great length and then, a few minutes before the
conclusion, there is the interruption of another murder,
and you do not, after all, hear the answers that you
have been waiting for. Dommage. ”
“Please tell me at once, and let the dommage end
here,” I said as forcefully as I could.
“It is quite simple. Jennie Hobbs and Nancy
Ducane, with the help of Samuel Kidd, conspired to
murder Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard
Negus. However, while collaborating with Nancy,
Jennie pretended to be part of a quite different
conspiracy. She allowed Richard Negus to believe
that he was the one with whom she conspired.”
“That does not sound ‘quite simple’ to me,” I said.
“It sounds inordinately complicated.”
“No, no, my friend. Vraiment, it is not at all. You
are having trouble reconciling the different versions
of the story that you have heard, but you must forget
all that Jennie told us when we visited her at Samuel
Kidd’s house—banish it from your mind completely.
It was a lie from start to finish, though I do not doubt
that it contained some elements of veracity. The best
lies always do. In a moment, Jennie will tell us the
whole truth, now that she has nothing to lose, but first,
my friend, I must pay you the compliment that you
deserve. It was you, in the end, who helped me to see
clearly with your suggestion in the graveyard of Holy
Saints Church.”
Poirot turned to Jennie. He said, “The lie you told
to Harriet Sippel: that Patrick Ive took money from
parishioners and, in return, conveyed to them
messages from their dead loved ones; that Nancy
Ducane had visited him in the vicarage at night for
that reason—in the hope of communicating with her
deceased husband, William. Ah, how often has Poirot
heard about this terrible, wicked lie? Many, many
times. You yourself admitted to us the other day, Miss
Hobbs, that you told the lie in a moment of weakness,
inspired by jealousy. But this was not the truth!
“Standing by Patrick and Frances Ive’s desecrated
grave, Catchpool said to me, ‘What if Jennie Hobbs
lied about Patrick Ive not to hurt him but to help him?’
Catchpool had realized the significance of something
that I had taken for granted—a fact that had never
been in dispute, and so I had failed to examine it:
Harriet Sippel’s passionate love for her late
husband, George, who died tragically young. Had
Poirot not been told how much Harriet had loved
George? Or how the death of George had turned
Harriet from a happy, warm-hearted woman into a
bitter, spiteful monster? One can hardly imagine a
loss so terrible, so devastating, that it extinguishes all
joy and destroys all that is good in a person. Oui,
bien sûr, I knew that Harriet Sippel had suffered such
a loss. I knew it so surely that I thought no further
about it!
“I knew, also, that Jennie Hobbs loved Patrick Ive
enough to abandon Samuel Kidd, her fiancé, in order
to remain in the service of Reverend Ive and his wife.
This is a very self-sacrificing love: content to serve,
and receive little in return. Yet the story told to us by
both Jennie and Nancy offered Jennie’s jealousy as
her reason for telling the terrible lie that she told—
jealousy of Patrick’s love for Nancy. But this cannot
be true! It is not consistent! We must think not only of
the physical facts but of the psychological. Jennie did
nothing to punish Patrick Ive for his marriage to
Frances. She accepted with good grace that he
belonged to another woman. She continued as his
loyal servant and was a great help to him and his wife
at the vicarage, and they, in turn, were devoted to her.
Why then all of a sudden, after many years of self-
sacrificing love and service, would Patrick Ive’s love
for Nancy Ducane inspire Jennie to slander him, and
to set in motion a chain of events that would destroy
him? The answer is that it would not, and did not.
“It was not the eruption of envy and longing locked
inside for so long that prompted Jennie to tell her lie.
It was something altogether different. You were trying
—were you not, Miss Hobbs?—to help the man you
loved. To save him, even. As soon as I heard the
theory of my clever friend Catchpool, I knew it was
the truth. It was so obvious, and Poirot, he had been
imbécile not to see!”
Jennie looked at me. “What theory?” she asked.
I opened my mouth to answer, but Poirot was too
quick for me. “When Harriet Sippel told you she had
seen Nancy Ducane visiting the vicarage late at night,
you were straight away alert to the danger. You knew
about these trysts—how could you not, when you
lived at the vicarage—and you were anxious to
protect Patrick Ive’s good name. How could this be
achieved? Harriet Sippel, once she had sniffed out a
scandal, would relish the opportunity to bring public
shame to a sinner. How could you explain the
presence of Nancy Ducane at the vicarage on nights
when Frances Ive was not there, except with the
truth? What other story would pass the muster? And
then, as if by magic, when you had almost given up
hope, you thought of something that might work. You
decided to use temptation and false hope to eliminate
the threat that Harriet represented.”
Jennie stared blankly ahead. She said nothing.
“Harriet Sippel and Nancy Ducane had something
in common,” Poirot went on. “They had both lost their
husbands to early tragic death. You told Harriet that,
with the help of Patrick Ive, Nancy had been able to
communicate with the deceased William Ducane—
that money had changed hands. Of course, it would
have to be kept secret from the Church and from
everybody in the village, but you suggested to Harriet
that, if she so wished, Patrick would be able to do for
her what he was doing for Nancy. She and George
could be . . . well, if not together again then at least
there could be communication of a kind between
them. Tell me, how did Harriet respond when you
said this to her?”
A long silence followed. Then Jennie said, “She
was foaming at the mouth for it to happen as soon as
possible. She would pay any price, she said, to be
able to speak to George again. You cannot imagine
how much she loved that man, Monsieur Poirot.
Watching her face as I spoke . . . it was like seeing a
dead woman come back to life. I tried to explain it all
to Patrick: that there had been a problem, but I had
solved it. I made the offer to Harriet without asking
him first, you see. Oh, I think I knew in my heart that
Patrick would never consent to it, but I was
desperate! I didn’t want to give him the chance to
forbid me. Can you understand that?”
“Oui, mademoiselle. ”
“I hoped I would be able to persuade him to agree.
He was a principled man, but I knew he would want
to shield Frances from a scandal, and protect Nancy,
and this was a certain way to guarantee Harriet’s
silence. It was the only way! All Patrick would have
had to do was say some comforting words to Harriet
once in a while and pretend that those words came
from George Sippel. There was no need for him to
take her money, even. I said all this to him, but he
wouldn’t hear of it. He was horrified.”
“He was entirely right to be,” said Poirot quietly.
“Continue, please.”
“He said it would be immoral and unfair to do to
Harriet what I was proposing; he would sooner face
personal ruin. I begged him to reconsider. What harm
would it do, if it would make Harriet happy? But
Patrick was resolute. He asked me to give her the
message that what I had proposed would not, after all,
be possible. He was very specific. ‘Do not say that
you lied, Jennie, or else she will revert to suspecting
the truth,’ he said. My instructions were to tell Harriet
only that she could not have what she wanted.”
“So you had no choice but to tell her,” I said.
“No choice at all.” Jennie started to cry. “And
from the moment I told Harriet that Patrick had
refused her request, she made herself his enemy,
repeating my lie to the whole village. Patrick could
have ruined her reputation in return, by making it
known that she had been eager to avail herself of his
unwholesome services, and only started to call them
blasphemous and unchristian once she had been
thwarted, but he wouldn’t do it. He said that no matter
how maliciously Harriet attacked him, he would not
blacken her name. Foolish man! He could have shut
her up in an instant, but he was too noble for his own
good!”
“Was that when you went to Nancy Ducane for
advice?” Poirot asked.
“Yes. I didn’t see why Patrick and I should be the
only ones to fret. Nancy was part of it too. I asked her
if I should publicly admit to my lie, but she advised
me not to. She said, ‘I fear that trouble is coming to
Patrick now one way or another, and to me. You
would be wise to recede into the background and say
nothing, Jennie. Do not sacrifice yourself. I am not
sure you would be strong enough to withstand
Harriet’s vilification.’ She underestimated me. I was
upset, you see—I suppose I sort of fell apart a bit,
because I was so frightened for Patrick, with Harriet
determined to destroy him—but I am not a weak
person, Monsieur Poirot.”
“I see that you are not afraid.”
“No. I draw strength from the knowledge that
Harriet Sippel—that loathsome hypocrite—is dead.
Her killer did the world a great service.”
“Which leads us to the question of that killer’s
identity, mademoiselle. Who killed Harriet Sippel?
You told us that it was Ida Gransbury, but that was a
lie.”
“I hardly need tell you the truth, Monsieur Poirot,
when you know it as well as I do.”
“Then I must ask you to take pity on poor Mr.
Catchpool here. He does not yet know the whole
story.”
“You’d better tell him, then, hadn’t you?” Jennie
smiled an absent sort of smile, and I suddenly felt as
if there was less of her in the room than there had
been only moments ago; she had taken herself away.
“Très bien, ” said Poirot. “I will start with Harriet
Sippel and Ida Gransbury: two inflexible women so
convinced of their own rectitude that they were
willing to hound a good man into an early grave. Did
they express sorrow after his death? No, instead they
objected to his burial in consecrated ground. Did
these two women, after much persuasion by Richard
Negus, come to regret their treatment of Patrick Ive?
No, of course they did not. It is not plausible that they
would. That, Mademoiselle Jennie, was when I knew
that you were lying: at that point in your story.”
Jennie shrugged. “Anything is possible,” she said.
“Non. Only the truth is possible. I knew that
Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury would never have
agreed to the plan of voluntary execution that you
described to me. Therefore, they were murdered.
How convenient, to pass off their murders as a kind of
delegated suicide! You hoped Poirot might disengage
his little gray cells once he heard that all the dead had
been so willing to die. It was their great opportunity
for redemption! What an imaginative and unusual
story—the sort that one hears and assumes must be the
truth, for who would think to invent such a
fabrication?”
“It was my safeguard, to be used if needed,” said
Jennie. “I hoped you would never find me, but I
feared you might.”
“And if I did, you expected that your alibi for
between quarter past seven and ten past eight would
work, and Nancy Ducane’s also. You and Samuel
Kidd would be charged with attempting to frame an
innocent woman, but not with murder or conspiracy to
commit murder. It is clever: you confess to
wrongdoing in order to avoid punishment for far more
serious crimes. Your enemies are murdered, and no
one hangs because we believe your story: Ida
Gransbury killed Harriet Sippel, and Richard Negus
killed Ida Gransbury and then himself. Your plan was
ingenious, mademoiselle—but not as ingenious as
Hercule Poirot!”
“Richard wanted to die,” said Jennie angrily. “He
was not murdered. He was determined to die.”
“Yes,” said Poirot. “This was the truth in the lie.”
“It’s his fault, this whole horrible mess. I would
never have killed anybody if it were not for Richard.”
“But you did kill—several times. It was Catchpool
who, once again, set me on the right track, by uttering
a few innocent words.”
“What words?” Jennie asked.
“He said, ‘If murder began with a D . . .’ ”
IT WAS UNSETTLING TO listen to Poirot’s appreciation
of my helpfulness. I didn’t understand how a few
careless words of mine could have been so
momentous.
Poirot was in full flow. “After we had heard your
story, mademoiselle, we left Samuel Kidd’s house
and, naturally, we discussed what you had told us:
your supposed plan that you made together with
Richard Negus . . . If I may say so, it was a
compelling idea. There was a neatness about it—like
the falling dominoes, except, when I thought carefully,
it was not like that at all because the order of
knocking over is altered. Not D falls down, then C,
then B, then A; instead, B knocks A down, then C
knocks B . . . But that is beside the point.”
What on earth was he talking about? Jennie looked
as if she was wondering the same thing.
“Ah, I must be more lucid in my explanation,” said
Poirot. “To enable myself to imagine the order of
events more easily, mademoiselle, I substituted letters
for names. Your plan, as you told it to us at Samuel
Kidd’s house, was as follows: B kills A, C then kills
B, D then kills C. Afterwards, D waits for E to be
blamed and hanged for the murders of A, B and C,
and then D kills herself. Do you see, Miss Hobbs, that
you are D in this arrangement, according to the story
you told us?”
Jennie nodded.
“Bon. Now, by chance, Catchpool here is a
devotee of the crossword puzzle, and it was in
connection with this hobby that he asked me to think
of a word that had six letters and meant ‘death.’ I
suggested ‘murder.’ No, said Catchpool, my
suggestion would only work ‘if murder began with a
