Hush Now, Don’t You Cry (22 page)

Chief Prescott worked his way around the shelves and cupboards, opening each one cautiously, using his handkerchief. When he reached the far recesses of the shed we heard him say, “So that’s where it was.”

He came back out to us. “I’ve just found where Mr. Hannan kept his stash of alcohol. There’s a bottle of whiskey and one of gin, plus a bottle of tonic water. And there’s a space where I suspect the tray and decanter had stood.”

“Ah, so that’s where he kept it,” Joseph said. “We thought as much. That means presumably that the gardeners were in on his secret. He probably paid them to keep quiet.”

“We’ll have to ask them when they arrive,” Prescott said.

“So it’s possible that one of the glasses had the poison put in it right here in this shed,” Archie Van Horn said slowly, as if still thinking this through.

“Probably not, sir. Doing that would risk that Mr. Hannan would take a drink and die too far from the cliff. No, I surmise that the poison was administered at the last possible moment.” He closed the shed door behind him. “I want this place sealed off,” Prescott said. “And I want one of you to get Sergeant Rawlins out here. He knows about fingerprint testing. Is there a telephone on the premises?”

“There is,” Joseph said. “Mrs. McCreedy will show you.”

“Go and telephone headquarters and have Rawlins brought out here,” Prescott said.

The constable he was talking to looked alarmed. “I ain’t never actually used a telephone, sir,” he said.

“It’s not hard, man. You just pick up the receiver and speak into it. Ask the operator to connect you with the police station. Go on. Get on with it.”

As we were coming away from the shed the automobile arrived, with Parsons, the head gardener, and one other gardener sitting in the backseat. My friendly fellow was missing.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the police constable said as he climbed out of the auto, “but the other man, Ted Hemmings, was out fishing today. We’ve left word that he’s to come here as soon as he gets back.”

“No matter,” Prescott said. “Which one of you is the head gardener?”

“That would be me, sir.” Parsons stepped forward. “Frank Parsons, sir.”

“We’ve just discovered a jar containing prussic acid in your garden shed. Can you tell me whether you knew it was there and what it might have been used for?”

“Knew it was there? Of course I knew it was there. I was the one who bought it,” Parsons said. I noticed his temperament had not improved since the last time I saw him. “I got it last year when we had a wasp’s nest in that big cedar tree and Mr. Hannan told me to get rid of it before the family came for the summer.”

“So the prussic acid has been up there on the shelf for anybody to see?” Chief Prescott asked.

Parsons gave him a withering look. “I don’t know about that. Who’d come in the shed except for the other gardeners?”

“This young man came in yesterday morning to find fishing tackle,” Prescott said, indicating Sam. “And I now know that Mr. Hannan kept a private supply of whiskey and gin in that little cupboard under the counter. So I suppose any number of people might have spotted the prussic acid on the shelf.”

“Up there on the top shelf? You’d have to be tall and poking around where you’ve no business to be in order to spot it among all the other garden things up there.”

“This presents a sobering thought, doesn’t it?” Prescott turned back to look at us. “It means that we can narrow the list of suspects, most likely to someone who is now present.”

Twenty-three

I saw a swift glance pass among those standing outside the shed. Irene shuddered and drew her shawl around her.

“Preposterous,” Joseph said.

“And not necessarily,” I added. “An outsider could have come prepared and brought his own cyanide with him. It may be a complete coincidence that you’ve found some on the shelf.”

“My thoughts precisely,” Archie said, nodding heartily. “This sounds to me like a well-planned crime. We had all only just arrived when it happened. The murderer would not have waited on the supposition that the jar containing the poison was still on that shelf. It could have been thrown out or used while we were absent.”

My estimation of Archie Van Horn rose. Until now I had thought him one of those not-too-bright sons of the Four Hundred.

“Well, we’ll know soon enough, sir. We’ll be sending this jar to look for fingerprints on it, and we’ll be taking fingerprints from everyone here.”

“What do you mean, ‘taking fingerprints’?” Mrs. Flannery’s voice trembled.

“Nothing to worry about, ma’am. Unless you’re guilty, that is. It’s simply a matter of pressing your fingertips onto a pad of ink and then pressing the inky fingers onto a sheet of paper. As simple as that. Now I suggest you all go into the house so that my men know where to find you. I want another word with the gardeners. Oh, and nobody is to think of leaving the area at this juncture. Nobody.”

“We have a business to run, man,” Joseph said. “Do use a little common sense. Why would I have wanted to kill my brother when we had been so successful together?”

“And I could never do a terrible thing like that,” Mary Flannery said. “Poison my own dear brother? Never. None of us would. We respected him and we loved him.”

“Then you have nothing to upset yourself about, ma’am. If your fingerprints don’t show up on that jar or packet, we can assume that none of you is guilty and you’ll all be free to leave.”

One by one they started to drift away. I touched Prescott on the sleeve. “I have to get back to my husband,” I said. “I’ve already left him long enough as it is. But I’ll be in the cottage if you want me.”

“It’s all right, Mrs. Sullivan,” he said in a low voice so that the others couldn’t hear. “I can safely rule out you and your husband from the investigation. In fact I’m now of the firm belief that Mr. Hannan wanted your husband here because he suspected that something like this might happen. I just wish he’d given your husband more of a clue. Right now we’ve got nothing to go on.”

I left him and made my way back to the cottage. As I crossed the lawn I realized that I had never actually had that tea, to which I had been invited, and I have to confess that I sneaked an éclair as I passed. I would have sneaked one for Daniel too but I didn’t think he’d be up to it. The moment I started to think about him, I began to worry. Had I left him for too long? Was he all right? Would the girl have checked on him often enough? I found myself walking faster and faster until I was almost running by the time I reached the front door.

“Martha?” I called.

She appeared from the kitchen. “Yes, ma’am?”

“How is Mr. Sullivan?”

“Sleeping like a baby last time I looked in,” she said.

Sleeping like a baby.
My heart lurched. What if he had slipped away and she hadn’t even noticed? I ran up the stairs and burst into the bedroom. Daniel was lying there looking so peaceful and still. Holding my breath I tiptoed up to him. Was he breathing? I put my face down close to his and had just given a sigh of relief when I felt faint warm breath on my cheek when he opened his eyes.

“What?” he asked, starting in alarm.

“I’m sorry.” I had to smile at his shocked face. “I came back and you were so still and peaceful that I had to find out if you were still breathing.”

“If you wanted a sure way to scare a fellow to death, then put your face two inches from his,” he said. I noticed he was still breathing heavily as he spoke, as if he’d just run a race, but his eyes no longer had that awful hollowness.

I sat on the bed beside him and stroked his cheek. “You’re looking better already,” I said

“Where were you?” he asked “I woke up and you weren’t here.”

“I was out to tea,” I said.

“Out to tea?”

“The family invited me to join them for tea on the lawn.”

“That was nice for you.”

“I didn’t get my tea as it happened. We had just started when Chief Prescott arrived and made the startling announcement that the body contained traces of cyanide.”

Daniel raised his head, attempting to sit up. “Cyanide? Good God. That’s something I wouldn’t have expected. So he was poisoned and then the body dumped over the cliff.”

“Or more likely he was standing near the cliff when he drank the poison and collapsed over the edge. That would explain the shattered glass among the rocks.”

“Fascinating. I wonder what Prescott plans to do next.”

“You lie back.” I pushed him gently down. “You’re not getting involved in this. You’re to rest, remember and get your strength back. Chief Prescott is taking everyone’s fingerprints and seeing if they match up on the packet or jar containing the cyanide.”

“Ah, so they’ve found that, have they?”

“They have found a jar, containing some cyanide in the shed. That doesn’t necessarily mean that that particular lot of poison was used. However if anyone’s fingerprints can be detected on it, then we’ll know.”

Daniel closed his eyes, thinking. “The boy said he’d taken fishing tackle from the shed, didn’t he? And he was the one who found the body. That’s always interesting.”

“I know. I thought the same thing. Someone should check into him. I thought I might befriend his grandmother who is clearly upset by all this. She might inadvertently share some revealing facts about her grandson. We do know that he had become a Junior Eastman. Who knows, maybe he was following orders from Monk.”

“Or he had an ax to grind against his grandfather. Maybe Grandpa was making him tow the line and he resented it. Sometimes that’s all it would take.”

“But do you think a boy like that would be savvy enough to use cyanide? It’s not an easy substance, is it? And highly dangerous for anyone who breathes the fumes, I remember reading.”

Daniel was silent for a while, considering this. “No, I can’t see a boy using that method—unless some adult had instructed him and that wouldn’t be the way that Monk Eastman would dispatch an enemy. I think of it as a more, shall we say, refined type of murder? And you’re probably right and they’ll find that the cyanide in the packet here has nothing to do with the crime.”

I looked out of the window and the long shadows stretching across the lawn. The clouds were almost upon us. I wonder if they’d mean another storm.

Daniel put a hand on my arm. “Maybe we should abandon all this speculation. It’s not your case, Molly. Not mine either. So don’t get involved. Leave it to the local police.”

“But you said he was an idiot.”

“Maybe, but it’s still his province, not ours. Especially if it turns out that somehow corruption in New York is involved.”

I frowned, trying to make worrying thoughts that flitted around my brain slow down enough so that I could voice them. My eyes strayed toward the great black shadow cast across the lawn by the castle and I realized what had been worrying me all along. “This may sound silly, but I can’t get it out of my mind that Brian Hannan’s death is somehow linked to the death of his granddaughter.”

“The little girl? How could that be—apart from both of them falling off a cliff.”

“That’s one thing,” I said. “‘Exactly the same spot,’ I heard one of them say.” I turned to face him. “There’s something strange about it, Daniel. Something not right. This refusal to speak about her. I mean if you’d lost a beloved child, wouldn’t you want to remember her fondly sometimes? Wouldn’t you want to look at her picture sometimes? Would you really act as if she never existed?”

“What are you trying to say?” He was frowning at me.

“That there may be a secret this family is keeping from us—”

“Oh, I’d believe that all right,” Daniel cut in. “I’m sure the Hannan brothers have plenty of things they’d like to be kept hidden. What New York politician has not been involved in corruption and graft. And then there are shady business practices…”

“No, not that kind of secret. I meant to do with the death of little Colleen.”

He looked at me suspiciously. “What are you trying to say? You think that maybe it wasn’t an accident? That she was murdered too, and her body dumped like her grandfather’s?”

“I bet they didn’t do an autopsy to show whether she was poisoned.”

“Interesting,” Daniel said, “but a little far-fetched.”

“Then why not speak about her? Why have they all been scared into silence?” I stood up suddenly as a wild thought flashed across my mind. “Or how about this? What if she’s not really dead?”

“But we saw her grave.”

“What if there’s nobody in it? Listen, Daniel. We know how much Brian Hannan liked perfection. All his family had to dress well at all times. He has expensive and beautiful things around him. What if Colleen fell from the cliff and wasn’t killed, but badly disfigured. They could have kept her shut away all this time.”

“Now that is definitely far-fetched.” He smiled.

“What about the face I saw at the window? I know I saw it, Daniel. So it was either a ghost or a real person. Either way there was somebody up in that turret and everyone is denying that there is even a way up to that part of the house.”

“So what are you trying to tell me now—that she came down from her prison and murdered her grandfather because he’d kept her locked up?”

I shrugged. “When you put it like that it does sound a little crazy, I’ll admit.”

Daniel was still smiling, the sort of smile one gives to humor a child. “How old would she be now? Twelve? A twelve-year-old child finds cyanide in a shed, lures her grandfather out to the cliff with alcohol, pops the cyanide into his drink, then pushes him over the cliff. Think about it, Molly.”

“Very well, I agree that doesn’t sound possible. But I have a gut feeling that there’s something strange going on. You’ll see. Something they know about Colleen’s death that they are not telling us. Mrs. McCreedy knows something, and she’s frightened.”

“Then all the more reason for you to stay well away.” His fingers gripped around mine. “Molly, I know you pride yourself on your detective skills and I’m sure you want to show me that you’re as fine a detective as I am. Well, I’m not doubting your skills, but sometimes I doubt your judgment. So I’m telling you now, as my wife, don’t put yourself in harm’s way. Those people have made it quite clear that we are not welcome here and they want us gone as soon as possible. If they know that one of their family members is a murderer, all the more reason for us to respect their wishes and leave them alone.”