The Monogram Murders Read online

  Margaret Ernst appeared in the kitchen. “Oh, I was looking for that,” she said with a smile, bending to retrieve the scarf. “I knew it would be you. I left the door open. In fact, I expected you to arrive five minutes ago, but I suppose nine o’clock on the dot would have looked too eager, wouldn’t it?” She ushered me inside, draping the scarf around her neck.

  Something about her teasing—though I knew it was not intended to offend—emboldened me to be more direct than I might otherwise have been. “I am eager to discover the truth, and I don’t mind looking it,” I said. “Who might have wished to murder Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus? I believe you have an idea about that, and I’d like to know it.”

  “What are those papers?”

  “What? Oh!” I had forgotten I was holding them. “Lists. Guests at the Bloxham Hotel around the time of the murders, and people employed by the Bloxham. I was wondering if you might take a look and let me know if you see a name you recognize—after you’ve answered my question about who might have wanted to murder—”

  “Nancy Ducane,” said Margaret. She took the two lists from my hand and studied them, frowning.

  I said the very same words to her that Poirot had said to Samuel Kidd the day before, though I did not know then that he had said them. “Nancy Ducane the artist?”

  “Wait a moment.” We stood in silence while Margaret read the two lists. “None of these names is familiar to me, I’m afraid.”

  “Are you saying that Nancy Ducane—the same Nancy Ducane I’m thinking of, the society portrait painter—had a motive for killing Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus?”

  Margaret folded the two pieces of paper, handed them back to me, then beckoned me to follow her into the parlor. Once we were sitting comfortably in the same chairs as on the previous day, she said, “Yes. Nancy Ducane the famous artist. She is the only person I can think of who would have had both the desire to kill Harriet, Ida and Richard and the ability to do it and get away with it. Don’t look so surprised, Mr. Catchpool. Famous people aren’t exempt from evil. Though I must say I can’t believe that Nancy would do such a thing. She was a civilized woman when I knew her, and no one ever changes all that much. She was a brave woman.”

  I said nothing. The trouble is, I thought, that some killers are civilized for the most part, and only break from their routine of civility once, to commit murder.

  Margaret said, “I lay awake all of last night wondering if Walter Stoakley might have done it, but, no, it’s impossible. He can’t stand up without help, let alone get himself to London. To commit three murders would be quite beyond him.”

  “Walter Stoakley?” I sat forward in my chair. “The drunken old cove at the King’s Head that I spoke to yesterday? Why should he want to murder Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus?”

  “Because Frances Ive was his daughter,” said Margaret. She turned to look out of the window at the Ives’ gravestone, and once again the line from the Shakespeare sonnet came into my mind: For slander’s mark was ever yet the fair.

  “I would be glad if Walter had committed the murders,” said Margaret. “Isn’t that dreadful of me? I would be relieved that Nancy hadn’t done it. Walter’s old, and there’s not much life left in him, I don’t think. Oh, I don’t want it to be Nancy! I’ve read in the papers about how well Nancy is doing as an artist. She left here and really made a name for herself. That was a source of comfort to me. I was happy to think of her prospering in London.”

  “Left here?” I said. “So Nancy Ducane also lived in Great Holling at one time?”

  Margaret Ernst was still staring out of the window. “Yes. Until 1913.”

  “The same year that Patrick and Frances Ive died. The same year that Richard Negus also left the village.”

  “Yes.”

  “Margaret . . .” I leaned forward in an attempt to draw her attention away from the Ives’ gravestone. “I’m hoping for all I’m worth that you have decided to tell me the story of Patrick and Frances Ive. I’m certain that once I have heard it, I will understand many things that are a mystery to me at present.”

  She turned her serious eyes toward me. “I have decided to tell you the story, on one condition. You must promise not to repeat it to anybody in the village. What I say to you in this room must go no further until you arrive in London. There, you may tell whomever you wish.”

  “No need to worry on that score,” I said. “My opportunities for conversation in Great Holling are limited. Everyone takes off as soon as they see me coming.” It had happened twice on the way to Margaret Ernst’s cottage that morning. One of the gaspers was a boy of no more than ten years old: a child, and yet he knew who I was and that he should avert his eyes and hurry past me to safety. He would, I felt sure, have known my Christian name, my surname, and the nature of my business in Great Holling. Small villages have at least one talent that London lacks: they know how to ignore a chap in a way that makes him feel terribly important.

  “I am asking for a solemn promise, Mr. Catchpool—not an evasion.”

  “Why is there a need for secrecy? Don’t all the villagers know about the Ives and whatever it was that happened to them?”

  What Margaret said next revealed that her concern was for one villager in particular. “Once you have heard what I have to say, you will doubtless want to speak to Dr. Ambrose Flowerday.”

  “The man you urge me to forget, yet remind me of time and time again?”

  She blushed. “You must promise not to seek him out and, if you do happen to encounter him, not to raise the subject of Patrick and Frances Ive. Unless you can give me such an undertaking, I shan’t be able to tell you anything.”

  “I’m not sure I can. What would I tell my boss at Scotland Yard? He sent me here to ask questions.”

  “Well, then. We’re in a bind.” Margaret Ernst folded her arms.

  “Supposing I find this Dr. Flowerday and ask him to tell me the story instead? He knew the Ives, didn’t he? Yesterday you said that, unlike you, he lived in Great Holling while they were still alive.”

  “No!” The fear in her eyes was unmistakable. “Please don’t speak to Ambrose! You don’t understand. You can’t understand.”

  “What are you so afraid of, Margaret? You seem to me to be a woman of integrity, but . . . well, I can’t help wondering if you intend to give me only a partial account.”

  “Oh, my account will be thorough. It will lack nothing.”

  For some reason, I believed her. “Then, if you’re not intending to withhold a portion of the truth, why must I not talk to anybody else about Patrick and Frances Ive?”

  Margaret rose to her feet, walked over to the window and stood with her forehead touching the glass and her body blocking my view of the Ives’ gravestone. “What happened here in 1913 inflicted a grievous wound upon this village,” she said quietly. “No one living here escaped it. Nancy Ducane moved to London afterward, and Richard Negus to Devon, but neither of them escaped. They carried the wound with them. It wasn’t visible on their skin or on any part of their bodies, but it was there. The wounds you can’t see are the worst. And those who stayed, like Ambrose Flowerday—well, it was terrible for them too. I don’t know if Great Holling can recover. I know that it hasn’t yet.”

  She turned to face me. “The tragedy is never spoken of, Mr. Catchpool. Not by anybody here, never directly. Sometimes silence is the only way. Silence and forgetting, if only one could forget.” She clasped and unclasped her hands.

  “Are you worried about the effect my question might have upon Dr. Flowerday? Is he trying to forget?”

  “As I said: forgetting is impossible.”

  “Nevertheless . . . it would be a distressing subject for him to discuss?”

  “Yes. Very.”

  “Is he a good friend of yours?”

  “This has nothing to do with me,” came her sharp retort. “Ambrose is a good man, and I don’t want him bothered. Why can you not agree to what I’m
asking?”

  “All right, you have my word,” I said reluctantly. “I will discuss what you tell me with no one in the village.” Having made this pledge, I found myself hoping that the residents of Great Holling would continue to ignore me as assiduously as they had thus far and not put temptation in my way. It would be just my luck to leave Margaret Ernst’s cottage and run into a garrulous Dr. Flowerday, keen to have a good old chinwag.

  From his three portraits on the wall, the late Charles Ernst bestowed three warning glances upon me: “Break your promise to my wife and you will regret it, you scoundrel,” his eyes seemed to say.

  “What about your own peace of mind?” I asked. “You don’t want me to talk to Dr. Flowerday in case it upsets him, but I’m worried I might upset you. I don’t want to cause you any distress.”

  “Good.” Margaret sighed with relief. “The truth is, I would welcome the chance to tell the story to another outsider like myself.”

  “Then please do,” I said.

  She nodded, returned to her chair, and proceeded to tell me the story of Patrick and Frances Ive, to which I listened without interruption. I shall now set it down here.

  THE RUMOR THAT STARTED all the trouble sixteen years ago came from a servant girl who worked in the home of Reverend Patrick Ive, the young vicar of Great Holling, and his wife, Frances. Having said that, the servant was not solely or even mainly responsible for the tragedy that resulted. She told a spiteful lie, but she told it to one person only and had no part in spreading it more widely throughout the village. Indeed, once the unpleasantness began, she withdrew almost completely and was scarcely seen. Some speculated that she was ashamed, as she should have been, of what she had set in motion. Later, she regretted her part in the affair and did her best to make amends, though by then it was too late.

  Of course, she was wicked to tell a lie of such magnitude even to one person. Perhaps she was frustrated after a particularly hard day’s work at the vicarage, or it could be that, as a servant with ideas above her station, she resented the Ives. Maybe she wished to perk up her dreary life with a little malicious gossip and was naïve enough to imagine that no serious harm would be done.

  Unfortunately, the person she chose as audience for her heinous lie was Harriet Sippel. Again, maybe her choice was easy to understand. Harriet, embittered and vindictive as she was since the death of her husband, could be relied upon to receive the lie with great excitement and to believe it, because, of course, she would want it to be true. Someone in the village was doing something gravely wrong, and, even worse (or, from Harriet’s point of view, even better) that someone was the vicar! How her eyes must have flashed with glee! Yes, Harriet was the perfect audience for the servant girl’s slanderous story, and no doubt that was why she was chosen.

  The servant told Harriet Sippel that Patrick Ive was a swindler of the most cruel and sacrilegious kind: he was, she claimed, luring villagers to the vicarage late at night whenever his wife Frances was elsewhere helping parishioners, as she often was, and taking their money in exchange for passing on communications from their deceased loved ones—messages from the afterlife that these departed souls had entrusted to him, Patrick Ive, to deliver.

  Harriet Sippel told anybody who would listen that Patrick was practicing his charlatan trickery upon several villagers, but this might have been her attempt to enlarge his wrongdoing in order to make a more shocking story. The servant girl insisted later that she had only ever mentioned one name to Harriet: that of Nancy Ducane.

  Nancy was at that time not a famous portrait painter but an ordinary young woman. She had moved to Great Holling in 1910 with her husband, William, when he took a job as headmaster of the village school. William was much older than Nancy. She was eighteen when they married and he was almost fifty, and in 1912 he died of a respiratory illness.

  According to the wicked rumors that Harriet Sippel began to circulate in the snow-beleaguered January of 1913, Nancy had been seen several times entering and leaving the vicarage at night or in the evening, always when it was dark, always looking furtive, and only on nights when Frances Ive wasn’t at home.

  Anyone with a grain of sense would have doubted the story. It is surely impossible to observe a furtive expression, or indeed any expression, on a person’s face in the pitch-darkness. It would have been hard to ascertain the identity of a woman leaving the vicarage in the dead of night unless she had a particularly distinctive gait, and Nancy Ducane did not; indeed, it is more likely that whoever saw her on these several occasions followed her home and found out who she was that way.

  It is easier to accept the account of a person more zealous than yourself than to challenge it, and that is what most people in Great Holling did. They were content to trust the rumor and to join Harriet in accusing Patrick Ive of blasphemy and extortion. Most believed (or, to avoid Harriet’s vitriolic scorn, pretended to believe) that Patrick Ive was secretly acting as a conduit for exchanges between the living and the souls of the dead, and taking substantial sums of money from gullible parishioners as recompense. It struck the villagers of Great Holling as eminently plausible that Nancy Ducane would be unable to resist if offered a means of receiving messages from her late husband, William, especially if the offer came from the vicar of the parish. And, yes, she might well pay handsomely for such an arrangement.

  The villagers forgot that they knew, liked and trusted Patrick Ive. They ignored what they knew of his decency and kindness, and they disregarded Harriet Sippel’s relish for sniffing out sinners. They fell in with her campaign of spite because they were afraid to attract her wrath, but that was not the only thing that persuaded them. More influential still was the knowledge that Harriet had two substantial allies: Richard Negus and Ida Gransbury had lent their support to her cause.

  Ida was known to be the most pious woman in Great Holling. Her faith never wavered, and she rarely opened her mouth to speak without quoting from the New Testament. She was admired and revered by all, even if she was not the sort of woman you would seek out if you wanted to have a riot of a time. She was far from being gay company, but she was the closest thing the village had to a saint all its own. And she was engaged to be married to Richard Negus, a lawyer who was said to have a brilliant mind.

  Richard’s considerable intellect and air of quiet authority had earned him the respect of the whole village. He believed the lie when Harriet presented it to him because it tallied with the evidence of his own eyes. He too had seen Nancy Ducane—or at least a woman who might have been Nancy Ducane—leaving the vicarage in the middle of the night on more than one occasion when the vicar’s wife was known to be away visiting her father, or staying in the home of one of her parishioners.

  Richard Negus believed the rumor, and so Ida Gransbury believed it too. She was shocked to her core to think that Patrick Ive, a man of the cloth, had been carrying on in such an unchristian fashion. She, Harriet and Richard made it their mission to remove Patrick Ive from his position as vicar of Great Holling, and to see him expelled from the Church. They demanded that he appear in public and admit to his sinful behavior. He declined to do so, since the rumors were untrue.

  The villagers’ hatred of Patrick Ive soon expanded to include his wife, Frances, whom people said must have known about the heretical and fraudulent activities of her husband. Frances swore that she did not. At first she tried to say that Patrick would never do such a thing, but when person after person insisted that he had, she stopped saying anything at all.

  Only two people in Great Holling declined to participate in the hounding of the Ives: Nancy Ducane (for obvious reasons, some said) and Dr. Ambrose Flowerday, who was particularly vociferous in his defense of Frances Ive. If Frances knew about the unsavory activities that were taking place at the vicarage, he argued, why did they only happen when she was elsewhere? Surely that suggested she was entirely innocent? It was Dr. Flowerday who pointed out that it is impossible to see a guilty expression on a person’s face in the pitch dark, Dr. Flower
day who declared that he intended to believe his friend Patrick Ive unless and until someone produced undeniable evidence of his wrongdoing, Dr. Flowerday who told Harriet Sippel (one day on the street, in front of several witnesses) that she had very likely packed more wickedness into the last half hour than Patrick Ive had committed in his entire life.

  Ambrose Flowerday did not make himself popular by taking this view, but he is one of those rare people who does not care what the world thinks of him. He defended Patrick Ive to the Church authorities and told them that, in his opinion, there was not a grain of truth in the rumors. He was dreadfully worried about Frances Ive, who by now was in a pitiful condition. She had stopped eating, hardly slept, and could not under any circumstances be persuaded to leave the vicarage. Patrick Ive was frantic. His position as vicar and his reputation no longer mattered to him, he said. His only wish was to restore his wife to good health.

  Nancy Ducane, meanwhile, had said nothing at all, neither confirming nor denying the rumors. The more Harriet Sippel goaded her, the more determined she seemed to remain silent. Then one day, she changed her mind. She told Victor Meakin that she had something important to say to put a stop to the foolishness that had gone on for long enough. Victor Meakin chuckled, rubbed his hands together, and quietly slipped out of the back door of the King’s Head. Very shortly afterward, everybody in Great Holling knew that Nancy Ducane wished to make an announcement.

  Patrick and Frances Ive were the only people in the village who did not appear in response to the summons. Everybody else—even the servant girl who had started the rumor and whom no one had seen for weeks—assembled at the King’s Head, eager for the next phase of the drama to begin.

  After a brief, warm smile at Ambrose Flowerday, Nancy Ducane assumed a cool and forthright manner to address the crowd. She told them that the story about Patrick Ive taking her money in exchange for communications from her late husband was completely untrue. However, she said, not all of what was being said was a lie. She had, she admitted, visited Patrick Ive in the vicarage at night more than once when his wife was not present. She had done this because she and Patrick Ive were in love.