“No, she did not. I assisted her myself, since my dear trusty clerk John Goode was otherwise occupied. Miss Hobbs said, “Put me in any room, but quickly! Quickly, I beg of you.”

“Was any sort of note left at the front desk to announce the fourth murder?” asked Poirot.

“No. This time, there was not the note,” said Lazzari.

“Were any food or beverages served to the room, or requested?”

“No. None.”

“You have checked with everybody who works in the hotel?”

“Every single person, yes. Monsieur Poirot, we have looked everywhere . . .”

“Signor, a few moments ago you described Jennie Hobbs as a young lady. How old was she, would you say?”

“Oh . . . I must beg your pardon. No, she was not young. But she was not old.”

“Was she, perhaps, thirty?” Poirot asked.

“I believe she might have been forty, but a woman’s age is a difficult thing to estimate.”

Poirot nodded. “A brown hat and a pale brown coat. Fair hair. Panic and distress, and an age that might be forty. The Jennie Hobbs you describe sounds like the Jennie Hobbs I encountered at Pleasant’s Coffee House last Thursday evening. But can we say for certain that it was she? Two sightings by two different people . . .” Suddenly, he fell silent though his mouth continued to move.

“Poirot?” I said.

He had eyes—intensely green eyes, at that precise moment—only for Lazzari. “Signor, I must speak to that most observant waiter again, Mr. Rafal Bobak. And Thomas Brignell, and John Goode. In fact, I must speak to every single member of your staff as soon as possible and ask how many times they each saw Harriet Sippel, Richard Negus and Ida Gransbury—dead or alive.”

He had evidently realized something important. As I reached this conclusion, I heard myself gasp as I too made a mental leap. “Poirot,” I murmured.

“What is it, my friend? You have put some pieces of our puzzle together? Poirot, he understands now something that did not strike him before, but there are still questions, still pieces that cannot be made to fit.”

“I have . . .” I cleared my throat. Speaking, for some reason, was proving rather difficult. “I have just seen a woman in the hotel gardens.” I could not, at that moment, bring myself to say that she had been in the arms of Thomas Brignell, or to describe the strange way in which she had seemed to crumple, her head falling to one side. It was simply too . . . peculiar. The suspicion running through my mind was one I would have felt embarrassed to utter aloud.

Thankfully, however, I did feel able to divulge one important detail. “She was wearing a pale brown coat,” I told Poirot.

16. A Lie for a Lie

A Lie for a Lie