The Monogram Murders(70)

“We four are judge, jury and executioner,” said Richard. “We will execute one another.”

“How will we do it?” Ida asked, gazing adoringly at him.

“I have thought of a way,” he said. “I shall take care of the details.”

Thus, without noise or complaint, we signed our own death warrants. I felt nothing but immense relief. I remember thinking that I would not be afraid to kill as long as my victim was not afraid to die. Victim is the wrong word. I don’t know what the right one is.

Then Harriet said, “Wait. What about Nancy Ducane?”

I KNEW WHAT SHE meant before she explained. “Oh, yes,” I thought to myself, “this is the same old Harriet Sippel.” Four deaths for a good cause were not enough for her; she craved a fifth.

Richard and Ida asked her what she meant.

“Nancy Ducane must die too,” said Harriet, her eyes as hard as flint. “She led poor Patrick into temptation, announced their shame to the village and broke poor Frances’s heart.”

“Oh, no,” I said, alarmed. “Nancy would never agree to give up her own life. And . . . Patrick loved her!”

“She’s every bit as guilty as we are,” Harriet insisted. “She must die. We all must, all the guilty, or else it will be for nothing. If we are going to do this, we must do it properly. It was Nancy’s revelation, remember, that prompted Frances Ive to take her own life. And besides, I know something that you don’t know.”

Richard demanded that we all be told at once. With a sly glint in her eye, Harriet said, “Nancy wanted Frances to know that Patrick’s heart belonged to her. She said what she said out of jealousy and spite. She admitted it to me. She’s just as guilty as we are—more so, if you want to know my true opinion. And if she won’t agree to die . . . well, then!”

Richard sat with his head in his hands for a long time. Harriet, Ida and I waited in silence. I realized then that Richard was our leader. Whatever he said when he finally spoke, we would abide by it.

I prayed for Nancy. I did not blame her for Patrick’s death, never had and never would.

“All right,” said Richard, though he did not look happy. “It saddens me to admit it, but yes. Nancy Ducane should not have consorted with another woman’s husband. She should not have announced her liaison with Patrick to the village in the way that she did. We do not know that Frances Ive would have taken her own life if that had not happened. Regrettably, Nancy Ducane must also die.”

“No!” I cried out. All I could think of was how Patrick would have felt if he had heard those words.

“I’m sorry, Jennie, but Harriet is right,” said Richard. “It is a bold and difficult thing that we intend to do. We cannot ask ourselves to make so great a sacrifice and leave alive one person who shares the blame for what occurred. We cannot exonerate Nancy.”

I wanted to scream and run from the room, but I forced myself to stay in my chair. I was certain that Harriet had lied about Nancy’s reason for speaking up at the King’s Head; I did not believe that Nancy had admitted to being driven by jealousy and a wish to hurt Frances Ive, but, in front of Harriet, I was too afraid to say so, and besides, I had no proof. Richard said that he would need to think for a while about how we would put our plan into action.

Two weeks later, he came to see me again, alone. He had decided what must happen, he said. He and I would be the only ones to know the whole truth—and Sammy, of course. I tell him everything.

We would tell Harriet and Ida, said Richard, that the plan was for us to kill one another, as agreed, and frame Nancy Ducane for our murders. Since Nancy lives in London, this would need to happen in London—in a hotel, Richard suggested. He said that he would pay for everything.

Once at the hotel, it was simple: Ida would kill Harriet, Richard would kill Ida, and I would kill Richard. Each killer, when his or her turn came, would place a cufflink bearing Patrick Ive’s initials in the victim’s mouth and set up the crime scene to look identical to the other two, so that the police would take for granted that the same killer had committed all three . . . deaths. I was about to say murders, but they weren’t. They were executions. You see, it occurred to us that after people are executed there must be a procedure, mustn’t there? The prison staff must do the same thing with every body of an executed criminal, we thought. It was Richard’s idea that the bodies should be laid out in the way that they were—respectfully and with dignity. Ceremonially—that was Richard’s word.

Since two of the victims, Ida and Harriet, would have given their home addresses to the hotel as Great Holling, we knew that it would not take the police long to go to the village, ask around, and begin to suspect Nancy. Who else was so obvious a suspect? Sammy could pretend to have seen her running out of the hotel after the third murder, and dropping the three room keys on the ground. That’s right: three room keys. Richard’s key was part of the plan too, you see. Ida was supposed to take Harriet’s key to her own room after killing Harriet and locking Harriet’s door. Richard was supposed to do the same: take Harriet’s and Ida’s keys with him when he left and locked Ida’s room after killing Ida. Then I would kill Richard, lock his door, take all three keys, meet Sammy outside the Bloxham and give the keys to him. Sammy would then sneak them somehow into Nancy Ducane’s home, or, as it turned out, her coat pocket one day on the street, in order to incriminate her.