The Monogram Murders(35)

“I thought I was alone,” I said, wondering how I could have missed her arrival, facing toward the street as I had been.

“I entered through the other gate,” she said, pointing over her shoulder with her thumb. “I live in the cottage. I saw you through my window.”

My face must have betrayed my thoughts on the unfortunate situation of her home, because she smiled and said, “Do I mind the view? Not at all. I took the cottage so that I could watch the graveyard.”

She said this as though it were a perfectly normal thing to say. She must have been reading my mind, for she went on to explain: “There is only one reason that Patrick Ive’s gravestone has not been dug out of the ground, Mr. Catchpool, and it is this: everybody knows I am watching.” She advanced upon me without warning and held out her hand. I shook it. “Margaret Ernst,” she said. “You may call me Margaret.”

“Do you mean . . . Are you saying that there are people in the village who would wish to disturb Patrick and Frances Ive’s grave?”

“Yes. I used to lay flowers by it, but it soon became apparent that there was little point. Flowers are easy to destroy, easier than a slab of stone. When I stopped leaving the flowers, there was nothing for them to destroy apart from the gravestone itself, but I was in the cottage by then. Watching.”

“How appalling that anybody would do such a thing to another person’s resting place,” I said.

“Well, people are appalling, aren’t they? Did you read the poem?”

“I started to and then you appeared.”

“Read it now,” she ordered.

I turned back to the stone and read the sonnet in its entirety.

That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect,

For slander’s mark was ever yet the fair;

The ornament of beauty is suspect,

A crow that flies in heaven’s sweetest air.

So thou be good, slander doth but approve

Thy worth the greater, being wooed of time;

For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,

And thou present’st a pure unstained prime.

Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days

Either not assailed, or victor being charged;

Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,

To tie up envy, evermore enlarged,

If some suspect of ill masked not thy show,

Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe.

“Well, Mr. Catchpool?”

“It’s a peculiar poem to fetch up on a gravestone.”

“Do you think so?”

“Slander’s a strong word. The poem suggests that—well, unless I’m mistaken—that there were attacks upon Patrick and Frances Ive’s characters?”

“There were. Hence the sonnet. I chose it. I was advised that it would prove too costly to engrave the whole poem, and that I should content myself with the first two lines—as if cost were the most important consideration. People are such brutes!” Margaret Ernst gave a disgusted snort. She rested the palm of her hand on the stone, as if it were the top of a beloved child’s head instead of a grave. “Patrick and Frances Ive were kind people who would never willingly have hurt anybody. About how many can one say that, truly?”

“Oh. Well—”

“I didn’t know them myself—Charles and I only took over the parish after their deaths—but that’s what the village doctor says, Dr. Flowerday, and he is the only person in Great Holling with an opinion worth listening to.”

Wanting to check I had not misunderstood her, I said, “So your husband was the vicar here, after Patrick Ive?”

“Until he died three years ago, yes. There is a new vicar now: a bookish chap without a wife who keeps himself to himself.”

“And this Dr. Flowerday . . . ?”

“Forget about him,” Margaret Ernst said quickly, which did an excellent job of fixing the name Dr. Flowerday firmly in my mind.

“All right,” I said dishonestly. Having known Margaret Ernst for less than a quarter of an hour, I suspected that all-embracing obedience was the tactic most likely to serve me well.

“Why did the inscription on the gravestone fall to you?” I asked her. “Did the Ives not have family?”

“None who were both interested and capable, sadly.”

“Mrs. Ernst,” I said. “Margaret, I mean . . . I can’t tell you how much more welcome in the village you have made me feel. It’s plain that you know who I am, so you must also know why I’m here. No one else will speak to me, apart from an old chap at the King’s Head Inn who made little sense.”

“I’m not sure my intention was to make you feel welcome, Mr. Catchpool.”

“Less unwelcome, then. At least you don’t flee from me as from a monstrous apparition.”

She laughed. “You? Monstrous? Oh, dear.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

“This man who made little sense at the King’s Head—did he have a white beard?”

“Yes.”

“He spoke to you because he is not afraid.”

“Because he’s too furiously drunk to fear a thing?”

“No. Because he was not . . .” Margaret stopped and changed course. “He is in no danger from the murderer of Harriet, Ida and Richard.”