“What was Emma doing?”
“Going back to her own room,” Jackman said. “Mrs. Washington says she sent her to bed. The Hannaford children are taking turns watching their mother. With the weather and the short notice, they haven’t been able to get a nurse. Or maybe Cordelia Day Hannaford doesn’t want them to. She’s supposed to have refused nurses before. The Hannaford children are taking a day each, sitting with Cordelia and getting her what she needs. This was supposed to be Emma’s day. Mrs. Washington says she told Emma to go to bed and she’d get one of the others to take over. And Emma went. Anne Marie says she saw Emma in the upstairs hall at about ten to eleven, and they talked. Emma said something about wanting to lie down and Anne Marie came downstairs to see if the mail had come in.”
“And Bennis?”
“Still in her own room. Now, at about eleven fifteen, Cordelia Hannaford buzzed the kitchen. She has a little button thing, electric, not the pull cords the rest of them have. Mrs. Washington hadn’t been able to get in touch with any of the others, and she’d just finished putting together the tea. She buzzed Anne Marie and asked her to look in on Cordelia—”
“Why hadn’t she buzzed Bennis, first?” Gregor said. “If she was looking for someone to take care of Mrs. Hannaford—”
Jackman shook his head. “Anne Marie’s the only one with a two-way intercom in her room. Her and her mother, that is. Those were put in specially when Mrs. Hannaford got so sick. With the other rooms, there are those pull cords, and if you want to get in touch from downstairs you have to come all the way up.”
“Why hadn’t she buzzed Anne Marie before?”
“Mrs. Washington? She says she had. No answer.”
“Where does Anne Marie say she was?”
“That, I haven’t got around to yet,” Jackman said. “It isn’t the relevant time.”
“It might be the relevant time if someone stole that note out of Bennis Hannaford’s pocketbook,” Gregor said. “If Emma didn’t do it herself—”
“Emma didn’t do it herself, and neither did anybody else, not then. Bennis was still in her room. In fact, she stayed in her room until eleven-twenty, when Anne Marie knocked on her door and told her something was wrong with Emma.”
“Eleven-twenty?”
“According to Anne Marie, she went into her mother’s room and found Cordelia very worried about Emma. She then went into Emma’s room and found Emma, sick all over the floor and nearly unconscious.”
“And all this time, Bennis was in her own room, and the note was in there with her.”
“Exactly.”
Gregor thought it over. “When I was talking to Bennis on the stairs,” he said, “she told me Anne Marie had told her that Emma had committed suicide. And she believed Emma had committed suicide. Why would Anne Marie think Emma had committed suicide, if the note wasn’t there?”
“According to Anne Marie, a note was there, but not the same note.”
“Better and better,” Gregor said.
“You mean more and more impossible,” Jackman said. “And don’t forget, we’ve got the three still unaccounted for, Bobby, Christopher and Myra Van Damm. They’re all supposed to have left the house around ten o’clock, but that doesn’t let any of them out of having drugged Emma Hannaford’s—whatever.”
“Does it let them out of stealing that note? Or both notes?”
“It seems to let Bobby and Christopher out,” Jackman said, “as far as I can tell, the way things stand now. Myra Van Damm was definitely back at Engine House in time to do that much.”
“Why would somebody start out with one note and replace it with another?”
“To suppress evidence in the note?” Jackman suggested. “There might have been something in the original somebody doesn’t want us to know about, even if it had nothing to do with Robert Hannaford’s murder. Or Emma’s death. Some mistake, maybe. On the other hand, there may have been no such note.”
Gregor nodded. “You like that,” he said. “I don’t blame you.”
“I’d have liked a real suicide even more,” Jackman said. “But here we are, and it doesn’t look like we’re going to get one.”
“Maybe we ought to talk to the Hannafords before we decide what we’re going to get,” Gregor said. “They may even start making sense.”
Jackman sighed. “I believe in the tooth fairy, too,” he said. He started to leave the room, but stopped at the door.
“Just one more thing.”