“Ah, the views from my charming hotel!” Lazzari clasped his hands together in delight. “From the rooms facing the hotel gardens there are sights of great beauty, and on the other side there is splendid London—another exquisite scene! Later I will show you.”

“I would prefer to be shown the three rooms in which murders have taken place,” Poirot told him.

That put a momentary crimp in Lazzari’s smile. “Monsieur Poirot, you may rest assured that this terrible crime—three murders on one night, it is scarcely credible to me!—that this will never happen again at the world-renowned Bloxham Hotel.”

Poirot and I exchanged a look. The point was not so much preventing it from happening again but dealing with the fact that it had happened on this occasion.

I decided I had better take the reins and not allow Lazzari the chance to say too much more. Poirot’s mustache was already twitching with suppressed rage.

“The victims’ names are Mrs. Harriet Sippel, Miss Ida Gransbury and Mr. Richard Negus,” I told Poirot. “All three were guests in the hotel and each one was the sole occupant of his or her room.”

“Each one? His or her room, you say?” Poirot smiled at his little joke. I attributed the rapid improvement in his spirits to the fact that Lazzari had fallen silent. “I do not mean to interrupt you, Catchpool. Continue.”

“All three victims arrived here at the hotel on Wednesday, the day before they were murdered.”

“Did they arrive together?”

“No.”

“Most definitely not,” said Lazzari. “They arrived separately, one by one. They checked in one by one.”

“And they were murdered one by one,” said Poirot, which happened to be exactly what I was thinking. “You are certain of this?” he asked Lazzari.

“I could not be more so. I have the word of my clerk, Mr. John Goode, the most dependable man of my entire acquaintance. You will meet him. We have only the most impeccable persons working here at the Bloxham Hotel, Monsieur Poirot, and when my clerk tells me a thing is so, I know that it is so. From across the country and across the world, people come to ask if they can work at the Bloxham Hotel. I say yes only to the best.”

It’s funny but I didn’t realize how well I had come to know Poirot until that moment—until I saw that Lazzari did not know how to manage him at all. If he had written “Suspect This Man of Murder” on a large sign and hung it around Mr. John Goode’s neck, he could not have done a better job of inciting Poirot to distrust the fellow. Hercule Poirot will not allow anyone else to dictate to him what his opinion should be; he will, rather, determine to believe the opposite, contrary old cove that he is.