The Monogram Murders(68)
Of course I knew about him and Nancy Ducane. I overheard some of his conversations with her that I wasn’t supposed to. I knew how much he loved her, and I couldn’t bear it. I had long ago accepted that he belonged to Frances and not to me, but it was intolerable to discover that he had fallen in love with a woman who was not his wife and that that woman was not me.
For a few fleeting seconds—no longer—I wanted to punish him. To cause him grievous hurt of the kind that he had caused me. So I made up a wicked lie about him and, God forgive me, I told that lie to Harriet Sippel. It comforted me for as long as I was telling it: the idea that Patrick’s whispered words of love for Nancy—words I had overheard more than once—were not his but the late William Ducane’s, conveyed from beyond the grave. Oh, I knew it was nonsense, but when I told Harriet Sippel, for a few seconds it felt true.
Then Harriet set to work, saying dreadful, unforgivable things about Patrick all over the village—and Ida and Richard helped her, which I never understood. They must have known what a venomous creature she had become; everyone in the village knew. How could they turn on Patrick and ally themselves with her? Oh, I know the answer: it was my fault. Richard and Ida knew that the rumor did not come from Harriet in the first place but from a servant girl who had always been loyal to Patrick and who was seen as having no reason to lie.
I saw at once that my jealousy had led me to do a terrible, heinous thing. I witnessed Patrick’s suffering and desperately wanted to help him, and Frances—but I didn’t see how I could! Harriet had seen Nancy enter and leave the vicarage at night. So had Richard Negus. If I had admitted to lying, I would have had to offer another explanation for Nancy’s nocturnal visits to Patrick. And it would not have taken Harriet long to arrive at the correct explanation by her own deductions.
The shameful truth is that I am a dreadful coward. People like Richard Negus and Ida Gransbury—they don’t mind what other people think of them if they believe that right is on their side, but I do mind. I have always cared about making a good impression. If I had confessed to my lie, I would have been hated by everybody in the village, and rightly so. I’m not a strong person, Monsieur Poirot. I did nothing, said nothing, because I was scared. Then Nancy, horrified by the lie and by people’s believing it, came forward and told the truth: that she and Patrick were in love and had been meeting in secret, though nothing of a carnal nature had taken place between them.
Nancy’s efforts on Patrick’s behalf only made things worse for him. “Not only a charlatan who defrauds parishioners and makes a mockery of his Church, but also an adulterer”—that was what they started to say. It became too much for Frances, who took her own life. When Patrick found her, he knew he would not be able to live with the guilt—after all, it was his love for Nancy that had started the trouble. He had failed in his duty to Frances. He, too, took his own life.
The village doctor said that the two deaths were accidents, but that was not true. They were both suicide—another sin in the eyes of those as saintly as Ida Gransbury, and those with an appetite for punishing, like Harriet Sippel. Patrick and Frances both left notes, you see. I found them and passed them on to the doctor, Ambrose Flowerday. I think he must have burned them. He said that he would not give anybody further cause to condemn Patrick and Frances. Dr. Flowerday was sickened by the way the whole village had turned on them.
Patrick’s death broke my heart, and it has remained broken since that day, Monsieur Poirot. I wanted to die, but with Patrick gone, I felt that I needed to stay alive, loving him and thinking well of him—as if my doing so could ever make up for everybody else in Great Holling believing him to be some sort of devil!
My only consolation was that I was not alone in my misery. Richard Negus felt ashamed of the part he had played. He alone among Patrick’s denigrators changed his mind; when Nancy told her story, he saw at once that the outlandish lie I had told was unlikely to be true.
Before he moved to his brother’s home in Devon, Richard sought me out and asked me directly. I wanted to tell him that there was not a grain of truth in the rumor I had started, but I didn’t dare, so I said nothing. I sat mutely, as if my tongue had been cut out, and Richard took my silence as an admission of guilt.
I left Great Holling shortly after he did. I went to Sammy for help at first, but I couldn’t stay in Cambridge—there were too many memories of Patrick there—so I came to London. It was Sammy’s idea. He found work here and, thanks to some people he introduced me to, so did I. Sammy is devoted to me in the way that I was to Patrick. I ought to be grateful to him for that. He asked me again to marry him but I couldn’t, though I regard him as a very dear friend.
A new chapter of my life opened with my move to London. I was unable to enjoy it and thought every single day of Patrick, of the agony of never seeing him again. Then last September I received a letter from Richard Negus. Fifteen years had gone by, but I did not feel as if the past had caught up with me—because I never left it behind!
Richard had been given my London address by the only person in Great Holling who knew it: Dr. Ambrose Flowerday. I don’t know why, but I wanted someone from there to know where I had gone. I remember thinking at the time that I did not wish to disappear absolutely without trace. I felt that . . .
No, I will not say that. It is not true that I had a vision of the future in which Richard Negus sought me out once again and asked for my help to right an old wrong. I will say instead that I had a powerful premonition, though not one I could have described in words. I knew that the village of Great Holling was not finished with me forever, nor I with it. That is why I made sure to send my London address to Dr. Flowerday.