Not a Creature Was Stirring (33 page)

“This is not news, Gregor.”

“I know it’s not. But it’s the answer, John. It came to me as soon as I saw her in there. It can’t be Hannaford Financial, because everything possible has been done to point us to Hannaford Financial. It’s what we’re being pointed away from that we have to consider.”

“Gregor, there isn’t anything we’re being pointed away from. There isn’t anything to be pointed away from. There’s just Hannaford Financial.”

“There is something,” Gregor said. “And not only is there something, but it’s got to be something so obvious we’re going to kill ourselves when we find it. That’s the only way all this trash makes sense. There’s only one reason for strewing all these clues around the landscape, and that’s to make sure we don’t see what would otherwise be all too easy for us to see.”

“Crap,” Jackman said.

Gregor looked up at the hallway wall, to the picture niche where a Braque etching had been decorated, beyond all reason, with a cluster of Hannaford family ornaments. A cherub, a bell, a ball, an angel. Tin. Gregor sighed.

“That’s the only thing that doesn’t fit,” he said. “That’s the only thing that must be a mistake. That piece of tin on the floor of Robert Hannaford’s study. I wish it had been smaller. Then it could have been one of these decorations.”

“Well, it wasn’t smaller,” Jackman said. “And it probably was a decoration. The damn things are everywhere.”

“I know.”

Down at the end of the hall, a door opened. Gregor and Jackman raised their heads together, to see Anne Marie Hannaford walking slowly toward them, looking shaken and angry at once. Gregor knew all about the mood she was in. She was frightened at what was going on in her house and angry because it had been going on long enough so that she could no longer count on what they would do. Gregor didn’t blame her. If he was right—and he was right; Jackman’s skepticism notwithstanding—there would have to be another death in this house.

Anne Marie covered half the distance to them and stopped, reluctant to come any closer.

“Excuse me,” she said. “Mr. Demarkian? My mother—my mother would like to see you.”

G
REGOR SPENT MORE TIME
thinking about Cordelia Day Hannaford than anyone else in this case, but he didn’t like to. That was inevitable, given Elizabeth, but it had a few kicks to it he wouldn’t have expected. Until he had seen her that first time, on the night Robert Hannaford died, Gregor hadn’t thought he was a numb man. If he felt less than he used to, it was because he had less to feel. All the drama and emotion of a protracted dying: it was like living through a monsoon season. When the season was over, normal weather was bound to feel like no weather at all.

Then he had walked into the living room. Gregor could still see that: Cordelia in her chair, her dress covered with blood and her head held steady by act of will; the rest of them stretched out around her, like dangerous kittens protecting a mother cat. Gregor had felt made of eggshell, irreparably cracked. It was silly to tell himself that seeing her had “changed everything.” It hadn’t. It had simply changed him back.

Now he stood in front of Cordelia’s door, as reluctant to go in as Anne Marie was to let him in. If Anne Marie had her way, Gregor thought, he’d be packed up and sent back to Philadelphia without another word.

Because she couldn’t do that—sick or not, Cordelia Day got what she wanted from her daughters—Anne Marie made do with standing directly in front of the door, crossing her arms across her chest, and glaring. It didn’t quite come off. Anne Marie was a very shaky young woman at the moment. She twitched.

“My mother,” she said, “is a very sick woman. And she’s very tired.”

Gregor hesitated. It was always hard to know what to say to someone who was overstating the obvious.

“I’m not forcing myself on your mother,” he pointed out. “You said she asked for me.”

“She did ask for you.”

“So?”

Anne Marie wrapped her arms more tightly around herself, making herself look less angry than cold. “She doesn’t like to believe she’s sick. She never has. That’s why we’ve almost never had a professional nurse in the house, why it’s always been me. If it’s me, she can pretend it isn’t real.”

“I don’t think she pretends it isn’t real, Miss Hannaford.”

“She pretends it makes no difference. She’s been knocking herself out on charities for years. Visiting. Chairing meetings. Going to parties. And then coming home to collapse.”

“And then you had to take care of her.”

“I don’t mind taking care of her,” Anne Marie said. “I mind her trying to kill herself. Nobody wants to keep her alive more than me.”

Gregor nodded. He thought that might be literally true. Anne Marie probably wanted to keep Cordelia alive more than Cordelia wanted to stay alive.

“I don’t want you to go in there and upset her,” Anne Marie said. “She was better than she was. Now she’s looking worse. Up and down, up and down. This morning—”

“Yes?”

“Last night she was much better. Then this morning when I came in to bring her her tea, she was worse again. Much worse. I could see it. And now—”

“Now?”

“I should have called the doctor,” Anne Marie said. “That’s what I’m supposed to do. But he’s no help and I’m sick and tired of him, and I know what’s going on. I know it.”

“What is going on?”

“She isn’t going to last past New Year’s.” Anne Marie looked away, up the hall, even though there wasn’t anyone there. “I’d like her to last to New Year’s. I’d like it very much if you didn’t upset her.”

“I’ll try not to.”

Anne Marie stepped away from the door. “She thinks she wants to know all about it,” she said bitterly. “All about the murders and the investigation. She wants to take an interest. It’s going to kill her.”

“Miss Hannaford—”

Anne Marie shook her head. “Never mind. She’ll do what she wants to do. She always does. You wouldn’t know it to look at her, but she was a great beauty once. One of the most beautiful women in Philadelphia. And Myra was always asking me why I didn’t take care of myself.”

She stepped around him and began backing away. “Go on in. Just be careful. One death in the house a day is all I can stand.”

She turned around and went pumping off toward the doors to the balcony, a fat woman who seemed to get fatter as he watched her walk.

Gregor didn’t blame her for not “taking care” of herself. Under the circumstances, he couldn’t have put much energy into it himself.

Anne Marie had said her mother was “much worse.” Going into Cordelia’s room, Gregor expected to see a woman in a state of total collapse. That was the only thing he could think of that would be “much worse” than the last time he had seen her. It wasn’t like that. Cordelia was sitting in a wide wing chair, her legs stretched out on a matching ottoman. Her hair was “dressed,” in the old-fashioned meaning of the term: off her neck, and pinned around her head in an intricate pattern, fastened with four tin combs that echoed the decorations in the rest of the house: an angel, a cherub, a ball and a bell. Her nails were done and her makeup was on. Her body was covered from neck to ankles in a bright brocaded house dress. The house dress had Christmas trees and Santa Clauses on it, an expensive version of old George Tekamanian’s reindeer socks.

Gregor walked across the room to her and took the empty chair beside her, watching her watch him. Her eyes moved quickly, but her head didn’t move at all. Suddenly, Gregor realized she was much worse. She looked better, but with her disease what she looked like didn’t mean anything. On the night of her husband’s death, she had been able to move her head and talk clearly in almost-sentences. Now her head seemed fixed, and Gregor knew sentences were too much to hope for.

He leaned forward. He didn’t know if multiple sclerosis affected the hearing, but he didn’t want to take any chances. “Mrs. Hannaford,” he said, “I know you sent for me, but if you’re not feeling up to it—”

“Stay.”

It was one word, but it was clear enough. Gregor relaxed a little. “I’m very happy to stay. I know this must be frightening for you. If I can do anything at all to help you—”

Cordelia’s head jerked, back and forth. The movement was so swift and violent, Gregor thought at first it had been involuntary. It wasn’t. Cordelia was shaking her head no.

She closed her eyes and sat very still. She sat that way for a long time, second after second going by with no sound in the room but her labored breathing. Then she sucked in as much breath as she could, stiffened her arms against the arms of her chair, and said,

“Help—
you
.”

“You want to help me?” Gregor said. “Do you mean you want to help the police? Because of the—the deaths?”

There really wasn’t anything wrong with Cordelia’s eyes. She shot him a look as imperious as that of any able-bodied duchess.

“Murder,” she said.

Gregor nodded an apology, embarrassed. After Elizabeth, he should have known better. Especially because this woman reminded him so much of Elizabeth.

“That’s right,” he told her, “murder. Three murders, to be exact.”

“Yessss.”

“If you think you know something that will help, I’ll be glad to hear it. We’ll all be glad to hear it. Your children are very disturbed.”

Cordelia seemed to smile, although it was hard to tell for sure. She didn’t have much control of the muscles around her mouth. She let her beautiful eyes wander around the room and then stop.

“Table,” she said.

Gregor followed her gaze. This was a sitting room, not a bedroom—Cordelia had a suite—but on the other side of it, under a window, was a writing table much like the one in Emma’s room. Its surface was clean and polished, its drawers were tightly shut. It looked as if it hadn’t been used in decades.

“Draw-er,” Cordelia said.

“There’s something in the writing table drawer?”

“Yessss.”

“All right.”

Gregor got up and went over to it, shivering a little in the draft from the window above it. It had four drawers, one in the center under the writing surface and three down the side, like a desk—but no one in his right mind would have called it a desk. It didn’t look like one. Gregor opened the center drawer first, because it seemed the easiest one to get to. It was empty.

He tried the first of the smaller drawers on the side, but it was empty, too. He tried the center one. Empty. He looked at the one on the bottom and then up at Cordelia, questioning.

“Yessss,” she said.

Gregor tried not to wonder how she’d managed to get whatever it was into that bottom drawer, in her condition. Anne Marie could have put it there for her—but if Anne Marie had, it would make more sense for Cordelia to get Anne Marie to bring it to him. He opened the drawer. Inside, there was a small brown accordion folder and a manila file. He took them out.

“A folder and a file,” he said. “Which one?”

“Both.”

Both. Gregor shut the drawer and went back to his chair. Cordelia had lost much of her anxiousness. She was still watching him, but without the urgency she’d brought to it when he first came into the room. Whatever she wanted to tell him must be substantially contained in what he now had.

The manila file was flat, the accordion folder thick. Gregor thought the file would take less time to get through. He wedged the folder between his leg and the chair to get it out of the way.

The file was full of small blue sheets of note paper, the kind supplied to all the writing tables at Engine House, each scribbled over in dark blue ink. He picked up the first one and read:

Dear Bennis: I keep starting this letter and starting this letter, and just not knowing how to go on.

That was it. He dropped it back into the file and looked up at Cordelia. She seemed to be trying to smile again.

“
Emma
,” she said.

“Emma wrote these?”

“Yessss.” She thought about it. “False—starts,” she said.

“False starts.” Gregor looked at the note again. “False starts of suicide notes?”

“No.”

“Of letters to Bennis? About something else?”

“Yes.” This time she made an effort, and bit off the “s” before it could become a hiss.

Gregor nodded. “You’re saying the first suicide note wasn’t a suicide note at all. It came from this file.”

“Yesss.” The attempt at control didn’t work.

“Was this file here, in your room, the day Emma died?”

“Yessss.”

“Was the note we found in the file then?”

Cordelia closed her eyes. “Don’t—know.”

“No,” Gregor said, “I don’t suppose you would. You must sleep a great deal.”

“Yesss.” She smiled her smile again. “Emma,” she said. “Sick.”

Gregor was startled. “Emma was sick?”

“This,” Cordelia said. The urgency was back in her voice. “
This
.”

Gregor blinked. “Emma had what you have? She had multiple sclerosis?”

“Yesss. Check—au—au—”

“We should check the autopsy?”

“Yesss.”

“Mrs. Hannaford, are you trying to say Emma did commit suicide? Because she knew she was sick?”

“No. No. Didn’t—did
not
—know—”

“Emma didn’t know she was sick,” Gregor said. “But you knew.”

“Yesss. May-be.”

“Meaning you don’t know if she knew or not.”

“Yesss. Not—not—”

“Not suicide,” Gregor said.

“
Not
.” Cordelia closed her eyes again.

Gregor stood up, agitated. This was getting worse and worse by the second, and what it made him think of was worse still.

“Mrs. Hannaford,” he said, “do you know who’s committing these murders? Do you know for sure?”

She opened her eyes and stared at him. She had very blue eyes, big and widely spaced. Her mouth worked and worked, and finally produced a real smile. It was a smile with an infinity of ambiguity in it.

“Yesss,” she said.

“Will you tell me who it is?” Gregor said.

“No. My—child.”

“You won’t say because it’s one of your children.”

“Yesss.”

“Was Emma killed because she knew who had tried to kill your husband the first time?”