The Monogram Murders(69)
Richard’s letter said that he needed to see me, and it did not occur to me to refuse him. He came to London the following week. Without preamble, he asked if I would help him to make amends for the unforgivable thing we had done all those years ago.
I told him that I did not believe amends could be made. Patrick was dead. There was no undoing that. Richard said, “Yes. Patrick and Frances are dead, and you and I can never again know happiness. But what if we were to make a corresponding sacrifice?”
I did not understand. I asked him what he meant.
He said: “If we killed Patrick and Frances Ive, and I believe that we did, is it not fitting that we should pay with our own lives? Do we not find ourselves unable to benefit from the joy that life offers to other people? Why is that? Why does time not heal our wound as it is meant to heal? Could it be because we do not deserve to live while poor Patrick and Frances lie in the ground?” Richard’s eyes darkened as he spoke, turning from their usual brown to almost black. “The law of the land punishes with death those who take the lives of the innocent,” he said. “We have cheated that law.”
I could have told him that neither he nor I took up a weapon and murdered Patrick and Frances, for that would have been the factual truth of the matter. However, his words resonated so powerfully that I knew he was right, although many would have said he was wrong. As he spoke, my heart filled with something akin to hope for the first time in fifteen years. I could not bring Patrick back, but I could make certain that I did not escape justice for what I had done to him.
“Are you proposing that I take my own life?” I asked Richard, because he had not said so explicitly.
“No. Nor that I take mine. What I have in mind is not suicide, but execution—for which we will volunteer. Or at least I shall. I have no wish to force your hand in this.”
“You and I are not the only guilty parties,” I reminded him.
“No, we are not,” he agreed. What he said next nearly caused my heart to stop. “Would it surprise you greatly, Jennie, to learn that Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury have come round to my way of thinking?”
I told him that I could not believe it. Harriet and Ida would never admit to having done something cruel and unforgivable, I thought. Richard said that at one time he too had taken this for granted. He said, “I persuaded them. People listen to me, Jennie. They always have. I worked on Harriet and Ida, not with harsh condemnation but by expressing, ceaselessly, my own deep regret, and my wish that I could compensate for the harm I had done. It took years—as many as have passed since last you and I spoke—but gradually Harriet and Ida came to see things as I do. They are both profoundly unhappy women, you see: Harriet ever since her husband died, and Ida since I informed her that I no longer wished to marry her.”
I opened my mouth to voice my disbelief, but Richard continued to speak. He assured me that both Harriet and Ida had accepted their responsibility for the deaths of Patrick and Frances Ive and wanted to correct the wrong they had done. “The psychology of the matter is fascinating,” he said. “Harriet is content as long as there is someone she can seek to punish. Presently, that person is herself. Do not forget that she is eager to be reunited with her husband in heaven. She cannot allow the possibility that she might end up in a different place.”
I was speechless with shock. I said that I would never believe it. Richard told me that I would as soon as I spoke to Harriet and Ida and they confirmed it. I must meet them, he said, so that I could see for myself how changed they were.
I could not imagine Harriet or Ida changed, and I feared that I would commit murder if I were to find myself in a room with either one of them.
Richard said, “You must try to understand, Jennie. I offered them a way out of their suffering—and be assured, they were suffering. One cannot do such harm to another and not wound one’s own soul in the process. For years Harriet and Ida believed that all they had to cling to was their conviction that they had been right about Patrick, but over time they came to see that I was offering them something better: God’s true forgiveness. The sinful soul aches for redemption, Jennie. The more we deny it the chance of finding that redemption, the stronger the ache grows. Thanks to my determined efforts, Harriet and Ida came to see that the revulsion that every day grew harder inside them was disgust at their own behavior, at the wickedness they tried so hard to drape in a cloak of virtue, and nothing to do with Patrick Ive’s imagined sins.”
Listening to Richard, I started to understand that even the most intransigent person—even a Harriet Sippel—might be persuaded by him. He had a way of putting things that made you see the world differently.
He asked for my permission to bring Harriet and Ida to our next meeting and, with doubt and fear in my heart, I granted it.
Although I believed everything Richard had told me by the time he left me, I nevertheless reeled in shock when, two days later, I found myself in a room with Harriet Sippel and Ida Gransbury, and saw with my own eyes that they were as changed as Richard had reported them to be. Or rather, they were the same as always, except that now they strove to apply their compassionless rigidity to themselves. I was filled anew with passionate hatred for them when they spoke of “poor, kind Patrick” and “poor, innocent Frances.” They had no right to utter those words.
The four of us agreed that we had to do something to put right the wrong. We were murderers, not according to the law but according to the truth, and murderers must pay with their own lives. Only after our deaths would God forgive us.