by Jane Haddam
He got his coat as far as his wrists, and Bennis came to life.
“Oh, God,” she said. “I didn’t even take your coat. Nobody took your coat.”
“Why should anyone take his coat?” the Movie Star said. “Who is he? Why is he staying?”
Bennis sighed. “I’m Bennis Hannaford,” she told Gregor. “That’s my sister Myra Hannaford Van Damm. Mrs. Richard Van Damm. Can I put that somewhere for you?”
Gregor handed her the coat. Bennis folded it over her arm, looked around the room, and finally settled on laying it out across a vacant chair. There were a lot of vacant chairs. The room was enormous, and stuffed as full of furniture as an exhibit in a second-rate museum.
“This must be Gregor Demarkian,” Bennis said. Gregor nodded, and she smiled. When the rest of them looked blank, she added, “Daddy’s dinner guest, remember? In all the confusion, we forgot to head him off at the pass.”
“Of course,” the Yuppie said. “Anne Marie strikes again. Efficiency in action.”
“Oh, shut up,” the stout woman said. “I’m as efficient as you’ve got any right to expect me to be. It’s not as if I had any help.”
Bennis shot Gregor an apologetic look, then stepped into the middle of them and started pointing. “That’s my brother Bobby,” she said, indicating the Yuppie, “and you and Myra have already been introduced. The man on the floor is Theodore,” (the brace, Gregor thought) “and the woman behind Mother is Anne Marie. You probably guessed. The person who looks like he just came back from a Grateful Dead concert is Christopher. And this,” she waved her hand over the very young woman’s head, “is Emma.”
“Every time you introduce me to anyone,” Emma said, “you always make it sound as if I’m Sarah Bernhardt.”
“Well, you are Sarah Bernhardt, sweetie. It’s just that nobody knows it yet but me.”
Emma had been sitting on the floor, with her back against the legs of a Victorian sofa. Now she stood up, in a single fluid dancer’s motion, and went to Cordelia Day Hannaford’s chair.
“This is our Mother,” she said. “Mrs. Robert Hannaford. She—”
“She’s very ill,” Anne Marie said.
Emma flushed. “He can see that she’s very ill,” she said angrily. “Anyone could see it. I was just trying—”
“She’s only trying to be polite,” Myra said. “God, Anne Marie. Sometimes I wonder what goes on in your head. You know how Mother feels about manners.”
“Stop talking about her as if she can’t hear,” Emma said. “There’s nothing wrong with her ears, and there’s nothing wrong with her mind, either.”
“Oh, Christ,” Chris said.
In her chair, Cordelia Day Hannaford stirred. Her movement stopped all other movement in the room. The pain of it was a tangible thing. Gregor had to go rigid to keep himself from rushing to her aid. Her children knew her far better than he did. If she liked help, they would help her.
Surprisingly, when she began to talk her voice was clear, almost steady. “Mr. Demark-ian,” she said. Her hesitation was so slight, Gregor wouldn’t have caught it if he hadn’t been listening for it. “My husband—was look-ing—for-ward—to—your—visit.”
“Thank you,” Gregor said.
“You must—have—a—seat.”
“Yes,” Gregor said. “Thank you again. I think I need one.”
Cordelia raised her hand, very slowly, and touched Anne Marie’s arm where it rested against the back of her chair. “Ring for Marsh-all,” she said. “We must—have the—the cart.”
“The cart,” Anne Marie repeated.
“It’s only right,” Emma said. “We have a guest. We can’t just let him sit there like—”
“What are you talking about?” Anne Marie said. “We’ve got a corpse, that’s what we’ve got, lying not a thousand feet from this room—”
Cordelia Day Hannaford jerked her hand away. Anne Marie jerked in response, frightened. “Oh, God. Oh, Mother. Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Marsh-all,” Cordelia said.
“Yes,” Anne Marie said. “I’ll go get Marshall. I’ll go get the cart. Just—just rest, please. I won’t be a moment.”
“You could ring,” Christopher said.
“Don’t be an ass,” Anne Marie said. She hurried out of the room, taking a door at the back Gregor hadn’t noticed before.
Once she was gone, the rest of them relaxed a little, but not much. If Gregor read them right, they were more concerned with their mother than they were with each other, or with the fact that their father was dead in another room. Their principal reason for being so angry at Anne Marie was her insistence on referring to the “corpse.” They wanted it safely out of sight, in another universe.
He turned his attention back to Cordelia, and decided—sentimentally—that she’d come to the same conclusions he had. It would be odd if she hadn’t. Most people overreacted to violent death, and when they were past that they overreacted to their connection to it. He’d have understood if they’d talked obsessively about the murder, or about the father they hadn’t liked very much. It was worse than strange to find them like this.
Cordelia was drooping. Her head had fallen forward. Her eyes had closed. Her hands had curled in on themselves, like the hands of a quadriplegic. Bennis got up and went over to her, checking her out carefully, as if she were a baby.
“Asleep,” she said.
“Thank God,” Myra said. “What’s that idiot policeman thinking of? She should have been medicated hours ago.”
“I told him that,” Bennis said. She moved her mother’s head so that it was resting more comfortably on the back of the chair. “I wonder how much of a horse’s ass he really was. Does she have medical insurance? Does she have survivorship? Did he consider for one single moment that he might get run over by a truck?”
“Well, I’m sure he didn’t think he was going to end up murdered,” the man in the brace said. “Although he should have.”
“Shut up, Teddy,” Myra said.
“Why?”
“She’s got a survivorship.” This came from Bobby, the Complete Yuppie. He was sitting straight up like the rest of them now, but Gregor was interested to note that only the mention of money had gotten him that way. A dead father, a dying mother—none of that had moved him to action. “She hasn’t got medical insurance, because she was diagnosed before he bought his policies. But she gets the annuity incomes as long as she lives, and that should take care of medical expenses. And running the house. Hell, he put everything he had into those annuities.”
“No he didn’t,” Myra said.
Bobby ignored her. “There’s a life insurance policy, too,” he said. “A million dollars worth. I don’t know if it has a double indemnity clause for murder. But she can use that money any way she wants to. She isn’t going to need it.”
“She isn’t going to use it, either,” Bennis said. “She isn’t going to last till New Year’s.”
“I don’t see what good a million dollars would have done her, anyway,” Bobby said. “That won’t pay the taxes on this place.”
Bennis looked ready to hit Bobby with something serious, but at that moment Cordelia’s head slipped, and she was closest. She got it into position again and stroked her mother’s hair. Then she looked up at Gregor.
“I heard them talking,” she said. “He was killed with that statue of his. I don’t see why they’re bothering her. She couldn’t have done that—”
“I’m surprised anybody could do that,” Teddy said.
“He used to be able to do that,” Christopher said. “When he was younger, anyway. He used to keep his arms in shape with it. Lifting it. Putting it down. Lifting it again.”
“That was years ago,” Bennis said, “and the point is, Mother couldn’t have done it. And if Mother couldn’t have done it, there’s no reason to keep her here like this.”
They all looked at their mother, asleep in her chair like this.
“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.
By the time she’d gotten the strangers out of the house and Mother settled and the rest of them packed off to bed, she’d been so tired she’d thought she was going to pass out in her clothes. She hadn’t. She’d never gotten to sleep at all. As soon as the light was out, she stared at the ceiling, and once the light was on again she stared at her hands. It was impossible. The corpse was still walking, but there were nightmares waiting for her on the other side of consciousness. She wanted nothing to do with them. Bloody and dead, bloody and dead, bloody and dead. It was odd how you could hate someone so much when he was alive, and then be so—upset—when he was dead.
She stepped out of the pantry hall into the kitchen to find Bennis standing at the counter next to the sink, throwing what looked like raw mushrooms into a mixing bowl. She bit her lip. Bennis was dressed in her hanging-around-home uniform—-jeans, turtleneck, knee socks, baggy flannel shirt—and it was so damn inappropriate for Engine House. On the other hand, Bennis also seemed to be doing something about dinner, and Anne Marie didn’t want to get in the way of that.
Bennis saw her, looked up, and waved her over. “Celery,” she said. “I can’t finish this without celery.”
“Celery,” Anne Marie repeated.
Bennis sighed. She looked as tired as Anne Marie felt. “Is that the only refrigerator we have? Is there cold storage someplace else? It takes six or seven hours to cook a turkey this size. If we don’t get our acts together, we’re not going to be able to eat until New Year’s.”
“Oh,” Anne Marie said. She turned around and headed back to the pantry hall—ran, really, losing her cool all over again. There were a lot of extra refrigerators at Engine House. There was a whole wall of them, built in, opposite the pantry closet. Anne Marie rummaged around in the carrots and parsnips and green beans, found two stalks of celery—or was it heads?—and grabbed them. Myra always claimed not to know one vegetable from another in its undoctored state, but Anne Marie thought that was a lie. Myra was always on a diet.
Back in the kitchen, Bennis took the celery, laid it down next to a pile of onions, and said, “Mrs. Washington called. She can’t get in today. She’s got half a foot of snow in front of her door.”
“I was expecting that,” Anne Marie said.
“And I went in to see Mother,” Bennis said
. “She was practically coherent. I still think it was shitty of that doctor to refuse to come out last night.”
Anne Marie shrugged. “It isn’t as if Mother hasn’t been in that state before. And he wouldn’t be negligent, Bennis. He’d be too afraid of getting sued.”
“If anything happens to her, he is going to get sued. That’s one of the nice things about having a lot of money you’ve made yourself. You can spend it any way you want to.” She threw the last of the mushrooms into the bowl and reached for the onions.
“Look,” she said, “there’s something we have to talk about.”
Anne Marie stepped away from the counter. Quickly. “I know what you want to talk about. I’m not going to do it. I don’t want to hear a thing.”
“Anne Marie, you’re going to have to hear about it. Believe me—to cop an attitude out of the latest private-eye fiction—you’d much rather hear it from me than from the police.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, yes, you do.”
“No, I don’t,” Anne Marie said. “Teddy might be right. It might have been an accident. That policeman could just be grandstanding or something. Trying to get his name in the papers.”
“It’s Bobby who was right. And that Gregor Demarkian. The Bryn Mawr police don’t want to investigate people like us. It’s a pain in the ass. It would be like the Boston police going after somebody named Cabot. There had to be something in that scene last night that made murder the inevitable conclusion, and it had to be something obvious, because they hit it right away. And that means we’re in big trouble.”
“I don’t see why we have to be in any trouble at all. Somebody got in from the outside—”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Bennis threw chopped onion into the bowl and reached for the celery. “Look, the police may not know it yet, but you’ve been around Daddy for years. You know what the security is like at Engine House. There’s a seven-foot wall around this property, and the top of it’s electrified. There are guys patrolling the gate. I was still living here when the police tried to make Daddy stop arming them. The old man was a paranoid nut. Nobody got in or out of here yesterday without being signed, timed, stamped, and dated.”
