Margaret rose to her feet, walked over to the window and stood with her forehead touching the glass and her body blocking my view of the Ives’ gravestone. “What happened here in 1913 inflicted a grievous wound upon this village,” she said quietly. “No one living here escaped it. Nancy Ducane moved to London afterward, and Richard Negus to Devon, but neither of them escaped. They carried the wound with them. It wasn’t visible on their skin or on any part of their bodies, but it was there. The wounds you can’t see are the worst. And those who stayed, like Ambrose Flowerday—well, it was terrible for them too. I don’t know if Great Holling can recover. I know that it hasn’t yet.”

She turned to face me. “The tragedy is never spoken of, Mr. Catchpool. Not by anybody here, never directly. Sometimes silence is the only way. Silence and forgetting, if only one could forget.” She clasped and unclasped her hands.

“Are you worried about the effect my question might have upon Dr. Flowerday? Is he trying to forget?”

“As I said: forgetting is impossible.”

“Nevertheless . . . it would be a distressing subject for him to discuss?”

“Yes. Very.”

“Is he a good friend of yours?”

“This has nothing to do with me,” came her sharp retort. “Ambrose is a good man, and I don’t want him bothered. Why can you not agree to what I’m asking?”

“All right, you have my word,” I said reluctantly. “I will discuss what you tell me with no one in the village.” Having made this pledge, I found myself hoping that the residents of Great Holling would continue to ignore me as assiduously as they had thus far and not put temptation in my way. It would be just my luck to leave Margaret Ernst’s cottage and run into a garrulous Dr. Flowerday, keen to have a good old chinwag.

From his three portraits on the wall, the late Charles Ernst bestowed three warning glances upon me: “Break your promise to my wife and you will regret it, you scoundrel,” his eyes seemed to say.

“What about your own peace of mind?” I asked. “You don’t want me to talk to Dr. Flowerday in case it upsets him, but I’m worried I might upset you. I don’t want to cause you any distress.”

“Good.” Margaret sighed with relief. “The truth is, I would welcome the chance to tell the story to another outsider like myself.”

“Then please do,” I said.

She nodded, returned to her chair, and proceeded to tell me the story of Patrick and Frances Ive, to which I listened without interruption. I shall now set it down here.