The Monogram Murders(42)
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 na?ve 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.