The Monogram Murders (24 page)

so after finding her dead?”

Margaret looked wary. “You will repeat what I tell

you to no one in Great Holling? Only to Scotland

Yard people in London?”

“Yes.” I decided that, for present purposes,

Hercule Poirot counted as a Scotland Yard person.

“Frances Ive wrote a note to her husband before

she took her own life,” said Margaret. “It was plain

that she expected him to survive her. Patrick also left

a note that . . .” She stopped.

I waited.

Eventually she said, “The two notes told us the

sequence of events.”

“What became of the notes?”

“I destroyed them. Ambrose Flowerday gave them

to me, and I threw them on the fire.”

This struck me as most curious. “Why on earth did

you do that?” I asked.

“I . . .” Margaret sniffed and turned away. “I don’t

know,” she said firmly.

She certainly did know, I thought to myself. It was

clear from her clamped-shut mouth that she intended

to say no more on the matter. Further interrogation

from me would only consolidate her determination to

withhold.

I stood to stretch my legs, which had grown stiff.

“You’re right about one thing,” I said. “Now that I

know the story of Patrick and Frances Ive, I
do
want

to speak to Dr. Ambrose Flowerday. He was here in

the village when it all happened. However faithful

your account—”

“No. You made me a promise.”

“I should very much like to ask him about Jennie

Hobbs, for example.”

“I can tell you about Jennie. What would you like

to know? Both Patrick and Frances Ive seemed to

think that she was indispensible. They were very fond

of her. Everyone else found her to be quiet, polite—

harmless enough, until she told a dangerous lie.

Personally, I don’t believe that someone who could

produce a lie of that sort from thin air can be harmless

the rest of the time. And she had ideas above her

station. Her way of speaking changed.”

“How?”

“Ambrose said it was very sudden. One day she

spoke as you would expect a domestic servant to

speak. The next day she had a new, far more polished

voice and was speaking very correctly.”

And using correct grammatical constructions, I

thought to myself.
Oh, please let no one open their

mouths.
Three mouths, each one with a monogrammed

cufflink

inside

it:

grammatically

satisfactory.

Confound it all, Poirot had probably been right about

that too.

“Ambrose said that Jennie altered her voice in

imitation of Patrick and Frances Ive. They were both

educated, and spoke very well.”

“Margaret, please tell me the truth: why are you so

determined that I should not speak to Ambrose

Flowerday? Are you afraid of his telling me

something you would rather I didn’t know?”

“It would be of no help to you to speak to

Ambrose, and it would be a great hindrance to him,”

Margaret said firmly. “You have my permission to

terrify the life out of any other villagers you come

across.” She smiled but her eyes were hard. “They

are scared already—the guilty are being picked off

one by one, and deep down they must know they are

all guilty—but they would be even more afraid if they

heard you say that, in your expert opinion, the killer

will not be content until all who helped to destroy

Patrick and Frances Ive have been dispatched to the

fiery pits of hell.”

“That’s rather extreme,” I said.

“I have an unorthodox sense of humor. Charles

used to complain about it. I never told him this, but I

don’t believe in heaven and hell. Oh, I believe in

God, but not the God we hear so much about.”

I must have looked nervous. I did not want to

discuss theology; I wanted to return to London as soon

as I could and tell Poirot what I had found out.

Margaret continued: “There is only one God, of

course, but I don’t believe for a moment that he wants

us to follow rules without questioning them, or be

unkind to anybody who falls short.” She smiled then

with more warmth and said, “I think that God sees the

world in the way that
I
see it, and not at all in the way

that Ida Gransbury saw it. Would you agree?”

I gave a noncommittal grunt.

“The Church teaches that only God can judge,”

said Margaret. “Why didn’t pious Ida Gransbury point

that out to Harriet Sippel and her baying flock? Why

did she reserve all of her condemnation for Patrick

Ive? If one is going to present oneself as a model of

Christianity, one should strive to get the basic

teachings right.”

“I see you are still angry about it.”

“I will be angry until my dying day, Mr. Catchpool.

Greater sinners persecuting lesser sinners in the name

of morality—that’s something worth raging about.”

“Hypocrisy is an ugly thing,” I concurred.

“Besides, one could argue that it cannot be wrong

to be with the person you truly love.”

“I’m not sure about that. If a person is married—”

“Oh, fiddlesticks to marriage!” Margaret looked

up at the paintings on the parlor wall, then addressed

them directly: “I’m sorry, Charles, dear, but if two

people love one another, then however inconvenient it

is for the Church and however against the rules it

might be . . . well, love is love, isn’t it? I know you

don’t like it when I say that.”

I can’t say I liked it much either. “Love can cause a

whole heap of trouble,” I said. “If Nancy Ducane had

not loved Patrick Ive, I would not now have three

murders to investigate.”

“What a nonsensical thing to say.” Margaret

wrinkled her nose at me. “It is hate that makes people

kill, Mr. Catchpool, not love. Never love. Please be

rational.”

“I have always believed that the hardest rules to

follow are the best tests of character,” I told her.

“Yes, but what aspect of our characters do they

test? Our credulity, perhaps. Our cloth-headed idiocy.

The Bible, with all its rules, is simply a book written

by a person or people. It ought to carry a disclaimer,

prominently displayed: ‘The word of God, distorted

and misrepresented by man.’ ”

“I must go,” I said, uncomfortable about the turn

our discussion had taken. “I have to get back to

London. Thank you for your time and your help. It has

been invaluable.”

“You must forgive me,” Margaret said as she

followed me to her front door. “I do not usually speak

my mind quite so bluntly, apart from when I am

speaking to Ambrose and Charles-on-the-wall.”

“I suppose I should feel honored, in that case,” I

said.

“I have spent my whole life following most of the

rules in the dusty old Book, Mr. Catchpool. That is

how I know it’s a foolish thing to do. Whenever

lovers throw caution to the wind and meet when they

ought not to . . . I admire them! And whoever

murdered Harriet Sippel, I admire that person too. I

can’t help it. That doesn’t mean that I condone

murder. I don’t. Now, go away before I become even

more outspoken.”

As I walked back to the King’s Head, I thought to

myself that a conversation was a strange thing that

could take you almost anywhere. Often you were left

stranded miles from where you had started, with no

idea about how to get back. Margaret Ernst’s words

rang in my ears as I walked:
However against the

rules it might be, love is love, isn’t it?

At the King’s Head, I strode past a snoring Walter

Stoakley and a pruriently peering Victor Meakin and

went upstairs to pack my things.

I caught the next train to London and bade a joyous

farewell to Great Holling as the train pulled out of the

station. As happy as I was to be leaving the village, I

wished I could have spoken to the doctor, Ambrose

Flowerday. What would Poirot say when I told him

about my promise to Margaret Ernst? He would

disapprove, for sure, and say something about the

English and their foolish sense of honor, and I would

no doubt hang my head and mumble apologetically

rather than voice my true opinion on the matter, which

is that one always manages to extract more

information from people in the end if one respects

their wishes. Let people think that you have no wish

to force them to tell you what they know, and it’s

surprising how often they approach you of their own

accord in due course with the very answers you were

looking for.

I knew Poirot would disapprove, and I decided not

to care. If Margaret Ernst could disagree with God,

then it was perfectly all right for me to disagree with

Hercule Poirot occasionally. If he wished to

interview Dr. Flowerday, he could go to Great

Holling and speak to the man himself.

I hoped that it would not be necessary. Nancy

Ducane was the person we needed to concentrate on.

That and saving the life of Jennie, assuming we were

not too late. I was full of remorse on account of

having dismissed the possible danger to her. If we did

manage to save her, the credit would be all Poirot’s.

If we solved the three Bloxham Hotel murders

satisfactorily, that would be down to Poirot too.

Officially, at Scotland Yard, it would be noted as one

of my successes, but everyone would know that it was

Poirot’s triumph and not mine. Indeed, it was thanks

to my bosses’ knowledge of Poirot’s involvement in

the case that they were content to leave me to my own

—or rather, to my Belgian friend’s—devices. It was

the famous Hercule Poirot they trusted to do as he

wished, not me.

I started to wonder if I might not prefer to fail

alone and entirely under my own steam than succeed

only thanks to Poirot’s involvement, and I fell asleep

before I had reached a conclusion.

I had a dream—my first on a train—about being

condemned by everybody I knew for something I

hadn’t done. In it, I saw my own gravestone clearly,

with my name instead of Patrick and Frances Ives’

carved on it, and the “slander’s mark” sonnet beneath.

In the earth beside the grave, there was a glint of

metal, and I knew somehow that it was a cufflink

bearing my initials that was partially buried there. I

woke as the train pulled into London, bathed in sweat,

my heart beating fit to burst from my chest.

Nancy Ducane

I DIDN’T KNOW, OF course, that Poirot was already

aware of the probable involvement of Nancy Ducane

in our three murders. As I made my escape from Great

Holling by train, Poirot was busy making

arrangements, with the help of Scotland Yard, to visit

Mrs. Ducane in her London home.

This he managed to do later that same day, with

Constable Stanley Beer as his escort. A young maid in

a starched apron answered the door of the large white

stucco townhouse in Belgravia. Poirot was expecting

to be shown to a tasteful drawing room where he

would wait to be seen, and he was surprised to find

Nancy Ducane herself standing in the hall at the foot

of the stairs.

“Monsieur Poirot? Welcome. I see you have

brought a policeman with you. This all seems rather

unusual, I must say.”

Stanley Beer made a strange noise in his throat and