Without waiting for my answer, Poirot proceeded with his imaginings. “And the letters PIJ, the person who has those initials, he is very important to the story, n’est-ce pas? Jennie, she knows this. She knows that if you find these three letters you will be on your way to finding the murderer, and she wants to prevent this. Alors, you must catch him before it is too late for Jennie, or else Hercule Poirot, he shall not forgive himself!”

I was alarmed to hear this. I felt a pressing sense of responsibility for catching this killer as it was, and I did not wish also to be responsible for Poirot’s never forgiving himself. Did he really look at me and see a man capable of apprehending a murderer with a mind of this sort—a mind that would think to place monogrammed cufflinks in the mouths of the dead? I have always been a straightforward person and I work best at straightforward things.

“I think you must go back to the hotel,” said Poirot. He meant immediately.

I shuddered at the memory of those three rooms. “First thing tomorrow will be soon enough,” I said, studiously avoiding his gleaming eyes. “I should tell you, I’m not going to make a fool of myself by bringing up this Jennie person. It would only confuse everybody. You have come up with a possible meaning for what she said, and I have come up with another. Yours is the more interesting, but mine is twenty times more likely to be correct.”

“It is not” came the contradiction.

“We shall have to disagree about it,” I said firmly. “If we were to ask a hundred people, they would all agree with me and not with you, I suspect.”

“I too suspect this.” Poirot sighed. “Allow me to convince you if I can. A few moments ago, you said to me about the murders at the hotel, ‘Each of the victims had something in his or her mouth,’ did you not?”

I agreed that I had.