date of their deaths, which was yesterday, but also their date of arrival at the Bloxham Hotel: Wednesday.’
‘What’s remarkable about it?’ I asked. ‘Plenty of other guests must also have arrived on Wednesday, in a hotel of this size. I mean, ones that have not been murdered.’
Poirot’s eyes looked as if they were about to burst forth from his head. I couldn’t see that I had said anything particularly shocking, so I pretended not to notice his consternation, and continued to tell him the facts of the case.
‘Each of the victims was found inside his or her locked bedroom,’ I said, feeling rather self-conscious about the ‘his or her’ part. ‘The killer locked all three doors and made off with the keys—’
‘Attendez,’ Poirot interrupted. ‘You mean that the keys are missing. You cannot know that the murderer took them or has them now.’
I took a deep breath. ‘We suspect that the killer took the keys away with him. We’ve done a thorough search, and they are certainly not inside the rooms, nor anywhere else in the hotel.’
‘My excellent staff have checked and confirmed that this is true,’ said Lazzari.
Poirot said that he would like to perform his own thorough search of the three rooms. Lazzari joyously agreed, as if Poirot had proposed a tea party followed by dancing.
‘Check all you like, but you won’t find the three room keys,’ I said. ‘I’m telling you, the murderer took them. I don’t know what he did with them, but—’
‘Perhaps he put them in his coat pocket, with one, or three, or five monogrammed cufflinks,’ Poirot said coolly.
‘Ah, now I see why they speak of you as the most splendid detective, Monsieur Poirot!’ Lazzari exclaimed, though he can’t have understood Poirot’s remark. ‘You have a superb mind, they say!’
‘Cause of death is looking very much like poisoning,’ I said, disinclined to linger over descriptions of Poirot’s brilliance. ‘We think cyanide, which can work with great speed if the quantities are sufficient. The inquest’ll tell us for sure, but … almost certainly their drinks were poisoned. In the case of Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury, that drink was a cup of tea. In the case of Richard Negus it was sherry.’
‘How is this known?’ Poirot asked. ‘The drinks are still there in the rooms?’
‘The cups are, yes, and Negus’s sherry glass. Only the remaining few drops of the drinks themselves, but it’s easy enough to tell tea from coffee. We will find cyanide in those drops, I’ll wager.’
‘And the time of death?’
‘According to the police doctor, all three were murdered between four o’clock in the afternoon and half past eight in the evening. Luckily, we’ve managed to narrow it down further: to between a quarter past seven and ten minutes past eight.’
‘A stroke of luck indeed!’ Lazzari agreed. ‘Each of the … ah … deceased guests was last seen alive at fifteen minutes after seven o’clock, by three unquestionably dependable representatives of this hotel—so we know this must be true! I myself found the deceased persons—so terrible, this tragedy!—at between fifteen and twenty minutes after eight o’clock.’
‘But they must have been dead by ten past eight,’ I told Poirot. ‘That was when the note announcing the murders was found on the front desk.’
‘Wait, please,’ said Poirot. ‘We will get to this note in due course. Monsieur Lazzari, it is surely not possible that each of the murder victims was last seen alive by a member of hotel staff at a quarter past seven precisely?’
‘Yes.’ Lazzari nodded so hard, I feared his head might fall off his neck. ‘It is very, very true. All three ordered dinner to be brought to their rooms at a quarter past the hour, and all three deliveries were exceptionally prompt. That is the way of the Bloxham Hotel.’
Poirot turned to me. ‘This is another coincidence énorme,’ he said. ‘Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus all arrive at the hotel on the same day, the day before they are murdered. Then on the day of the murders they all order dinner to be brought to their rooms at a quarter past seven exactly? It does not seem very likely.’
‘Poirot, there’s no point debating the likelihood of something we know happened.’
‘Non. But there is a point in making sure that it happened in the way that we have heard. Monsieur Lazzari, I have no doubt that your hotel contains at least one very large room. Please assemble in that room everybody who works here, and I will speak to them all at their—and your—earliest convenience. While you do this, Mr Catchpool and I will begin the inspection of the three victims’ rooms.’
‘Yes, and we’d better be quick about it, before they come for the bodies,’ I said. ‘In normal circumstances, they would have been removed by now.’ I did not mention that the delay in this instance had been caused by my own dereliction of duty. In my hurry to put distance between myself and the Bloxham Hotel last night, and to think about something—anything—more pleasant than these three murders, I had neglected to make the necessary arrangements.
I hoped Poirot might warm up a few degrees once Lazzari had left us alone, but there was no change to his stern demeanour, and I realized that he was probably always like this ‘at work’, as it were—which seemed a bit rich since it was my work and not his, and he was doing nothing to lift my spirits.
I had a master key, and we visited the three rooms one by one. As we waited for the lift’s elaborate gold doors to open, Poirot said, ‘We can agree on one thing, I hope: Monsieur Lazzari’s word cannot be relied upon with regard to those working in the hotel. He speaks of them as if they are above suspicion, which they cannot be if they were here yesterday when the murders were committed. The loyalty of Monsieur Lazzari is commendable, but he is a fool if he believes that all the staff of the Bloxham Hotel are des anges.’
Something had been bothering me, so I made a clean breast of it: ‘I hope you don’t also think I’m a fool. What I said before about plenty of other guests also arriving on Wednesday … That was a hare-brained thing to say. Any guests that arrived on Wednesday and didn’t get murdered on Thursday are irrelevant, aren’t they? I mean, it’s only a noteworthy coincidence that three or any number of apparently unconnected guests arrive on the same day if they also get murdered on the same evening.’
‘Oui.’ Poirot smiled at me with genuine warmth as we stepped into the lift. ‘You have restored my faith in your mental acuity, my friend. And you hit the head of the nail when you say “apparently unconnected”. The three murder victims will turn out to be connected. I will swear to it now. They were not selected at random from among the hotel’s guests. The three were killed for one reason—a reason connected with the initials PIJ. It is for the same reason that they all came to the hotel on the same day.’
‘It’s almost as if they received an invitation to present themselves for slaughter,’ I said in a cavalier fashion. ‘Invitation reads: “Please arrive the day before, so that Thursday can be devoted entirely to your getting murdered.”’
It was perhaps undignified to joke about it, but joking is what I do when I feel despondent, I’m afraid. Sometimes I succeed in tricking myself into imagining that I feel all right about things. It didn’t work on this occasion.
‘Devoted
