settles the matter!”
“TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED to Patrick and Frances Ive,”
I said once the tea was made and we were sitting by
the fire in Margaret Ernst’s long, narrow parlor. That
was what she called the room we were in, though it
contained so many books that “library” would have
done just as well. On one wall hung three portraits,
two painted and one photographic, of a man with a
high forehead and unruly eyebrows. I assumed that he
was Margaret’s late husband, Charles. It was
disconcerting to have three of him staring at me, so I
turned to the window instead. My chair afforded an
excellent view of the Ives’ gravestone, and I decided
it must be where Margaret usually sat in order to
conduct her vigil.
From this distance, the sonnet was unreadable. I
had forgotten all of it apart from the line “For
slander’s mark was ever yet the fair,” which had
lodged itself in my mind.
“No,” said Margaret Ernst.
“No? You won’t tell me about Patrick and Frances
Ive?”
“Not today. Maybe I will tomorrow. Do you have
other questions for me in the meantime?”
“Yes, but . . . do you mind if I ask what is likely to
change between now and tomorrow?”
“I would like some time to consider.”
“The thing is—”
“You’re going to remind me that you’re a
policeman working on a murder case, and it is my
duty to tell you everything I know. But what have
Patrick and Frances Ive to do with your case?”
I ought to have done some delaying and
considering of my own, but I was eager to see what
response I would get if I presented her with a fact I
had not told Victor Meakin, and that therefore she
couldn’t possibly already know.
“Each of the three victims was found with a gold
cufflink in his or her mouth,” I said. “All three
cufflinks were monogrammed with Patrick Ive’s
initials: PIJ.” I explained, as I had to Poirot, about the
surname’s initial being the largest of the three, and in
the middle. Unlike my Belgian friend, Margaret Ernst
showed no sign of believing civilization to be
imperiled by such an arrangement of letters. She also
did not appear shocked or surprised by what I had
told her, which I found unusual.
“Now do you see why Patrick Ive is of interest to
me?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Then will you tell me about him?”
“As I said: perhaps tomorrow. Would you like
some more tea, Mr. Catchpool?”
I told her that I would, and she left the room. Alone
in the parlor, I ruminated over whether I had left it too
late to ask her to call me Edward, and, if not, whether
I ought to do so. I pondered this while knowing that I
would say nothing, and would allow her to continue
with “Mr. Catchpool.” It is among the more pointless
of my habits: wondering what I ought to do when
there is no doubt about what I am going to do.
When Margaret returned with the tea, I thanked her
and asked her if she could tell me about Harriet
Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus. The
transformation was incredible. She made no attempt
to dissemble, and, in a most efficient fashion, told me
enough about two of the three murder victims to fill
several pages. Infuriatingly, the notebook I had
brought with me to Great Holling lay in one of my
cases in my room at the King’s Head Inn. This would
be a test for my memory.
“Harriet used to have a sweet nature, according to
the overflowing archive of village legend,” said
Margaret. “Kind, generous, always a smile on her
face, forever laughing and offering to help friends and
neighbors, never once thinking of herself—positively
saintly. Determined to think well of all she met, to see
everything in the best possible light. Naïvely trusting,
some said. I’m not sure if I believe all of it. No one
could be as perfect as Harriet-Before-She-Changed is
painted as being. I wonder if it’s the contrast with
what she became . . .” Margaret frowned. “Perhaps it
wasn’t, in strictest truth, a case of her going from one
extreme to the other, but when one is telling a story,
one always wants to make it as dramatic as possible,
doesn’t one? And I suppose losing a husband so
young could turn even the sunniest nature. Harriet was
devoted to her George, so they say, and he to her. He
died in 1911 at the age of twenty-seven—dropped
down dead one day in the street, having always been
the picture of health. A blood clot in his brain. Harriet
was a widow at twenty-five.”
“What a blow that must have been for her,” I said.
“Yes,” Margaret agreed. “A loss of that magnitude
might have a terrible effect upon a person. It’s
interesting that some describe her as having been
naïve.”
“Why do you say that?”
“ ‘Naïve’ suggests a falsely rosy conception of
life. If one believed in a wholly benign world and
then tragedy of the worst kind struck, one might feel
anger and resentment as well as sadness, as if one had
been duped. And of course, when we suffer greatly
ourselves, it becomes so much easier to blame and
persecute others.”
I was attempting to conceal my strenuous
disagreement when she added, “For some, I should
say. Not for all. I expect you find it easier to
persecute yourself, don’t you, Mr. Catchpool?”
“I hope I don’t persecute anybody,” I said,
bemused. “So am I to take it that the loss of her
husband had an unfortunate effect upon Harriet
Sippel’s character?”
“Yes. I never knew sweet, kind Harriet. The
Harriet
Sippel
I
knew
was
spiteful
and
sanctimonious. She treated the world and nearly
everyone in it as an enemy, deserving of her
suspicion. Instead of seeing only the good, she saw
the threat of evil everywhere, and behaved as if she
had been charged with unearthing and defeating it. If
there was a newcomer to the village, she would start
out with the belief that he or she was bound to be
heinous in some respect. She would tell others of her
suspicions, as many as would listen, and encourage
them to look out for signs. Put a person in front of her
and she would search for wickedness in that person.
If she found none, she would invent it. Her only
pleasure after George died was condemning others as
wicked, as if doing so made her a better person
somehow. The way her eyes would shine whenever
she’d sniffed out some new wrongdoing . . .”
Margaret shuddered. “It was as if, in the absence
of her husband, she had found something else that
could ignite her passion and so she clung to it. But it
was a dark, destructive passion that sprang from
hatred, not love. The worst part was that people
flocked around her, readily agreeing with all her
unpleasant accusations.”
“Why did they?” I asked.
“They didn’t want to be next. They knew Harriet
was never without prey. I don’t think she could have
survived for as long as a week without a focus for her
righteous spite.”
I thought of the bespectacled young man who had
said, “No one wants to be next.”
Margaret said: “They were happy to condemn
whichever poor soul she had fixed upon if it diverted
her attention from them and whatever they might be up
to. That was Harriet’s idea of a friend: someone who
joined her in vilifying those she deemed to be guilty
of a sin, minor or major.”
“You’re describing, if I may say so, the sort of
person who is likely to end up getting murdered.”
“Am I? I think people like Harriet Sippel aren’t
murdered nearly often enough.” Margaret raised her
eyebrows. “I see I’ve shocked you again, Mr.
Catchpool. As a vicar’s wife, I shouldn’t say these
things, I dare say. I try to be a good Christian, but I
have my weaknesses, as we all do. Mine is the
inability to forgive the inability to forgive. Does that
sound contradictory?”
“It sounds like a tongue-twister. Do you mind if I
ask you where you were last Thursday evening?”
Margaret sighed and looked out of the window. “I
was where I always am: sitting where you’re sitting
now, watching the graveyard.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
“Would you like me to tell you about Ida
Gransbury now?”
I nodded, with some trepidation. I wondered how I
would feel if it turned out that all three of the murder
victims were vindictive monsters while alive. The
words “MAY THEY NEVER REST IN PEACE”
passed through my mind, swiftly followed by Poirot’s
account of his meeting with Jennie, her insistence that
justice would finally be done once she was dead . . .
“Ida was a dreadful prig,” said Margaret. “She
was every inch as sanctimonious as Harriet in her
outward behavior, but she was driven by fear and by
faith in the rules we are all supposed to obey rather
than by the thrill of persecution. Denouncing the sins
of others wasn’t a pleasure for Ida as it was for
Harriet. She saw it as her moral duty as a good
Christian.”
“When you say fear, do you mean fear of divine
retribution?”
“Oh, that, certainly, but not only that,” said
Margaret. “Different people regard rules differently,
no matter what those rules happen to be. Mutinous
characters like me always resent constraints, even
perfectly sensible ones, but there are some who
welcome their existence and enforcement because it
makes them feel safer. Protected.”
“And Ida Gransbury was the second sort?”
“I think so, yes. She would not have said so. She
was always careful to present herself as a woman
driven by strong principle and nothing else. No
shameful human weaknesses for Ida! I am sorry she is
dead, though she did untold harm while alive. Unlike
Harriet, Ida believed in redemption. She wanted to
save sinners, while Harriet wanted only to revile
them and feel elevated by comparison. I think Ida
would have forgiven a demonstrably repentant sinner.
She was reassured by contrition of the standard
Christian sort. It bolstered her view of the world.”
“What untold harm did Ida do?” I asked. “To
whom?”
“Come back and ask me that question tomorrow.”
Her tone was generous but firm.
“To Patrick and Frances Ive?”
“Tomorrow, Mr. Catchpool.”
“What can you tell me about Richard Negus?” I
asked.
“Precious little, I’m afraid. He left Great Holling
soon after Charles and I arrived. I think he was an
authoritative presence in the village—a man people
listened to and took advice from. Everybody speaks
of him with the greatest respect, apart from Ida
Gransbury. She never spoke of him at all after he left
both her and Great Holling behind.”
“Was it his decision or hers to call off the marriage
plans?” I asked.
“His.”
“How do you know that she never spoke of him
afterward? Perhaps to others she did, even if not to
you?”
“Oh, Ida wouldn’t have spoken to me about
Richard Negus or anything else. I know only what I
have been told by Ambrose Flowerday, the village
doctor, but there is no more reliable man on earth.
Ambrose gets to hear about most things that go on, as
long as he remembers to leave the door to his waiting
room ajar.”
“Is this the same Dr. Flowerday that I am supposed
to forget about? I had better forget his Christian name
too, I dare say.”
Margaret ignored my mischievous remark. “I have
it on good authority that after Richard Negus
abandoned her, Ida resolved never to speak or think
of him again,” she said. “She showed no outward
signs of upset. People remarked upon it: how strong
and resolute she was. She announced her intention to
reserve all her love for God thenceforth. She found
him to be more reliable than mortal men.”
“Would it surprise you to learn that Richard Negus
and Ida Gransbury took afternoon tea together in her
hotel room in London last Thursday evening?”
Margaret’s eyes widened. “To hear that the two of
them took tea alone together — yes, it would surprise
me greatly. Ida was the sort who drew firm lines and
did not cross them. By all accounts so was Richard
Negus. Having decided he didn’t want Ida as a wife,
he is unlikely to have changed his mind, and I cannot
think that anything short of prostrate penitence and a
renewed declaration of love would have persuaded
Ida to agree to a meeting with him in private.”
After a pause, Margaret went on, “But since
Harriet Sippel was at the same London hotel, I
assume that she too was present at this afternoon tea
ceremony?”
I nodded.
“Well, then. The three of them obviously had
something to discuss that was more important than the
lines any of them had drawn in the past.”
“You have an idea about what that thing might be,
don’t you?”
Margaret looked out of the window toward the
rows of graves. “Perhaps I shall have some ideas by
the time you visit me tomorrow,” she said.
Two Recollections
WHILE I STRUGGLED IN vain to persuade Margaret Ernst
to tell me the story of Patrick and Frances Ive before
she was ready to do so, Hercule Poirot was at
Pleasant’s Coffee House in London, engaged in an
effort of equal futility: that of trying to persuade the
waitress Fee Spring to tell him what she could not
remember.
“All I can tell you’s what I’ve already told you,”
she said several times, with increasing weariness. “I
noticed something not right about Jennie that night. I
tucked it away to fret about later, and now it’s buried
somewhere and won’t come out. You pestering me
won’t change that, if anything will. Chances are
you’ve scared it away for good. You’ve no patience
about you, that’s for sure.”
“Please continue to try to retrieve the memory,
mademoiselle. It might be important.”
Fee Spring looked over Poirot’s shoulder toward
the door. “If it’s memories you’re after, there’ll be a
man bringing one in for you soon. He was in round
about an hour ago. Shown the way here by a
policeman, he was—escorted, like royalty. Must be
someone important, I thought. You weren’t here, so I
told him to come back now . ” She was looking up at
the clock that was wedged in between two teapots on
a bowed shelf above her head. “I knew you’d be in
again at least once today, looking for Jennie when
