The Monogram Murders(36)

“And you?” I asked.

“I would speak to you as I have, and as I am, whatever the danger.”

“I see. Are you unusually brave?”

“I am unusually pigheaded. I say what I believe needs to be said, and I do what I believe needs to be done. And if I happen to catch a suggestion that others would prefer me to remain silent, then I do the opposite.”

“That’s commendable, I suppose.”

“Do you find me too direct, Mr. Catchpool?”

“Not at all. It makes life easier, to speak one’s mind.”

“And is that one of the reasons your life has never been easy?” Margaret Ernst smiled. “Ah—I see you would prefer not to talk about yourself. Very well then. What is your impression of my character? If you don’t object to the question.”

“I have only just met you.” Heavens above! I thought. Unprepared as I was for an exchange of this nature, the best I could muster was, “I’d say you come over as a good egg, all in all.”

“That’s a rather abstract description of a person, wouldn’t you say? Also rather brief. Besides, what is goodness? Morally, the best thing I have ever done was unquestionably wrong.”

“Was it really?” What an extraordinary woman she was. I decided to take a chance. “What you said before about doing the opposite of what people would like you to do . . . Victor Meakin told me nobody would speak to me. He would be delighted if you neglected to invite me to your cottage for a cup of tea, so that we can talk at greater length, out of the rain. What do you say?”

Margaret Ernst smiled. She seemed to appreciate my boldness, as I had hoped she would. I noticed, however, that her eyes grew more wary. “Mr. Meakin would be similarly delighted if you followed the example of most in the village and refused to cross my threshold,” she said. “He is joyous about any misfortune to anyone. We could displease him on two accounts if you are mutinously inclined?”

“Well, then,” I said. “It sounds to me as if that settles the matter!”

“TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED to Patrick and Frances Ive,” I said once the tea was made and we were sitting by the fire in Margaret Ernst’s long, narrow parlor. That was what she called the room we were in, though it contained so many books that “library” would have done just as well. On one wall hung three portraits, two painted and one photographic, of a man with a high forehead and unruly eyebrows. I assumed that he was Margaret’s late husband, Charles. It was disconcerting to have three of him staring at me, so I turned to the window instead. My chair afforded an excellent view of the Ives’ gravestone, and I decided it must be where Margaret usually sat in order to conduct her vigil.

From this distance, the sonnet was unreadable. I had forgotten all of it apart from the line “For slander’s mark was ever yet the fair,” which had lodged itself in my mind.

“No,” said Margaret Ernst.

“No? You won’t tell me about Patrick and Frances Ive?”

“Not today. Maybe I will tomorrow. Do you have other questions for me in the meantime?”

“Yes, but . . . do you mind if I ask what is likely to change between now and tomorrow?”

“I would like some time to consider.”

“The thing is—”

“You’re going to remind me that you’re a policeman working on a murder case, and it is my duty to tell you everything I know. But what have Patrick and Frances Ive to do with your case?”

I ought to have done some delaying and considering of my own, but I was eager to see what response I would get if I presented her with a fact I had not told Victor Meakin, and that therefore she couldn’t possibly already know.

“Each of the three victims was found with a gold cufflink in his or her mouth,” I said. “All three cufflinks were monogrammed with Patrick Ive’s initials: PIJ.” I explained, as I had to Poirot, about the surname’s initial being the largest of the three, and in the middle. Unlike my Belgian friend, Margaret Ernst showed no sign of believing civilization to be imperiled by such an arrangement of letters. She also did not appear shocked or surprised by what I had told her, which I found unusual.

“Now do you see why Patrick Ive is of interest to me?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Then will you tell me about him?”

“As I said: perhaps tomorrow. Would you like some more tea, Mr. Catchpool?”

I told her that I would, and she left the room. Alone in the parlor, I ruminated over whether I had left it too late to ask her to call me Edward, and, if not, whether I ought to do so. I pondered this while knowing that I would say nothing, and would allow her to continue with “Mr. Catchpool.” It is among the more pointless of my habits: wondering what I ought to do when there is no doubt about what I am going to do.

When Margaret returned with the tea, I thanked her and asked her if she could tell me about Harriet Sippel, Ida Gransbury and Richard Negus. The transformation was incredible. She made no attempt to dissemble, and, in a most efficient fashion, told me enough about two of the three murder victims to fill several pages. Infuriatingly, the notebook I had brought with me to Great Holling lay in one of my cases in my room at the King’s Head Inn. This would be a test for my memory.

“Harriet used to have a sweet nature, according to the overflowing archive of village legend,” said Margaret. “Kind, generous, always a smile on her face, forever laughing and offering to help friends and neighbors, never once thinking of herself—positively saintly. Determined to think well of all she met, to see everything in the best possible light. Na?vely trusting, some said. I’m not sure if I believe all of it. No one could be as perfect as Harriet-Before-She-Changed is painted as being. I wonder if it’s the contrast with what she became . . .” Margaret frowned. “Perhaps it wasn’t, in strictest truth, a case of her going from one extreme to the other, but when one is telling a story, one always wants to make it as dramatic as possible, doesn’t one? And I suppose losing a husband so young could turn even the sunniest nature. Harriet was devoted to her George, so they say, and he to her. He died in 1911 at the age of twenty-seven—dropped down dead one day in the street, having always been the picture of health. A blood clot in his brain. Harriet was a widow at twenty-five.”