The Monogram Murders(61)
“There is no doubt in my mind that Jennie loved Patrick,” said Nancy stubbornly. “She left behind a sweetheart in Cambridge when she moved to Great Holling with Patrick and Frances—did you know that?”
We shook our heads.
“They were supposed to get married. The date was set, I believe. Jennie couldn’t bear to let Patrick go, so she canceled her wedding and went with him.”
“Could it not have been Frances Ive to whom she was so attached?” Poirot asked. “Or to both of the Ives? It might have been loyalty and not romantic love that she felt.”
“I don’t believe many women would put loyalty to their employers above their own marriage prospects, do you?” said Nancy.
“Assuredly not, madame. But what you tell me does not quite fit. If Jennie were inclined toward jealousy, why was she moved to tell this terrible lie only when Patrick Ive fell in love with you? Why did his marriage to Frances Ive, long before then, not provoke her envy?”
“How do you know that it did not? Patrick lived in Cambridge when he and Frances met and married. Jennie Hobbs was his servant then too. Perhaps she whispered something malicious about him in a friend’s ear and that friend, not being Harriet Sippel, chose to spread the malice no further.”
Poirot nodded. “You are right. It is a possibility.”
“Most people prefer not to spread ill will, and thank goodness for that,” said Nancy. “Perhaps in Cambridge there is nobody as malevolent as the person Harriet Sippel turned into, and nobody as eager as Ida Gransbury to lead a pious moral crusade.”
“I notice you do not mention Richard Negus.”
Nancy looked troubled. “Richard was a good man. He came to regret his contribution to the whole awful business. Oh, he regretted it deeply once he understood that Jennie had told a despicable lie, and once he saw Ida for the pitiless creature she was. He wrote to me a few years ago, from Devon, to say that the matter had been preying on his mind. Patrick and I were quite wrong to conduct ourselves as we did, he said, and he would never change his mind about that—marriage vows were marriage vows—but he had come to believe that punishment was not always the right path to follow, even when one knows that an offense has taken place.”
“That is what he wrote to you?” Poirot raised his eyebrows.
“Yes. I expect you disagree.”
“These affairs are complicated, madame.”
“What if, in punishing somebody for the sin of falling in love with the wrong person, one only brings greater sin into the world? And more evil: two deaths—one, of a person who has committed no sin.”
“Oui. This is precisely the sort of dilemma that creates the complication.”
“In his letter to me, Richard wrote that, Christian as he was, he could not bring himself to believe that God would wish him to persecute a sweet-natured man like Patrick.”
“Punishment and persecution are two separate things,” said Poirot. “There is also the question: has a rule or law been broken? Falling in love . . . enfin, we cannot help how we feel, but we can choose whether or not to act upon those feelings. If a crime has been committed, one must ensure that the criminal is dealt with by the law in an appropriate fashion, but always without personal venom and spite—always without the lust for vengeance, which contaminates everything and is indeed evil.”
“Lust for vengeance,” Nancy Ducane repeated with a shudder. “That was it exactly. Harriet Sippel was filled with it. It was sickening.”
“And yet, in telling the story, you have not once spoken angrily of Harriet Sippel,” I said. “You describe her behavior as sickening, as if it saddens you. You do not seem angry with her as you are with Jennie Hobbs.”
“I suppose that’s true.” Nancy sighed. “I used to be devoted to Harriet. When my husband William and I moved to Great Holling, Harriet and George Sippel were our dearest friends. Then George died, and Harriet became a monster. But once you have been very fond of a person, it’s difficult to condemn them, don’t you find?”
“It is either impossible, or irresistible,” said Poirot.
“Impossible, I should say. You imagine that their worst behavior is a symptom of an ailment and not their true self. I couldn’t forgive Harriet’s treatment of Patrick. I couldn’t persuade myself to try. At the same time, I felt that it must have been as horrible for her as it was for anybody else—to have turned into that.”
“You saw her as a victim?”
“Of the tragedy of losing a beloved husband, yes—and so young! One can be both victim and villain, I think.”
“It was something that you and Harriet had in common,” said Poirot. “The loss of a husband when you were far too young.”
“This will sound heartless, but there is really no comparison,” said Nancy. “George Sippel was everything to Harriet, her whole world. I married William because he was wise and safe, and I needed to escape from my father’s home.”
“Ah, yes. Albinus Johnson,” said Poirot. “It came back to me after I left your house that I do indeed know the name. Your father was one of a circle of English and Russian agitators in London at the end of the last century. He spent a period of time in prison.”
“He was a dangerous man,” said Nancy. “I couldn’t bear to speak to him about his . . . ideas, but I know that he believed it was acceptable to murder any number of people if those people were delaying the cause of making the world a better place—better only according to his definition! How in the name of heaven can anything ever be made better by bloodshed and mass slaughter? How can any improvement be brought about by men who wish only to smash and destroy, who cannot speak of their hopes and dreams without their faces twisting in hatred and anger?”