Not a Creature Was Stirring(109)

Lida had veered off her original subject and was into a monologue on the sorry life of mothers everywhere. She was tearful. She was pleading. She was speaking with her hands as eloquently as if she were a deaf person using sign language.

“Wait,” Gregor told her. “Stop for a minute. Go back and say that again.”

“Say what again?” Lida looked offended.

“What you just said,” Gregor insisted. “About Cordelia Hannaford not having time.”

“Well, Gregor. You’ve told me over and over again. The poor woman has a disease. She gets better sometimes but mostly she gets worse. She will die maybe before the year is out. And I tell you, if she dies that soon—”

“Oh, dear sweet lord Jesus Christ,” Gregor said. “Cordelia Day Hannaford’s heir.” He stood up. They were all staring at him, and he didn’t blame them. He must look like a lunatic. In a minute, he was going to sound like a lunatic. He couldn’t help it. He didn’t have time to explain it to them. If he were right—and he knew he was right, it was the only way it all made sense, all of it, even old Robert Hannaford and his $100,000—if he were right, there was going to be another death and it was going to happen soon.

He turned to Donna. “Get me your car,” he said. “Go take it out of the garage and get it warmed up and ready to go. I’ll be ready as soon as I make a phone call.”

“Car?” Tibor said. “Gregor, look out the window. It’s snowing again.”

Gregor was moving too fast to pay attention. He moved right out of the living room into his bedroom, shut the door, and sat down on his bed. Then he picked up the phone.

Early this morning—so early now it almost felt like another day—he had told Jackman that the deaths of these three particular people must have changed something. He just hadn’t been able to think of what. Even after he knew who his murderer was, he hadn’t been able to think of what. That was the problem with the obvious. It never seemed to be important, but it always was.

He flipped through his address book until he found the name of the man he always thought of as “that lawyer.” Floyd Evers. There it was.

He was going to ask Floyd Evers what he should have asked him in the beginning. He was going to ask if Cordelia Hannaford had made a will.





FIVE


1


ANNE MARIE HANNAFORD HAD never thought of Engine House as haunted before, but tonight she couldn’t think of it any other way. The place was so big, and so dark, and so quiet. With the weather as bad as it was, she had been forced to let the servants go early. They had packed up and gone back to Philadelphia right after the police had left. Things were so much easier in the old days, when servants lived in. Now they all wanted their own houses. Only Morgan lived on the grounds, and that was because the driver’s apartment was over the garages and well separated from the main building. There was no loyalty anymore, that was the problem. Servants wanted to take your money, but they didn’t want to live with you. They didn’t want to know you. It all came down to an exchange of cash.

She looked into her mother’s face and sighed. It had been a bad evening. Only yesterday, Cordelia had been so much better. Even the doctor had said she might last three months or even a year. Now she was wondering if Cordelia would last the night. She ought to send for an ambulance. An hour ago, they had sat in this room—Chris, Teddy, Bennis, and herself-—keeping a death watch. If it hadn’t been for Bennis, she would have called the hospital then. But Bennis had been insistent, and when Bennis insisted—Bennis.

Anne Marie put her hands up to her hair and began to fix it, automatically. In all the crisis and confusion, it had come down around her neck. She was being stupid, she knew. She had no reason whatsoever to be afraid of Bennis.

She went to the side of her mother’s bed and switched on the intercom. It had special speakers that picked up the smallest sound in this room and amplified it through the rest of the house. When she left here, the house would seem to be breathing.

She fixed the blankets, plumped the pillows, touched her mother’s forehead. Everything was as all right as it could be, meaning just all right enough for her to go down and have some dinner. Meaning awful. She left the lamp on and went into the hall.

Long hall. Dark hall. Cold hall. Down there, Emma had died.

Anne Marie went to the balcony, moving as fast as she could. The lights were dim there, too, but at least it wasn’t so closed in. Sometimes she thought the house was shrinking, closing in around her the way plastic did on cheap toys, cutting off her air.

She left the hall door open and started down the stairs. Teddy and Chris were in the foyer. She hadn’t seen them before because they were sitting at opposite ends of the bottom step. She hadn’t heard them because they were talking quietly, and she couldn’t hear anything over the sound of Mother’s breathing. She kept telling herself everything would be all right as long as Mother didn’t stop breathing. Listening to that rasp and hitch was like listening to her own heartbeat. No matter how awful it sounded, it was better than no sound at all.