‘Another difference here is the position of the cufflink,’ said Poirot. ‘Did you notice that? In Harriet Sippel’s and Ida Gransbury’s mouths, the cufflink is slightly protruding between the lips. Whereas Richard Negus has the cufflink much further back, almost at the entrance to the throat.’
I opened my mouth to object, then changed my mind, but it was too late. Poirot had seen the argument in my eyes. ‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘I think you’re being a touch pedantic,’ I said. ‘All three victims have monogrammed cufflinks in their mouths—the same initials on each one, PIJ. That’s something they have in common. It isn’t a difference. No matter which of their teeth the cufflink happens to be next to.’
‘But it is a very big difference! The lips, the entrance to the throat—these are not the same place, not at all.’ Poirot walked over so that he was standing right in front of me. ‘Catchpool, please remember what I am about to tell you. When three murders are almost identical, the smallest divergent details are of the utmost importance.’
Was I supposed to remember these wise words even if I disagreed with them? Poirot needn’t have worried. I remember nearly every word he has spoken in my presence, and the ones that infuriated me most are the ones I remember best of all.
‘All three cufflinks were in the mouths of the victims,’ I repeated with determined obstinacy. ‘That’s good enough for me.’
‘This I see,’ said Poirot with an air of dejection. ‘Good enough for you, and good enough also for your hundred people that you might ask, and also, I have no doubt, for your bosses at Scotland Yard. But not good enough for Hercule Poirot!’
I had to remind myself that he was talking about definitions of similarity and difference, and not about me personally.
‘What about the open window, when all the windows in the other two rooms are closed?’ he asked. ‘Is that a difference worth noting?’
‘It’s unlikely to be relevant,’ I said. ‘Richard Negus might have opened the window himself. There would be no reason for the murderer to close it. You’ve said it often yourself, Poirot—we Englishmen open windows in the dead of winter because we believe it’s good for our character.’
‘Mon ami,’ said Poirot patiently. ‘Consider: these three people did not drink poison, fall out of their armchairs and quite naturally land flat on their backs with their arms at their sides and their feet pointing towards the door. It is impossible. Why would one not stagger across the room? Why would one not fall out of the chair on the other side? The killer, he arranged the bodies so that each one was in the same position, at an equal distance from the chair and from the little table. Eh bien, if he cares so much to arrange his three murder scenes to look exactly the same, why does he not wish to close the window that, yes, perhaps Mr Richard Negus has opened—but why does the murderer not close it in order to make it conform with the appearance of the windows in the other two rooms?’
I had to think about this. Poirot was right: the bodies had been laid out in this way deliberately. The killer must have wanted them all to look the same.
Laying out the dead …
‘I suppose it depends where you choose to draw your frame around the scene of the crime,’ I said hurriedly, as my mind tried to drag me back to my childhood’s darkest room. ‘Depends whether you want to extend it as far as the window.’
‘Frame?’
‘Yes. Not a real frame, a theoretical one. Perhaps our murderer’s frame for his creations was no larger than a square like this.’ I walked around Richard Negus’s body, turning corners when necessary. ‘You see? I’ve just walked a small frame around Negus, and the window is outside the frame.’
Poirot was smiling and trying to hide it beneath his moustaches. ‘A theoretical frame around the murder. Yes, I see. Where does the scene of a crime begin and where does it end? This is the question. Can it be smaller than the room that contains it? This is a fascinating matter for the philosophers.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Pas du tout. Catchpool, will you please tell me what you believe happened here at the Bloxham Hotel yesterday evening? Let us leave motive to one side for the moment. Tell me what you think the killer did. First, and next, and next, and so on.’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Try to have an idea, Catchpool.’
‘Well … I suppose he came to the hotel, cufflinks in pocket, and went to each of the three rooms in turn. He probably started where we did, with Ida Gransbury in Room 317, and worked his way down so that he would be able to leave the hotel fairly quickly after killing his final victim—Harriet Sippel in Room 121, on the first floor. Only one floor down and he can escape.’
‘And what does he do in the three rooms?’
I sighed. ‘You know the answer to that. He commits a murder and arranges the body in a straight line. He places a cufflink in the person’s mouth. Then he closes and locks the door and leaves.’
‘And to each room he is admitted without question? In each room, he finds his victim waiting with a most convenient drink for him to drop his poison into—drinks that were delivered by hotel staff at precisely a quarter past seven? He stands beside his victim, watching as the drink is consumed, and then he stands for a little longer as he waits for each one to die? And he stops to eat supper with one of them, Ida Gransbury, who has ordered a cup of tea for him too? All these visits to rooms, all these murders and putting of cufflinks in mouths and very formal arranging of bodies in straight lines, with feet pointing towards the door, he is able to do between a quarter past seven and ten past eight? This seems most unlikely, my friend. Most unlikely indeed.’
‘Yes, it does. Have you got any better ideas, Poirot? That’s why you’re here—to have better ideas than mine. Do please start any time you wish.’ I was regretting my outburst by the time I’d finished the sentence.
‘I started long ago,’ said Poirot, who thankfully had not taken umbrage. ‘You said that the killer left a note on the front desk, informing of his crimes—show it to me.’
I took it out of my pocket and passed it across to him. John Goode, Lazzari’s idea of perfection in the form of a hotel clerk, had found it on the front desk ten minutes after eight o’clock. It read, ‘MAY THEY NEVER REST IN PEACE. 121. 238. 317.’
‘So the murderer, or an accomplice of the murderer, was brazen enough to approach the desk—the main desk in the lobby of the hotel—with a note that would incriminate him if anyone saw him leaving it,’ said Poirot. ‘He is audacious. Confident. He did not disappear into the shadows, using the back door.’
‘After Lazzari read the note, he checked the three rooms and found the bodies,’ I said. ‘Then he checked all the other rooms in the hotel, he was very proud to tell me. Fortunately no other dead guests were found.’
I knew I oughtn’t to say vulgar things, but it made me feel better somehow. If Poirot had been English, I probably would have made a greater effort to keep myself in check.
‘And did it occur to Monsieur Lazzari that one of his still-living guests might be a murderer? Non. It did not. Any person who chooses to stay at the Bloxham Hotel must have a character of the utmost virtue and integrity!’
I coughed and inclined my head towards the door. Poirot turned. Lazzari had let himself into the room and was standing in the doorway. He could hardly have looked happier. ‘So true, so true, Monsieur Poirot,’ he said.
‘Every single person who was in this hotel on Thursday must speak to Mr Catchpool and account for their movements,’ Poirot told him sternly. ‘Every guest, everyone who was here to work. All of them.’
‘With the greatest pleasure, you may speak