‘Was that all he said, monsieur?’
‘Yes.’ Brignell looked as if he might faint if he was required to produce one more word.
‘Thank you, Mr Brignell,’ I said as warmly as I could. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’ Immediately I felt guilty for not having thanked Rafal Bobak in a similar manner, so I added, ‘As have you, Mr Bobak. As have you all.’
‘Catchpool,’ Poirot murmured. ‘Most people in this room have said nothing.’
‘They have listened attentively and applied their minds to the problems presented to them. I think they deserve credit for that.’
‘You have faith in their minds, yes? Perhaps these are the hundred people you call upon when we disagree? Bien, if we were to ask these hundred people …’ Poirot turned back to the crowd. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we have heard that Richard Negus, Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury were friends, and that their food was delivered to Room 317 at fifteen minutes past seven. Yet at half past seven, Mr Brignell saw Richard Negus on this floor of the hotel, walking towards the lift. Mr Negus must have been returning, n’est-ce pas, either to his own room, 238, or to Room 317 to join his two friends? But returning from where? His sandwiches and cakes were delivered only fifteen minutes earlier! Did he abandon them immediately and set off somewhere? Or did he eat his share of the food in only three or four minutes before rushing off? And to where did he rush? What was the important errand for which he left Room 317? Was it to ensure that the food should not end up on the bill of Harriet Sippel or Ida Gransbury? He could not wait twenty or thirty minutes, or an hour, before setting off to attend to this matter?’
A sturdily built woman with curly brown hair and severe eyebrows sprang to her feet at the back of the room. ‘You keep asking all these questions as if I might know the answer, as if we all might know the answers, and we don’t know nothing!’ Her eyes darted around the room as she spoke, settling on one person after another, though her words were addressed to Poirot. ‘I want to go home, Mr Lazzari,’ she wailed. ‘I want to look in on my kiddies and see that they’re safe!’
A younger woman sitting beside her put a hand on her arm and tried to calm her. ‘Sit down, Tessie,’ she said. ‘The gentleman’s only trying to help. Your bairns won’t have come to any harm, not if they’ve been nowhere near the Bloxham.’
At this remark, intended as a comfort, both Luca Lazzari and Sturdy Tessie made anguished noises.
‘We won’t keep you much longer, madam,’ I said. ‘And I’m sure Mr Lazzari will allow you to pay a visit to your children afterwards, if that is what you feel you need to do.’
Lazzari indicated that this would be permissible, and Tessie sat down, slightly mollified.
I turned to Poirot and said, ‘Richard Negus did not leave Room 317 in order to clear up the matter of the bill. He ran into Thomas Brignell on his way back from somewhere, so he had already done whatever it was that he set out to do by that point. He then happened to spot Mr Brignell and decided to clear up the matter of the bill.’ I hoped, with this little speech, to demonstrate to all present that we had answers as well as questions. Perhaps not all the answers, yet, but some, and some was better than none.
‘Monsieur Brignell, did you have the impression that Mr Negus happened to see you and take his opportunity, as Mr Catchpool describes? He was not looking for you? It was you who attended to him when he arrived at the hotel on Wednesday, yes?
‘That’s right, sir. No, he wasn’t looking for me.’ Brignell seemed happier about speaking while seated. ‘He chanced upon me and thought, “Oh, there’s that chap again”, if you know what I mean, sir.’
‘Indeed. Ladies and gentlemen,’ Poirot raised his voice. ‘After committing three murders in this hotel yesterday evening, the killer, or somebody who knows the identity of the killer and conspired with him, left a note on the front desk: “MAY THEY NEVER REST IN PEACE. 121. 238. 317.” Did anybody happen to observe the leaving of this note that I show to you now?’ Poirot produced the small white card from his pocket and held it up in the air. ‘It was found by the clerk, Mr John Goode, at ten minutes past eight. Did any of you, perhaps, notice a person or persons near the desk who seemed to be conducting themselves in an unusual way? Think hard! Someone must have seen something!’
Stout Tessie had screwed her eyes shut and was leaning against her friend. The room had filled with whispers and gasps, but it was only the shock and excitement of seeing the handwriting of a killer—a souvenir that made the three deaths seem more vividly real.
Nobody had anything more to tell us. It turned out that if you asked a hundred people, you were likely to be disappointed.
Half an hour later, Poirot and I sat drinking coffee in front of a roaring fire in what Lazzari had called ‘our hidden lounge’, a room that was behind the dining room and not accessible from any public corridor. The walls were covered with portraits which I tried to ignore. Give me a sunny landscape any day of the week, or even a cloudy one. It’s the eyes that bother me when people are depicted; it doesn’t seem to matter who the artist is. I’ve yet to see a portrait and not be convinced that its subject is regarding me with searing scorn.
After his exuberant performance as master of ceremonies in the dining room, Poirot had lapsed once more into quiet gloom. ‘You’re fretting about Jennie again, aren’t you?’ I asked him.
He admitted that he was. ‘I do not want to hear that she has been found with a cufflink in her mouth, with the monogram PIJ. That is the news I dread.’
‘Since there is nothing you can do about Jennie for the time being, I suggest you think about something else,’ I advised.
‘How practical you are, Catchpool. Very well. Let us think about teacups.’
‘Teacups?’
‘Yes. What do you make of them?’
After some consideration, I said, ‘I believe I have no opinions whatever on the subject of teacups.’
Poirot made an impatient noise. ‘Three teacups are brought to Ida Gransbury’s room by the waiter Rafal Bobak. Three teacups for three people, as one would expect. But when the bodies of the three are found, there are only two teacups in the room.’
‘The other one is in Harriet Sippel’s room with Harriet Sippel’s dead body,’ I said.
‘Exactement. And this is most curious, is it not? Did Mrs Sippel carry her teacup and saucer back to her room before or after the poison was put into it? In either scenario, who would carry a cup of tea along a hotel corridor, and then take it into a lift or walk down two flights of stairs with it in their hands? Either it is full and there is a risk of spillage, or it is half full or almost empty, and hardly worth transporting. Usually one drinks a cup of tea in the room in which one pours the cup of tea, n’est-ce pas?’
‘Usually, yes. This killer strikes me as being as far from usual as it’s possible to be,’ I said with some vehemence.
‘And his victims? Are they not ordinary people? What about their behaviour? Do you ask me to believe that Harriet Sippel carries her tea down to her room, sits in a chair to drink it, and then almost immediately the murderer knocks on her door, finds an opportunity to put cyanide in her drink? And Richard Negus, remember, has also left Ida Gransbury’s room for some unknown reason, but he arranges to be back in his own room soon afterwards, with a glass of sherry that nobody at the hotel gave him.’
‘I