If Murder Began with a D
I LEARNED THAT DAY that I am not afraid of death. It is a state that contains no energy; it exerts no force. I see dead bodies in the course of my work, and it has never bothered me unduly. No, the thing I dread above all else is proximity to death in the living: the sound of Jennie Hobbs’s voice when the desire to kill has consumed her; the state of mind of a murderer who would, with cold calculation, put three monogrammed cufflinks in his victims’ mouths and take the trouble to lay them out: straightening their limbs and their fingers, placing their lifeless hands palms downward on the floor.
“Hold his hand, Edward.”
How can the living hold the hands of the dying and not fear being pulled toward death themselves?
If I had my way, no person, while alive and vital, would have any involvement with death at all. I accept that this is an unrealistic hope.
After she had stabbed Nancy, I did not wish to be near Jennie Hobbs. I was not curious to learn why she had done it; I simply wanted to go home, sit by one of Blanche Unsworth’s roaring fires, work on my crossword puzzle and forget all about the Bloxham Hotel Murders or Monogram Murders or whatever anybody wanted to call them.
Poirot, however, had enough curiosity for both of us, and his will was stronger than mine. He insisted that I stay. This was my case, he said—I had to tie it up neatly. He made a gesture with his hands that suggested meticulous wrapping, as if a murder investigation were a parcel.
So it was that several hours later, he and I were seated in a small, square room at Scotland Yard, with Jennie Hobbs across the table from us. Samuel Kidd had also been arrested and was being questioned by Stanley Beer. I would have given anything to tackle Kidd instead, who was a crook and a rotten egg for sure, but in whose voice I had never heard the extinction of all hope.
On the subject of voices, I was surprised by the gentleness of Poirot’s as he spoke. “Why did you do it, mademoiselle? Why kill Nancy Ducane, when the two of you have been friends and allies for so long?”
“Nancy and Patrick were lovers in every sense of the word. I did not know that until I heard her say so today. I always thought she and I were the same: we both loved Patrick, but knew we could not be with him in that way—had not been with him in that way. All these years, I have believed that their love was chaste, but that was a lie. If Nancy had really loved Patrick, she would not have made an adulterer of him and sullied his moral character.”
Jennie wiped away a tear. “I believe I did her a favor. You heard her express the desire to be reunited with Patrick. I helped her with that, didn’t I?”
“Catchpool,” said Poirot. “Do you recall that I said to you, after we found the blood in the Room 402 of the Bloxham Hotel, that it was too late for me to save Mademoiselle Jennie?”
“Yes.”
“You thought I meant that she was dead, but you misunderstood me. You see, I knew even then that Jennie was beyond help. She had already done things so terrible that her own death was guaranteed, I feared. That was my meaning.”
“In every way that counts, I have been dead since Patrick died,” Jennie said in that same tone of unending hopelessness.
I knew there was only one way that I could get through this ordeal, and that was by concentrating all my attention on questions of logic. Had Poirot solved the puzzle? He seemed to think he had, but I was still in the dark. Who, for instance, had killed Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus, and why had they done so? I asked these questions of Poirot.
“Ah,” he said, smiling fondly, as if I had reminded him of a joke we had once shared. “I see your dilemma, mon ami. You listen to Poirot declaim at great length and then, a few minutes before the conclusion, there is the interruption of another murder, and you do not, after all, hear the answers that you have been waiting for. Dommage.”
“Please tell me at once, and let the dommage end here,” I said as forcefully as I could.
“It is quite simple. Jennie Hobbs and Nancy Ducane, with the help of Samuel Kidd, conspired to murder Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus. However, while collaborating with Nancy, Jennie pretended to be part of a quite different conspiracy. She allowed Richard Negus to believe that he was the one with whom she conspired.”
“That does not sound ‘quite simple’ to me,” I said. “It sounds inordinately complicated.”
“No, no, my friend. Vraiment, it is not at all. You are having trouble reconciling the different versions of the story that you have heard, but you must forget all that Jennie told us when we visited her at Samuel Kidd’s house—banish it from your mind completely. It was a lie from start to finish, though I do not doubt that it contained some elements of veracity. The best lies always do. In a moment, Jennie will tell us the whole truth, now that she has nothing to lose, but first, my friend, I must pay you the compliment that you deserve. It was you, in the end, who helped me to see clearly with your suggestion in the graveyard of Holy Saints Church.”
Poirot turned to Jennie. He said, “The lie you told to Harriet Sippel: that Patrick Ive took money from parishioners and, in return, conveyed to them messages from their dead loved ones; that Nancy Ducane had visited him in the vicarage at night for that reason—in the hope of communicating with her deceased husband, William. Ah, how often has Poirot heard about this terrible, wicked lie? Many, many times. You yourself admitted to us the other day, Miss Hobbs, that you told the lie in a moment of weakness, inspired by jealousy. But this was not the truth!
“Standing by Patrick and Frances Ive’s desecrated grave, Catchpool said to me, ‘What if Jennie Hobbs lied about Patrick Ive not to hurt him but to help him?’ Catchpool had realized the significance of something that I had taken for granted—a fact that had never been in dispute, and so I had failed to examine it: Harriet Sippel’s passionate love for her late husband, George, who died tragically young. Had Poirot not been told how much Harriet had loved George? Or how the death of George had turned Harriet from a happy, warm-hearted woman into a bitter, spiteful monster? One can hardly imagine a loss so terrible, so devastating, that it extinguishes all joy and destroys all that is good in a person. Oui, bien s?r, I knew that Harriet Sippel had suffered such a loss. I knew it so surely that I thought no further about it!
“I knew, also, that Jennie Hobbs loved Patrick Ive enough to abandon Samuel Kidd, her fiancé, in order to remain in the service of Reverend Ive and his wife. This is a very self-sacrificing love: content to serve, and receive little in return. Yet the story told to us by both Jennie and Nancy offered Jennie’s jealousy as her reason for telling the terrible lie that she told—jealousy of Patrick’s love for Nancy. But this cannot be true! It is not consistent! We must think not only of the physical facts but of the psychological. Jennie did nothing to punish Patrick Ive for his marriage to Frances. She accepted with good grace that he belonged to another woman. She continued as his loyal servant and was a great help to him and his wife at the vicarage, and they, in turn, were devoted to her. Why then all of a sudden, after many years of self-sacrificing love and service, would Patrick Ive’s love for Nancy Ducane inspire Jennie to slander him, and to set in motion a chain of events that would destroy him? The answer is that it would not, and did not.
“It was not the eruption of envy and longing locked inside for so long that prompted Jennie to tell her lie. It was something altogether different. You were trying—were you not, Miss Hobbs?—to help the man you loved. To save him, even. As soon as I heard the theory of my clever friend Catchpool, I knew it was the truth. It was so obvious, and Poirot, he had been imbécile not to see!”
Jennie looked at me. “What theory?” she asked.
I opened my mouth to answer, but Poirot was too quick for me. “When Harriet Sippel told you she had seen Nancy Ducane visiting the vicarage late at night, you were straight away alert to the danger. You knew about these trysts—how could you not, when you lived at the vicarage—and you were anxious to protect Patrick Ive’s good name. How could this be achieved? Harriet Sippel, once she had sniffed out a scandal, would relish the opportunity to bring public shame to a sinner. How could you explain the presence of Nancy Ducane at the vicarage on nights when Frances Ive was not there, except with the truth? What other story would pass the muster? And then, as if by magic, when you had almost given up hope, you thought of something that might work. You decided to use temptation and false hope to eliminate the threat that Harriet represented.”
Jennie stared blankly ahead. She said nothing.
“Harriet Sippel and Nancy Ducane had something in common,” Poirot went on. “They had both lost their husbands to early tragic death. You told Harriet that, with the help of Patrick Ive, Nancy had been able to communicate with the deceased William Ducane—that money had changed hands. Of course, it would have to be kept secret from the Church and from everybody in the village, but you suggested to Harriet that, if she so wished, Patrick would be able to do for her what he was doing for Nancy. She and George could be . . . well, if not together again then at least there could be communication of a kind between them. Tell me, how did Harriet respond when you said this to her?”
A long silence followed. Then Jennie said, “She was foaming at the mouth for it to happen as soon as possible. She would pay any price, she said, to be able to speak to George again. You cannot imagine how much she loved that man, Monsieur Poirot. Watching her face as I spoke . . . it was like seeing a dead woman come back to life. I tried to explain it all to Patrick: that there had been a problem, but I had solved it. I made the offer to Harriet without asking him first, you see. Oh, I think I knew in my heart that Patrick would never consent to it, but I was desperate! I didn’t want to give him the chance to forbid me. Can you understand that?”
“Oui, mademoiselle.”
“I hoped I would be able to persuade him to agree. He was a principled man, but I knew he would want to shield Frances from a scandal, and protect Nancy, and this was a certain way to guarantee Harriet’s silence. It was the only way! All Patrick would have had to do was say some comforting words to Harriet once in a while and pretend that those words came from George Sippel. There was no need for him to take her money, even. I said all this to him, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He was horrified.”
“He was entirely right to be,” said Poirot quietly. “Continue, please.”
“He said it would be immoral and unfair to do to Harriet what I was proposing; he would sooner face personal ruin. I begged him to reconsider. What harm would it do, if it would make Harriet happy? But Patrick was resolute. He asked me to give her the message that what I had proposed would not, after all, be possible. He was very specific. ‘Do not say that you lied, Jennie, or else she will revert to suspecting the truth,’ he said. My instructions were to tell Harriet only that she could not have what she wanted.”
“So you had no choice but to tell her,” I said.
“No choice at all.” Jennie started to cry. “And from the moment I told Harriet that Patrick had refused her request, she made herself his enemy, repeating my lie to the whole village. Patrick could have ruined her reputation in return, by making it known that she had been eager to avail herself of his unwholesome services, and only started to call them blasphemous and unchristian once she had been thwarted, but he wouldn’t do it. He said that no matter how maliciously Harriet attacked him, he would not blacken her name. Foolish man! He could have shut her up in an instant, but he was too noble for his own good!”
“Was that when you went to Nancy Ducane for advice?” Poirot asked.
“Yes. I didn’t see why Patrick and I should be the only ones to fret. Nancy was part of it too. I asked her if I should publicly admit to my lie, but she advised me not to. She said, ‘I fear that trouble is coming to Patrick now one way or another, and to me. You would be wise to recede into the background and say nothing, Jennie. Do not sacrifice yourself. I am not sure you would be strong enough to withstand Harriet’s vilification.’ She underestimated me. I was upset, you see—I suppose I sort of fell apart a bit, because I was so frightened for Patrick, with Harriet determined to destroy him—but I am not a weak person, Monsieur Poirot.”
“I see that you are not afraid.”
“No. I draw strength from the knowledge that Harriet Sippel—that loathsome hypocrite—is dead. Her killer did the world a great service.”
“Which leads us to the question of that killer’s identity, mademoiselle. Who killed Harriet Sippel? You told us that it was Ida Gransbury, but that was a lie.”
“I hardly need tell you the truth, Monsieur Poirot, when you know it as well as I do.”
“Then I must ask you to take pity on poor Mr. Catchpool here. He does not yet know the whole story.”
“You’d better tell him, then, hadn’t you?” Jennie smiled an absent sort of smile, and I suddenly felt as if there was less of her in the room than there had been only moments ago; she had taken herself away.
“Très bien,” said Poirot. “I will start with Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury: two inflexible women so convinced of their own rectitude that they were willing to hound a good man into an early grave. Did they express sorrow after his death? No, instead they objected to his burial in consecrated ground. Did these two women, after much persuasion by Richard Negus, come to regret their treatment of Patrick Ive? No, of course they did not. It is not plausible that they would. That, Mademoiselle Jennie, was when I knew that you were lying: at that point in your story.”
Jennie shrugged. “Anything is possible,” she said.
“Non. Only the truth is possible. I knew that Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury would never have agreed to the plan of voluntary execution that you described to me. Therefore, they were murdered. How convenient, to pass off their murders as a kind of delegated suicide! You hoped Poirot might disengage his little gray cells once he heard that all the dead had been so willing to die. It was their great opportunity for redemption! What an imaginative and unusual story—the sort that one hears and assumes must be the truth, for who would think to invent such a fabrication?”
“It was my safeguard, to be used if needed,” said Jennie. “I hoped you would never find me, but I feared you might.”
“And if I did, you expected that your alibi for between quarter past seven and ten past eight would work, and Nancy Ducane’s also. You and Samuel Kidd would be charged with attempting to frame an innocent woman, but not with murder or conspiracy to commit murder. It is clever: you confess to wrongdoing in order to avoid punishment for far more serious crimes. Your enemies are murdered, and no one hangs because we believe your story: Ida Gransbury killed Harriet Sippel, and Richard Negus killed Ida Gransbury and then himself. Your plan was ingenious, mademoiselle—but not as ingenious as Hercule Poirot!”
“Richard wanted to die,” said Jennie angrily. “He was not murdered. He was determined to die.”
“Yes,” said Poirot. “This was the truth in the lie.”
“It’s his fault, this whole horrible mess. I would never have killed anybody if it were not for Richard.”
“But you did kill—several times. It was Catchpool who, once again, set me on the right track, by uttering a few innocent words.”
“What words?” Jennie asked.
“He said, ‘If murder began with a D . . .’ ”
IT WAS UNSETTLING TO listen to Poirot’s appreciation of my helpfulness. I didn’t understand how a few careless words of mine could have been so momentous.
Poirot was in full flow. “After we had heard your story, mademoiselle, we left Samuel Kidd’s house and, naturally, we discussed what you had told us: your supposed plan that you made together with Richard Negus . . . If I may say so, it was a compelling idea. There was a neatness about it—like the falling dominoes, except, when I thought carefully, it was not like that at all because the order of knocking over is altered. Not D falls down, then C, then B, then A; instead, B knocks A down, then C knocks B . . . But that is beside the point.”
What on earth was he talking about? Jennie looked as if she was wondering the same thing.
“Ah, I must be more lucid in my explanation,” said Poirot. “To enable myself to imagine the order of events more easily, mademoiselle, I substituted letters for names. Your plan, as you told it to us at Samuel Kidd’s house, was as follows: B kills A, C then kills B, D then kills C. Afterwards, D waits for E to be blamed and hanged for the murders of A, B and C, and then D kills herself. Do you see, Miss Hobbs, that you are D in this arrangement, according to the story you told us?”
Jennie nodded.
“Bon. Now, by chance, Catchpool here is a devotee of the crossword puzzle, and it was in connection with this hobby that he asked me to think of a word that had six letters and meant ‘death.’ I suggested ‘murder.’ No, said Catchpool, my suggestion would only work ‘if murder began with a D.’ I recalled his words some time later and made the idle speculation in my mind: what if murder did begin with a D? What if the first to kill was not Ida Gransbury but you, Miss Hobbs?
“Over time, this speculation hardened into certainty. I understood why it must have been you who killed Harriet Sippel. She and Ida Gransbury shared neither a train nor a car from Great Holling to the Bloxham Hotel. Therefore each was unaware of the presence of the other, and there was no plan agreed by all for one to kill the other. That had to be a lie.”
“What was the truth?” I asked rather desperately.
“Harriet Sippel believed, and so did Ida Gransbury, that she alone was going to London, for a very private reason. Harriet had been contacted by Jennie, who said she needed to meet with her urgently. The highest level of secrecy was required. Jennie told Harriet that a room at the Bloxham Hotel was booked and paid for, and that she, Jennie, would come to the hotel on Thursday afternoon, perhaps at half past three or four o’clock, so that they could conduct their important business. Harriet accepted Jennie’s invitation because Jennie had written in her letter of invitation something that Harriet could not resist.
“You offered her what Patrick Ive had refused her all those years ago, n’est-ce pas, mademoiselle? Communication with her late beloved husband. You told her that George Sippel had sought to speak to her through you—you, who had tried to help him reach her sixteen years earlier, and failed. And now, again, George was trying to send a message to his dearest wife, using you as his channel. He had spoken to you from the afterlife! Oh, I have no doubt that you made it extremely convincing! Harriet was unable to resist. She believed because she so ardently wished it to be true. The lie you had told her so long ago, about the souls of dead loved ones making contact with the living—she believed it then, and she had never stopped believing it.”
“Clever old you, Monsieur Poirot,” said Jennie. “Top marks.”
“Catchpool, tell me: do you understand now about the old woman enamored of a man possibly young enough to be her son? These people with whom you became so obsessed, who featured in the gossip between Nancy Ducane and Samuel Kidd in Room 317?”
“I’d hardly say obsessed. And, no, I don’t understand.”
“Let us recall précisément what Rafal Bobak told us. He heard Nancy Ducane, posing as Harriet Sippel, say, ‘She’s no longer the one he confides in. He’d hardly be interested in her now—she’s let herself go, and she’s old enough to be his mother.’ Think about those words: ‘he’d hardly be interested in her now’—that fact is asserted first, before the two reasons for his lack of interest are given. One of these is that she is old enough to be his mother. Now, she is old enough to be his mother. Do you not see, Catchpool? If she is old enough to be his mother now, then she must always have been old enough to be his mother. Nothing else is possible!”
“Isn’t that stretching it a bit?” I said. “I mean, without the ‘now’ it makes perfect sense: he’d hardly be interested in her—she’s let herself go and she’s old enough to be his mother.”
“But, mon ami, what you say, it is ridiculous,” Poirot spluttered. “It is not logical. The ‘now’ was there, in the sentence. We cannot pretend to be without it when we are with it. We cannot ignore a ‘now’ that is right in front of our ears!”
“I’m afraid I disagree with you,” I said with some trepidation. “If I had to guess, I should say that the intended meaning was something along these lines: before she let herself go, this chap didn’t especially mind or notice the age difference between them. Maybe it wasn’t quite so visible. However, now that she is no longer in tip-top shape, the chap has moved on to a younger, more attractive companion, the one he now confides in—”
Poirot had begun to speak over me, red faced and impatient. “There is no point in your guessing, Catchpool, when I know! Listen to Poirot! Listen one more time to exactly what was said, and in what order: ‘He’d hardly be interested in her now—she’s let herself go, and she’s old enough to be his mother!’ Reason one that he would no longer be interested in her, followed by reason two! The construction of the sentence makes it clear that both of these unfortunate circumstances that are the case now were once not the case.”
“There is no need to shout at me, Poirot. I have grasped your point, and I still disagree. Not everybody is as precise in their speech as you are. My interpretation has to be the correct one, and yours incorrect, because, as you have pointed out, it makes no sense otherwise. You said it yourself: if she is old enough to be his mother now, then she must always have been old enough to be his mother.”
“Catchpool, Catchpool. How I begin to despair of you! Think of what came later in the same conversation. Rafal Bobak heard Samuel Kidd, posing as Richard Negus, say, ‘I dispute the old-enough-to-be-his-mother claim. I dispute it utterly.’ To which Nancy, posing as Harriet, replied, ‘Well, neither of us can prove we’re right, so let’s agree to disagree!’ But why could neither prove they were right? Surely it is a matter of simple biological fact whether or not a woman is old enough to be a man’s mother? If she is four years older than him, then she is not old enough. No one would dispute this! If she is twenty years older, then she is old enough to be his mother—that is equally certain.”
“What if she were thirteen years older?” said Jennie Hobbs, who had closed her eyes. “Or twelve? One does hear of rare cases . . . That does not apply here, of course.”
So Jennie knew where Poirot was going with all this. I was the only ignorant one in the room.
“Thirteen, twelve—it is irrelevant! One asks a doctor, a medical expert: is it theoretically possible for a female of thirteen, or twelve, to give birth to a child? The answer is either yes or no. Please let us not debate the borderline cases of potential childbearing ages! Have you forgotten the other intriguing statement made by Samuel Kidd in connection with this allegedly younger man: ‘His mind? I’d argue he has no mind.’ No doubt you will say that Mr. Kidd meant nothing more than that the man in question was an imbecile.”
“No doubt I will,” I said peevishly. “Why don’t you tell me what I’m missing, since you’re so much cleverer than I am?”
Poirot made a dismissive clicking noise. “Sacré tonnerre. The couple under discussion in Room 317 were Harriet Sippel and her husband George. The conversation was not a serious debate—it was mockery. George Sippel died when he and Harriet were both very young. Samuel Kidd argues that he has no mind because, if George Sippel exists at all after his death, it is not in human form. He is a ghost, n’est-ce pas? Since the mind is inside the brain, and the soul does not possess human organs, George Sippel the ghost cannot have a mind.”
“I . . . Oh, heavens. Yes, now I see.”
“Samuel Kidd introduces his point of view in the way that he does—‘I would argue . . .’—because he expects Nancy Ducane to disagree. She might well have said, “Of course a ghost must have a mind. Ghosts have agency, do they not, and free will? From where do these things come if not the mind?”
Philosophically, it was an interesting point. In different circumstances, I could imagine taking a view on the matter myself.
Poirot continued: “Nancy’s ‘old-enough-to-be-his-mother’ remark was based on her belief that, when a man dies, his age is then fixed forevermore. In the afterlife, he does not age. George Sippel, if he were to return as a spirit to visit his widow, would be a young man in his twenties, the age he was when he died. And she, as a woman in her forties, is now old enough to be his mother.”
“Bravo,” said Jennie in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. “I was not there, but the conversation was continued later in my presence. Monsieur Poirot really is formidably perceptive, Mr. Catchpool. I hope you appreciate him.” To Poirot, she said, “The argument went on . . . oh, just for ever! Nancy insisted she was right, but Sam would not concede the point. He said ghosts do not exist in the dimension of age—they are timeless, so it is incorrect to say that anyone could be old enough to be a ghost’s mother.”
Poirot said to me, “It is distasteful, is it not, Catchpool? When Rafal Bobak delivered the food, Nancy Ducane, with the dead body of Ida Gransbury propped up in a chair beside her, was mocking the woman in whose murder she had conspired earlier that same day. Poor stupid Harriet: her husband is not interested in talking directly to her from beyond the grave. No, he will speak only to Jennie Hobbs, leaving Harriet with no choice if she wants to receive his message: she must meet Jennie at the Bloxham, and, in doing so, meet her own doom.”
“Nobody has ever deserved to be murdered more than Harriet Sippel did,” said Jennie. “I have many regrets. Killing Harriet is not one of them.”
“WHAT ABOUT IDA GRANSBURY?” I asked. “Why did she go to the Bloxham Hotel?”
“Ah!” said Poirot, who never tired of sharing the endless knowledge that he alone seemed to possess. “Ida also accepted an irresistible invitation, from Richard Negus. Not to be put in communication with a dead loved one, but to meet, after sixteen years apart, her former fiancé. It is not hard to imagine what the lure would have been. Richard Negus abandoned Ida and, no doubt, broke her heart. She never married. I expect he alluded in a letter to the possibility of a reconciliation, maybe matrimony. A happy ending. Ida agreed—which lonely individual would not choose to give a second chance to true love?—and Richard told her that he would come to her room at the Bloxham Hotel at half past three or perhaps four o’clock on the Thursday. Do you remember your remark, Catchpool, about arriving at the hotel on Wednesday, so that the whole of Thursday could be devoted to getting murdered? That makes more sense now, yes?”
I nodded. “Negus knew that on the Thursday he would have to commit murder, and also to be killed himself. It is only natural that he would wish to arrive a day early to prepare himself mentally for a double ordeal of that sort.”
“Also to avoid the delayed train or something similar that might have interfered with his plans,” said Poirot.
“So Jennie Hobbs murdered Harriet Sippel, and Richard Negus murdered Ida Gransbury?” I said.
“Oui, mon ami.” Poirot looked at Jennie, who nodded. “At around the same time of day, in rooms 121 and 317 respectively. In both rooms, the same method was used, I imagine, to induce Harriet and Ida to drink the poison. Jennie said to Harriet, and Richard Negus to Ida, ‘You will need a glass of water before you hear what I have to say. Here, let me fetch one for you. You sit down.’ While fetching the water, using the glass next to the basin, Jennie and Negus slipped in the poison. The glasses were then handed to the two victims to drink. Death would have followed shortly thereafter.”
“What about Richard Negus’s death?” I asked.
“Jennie killed him, according to the plan the two of them made.”
“Much of what I told you at Sam’s house was true,” said Jennie. “Richard did write to me after years of silence. He was torn apart by guilt for what he had done to Patrick and Frances, and he saw no way out—no possibility of justice or peace of mind—unless we all paid with our own lives, all four of us who were responsible.”
“He asked you . . . to help him kill Harriet and Ida?” I said, working it out as I spoke.
“Yes. Them, and him, and myself as well. It had to be all of us, he insisted, or else it was meaningless. He did not want to be a murderer but an executioner—he used that word a lot—and that meant that he and I could not avoid punishment. I agreed with him that Harriet and Ida deserved to die. They were evil. But . . . I didn’t want to die, nor did I want Richard dead. It was enough for me that he was truly sorry for his part in Patrick’s death. I . . . I knew it would have been enough for Patrick too, and for any higher authority that might or might not exist. But there was no way to persuade Richard of this. I saw at once that there was no point trying. He was as intelligent as he always had been, but something in his mind had slipped and turned him peculiar, given him weird ideas. All those years of brooding on it, the guilt . . . He had become a strange species of zealot. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he would murder me too if I did not go along with what he was proposing. He didn’t say so explicitly. He didn’t want to threaten me, you see. He was kind to me. What he wanted and needed was an ally. Someone of like mind. He honestly believed I would agree to his scheme because, unlike Harriet and Ida, I was reasonable. He was so certain he was right—that his solution was the only way for all of us. I thought perhaps he was right, but I was afraid. I’m not any more. I don’t know what has changed me. Maybe then, even in my unhappiness, I still entertained the notion that my life might improve. Sadness is different from despair.”
“You knew that you would have to pretend in order to save your life,” said Poirot. “To lie convincingly to Richard Negus—it was your only possible escape from death. You did not know what to do, so you went to Nancy Ducane for help.”
“Yes, I did. And she solved my problem, or so I thought. Her plan was brilliant. Following her advice, I suggested to Richard only one deviation from his proposed plan. His idea was that once Harriet and Ida were dead, he would kill me and then himself. Naturally, as an authoritative man accustomed to being in charge of whatever mattered to him, he wanted to be the one in control until the end.
“Nancy told me I had to persuade Richard that I should kill him rather than have him kill me. ‘Impossible!’ I said. ‘He will never agree.’ But Nancy said that he would if I approached him in the right way. I had to pretend to be more committed to our goal than he was. She was right. It worked. I went to Richard and said that it was not enough for the four of us to die: me, him, Harriet and Ida. Nancy had to be punished too. I pretended that I would be happy to die only once she was dead. She was more evil than Harriet, I said. I related an elaborate tale of how Nancy had callously plotted to seduce Patrick away from his wife, and would not take no for an answer. I told Richard she had confessed to me that her true motive for speaking up at the King’s Head was not to help Patrick but to hurt Frances. She hoped that Frances would take her own life, or abandon Patrick at the very least and return to her father in Cambridge, leaving the way clear for Nancy.”
“More lies,” said Poirot.
“Yes, of course, more lies—but ones suggested to me by Nancy herself, and ones that did the trick! Richard agreed to die before me.”
“And he did not know that Samuel Kidd was involved, did he?” said Poirot.
“No. Nancy and I brought Sam into it. He was part of our plan. Neither of us wanted to climb out of that window and down the tree—we both feared we would fall and break our necks—and after locking the door from the inside and hiding the key behind the tile, that was the only way to leave Room 238. That’s why Sam was needed—that and the impersonation of Richard.”
“And the key had to be hidden behind the tile,” I muttered to myself, checking I had it all straight in my mind. “So that, when you came to tell us your story—the one we heard at Mr. Kidd’s house—it all appeared to fit: Richard Negus hid the key to make it look as if a murderer had taken it because he was involved in a plan to frame Nancy Ducane.”
“Which he was,” said Poirot. “Or rather, he thought he was. When Jennie handed him a glass of poisoned water, as agreed, he believed she would stay alive and do her best to ensure that Nancy was found guilty of the three Bloxham Hotel murders. He believed that she would speak to the police in such a way as to ensure that they suspected Nancy. He did not know that Nancy had arranged a cast-iron alibi with Lord and Lady Wallace! Or that, after his death, the cufflink would be pushed to the back of his mouth, the key hidden behind the tile, the window opened . . . He did not know that Jennie Hobbs, Nancy Ducane and Samuel Kidd would arrange it so that it appeared to the police that the killings must have taken place between a quarter past seven and ten minutes past eight!”
“No, Richard was not privy to those details,” Jennie agreed. “Now you can see why I described Nancy’s plan as brilliant, Monsieur Poirot.”
“She was a talented artist, mademoiselle. The best artists, they have the eye for detail and for structure: how all the components fit together.”
Jennie turned to me. “Neither Nancy nor I wanted any of this. You have to believe me, Mr. Catchpool. Richard would have killed me if I had resisted him.” She sighed. “We had it all worked out. Nancy was supposed to get off scot-free, and Sam and I were to be punished for trying to frame Nancy, but not by death. A short term of imprisonment would suffice, we hoped. After which we intended to marry.” Seeing our surprised faces, Jennie added, “Oh, I don’t love Sam as I loved Patrick, but I am very fond of him. He would have made a good companion if I had not ruined it all by stabbing Nancy.”
“It was already ruined, mademoiselle. I knew that you had murdered Harriet Sippel and Richard Negus.”
“I did not murder Richard, Monsieur Poirot. That’s one thing you’re wrong about. Richard wanted to die. I gave him the poison with his full consent.”
“Yes, but under false pretenses. Richard Negus agreed to die because you agreed to his plan that all four of you would die. Then it became five when you involved Nancy Ducane. But you did not really agree. You betrayed him and plotted behind his back. Who knows whether Richard Negus would have chosen to die at that moment and in that way if you had told him the truth of your secret pact with Nancy Ducane.”
Jennie’s expression hardened. “I did not murder Richard Negus. I killed him as an act of self-defense. He would have murdered me otherwise.”
“You said that he did not explicitly threaten this.”
“No—but I knew it. What do you think, Mr. Catchpool? Did I murder Richard Negus or not?”
“I don’t know,” I said, confused.
“Catchpool, mon ami, do not be absurd.”
“He is not being absurd,” said Jennie. “He is using his brain where you refuse to, Monsieur Poirot. Please think about it, I beg of you. Before I hang, I hope to hear you say that I did not murder Richard Negus.”
I stood up. “Let us leave now, Poirot.” I wanted to end the interview while the word “hope” still hung in the air.