made the following point: the cufflink being in a slightly different part of Richard Negus’s mouth was of absolutely no consequence. A mouth is a mouth, and that was all there was to it. In the murderer’s mind, he had done the same thing to each of his three victims: he had opened their mouths and placed a monogrammed gold cufflink inside each one.
I could not think of any explanation for the hiding of the key behind the loose fireplace tile. It would have been quicker and easier for the murderer to take it with him, or drop it on the carpet after wiping it clean of his fingerprints.
Behind us, the mother and daughter had exhausted the topic of pastry and moved on to suet.
‘We ought to think about returning to the hotel,’ said Poirot.
‘But we’ve only just got on the bus!’ I protested.
‘Oui, c’est vrai, but we do not want to stray too far from the Bloxham. We will soon be needed in the dining room.’
I exhaled slowly, knowing it would be pointless to ask why, in that case, he had felt it necessary to leave the hotel in the first place.
‘We must get off this bus and catch another,’ he said. ‘Perhaps there will be better views from the next one.’
There were. Poirot saw no sign of Jennie, much to his consternation, but I saw some amusing sights that made me realize all over again why I loved London: a man dressed in a clown costume, juggling about as badly as I had ever seen a person juggle. Still, passers-by were throwing coins into the hat by his feet. Other highlights were a poodle that had a face exactly like a prominent politician, and a vagrant sitting on the pavement with an open suitcase beside him, eating food out of it as if it were his very own mobile tuck shop. ‘Look, Poirot,’ I said. ‘That chap doesn’t care about the cold—he’s as happy as the cat that got the cream. The tramp that got the cream, I should say. Poirot, look at that poodle—does it remind you of anyone? Somebody famous. Go on, look, you can’t fail to see it.’
‘Catchpool,’ Poirot said severely. ‘Stand up, or we will miss our stop. Always you look away, seeking the diversion.’
I rose to my feet. As soon as we were off the bus, I said, ‘You’re the one who took me on a pointless sightseeing tour of London. You can hardly blame me for taking an interest in the sights.’
Poirot stopped walking. ‘Tell me something. Why will you not look at the three bodies in the hotel? What is it that you cannot bear to observe?’
‘Nothing. I’ve looked at the bodies as much as you have—I did quite a lot of my looking before you turned up, as a matter of fact.’
‘If you do not wish to discuss it with me, you only need to say so, mon ami.’
‘There is nothing to discuss. I don’t know anybody who would stare at a deceased person for any longer than necessary. That’s all there is to it.’
‘Non,’ said Poirot quietly. ‘It is not all.’
I dare say I ought to have told him, and I still don’t know why I didn’t. My grandfather died when I was five. He was dying for a long time, in a room in our house. I didn’t like going to visit him in his room every day, but my parents insisted that it was important to him, and so I did it to please them, and for his sake also. I watched his skin turn gradually yellower, and listened as his breathing became more shallow and his eyes less focused. I didn’t think of it then as fear, but I remember, every day, counting the seconds that I had to spend in that room, knowing that eventually I would be able to leave, close the door behind me and stop counting.
When he died, I felt as if I had been released from prison and could be fully alive again. He would be taken away, and there would be no more death in the house. And then my mother told me that I must go and see Grandfather one last time, in his room. She would come with me, she said. It would be all right.
The doctor had laid him out. My mother explained to me about the laying out of the dead. I counted the seconds in silence. More seconds than usual. A hundred and thirty at least, standing by my mother’s side, looking at Grandpa’s still, shrunken body. ‘Hold his hand, Edward,’ my mother said. When I said I didn’t want to, she started to weep as if she would never stop.
So I held Grandpa’s dead, bony hand. I wanted more than anything to drop it and run away, but I clung to it until my mother stopped crying and said we could go back downstairs.
Hold his hand, Edward. Hold his hand.
I barely noticed the large crowd gathered in the Bloxham Hotel’s dining room as Poirot and I walked in. The room itself was so striking that I couldn’t help but be diverted by its grandeur. I stopped in the doorway and stared up at the high, lavishly ornamented ceiling with its many emblems and carvings. It was strange to think of people eating ordinary things like toast and marmalade at the tables below a work of art such as this—not even looking up, perhaps, as they sliced the tops off their boiled eggs.
I was trying to make sense of the complete design, and how the different parts of the ceiling related to one another, when a disconsolate Luca Lazzari rushed towards me, interrupting my admiration of the artistic symmetry above my head with his loud lament. ‘Mr Catchpool, Monsieur Poirot, I must apologize to you most profusely! I have hurried to assist you in your important work, and, in doing so, I have put forward a falsehood! It was simply, you see, that I heard many accounts, and my first attempt to collate them was not successful. My own foolishness was responsible! No one else was at fault. Ah—’
Lazzari broke off and looked over his shoulder at the hundred or so men and women in the room. Then he moved to his left, so that he was standing directly in front of Poirot, and stuck out his chest in a funny sort of way. He put his hands on his hips. I think he was hoping to hide his entire staff from Poirot’s disapproving eye, on the principle that if they couldn’t be seen, they couldn’t be blamed for anything.
‘What was your mistake, Signor Lazzari?’ Poirot asked.
‘It was a grave error! You observed that it was surely not possible, and you were right. But I want you to understand that my excellent staff, whom you see here before you, told me the truth of what took place, and it was I who twisted that truth to mislead—but I did not do it deliberately!’
‘Je comprends. Now, to correct the mistake …?’ said Poirot hopefully.
The ‘excellent’ staff, meanwhile, sat silently at large round tables, listening carefully to every word. The mood was sombre. I made a quick survey of the faces and saw not a single smile.
‘I told you that the three deceased guests asked to have dinner served in their rooms at a quarter past seven yesterday evening—each separately,’ Lazzari said. ‘This is not true! The three were together! They dined as a group! All in one room, Ida Gransbury’s room, number 317. One waiter, not three, saw them alive and well at a quarter past seven. Do you see, Monsieur Poirot? It is not the great coincidence that I conveyed to you, but, instead, a commonplace occurrence: three guests taking dinner together in the room of one!’
‘Bon.’ Poirot sounded satisfied. ‘That makes sense of that. And who was this one waiter?’
A stout, bald man seated at one of the tables rose to his feet. He looked to be around fifty, and had the jowlish tendency and mournful eyes of a Basset Hound. ‘It was I, sir,’ he said.
‘What is your name, monsieur?’
‘Rafal Bobak, sir.’
‘You served dinner to Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus in Room 317 at fifteen minutes past seven yesterday evening?’ Poirot asked him.
‘Not