Sophie Hannah - The Monogram Murders

Each room’s door closed with a thud, trapping me inside …

‘Hold his hand, Edward.’

I couldn’t bring myself to look too closely at the bodies. All three were lying on their backs, perfectly straight, with their arms flat by their sides and their feet pointing towards the door. Formally laid out.

(Even writing these words, describing the posture of the bodies, produces in me an intolerable sensation. Is it any wonder I could not look closely at the three victims’ faces for more than a few seconds at a time? The blue undertone to the skin; the still, heavy tongues; the shrivelled lips? Though I would have studied their faces in detail rather than look at their lifeless hands, and I would have done anything at all rather than wonder what I could not help wondering: whether Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus would have wanted somebody to hold their hands once they were dead, or whether the idea would have horrified them. Alas, the human mind is a perverse, uncontrollable organ, and the contemplation of this matter pained me greatly.)

Formally laid out …

A thought struck me with great force. That was what was so grotesque about these three murder scenes, I realized: that the bodies had been laid out as a doctor might lay out his deceased patient, after tending him in his illness for many months. The bodies of Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus had been arranged with meticulous care—or so it seemed to me. Their killer had ministered to them after their deaths, which made it all the more chilling that he had murdered them in cold blood.

No sooner had I had this thought than I told myself I was quite wrong. It was not ministration that had taken place here; far from it. I was confusing the present and the past, mixing up this business at the Bloxham with my unhappiest childhood memories. I ordered myself to think only about what was here in front of me, and nothing else. I tried to see it all through Poirot’s eyes, without the distortion of my own experience.

Each of the murder victims lay between a wing-backed armchair and a small table. On the three tables were two teacups with saucers (Harriet Sippel’s and Ida Gransbury’s) and one sherry glass (Richard Negus’s). In Ida Gransbury’s room, 317, there was a tray on the larger table by the window, loaded with empty plates and one more teacup and saucer. This cup was also empty. There was nothing on the plates but crumbs.

‘Aha,’ said Poirot. ‘So in this room we have two teacups, and many plates. Miss Ida Gransbury had company for her evening meal, most certainly. Perhaps she had the murderer’s company. But why is the tray still here, when the trays have been removed from the rooms of Harriet Sippel and Richard Negus?’

‘They might not have ordered food,’ I said. ‘Maybe they only wanted drinks—the tea and the sherry—and no trays were left in their rooms in the first place. Ida Gransbury also brought twice as many clothes with her as the other two.’ I gestured towards the cupboard, which contained an impressive array of dresses. ‘Have a look in there—there isn’t room to squeeze in even one petticoat, the number of garments she brought with her. She wanted to be certain of looking her best, that’s for sure.’

‘You are right,’ said Poirot. ‘Lazzari said that they all ordered dinner, but we will check exactly what was ordered to each room. Poirot, he would not make the mistake of the assumption if it were not for Jennie weighing on his mind—Jennie, whose whereabouts he does not know! Jennie who is more or less the same age as the three we have here—between forty and forty-five, I think.’

I turned away while Poirot did whatever he did with the mouths and the cufflinks. While he conducted his forays and emitted various exclamations, I stared into fireplaces and out of windows, avoided thinking about hands that would never again be held, and pondered my crossword puzzle and where I might be going wrong. For some weeks I had been trying to compose one that was good enough to be sent to a newspaper to be considered for publication, but I wasn’t having much success.

After we had looked at all three rooms, Poirot insisted that we return to the one on the second floor—Richard Negus’s, number 238. Would I find it any easier to enter these rooms, I wondered, the more I did it? So far the answer was no. Walking once again into Negus’s hotel room felt like forcing my heart to climb the most perilous mountain, in the certain knowledge that it will be left stranded as soon as it reaches the top.

Poirot—unaware of my distress, which I concealed effectively, I hope—stood in the middle of the room and said, ‘ Bon. This is the one that is most different from the others, n’est-ce pas ? Ida Gransbury has the tray and the additional teacup in her room, it is true, but here there is the sherry glass instead of the teacup, and here we have one window open to its full capacity, while in the other two rooms all the windows are closed. Mr Negus’s room is intolerably cold.’

‘This is how it was when Monsieur Lazzari walked in and found Negus dead,’ I said. ‘Nothing’s been altered in any way.’

Poirot walked over to the open window. ‘Here is Monsieur Lazzari’s wonderful view that he offered to show me—of the hotel’s gardens. Both Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury had rooms on the other side of the hotel, with views of the “splendid London”. Do you see these trees, Catchpool?’

I told him that I did, wondering if he had me down as a colossal idiot. How could I fail to see trees that were directly outside the window?

‘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.’