“I wish I could say yes to that, Monsieur Poirot. If I could believe that Richard was happier than he had been for years on the day that he died, that would be a significant consolation to me. But no, it wasn’t happiness. It was more as if he was planning something. He seemed to have a purpose again, after years without one. That was my impression, though, as I say, I know nothing of what that purpose might have been.”

“Yet you are certain you did not imagine this change?”

“Yes, I am. It manifested itself in several ways. Richard got up and came down to breakfast more often. He had more vim and energy about him. His personal hygiene improved. Most noticeable of all was that he stopped drinking. I cannot tell you how grateful I was for that alone. My wife and I prayed that he would succeed, whatever his venture—that finally the curse of Great Holling would release its grip on him and let him enjoy a fruitful life.”

“The curse, monsieur? You believe the village to be cursed?”

Henry Negus’s face reddened. “Not really, no. Of course, there’s no such thing, is there? It’s my wife’s phrase. Deprived of a good yarn to get her teeth into, she dreamed up the notion of a curse, based on Richard’s fleeing the place, and his broken engagement, and the only other fact she knows about Great Holling.”

“What other fact?” I asked.

“Oh.” Henry Negus looked surprised. Then he said, “No, I don’t suppose you would know about it. Why should you? The terrible tragedy of the young vicar of the parish and his wife. Richard wrote and told us about it a few months before he left the village,” said Henry. “They died within hours of one another.”

“Did they indeed? What was the cause of their deaths?” asked Poirot.

“I don’t know. Richard didn’t include that detail in his letter, assuming he knew it. He wrote only that it was a terrible tragedy. As a matter of fact, I asked him about it later, but I’m afraid he rather growled at me, which left me none the wiser. I think he was too caught up in his own misfortunes to care to discuss anybody else’s.”

8. Assembling Our Thoughts

Assembling Our Thoughts

“OR ELSE,” SAID POIROT as he and I walked briskly from Pleasant’s in the direction of our lodging house half an hour later, “all these unhappy events sixteen years ago are connected: the tragic fate of the vicar and his wife, Richard Negus’s suddenly ending his engagement to Ida Gransbury, Richard Negus’s deciding that he loathes Great Holling and must flee to Devon—to become an idle spendthrift who drinks himself to death in his brother’s house!”