The Monogram Murders(33)

“For . . . the young man who was here just now?” No, that seemed unlikely; the ne’er-do-well had not looked substantial.

It was lucky that Poirot wasn’t party to this conversation, I thought. Walter Stoakley’s disorganized ramblings would have given him a seizure.

“No, no. He’s only twenty, you know.”

“Yes, you told me a few moments ago.”

“No point devoting your life to a wastrel who spends his days drinking.”

“I agree, but—”

“She couldn’t marry some kid, not once she’d fallen in love with a man of substance. So she left him behind.”

I had an idea, inspired by what the waiter Rafal Bobak had said in the dining room of the Bloxham Hotel. “Is she many years older than him?” I asked.

“Who?” Stoakley looked puzzled.

“The woman you’re talking about. How old is she?”

“A good ten years older than you. Forty-two, forty-three at an estimate.”

“I see.” I couldn’t help being impressed that he had guessed my age accurately. If he was able to do that, I reasoned, then surely I would eventually manage to draw some coherent sense from him.

Back into the discursive chaos I went: “So the woman you’re talking about is older than the ne’er-do-well who was sitting here in this chair a few minutes ago?”

Stoakley frowned. “Why, my good fellow, she’s more than twenty years older than him! You policemen ask peculiar questions.”

An older woman and a younger man: the very pairing that Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus had been overheard gossiping about at the Bloxham Hotel. I was definitely making progress. “So she was supposed to marry the ne’er-do-well, but then chose a more substantial man instead?”

“No, not the ne’er-do-well,” said Stoakley impatiently. Then his eyelids flickered. He smiled and said, “Ah, but Patrick! He had greatness within his grasp. She saw it. She understood. If you want women to fall in love with you, Mr. Catchpool, show them you have greatness within your grasp.”

“I don’t want women to fall in love with me, Mr. Stoakley.”

“Whyever not?”

I took a deep breath.

“Mr. Stoakley, could you please tell me the name of the woman you were talking about—the one you wish hadn’t come here, who fell in love with a more substantial man and who told the unforgivable lie?”

“Unforgivable,” the old gnome agreed.

“Who is Patrick? What is the rest of his name? Are his initials PJI? And is there, or was there ever, a woman by the name of Jennie in Great Holling?”

“Greatness in his grasp,” said Stoakley sadly.

“Yes, quite. But—”

“She sacrificed everything for him, and I don’t think she would say she regretted it, if you asked her today. What else could she do? She loved him, you see. There’s no arguing with love.” He clutched at his shirt and twisted it. “You might as well try to rip out your heart.”

Which was rather how I felt after a further half hour of trying to extract some logic from Walter Stoakley. I applied myself until I could bear it no longer, and then gave up.





Slander’s Mark

I STEPPED OUT OF the King’s Head Inn with great relief. A light rain had started to fall. In front of me, a man wearing a long coat and a cap broke into a trot, no doubt hoping to reach his house and get himself inside before the weather worsened. I gazed out across the field that was opposite the pub, beyond a low hedge: a sizeable expanse of green, bordered by rows of trees on three sides. Again, that silence. Nothing to hear but the rain on the leaves; nothing to see but green.

A country village was the wrong place to live for anyone who wanted to be distracted from their own thoughts, that was for sure. In London, there was always a car or a bus or a face or a dog whizzing past, making some sort of commotion. How I longed for commotion now; anything but this stillness.

Two women passed me, also apparently in a hurry. They ignored my friendly greeting and scuttled away without looking up. It was only when I heard over my shoulder the words “policeman” and “Harriet” that I wondered if I had blamed the perfectly innocent rain for a phenomenon of my own making. Were these people running from the weather or from the London policeman?

While I had been applying my little gray cells, as Poirot would call them, to Walter Stoakley’s disjointed proclamations, had Victor Meakin left his inn by the back door and stopped passersby on the street to inform them of my presence in the village, against my clearly stated wishes? I could imagine that might be his idea of sport. What a strange and unpleasant man he was.

I continued along the S-shaped street. Ahead of me, a young man emerged from one of the houses. I was pleased to see that it was the man with the glasses and freckles whom I had met when I first got off the train. When he saw me strolling toward him, he stopped as if the soles of his shoes had been glued to the pavement. “Hello!” I called out. “I found the King’s Head, thanks to your help!”

The young man’s eyes widened as I approached. He looked as if he wanted to flee; evidently he was too polite to do so. If it hadn’t been for that distinctive boomerang of freckles across his nose, I might have concluded that this could not be the same person I had met before. His manner had totally altered—exactly as Victor Meakin’s had.