Hush Now, Don’t You Cry (14 page)

That sounded as if I’d hit on something. A Mr. and Mrs. Joseph? And he’d stayed in the background, and worn a big fake mustache. As a disguise it was always successful because the mustache was always the one thing that people remembered, not the face, the expression, or the voice. So it appeared that Joseph’s ladylove had taken the first train back to the city. That was probably correct, given the small size of Newport and the prejudice against a woman alone trying to stay at a hotel. Not that it could have any relevance to Brian Hannan’s death. I hardly thought that Brian Hannan’s brother would shove him over a cliff because his mistress was not welcome at Connemara. But something had made Joseph Hannan uneasy. It couldn’t just be suspicion of outsiders that had made him so anxious to get rid of us.

I gave one last regretful look at the bustling harbor scene and made my way back to the cottage. It was harder walking back with that wind full in my face and I was quite out of breath by the time I entered at the main gate. There was no sign of the gardener. No sign of anyone, in fact. I glanced up at the tower window and started as I thought I saw a movement. But then a second later a dove flew down and I realized that it must have been sitting on the windowsill.

Daniel was sound asleep and snoring noisily, so I need not have hurried back after all. But it was close to lunchtime so I heated up the soup I had made the night before and carried him up a tray with a hunk of bread. The bread was now getting stale and I didn’t like to repeat last night’s fiasco by visiting the kitchen for more. Crumbled into the soup it wasn’t so bad. I woke Daniel and he made a halfhearted attempt at eating. Then I gave him the aspirin mixture to drink and he made an awful fuss about the taste. Really men are such babies when it comes to sickness and medicine!

After lunch I decided against going back into town. There were clouds on the horizon that promised rain later. Instead I remembered that I had promised to write to Sid and Gus, so I took the little lap desk and went to sit in the gazebo. I noticed that the tray had been removed and big policemen’s boots had trampled the leaves on the floor. I wondered if they had searched for clues, then wondered what those clues might be. How did one detect whether one or two people sat on a bench, or stood together in a gazebo, when the place was littered with leaves? But then Chief Prescott was now treating this as an accident, wasn’t he? The case was closed as far as he was concerned.

I cleared a portion of the bench to sit down. It was dusty and damp, the leaves having been rained on recently. Not at all appealing as a place to write letters. I had just decided to give up and go back to write in the pleasant warmth of the little sitting room at our cottage when I heard footsteps tramping through the undergrowth. They were coming closer and closer—a heavy, measured tread.

Fifteen

I was on my feet instantly, my heart beating rather faster than normal. I hadn’t imagined it. I could definitely hear the sound of footsteps over the whistle of the wind in the trees and the crash of the waves. Then I told myself that it was broad daylight and I had nothing to alarm me. It was probably just one of Chief Prescott’s men been sent to patrol the area once more. The footsteps came ever closer, that same slow measured tread that was alarming in itself. It was the footfall of someone moving cautiously, but with purpose. I looked around me but could see no one. When the bushes parted just outside the gazebo, a few feet away from me, and a face poked through, I leaped back, stifling a scream, until I saw it was Terrence. He laughed and pushed his way through the undergrowth.

“It’s all right, it’s only me,” he said. “I heard rustling in the gazebo so I thought I’d creep up and take a look.”

“Some creeping. I heard you coming a mile off.” I replied with as much bravado as I could muster, ashamed now of my weak and female reaction to his sudden appearance.

“Then why did you look so startled when I poked my head through the foliage?” he demanded, coming up the steps to join me in the gazebo. “Who did you think I was? The Jersey Devil moved north for the winter?”

“No, but you have to admit that one doesn’t expect a face to appear suddenly through the foliage like that. Among civilized adults, that is.”

This made him laugh even more. “But then, my dear, this is the jungle and I’ve never been a civilized adult. Ask my parents. My mother has completely given up on me and spends long hours on her knees in front of statues, praying that I’ll see the light and start acting like a God-fearing and sensible human being. My father has tried everything and has now also pretty much given up on me in disgust.”

“You don’t seem so uncivilized to me,” I said. “What is it that has made them despair of you?”

“My riotous living, I suppose. Wine, women, and song. Especially the wine, of course. You’ve heard no doubt that mother is a big noise in the temperance movement. Beware the demon alcohol and all that.”

“Yes, I did hear something of the sort.” I found that I had to return his smile. There was something unmistakably likable about him, whatever his failings might be. “So what were you doing creeping through the undergrowth?”

“I couldn’t take it in the house another moment,” he said. “It was getting too much for me.”

“You have felt it too,” I said. “I sensed it right away.”

“Sensed what?” he asked.

“You said you couldn’t take it in the house another moment so I wondered if you also found it—oppressive?” I phrased it carefully, not wanting to use the word “haunted.”

“Oppressive? More like depressive. All that weeping and gloom and doom. I mean, I miss the old fellow as much as anyone, but weeping and wailing won’t bring him back, will it? And those steely-eyed policemen everywhere watching us. Enough to give one the shivers and make one confess to something one hasn’t done.”

And he gave a slightly forced gay laugh.

“But you still haven’t told me why you were creeping through the undergrowth,” I said. “If you wanted to come to the gazebo, there is a path directly from the house.”

“If you really want to know, I wanted to check that it was unoccupied before I emerged,” he said.

“Really? Why was that? You didn’t want to risk encountering one of those policemen?”

“Exactly.” He grinned then lowered his gaze like a schoolboy who is on the carpet before the headmaster. “All right. I have a confession to make. I won’t be giving it to the priest so I’ll make it to you. My reason for coming this way was not entirely honorable.”

“Really?” I tried not to sound too interested.

“I heard my father talking about a decanter and glass that Uncle Brian must have left in the gazebo last evening before he plunged to his death. Since my sister and father watch the booze in the house with hawk eyes, I thought I’d take a stroll on the off chance that the decanter might still be here. But alas I see it isn’t.”

“You’d have been taking an awful chance,” I said.

“Of being caught by Eliza?”

“No, of coming to a bad end,” I said. “Did it not occur to you that if your uncle had fallen to his death after drinking in this gazebo that maybe the drink had been tampered with?”

The smile faded. His mouth opened wide in surprise. “Good God. You’re suggesting that the old boy was poisoned?”

“I’m suggesting it is a possibility we should consider, given that you all think it unlikely he’d just have blundered over the cliff by mistake. Poisoned or drugged. What if there was something in the liquor to make him drowsy or to disorient him?”

He hit himself on the side of the head. “I never thought of that. Stupid of me. I might have been lying at the bottom of that cliff by now if you hadn’t been here.”

“Hardly, since the decanter and glass have been taken away.”

Terrence sat down and patted the bench beside him for me to join him. “So tell me, Mrs. Sullivan,” he said in an intimately low voice. “Do you really think that my uncle was murdered?”

I sat. “What do you think?”

“Me? I really don’t know what to think. I don’t think I’d go along with his being drunk enough to walk over a cliff. My observation was that he held his liquor pretty well. Unless he was well soused before he got here, which I suppose is possible. But if he had drunk that amount, wouldn’t he have been more likely to have passed out, rather than gone blundering around in the dark? And as you pointed out, there is a perfectly good path back to the house.”

“Do you have a more plausible explanation?”

Terrence shook his head. “I really don’t. If someone tried to kill him—well, he was a big burly fellow. Kept himself in good shape. He’d have fought back. The police would have come across signs of a struggle.”

“Can you think of anyone who might want to kill him?”

At this Terrence had to chuckle. “Want to kill him? Oh, I’m sure there are plenty of those around. Let’s just say that the Hannan company doesn’t always play fair and straight. In fact they play downright dirty to get contracts and to knock out competitors. And Uncle Brian’s involvement with Tammany Hall—he never wanted the control himself but he liked playing kingmaker, and puppeteer. Yes, I think that described him well. He liked jerking the strings and making the rest of us dance to his tune.”

He fell silent while the wind rustled dead leaves and made branches creak around us. I wanted to take this one step further, to ask him whether his uncle had pulled on his strings and made him dance recently. I also wanted to ask where he had gone when he left the house the prior evening, but until this was ruled an accident he was a suspect like everyone else in the house. So instead I asked, “What does the rest of your family think?”

“As to that, I can’t tell you. We’re a reserved bunch. Keep our feelings and thoughts to ourselves. My father wants desperately to believe that it was an accident, brought on by Uncle Brian’s weakness for alcohol. Eliza is ready enough to go along with that. Irene is still in shock, I should say. She’s never had the strongest constitution and another body lying at the foot of the cliff is one too many for her to handle. Especially her adored papa who spoiled her horribly and kept her protected from the big bad world.”

“What about your other uncle, the priest? What does he think?”

Terrence shrugged. “Who knows? He’s a quiet, withdrawn sort of fellow. A little naïve as most priests tend to be, especially when they are sent off to the seminary at fourteen as he was. So it probably hasn’t entered his head that it could be anything but an accident. He was saying to my father this morning how Brian’s drinking was grieving him and how he had hoped to speak to him about it while they were here.”

“And your aunt?”

“Not the brightest of souls, you know. And had no education to speak of. Hasn’t exactly come up in the world like the rest of us. So she’d be prepared to believe anything, especially if it was on the headline of some penny rag. Of course she doesn’t believe in the basic goodness of mankind like Father Patrick. She’s seen her share of the other side—drunken husband who knocked her around and now her daughter’s married to a lout of the same sort—always out of work, always drunk, always getting into fights. If he’d been anywhere near she’d have been all too keen to believe that he threw Uncle Brian over a cliff.”

“But you don’t think he was the one who showed up at the gate last night asking if Mr. Hannan had arrived?”

Terrence kicked at a pile of leaves with his well-polished shoe. “Frankly I don’t think he’d have the brains to find his way here. He’s probably never been out of the city in his life—certainly never had to change trains. Besides, he wouldn’t have had the money for the train fare—in addition to which it’s already been pointed out that he lives within a block or so of the company office. He could have seen my uncle whenever he wanted. And I know Uncle Brian occasionally could be tapped for money, so why kill the golden goose?”

Why indeed?
I thought. That same reasoning would apply to all the family members. They all benefited from his beneficence and if he’d left his fortune to his only daughter, then the rest of them would be worse off now than they had been.

Terrence reached into his pocket and took out a cigarette case and a lighter. “Do you mind if I smoke? Irene makes a frightful fuss if I do it in the house. I don’t suppose you’d like one yourself, would you?”

“Uh, no thank you,” I said. “And I really should be getting back to my husband. He’s not well, so I should be keeping an eye on him.”

“Not another victim of poisoning?” Terrence asked.

“No, just a normal chill,” I replied. “At least I think it’s a little worse than a normal chill. It’s turned into a full-fledged grippe. However, I suspect that it’s partly a case of men making terrible patients. Women just get on with it and know they have to recover quickly or else.”

“That’s us men. Weak and self-centered creatures.” Terrence took a long drag on his cigarette and blew out a perfect smoke ring. “Give my regards to your husband.”

My encounter with Terrence had left me feeling uneasy. I started to walk away quickly and had to resist the urge not to look back over my shoulder to see if he was watching me or following me. I told myself I had no reason to be afraid. He had done nothing to threaten me in any way. In fact he had been open, frank, and chatty with me. What’s more, I liked him. He was witty and charming. He reminded me of my playwright friend Ryan O’Hare. But I knew quite well that criminals and even murderers could be charming. And his story about coming to the gazebo on the possibility that he might be able to help himself to a drink—surely that was a thin excuse, wasn’t it? There would obviously be a drinks cabinet in the house where he could sneak a drink unobserved if he put his mind to it. It seemed more likely to me that he had wanted to come to the gazebo because he wanted to check it out. Perhaps he was concerned that he might have left something there—something that could be used as evidence against him. The truth was that I suspected that Terrence had something to hide.

I emerged into the full force of the wind as I came out onto the lawn and battled my way back to my cottage as quickly as possible.