I hoped that it would not be necessary. Nancy Ducane was the person we needed to concentrate on. That and saving the life of Jennie, assuming we were not too late. I was full of remorse on account of having dismissed the possible danger to her. If we did manage to save her, the credit would be all Poirot’s. If we solved the three Bloxham Hotel murders satisfactorily, that would be down to Poirot too. Officially, at Scotland Yard, it would be noted as one of my successes, but everyone would know that it was Poirot’s triumph and not mine. Indeed, it was thanks to my bosses’ knowledge of Poirot’s involvement in the case that they were content to leave me to my own—or rather, to my Belgian friend’s—devices. It was the famous Hercule Poirot they trusted to do as he wished, not me.

I started to wonder if I might not prefer to fail alone and entirely under my own steam than succeed only thanks to Poirot’s involvement, and I fell asleep before I had reached a conclusion.

I had a dream—my first on a train—about being condemned by everybody I knew for something I hadn’t done. In it, I saw my own gravestone clearly, with my name instead of Patrick and Frances Ives’ carved on it, and the “slander’s mark” sonnet beneath. In the earth beside the grave, there was a glint of metal, and I knew somehow that it was a cufflink bearing my initials that was partially buried there. I woke as the train pulled into London, bathed in sweat, my heart beating fit to burst from my chest.

13. Nancy Ducane

Nancy Ducane

I DIDN’T KNOW, OF course, that Poirot was already aware of the probable involvement of Nancy Ducane in our three murders. As I made my escape from Great Holling by train, Poirot was busy making arrangements, with the help of Scotland Yard, to visit Mrs. Ducane in her London home.

This he managed to do later that same day, with Constable Stanley Beer as his escort. A young maid in a starched apron answered the door of the large white stucco townhouse in Belgravia. Poirot was expecting to be shown to a tasteful drawing room where he would wait to be seen, and he was surprised to find Nancy Ducane herself standing in the hall at the foot of the stairs.

“Monsieur Poirot? Welcome. I see you have brought a policeman with you. This all seems rather unusual, I must say.”

Stanley Beer made a strange noise in his throat and turned beet red. Nancy Ducane was an unusually beautiful woman with a peaches-and-cream complexion, lustrous dark hair and deep blue eyes with long lashes. She looked to be somewhere in the region of forty and was stylishly dressed in peacock blues and deep greens. For once in his life, Poirot was not the most elegantly attired person present.