Not a Creature Was Stirring(37)

“They’re only doing this because she’s the only one with any motive they can think of,” Bennis said, “but anyone with any brains and any decency could see it isn’t a motive at all.”

“Wait.” Gregor couldn’t stop himself. “Why is she the only one of you with a motive? He was a rich man. You’re all a rich man’s children.”

The rich man’s children looked at each other, and then at the floor, and then at each other again. Gregor saw Bennis shake her head, almost imperceptibly. Then Teddy got up and started pacing around the room, thumping his brace against the hardwood floor for a diversion.

“Maybe it’ll turn out to have been an accident,” he said. “Chris is right. He did used to use that thing to keep his arms in shape. Maybe he made a huge effort, and got it over his head again, and then lost control and let the thing fall on him.”

“Oh,” Emma said, “I hope so.”

“Hope but don’t expect,” Bobby said. “Something tells me, if there was any possibility of that, we’d have heard about it already. Aren’t I right, Mr. Demarkian?”

Gregor nodded. He knew better than to give them any particulars, but he could answer this. “Very right. The last thing Mr. Jackman wants to do is to investigate a family like yours in a town like Bryn Mawr. If he had any reason to hope for an accident, he’d be hoping out loud.”

“There,” Bobby said.

“Don’t look so damn satisfied,” Myra said.

“I’m not looking satisfied. I’m just being realistic.”

Myra shot Bobby a look that was very much like the one Bennis had given him before. He was saved this time by the arrival of Anne Marie, complete with drinks cart. She saw her mother as soon as she came into the room and bit her lip. God only knew what she was stopping herself from saying.

Away from the family, Anne Marie had acquired a determination Gregor was surprised to see in her. She wheeled the drinks tray to his side, waved her hands over the collection of bottles on the top shelf, and plastered a determined social smile across her face.

“There,” she said. “Vodka, whiskey, bourbon, gin, and four kinds of Scotch. We’re ready for anything.”

What she was really saying, of course, was that she was ready for him. Gregor decided to give in to that gracefully. It wasn’t his investigation, after all, and he’d get better information out of Jackman when Jackman questioned him than he could ever get from the younger Hannafords.

Gregor asked Anne Marie for a Scotch and water, and settled back for a long boring evening of social inanity.





2


Exactly one half hour later, a young patrolman came to the living room door and asked Gregor to come into the hall with him. Gregor came, and supplied the boy with his name, address, and telephone number. Then he shut up and waited to be invited into the presence of the great John Henry Newman Jackman. He wasn’t.

“Detective Jackman,” the boy said, “thinks it’s about time you went home.”





THREE


1


IF ANNE MARIE HANNAFORD had had any sleep, she might have decided to skip Christmas Day altogether. Skipping it was what she had wanted to do right from the beginning, when Myra had first talked Mother into this silly project. Now she had an excuse. Mother was in no shape to come down to dinner—although she was going to insist on doing it. The rest of them were in no shape for anything, and even less use. It had snowed all night. If the police hadn’t left when they did, and sent that Demarkian man home before them, the house would be full of strangers. According to the latest weather reports, there was a foot and a half of snow out there. There would be more, later. Mrs. Washington was never going to make it in from Philadelphia.

The police had given Mrs. Washington a ride to her sister’s. Otherwise, she would have spent the night, and Anne Marie wouldn’t be stuck with a twenty-two pound turkey she had no idea how to cook. Never mind fresh corn, flown in from Mexico, to be stripped from the cob before it was creamed. And potatoes to be mashed. And stuffing. Anne Marie had been taught to run a house, not to keep it. Fortunately, she was a Hannaford. Hannafords either got filthy rich or they died in the gutter.

Bag ladies.

Out in the hall, the clock struck ten. Anne Marie smoothed hair from her face and decided she couldn’t get away with canned vegetables. There were cases and cases of canned vegetables in the pantry, but they must have been there forever, laid on in case of fire and flood and thermonuclear war. They’d certainly never been served to Robert Hannaford V at his table.

She put the can of Niblets brand corn on its shelf and backed out of the pantry. She was tired, that was all. When she got tired she got trite. And confused. And even a little frightened. It was odd. Yesterday morning, if she’d been asked what she most wanted for Christmas—and decided to answer honestly—she would have said, Daddy dying suddenly. Now, instead of being more relaxed than she’d been the past few months, she was less. First there had been all those police in the house, going back and forth, asking stupid questions. She’d heard them talking in the halls, and some of the things they’d said had been terrifying. Then there had been that charade in the living room with Mr. Demarkian. Mother acting like the perfect Main Line hostess. Herself pretending not to know who that damnable man was. The rest of them—but it wasn’t the rest of them who bothered her. She hadn’t expected to be able to count on them. She had expected to be able to count on herself, and instead she’d been jerky and impulsive, almost obsessive, all evening long. Every time she looked at Mother’s dress, she thought about Daddy on the floor of the study, bloody and dead. The deadness of him seemed to be in the room with her, stalking her, so that every time she turned around she expected to see his corpse risen and walking at her side.