Hush Now, Don't You Cry(61)

“The accusation is preposterous. You would not find a more close-knit family than ours. Brian was the patriarch. He earned and received love and respect from each of us. We’d still have been living in a fourth-floor tenement on Cherry Street if it hadn’t been for his hard work and enterprise. Do you think we’re not mindful of that?”

“I’m sorry, sir. I’m sure this is very hard to hear, but in my profession we are taught to start with the obvious. And to me the obvious is that Mr. Hannan summons his family here at a strange time of year and he is poisoned. What would you think if you were in my place?”

“I’d think it was time to start looking beyond the obvious,” Joseph said sharply. “Find out who wished my brother ill, who had a grudge to settle, especially among the criminal classes.”

We looked up as one of the maids came running back across the lawn, the ribbons in her cap flying out behind her. “Alice is bringing the rest of the servants, ma’am,” she said to Irene, “but I couldn’t find Mrs. McCreedy anywhere. Nobody’s seen her.”

I felt a jolt of fear go through me. I remembered all too clearly when nobody had seen Mr. Hannan although it was supposed he had arrived. And I’d come to appreciate that Mrs. McCreedy was a woman living on her nerves. Something had severely rattled her even before Mr. Hannan had died. I suspected she knew something she hadn’t told us about this visit and had feared something might go wrong.

“Might she have stepped out?” Police Chief Prescott said. “It is, as you pointed out, Sunday afternoon when servants do like to visit their families.”

“But she helped to carry out the tea things,” Eliza said, “and we’ve been out here since. We’d have seen anybody going past toward the gate.”

Eliza turned to the maid. “Go and look again, Sarah. Perhaps she is taking a nap in her room. She does get up extremely early.”

It struck me that this was an unusual thing for a woman of her station to say. I’m sure the thought never crossed Irene’s mind that servants might need to take naps or indeed had to get up awfully early.

I got to my own feet. “I’ll go and help her, if you like. It is an awfully big house.”

I think Joseph was about to protest when Chief Prescott said, “Good of you, Mrs. Sullivan.”

So I went. As well as my nagging fear that something had happened to her, I realized that this would be my one chance to look around the house for myself. I don’t know exactly what I expected to find, but I was still morbidly curious about that tower. As the maid and I went in, we passed the other servants filing out through the front door.

“Has any of you seen Mrs. McCreedy?” I asked.

“I have. She helped carry out the table about half an hour ago,” the footman said.

“But since then?”

They shook their heads.

“She may be in her room,” one of the local girls said.

They went on their way, out toward the lawn. I looked at the maid. “Where is her room, Sarah?”

“I’m not quite sure, ma’am. Up on the top floor with the rest of the servants, I presume.”

“Then you go straight up and see if you can find her. I’ll search the rest of the house systematically.”

“Very well, ma’am,” she said, not too graciously. She was a hefty girl and I could tell that she wasn’t charmed with the idea of climbing all those stairs again.

“Off you go then,” I said as she still lingered. “Up on the top floor, correct?” I indicated the grand staircase. She blushed. “Oh, no, ma’am. I shouldn’t use that staircase. I have to use the servants’ stairs at the back.” And with that she set off down the long dark hallway to the back of the house. I wondered if the servants’ staircase had been behind that door I had opened when I had so startled Mrs. McCreedy. That would explain a lot of things—if maybe she had been up in her room, taking a nap when she shouldn’t and had just hurried down several flights of stairs. I knew that not everything has to have a sinister meaning. I just prayed that the girl would find Mrs. McCreedy asleep.

I was going to follow her, to check out that staircase for myself, but I decided that an empty house and permission to search it was an opportunity too good to miss. So I worked my way through the ground-floor rooms. She wasn’t in the salon, the drawing room, dining room, morning room, music room, or library. I half expected to see her feet sticking out behind a bookshelf in the library, but all the rooms lay calm and serene in the afternoon sunshine. I went through a swing door to the servants’ part of the house. I found the back staircase off a side hallway. I also found the door behind which I had seen her startled face, but it was locked. There was nobody in the kitchen, nor in any of the closets, scullery, or anywhere else.