The Monogram Murders (23 page)

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

Holling, Jennie went with them. Do you see?”

I nodded. “Walter Stoakley blames himself for

putting Patrick Ive and Jennie Hobbs together. If

Patrick and Frances had not taken Jennie with them to

Great Holling, she would not have been in a position

to tell the terrible lie that led to their deaths.”

“And I would not have to spend my life watching a

gravestone to make sure nobody desecrates it.”

“Who would do such a thing?” I asked. “Harriet

Sippel? Before she was killed, I mean.”

“Oh, no, Harriet’s weapon was her toxic tongue,

not her hands. She would never defile a grave. No,

it’s the rowdy young men of the village who would do

that, given half a chance. They were children when

Patrick and Frances died, but they’ve heard their

parents’ stories. If you ask anyone around here,

besides me and Ambrose Flowerday, they will tell

you that Patrick Ive was a wicked man—that he and

his wife practiced black magic. I think most of them

believe it more strongly as time goes on. They have

to, don’t they? It’s either that or dislike themselves as

heartily as I dislike them.”

There was something I wanted to clarify. “Did

Richard Negus sever ties with Ida Gransbury because

she continued to denounce Patrick Ive after Richard

had come to his senses? Was it following Nancy’s

announcement at the King’s Head that he ended their

engagement?”

A peculiar expression passed across Margaret’s

face. She started to say, “That day at the King’s Head

was the beginning of . . . ,” then stopped and changed

course. “Yes. He found her irrational insistence upon

the virtue of her and Harriet’s cause too galling to

bear.”

Margaret’s face had a shut-down look about it all

of a sudden. I had the impression that there was

something important she had chosen not to tell me.

“You mentioned that Frances Ive swallowed

poison,” I said. “How? Where did she get it from?

And how did Patrick Ive die?”

“The same way: poison. I don’t suppose you’ve

heard of abrin?”

“I can’t say I have.”

“It comes from a plant called the rosary pea,

common in the tropics. Frances Ive obtained several

vials of the stuff from somewhere.”

“Forgive me, but if they both took the same poison

and were found together, how was it established that

Frances killed herself first and that Patrick only did