The Monogram Murders Read Online Free Page B

They arrange to be elsewhere
    when they see that Madame Blanche approaches! But
    please tell Poirot immédiatement: what is the
    matter?”
    “THREE MURDERS ARE THE matter,” I said. “And all
    three of them like nothing I’ve seen before. Two
    women and one man. Each one in a different room.”
    Of course, I had encountered violent death before
    many times—I had been with Scotland Yard for
    nearly two years, and a policeman for five—but most
    murders had about them an obvious appearance of
    lost control: somebody had lashed out in a fit of
    temper, or had one tipple too many and blown his top.
    This business at the Bloxham was very different.
    Whoever had killed three times at the hotel had
    planned ahead—for months, I guessed. Each of his
    crime scenes was a work of macabre art with a
    hidden meaning that I could not decipher. It terrified
    me to think that this time I was not up against a
    chaotic ruffian of the sort I was used to, but perhaps a
    cold, meticulous mind that would not allow itself to
    be defeated.
    I was no doubt being overly gloomy about it, but I
    couldn’t shake my feelings of foreboding. Three
    matching corpses: the very idea made me shudder. I
    told myself I must not develop a phobia; I had rather
    to treat this case as I would any other, no matter how
    different it seemed on the surface.
    “Each of the three murders in a different room in
    the same house?” Poirot asked.
    “No, at the Bloxham Hotel. Up Piccadilly Circus
    way. I don’t suppose you know it?”
    “ Non. ”
    “I had never been inside it before tonight. It’s not
    the sort of place a chap like me would think to go. It’s
    palatial.”
    Poirot was sitting with his back very straight.
    “Three murders, in the same hotel and each in a
    different room?” he said.
    “Yes, and all committed earlier in the evening
    within a short space of time.”
    “This evening? And yet you are here. Why are you
    not at the hotel? The killer, he is apprehended
    already?”
    “No such luck, I’m afraid. No, I . . .” I stopped and
    cleared my throat. Reporting the facts of the case was
    straightforward enough, but I had no wish to explain
    to Poirot how my mood had been affected by what I
    had seen, or to tell him that I had been at the Bloxham
    for no more than five minutes before I succumbed to
    the powerful urge to leave.
    The way all three had been laid out on their
    backs so formally: arms by their sides, palms of
    their hands touching the floor, legs together . . .
    Laying out the dead. The phrase forced its way
    into my mind, accompanied by a vision of a dark
    room from many years ago—a room I had been
    compelled to enter as a young child, and had been
    refusing to enter in my imagination ever since. I fully
    intended to carry on refusing for the rest of my life.
    Lifeless hands, palms facing downward.
    “Hold his hand, Edward.”
    “Don’t worry, there are plenty of police crawling
    about the place,” I said quickly and loudly, to banish
    the unwelcome vision. “Tomorrow morning is soon
    enough for me to go back.” Seeing that he was waiting
    for a fuller answer, I added, “I had to clear my head.
    Frankly, I’ve never seen anything as peculiar as these
    three murders in all my life.”
    “In what way peculiar?”
    “Each of the victims had something in his or her
    mouth—the same thing.”
    “ Non. ” Poirot wagged his finger at me. “This is
    not possible, mon ami . The same thing cannot be
    inside three different mouths at the same time.”
    “Three separate things, all identical,” I clarified.
    “Three cufflinks, solid gold from the look of them.
    Monogrammed. Same initials on all three: PIJ.
    Poirot? Are you all right? You look—”
    “ Mon Dieu! ” He had risen to his feet and begun to
    pace around the room. “You do not see what this
    means, mon ami . No, you do not see it at all, because
    you have not heard the story of my encounter with
    Mademoiselle Jennie. Quickly I must tell you what
    happened