“Then why—to Mr. Lazzari, the hotel manager—why did you ask him to provide you with a room ‘quickly, quickly,’ as if you were still in flight from your pursuer? And, since you do not appear to be wounded, whose was the blood in Room 402?”

Jennie began to cry, swaying slightly on her feet. Poirot rose and helped her to a chair. He said, “Sit, mademoiselle. It is my turn to stand, and to tell you how I know beyond doubt that nothing you have ever said to me has been the truth.”

“Steady on, Poirot,” I cautioned him. Jennie looked as if she might faint.

Poirot seemed unconcerned. “The murders of Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus were announced in a note,” he said. “ ‘MAY THEY NEVER REST IN PEACE. 121. 238. 317.’ Now, I wonder to myself: a killer who walks in a state of brazen calm to a hotel’s front desk and places a note there advertising three murders—is this the sort of person who would then panic, run from the hotel panting, and drop two room keys in front of a witness? Are we to believe that the killer Nancy Ducane’s panic commenced only after she had left the note on the desk? Why would it start only then? And if Nancy Ducane was making her exit from the Bloxham at shortly after eight o’clock, how could she also be dining with her friend Lady Louisa Wallace at that very same moment?”

“Poirot, don’t you think you ought to go easy on her?”

“I do not. I ask you, Mademoiselle Jennie: why should Nancy Ducane leave a note at all? Why did the three dead bodies need to be found shortly after eight o’clock that evening? The hotel maids would have found them in due course. What was the hurry? And if Madame Ducane was calm and composed enough to approach the desk and leave the note without arousing suspicion, that must mean she was able to think sensibly about what needed to be done. Why, then, did she not also put the two room keys safely in her deep coat pocket at that point, before she left the hotel? Foolishly, she keeps them in her hand and then drops them in front of Mr. Kidd. He is able to see that they have numbers on them: ‘one hundred and something’ and ‘three hundred and something.’ He also, by fortunate coincidence, happens to recognize the face of this mysterious woman, and after a short pretense of being unable to recall her name, he is most conveniently able to tell us the name of Nancy Ducane. Does all of this sound plausible to you, Miss Hobbs? It does not sound at all plausible to Hercule Poirot—not when he finds you here, in Mr. Kidd’s home, and he knows that Nancy Ducane has an alibi!”

Jennie was weeping into her sleeve.