not finished with me forever, nor I with it. That is why
I made sure to send my London address to Dr.
Flowerday.
Richard’s letter said that he needed to see me, and
it did not occur to me to refuse him. He came to
London the following week. Without preamble, he
asked if I would help him to make amends for the
unforgivable thing we had done all those years ago.
I told him that I did not believe amends could be
made. Patrick was dead. There was no undoing that.
Richard said, “Yes. Patrick and Frances are dead, and
you and I can never again know happiness. But what
if we were to make a corresponding sacrifice?”
I did not understand. I asked him what he meant.
He said: “If we killed Patrick and Frances Ive, and
I believe that we did, is it not fitting that we should
pay with our own lives? Do we not find ourselves
unable to benefit from the joy that life offers to other
people? Why is that? Why does time not heal our
wound as it is meant to heal? Could it be because we
do not deserve to live while poor Patrick and Frances
lie in the ground?” Richard’s eyes darkened as he
spoke, turning from their usual brown to almost black.
“The law of the land punishes with death those who
take the lives of the innocent,” he said. “We have
cheated that law.”
I could have told him that neither he nor I took up a
weapon and murdered Patrick and Frances, for that
would have been the factual truth of the matter.
However, his words resonated so powerfully that I
knew he was right, although many would have said he
was wrong. As he spoke, my heart filled with
something akin to hope for the first time in fifteen
years. I could not bring Patrick back, but I could make
certain that I did not escape justice for what I had
done to him.
“Are you proposing that I take my own life?” I
asked Richard, because he had not said so explicitly.
“No. Nor that I take mine. What I have in mind is
not suicide, but execution—for which we will
volunteer. Or at least I shall. I have no wish to force
your hand in this.”
“You and I are not the only guilty parties,” I
reminded him.
“No, we are not,” he agreed. What he said next
nearly caused my heart to stop. “Would it surprise you
greatly, Jennie, to learn that Harriet Sippel and Ida
Gransbury have come round to my way of thinking?”
I told him that I could not believe it. Harriet and
Ida would never admit to having done something cruel
and unforgivable, I thought. Richard said that at one
time he too had taken this for granted. He said, “I
persuaded them. People listen to me, Jennie. They
always have. I worked on Harriet and Ida, not with
harsh condemnation but by expressing, ceaselessly,
my own deep regret, and my wish that I could
compensate for the harm I had done. It took years—as
many as have passed since last you and I spoke—but
gradually Harriet and Ida came to see things as I do.
They are both profoundly unhappy women, you see:
Harriet ever since her husband died, and Ida since I
informed her that I no longer wished to marry her.”
I opened my mouth to voice my disbelief, but
Richard continued to speak. He assured me that both
Harriet and Ida had accepted their responsibility for
the deaths of Patrick and Frances Ive and wanted to
correct the wrong they had done. “The psychology of
the matter is fascinating,” he said. “Harriet is content
as long as there is someone she can seek to punish.
Presently, that person is herself. Do not forget that she
is eager to be reunited with her husband in heaven.
She cannot allow the possibility that she might end up
in a different place.”
I was speechless with shock. I said that I would
never believe it. Richard told me that I would as soon
as I spoke to Harriet and Ida and they confirmed it. I
must meet them, he said, so that I could see for myself
how changed they were.
I could not imagine Harriet or Ida changed, and I
feared that I would commit murder if I were to find
myself in a room with either one of them.
Richard said, “You must try to understand, Jennie.
I offered them a way out of their suffering—and be
assured, they were suffering. One cannot do such harm
to another and not wound one’s own soul in the
process. For years Harriet and Ida believed that all
they had to cling to was their conviction that they had
been right about Patrick, but over time they came to
see that I was offering them something better: God’s
true forgiveness. The sinful soul aches for
redemption, Jennie. The more we deny it the chance
of finding that redemption, the stronger the ache
grows. Thanks to my determined efforts, Harriet and
Ida came to see that the revulsion that every day grew
harder inside them was disgust at their own behavior,
at the wickedness they tried so hard to drape in a
cloak of virtue, and nothing to do with Patrick Ive’s
imagined sins.”
Listening to Richard, I started to understand that
even the most intransigent person—even a Harriet
Sippel—might be persuaded by him. He had a way of
putting things that made you see the world differently.
He asked for my permission to bring Harriet and
Ida to our next meeting and, with doubt and fear in my
heart, I granted it.
Although I believed everything Richard had told
me by the time he left me, I nevertheless reeled in
shock when, two days later, I found myself in a room
with Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury, and saw with
my own eyes that they were as changed as Richard
had reported them to be. Or rather, they were the same
as always, except that now they strove to apply their
compassionless rigidity to themselves. I was filled
anew with passionate hatred for them when they
spoke of “poor, kind Patrick” and “poor, innocent
Frances.” They had no right to utter those words.
The four of us agreed that we had to do something
to put right the wrong. We were murderers, not
according to the law but according to the truth, and
murderers must pay with their own lives. Only after
our deaths would God forgive us.
“We four are judge, jury and executioner,” said
Richard. “We will execute one another.”
“How will we do it?” Ida asked, gazing adoringly
at him.
“I have thought of a way,” he said. “I shall take
care of the details.”
Thus, without noise or complaint, we signed our
own death warrants. I felt nothing but immense relief.
I remember thinking that I would not be afraid to kill
as long as my victim was not afraid to die. Victim is
the wrong word. I don’t know what the right one is.
Then Harriet said, “Wait. What about Nancy
Ducane?”
I KNEW WHAT SHE meant before she explained. “Oh,
yes,” I thought to myself, “this is the same old Harriet
Sippel.” Four deaths for a good cause were not
enough for her; she craved a fifth.
Richard and Ida asked her what she meant.
“Nancy Ducane must die too,” said Harriet, her
eyes as hard as flint. “She led poor Patrick into
temptation, announced their shame to the village and
broke poor Frances’s heart.”
“Oh, no,” I said, alarmed. “Nancy would never
agree to give up her own life. And . . . Patrick loved
her!”
“She’s every bit as guilty as we are,” Harriet
insisted. “She must die. We all must, all the guilty, or
else it will be for nothing. If we are going to do this,
we must do it properly. It was Nancy’s revelation,
remember, that prompted Frances Ive to take her own
life. And besides, I know something that you don’t
know.”
Richard demanded that we all be told at once.
With a sly glint in her eye, Harriet said, “Nancy
wanted Frances to know that Patrick’s heart belonged
to her. She said what she said out of jealousy and
spite. She admitted it to me. She’s just as guilty as we
are—more so, if you want to know my true opinion.
And if she won’t agree to die . . . well, then!”
Richard sat with his head in his hands for a long
time. Harriet, Ida and I waited in silence. I realized
then that Richard was our leader. Whatever he said
when he finally spoke, we would abide by it.
I prayed for Nancy. I did not blame her for
Patrick’s death, never had and never would.
“All right,” said Richard, though he did not look
happy. “It saddens me to admit it, but yes. Nancy
Ducane should not have consorted with another
woman’s husband. She should not have announced her
liaison with Patrick to the village in the way that she
did. We do not know that Frances Ive would have
taken her own life if that had not happened.
Regrettably, Nancy Ducane must also die.”
“No!” I cried out. All I could think of was how
Patrick would have felt if he had heard those words.
“I’m sorry, Jennie, but Harriet is right,” said
Richard. “It is a bold and difficult thing that we intend
to do. We cannot ask ourselves to make so great a
sacrifice and leave alive one person who shares the
blame for what occurred. We cannot exonerate
Nancy.”
I wanted to scream and run from the room, but I
forced myself to stay in my chair. I was certain that
Harriet had lied about Nancy’s reason for speaking up
at the King’s Head; I did not believe that Nancy had
admitted to being driven by jealousy and a wish to
hurt Frances Ive, but, in front of Harriet, I was too
afraid to say so, and besides, I had no proof. Richard
said that he would need to think for a while about
how we would put our plan into action.
Two weeks later, he came to see me again, alone.
He had decided what must happen, he said. He and I
would be the only ones to know the whole truth—and
Sammy, of course. I tell him everything.
We would tell Harriet and Ida, said Richard, that
the plan was for us to kill one another, as agreed, and
frame Nancy Ducane for our murders. Since Nancy
lives in London, this would need to happen in London
—in a hotel, Richard suggested. He said that he
would pay for everything.
Once at the hotel, it was simple: Ida would kill
Harriet, Richard would kill Ida, and I would kill
Richard. Each killer, when his or her turn came,
would place a cufflink bearing Patrick Ive’s initials in
the victim’s mouth and set up the crime scene to look
identical to the other two, so that the police would
take for granted that the same killer had committed all
three . . . deaths. I was about to say murders, but they
weren’t. They were executions. You see, it occurred
to us that after people are executed there must be a
procedure, mustn’t there? The prison staff must do the
same thing with every body of an executed criminal,
we thought. It was Richard’s idea that the bodies
should be laid out in the way that they were—
respectfully and with dignity. Ceremonially—that
was Richard’s word.
Since two of the victims, Ida and Harriet, would
have given their home addresses to the hotel as Great
Holling, we knew that it would not take the police
long to go to the village, ask around, and begin to
suspect Nancy. Who else was so obvious a suspect?
Sammy could pretend to have seen her running out of
the hotel after the third murder, and dropping the three
room keys on the ground. That’s right: three room
keys. Richard’s key was part of the plan too, you see.
Ida was supposed to take Harriet’s key to her own
room after killing Harriet and locking Harriet’s door.
Richard was supposed to do the same: take Harriet’s
and Ida’s keys with him when he left and locked Ida’s
room after killing Ida. Then I would kill Richard, lock
his door, take all three keys, meet Sammy outside the
Bloxham and give the keys to him. Sammy would then
sneak them somehow into Nancy Ducane’s home, or,
as it turned out, her coat pocket one day on the street,
in order to incriminate her.
I don’t suppose this matters, but Patrick Ive never
wore monogrammed cufflinks. He didn’t own a pair
as far as I ever knew. Richard Negus ordered all the
cufflinks to be specially made, to set the police on the
right track. The leaving of the blood and my hat inside
the fourth hotel room was also part of our plan,
designed to make you believe I had been murdered in
that room—that Nancy Ducane had avenged her dead
love by killing all four of us. Richard was happy to
leave it to Sammy to provide the blood. It came from
a stray cat, if you want to know. It was also Sammy’s
job to leave the note on the hotel’s front desk on the
night of the killings: “MAY THEY NEVER REST IN
PEACE” and then the three room numbers. He was to
place it on the reception desk when no one was
looking, shortly after eight o’clock. My task,
meanwhile, was to stay alive and make sure that
Nancy Ducane hanged for the three murders, and
possibly four if the police believed that I too was
dead.
How was I to accomplish this? Well, as the fourth
person that Nancy would wish to kill—the fourth
person responsible for what happened to Patrick—I
was to let the police know that I feared for my life.
This I did at Pleasant’s Coffee House, and you were
my audience, Monsieur Poirot. You are quite right: I
deceived you. You are right too that I had heard the
waitresses at Pleasant’s discussing the detective from
the Continent who comes in every Thursday evening
at precisely half past seven, and who sometimes dines
with his much younger friend from Scotland Yard. As
soon as I heard the girls talking about you, I knew you
would be perfect.
But Monsieur Poirot, one of the conclusions you
have drawn is incorrect. You said that my saying,
“Once I am dead, justice will have been done,
finally” meant that I knew the other three were
already dead, but I absolutely did not know whether
Richard, Harriet and Ida were dead or alive, because
by then I had ruined everything. I was merely thinking,
when I spoke those words, that according to the plan
Richard and I made, I would outlive them. So you see,
they might well still have been alive when I uttered
those words.
I should make it clear: there were two plans—one
that Harriet and Ida agreed to, and a quite different
one known only to Richard and me. As far as Harriet
