the life of anybody else?”
“Too true!” Fee looked impressed. “There’s not a
scrap of curiosity in her. I’ve never known anyone
more wrapped up in her own cares. Just doesn’t see
the world or the rest of us in it. She never asks you
how you’re rubbing along, or what you’ve been doing
with yourself.” Fee tilted her head to one side.
“You’re quick to catch on, aren’t you?”
“I know what I know only from listening to you
speak to the other waitresses, mademoiselle.”
Fee’s face turned red. “I’m surprised you’d go to
the bother of listening.”
Poirot had no wish to embarrass her further, so he
did not tell her that he greatly looked forward to her
descriptions of the individuals he had come to think
of, collectively, as “The Coffee-House Characters”—
Mr. Not Quite, for instance, who, each time he came
in, would order his food and then, immediately
afterward, cancel the order because he had decided it
was not quite what he wanted.
Now was not the appropriate time to enquire if
Fee had a name of the same order as Mr. Not Quite
for Hercule Poirot that she used in his absence—
perhaps one that made reference to his exquisite
mustache.
“So Mademoiselle Jennie does not wish to know
the business of other people,” Poirot said thoughtfully,
“but unlike many who take no interest in the lives and
ideas of those around them, and who talk only about
themselves at great length, she does not do this either
—is that not so?”
Fee raised her eyebrows. “Powerful memory
you’ve got there. Dead right again. No, Jennie’s not
one to talk about herself. She’ll answer a question,
but she won’t linger on it. Doesn’t want to be kept too
long from what’s in her head, whatever it is. Her
hidden treasure—except it don’t make her happy,
whatever she’s dwelling on. I’ve long since given up
trying to fathom her.”
“She dwells on the heartbreak,” Poirot murmured.
“And the danger.”
“Did she say she was in danger?”
“ Oui, mademoiselle. I regret that I was not quick
enough to stop her from leaving. If something should
happen to her . . .” Poirot shook his head and wished
he could recover the settled feeling with which he had
arrived. He slapped the tabletop with the flat of his
hand as he made his decision. “I will return here
demain matin . You say she is here often, n’est-ce
pas ? I will find her before the danger does. This time,
Hercule Poirot, he will be quicker!”
“Fast or slow, don’t matter,” said Fee. “No one
can find Jennie, not even with her right in front of
their noses, and no one can help her.” She stood and
picked up Poirot’s plate. “There’s no point letting
good food go cold over it,” she concluded.
Murder in Three Rooms
THAT WAS HOW IT started, on the evening of Thursday,
February 7, 1929, with Hercule Poirot, and Jennie,
and Fee Spring; amid the crooked, teapot-huddled
shelves of Pleasant’s Coffee House.
Or, I should say, that was how it appeared to start.
I’m not convinced that stories from real life have
beginnings and ends, as a matter of fact. Approach
them from any vantage point and you’ll see that they
stretch endlessly back into the past and spread
inexorably forward into the future. One is never quite
able to say “That’s that, then,” and draw a line.
Luckily, true stories do have heroes and heroines.
Not being one myself, having no hope of ever being
one, I am all too aware that they are real.
I wasn’t present that Thursday evening at the
coffee house. My name was mentioned—Edward
Catchpool, Poirot’s policeman friend from Scotland
Yard, not much older than thirty (thirty-two, to be
precise)—but I was not there. I have, nevertheless,
decided to try to fill the gaps in my own experience in
order make a written record of the Jennie story.
Fortunately, I have the testimony of Hercule Poirot to
help me, and there is no better
Michael Boughn Robert Duncan Victor Coleman