to include his wife, Frances, whom people said must
have known about the heretical and fraudulent
activities of her husband. Frances swore that she did
not. At first she tried to say that Patrick would never
do such a thing, but when person after person insisted
that he had, she stopped saying anything at all.
Only two people in Great Holling declined to
participate in the hounding of the Ives: Nancy Ducane
(for obvious reasons, some said) and Dr. Ambrose
Flowerday, who was particularly vociferous in his
defense of Frances Ive. If Frances knew about the
unsavory activities that were taking place at the
vicarage, he argued, why did they only happen when
she was elsewhere? Surely that suggested she was
entirely innocent? It was Dr. Flowerday who pointed
out that it is impossible to see a guilty expression on a
person’s face in the pitch dark, Dr. Flowerday who
declared that he intended to believe his friend Patrick
Ive unless and until someone produced undeniable
evidence of his wrongdoing, Dr. Flowerday who told
Harriet Sippel (one day on the street, in front of
several witnesses) that she had very likely packed
more wickedness into the last half hour than Patrick
Ive had committed in his entire life.
Ambrose Flowerday did not make himself popular
by taking this view, but he is one of those rare people
who does not care what the world thinks of him. He
defended Patrick Ive to the Church authorities and
told them that, in his opinion, there was not a grain of
truth in the rumors. He was dreadfully worried about
Frances Ive, who by now was in a pitiful condition.
She had stopped eating, hardly slept, and could not
under any circumstances be persuaded to leave the
vicarage. Patrick Ive was frantic. His position as
vicar and his reputation no longer mattered to him, he
said. His only wish was to restore his wife to good
health.
Nancy Ducane, meanwhile, had said nothing at all,
neither confirming nor denying the rumors. The more
Harriet Sippel goaded her, the more determined she
seemed to remain silent. Then one day, she changed
her mind. She told Victor Meakin that she had
something important to say to put a stop to the
foolishness that had gone on for long enough. Victor
Meakin chuckled, rubbed his hands together, and
quietly slipped out of the back door of the King’s
Head. Very shortly afterward, everybody in Great
Holling knew that Nancy Ducane wished to make an
announcement.
Patrick and Frances Ive were the only people in
the village who did not appear in response to the
summons. Everybody else—even the servant girl who
had started the rumor and whom no one had seen for
weeks—assembled at the King’s Head, eager for the
next phase of the drama to begin.
After a brief, warm smile at Ambrose Flowerday,
Nancy Ducane assumed a cool and forthright manner
to address the crowd. She told them that the story
about Patrick Ive taking her money in exchange for
communications from her late husband was
completely untrue. However, she said, not all of what
was being said was a lie. She had, she admitted,
visited Patrick Ive in the vicarage at night more than
once when his wife was not present. She had done
this because she and Patrick Ive were in love.
The villagers gasped in shock. Some started to
whisper. Some people covered their mouths with their
hands, or clutched the arm of whoever was next to
them.
Nancy waited for the hubbub to subside before she
continued. “We were wrong to meet in secret and put
ourselves in temptation’s way,” she said, “but we
could not stay apart. When we met at the vicarage, all
we ever did was talk—about our feelings for one
another, and how impossible they were. We would
agree that we must never be alone together again, but
then Frances would go somewhere and . . . well, the
strength of our love was such that we could not
resist.”
Someone shouted out, “All you did was talk, was
it? My eye and Betty Martin!” Once again, Nancy
assured the crowd that nothing of a physical nature
had taken place between herself and Patrick Ive.
“I have now told you the truth,” she said. “It is a
truth I would rather not have told, but it was the only
way to put a stop to the vile lies. Those of you who
know what it means to feel deep, all-consuming love
for another person—you will find yourselves unable
to condemn me and unable to condemn Patrick. Those
with condemnation in your hearts—you are ignorant
of love, and I pity you.”
Then Nancy looked straight at Harriet Sippel and
said, “Harriet, I believe you did know true love once,
but when you lost George, you chose to forget what
you knew. You made an adversary of love and an ally
of hate.”
As if determined to prove her right, Harriet Sippel
rose to her feet and, after a swift dismissal of Nancy
as a lying harlot, began to denounce Patrick Ive more
vociferously than ever before: not only did he profit
from selling fraudulent encounters with the souls of
the dead, but he also consorted with women of loose
morals while his wife was away. He was a heretic
and an adulterer! He was even worse than she,
Harriet, had suspected! It was an outrage, she said,
that a man so steeped in sin should be allowed to call
himself vicar of Great Holling.
Nancy Ducane left the King’s Head halfway
through Harriet’s rousing speech, unable to bear it. A
few seconds later, the Ives’ servant girl ran for the
door, red-faced and in floods of tears.
Most of the villagers did not know what to think.
They were confused by what they had heard. And then
Ida Gransbury spoke up in support of Harriet. Though
it was unclear what was rumor and what was true, she
said, it was surely beyond doubt that Patrick Ive was
a sinner of some description and that he could not be
allowed to remain in his post as vicar of Great
Holling.
Yes, agreed most of the villagers. Yes, that was
true.
Richard Negus said nothing, even when called
upon to speak by Ida, his fiancée. He told Dr.
Ambrose Flowerday later that day that he was
worried by the turn events had taken. “A sinner of
some description,” while apparently good enough for
Ida, was not, he said, good enough for him. He
declared himself disgusted by Harriet Sippel’s
opportunistic attempt to portray Patrick Ive as guilty
twice over, of two sins instead of one. She had taken
Nancy Ducane’s “not this but that” and turned it into
“this and that” without evidence or justification.
Ida had used the words “beyond doubt” at the
King’s Head; what now seemed to Richard Negus to
be beyond doubt, he told Ambrose Flowerday, was
that people (including himself, to his shame) had been
telling lies about Patrick Ive. What if Nancy Ducane
had also lied? What if her love for Patrick Ive was
unrequited, and he had met her in secret at her
insistence, only to try to explain to her that she must
desist from harboring these feelings for him?
Dr. Flowerday agreed: no one knew for certain
that Patrick Ive had done anything wrong, which had
been his opinion of the matter from the start. He was
the only person the Ives would admit to the vicarage,
and on his next visit, he told Patrick what Nancy
Ducane had said at the King’s Head. Patrick simply
shook his head. He made no comment on the truth or
falsehood of Nancy’s story. Frances Ive, meanwhile,
was physically and mentally deteriorating.
Richard Negus failed to persuade Ida Gransbury to
see things the way he saw them, and relations
between them became strained. The villagers, led by
Harriet, continued to persecute Patrick and Frances
Ive, shouting accusations outside the vicarage all day
and night. Ida continued to petition the Church to
remove the Ives from the vicarage, the church and the
village of Great Holling, for their own sakes.
And then tragedy struck: Frances Ive, unable to
bear the ignominy any longer, swallowed poison and
put an end to her unhappy life. Her husband found her
and knew straight away that it was too late. There
was no point summoning Dr. Flowerday; Frances
could not be saved. Patrick Ive knew, also, that he
could not live with the guilt and the pain, and so he
too took his own life.
Ida Gransbury advised the villagers to pray for
mercy for the sinful souls of Patrick and Frances Ive,
however unlikely it was that the Lord would forgive
them.
Harriet Sippel saw no need to allow the Lord any
discretion in the matter; the Ives would burn in hell
for ever, she told her flock of righteous persecutors,
and it would be no more than they deserved.
Within a few months of the Ives’ deaths, Richard
Negus had ended his engagement to Ida Gransbury
and left Great Holling. Nancy Ducane left for London,
and the servant girl who told the horrible lie was
never seen again in the village.
In the meantime, Charles and Margaret Ernst had
arrived and taken over at the vicarage. They quickly
became friendly with Dr. Ambrose Flowerday, who
forced himself to relate the whole tragic tale. He told
them that Patrick Ive, whether or not he had made the
mistake of harboring a secret passion for Nancy
Ducane, had been one of the most generous and
benign men he had ever known, and the least
deserving of slander.
It was his mention of slander that gave Margaret
Ernst the idea for the poem on the gravestone. Charles
Ernst was against the idea, not wishing to provoke the
villagers, but Margaret stood her ground, determined
that Holy Saints Church should display its support for
Patrick and Frances Ive. “I would like to do
considerably more to Harriet Sippel and Ida
Gransbury than provoke them,” she said. And yes,
when she uttered those words, murder was what she
had in mind, though only as a fantasy, not as a crime
she intended to commit.
AFTER SHE HAD TOLD me the story, Margaret Ernst fell
silent. It was a while before either of us spoke.
Finally I said, “I can see why you gave me the
name of Nancy Ducane when I asked you who might
have a motive. Would she have murdered Richard
Negus, though? He withdrew his support for Harriet
Sippel and Ida Gransbury as soon as doubt was cast
upon the servant girl’s lie.”
“I can only tell you how I would feel if I were
Nancy,” said Margaret. “Would I forgive Richard
Negus? No, I would not. Without his early
endorsement of the lies told by Harriet and that
wretched servant girl, Ida Gransbury might not have
believed the nonsense they were spouting. Three
people drummed up hostility towards Patrick Ive in
Great Holling. Those three people were Harriet
Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus.”
“What about the servant?”
“Ambrose Flowerday doesn’t believe that she
meant to start what she started. She was clearly
unhappy as soon as the bad feeling toward the Ives
took hold in the village.”
I frowned, dissatisfied. “But from a murderous
Nancy Ducane’s point of view—purely for the sake of
argument—if she can’t forgive Richard Negus who
later saw the error of his ways, why would she
forgive the girl who told the lie in the first place?”
“Perhaps she didn’t,” said Margaret. “Perhaps she
has murdered her too. I don’t know where the servant
ended up, but Nancy Ducane might have known. She
could have hunted her down and killed her too.
What’s the matter? Your face has turned rather gray.”
“What . . . what was the name of the servant girl
who told the lie?” I stammered, fearing I knew the
answer. “No, no, it can’t be,” said a voice in my head,
“and yet how can it not be?”
“Jennie Hobbs. Mr. Catchpool, are you all right?
You don’t look at all well.”
“He was right! She is in danger.”
“Who is ‘He?’ ”
“Hercule Poirot. He’s always right. How is that
possible?”
“Why do you sound cross? Did you want him to be
wrong?”
“No. No, I suppose not.” I sighed. “Although I am
now worried that Jennie Hobbs is not safe, assuming
she’s still alive.”
“I see. How strange.”
“What is strange?”
Margaret sighed. “In spite of everything I have
said, it’s hard for me to think of anyone being in
danger from Nancy. Motive or no motive, I don’t see
her committing murder. This will sound peculiar but
. . . one cannot kill without immersing oneself in
horror and unpleasantness—wouldn’t you say?”
I nodded.
“Nancy liked fun and beauty and pleasure and
love. All the happy things. She would want nothing to
do with a business as ugly as murder.”
“So if not Nancy Ducane, then who?” I asked.
“What about drunk old Walter Stoakley? As Frances
Ive’s father, he has a powerful motive. If he laid off
the drink for a day or so, it might not be beyond him to
kill three people.”
“It would be quite impossible for Walter to lay off
the drink even for an hour. I can assure you, Mr.
Catchpool, Walter Stoakley is not the man you’re
looking for. You see, unlike Nancy Ducane, he never
blamed Harriet, Ida and Richard for what happened to
Frances. He blamed himself.”
“Hence the drinking?”
“Yes. It is Walter Stoakley that Walter Stoakley set
out to kill after he lost his daughter, and he shall very
soon succeed, I imagine.”
“In what possible way could Frances’s suicide
have been his fault?”
“Walter didn’t always live in Great Holling. He
moved here to be closer to Patrick and Frances’s
resting place. You will find this difficult to believe,
having seen him as he is now, but until Frances’s
death, Walter Stoakley was an eminent Classicist, and
Master of the University of Cambridge’s Saviour
College. That is where Patrick Ive trained for the
priesthood. Patrick had no parents. He was orphaned
at a young age, and Walter made a sort of protégé of
him. Jennie Hobbs, then only seventeen years old,
was a bed-maker at the college. She was the best
bedder Saviour had, and so Walter Stoakley arranged
for her to look after Patrick Ive’s rooms. Then Patrick
married Frances Stoakley, Walter’s daughter, and
when they moved to Holy Saints Vicarage in Great
