The Monogram Murders(32)

Father Christmas made sounds that I translated as: “Yes, you, good fellow. Come and sit down here. In this chair here. Next to me, here. The chair that the unfortunate young ne’er-do-well no longer has the need of, here.”

Under normal circumstances the repetition might have grated, but since I was engaged in a translation exercise, I rather welcomed it.

“Actually, I was about to take a stroll around the village . . .” I started to say, but the old man had made his mind up that I should do no such thing.

“There’s plenty of time for that later!” he barked. “Now, you’ll come and sit down, and we’ll have ourselves a talk.” To my alarm, he began to sing:

“Come and sit down,

Come and sit down,

Mr. Policeman from London Town.”

I looked at Meakin, who kept his eyes on his beer glasses. Anger emboldened me and I said to him, “I seem to remember asking you only ten minutes ago not to discuss my business with anybody.”

“I haven’t said a word.” He did not even have the good grace to look at me.

“Mr. Meakin, how has this gentleman found out that I’m a policeman from London if not from your telling him? Nobody else in the village knows who I am.”

“You mustn’t go leaping to conclusions, Mr. Catchpool. That’ll get you nowhere, I expect. I’ve said not a word about you to a single body. Not a word.”

He was lying. He knew that I knew, and he didn’t care.

DEFEATED, I WENT AND sat with the old gnome-like man in his corner of the inn. There were hops and brasses on the dark beams all around him, and for a second he struck me as a strange white-haired creature in an even stranger nest.

He started to talk as if our conversation were already in full swing: “. . . not a gentleman but a ne’er-do-well, and his parents are the same way. They can’t read, or write their own names, and nor can he. No Latin to speak of! Twenty years of age and look at him! When I was his age—ah, but that was long ago. Time immemorial! I made the best of myself as a young man, but some take the blessings the Lord bestowed and squander them all. They don’t realize that greatness is within the grasp of every man, so they don’t try to achieve it.”

“Latin, eh?” was all I could manage by way of reply. Greatness? I counted myself as lucky every time I avoided a humiliating failure. There was nothing coarse about the old man’s voice, in spite of his lumpy claret-colored nose and ale-soaked beard. Undistorted by drink, his was a voice one might be pleased to listen to, I thought.

“So, have you done great things, then?” I asked him.

“I’ve tried, and I’ve succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.”

“Have you really?”

“Ah, but that was long ago. It doesn’t pay a man to dream, and the dreams that matter most can never come true. I didn’t know that when I was young. I’m glad I didn’t.” He sighed. “What about you, my good fellow? What will be your great achievement? Solving the murders of Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus?”

He spoke as if this were an unworthy goal.

“I never knew Negus, though I saw him once or twice,” he went on. “Shortly after I arrived in the village, he left it. One man comes, another man goes, and both for the very same reason. Both with the heaviest of hearts.”

“What reason?”

The old gnome poured an almost impossible amount of ale down his throat in one swift motion. “She never got over it!” he said.

“Who never got over what? Do you mean that Ida Gransbury never got over Richard Negus’s leaving Great Holling?”

“The loss of her husband. Or so they say. Harriet Sippel. They say it was losing him so young that made her what she was. I say that’s a poor excuse. Not much older than the kid that was sitting where you’re sitting before you were sitting there. Too young to die. There’s no end to them.”

“When you say ‘made her what she was’—I wonder what you meant by that, Mr. . . . um . . . ? Can you explain?”

“What, my good fellow? Oh, yes. It doesn’t pay a man or a woman to dream. I’m glad I was old by the time I tumbled to that.”

“Forgive me, but I’d like to check I’ve got this right,” I said, wishing he would stick to the point. “Are you saying that Harriet Sippel lost her husband at a young age, and that being widowed was what made her become . . . what?”

To my horror, the old man started to cry. “Why did she have to come here? She could have had a husband, children, a home of her own, a happy life.”

“Who could have had those things?” I asked rather desperately. “Harriet Sippel?”

“If she hadn’t told an unforgivable lie . . . That was what started all the trouble.” As if an invisible participant in the conversation had suddenly asked him another question, the old man frowned and said, “No, no. Harriet Sippel had a husband. George. He died. Young. A terrible illness. He wasn’t much older than the kid, the ne’er-do-well that was sitting before where you’re sitting now. Stoakley.”

“The ne’er-do-well’s name is Stoakley, is it?”

“No, my good fellow. My name is Stoakley. Walter Stoakley. I don’t know his name.” The old gnome combed his fingers through his beard, then said, “She devoted her life to him. Oh, I know why, I’ve always understood why. He was a substantial man, whatever his sins. She sacrificed everything for him.”