“I would like to tell you what happened in Great Holling sixteen years ago,” said Nancy. “I should have done so before, but you gave me such a shock when you mentioned all those names I had hoped never to hear again.”

She unbuttoned her coat and took it off. I gestured toward an armchair.

She sat down. “It’s not a happy tale,” she said.

NANCY DUCANE SPOKE IN a quiet voice and with a haunted look in her eyes. She told us the same story that Margaret Ernst had told me in Great Holling, about the cruel and slanderous treatment of Reverend Patrick Ive. When she spoke of Jennie Hobbs, her voice shook. “She was the worst of them. She was in love with Patrick, you see. Oh, I can’t prove it, but I shall always believe it. She did what she did to him as someone who loved him: told an unforgivable lie because she was jealous. He was in love with me, and she wanted to wound him. To punish him. Then when Harriet seized on the lie, and Jennie saw the harm she had done and felt sick about it—and I do believe she felt dreadfully ashamed, and must have hated herself—she did nothing to remedy what she had set in motion, nothing! She slunk off into the shadows and hoped not to be noticed. However afraid she was of Harriet, she should have forced herself to stand up and say, “I told a terrible lie and I’m sorry for it.”

“Pardon, madame. You say you cannot prove that Jennie was in love with Patrick Ive. May I ask: how do you know that she was? As you suggest, it is unthinkable that one who loved him would start so damaging a rumor.”

“There is no doubt in my mind that Jennie loved Patrick,” said Nancy stubbornly. “She left behind a sweetheart in Cambridge when she moved to Great Holling with Patrick and Frances—did you know that?”

We shook our heads.

“They were supposed to get married. The date was set, I believe. Jennie couldn’t bear to let Patrick go, so she canceled her wedding and went with him.”

“Could it not have been Frances Ive to whom she was so attached?” Poirot asked. “Or to both of the Ives? It might have been loyalty and not romantic love that she felt.”

“I don’t believe many women would put loyalty to their employers above their own marriage prospects, do you?” said Nancy.

“Assuredly not, madame. But what you tell me does not quite fit. If Jennie were inclined toward jealousy, why was she moved to tell this terrible lie only when Patrick Ive fell in love with you? Why did his marriage to Frances Ive, long before then, not provoke her envy?”