Reading Online Novel

Hush Now, Don't You Cry(64)



“Alice, sir. Mrs. Van Horn’s maid. I was unpacking the mistress’s things and I just happened to look out across the courtyard and I saw a man going into the stables and it looked like Mr. Hannan. Of course it was almost dark by then and I don’t know him that well, and I know that he has two brothers, so I might have been wrong.”

“Thank you, Alice. Most helpful,” Chief Prescott said.

“Anyone else?”

“You might ask the servants if any of them spotted an outsider on the premises, someone they didn’t recognize,” Archie said. “And you might want to find out where someone got their hands on prussic acid in the first place.”

“I do know my job, sir,” Prescott said. “I was getting to that. So let me ask right away—is there any prussic acid stored in this house that any of you know about?”

“There is not,” Mrs. McCreedy said firmly. “I can tell you the exact contents of the cupboards in this house. I do the purchasing and I have had no need for prussic acid.”

“I have my men doing a search at this moment,” Chief Prescott said. “Let’s see what they turn up, shall we?”

“Searching our personal things?” Terrence said. “You’ve no right to do that.”

“Unless you’re hiding a vial of prussic acid you’ve no need to be alarmed, sir,” Chief Prescott said. “You’re not, are you?”

“Of course not. I don’t even know what the stuff looks like.”

“It can take several forms, as I’ve been told,” Prescott said. “But to go back to the first part of Mr. Van Horn’s question—did anyone notice an outsider on the premises that evening?”

“I already told you about the man at the gate,” I said, “but he couldn’t get in. The gate was already shut for the night.”

“About this gate,” Prescott said. “Is it usually locked at night?”

“It is,” Mrs. McCreedy said. “The gardeners do it when they go home around sundown. I feel more secure when I’m on my own here knowing that strangers can’t get in after dark.”

“So nobody can get in or out after that?”

“They can if they know how to,” she said. “There is a secret way in through a small door in the wall, but a stranger wouldn’t know where to look in the ivy. It’s not easy to find, especially not in the dark.”

“But as I pointed out before, anybody could get in during the day and it would be simple enough to elude the gardeners, by hiding out in the wilderness or one of the outbuildings,” Joseph said.

“Yes, we understand that, sir. But the intruder would have had to come out of the stable or the wilderness to meet Mr. Hannan, wouldn’t he? So how about it—did anyone here notice a person they didn’t recognize at any time during that day or evening?”

“I saw a woman creeping around the side of the house,” the footman said. “I remember thinking it was strange that she hadn’t gone to the front door and concluded that it was one of the local women coming to help with the serving that evening.”

“I believe I can explain that,” I said. “I walked down the side of the house in the dark that evening. I was going to the kitchen to see if Mrs. McCreedy could give me the ingredients to make my husband a soup. He was already feeling unwell, you see, and I didn’t want to disturb the family.”

“Could the woman you saw have been Mrs. Sullivan?” Prescott asked.

The young footman looked at me and then nodded. “Could have been.”

I had been wrestling with my own conscience about the person I had seen that evening. Now that prussic acid was involved I realized I could keep quiet no longer. “I saw somebody,” I said. “When I was passing beside the flower beds I saw the French doors open and a man came out. He looked around then set off, walking past in the direction of the wood, and the gazebo for that matter.”

“And that man wasn’t Brian Hannan?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I never met Mr. Hannan. I suppose it could have been, but it didn’t look like the man I saw in the photographs. He seemed to be taller and slimmer. I thought at the time that it was Mr. Terrence Hannan.”

“It most certainly was not me,” Terrence said angrily. “I can tell you exactly where I was all that evening. I was playing with my small nephews, which I’m sure they will be only too happy to confirm, and then I went to my room to change for dinner. We met for sherry in the music room and waited for Uncle Brian to arrive so we could go in to dinner. We all became rather annoyed and hungry when he did not show up. Finally we decided to go in to eat. After dinner I sat smoking with the other men. Archie tried to get us interested in playing whist, but we were all rather tired from the journey. I read the paper for a while then went to bed.”