devoted to Harriet. When my husband William and I
moved to Great Holling, Harriet and George Sippel
were our dearest friends. Then George died, and
Harriet became a monster. But once you have been
very fond of a person, it’s difficult to condemn them,
don’t you find?”
“It is either impossible, or irresistible,” said
Poirot.
“Impossible, I should say. You imagine that their
worst behavior is a symptom of an ailment and not
their true self. I couldn’t forgive Harriet’s treatment of
Patrick. I couldn’t persuade myself to try. At the same
time, I felt that it must have been as horrible for her as
it was for anybody else—to have turned into that.”
“You saw her as a victim?”
“Of the tragedy of losing a beloved husband, yes—
and so young! One can be both victim and villain, I
think.”
“It was something that you and Harriet had in
common,” said Poirot. “The loss of a husband when
you were far too young.”
“This will sound heartless, but there is really no
comparison,” said Nancy. “George Sippel was
everything to Harriet, her whole world. I married
William because he was wise and safe, and I needed
to escape from my father’s home.”
“Ah, yes. Albinus Johnson,” said Poirot. “It came
back to me after I left your house that I do indeed
know the name. Your father was one of a circle of
English and Russian agitators in London at the end of
the last century. He spent a period of time in prison.”
“He was a dangerous man,” said Nancy. “I
couldn’t bear to speak to him about his . . . ideas, but I
know that he believed it was acceptable to murder
any number of people if those people were delaying
the cause of making the world a better place—better
only according to his definition! How in the name of
heaven can anything ever be made better by
bloodshed and mass slaughter? How can any
improvement be brought about by men who wish only
to smash and destroy, who cannot speak of their hopes
and dreams without their faces twisting in hatred and
anger?”
“I agree with you absolutely, madame. A
movement driven by fury and resentment will not
change any of our lives for the better. Ce n’est pas
possible. It is corrupt at the source.”
I nearly said that I too agreed, but I stopped
myself. Nobody was interested in my ideas.
Nancy said, “When I met William Ducane, I did
not fall in love with him, but I liked him. I respected
him. He was calm and courteous; he never behaved or
spoke intemperately. If he failed to return a book to
the library when it was due to be returned, he would
suffer agonies of remorse.”
“A man with a conscience.”
“Yes, and a sense of proportion, and humility. If
something stood in his way, he would consider
moving himself before he would consider moving the
obstacle. I knew that he would not fill our home with
men intent on making the world uglier with their
violent acts. William appreciated art and beautiful
things. He was like me in that respect.”
“I understand, madame. But you did not love
William Ducane passionately, in the way that Harriet
Sippel loved her husband?”
“No. The man I loved passionately was Patrick
Ive. From the first moment I saw him, my heart
belonged to him alone. I would have laid down my
life for him. When I lost him, I finally understood how
Harriet had felt when she had lost George. One thinks
one can imagine, but one can’t. I remember thinking
Harriet morbid when she begged me, after George’s
funeral, to pray for her death so that she might be
quickly reunited with him. I refused to do as she
asked. The passing of time would ease her pain, I told
her, and one day she would find something else to live
for.”
Nancy stopped to compose herself before
continuing. “Regrettably, she did. She found a delight
in the suffering of others. Harriet the widow was a
joyless harridan. That was the woman who was
killed at the Bloxham Hotel in London recently. The
Harriet I knew and loved died with her husband
George.” She looked at me suddenly. “You observed
that I am angry with Jennie. I have no right to be. I am
as guilty as she is of letting Patrick down.” Nancy
started to cry and covered her face with her hands.
“Come, come, madame. Here.” Poirot passed her a
handkerchief. “How did you let down Patrick Ive?
You have told us that you would have sacrificed your
life for him.”
“I am as bad as Jennie: a disgusting coward! When
I stood up in the King’s Head Inn and confessed that
Patrick and I were in love and had been meeting in
secret, I did not tell the truth. Oh, the secret meetings
were real enough, and Patrick and I were desperately
in love—that was true too. But . . .” Nancy appeared
too distressed to continue. Her shoulders shook as she
wept into the handkerchief.
“I think I comprehend, madame. That day at the
King’s Head Inn, you told the villagers that your
relations with Patrick Ive had been chaste. That was
your lie. Poirot, he guesses correctly?”
Nancy let out a wail of despair. “I couldn’t bear
the rumors,” she cried. “All those whispered macabre
tales of encounters with the souls of the dead in
exchange for money; little children hissing in the
street about blasphemy . . . I was appalled! You
cannot imagine the horror of so many voices of
accusation and condemnation, all rounding on one
man, a good man!”
I could imagine. I could imagine it so vividly that I
wished she would stop talking about it.
“I had to do something, Monsieur Poirot. So I
thought, “I shall fight these lies with something pure
and good: the truth.” The truth was my love for
Patrick and his for me, but I was afraid, and I
tarnished our truth with lies! That was my mistake. In
my frenzy, I could not think clearly. I sullied the
beauty of my love for Patrick with faint-hearted
dishonesty. Relations between us were not chaste, but
I said that they were. I imagined that I had no choice
but to lie. That was craven of me. Despicable!”
“You are hard on yourself,” said Poirot.
“Unnecessarily so.”
Nancy dabbed at her eyes. “How I wish I could
believe you,” she said. “Why did I not tell the whole
truth? My defense of Patrick against those horrible
accusations should have been a noble thing, and I
ruined it. For that, I curse myself every day of my life.
Those braying, spittle-flecked sin-hunters at the
King’s Head, they all disapproved of me anyway—
thought I was a fallen woman, and Patrick the very
devil. What would it have mattered if they had
disapproved a little more? In point of fact, I’m not
sure there was a higher peak of opprobrium for them
to ascend to.”
“Why, then, did you not tell the truth?” Poirot
asked.
“I hoped to make the ordeal more bearable for
Frances, I suppose. To avoid a bigger scandal. But
then Frances and Patrick took their own lives, and all
hope of ever making anything better was lost. I know
they killed themselves, whatever anybody says,”
Nancy added as an apparent afterthought.
“Is this a fact that has been disputed?” asked
Poirot.
“According to the doctor and all official records,
their deaths were accidental, but nobody in Great
Holling believed that. Suicide is a sin in the eyes of
the Church. The village doctor wanted to protect
Patrick and Frances’s reputations from greater
damage, I think. He liked them very much and stood
up for them when no one else would. He’s a good egg,
Dr. Flowerday—one of very few in Great Holling. He
knew a wicked lie when he heard one.” Nancy
laughed through her tears. “A lie for a lie and a tooth
for a tooth.”
“Or a truth for a truth?” Poirot suggested.
“Oh. Yes, indeed.” Nancy looked surprised. “Oh,
dear, I’ve quite ruined your handkerchief.”
“It is not important. I have others. There is one
more question I should like to ask you, madame: is the
name Samuel Kidd familiar to you?”
“No. Should it be?”
“He did not live in Great Holling when you lived
there?”
“No, he did not. Lucky old him, whoever he is,”
said Nancy bitterly.
The Older Woman and the Younger
Man
“SO,” SAID POIROT ONCE our visitor had left us and we
were alone. “Nancy Ducane agrees with Margaret
Ernst that the Ives committed suicide, but the official
record is of two accidental deaths. Ambrose
Flowerday told this lie in order to protect the
reputations of Patrick and Frances Ive from further
damage.”
“How extraordinary,” I said. “Margaret Ernst said
nothing about that.”
“I wonder, then, if we have found the reason why
she made you promise not to speak to the doctor.
What if Ambrose Flowerday is proud of the lie he
told—proud enough, maybe, to confess if asked. If
Margaret Ernst wished to protect him . . .”
“Yes,” I agreed. “That could have been the reason
she wanted to steer me away from him.”
“The desire to protect—this I understand only too
well!” Poirot’s voice was fierce with emotion.
“You mustn’t blame yourself about Jennie, Poirot.
You could not have protected her.”
“There you have the wisdom, Catchpool.
Protecting Jennie would have been impossible for
anyone, even Hercule Poirot. It was too late to save
her even before I met her—this I now understand.
Much, much too late.” He sighed. “It is interesting, is
it not, that this time there is blood, when before there
was poison and no blood?”
“What I keep wondering is: where is Jennie’s
body? The Bloxham has been searched from top to
bottom, and nothing!”
“Do not ask yourself where, Catchpool. Where
does not matter. Ask yourself why. Whether the body
was removed from the hotel by laundry cart, suitcase
or wheelbarrow, why was it removed? Why was it
not left in the hotel room, as the other three were?”
“Well? What’s the answer? You know what it is,
so tell me.”
“Indeed,” said Poirot. “All of this can be
explained, but I am afraid it is not a happy
explanation.”
“Happy or not, I’d like to hear it.”
“In the fullness of time you will hear everything.
For now I will tell you this: no employee of the
Bloxham Hotel saw either Harriet Sippel, Ida
Gransbury or Richard Negus more than once, apart
from one man: Thomas Brignell. He saw Richard
Negus twice: once when Negus arrived at the hotel on
the Wednesday and Brignell attended to him, and
again on Thursday evening when he bumped into Mr.
Negus in the corridor and Mr. Negus asked him for a
sherry.” Poirot gave a self-satisfied little chuckle.
“Reflect upon that, Catchpool. Do you start to see
what is suggested by that fact?”
“No.”
“Ah!”
“For pity’s sake, Poirot!” Never had one syllable
— Ah!— been enunciated in such an infuriating fashion.
“I have told you, my friend: do not expect always
to be given the answer.”
“I’m well and truly stumped! From several angles,
it looks as if Nancy Ducane must be our killer, but she
has an alibi from Lady Louisa Wallace. So. Who else
might want to kill Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury,
Richard Negus and now Jennie Hobbs too?” I
stamped up and down the drawing room, angry with
myself because I couldn’t see a way out of the bind.
“And—though I still think you’re crazy to suspect
them—if the murderer is Henry Negus, or Rafal
Bobak, or Thomas Brignell, what could the motive
have been? What connection do any of those people
have to the tragic events in Great Holling sixteen
years ago?”
“Henry Negus has the oldest and most common
motive in the world: money. He told us, did he not,
that his brother Richard had been squandering his
wealth? He told us, also, that his wife would on no
account banish Richard from her home. If Richard
Negus dies, Henry Negus does not have to pay for his
upkeep. If Richard does not die, he might end up
costing his brother a small fortune.”
“And Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury? Jennie
Hobbs? Why would Henry Negus kill them too?”
“I do not know, though I could speculate,” said
Poirot. “As for Rafal Bobak and Thomas Brignell—I
can think of no possible motive for either man, unless
one of them is not who he purports to be.”
“I suppose we could do a bit of digging around,” I
said.
“While we are compiling a list of possible
suspects, what about Margaret Ernst and Dr. Ambrose
Flowerday?” Poirot suggested. “They were not in
love with Patrick Ive, but they might nevertheless
have been motivated by the desire to avenge him.
Margaret Ernst was, by her own account, sitting in her
house alone on the night of the murders. And we do
not know where Dr. Flowerday was because you
promised you would not seek him out and—alas!—
you kept your promise. Poirot will have to go to Great
Holling himself.”
“I did say that you ought to come with me,” I
reminded him. “But I suppose if you had, you
wouldn’t have been able to talk to Nancy Ducane and
Rafal Bobak and the others. Incidentally, this younger
man and older woman that Bobak overheard Harriet,
Ida and Richard Negus talking about, assuming we
believe his account—I’ve been pondering, and I’ve
even made a list of all the romantically linked couples
I can think of.” I produced the list from my pocket. (I
will admit that I was hoping to impress Poirot, but
either he wasn’t impressed or else he hid it well.)
“George and Harriet Sippel,” I read aloud.
“Patrick and Frances Ive. Patrick Ive and Nancy
Ducane. William Ducane and Nancy Ducane. Charles
and Margaret Ernst. Richard Negus and Ida
Gransbury. In none of these pairings is the woman
older than the man, certainly not by enough to be
described as ‘old enough to be his mother.’ ”
“Tsk,” said Poirot impatiently. “You do not think,
my friend. How do you know that this couple exists,
with the older woman and the younger man?”
I stared at him, wondering if he had lost his reason.
“Well, Walter Stoakley talked about them at the
King’s Head, and Rafal Bobak overheard—”
“Non, non, ” Poirot interrupted gracelessly. “You
do not pay attention to the details: in the King’s Head
Inn, Walter Stoakley spoke of the woman putting an
