?” I asked.
“Be patient and listen, Catchpool. I will explain the sequence of events. The man impersonating Richard Negus was in the lobby of the hotel when Mr. Negus checked in on Wednesday, the day before the murders. Probably he wanted to survey the territory in preparation for the role he was to play later. In any case, he saw Richard Negus arrive. How did he know it was Richard Negus? I will come back to that point. Suffice to say, he knew. He saw Thomas Brignell undertake the necessary paperwork and then hand Mr. Negus the key to his room. The following evening, after posing as Mr. Negus to receive the afternoon tea and then going outside to dispose of it, this man is on his way back to Room 317 and he passes Thomas Brignell. He is a quick-thinking individual, and he sees a superb opportunity to consolidate the misleading of the police. He approaches Brignell and addresses him as if he, this impostor, were Richard Negus. He reminds Brignell of his name and alludes to a previous meeting.
“In fact, Thomas Brignell has never met this man before, but he remembers the name from when he gave the real Richard Negus his room key. Here, suddenly, is a man speaking to him in a confident, friendly and knowledgeable fashion and calling himself by that same name. Thomas Brignell assumes that he must be Richard Negus. He does not recall his face, but he blames only himself for this lapse.”
Thomas Brignell’s face had turned as red as claret.
Poirot went on, “The man impersonating Richard Negus asked for a glass of sherry. Why? To extend his encounter with Brignell a little, thereby imprinting it more strongly on the clerk’s memory? To soothe agitated nerves with some liquor? Maybe for both of these reasons.
“Now, if you will permit me a small digression: in the remains of this glass of sherry, the poison cyanide was found, as it was in Harriet Sippel’s and Ida Gransbury’s cups of tea. But it was not the tea or the sherry that killed the three murder victims. It cannot have been. These beverages arrived too late to kill, long after the murders had been committed. The sherry glass and the two teacups on the occasional tables next to the three bodies—they were essential for the staging of the crime scenes, to give the false impression that the killings must have occurred after a quarter past seven. In fact, the cyanide that killed Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus was given to them much earlier and by another means. There is a water glass by the basin in each room of the hotel, is there not, Signor Lazzari?”
“Si, Monsieur Poirot. Yes, there is.”
“Then I expect that is how the poison was consumed: in water. The glass, in each case, was then carefully washed and replaced by the basin. Mr. Brignell,” Poirot addressed him unexpectedly, causing the assistant clerk to duck in his seat as if someone had taken a shot at him. “You do not like to speak in public, but you plucked up the courage to do so the first time we all gathered in this room. You told us of your encounter with Mr. Negus in the corridor, but you did not mention the sherry, even though I had specifically asked about it. Later, you sought me out and added the detail about the sherry to your story. When I asked you why you did not originally mention it, you gave me no answer. I did not understand why, but my friend here, Catchpool—he said something most perceptive and illuminating. He said that you are a conscientious man who would only withhold information in a murder enquiry if it caused you great personal embarrassment, and if you were sure it had nothing to do with the murder case. He hit upon the head of the nail with this assessment, did he not?”
Brignell gave a small nod.
“Allow me to explain.” Poirot raised his voice, though it was quite loud enough in the first place. “When we met here in this room before, I asked if anybody had taken sherry to Mr. Negus in his room. No one spoke up. Why did Thomas Brignell not say, ‘I did not take it up to his room, but I did fetch for him a glass of sherry?’ Poirot will tell you! He did not do so because he had doubts in his mind, and he did not want to risk saying something that was not true.
“Mr. Brignell was the only member of the hotel staff to see any of the three murder victims more than once—or, to be more precise, he had been led to believe that he had seen Richard Negus more than once. He knew that he had given a glass of sherry to a man calling himself Richard Negus who behaved as if he had encountered him before, but this man did not look like the Richard Negus that Thomas Brignell had met. Remember, Mr. Lazzari has told us that Mr. Brignell has an excellent memory for faces as well as names. That is why he did not speak up when I asked about the sherry! He was distracted by his thoughts. A voice in his head whispered: ‘It must have been him, the same man. But it was not him—I would have recognized him.’
“A few moments later, Mr. Brignell said to himself, ‘What kind of fool am I? Of course it was Richard Negus if he said that was his name! For once my memory lets me down. And besides, the man sounded just like Mr. Negus, with his educated English accent.’ It would seem incroyable to the scrupulously honest Thomas Brignell that anyone should wish to impersonate another in order to trick him.
“After reaching the conclusion that the man must have been Richard Negus, Mr. Brignell decides to stand up and tell me that he met Mr. Negus in the corridor at half past seven on the night of the murders, but he is too embarrassed to mention the sherry, because he fears he will seem an imbecile for sitting in silence in response to my earlier question about the drink. I would surely ask, in front of everybody, ‘Why did you not tell me this before?’ and Mr. Brignell would have been mortified to have to say, ‘Because I was too busy wondering how Mr. Negus came to have a different face the second time I encountered him.’ Mr. Brignell, can you confirm that what I am saying is true? There is no need to worry about looking like a fool. You were the opposite. It was a different face. It was a different man.”
“Thank goodness,” said Brignell. “Everything you have said is absolutely correct, Mr. Poirot.”
“Bien s?r,” said Poirot immodestly. “Do not forget, ladies and gentlemen, that the same name does not necessarily mean the same person. When Signor Lazzari described to me the woman who took a room in this hotel using the name Jennie Hobbs, I thought that she was probably the same woman I had met at Pleasant’s Coffee House. She sounded similar: fair hair, dark brown hat, lighter brown coat. But two men who have each seen a woman fitting this description only once, they cannot be certain they have seen the same woman.
“This led me to ruminate. I already suspected that the dead Richard Negus whose body I saw and the living Richard Negus seen by Rafal Bobak and Thomas Brignell on the night of the murders were two different men. Then I remembered being told that on arrival at the Bloxham on the Wednesday, Richard Negus was dealt with by Thomas Brignell. If I was right in my suppositions, then this would have been a different Richard Negus, the real one. Suddenly I understood Thomas Brignell’s predicament. How could he say publicly that this one man appeared to have two faces? Everyone would think him a lunatic!”
“You’re the one that sounds half-crazed, Mr. Poirot,” said Samuel Kidd with a sneer.
Poirot went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “This impostor might not have resembled Richard Negus in appearance, but I have no doubt that his voice was a perfect imitation. He is an excellent mimic—are you not, Mr. Kidd?”
“Don’t listen to this man! He’s a liar!”
“No, Mr. Kidd. It is you who are the liar. You have impersonated me more than once.”
Fee Spring stood up at the back of the room. “You should all believe Mr. Poirot,” she said. “He’s telling the truth, all right. I’ve heard Mr. Samuel Kidd speak in his accent. With my eyes closed, I’d not know the difference.”
“It is not only with his voice that Samuel Kidd lies,” said Poirot. “The first time I met him, he presented himself as a man of below average intelligence and slovenly appearance: his shirt with the missing button and the stain. Also the incomplete beard—he had shaved only one small patch of his face. Mr. Kidd, please tell everybody here why you went to great lengths to make yourself look so disheveled the first time we met.”
Samuel Kidd stared resolutely ahead. He said nothing. His eyes were full of loathing.
“Very well, if you will not speak then I shall explain it myself. Mr. Kidd cut his cheek while climbing down the tree outside the window of Room 238, Richard Negus’s hotel room. A cut on the face of a smartly dressed man might stand out and invite questions, no? One who is careful about his appearance would surely not allow a razor to make an unsightly mark upon his face. Mr. Kidd did not want me to think along these lines. He did not want me to wonder if he might recently have climbed out of an open window and down a tree, so he created the general unkempt appearance. He arranged himself to look like the sort of man who would be so careless as to cut himself while shaving and then, to avoid further cuts, walk around with half a beard on and half off! Such a chaotic man would of course use his shaving razor recklessly and do damage—this is what Poirot was supposed to believe, and it was what he did believe at first.”
“Hold on a minute, Poirot,” I said. “If you’re saying that Samuel Kidd climbed out of Richard Negus’s hotel-room window—”
“Am I saying that he murdered Mr. Negus? Non. He did not. He assisted the murderer of Richard Negus. As for who that person is . . . I have not yet told you the name.” Poirot smiled.
“No, you haven’t,” I said sharply. “Nor have you told me who were the three people in Room 317 when Rafal Bobak took up the afternoon tea. You’ve said that the three murder victims were all dead by then—”
“Indeed they were. One of the three in Room 317 at a quarter past seven was Ida Gransbury—dead, but positioned upright in a chair to appear alive, as long as one did not see her face. Another was Samuel Kidd, playing the part of Richard Negus.”
“Yes, I see that, but who was the third?” I asked rather desperately. “Who was the woman posing as Harriet Sippel, gossiping with spiteful glee? It can’t have been Jennie Hobbs. As you say, Jennie would have had to be halfway to Pleasant’s Coffee House by then.”
“Ah, yes, the woman gossiping gleefully,” said Poirot. “I shall tell you who that was, my friend. That woman was Nancy Ducane.”
LOUD CRIES OF SHOCK filled the room.
“Oh, no, Monsieur Poirot,” said Luca Lazzari. “Signora Ducane is one of the country’s foremost artistic talents. She is also a most loyal friend of this hotel. You must be mistaken!”
“I am not mistaken, mon ami.”
I looked at Nancy Ducane, who sat with an air of quiet resignation. She denied nothing that Poirot had said.
Famous artist Nancy Ducane conspiring with Samuel Kidd, Jennie Hobbs’s former fiancé? I had never been more flummoxed in my life than I was at that moment. What could it all mean?
“Did I not tell you, Catchpool, that Madame Ducane wears the scarf over her face today because she does not wish to be recognized? You assumed that I meant ‘recognized as the celebrated portrait painter.’ No! She did not want be recognized by Rafal Bobak as the Harriet he saw in Room 317 on the night of the murders! Please stand and remove your scarf, Mrs. Ducane.”
Nancy did so.
“Mr. Bobak, was this the woman you saw?”
“Yes, Mr. Poirot. It was.”
It was quiet, but audible nonetheless: the sound of breath being drawn into lungs and held there. It filled the large room.
“You did not recognize her as the famous portrait painter, Nancy Ducane?”
“No, sir. I know nothing about art, and I only saw her in profile. She had her head turned away from me.”
“I am sure she did, in case you happened to be an art enthusiast and able to identify her.”
“I spotted her as soon as she walked in today, though—her and that Mr. Kidd chappy. I tried to tell you, sir, but you wouldn’t let me speak.”
“Yes, and so did Thomas Brignell try to tell me that he recognized Samuel Kidd,” said Poirot.
“Two of the three people I’d thought were murdered—alive and well and walking into the room!” From his voice, it was evident that Rafal Bobak had not yet recovered from the shock.
“What about Nancy Ducane’s alibi from Lord and Lady Wallace?” I asked Poirot.
“I’m afraid that wasn’t true,” said Nancy. “It is my fault. Please do not blame them. They are dear friends and were trying to help me. Neither St. John nor Louisa knew that I was at the Bloxham Hotel on the night of the murders. I swore to them that I had not been, and they trusted me. They are good, brave people who did not want to see me framed for three murders I did not commit. Monsieur Poirot, I believe you understand everything, so you must know that I have murdered nobody.”
“To lie to the police in a murder investigation is not brave, madame. It is inexcusable. By the time I left your house, Lady Wallace, I knew you to be a liar!”
“How dare you speak to my wife like that?” said St. John Wallace.
“I am sorry if the truth is not to your taste, Lord Wallace.”
“How did you know, Monsieur Poirot?” his wife asked.
“You had a new servant girl: Dorcas. She is here with you today only because I asked you to bring her. She is important to this story. You told me that Dorcas had been with you for just a few days, and I saw for myself that she is a little clumsy. She brought me a cup of coffee and spilled most of it. Luckily not all was spilled, and so I was able to drink some. I immediately recognized it as the coffee made by Pleasant’s Coffee House. Their coffee is unmistakeable; there is no other like it, anywhere.”
“Blimey!” said Fee Spring.
“Indeed, mademoiselle. The effect upon my mind was profound: at once, I put together several things like pieces of a jigsaw that fit perfectly. The strong coffee, it is very good for the brain.” Poirot looked pointedly at Fee as he said this. She pursed her lips in disapproval.
“This not very capable maid—pardon me, Mademoiselle Dorcas, I am sure you will improve, given time—she was new! I put this fact together with the coffee from Pleasant’s, and it gave me an idea: what if Jennie Hobbs was Louisa Wallace’s maid, before Dorcas? I knew from the waitresses at Pleasant’s that Jennie used to go there often to collect things for her employer, who was a posh society lady. Jennie spoke of her as ‘Her Ladyship.’ It would be interesting, would it not, if Jennie, until a few days ago, worked for the woman providing Nancy Ducane’s alibi? An extraordinary coincidence—or not a coincidence at all! At first, my thoughts on this matter proceeded along an incorrect track. I thought, ‘Nancy Ducane and Louisa Wallace are friends who have conspired to kill la pauvre Jennie.’ ”
“What a suggestion!” said Louisa Wallace indignantly.
“A shocking lie!” her husband St. John agreed.
“Not a lie, pas du tout. A mistake. Jennie, as we see, is not dead. However, I was not mistaken to believe that she was a servant in the home of St. John and Louisa Wallace, replaced very recently by Mademoiselle Dorcas. After speaking to me at Pleasant’s on the night of the murders, Jennie had to leave the Wallaces’ house, and quickly. She knew that I would soon arrive there to ask for confirmation of Nancy Ducane’s alibi. If I had found her there, working for the woman providing that alibi, I would instantly have been suspicious. Catchpool, tell me—tell us all—what exactly would I have suspected?”
I took a deep breath, praying I hadn’t got this all wrong, and said, “You would have suspected that Jennie Hobbs and Nancy Ducane were colluding to deceive us.”
“Quite correct, mon ami.” Poirot beamed at me. To our audience, he said, “Shortly before I tasted the coffee and made the connection with Pleasant’s, I had been looking at a picture by St. John Wallace that was his wedding anniversary present to his wife. It was a picture of blue bindweed. It was dated—the fourth of August last year—and Lady Wallace remarked upon this. It was then that Poirot, he realized something: Nancy Ducane’s portrait of Louisa Wallace, which he had seen a few minutes earlier, was not dated. As an appreciator of art, I have attended countless exhibition premieres in London. I have seen the work of Mrs. Ducane before, many times. Her pictures always have the date in the bottom right-hand corner, as well as her initials: NAED.”
“You pay more attention than most who attend the exhibitions,” Nancy said.
“Hercule Poirot always pays attention—to everything. I believe, madame, that your portrait of Louisa Wallace was dated, until you painted out the date. Why? Because it was not a recent one. You needed me to believe that you had delivered the portrait to Lady Wallace on the night of the murders, and that, therefore, it was a newly completed portrait. I asked myself why you did not paint on a new, false date, and the answer was obvious: if your work survives for hundreds of years, and if art historians take an interest in it, as they surely will, you do not wish actively to mislead them, these people who care about your work. No, the only people you wish to mislead are Hercule Poirot and the police!”
Nancy Ducane tilted her head to one side. In a thoughtful voice, she said, “How perceptive you are, Monsieur Poirot. You really do understand, don’t you?”
“Oui, madame. I understand that you found employment for Jennie Hobbs in the home of your friend Louisa Wallace—to help Jennie, when she came to London and needed a job. I understand that Jennie was never part of any plan to frame you for murder, though she allowed Richard Negus to believe otherwise. In fact, ladies and gentleman, Jennie Hobbs and Nancy Ducane have been friends and allies ever since they both lived in Great Holling. The two women who loved Patrick Ive unconditionally and beyond reason are the ones who formulated a plan nearly clever enough to fool me, Hercule Poirot—but not quite clever enough!”
“Lies, all lies!” Jennie wept.
Nancy said nothing.
Poirot said, “Let me return for a moment to the home of the Wallaces. In Nancy Ducane’s portrait of Lady Louisa that I inspected so closely and for so long, there is a blue jug and bowl set. When I walked up and down the room and looked at it in different lights, the blue of the jug and bowl remained a solid block of color, bland and uninteresting. Every other color on that canvas changed subtly as I moved around, depending on the light. Nancy Ducane is a sophisticated artist. She is a genius when it comes to color—except when she is in a hurry and thinking not about art but about protecting herself and her friend Jennie Hobbs. To conceal information, Nancy quickly painted blue a jug and bowl set that was not formerly blue. Why did she do this?”
“To paint out the date?” I suggested.
“Non. The jug and bowl were in the top half of the picture, and Nancy Ducane always paints the date in the bottom right-hand corner,” said Poirot. “Lady Wallace, you did not expect me to ask to be shown round your home from bottom to top. You thought that once we had spoken and I had seen Nancy Ducane’s portrait of you, I would be satisfied and leave. But I wanted to see if I could find this blue jug and bowl that were in the portrait, and painted with so much less subtlety than the rest of the picture. And I did find them! Lady Wallace seemed to be puzzled because they were missing, but her puzzlement was a pretense. In an upstairs bedroom, there was a white jug and bowl set with a crest on it. This, I thought, might be the jug and bowl set in the portrait—yet it was not blue. Mademoiselle Dorcas, Lady Wallace told me that you must have smashed or stolen the blue jug and bowl.”
“I never did!” said a stricken Dorcas. “I ain’t never seen no blue jug and bowl in the house!”
“Because, young lady, there has never been one there!” said Poirot. “Why, I asked myself, would Nancy Ducane hurriedly paint over the white jug and bowl with blue paint? What did she hope to hide? It had surely to be the crest, I concluded. Crests are not purely decorative; they belong to families, sometimes, or, at other times, to colleges of famous universities.”
“Saviour College, Cambridge,” I said before I could stop myself. I remembered that just before Poirot and I had left London for Great Holling, Stanley Beer had referred to a crest.
“Oui, Catchpool. When I left the Wallaces’ home, I drew a picture of the crest so that I would not forget it. I am no artist, but it was accurate enough. I asked Constable Beer to find out for me where it came from. As you have all heard my friend Catchpool say, the crest on the white jug and bowl set in the Wallaces’ house is that of Saviour College, Cambridge, where Jennie Hobbs used to work as a bed-maker for the Reverend Patrick Ive. It was a leaving present to you, was it not, Miss Hobbs, when you left Saviour College and went to Great Holling with Patrick and Frances Ive? And then when you moved into the home of Lord and Lady Wallace, you took it with you. When you left that house in a hurry and went to hide at Mr. Kidd’s house, you did not take the jug and bowl—you were in no state of mind to think of such things. I believe that Louisa Wallace, at that point, moved the jug and bowl set from the servant’s quarters you had previously occupied into a guest bedroom, where it might be admired by those she wished to impress.”
Jennie didn’t answer. Her face was blank and expressionless.
“Nancy Ducane did not want to take even the tiniest risk,” said Poirot. “She knew that, after the murders in this hotel, Catchpool and I would ask questions in the village of Great Holling. What if the old drunkard Walter Stoakley, formerly Master of Saviour College, mentioned to us that he gave Jennie Hobbs a crested jug and bowl as a leaving present? If we then saw a crest in the portrait of Lady Wallace, we might discover the connection to Jennie Hobbs and, by extension, the link between Nancy Ducane and Jennie Hobbs, which was not one of enmity and envy, as we had been told by both women, but one of friendship and collusion. Madame Ducane could not take the chance that we would arrive at this suspicion because of the crest in the portrait, and so the white jug and bowl set was painted blue—hurriedly, and with little artistry.”
“Not all of one’s work can be one’s best work, Monsieur Poirot,” said Nancy. It alarmed me to hear how reasonable she sounded—to see somebody who had conspired in three unlawful killings being so polite and rational in conversation.
“Perhaps you would agree with Mrs. Ducane, Lord Wallace?” said Poirot. “You too are a painter, though of a very different kind. Ladies and gentlemen, St. John Wallace is a botanical artist. I saw his work in every room of his house when I visited—Lady Wallace was gracious enough to show me around, just as she was generous enough to provide a false alibi for Nancy Ducane. Lady Wallace, you see, is a good woman. She is the most dangerous kind of good: so far removed from evil that she does not notice it when it is right in front of her! Lady Wallace believed in Nancy Ducane’s innocence and provided an alibi to protect her. Ah, the lovely, talented Nancy, she is most convincing! She convinced St. John Wallace that she was eager to try her hand at his sort of painting. Lord Wallace is well connected and well known, therefore easily able to obtain what plants he needs for his work. Nancy Ducane asked him to obtain for her some cassava plants—from which the cyanide is made!”
“How the devil can you possibly know that?” St. John Wallace demanded.
“A lucky guess, monsieur. Nancy Ducane told you that she wanted these plants for the purpose of her art, did she not? And you believed her.” To the sea of open-mouthed faces, Poirot said, “The truth is that neither Lord nor Lady Wallace would ever believe a good friend of theirs capable of murder. It would reflect so badly upon them. Their social standing—imagine it! Even now, when everything I say fits perfectly with what they know to be true, St. John and Louisa Wallace tell themselves that he must be wrong, this opinionated detective from the Continent. Such is the perversity of the human mind, particularly where snobbish idées fixes are concerned!”
“Monsieur Poirot, I have not killed anyone,” said Nancy Ducane. “I know that you know I am telling the truth. Please make it clear to everybody gathered in this room that I am not a murderer.”
“I cannot do that, madame. Je suis désolé. You did not administer the poison yourself, but you conspired to end three lives.”
“Yes, but only to save another,” said Nancy earnestly. “I am guilty of nothing! Come, Jennie, let us tell him our story—the true story. Once he has heard it, he will have to concede that we did only what we had to do to save our own lives.”
The room was completely still. Everyone sat in silence. I did not think Jennie was going to move, but eventually, slowly, she rose to her feet. Clutching her bag in front of her with both hands, she walked across the room toward Nancy. “Our lives were not worth saving,” she said.
“Jennie!” Sam Kidd cried out, and suddenly he too was out of his chair and moving toward her. As I watched him, I had the peculiar sense of time having slowed down. Why was Kidd running? What was the danger? He clearly thought there was one, and, though I did not understand why, my heart had started to beat hard and fast. Something terrible was about to happen. I started to run toward Jennie.
She opened her bag. “So you want to be reunited with Patrick, do you?” she said to Nancy. I recognized the voice as hers, but at the same time it was not hers. It was the sound of unremitting darkness molded into words. I hope never again to hear anything like it, as long as I live.
Poirot had also started to move, but both of us were too far away. “Poirot!” I called, and then, “Someone stop her!” I saw metal, and light dancing upon it. Two men at the table next to Nancy’s rose to their feet, but they were not moving fast enough. “No!” I called out. There was a rapid movement—Jennie’s hand—and then blood, a rush of it, flowing down Nancy’s dress and on to the floor. Nancy fell to the ground. Somewhere at the back of the room, a woman started to scream.
Poirot had stopped moving, and now stood perfectly still. “Mon Dieu,” he said, and closed his eyes.
Samuel Kidd reached Nancy before I could. “She’s dead,” he said, staring down at her body on the floor.
“Yes, she is,” said Jennie. “I stabbed her in the heart. Right in the heart.”