The Monogram Murders(78)

“Where did Frances and Patrick Ive find the abrin that they used to kill themselves?” Poirot asked.

Ambrose Flowerday looked surprised. “That’s a question I wasn’t expecting. Why do you ask?”

“Because I wonder if it originated with you?”

“It did.” The doctor flinched, as if in pain. “Frances stole it from my house. I spent some years working in the tropics and I brought two vials of the poison back with me. I was a young man then, but I planned to use it later in life if I needed to—in the event of a painful illness from which I would not recover. Having observed the agonies endured by some of my patients, I wanted to be able to spare myself that sort of ordeal. I didn’t know that Frances knew I had two vials of lethal poison in my cupboard, but she must have searched it one day, looking for something that would serve her purpose. As I said before, perhaps I do deserve to be punished. Whatever Margaret says, I have always felt that Frances’s killer was not Frances but me.”

“Non. You must not blame yourself,” said Poirot. “If she was determined to take her own life, she would have found a way to do so with or without your vial of abrin.”

I waited for Poirot to move on to a question about cyanide, since a doctor with access to one poison might well have access to two, but instead he said, “Dr. Flowerday, I do not intend to tell anybody that the deaths of Patrick and Frances Ive were not accidental. You will remain at liberty and able to continue in your medical practice.”

“What?” Flowerday looked from Poirot to me in astonishment. I nodded my consent, while resenting Poirot’s failure to ask my opinion. I, after all, was the one whose job it was to uphold the law of the land.

Had he consulted me, I would have urged him not to expose the lie that Ambrose Flowerday had told.

“Thank you. You are a fair-minded and generous-spirited man.”

“Pas du tout.” Poirot fended off Flowerday’s gratitude. “I have one more question for you, Doctor: are you married?”

“No.”

“If you will permit me to say so, I think you ought to be.”

I breathed in sharply.

“You are a bachelor, are you not? And Margaret Ernst has been a widow for some years. It is evident that you love her very much, and I believe that she returns your affection. Why do you not ask her to be your wife?”

Dr. Flowerday seemed to be trying to blink away his surprise, poor chap. Finally he said, “Margaret and I agreed long ago that we would never marry. It wouldn’t have been right. After what we did—necessary as we both felt it was—and after what happened to poor Charles . . . well, it would have been improper for us to allow ourselves to be happy in that way. As happy as we would have been together. There has been too much suffering.”

I was watching Margaret, and saw her eyelids flutter open.

“Enough suffering,” she said in a weak voice.

Flowerday covered his mouth with his clenched fist. “Oh, Margaret,” he said. “Without you, what is the point?”

Poirot stood up. “Doctor,” he said in his most stringent voice. “Mrs. Ernst is of the opinion that she will survive. It would be a great shame if your foolish resolve to eschew the possibility of true happiness were to survive also. Two good people who love each other should not be apart when there is no need to be.”

With that, he marched from the room.

I WANTED TO MAKE A SWIFT escape back to London, but Poirot said that first he needed to see Patrick and Frances Ive’s grave. “I would like to lay some flowers, mon ami.”

“It’s February, old chap. Where are you going to find flowers?”

This prompted a lengthy grumble about the English climate.

The gravestone lay on its side, covered in mud smears. There were several overlapping footprints in the mud, suggesting that those two feral brutes Frederick and Tobias Clutton had jumped up and down on the stone after digging it out of the ground with their spade.

Poirot took off his gloves. He bent down and, using the forefinger of his right hand, drew the outline of a large flower—like a child’s drawing—in the earth. “Voilà,” he said. “A flower in February, in spite of the appalling English weather.”

“Poirot, you’ve got mud on your finger!”

“Oui. Why do you sound surprised? Even the famous Hercule Poirot cannot create a flower in mud while keeping his hand clean. It will come off, the dirt—do not fear. There is always the manicure, later.”

“Of course there is.” I smiled. “I’m glad to hear you so sanguine on the subject.”

Poirot had produced a handkerchief. I watched in fascination as he used it to wipe the footprints from the gravestone, huffing and puffing as he rocked back and forth, nearly losing his balance once or twice.

“There!” he declared. “C’est mieux!”

“Yes. Better.”

Poirot frowned down at his feet. “There are sights so dispiriting that one wishes one did not have to see them,” he said quietly. “We must trust that Patrick and Frances Ive rest in peace together.”

It was the word “together” that did it. It brought to mind another word: apart. My face must have been a picture.

“Catchpool? Something is the matter with you—what is it?”

Together. Apart.