Poirot turned to me. “Samuel Kidd’s testimony was a lie from start to finish, Catchpool. He and Jennie Hobbs conspired to frame Nancy Ducane for the murders of Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus.”

“You don’t know how wrong you are!” Jennie cried.

“I know that you are a liar, mademoiselle. I have suspected all along that my encounter with you at Pleasant’s was connected to the Bloxham Hotel murders. The two happenings—if we can classify three murders as one happening—had two very important and most unusual features in common.”

That made me sit up straight. I had been waiting to hear these points of likeness for too long.

Poirot went on: “One, a psychological similarity: in both cases there is the suggestion that the victims are guiltier than the murderer. The note left on the desk at the Bloxham—‘MAY THEY NEVER REST IN PEACE’—suggests that Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus deserved to die, and that their killer brought them to justice. And at the coffee house, Mademoiselle Jennie, you said to me that you deserved to die, and that once you had been killed, justice would have been done, finally.”

He was right. How had I missed that?

“Then there is the second similarity, which is not psychological but circumstantial: attached to both the Bloxham Hotel murders and my conversation with the frightened Jennie at the coffee house, there were too many clues—too much information available too soon! Too many leads presenting themselves all at once, almost as if someone wanted to offer the hand of help to the police. From a brief meeting in a coffee house, I was able to glean a surprisingly large number of facts. This Jennie, she felt guilty. She had done something terrible. She did not want her killer to be punished. She made sure to say to me, ‘Oh, please let no one open their mouths’ so that when I hear about three bodies at the Bloxham Hotel with cufflinks in their mouths, I will perhaps remember what she has said and wonder, or perhaps my subconscious will make the connection.”

“You’re wrong about me, Monsieur Poirot,” Jennie protested.