The Monogram Murders (34 page)

once I had reassured you on this point, did you

confide in me.
But I had already told you that I had

a friend at Scotland Yard.
You spoke to me not

because you believed me to be powerless to arrest a

murderer,
but because you knew perfectly well that I

had influence with the police
—because you wished

to see Nancy Ducane framed and hanged for murder!”

“I wish
no such thing
!” Jennie turned her tear-

streaked face to me. “Please, stop him!”

“I will stop when I am ready,” said Poirot. “You

were a regular visitor to Pleasant’s Coffee House,

mademoiselle. The waitresses have said so. They talk

about their customers a great deal in their absence. I

expect you heard them speak about me: the fussy

European gentleman with the mustache who used to

be a policeman on the Continent—and my friend

Catchpool here, from Scotland Yard. You heard them

say that I dine at Pleasant’s every Thursday evening at

half past seven precisely. Oh, yes, mademoiselle, you

knew where to find me, and you knew that Hercule

Poirot would be perfect for your devious purposes!

You arrived at the coffee house in an apparent state of

terror, but it was all a lie, an act! You stared out of the

window for a long time, as if fearful of someone in

pursuit, but
you cannot have seen anything out of

that window except the reflection of the room that

you were in
. And one of the waitresses, she saw your

eyes reflected and saw that you were watching her,

not the street. You were calculating, were you not?

‘Will anyone suspect that I am feigning my state of

distress? Will that sharp-eyed waitress guess the truth

and prevent my plan from being successful?’ ”

I rose to my feet. “Poirot, I don’t doubt that you’re

right, but you can’t simply go on at the poor woman

without allowing her to say a word in her defense.”

“Be quiet, Catchpool. Have I not just explained to

you that Miss Hobbs is excellent at creating an

appearance of great unhappiness while, underneath,

her true self is composed and calculating?”

“You are a cold-hearted man!” Jennie wailed.

“
Au contraire, mademoiselle.
In due course you

will have your turn to speak, you may rest assured,

but first I have another question for you. You said to

me, ‘Oh, please let no one open their mouths!’ How

did you know that Nancy Ducane, after killing her

three victims, had placed cufflinks in their mouths? It

seems to me odd that you should know this. Did Mrs.

Ducane threaten that it would happen? I can imagine a

murderer threatening violence in order to scare—‘If I

catch you, I will cut your throat,’ or something of that

nature—but I cannot imagine a killer saying, ‘After I

have murdered you, I intend to place a monogrammed

cufflink in your mouth.’ I cannot imagine any person

saying that, and I am a man of considerable

imagination!

“And—pardon

me!—one

final

observation,

mademoiselle. Whatever guilt was yours for the tragic

fate of Patrick and Frances Ive, three people were as

guilty as you if not more so: Harriet Sippel, Ida

Gransbury and Richard Negus. They were the people

who believed your lie and turned the whole village

against the Reverend Ive and his wife. Now, at

Pleasant’s you said to me, ‘Once I am dead, justice

will have been done, finally,’ and you placed the

stress upon the ‘I’: ‘once
I
am dead.’ This indicates to

me that you knew that Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury

and Richard Negus were already dead. But if I look at

all the evidence as it has been presented to me,
the

three murders at the Bloxham Hotel might not yet

have been committed.
”

“Stop, please,
stop!
” Jennie cried, weeping.

“In a moment, with pleasure. Let me only say that it

was approximately a quarter to eight when you spoke

those words to me—‘Once
I
am dead, justice will

have been done, finally’—and yet we know that the

three Bloxham murders were only discovered by the

hotel’s staff after ten minutes past eight. Yet somehow

you, Jennie Hobbs, had advance knowledge of these

murders. How?”

“If you will only stop accusing me, I shall tell you

everything! I’ve been so desperate. Having to keep it

all secret and lie constantly—it was a torment. I can’t

bear it any longer!”

“
Bon,
” said Poirot quietly. He sounded suddenly

kinder. “You have had a severe shock today, have you

not? Perhaps you will now see that you cannot

deceive Poirot?”

“I do see. Let me tell you the story, from the

beginning. It will be such a relief to be able to tell the

truth at last.”

Jennie spoke at length then, and neither I nor Poirot

interrupted her until she indicated that she had

finished. What follows is in her words, and is, I hope,

a faithful and complete account of what she said.

The Truth at Last

I DESTROYED THE LIFE of the only man I have ever

loved, and I destroyed my own life along with it.

I didn’t mean for things to take the turn they took. I

would never have imagined that a few silly, cruel

words spoken by me could lead to such disaster. I

ought to have considered and kept my mouth shut, but

I was feeling wounded and, in a moment of weakness,

I allowed spite to get the better of me.

I loved Patrick Ive with every bone and muscle in

my body. I tried not to. I was engaged to be married to

Sam Kidd when I first started working for Patrick—

as his bedder, at Saviour College in Cambridge,

where he studied. I liked Sam well enough, but my

heart belonged to Patrick within a few weeks of first

meeting him, and I knew that no amount of trying to

feel differently would change that. Patrick was

everything good that a person could be. He was fond

of me, but to him I was only a servant. Even after I

learned to speak like the daughter of a master of a

Cambridge college—like Frances Ive—I remained, in

Patrick’s eyes, a loyal servant and nothing more.

Of course I knew about him and Nancy Ducane. I

overheard some of his conversations with her that I

wasn’t supposed to. I knew how much he loved her,

and I couldn’t bear it. I had long ago accepted that he

belonged to Frances and not to me, but it was

intolerable to discover that he had fallen in love with

a woman who was not his wife and that that woman

was not me.

For a few fleeting seconds—no longer—I wanted

to punish him. To cause him grievous hurt of the kind

that he had caused me. So I made up a wicked lie

about him and, God forgive me, I told that lie to

Harriet Sippel. It comforted me for as long as I was

telling it: the idea that Patrick’s whispered words of

love for Nancy—words I had overheard more than

once—were not his but the late William Ducane’s,

conveyed from beyond the grave. Oh, I knew it was

nonsense, but when I told Harriet Sippel, for a few

seconds it felt true.

Then Harriet set to work, saying dreadful,

unforgivable things about Patrick all over the village

—and Ida and Richard helped her, which I never

understood. They must have known what a venomous

creature she had become; everyone in the village

knew. How could they turn on Patrick and ally

themselves with her? Oh, I know the answer: it was

my fault. Richard and Ida knew that the rumor did not

come from Harriet in the first place but from a servant

girl who had always been loyal to Patrick and who

was seen as having no reason to lie.

I saw at once that my jealousy had led me to do a

terrible, heinous thing. I witnessed Patrick’s suffering

and desperately wanted to help him, and Frances—

but I didn’t see how I could! Harriet had
seen
Nancy

enter and leave the vicarage at night. So had Richard

Negus. If I had admitted to lying, I would have had to

offer another explanation for Nancy’s nocturnal visits

to Patrick. And it would not have taken Harriet long

to arrive at the correct explanation by her own

deductions.

The shameful truth is that I am a dreadful coward.

People like Richard Negus and Ida Gransbury—they

don’t mind what other people think of them if they

believe that right is on their side, but I
do
mind. I have

always cared about making a good impression. If I

had confessed to my lie, I would have been hated by

everybody in the village, and rightly so. I’m not a

strong person, Monsieur Poirot. I did nothing, said

nothing, because I was scared. Then Nancy, horrified

by the lie and by people’s believing it, came forward

and told the truth: that she and Patrick were in love

and had been meeting in secret, though nothing of a

carnal nature had taken place between them.

Nancy’s efforts on Patrick’s behalf only made

things worse for him. “Not only a charlatan who

defrauds parishioners and makes a mockery of his

Church, but also an adulterer”—that was what they

started to say. It became too much for Frances, who

took her own life. When Patrick found her, he knew he

would not be able to live with the guilt—after all, it

was his love for Nancy that had started the trouble.

He had failed in his duty to Frances. He, too, took his

own life.

The village doctor said that the two deaths were

accidents, but that was not true. They were both

suicide—another sin in the eyes of those as saintly as

Ida Gransbury, and those with an appetite for

punishing, like Harriet Sippel. Patrick and Frances

both left notes, you see. I found them and passed them

on to the doctor, Ambrose Flowerday. I think he must

have burned them. He said that he would not give

anybody further cause to condemn Patrick and

Frances. Dr. Flowerday was sickened by the way the

whole village had turned on them.

Patrick’s death broke my heart, and it has remained

broken since that day, Monsieur Poirot. I wanted to

die, but with Patrick gone, I felt that I needed to stay

alive, loving him and thinking well of him—as if my

doing so could ever make up for everybody else in

Great Holling believing him to be some sort of devil!

My only consolation was that I was not alone in

my misery. Richard Negus felt ashamed of the part he

had played. He alone among Patrick’s denigrators

changed his mind; when Nancy told her story, he saw

at once that the outlandish lie I had told was unlikely

to be true.

Before he moved to his brother’s home in Devon,

Richard sought me out and asked me directly. I

wanted to tell him that there was not a grain of truth in

the rumor I had started, but I didn’t dare, so I said

nothing. I sat mutely, as if my tongue had been cut out,

and Richard took my silence as an admission of guilt.

I left Great Holling shortly after he did. I went to

Sammy for help at first, but I couldn’t stay in

Cambridge—there were too many memories of

Patrick there—so I came to London. It was Sammy’s

idea. He found work here and, thanks to some people

he introduced me to, so did I. Sammy is devoted to me