“Is this the same Dr. Flowerday that I am supposed to forget about? I had better forget his Christian name too, I dare say.”

Margaret ignored my mischievous remark. “I have it on good authority that after Richard Negus abandoned her, Ida resolved never to speak or think of him again,” she said. “She showed no outward signs of upset. People remarked upon it: how strong and resolute she was. She announced her intention to reserve all her love for God thenceforth. She found him to be more reliable than mortal men.”

“Would it surprise you to learn that Richard Negus and Ida Gransbury took afternoon tea together in her hotel room in London last Thursday evening?”

Margaret’s eyes widened. “To hear that the two of them took tea alone together—yes, it would surprise me greatly. Ida was the sort who drew firm lines and did not cross them. By all accounts so was Richard Negus. Having decided he didn’t want Ida as a wife, he is unlikely to have changed his mind, and I cannot think that anything short of prostrate penitence and a renewed declaration of love would have persuaded Ida to agree to a meeting with him in private.”

After a pause, Margaret went on, “But since Harriet Sippel was at the same London hotel, I assume that she too was present at this afternoon tea ceremony?”

I nodded.

“Well, then. The three of them obviously had something to discuss that was more important than the lines any of them had drawn in the past.”

“You have an idea about what that thing might be, don’t you?”

Margaret looked out of the window toward the rows of graves. “Perhaps I shall have some ideas by the time you visit me tomorrow,” she said.

11. Two Recollections

Two Recollections

WHILE I STRUGGLED IN vain to persuade Margaret Ernst to tell me the story of Patrick and Frances Ive before she was ready to do so, Hercule Poirot was at Pleasant’s Coffee House in London, engaged in an effort of equal futility: that of trying to persuade the waitress Fee Spring to tell him what she could not remember.

“All I can tell you’s what I’ve already told you,” she said several times, with increasing weariness. “I noticed something not right about Jennie that night. I tucked it away to fret about later, and now it’s buried somewhere and won’t come out. You pestering me won’t change that, if anything will. Chances are you’ve scared it away for good. You’ve no patience about you, that’s for sure.”

“Please continue to try to retrieve the memory, mademoiselle. It might be important.”