The Monogram Murders (4 page)

guess: she was anxious, and I was the cause of her

anxiety. She had arrived back from her sister-in-law’s

house at half past nine and decided that something

was wrong with me. I looked a fright—as if I hadn’t

eaten and wouldn’t sleep. She’d said all this to me

herself. I don’t know quite how a person manages to

look as if he hasn’t eaten, incidentally. Perhaps I was

leaner than I had been at breakfast that morning.

She inspected me from a variety of angles and

offered me everything she could think of that might set

me right, starting with the obvious remedies one

offers in such situations—food, drink, a friendly ear.

Once I’d rejected all three as graciously as I could,

she proceeded to more outlandish suggestions: a

pillow stuffed with herbs, something foul smelling but

apparently beneficial from a dark blue bottle that I

must put in my bath water.

I thanked her and refused. She cast her eyes

frantically around the drawing room, looking for any

unlikely object she might foist upon me with the

promise that it would solve all my problems.

Now, more likely than not, she was whispering to

Poirot that he must press me to accept the foul-

smelling blue bottle or the herb pillow.

Poirot is normally back from Pleasant’s and

reading in the drawing room by nine o’clock on a

Thursday evening. I had returned from the Bloxham

Hotel at a quarter past nine, determined not to think

about what I had encountered there, and very much

looking forward to finding Poirot in his favorite chair

so that we could talk about amusing trivialities as we

so often did.

He wasn’t there. His absence made me feel

strangely remote from everything, as if the ground had

fallen away beneath my feet. Poirot is a regular sort

of person who does not like to vary his routines—“It

is the unchanging daily routine, Catchpool, that makes

for the restful mind” he had told me more than once—

and yet he was a full quarter of an hour late.

When I heard the front door at half past nine, I

hoped it was him, but it was Blanche Unsworth. I

nearly let out a groan. If you’re worried about

yourself, the last thing you want is the company of

somebody whose chief pastime is fussing over

nothing.

I was afraid I might not be able to persuade myself

to return to the Bloxham Hotel the following day, and

I knew that I had to. That was what I was trying not to

think about.

“And now,” I reflected, “Poirot is here at last, and

he will be worried about me as well because Blanche

Unsworth has told him he must be.” I decided I would

be better off with neither of them around. If there was

no possibility of talking about something easy and

entertaining, I preferred not to talk at all.

Poirot appeared in the drawing room, still wearing

his hat and coat, and closed the door behind him. I

expected a barrage of questions from him, but instead

he said with an air of distraction, “It is late. I walk

and walk around the streets, looking, and I achieve

nothing except to make myself late.”

He was worried, all right, but not about me and

whether I had eaten or was going to eat. It was a huge

relief. “Looking?” I asked.

“
Oui.
For a woman, Jennie, whom I very much

hope is still alive and not murdered.”

“Murdered?” I had that sense of the ground

dropping away again. I knew Poirot was a famous

detective. He had told me about some of the cases

he’d solved. Still, he was supposed to be having a

break from all that, and I could have done without his

producing that particular word at that moment, in such

a portentous fashion.

“What does she look like, this Jennie?” I asked.

“Describe her. I might have seen her. Especially if

she’s been murdered. I’ve seen two murdered women

tonight, actually, and one man, so you might be in

luck. The man didn’t look as if he was likely to be

called Jennie, but as for the other two—”

“
Attendez, mon ami,
” Poirot’s calm voice cut

through my desperate ramblings. He took off his hat

and began to unbutton his coat. “So Madame Blanche,

she is correct—you are troubled? Ah, but how did I

not see this straight away? You are pale. My thoughts,

they were elsewhere. They arrange to be elsewhere

when they see that Madame Blanche approaches! But

please tell Poirot
immédiatement:
what is the

matter?”

“THREE MURDERS ARE THE matter,” I said. “And all

three of them like nothing I’ve seen before. Two

women and one man. Each one in a different room.”

Of course, I had encountered violent death before

many times—I had been with Scotland Yard for

nearly two years, and a policeman for five—but most

murders had about them an obvious appearance of

lost control: somebody had lashed out in a fit of

temper, or had one tipple too many and blown his top.

This business at the Bloxham was very different.

Whoever had killed three times at the hotel had

planned ahead—for months, I guessed. Each of his

crime scenes was a work of macabre art with a

hidden meaning that I could not decipher. It terrified

me to think that this time I was not up against a

chaotic ruffian of the sort I was used to, but perhaps a

cold, meticulous mind that would not allow itself to

be defeated.

I was no doubt being overly gloomy about it, but I

couldn’t shake my feelings of foreboding. Three

matching corpses: the very idea made me shudder. I

told myself I must not develop a phobia; I had rather

to treat this case as I would any other, no matter how

different it seemed on the surface.

“Each of the three murders in a different room in

the same house?” Poirot asked.

“No, at the Bloxham Hotel. Up Piccadilly Circus

way. I don’t suppose you know it?”

“
Non.
”

“I had never been inside it before tonight. It’s not

the sort of place a chap like me would think to go. It’s

palatial.”

Poirot was sitting with his back very straight.

“Three murders, in the same hotel and each in a

different room?” he said.

“Yes, and all committed earlier in the evening

within a short space of time.”

“This evening? And yet you are here. Why are you

not at the hotel? The killer, he is apprehended

already?”

“No such luck, I’m afraid. No, I . . .” I stopped and

cleared my throat. Reporting the facts of the case was

straightforward enough, but I had no wish to explain

to Poirot how my mood had been affected by what I

had seen, or to tell him that I had been at the Bloxham

for no more than five minutes before I succumbed to

the powerful urge to leave.

The way all three had been laid out on their

backs so formally: arms by their sides, palms of

their hands touching the floor, legs together
. . .

Laying out the dead.
The phrase forced its way

into my mind, accompanied by a vision of a dark

room from many years ago—a room I had been

compelled to enter as a young child, and had been

refusing to enter in my imagination ever since. I fully

intended to carry on refusing for the rest of my life.

Lifeless hands, palms facing downward.

“Hold his hand, Edward.”

“Don’t worry, there are plenty of police crawling

about the place,” I said quickly and loudly, to banish

the unwelcome vision. “Tomorrow morning is soon

enough for me to go back.” Seeing that he was waiting

for a fuller answer, I added, “I had to clear my head.

Frankly, I’ve never seen anything as peculiar as these

three murders in all my life.”

“In what way peculiar?”

“Each of the victims had something in his or her

mouth—the same thing.”

“
Non.
” Poirot wagged his finger at me. “This is

not possible,
mon ami
. The same thing cannot be

inside three different mouths at the same time.”

“Three separate things, all identical,” I clarified.

“Three cufflinks, solid gold from the look of them.

Monogrammed. Same initials on all three: PIJ.

Poirot? Are you all right? You look—”

“
Mon Dieu!
” He had risen to his feet and begun to

pace around the room. “You do not see what this

means,
mon ami
. No, you do not see it at all, because

you have not heard the story of my encounter with

Mademoiselle Jennie. Quickly I must tell you what

happened so that you understand.”

Poirot’s idea of telling a story quickly is rather

different from most people’s. Every detail matters to

him equally, whether it’s a fire in which three hundred

people perish or a small dimple on a child’s chin. He

can never be induced to rush to the nub of a matter, so

I settled into my chair and let him tell it in his own

way. By the time he had finished, I felt as if I had

experienced

the

events

first-hand—more

comprehensively, indeed, than I experience many

scenes from my life in which I personally participate.

“What an extraordinary thing to happen,” I said.

“On the same night as the three murders at the

Bloxham, too. Quite a coincidence.”

Poirot sighed. “I do not think it is a coincidence,

my friend. One accepts that the coincidences happen

from time to time, but here there is a clear

connection.”

“You mean murder on the one hand, and the fear of

being murdered on the other?”

“
Non.
That is one connection, yes, but I am talking

about

something

different.”

Poirot

stopped

promenading around the drawing room and turned to

face me. “You say that in your three murder victims”

mouths are found three gold cufflinks bearing the

monogram ‘PIJ?’ ”

“That’s right.”

“Mademoiselle Jennie, she said to me quite

clearly: ‘Promise me this: if I’m found dead, you’ll

tell your friend the policeman not to look for my

killer.
Oh, please let no one open their mouths!
This

crime must never be solved.’ What do you think she

meant by ‘Oh, please let no one open their mouths?’ ”

Was he joking? Apparently not. “Well,” I said,

“it’s clear, isn’t it? She feared she would be

murdered, didn’t want her killer punished and was

hoping no one would say anything to point the finger

at him. She believes
she
is the one who deserves to

be punished.”

“You choose the meaning that at first seems

obvious,” said Poirot. He sounded disappointed in

me. “Ask yourself if there is another possible meaning

of those words: ‘Oh, please let no one open their

mouths.’ Reflect upon your three gold cufflinks.”

“They are not mine,” I said emphatically, wishing

at that moment that I could push the whole case very

far away from me. “All right, I see what you’re

driving at, but—”

“What do you see?
Je conduis ma voiture à

quoi?
”

“Well . . . ‘Please let no one open their mouths’

could, at a stretch, mean ‘Please let no one open the

mouths of the three murder victims at the Bloxham

Hotel.’ ” I felt an utter fool giving voice to this

preposterous theory.

“
Exactement!
‘Please let no one open their mouths

and find the gold cufflinks with the initials PIJ.’ Is it

not possible that this is what Jennie meant? That she

knew about the three murder victims at the hotel, and

that she knew that whoever killed them was also

intent on killing her?”

Without waiting for my answer, Poirot proceeded

with his imaginings. “And the letters PIJ, the person

who has those initials, he is very important to the

story,
n’est-ce pas
? Jennie, she knows this. She

knows that if you find these three letters you will be

on your way to finding the murderer, and she wants to

prevent this.
Alors,
you must catch him before it is too

late for Jennie, or else Hercule Poirot, he shall not