The Monogram Murders: The New Hercule Poirot Mystery

by Sophie Hannah

  “Where are the Ives’ suicide notes now?” Poirot asked.

  “I don’t know. I gave them to Margaret sixteen years ago. I haven’t asked her about them since.”

  “I burned them.”

  “Margaret.” Ambrose Flowerday hurried to her side. “You’re awake.”

  “I remember every word of both of them. It seemed important to remember, so I made sure I did.”

  “Margaret, you must rest. Talking is tiring for you.”

  “Patrick’s note said to tell Nancy that he loved her and always would. I didn’t tell her. How could I, without revealing that Ambrose had lied about cause of death at the inquest? But . . . now that the truth is out, you must tell her, Ambrose. Tell her what Patrick wrote.”

  “I will. Don’t worry, Margaret. I will take care of everything.”

  “I do worry. You have not told Monsieur Poirot and Mr. Catchpool about Harriet’s threats, after Patrick and Frances were buried. Tell them now.” Her eyes closed. Seconds later, she was fast asleep again.

  “What were these threats, Doctor?” Poirot asked.

  “Harriet Sippel arrived at the vicarage one day, trailing a mob of ten or twenty behind her, and announced that the people of Great Holling intended to dig up the bodies of Patrick and Frances Ive. As suicides, she said, they had no right to be buried in consecrated ground—it was God’s law. Margaret came to the door and told her that she was speaking nonsense: it used to be the law of the Christian Church, but it wasn’t any longer. It had not been since the 1880s, and this was 1913. Once dead, a person’s soul is entrusted to the mercy of God, and that person is beyond earthly judgement. Harriet’s pious little helper Ida Gransbury insisted that if it was wrong for a suicide to be buried in a churchyard before 1880, then it must still be wrong. God does not change his mind about what constitutes acceptable behavior, she said. When he heard about this unconscionable outburst from his fiancée, Richard Negus ended his engagement to the pitiless harridan and left for Devon. It was the best decision he ever made.”

  “Where did Frances and Patrick Ive find the abrin that they used to kill themselves?” Poirot asked.

  Ambrose Flowerday looked surprised. “That’s a question I wasn’t expecting. Why do you ask?”

  “Because I wonder if it originated with you?”

  “It did.” The doctor flinched, as if in pain. “Frances stole it from my house. I spent some years working in the tropics and I brought two vials of the poison back with me. I was a young man then, but I planned to use it later in life if I needed to—in the event of a painful illness from which I would not recover. Having observed the agonies endured by some of my patients, I wanted to be able to spare myself that sort of ordeal. I didn’t know that Frances knew I had two vials of lethal poison in my cupboard, but she must have searched it one day, looking for something that would serve her purpose. As I said before, perhaps I do deserve to be punished. Whatever Margaret says, I have always felt that Frances’s killer was not Frances but me.”

  “Non. You must not blame yourself,” said Poirot. “If she was determined to take her own life, she would have found a way to do so with or without your vial of abrin.”

  I waited for Poirot to move on to a question about cyanide, since a doctor with access to one poison might well have access to two, but instead he said, “Dr. Flowerday, I do not intend to tell anybody that the deaths of Patrick and Frances Ive were not accidental. You will remain at liberty and able to continue in your medical practice.”

  “What?” Flowerday looked from Poirot to me in astonishment. I nodded my consent, while resenting Poirot’s failure to ask my opinion. I, after all, was the one whose job it was to uphold the law of the land.

  Had he consulted me, I would have urged him not to expose the lie that Ambrose Flowerday had told.

  “Thank you. You are a fair-minded and generous-spirited man.”

  “Pas du tout.” Poirot fended off Flowerday’s gratitude. “I have one more question for you, Doctor: are you married?”

  “No.”

  “If you will permit me to say so, I think you ought to be.”

  I breathed in sharply.

  “You are a bachelor, are you not? And Margaret Ernst has been a widow for some years. It is evident that you love her very much, and I believe that she returns your affection. Why do you not ask her to be your wife?”

  Dr. Flowerday seemed to be trying to blink away his surprise, poor chap. Finally he said, “Margaret and I agreed long ago that we would never marry. It wouldn’t have been right. After what we did—necessary as we both felt it was—and after what happened to poor Charles . . . well, it would have been improper for us to allow ourselves to be happy in that way. As happy as we would have been together. There has been too much suffering.”

  I was watching Margaret, and saw her eyelids flutter open.

  “Enough suffering,” she said in a weak voice.

  Flowerday covered his mouth with his clenched fist. “Oh, Margaret,” he said. “Without you, what is the point?”

  Poirot stood up. “Doctor,” he said in his most stringent voice. “Mrs. Ernst is of the opinion that she will survive. It would be a great shame if your foolish resolve to eschew the possibility of true happiness were to survive also. Two good people who love each other should not be apart when there is no need to be.”

  With that, he marched from the room.

  I WANTED TO MAKE A SWIFT escape back to London, but Poirot said that first he needed to see Patrick and Frances Ive’s grave. “I would like to lay some flowers, mon ami.”

  “It’s February, old chap. Where are you going to find flowers?”

  This prompted a lengthy grumble about the English climate.

  The gravestone lay on its side, covered in mud smears. There were several overlapping footprints in the mud, suggesting that those two feral brutes Frederick and Tobias Clutton had jumped up and down on the stone after digging it out of the ground with their spade.

  Poirot took off his gloves. He bent down and, using the forefinger of his right hand, drew the outline of a large flower—like a child’s drawing—in the earth. “Voilà,” he said. “A flower in February, in spite of the appalling English weather.”

  “Poirot, you’ve got mud on your finger!”

  “Oui. Why do you sound surprised? Even the famous Hercule Poirot cannot create a flower in mud while keeping his hand clean. It will come off, the dirt—do not fear. There is always the manicure, later.”

  “Of course there is.” I smiled. “I’m glad to hear you so sanguine on the subject.”

  Poirot had produced a handkerchief. I watched in fascination as he used it to wipe the footprints from the gravestone, huffing and puffing as he rocked back and forth, nearly losing his balance once or twice.

  “There!” he declared. “C’est mieux!”

  “Yes. Better.”

  Poirot frowned down at his feet. “There are sights so dispiriting that one wishes one did not have to see them,” he said quietly. “We must trust that Patrick and Frances Ive rest in peace together.”

  It was the word “together” that did it. It brought to mind another word: apart. My face must have been a picture.

  “Catchpool? Something is the matter with you—what is it?”

  Together. Apart.

  Patrick Ive was in love with Nancy Ducane, but in death, in their shared grave, he was with the woman to whom he had rightfully belonged in life: his wife, Frances. Had his soul found peace, or was it pining for Nancy? Did Nancy ask herself this? Did she wish, loving Patrick as she did, that the dead could speak to the living? Anybody who had loved and lost someone precious to them might wish that . . .

  “Catchpool! What is in your mind at this moment? I must know.”

  “Poirot, I’ve had the most preposterous idea. Let me tell you, quickly, so that you can tell me I am crazy.” I babbled excitedly until he had heard the whole of it. “I’m wrong, of course,” I concluded.

  “Oh, no, no, no. No, mon
ami, you are not wrong.” He gasped. “Of course! How, how did I fail to see it? Mon Dieu! Do you see what this means? What we must now conclude?”

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “Ah. Dommage.”

  “For pity’s sake, Poirot! It’s hardly fair to make me lay out my idea and then withhold yours.”

  “There is not time for discussion now. We must hurry back to London, where you will pack up the clothes and personal effects of Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury.”

  “What?” I frowned in confusion, wondering if my ears were deceiving me.

  “Oui. Mr. Negus has already had his belongings removed by his brother, if you recall.”

  “I do, but . . .”

  “Do not argue, Catchpool. It will take you hardly any time to pack two ladies” cases with the clothes in their hotel rooms. Ah, now I see it, I see all of it, at last. All the solutions to the many little puzzles, they are in place! You know, it is rather like the crossword puzzle.”

  “Please don’t make the comparison,” I said. “You’re likely to put me off my favorite pastime if you compare it to this case.”

  “Only when one sees all the answers together does one know for certain that one is right,” Poirot went on, ignoring me. “Until then, for as long as some answers are missing, one may yet discover that a detail that seems to fit in fact does not fit at all.”

  “In that case, think of me as an empty crossword grid, with no words filled in,” I said.

  “Not for long, my friend—not for long. Poirot, he will require the dining room of the Bloxham Hotel one last time!”

  The Monogram Murders

  THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON AT a quarter past four, Poirot and I stood at one end of the Bloxham Hotel’s dining room and waited as people took their places at the various tables. The hotel staff had all arrived promptly at four o’clock as Luca Lazzari had promised they would. I smiled at the familiar faces: John Goode, Thomas Brignell, Rafal Bobak. They acknowledged me with nervous nods.

  Lazzari was standing by the door, throwing his arms around in wild gesticulation as he spoke to Constable Stanley Beer. Beer kept having to duck and step back in order to avoid being clonked in the face. I was too far away to catch most of what Lazzari was saying, and the room was too noisy, but I did hear “these Monogram Murders” more than once.

  Was that what Lazzari had decided to call them? Everybody else in the country was calling them by the name the newspapers had chosen from the first day: the Bloxham Hotel Murders. Evidently Lazzari had come up with a more imaginative alternative, in the hope that his beloved establishment would not be forever tarnished by association. I found this so transparent as to be irritating, but I knew that my mood was colored by my failure on the suitcase-packing front. I am easily capable of packing for myself before a trip, but that is because I take as little as possible when I travel. Ida Gransbury’s clothes must have expanded during her short stay at the Bloxham; I had spent an infuriating time pressing and leaning down with my full weight, and still I could not fit many of her clothes in her case. No doubt there is a feminine knack to these things that oafish men like me will never master. I was exceedingly relieved to be told by Poirot that I must stop trying and make my way to the hotel’s dining room at the appointed hour of four o’clock.

  Samuel Kidd, in a smart gray flannel suit, had arrived with a pale-faced Jennie Hobbs on his arm at five minutes past four, followed two minutes later by Henry Negus, Richard’s brother, and ten minutes after that by a group of four: a man and three women, one of whom was Nancy Ducane. The skin around her tear-filled eyes was red raw. As she entered the room, she tried unsuccessfully to conceal her face behind a scarf made of diaphanous material.

  I muttered to Poirot, “She doesn’t want people to see that she has been crying.”

  “No,” he said. “She wears the scarf because she hopes not to be recognized, not because she is ashamed of her tears. There is nothing reprehensible in allowing a feeling to show outwardly, contrary to what you Englishmen seem to believe.”

  I had no wish to be diverted to the topic of myself when I had been talking about Nancy Ducane, in whom I was far more interested. “I suppose the last thing she wants is to be set upon by eager fans, all falling in an adoring heap at her faraway feet.”

  Poirot, as a somewhat famous person himself who should have liked nothing better than a pile of admirers draped all over his spats, looked as if he was about to take issue with this point as well.

  I distracted him with a question: “Who are the three people who came in with Nancy Ducane?”

  “Lord St. John Wallace, Lady Louisa Wallace and their servant Dorcas.” He looked at his watch and tutted. “We are fifteen minutes late in starting! Why cannot people arrive on time?”

  I noticed that both Thomas Brignell and Rafal Bobak had risen to their feet, both apparently wanting to speak, although the proceedings were not yet officially underway.

  “Please, gentlemen, sit down!” Poirot said.

  “But Mr. Poirot, sir, I must—”

  “But I—”

  “Do not agitate yourselves, messieurs. These things that you are so determined to tell Poirot? You may be assured that he knows them already, and that he is about to tell you, and everybody gathered here, those very same things. Be patient, I beg of you.”

  Mollified, Bobak and Brignell sat down. I was surprised to see the black-haired woman sitting next to Brignell reach for his hand. He squeezed hers, and they allowed their hands to remain entwined. I saw the look that passed between them, and it told me all I needed to know: they were sweethearts. This, however, was definitely not the woman I had seen Brignell canoodling with in the hotel gardens.

  Poirot whispered in my ear, “The woman Brignell was kissing in the garden, beside the wheelbarrow—she had fair hair, non? The woman with the brown coat?” He gave me an enigmatic smile.

  To the crowd, he said, “Now that everyone has arrived, please may I ask for silence and your full attention? Thank you. I am obliged to you all.”

  As Poirot spoke, I cast my eyes over the faces in the room. Was that . . . Oh, my goodness! It was! Fee Spring, the waitress from Pleasant’s, was sitting at the back of the room. Like Nancy Ducane, she had made an effort to cover her face—with a fancy sort of hat—and like Nancy she had failed. She winked at me as if to say that it served me and Poirot right for stopping in for a drink and telling her where we were going next. Confound it all, why couldn’t the little minx stay in the coffee house where she belonged?

  “I must ask for your forbearance today,” said Poirot. “There is much that you need to know and understand that you do not at present.”

  Yes, I thought, that summed up my position perfectly. I knew scarcely more than the Bloxham’s chambermaids and cooks did. Perhaps even Fee Spring had a stronger grasp on the facts than I; Poirot had probably invited her to this grand event he had arranged. I must say, I did not and never would understand why he required such a sizeable audience. It was not a theatrical production. When I solved a crime—and I had been lucky enough to do so several times without Poirot’s help—I simply presented my conclusions to my boss and then arrested the miscreant in question.

  I wondered, too late, if I ought to have demanded that Poirot tell me everything first, before staging this spectacle. Here I was, supposedly in charge of the investigation, and I had no inkling of what solution to the mystery he was about to present.

  “Whatever he is about to say, please let it be brilliant,” I prayed. “If he gets it right and I am standing by his side, no one will suspect that I was once, and so late in the day, as unenlightened as I am now.”

  “The story is too long for me to tell it without help,” Poirot addressed the room. “My voice, I would wear it out. Therefore I must ask you to listen to two other speakers. First, Mrs. Nancy Ducane, the famous portrait painter who has done us the honor of joining us here today, will speak.”

  This was a surprise—though not to Nancy herself, I notic
ed. From her face, it was apparent that she had known Poirot would call upon her. The two of them had arranged it in advance.

  Awed whispers filled the room as Nancy, with her scarf wrapped round her face, came to stand beside me where everyone could see her. “You’ve blown her cover with the adoring fans,” I whispered to Poirot.

  “Oui.” He smiled. “Yet still she keeps the scarf around her face as she speaks.”

  Everyone listened, rapt, as Nancy Ducane told the story of Patrick Ive: her forbidden love for him, her illicit visits to the vicarage at night, the wicked lies about his taking money from parishioners and, in exchange, passing on communications from their dead loved ones. She did not mention Jennie Hobbs by name when she referred to the rumor that had started all the trouble.

  Nancy described how she finally spoke out, at the King’s Head Inn, and told the villagers of Great Holling about her love affair with Patrick Ive, which was not chaste, though she had pretended at the time that it was. Her voice shook as she told of the tragic deaths by poisoning of Patrick and Frances Ive. I noted that that was all she said about the cause of death: poisoning. She did not specify accident or suicide. I wondered if Poirot had asked her not to, for the sake of Ambrose Flowerday and Margaret Ernst.

  Before sitting down, Nancy said, “I am as devoted to Patrick now as I ever was. I will never stop loving him. One day, he and I will be reunited.”

  “Thank you, Madame Ducane.” Poirot bowed. “I must now without delay tell you something that I have recently discovered, for I believe it will be a comfort to you. Before his death, Patrick wrote . . . a letter. In it, he asked for you to be told that he loved you and always would.”

  “Oh!” Nancy clapped her hands over her mouth and blinked many times. “Monsieur Poirot, you cannot imagine how happy you have made me.”

  “Au contraire, madame. I can imagine only too well. The loving message, conveyed after the death of the loved one . . . It is an echo, is it not, of the untrue rumors about Patrick Ive: that he conveyed messages from beyond the grave? And who, I ask you, would not wish to receive such a message from one they have loved very much and lost?”