4
Sometimes, remembering something a person said months or even years ago still makes you chuckle, and this, for me, is true of what Poirot said to me at some point later on that day: ‘It is hard for even the most ingenious detective to know what to do if his desire is to be free of Signor Lazzari. If one’s praise of his hotel is insufficient, he stays by one’s side and supplements it with his own; if one’s praise is fulsome and lengthy, he stays to listen.’
Poirot’s efforts were eventually successful, and he finally managed to persuade Lazzari to leave him to his own devices in Room 238. He walked over to the door that the hotel manager had left open, closed it, and sighed with relief. How much easier it was to think clearly when there was no babble of voices.
He made straight for the window. An open window, he thought as he stared out of it. The murderer might have opened it to escape, after killing Richard Negus. He could have climbed down a tree.
Why escape thus? Why not simply leave the room in the expected way, using the corridor? Perhaps the killer heard voices outside Negus’s room and did not want to risk being seen. Yes, that was a possibility. And yet when he strolled up to the front desk to leave his note announcing his three murders, he risked being seen. More than seen—he risked being caught in the act of leaving incriminating evidence.
Poirot looked down at the body on the floor. No gleam of metal between the lips. Richard Negus alone of the three victims had the cufflink right at the back of his mouth. It was an anomaly. Too many things about this room were anomalous. For this reason, Poirot decided he would search Room 238 first. He was … Yes, there was no virtue in denying it—he was suspicious of this room. Of the three, it was his least favourite. There was something disorganized about it, something a little unruly.
Poirot stood beside Negus’s body and frowned. Even by his exacting standards, one open window was not enough to render a room chaotic, so what was it that was giving him this impression? He looked around, turning in a slow circle. No, he must be mistaken. Hercule Poirot was not often wrong but it did happen very occasionally, and this must be one such instance, because 238 was an undeniably tidy room. There was no mess or muddle. It was as tidy as Harriet Sippel’s room and Ida Gransbury’s.
‘I shall shut the window and see if that makes a difference,’ said Poirot to himself. He did so, and surveyed the territory anew. Something was still not right. He did not like Room 238. He would not have felt comfortable if he had arrived at the Bloxham Hotel and been shown to this …
Suddenly the problem leapt out at him, putting an abrupt end to his meditations. The fireplace! One of the tiles was not aligned correctly. It was not straight; it jutted out. A loose tile; Poirot could not sleep in a room with such a thing. He eyed the body of Richard Negus. ‘If I were in the condition that you are in, oui, but not otherwise,’ he said to it.
His only thought as he bent to touch the tile was that he might straighten it and push it back in so that it was flush with the others. To spare future guests the torment of knowing that there was something amiss in the room and being unable to work out what it was—what a service that would be! And to Signor Lazzari also!
When Poirot touched it, the tile fell clean out, and something else fell with it: a key with a number on it: 238. ‘Sacre tonnerre,’ Poirot whispered. ‘So the thorough search was not so thorough after all.’
Poirot replaced the key where he had found it, then set about inspecting the rest of the room, inch by inch. He discovered nothing else of interest, so he proceeded to Room 317 and then to Room 121, which was where I found him when I returned from my errands with exciting news of my own.
Poirot being Poirot, he insisted on telling me his news first, about his finding of the key. All I can say is, in Belgium it is evidently not considered unseemly to gloat. He was quite puffed up with pride. ‘Do you see what this means, mon ami? The open window was not opened by Richard Negus, it was opened after his death! Having locked the door of Room 238 from the inside, the murderer needed to escape. He did so using the tree outside Mr Negus’s window, after he had hidden the key behind a tile in the fireplace that had come loose. He perhaps loosened it himself.’
‘Why not conceal it in his clothing, take it with him and leave the room in the customary way?’ I asked.
‘That is a question I have been asking myself—one that, for now, I am unable to answer,’ Poirot said. ‘I have satisfied myself that there is no hidden key in this room, 121. Nor is there a key anywhere in Room 317. The killer must have taken two keys with him when he left the Bloxham Hotel, so why not the third? Why is the treatment of Richard Negus different?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ I said. ‘Listen, I’ve been talking to John Goode, the clerk—’
‘The most dependable clerk,’ Poirot amended with a twinkle in his eye.
‘Yes, well … dependable or not, he’s certainly come up trumps for us on the information front. You were right: the three victims are connected. I’ve seen their addresses. Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury both lived in a place called Great Holling, in the Culver Valley.’
‘Bon. And Richard Negus?’
‘No, he lives in Devon—place called Beaworthy. But he’s connected too. He booked all three hotel rooms—Ida’s, Harriet’s and his own—and he paid for them ahead of time.’
‘Did he indeed? This I find very interesting …’ Poirot murmured, stroking his moustaches.
‘Bit puzzling, if you ask me,’ I said. ‘The main puzzle being: why, if they were coming from the same village on the same day, did Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury not travel together? Why did they not arrive together? I went over it several times with John Goode and he is adamant: Harriet arrived two hours before Ida on Wednesday—two full hours.’
‘And Richard Negus?’
I resolved henceforth to include all details relating to Negus at the earliest opportunity, if only so that I wouldn’t have to hear Poirot say, ‘And Richard Negus?’ over and over again.
‘He turned up an hour before Harriet Sippel. He was the first of the three to arrive, but it wasn’t John Goode who dealt with him. It was a junior clerk, a Mr Thomas Brignell. I also found out that all three of our murder victims travelled to London by train, not car. I’m not sure if you wanted to know that, but—’
‘I must know everything,’ said Poirot.
His obvious desire to be in charge and make the investigation his own both irritated and reassured me. ‘The Bloxham has some cars that it sends out to fetch guests from the station,’ I told him. ‘It’s not cheap, but they’re happy to sort it out for you. Three weeks ago, Richard Negus made arrangements with John Goode for the hotel’s cars to meet him, Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury. Separately; a car each. All of it—the rooms, the cars—it was all paid for in advance, by Negus.’
‘I wonder if he was a wealthy man,’ Poirot mused aloud. ‘So often, murder turns out to be about money. What are your thoughts, Catchpool, now that we know a little more?’
‘Well …’ I decided to throw myself into it, since he’d asked. Imagining what was possible was a good thing in Poirot’s book, so I would allow myself to concoct a theory, using the facts as a starting point. ‘Richard Negus must have known about all three arrivals, since he reserved and paid for the rooms, but perhaps Harriet Sippel didn’t know that Ida Gransbury was also coming to the Bloxham. And perhaps Ida didn’t know that Harriet was.’
‘Oui, c’est possible.’
Encouraged, I went on: ‘Maybe it was essential to the murderer’s plan that neither Ida nor Harriet should know about the presence of the other one. But if that’s so, and if Richard Negus, meanwhile, knew that he and both women would be