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.”