Not a Creature Was Stirring(86)

“I know because I asked the doctor to check,” Bennis said. “We were behind the trees, but we weren’t far away from him. We would have heard him if he’d cried out. And he should have cried out, attempted murder or not. Even if he’d gone over that bluff accidentally, and been asleep when he started moving, the drop should have woken him up.”

“Miss Hannaford, did you tell the police about this Demerol?”

Bennis picked up a grape leaf and studied it. “We told them he’d taken some, yes. Daddy was always taking some painkiller or the other. He was paralyzed, but “the nerves in his lower body weren’t entirely dead. They hurt him, often.”

Gregor got a grape leaf of his own, but he ate his. It was good. Everything at Ararat was always good.

Across the table, Bennis Hannaford was looking tired and sad. She kept picking up food and putting it down again, as if she’d forgotten what it was for.

“I asked her about it,” she said finally. “I confronted her with it, really, that same week. After we knew Daddy was going to live. She said she hadn’t done it.”

“You didn’t believe her?” Gregor asked.

“No. Emma was always—sketchy, sort of. Not too stable, I suppose you’d say. When she was a child, she’d have terrible tantrums, hold her breath until she passed out, I don’t know what. Anne Marie and Myra and I were all so—practical, I guess.”

“Was that what the note was about? The one the police found in her room? About the fact that she knew you suspected her?”

“Yes.”

“What about the other note?” Gregor said. “The one Anne Marie found originally?”

“I don’t know. I never saw it.” Bennis blushed. “I didn’t go into the room. The room where Emma was. I didn’t want to see her—”

“It’s all right. I understand that. You weren’t in the house when the note was finally discovered?”

“I left about half an hour after you started talking to Evers. Do you remember what it said?”

Gregor sighed. “Let’s just say I found it less convincing, as a suicide note, than the one that had been sent to you.”

“Which wasn’t a suicide note at all,” Bennis pointed out.

“I know that.” Gregor slapped his hand against the table. Simplicity. That was what this pointed to. Simplicity. Somewhere, in all this mess of motives and secrets and plots, there was a perfectly straightforward course of action, a person who killed or tried to kill, over and over again, always in much the same way. And that meant there was also a perfectly straightforward reason for it all. Not Hannaford Financial and a complex embezzling scheme. Not Teddy’s baroque fantasies of persecution. Something else, something simple, something obvious—but not obvious enough for him to see what it was.

Linda Melajian came to clear the appetizer and put out the salads. Gregor sat back while she wiped the table in front of him. She scrubbed too long and too vigorously, but he had been expecting that.

When she was gone, he leaned across his salad bowl and said, “Would you do me a favor? I’d like to come to Engine House, on my own, without John Jackman. Would you invite me?”

“Of course I will,” Bennis said. “When do you want to come?”

Gregor thought about it. “Tomorrow morning. We might as well not waste time. I don’t think you want to waste time, either.”

“Mr. Demarkian, for ten years, I thought Emma had tried to kill Daddy. When Daddy died the way he did, I thought she’d tried again and succeeded. I had nothing to worry about as long as I thought that was true. Emma wasn’t dangerous to the rest of us. And she wasn’t dangerous to Mother.”

“And you’re worried that whoever is really doing these things is dangerous to your mother?”

“I don’t know. But she’s the most vulnerable one. And she’s helpless.”

Gregor understood. But he had something much more immediate to worry about, immediate and frightening. He saw the swish of skirts. He saw the glint of lights on hair. He heard the rustling of a fur coat.

“Krekor!” Lida Arkmanian trilled. “It is you! And a friend of yours I haven’t met!”

Which took care of what the good ladies of Cavanaugh Street were going to do about his dinner with Bennis Day Hannaford.





SEVEN


1


AT SIX O’CLOCK ON the morning of Wednesday, December 28, Christopher Hannaford woke up on the floor of his bedroom. He turned over onto his back, looked up at his bed, and decided it might not be such a bad idea to get stoned again right away. Then he realized that, bad idea or good one, it was impossible. He had finished the dope he’d brought from California. He was dead broke. And after his experiences yesterday afternoon, he had no damn intention of leaving Engine House again for any reason whatsoever.