The Monogram Murders (39 page)

—then I wanted to hear what she had to say while

there was still time.

“Of course,” said Ambrose Flowerday. “She

would be furious with me for keeping you from her.”

Poirot, the nurse and I followed him up a flight of

uncarpeted wooden stairs and into one of the

bedrooms. I tried not to show my shock when I saw

bandages, blood, and the purple and blue welts and

lumps that covered Margaret Ernst’s face. Tears came

to my eyes.

“Are they here, Ambrose?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“
Bonjour,
Madame Ernst. I am Hercule Poirot.

Words cannot express how sorry I am—”

“Please call me Margaret. Is Mr. Catchpool with

you?”

“Yes, I’m here,” I managed to say. How any man or

men could inflict such injury upon a woman was quite

beyond me. It was not the act of human beings but of

beasts. Monsters.

“Are you both striving for polite expressions that

won’t alarm me?” Margaret asked. “My eyes are

swollen shut, so I can’t see your faces. I expect

Ambrose has told you I’m about to die?”

“
Non, madame.
He has said no such thing.”

“Hasn’t he? Well, it’s what he believes.”

“Margaret, dear—”

“He is wrong. I am far too angry to die.”

“You have something that you wish to tell us?”

Poirot asked.

A peculiar noise emerged from Margaret’s throat.

It had a derisory quality. “Yes, I do, but I wish you

wouldn’t ask me so soon and so urgently, as if there’s

a scrambling hurry about it all—as if my next breath

might be my last! Ambrose has given you quite the

wrong impression if that is what you believe. Now, I

need to rest. I shall no doubt have to defend myself

many more times today against unwarranted

accusations of dying! Ambrose, you’ll tell them what

they need to know, won’t you?” Her eyelids flickered.

“Yes. If that’s what you would prefer.” His eyes

widened in alarm and he grabbed her hand.

“Margaret? Margaret!”

“Leave her,” the nurse said, speaking for the first

time. “Let her sleep.”

“Sleep,” Dr. Flowerday repeated, looking

confused. “Yes, of course. She needs to sleep.”

“What is it that she wishes you to tell us, Doctor?”

Poirot asked.

“You might like to take your visitors to the drawing

room?” suggested the nurse.

“No,” said Flowerday. “I won’t leave her. And I

need to speak to these gentleman in private, so if you

would be kind enough to give us a few moments,

Nurse?”

The young woman nodded and left the room.

Flowerday addressed me. “She told you most of it,

I dare say? What this hell-pit of a village did to

Patrick and Frances?”

“We know, perhaps, more of the story than you

think,” said Poirot. “I have spoken to both Nancy

Ducane and Jennie Hobbs. They tell me that the

inquest found Patrick and Frances Ive’s deaths to be

accidental. Yet Margaret Ernst told Catchpool that

they swallowed poison deliberately to end their lives:

she first, and he second. A poison called abrin.”

Flowerday nodded. “That’s the truth. Frances and

Patrick both left notes: their last words to the world. I

told the authorities that in my opinion the deaths were

accidental. I lied.”

“Why?” Poirot asked.

“Suicide is a sin in the eyes of the Church. After

the battering that Patrick’s good name had taken, I

could not bear for there to be another mark against

him. And poor Frances, who had done nothing wrong

and was a good Christian . . .”

“
Oui. Je comprends.
”

“I knew several people who would have reveled

in their achievement if told their actions had driven

the Ives to suicide. I was unwilling to afford them that

satisfaction. Harriet Sippel in particular.”

Poirot said, “May I ask you something, Dr.

Flowerday? If I were to say to you that Harriet Sippel

came to regret her despicable treatment of Patrick Ive,

would you believe that to be possible?”

“Regret

it?”

Ambrose

Flowerday

laughed

mirthlessly. “Why, Monsieur Poirot, I should think

you had taken leave of your senses. Harriet regretted

nothing
that she had done. Neither do I, if you must

know. I am glad that I lied sixteen years ago. I would

do the same again. Let me tell you: the mob led by

Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury against Patrick Ive

was evil. There is no other word for it. I imagine that,

as a cultured man you are familiar with
The Tempest
?

‘Hell is empty’?”

“‘And all the devils are here,’” Poirot completed

the quotation.

“Quite so.” Dr. Flowerday turned then to me. “This

is why Margaret did not want you to speak to me, Mr.

Catchpool. She too is proud that we lied for Patrick

and Frances’s sake, but she is more cautious than I

am. She feared that I would boast to you of my defiant

act, as I just have.” He smiled sadly. “I know that I

must now face the consequences. I will lose my

medical practice and possibly my liberty, and perhaps

I deserve to. The lie I told killed Charles.”

“Margaret’s late husband?” I said.

The doctor nodded. “Margaret and I didn’t care if

people whispered ‘Liar!’ after us in the street, but

Charles minded dreadfully. His health deteriorated. If

I had been less determined to fight the evil in the

village, Charles might still be alive today.”

“Where are the Ives’ suicide notes now?” Poirot

asked.

“I don’t know. I gave them to Margaret sixteen

years ago. I haven’t asked her about them since.”

“I burned them.”

“Margaret.” Ambrose Flowerday hurried to her

side. “You’re awake.”

“I remember every word of both of them. It seemed

important to remember, so I made sure I did.”

“Margaret, you must rest. Talking is tiring for you.”

“Patrick’s note said to tell Nancy that he loved her

and always would. I didn’t tell her. How could I,

without revealing that Ambrose had lied about cause

of death at the inquest? But . . . now that the truth is

out, you must tell her, Ambrose. Tell her what Patrick

wrote.”

“I will. Don’t worry, Margaret. I will take care of

everything.”

“I
do
worry. You have not told Monsieur Poirot

and Mr. Catchpool about Harriet’s threats, after

Patrick and Frances were buried. Tell them now.” Her

eyes closed. Seconds later, she was fast asleep again.

“What were these threats, Doctor?” Poirot asked.

“Harriet Sippel arrived at the vicarage one day,

trailing a mob of ten or twenty behind her, and

announced that the people of Great Holling intended

to dig up the bodies of Patrick and Frances Ive. As

suicides, she said, they had no right to be buried in

consecrated ground—it was God’s law. Margaret

came to the door and told her that she was speaking

nonsense: it used to be the law of the Christian

Church, but it wasn’t any longer. It had not been since

the 1880s, and this was 1913. Once dead, a person’s

soul is entrusted to the mercy of God, and that person

is beyond earthly judgement. Harriet’s pious little

helper Ida Gransbury insisted that if it was wrong for

a suicide to be buried in a churchyard before 1880,

then it must still be wrong. God does not change his

mind about what constitutes acceptable behavior, she

said. When he heard about this unconscionable

outburst from his fiancée, Richard Negus ended his

engagement to the pitiless harridan and left for Devon.

It was the best decision he ever made.”

“Where did Frances and Patrick Ive find the abrin

that they used to kill themselves?” Poirot asked.

Ambrose Flowerday looked surprised. “That’s a

question I wasn’t expecting. Why do you ask?”

“Because I wonder if it originated with you?”

“It did.” The doctor flinched, as if in pain.

“Frances stole it from my house. I spent some years

working in the tropics and I brought two vials of the

poison back with me. I was a young man then, but I

planned to use it later in life if I needed to—in the

event of a painful illness from which I would not

recover. Having observed the agonies endured by

some of my patients, I wanted to be able to spare

myself that sort of ordeal. I didn’t know that Frances

knew I had two vials of lethal poison in my cupboard,

but she must have searched it one day, looking for

something that would serve her purpose. As I said

before, perhaps I do deserve to be punished.

Whatever Margaret says, I have always felt that

Frances’s killer was not Frances but me.”

“
Non.
You must not blame yourself,” said Poirot.

“If she was determined to take her own life, she

would have found a way to do so with or without your

vial of abrin.”

I waited for Poirot to move on to a question about

cyanide, since a doctor with access to one poison

might well have access to two, but instead he said,

“Dr. Flowerday, I do not intend to tell anybody that

the deaths of Patrick and Frances Ive were not

accidental. You will remain at liberty and able to

continue in your medical practice.”

“What?” Flowerday looked from Poirot to me in

astonishment. I nodded my consent, while resenting

Poirot’s failure to ask my opinion. I, after all, was the

one whose job it was to uphold the law of the land.

Had he consulted me, I would have urged him not

to expose the lie that Ambrose Flowerday had told.

“Thank you. You are a fair-minded and generous-

spirited man.”

“
Pas du tout.
” Poirot fended off Flowerday’s

gratitude. “I have one more question for you, Doctor:

are you married?”

“No.”

“If you will permit me to say so, I think you ought

to be.”

I breathed in sharply.

“You are a bachelor, are you not? And Margaret

Ernst has been a widow for some years. It is evident

that you love her very much, and I believe that she

returns your affection. Why do you not ask her to be

your wife?”

Dr. Flowerday seemed to be trying to blink away

his surprise, poor chap. Finally he said, “Margaret

and I agreed long ago that we would never marry. It

wouldn’t have been right. After what we did—

necessary as we both felt it was—and after what

happened to poor Charles . . . well, it would have

been improper for us to allow ourselves to be happy

in that way. As happy as we would have been

together. There has been too much suffering.”

I was watching Margaret, and saw her eyelids

flutter open.

“Enough suffering,” she said in a weak voice.

Flowerday covered his mouth with his clenched

fist. “Oh, Margaret,” he said. “Without you, what is

the point?”

Poirot stood up. “Doctor,” he said in his most

stringent voice. “Mrs. Ernst is of the opinion that she

will survive. It would be a great shame if your foolish

resolve to eschew the possibility of true happiness

were to survive also. Two good people who love

each other should not be apart when there is no need

to be.”

With that, he marched from the room.

I WANTED TO MAKE A SWIFT escape back to London, but

Poirot said that first he needed to see Patrick and

Frances Ive’s grave. “I would like to lay some

flowers,
mon ami.
”

“It’s February, old chap. Where are you going to

find flowers?”

This prompted a lengthy grumble about the English

climate.

The gravestone lay on its side, covered in mud

smears. There were several overlapping footprints in

the mud, suggesting that those two feral brutes

Frederick and Tobias Clutton had jumped up and

down on the stone after digging it out of the ground

with their spade.

Poirot took off his gloves. He bent down and,

using the forefinger of his right hand, drew the outline

of a large flower—like a child’s drawing—in the

earth. “
Voilà,
” he said. “A flower in February, in

spite of the appalling English weather.”

“Poirot, you’ve got mud on your finger!”

“
Oui.
Why do you sound surprised? Even the