LITMIR.BIZ

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to be shown the three rooms in which murders have taken place,’ Poirot told him.

      That put a momentary crimp in Lazzari’s smile. ‘Monsieur Poirot, you may rest assured that this terrible crime—three murders on one night, it is scarcely credible to me!—that this will never happen again at the world-renowned Bloxham Hotel.’

      Poirot and I exchanged a look. The point was not so much preventing it from happening again but dealing with the fact that it had happened on this occasion.

      I decided I had better take the reins and not allow Lazzari the chance to say too much more. Poirot’s moustaches were already twitching with suppressed rage.

      ‘The victims’ names are Mrs Harriet Sippel, Miss Ida Gransbury and Mr Richard Negus,’ I told Poirot. ‘All three were guests in the hotel and each one was the sole occupant of his or her room.’

      ‘Each one? His or her room, you say?’ Poirot smiled at his little joke. I attributed the rapid improvement in his spirits to the fact that Lazzari had fallen silent. ‘I do not mean to interrupt you, Catchpool. Continue.’

      ‘All three victims arrived here at the hotel on Wednesday, the day before they were murdered.’

      ‘Did they arrive together?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Most definitely not,’ said Lazzari. ‘They arrived separately, one by one. They checked in one by one.’

      ‘And they were murdered one by one,’ said Poirot, which happened to be exactly what I was thinking. ‘You are certain of this?’ he asked Lazzari.

      ‘I could not be more so. I have the word of my clerk, Mr John Goode, the most dependable man of my entire acquaintance. You will meet him. We have only the most impeccable persons working here at the Bloxham Hotel, Monsieur Poirot, and when my clerk tells me a thing is so, I know that it is so. From across the country and across the world, people come to ask if they can work at the Bloxham Hotel. I say yes only to the best.’

      It’s funny but I didn’t realize how well I had come to know Poirot until that moment—until I saw that Lazzari did not know how to manage him at all. If he had written ‘Suspect This Man of Murder’ on a large sign and hung it around Mr John Goode’s neck, he could not have done a better job of inciting Poirot to distrust the fellow. Hercule Poirot will not allow anyone else to dictate to him what his opinion should be; he will, rather, determine to believe the opposite, contrary old cove that he is.

      ‘So,’ he said now, ‘it is a remarkable coincidence, is it not? Our three murder victims—Mrs Harriet Sippel, Miss Ida Gransbury and Mr Richard Negus—they arrive separately and appear to have nothing to do with one another. And yet all three share not merely the 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

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