A FEW PEOPLE CRIED out in alarm. There is a strong chance that I was one of them. It is strange: I have seen many dead bodies, thanks to my work for Scotland Yard, and have on occasion found the sight of them disturbing—yet no regular corpse could be as horrifying a prospect as a dead woman propped up as if alive and partaking of a jolly afternoon tea with friends.

Poor Rafal Bobak looked rather shivery and wobbly lipped, no doubt reflecting that he had been closer to the monstrosity than any sane person would wish to be.

“This is why the food had to be delivered to Ida Gransbury’s room,” Poirot went on. “Richard Negus’s room, 238, would have been the most convenient meeting point for the three victims, as it was on the second floor between the other two rooms. The afternoon tea would then have been added to Mr. Negus’s bill without his having to make a point of requesting this. But of course Room 238 could not be the room in which our three murder victims were seen alive by Rafal Bobak at a quarter past seven! That would have involved carrying Ida Gransbury’s dead body from her room, 317, in which she had been killed some hours earlier, through the corridors of the hotel to Richard Negus’s room. It would have been too great a risk. Someone would almost certainly have seen.”

The shocked faces of the bewildered crowd were something to behold. I wondered if Luca Lazzari would soon be seeking new staff. I definitely had no intention of returning to the Bloxham once this unpleasant business was concluded, and I imagined that many in the room felt the same way.

Poirot proceeded with his explanations. “Reflect, ladies and gentlemen, upon the munificence, the largesse, of Mr. Richard Negus. Ah, how generous he was, insisting on paying for the food and the tea, also paying for Harriet and Ida each to travel alone to the hotel in a car. Why would they not come by train together and share a car to the hotel? And why should Richard Negus care so passionately about making sure that the bill for the food and beverages was sent to him, when he knew that he, Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury were all about to die?”

It was a very good question. All the points that Poirot was making were pertinent, and, moreover, were things I should have thought of myself. Somehow, I had failed to notice that so many aspects of Jennie Hobbs’s story did not fit with the facts of the case. How could I have missed such glaring inconsistencies?