Epilogue
FOUR DAYS LATER I was sitting in front of one of Blanche Unsworth’s roaring fires, sipping a glass of brandy and working on my crossword puzzle, when Poirot walked into the drawing room. He stood silently by my side for several minutes. I did not look up.
Eventually he cleared his throat. “Still, Catchpool,” he said. “Still you avoid the discussion of whether or not Richard Negus was murdered, was assisted in taking his own life, or was killed in self-defense.”
“I hardly see that it would be a profitable debate,” I said, as my stomach clenched. I did not want to talk about the Bloxham Murders ever again. What I wanted—needed—was to write about them, to set down on paper every detail of what had happened. It mystified me that I was so eager to do the latter and so reluctant to undertake the former. Why should writing about a thing be so different from speaking about it?
“Do not alarm yourself, mon ami,” said Poirot. “I will not raise the matter again. We will talk of other things. For example, I visited Pleasant’s Coffee House this morning. Fee Spring asked me to pass the message to you that she would like to speak to you at your earliest convenience. She is displeased.”
“With me?”
“Yes. One moment, she says, she is sitting in the Bloxham Hotel’s dining room hearing the explanation of everything, and the next it is all over. A murder takes place in front of all our eyes, and the story, for our audience, is left incomplete. Mademoiselle Fee wishes you to relate the tale to her in its fullest form.”
“It’s hardly my fault that there was another murder,” I muttered under my breath. “Can she not read the story in the newspapers like everybody else?”
“Non. She wishes to discuss it with you in particular. For a waitress, her intelligence is impressive. She is an estimable young woman. Do you not think so, mon ami?”
“I know your game, Poirot,” I said wearily. “Really, you must desist. You are wasting your time, as is Fee Spring, assuming . . . Look, buzz off, can’t you?”
“You are angry with me.”
“A little, yes,” I admitted. “Henry Negus and the suitcase, Rafal Bobak and the laundry cart, Thomas Brignell and his lady friend in the hotel garden, who happened to be wearing a light brown coat like half the women in England. The wheelbarrow . . .”
“Ah!”
“Yes, ‘ah.’ You knew perfectly well that Jennie Hobbs wasn’t dead, so why make such an effort to mislead me into suspecting that her body might have been removed from room 402 by three of the most unlikely means imaginable?”
“Because, my friend, I wanted to encourage you to imagine. If you do not consider the unlikeliest of possibilities, you will not be the best detective that you can be. It is the education for the little gray cells, to force them to move in unusual directions. From this comes the inspiration.”
“If you insist,” I said doubtfully.
“Poirot, he goes too far, you think—beyond what is necessary. Perhaps.”
“All that fuss you made about the trail of blood in room 402 leading from the pool of blood in the center of the room toward the door, all your exclaiming about the width of the doorway—what was that about? You knew that Jennie Hobbs had not been murdered and dragged anywhere!”
“I did, but you did not. You believed, as did our friend Signor Lazzari, that Mademoiselle Jennie was dead and that it was her blood on the floor. Alors, I wanted you to demand of yourself: a suitcase, a laundry cart on wheels—both of these are objects that could have been brought into room 402, right to the spot where the dead body was. Why, then, would a killer pull the body toward the door? He would not! She would not! The trail of blood going in the direction of the door was a hoax; its aim was to suggest to us that the body had been dragged out of the room, since it was not in the room. It was the small detail of verisimilitude, so important to lend credence to the murder scene.
“But for Hercule Poirot, it was a detail that allowed him to know what he already strongly suspected: that Jennie Hobbs had not been murdered in that room and neither had anybody else. I could imagine no method of removing a corpse that would necessitate the trail of blood smears going toward the door. No killer would take his victim’s body out into the public corridor of a hotel without first hiding it inside some sort of receptacle—a container. Every container I could think of could easily have been taken into the room, traveling toward the body rather than requiring the body to travel toward it. It was such simple logic, Catchpool. I was surprised you did not grasp this point at once.”
“Handy tip for you, Poirot,” I said. “Next time you’d like me to grasp something at once, open your mouth and tell me facts, whatever they are. Be straightforward about it. You’ll find it saves a lot of bother.”
He smiled. “Bien. From my good friend Catchpool, I shall endeavor to learn the comportement straightforward. I start immediately!” He produced an envelope from his pocket. “This arrived for me an hour ago. You might not welcome my interference in your personal affairs, Catchpool—you may think, ‘Poirot, he sticks in his oar where it is not wanted’—but this letter expresses gratitude for that very vice of mine that you find so intolerable.”
“If you’re referring to Fee Spring, she is not my ‘personal affairs’ and never will be,” I said, eyeing the missive in his hand. “Which poor stick’s private business have you meddled in now? And gratitude for what?”
“For bringing together two people who love each other very much.”
“Who is the letter from?”
Poirot smiled. “Dr. and Mrs. Ambrose Flowerday,” he said. And he handed it to me to read.
THE END