The Monogram Murders (18 page)

have to be made of strong stuff to live there, I thought.

I opened the iron gates and walked from the street

into the churchyard. Many of the headstones were so

old that the names were illegible. Just as I was

thinking this, a new and rather handsome one caught

my eye. It was one of the few by which no flowers

were laid, and the names carved upon it made my

breath catch in my throat.

It couldn’t be . . . But surely it
had
to be!

Patrick James Ive, vicar of this parish, and Frances

Maria Ive, his beloved wife.

PJI. It was as I had explained to Poirot: the larger

initial in the middle of the monogram was the first

letter of the surname. And Patrick Ive was once the

vicar of Great Holling.

I looked again at the birth and death dates to check

that I had not made a mistake. No, Patrick and Frances

Ive had both died in 1913, he at the age of twenty-nine

and she at twenty-eight.

A vicar and his wife who had died tragically,

within hours of one another . . . His initials on three

cufflinks that ended up in three murder victims’

mouths at the Bloxham Hotel . . .

Confound it all! Poirot was right, loath though I

was to admit it. There
was
a link. Did that mean he

must also be right about this Jennie woman? Was she

connected too?

Beneath the names and dates on the gravestone

there was a poem. It was a sonnet, but not one I knew.

I started to read:

That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect,

For slander’s mark was ever yet the fair;

I had read only the first two lines when a voice

spoke behind me and prevented me from getting any

further. “The author is William Shakespeare.”

I turned and saw a woman of fifty or thereabouts,

with a long and somewhat bony face, hair the color of

horse chestnuts with the odd streak of gray here and

there, and wise, watchful gray-green eyes. Pulling her

dark coat tight around her body, she said, “There was

much debate about whether the name William

Shakespeare ought to be included.”

“Pardon?”

“Beneath the sonnet. In the end, it was decided that

the only names on the stone should be . . .” She turned

away suddenly, without finishing her sentence. When

she turned back to me, her eyes were damp. “Well, it

was decided that . . . by which I mean that my late

husband Charles and I decided . . . Oh, it was
me
,

really. But Charles was my loyal supporter in

everything I did. We agreed that William

Shakespeare’s name received plenty of attention one

way and another, and did not need to be carved there

too.” She nodded at the stone. “Though when I saw

you looking, I felt obliged to steal up on you and tell

you who wrote the poem.”

“I thought I was alone,” I said, wondering how I

could have missed her arrival, facing toward the

street as I had been.

“I entered through the other gate,” she said,

pointing over her shoulder with her thumb. “I live in

the cottage. I saw you through my window.”

My face must have betrayed my thoughts on the

unfortunate situation of her home, because she smiled

and said, “Do I mind the view? Not at all. I took the

cottage so that I could watch the graveyard.”

She said this as though it were a perfectly normal

thing to say. She must have been reading my mind, for

she went on to explain: “There is only one reason that

Patrick Ive’s gravestone has not been dug out of the

ground, Mr. Catchpool, and it is this: everybody

knows I am watching.” She advanced upon me

without warning and held out her hand. I shook it.

“Margaret Ernst,” she said. “You may call me

Margaret.”

“Do you mean . . . Are you saying that there are

people in the village who would wish to disturb

Patrick and Frances Ive’s grave?”

“Yes. I used to lay flowers by it, but it soon

became apparent that there was little point. Flowers

are easy to destroy, easier than a slab of stone. When I

stopped leaving the flowers, there was nothing for

them to destroy apart from the gravestone itself, but I

was in the cottage by then. Watching.”

“How appalling that anybody would do such a

thing to another person’s resting place,” I said.

“Well, people
are
appalling, aren’t they? Did you

read the poem?”

“I started to and then you appeared.”

“Read it now,” she ordered.

I turned back to the stone and read the sonnet in its

entirety.

That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect,

For slander’s mark was ever yet the fair;

The ornament of beauty is suspect,

A crow that flies in heaven’s sweetest air.

So thou be good, slander doth but approve

Thy worth the greater, being wooed of time;

For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,

And thou present’st a pure unstained prime.

Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days

Either not assailed, or victor being charged;

Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,

To tie up envy, evermore enlarged,

If some suspect of ill masked not thy show,

Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe.

“Well, Mr. Catchpool?”

“It’s a peculiar poem to fetch up on a gravestone.”

“Do you think so?”

“Slander’s a strong word. The poem suggests that

—well, unless I’m mistaken—that there were attacks

upon Patrick and Frances Ive’s characters?”

“There were. Hence the sonnet. I chose it. I was

advised that it would prove too costly to engrave the

whole poem, and that I should content myself with the

first two lines—as if cost were the most important

consideration. People are such brutes!” Margaret

Ernst gave a disgusted snort. She rested the palm of

her hand on the stone, as if it were the top of a

beloved child’s head instead of a grave. “Patrick and

Frances Ive were kind people who would never

willingly have hurt anybody. About how many can one

say that, truly?”

“Oh. Well—”

“I didn’t know them myself—Charles and I only

took over the parish after their deaths—but that’s

what the village doctor says, Dr. Flowerday, and he is

the only person in Great Holling with an opinion

worth listening to.”

Wanting to check I had not misunderstood her, I

said, “So your husband was the vicar here, after

Patrick Ive?”

“Until he died three years ago, yes. There is a new

vicar now: a bookish chap without a wife who keeps

himself to himself.”

“And this Dr. Flowerday . . . ?”

“Forget about him,” Margaret Ernst said quickly,

which did an excellent job of fixing the name Dr.

Flowerday firmly in my mind.

“All right,” I said dishonestly. Having known

Margaret Ernst for less than a quarter of an hour, I

suspected that all-embracing obedience was the tactic

most likely to serve me well.

“Why did the inscription on the gravestone fall to

you?” I asked her. “Did the Ives not have family?”

“None who were both interested and capable,

sadly.”

“Mrs. Ernst,” I said. “Margaret, I mean . . . I can’t

tell you how much more welcome in the village you

have made me feel. It’s plain that you know who I am,

so you must also know why I’m here. No one else

will speak to me, apart from an old chap at the King’s

Head Inn who made little sense.”

“I’m not sure my intention was to make you feel

welcome, Mr. Catchpool.”

“Less unwelcome, then. At least you don’t flee

from me as from a monstrous apparition.”

She laughed. “You? Monstrous? Oh, dear.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

“This man who made little sense at the King’s

Head—did he have a white beard?”

“Yes.”

“He spoke to you because he is not afraid.”

“Because he’s too furiously drunk to fear a thing?”

“No. Because he was not . . .” Margaret stopped

and changed course. “He is in no danger from the

murderer of Harriet, Ida and Richard.”

“And you?” I asked.

“I would speak to you as I have, and as I am,

whatever the danger.”

“I see. Are you unusually brave?”

“I am unusually pigheaded. I say what I believe

needs to be said, and I do what I believe needs to be

done. And if I happen to catch a suggestion that others

would prefer me to remain silent, then I do the

opposite.”

“That’s commendable, I suppose.”

“Do you find me too direct, Mr. Catchpool?”

“Not at all. It makes life easier, to speak one’s

mind.”

“And is that one of the reasons
your
life has never

been easy?” Margaret Ernst smiled. “Ah—I see you

would prefer not to talk about yourself. Very well

then. What is your impression of my character? If you

don’t object to the question.”

“I have only just met you.” Heavens above! I

thought. Unprepared as I was for an exchange of this

nature, the best I could muster was, “I’d say you come

over as a good egg, all in all.”

“That’s a rather abstract description of a person,

wouldn’t you say? Also rather brief. Besides, what is

goodness? Morally, the best thing I have ever done

was unquestionably wrong.”

“Was it really?” What an extraordinary woman she

was. I decided to take a chance. “What you said

before about doing the opposite of what people would

like you to do . . . Victor Meakin told me nobody

would speak to me. He would be delighted if you

neglected to invite me to your cottage for a cup of tea,

so that we can talk at greater length, out of the rain.

What do you say?”

Margaret Ernst smiled. She seemed to appreciate

my boldness, as I had hoped she would. I noticed,

however, that her eyes grew more wary. “Mr. Meakin

would be similarly delighted if you followed the

example of most in the village and refused to cross

my threshold,” she said. “He is joyous about any

misfortune to anyone. We could displease him on two

accounts if you are mutinously inclined?”

“Well, then,” I said. “It sounds to me as if that

settles the matter!”

“TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED to Patrick and Frances Ive,”

I said once the tea was made and we were sitting by

the fire in Margaret Ernst’s long, narrow parlor. That

was what she called the room we were in, though it

contained so many books that “library” would have

done just as well. On one wall hung three portraits,

two painted and one photographic, of a man with a

high forehead and unruly eyebrows. I assumed that he

was Margaret’s late husband, Charles. It was

disconcerting to have three of him staring at me, so I

turned to the window instead. My chair afforded an

excellent view of the Ives’ gravestone, and I decided

it must be where Margaret usually sat in order to

conduct her vigil.

From this distance, the sonnet was unreadable. I

had forgotten all of it apart from the line “For

slander’s mark was ever yet the fair,” which had

lodged itself in my mind.

“No,” said Margaret Ernst.

“No? You won’t tell me about Patrick and Frances

Ive?”

“Not today. Maybe I will tomorrow. Do you have

other questions for me in the meantime?”

“Yes, but . . . do you mind if I ask what is likely to

change between now and tomorrow?”

“I would like some time to consider.”

“The thing is—”

“You’re going to remind me that you’re a

policeman working on a murder case, and it is my

duty to tell you everything I know. But what have

Patrick and Frances Ive to do with your case?”

I ought to have done some delaying and

considering of my own, but I was eager to see what

response I would get if I presented her with a fact I

had not told Victor Meakin, and that therefore she

couldn’t possibly already know.

“Each of the three victims was found with a gold

cufflink in his or her mouth,” I said. “All three

cufflinks were monogrammed with Patrick Ive’s

initials: PIJ.” I explained, as I had to Poirot, about the

surname’s initial being the largest of the three, and in

the middle. Unlike my Belgian friend, Margaret Ernst