“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?”