Hush Now, Don't You Cry(67)

“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.”