The Monogram Murders (13 page)

“
Bon.
Mr. Kidd, please sit down and tell Poirot

your very interesting story.”

To my astonishment, instead of sitting, Samuel

Kidd laughed and repeated the very words Poirot had

spoken in an exaggerated French accent, or Belgian

accent, or however it is that Poirot speaks: “
Meester

Keedd, please sit down and tell Poirr-oh your very

interesting storrie.
”

Poirot looked affronted to have his voice mocked.

I felt a pang of sympathy for him, until he said, “Mr.

Kidd pronounces my name better than you do,

Catchpool.”

“
Meester Keedd
,” the disheveled man said with a

guffaw. “Oh, don’t mind me, sir. I’m only entertaining

meself.
Meester Keedd!
”

“We are not here to entertain ourselves,” I told

him, tired of his antics already. “Please repeat what

you told me outside the hotel.”

Kidd took ten minutes to tell a story that could

have been distilled into three, but it was worth it.

Walking past the Bloxham shortly after eight o’clock

the previous evening, he had seen a woman run out of

the hotel, down the steps and onto the street. She was

panting and looked frightful. He had started to make

his way toward her to ask if she needed help, but she

was too fast for him and ran away before he could get

to her. As she ran, she dropped something on the

ground: two gold-colored keys. Realizing she had

dropped them, she turned around and hurried back to

retrieve them. Then, clutching them in her gloved

hand, she had disappeared into the night.

“I said to meself, that’s strange, that is, her taking

off like that,” Samuel Kidd mused. “And then this

morning I seen police everywhere and I asked one of

’em what was the big to-do. When I heard about these

murders, I thought to meself, ‘That could have been a

murderer that you saw, Sammy.’ She looked frightful,

did the lady—frightful!”

Poirot was staring at one of the many stains on the

man’s shirt. “Frightful,” he murmured. “Your story is

most intriguing, Mr. Kidd. Two keys, you say?”

“That’s right, sir. Two gold keys.”

“You were close enough to see, yes?”

“Oh, yes, sir—the street’s nicely lit up outside the

Bloxham. It was no trouble seeing.”

“Can you tell me anything else about these keys

apart from their gold color?”

“Yes. They had numbers on ’em.”

“Numbers?” I said. This was a detail that Samuel

Kidd had not revealed to me in his first telling of the

story outside the hotel, nor in his second, on the way

here in the car. And . . . dash it all, I should have

thought to ask him. I had seen Richard Negus’s key,

the one that Poirot had found behind the loose

fireplace tile. It had the number 238 on it.

“Yes, sir, numbers. Like, you know, one hundred,

two hundred . . .”

“I know what numbers are,” I said brusquely.

“Were those, in fact, the numbers you saw on the

keys, Mr. Kidd?” Poirot asked. “One hundred and two

hundred?”

“No, sir. One of them was a hundred and summat,

if I’m not mistaking. The other . . .” Kidd scratched

his head vigorously. Poirot averted his eyes. “It was

three hundred and summat, I think, sir. Though I

couldn’t swear to it, you understand. But that’s what

I’m seeing now in my mind’s eye: one hundred and

summat, three hundred and summat.”

Room 121, Harriet Sippel’s room. And Ida

Gransbury’s, Room 317.

I felt a hollow space open up in my stomach. I

recognized the sensation: it was how I had felt when I

first saw the three dead bodies and was told by the

police doctor that a gold monogrammed cufflink had

been found in each of their mouths.

It now seemed likely that Samuel Kidd had been

within inches of the murderer last night.
A frightful-

looking lady.
I shivered.

“This woman that you saw,” said Poirot, “did she

have fair hair and a brown hat and coat?”

He was, of course, thinking of Jennie. I still

believed there was no link, but I could see Poirot’s

reasoning: Jennie had been running around London

last night in a state of great agitation and so had this

other lady. It was just about possible they were one

and the same person.

“No, sir. She had a hat on but it were pale blue,

and her hair were dark. Curled and dark.”

“How old was she?”

“Wouldn’t like to guess a lady’s age, sir. Between

young and old, I’d say.”

“Apart from the blue hat, what was she wearing?”

“Can’t say I took that in, sir. I was too busy

looking at her face when I could.”

“Was she pretty?” I asked.

“Yes, but I wasn’t looking for that reason, sir. I

was looking because I know her, see. I took one look

and I thought to meself, ‘Sammy, you know that lady.’

”

Poirot shifted in his chair. He looked at me, then

back at Kidd. “If you know her, Mr. Kidd, please tell

us who she is.”

“I can’t, sir. That’s what I was trying to get straight

in my head when she ran away. I don’t know
how
I

know her, or her name, or nothing like that. It’s not

from making boilers I know her, I can say that much.

She looked refined. A proper lady. I don’t know

anybody like that, but I
do
know her. That face—it’s

not a face I saw last night for the first time. No, sir.”

Samuel Kidd shook his head. “It’s a puzzle all right. I

might have asked her, if she’d not run away.”

I wondered, out of all the people who ever ran

away, how many did so for that very reason: because

they would rather not be asked, whatever the question

might be.

SHORTLY AFTER I HAD sent Samuel Kidd packing with

orders to search his memory for the name of this

mysterious woman and details of where and when he

might have made her acquaintance, Constable Stanley

Beer delivered Henry Negus to Pleasant’s.

Mr. Negus was considerably more pleasing to the

eye than Samuel Kidd: a handsome man of around

fifty with iron-gray hair and a wise face. He was

smartly dressed and soft spoken. I liked him instantly.

His grief at the loss of his brother was palpable,

though he was a model of self-control throughout our

conversation.

“Please accept my condolences, Mr. Negus,” said

Poirot. “I am so sorry. It is a terrible thing to lose one

so close as a brother.”

Negus nodded his gratitude. “Anything I can do to

help—anything at all—I will gladly do. Mr.

Catchpool says that you have questions for me?”

“Yes, monsieur. The names Harriet Sippel and Ida

Gransbury—they are familiar to you?”

“Were they the other two who were. . . ?” Henry

Negus stopped talking as Fee Spring approached with

the cup of tea he had asked for on arrival.

Once she had retreated, Poirot said, “Yes. Harriet

Sippel and Ida Gransbury were also murdered at the

Bloxham Hotel yesterday evening.”

“The name Harriet Sippel means nothing to me. Ida

Gransbury and my brother were engaged to be

married years ago.”

“So you knew Mademoiselle Gransbury?” I heard

the flare of excitement in Poirot’s voice.

“No, I never met her,” said Henry Negus. “I knew

her name, of course, from Richard’s letters. He and I

rarely saw one another while he lived in Great

Holling. We wrote instead.”

I felt another piece of the puzzle slide into position

with a satisfying click. “Richard lived in Great

Holling?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice even.

If Poirot shared my surprise at this discovery, he did

not show it.

One village, linking all three murder victims. I

repeated its name several times in my mind:
Great

Holling, Great Holling, Great Holling.
Everything

seemed to point in its direction.

“Yes, Richard lived there until 1913,” said Negus.

“He had a law practice in the Culver Valley. It’s

where he and I grew up—in Silsford. Then in 1913 he

came to live in Devon with me, where he’s lived ever

since. I mean . . . where he lived,” he corrected

himself. His face looked suddenly haggard, as if the

knowledge of his brother’s death had landed violently

upon him once again, crushing him.

“Did Richard ever mention to you anyone from the

Culver Valley by the name of Jennie?” asked Poirot.

“Or anyone at all with that name, perhaps from Great

Holling or perhaps not?”

There was a pause that stretched forward. Then

Henry Negus said, “No.”

“What about a person with the initials PIJ?”

“No. The only one from the village that he ever

mentioned was Ida, his fiancée.”

“If I may ask a delicate question, monsieur: why

did your brother’s engagement not result in a

marriage?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know. Richard and I were close

but we tended to discuss ideas more than anything

else. Philosophy, politics, theology . . . We did not

generally inquire into one another’s private business.

All he told me about Ida was that he was engaged to

be married to her, and then, in 1913, that they were no

longer engaged.”

“
Attendez.
In 1913, his engagement to Ida

Gransbury ends, and also he leaves Great Holling to

move to Devon and live with you?”

“And my wife and children, yes.”

“Did he leave Great Holling in order to put more

distance between himself and Miss Gransbury?”

Henry Negus considered the question. “I think that

was part of it, but it wasn’t the whole story. Richard

hated Great Holling by the time he left it, and that

can’t have been only Ida Gransbury’s doing. He

loathed every inch of the place, he said. He didn’t tell

me why, and I didn’t ask. Richard had a way of letting

you know when he had said all he wanted to say. His

verdict on the village was delivered very much in the

spirit of ‘That’s all there is to it,’ as I recall. Perhaps

if I had tried to find out more—” Negus broke off, an

anguished expression on his face.

“You must not blame yourself, Mr. Negus,” said

Poirot. “You did not cause your brother’s death.”

“I couldn’t help thinking that . . . well, that

something dreadful must have happened to him in that

village. And one doesn’t like to speak or think about

things of that nature if one can help it.” Henry Negus

sighed. “Richard certainly didn’t want to talk about it,

whatever it was, so I took the view that it was better

not talked about. He was the one with the authority,

you see—the older brother. Everybody deferred to

him. He had a brilliant mind, you know.”

“Indeed?” Poirot smiled kindly.

“Oh, no one paid attention to detail like Richard,

before his decline. Meticulous, he was, in everything

he did. You would entrust anything to him—anybody

would. That was why he was so successful as a

lawyer, before things went badly wrong. I always

believed that he would right himself one day. When he

seemed to perk up a few months ago, I thought,

‘Finally, he has regained his appetite for life.’ I hoped

he might have been thinking about working again,

before every last penny of his money ran out—”

“Mr. Negus, if you would please slow down a

little,” said Poirot, polite but insistent. “Your brother

did not at first work when he moved into your home?”

“No. As well as Great Holling and Ida Gransbury,

Richard left behind his profession when he came to

Devon. Instead of practicing the law, he shut himself

away in his room and practiced drinking heavily.”

“Ah. The decline you mentioned?”

“Yes,” said Negus. “It was a very different

Richard that arrived at my house from the one I had

last encountered. He was so withdrawn and dour. It

was as if he had built a wall around himself. He never

left the house—saw no one, wrote to no one, received

no letters. All he did was read books and stare into

space. He refused to accompany us to church and

would not relent even to please my wife. One day,

after he had been with us for about a year, I found a

Bible outside his door, on the landing floor. It had

been in a drawer in the bedroom we had given him. I

tried to put it back there, but Richard made it clear