by Jane Haddam
There was another bench, next to the writing room door, opposite the one Jackman was sitting on. Gregor’s feet hurt and his legs were heavy. He sat down and put his hands on his knees.
“This is just conjecture,” he said, “but I think I’m right, and you can check on it. I think that sometime on the day Emma Hannaford was killed, or before, Christopher took that pair of candlesticks and tried to pawn them.”
“I thought you said nobody in his right mind would pawn them. Christopher Hannaford may be a long-haired weirdo, but he isn’t that kind of nuts.”
“I said no one who knew anything about silver would try to pawn them,” Gregor said. “That includes most of the servants. The butler would have instructed anyone who worked here in what was valuable and what was not, to make sure they didn’t damage anything important. It includes most of the family, too. Cordelia Day would have taught her daughters about those things. Upper-class mothers do. Bobby would have known because Bobby makes it a point to know about things. That leaves Teddy and Chris.”
“Why not pick on Teddy?” Jackman grinned. “I’d like to pick on Teddy. Man makes my teeth grind.”
“Teddy was in the house all day the day Emma Hannaford died, for one thing,” Gregor said, “or around the house, anyway. I know, I know. The candlesticks might have been stolen earlier. But look at the two of them. Teddy Hannaford seems to be scrambling a little, and he’s definitely worried about something. Christopher Hannaford is in desperate need of money.”
Jackman’s head came up quickly. “Did you check that out? The information you got us on Bobby Hannaford was wonderful. Does the FBI know something—”
“No, no. You can see it, that’s all. A certain kind of rich person dresses poor these days, but Chris Hannaford’s clothes are worn to shreds. He stopped taking care of himself in the most fundamental ways. He doesn’t eat. He doesn’t sleep. I don’t think he’s brushed his hair in weeks.”
“That could be dope.”
“I don’t think Christopher Hannaford takes serious drugs,” Gregor said. “The indications aren’t there. He isn’t jumpy and paranoid. That rules out cocaine. He’s not glazed over and he’s not shaking. That rules out heroin. The psychedelics aren’t addictive, just bad for you. Maybe he smokes a little marijuana. He has the smell clinging to him.”
“But if he isn’t taking dope, what would he need money for?” Jackman asked. “He’s got a regular job. It doesn’t pay Lee Iacocca’s salary, but it does pay a living wage. And he’s got that trust fund. That pays just about a living wage, too. What would he need money for?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you definitely think he needs it,” Jackman said.
Gregor nodded. “I think he took the candlesticks to pawn. I think he found no pawnbroker would take them. I think he brought them back and left them in his room.”
“Why didn’t he put them back in the hallway?”
Gregor shrugged. “Lethargy. Fear. Lack of opportunity. Who knows? That young man is not thinking straight. But if I’m right about all this, that,” Gregor jerked his head toward the writing room door, “makes a lot more sense than it might.”
“I’m glad it makes sense to you,” Jackman said. “I’m beginning to think we have an upper-class Charlie Manson on our hands.”
“If we had an upper-class Charlie Manson, we’d have a lot less of this kind of strangeness and a lot more of the messy kind. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about psychopathic serial killers, it’s that they love rituals. And there’s nothing ritualized about this. The murders have been planned, John, but the settings haven’t been.”
“The settings,” Jackman repeated.
Gregor stood up, restless. “Always, always, the murderer is using whatever is at hand. The Demerol. It’s all over this house. There’s a stock of it in almost every medicine cabinet. The death of Robert Hannaford. The statue was in the study. The murderer didn’t bring in something to crush his head with. The death of Emma Hannaford. The second note was in Bennis Hannaford’s handbag. The murderer didn’t write a new one.”
“What about the first note?”
“I don’t know yet, but I think we’ll find it had been left around the house, too. Assuming it wasn’t a real suicide note.”
Jackman rubbed his jaw. “I was thinking about something, last night after you called me about Hannaford Financial. We keep forgetting about that book we found in Emma Hannaford’s room. The Predator’s Ball.”
“I haven’t forgotten about it,” Gregor said.
“It’s about the junk bond business. Ivan Boesky and Dennis Levine and all those people. Insider trading. I was thinking Robert Hannaford might have been killed because he’d found out what Bobby was up to at Hannaford Financial, and Emma Hannaford might have been killed because reading this book had given her ideas—”
“John, whatever the reason for those murders, they have nothing to do with Hannaford Financial.”
“Why not?” Jackman said. “It fits, doesn’t it? The mess at Hannaford Financial is the best motive we’ve got, for Christ’s sake. And there doesn’t seem to be any other motive. Cordelia Day Hannaford gets the insurance, but she’s in no shape to go running around this house dropping statues on people.”
“What about the death of Mrs. Van Damm?”
“I say we go looking for a link with Hannaford Financial,” Jackman said. “I’ll say we’ll find one.”
“Maybe you will,” Gregor said, “but if you do you have another problem. At least theoretically, Bobby Hannaford wasn’t here when this was done to Mrs. Van Damm.”
“The theoretical isn’t the actual,” Jackman said. “You told me that when I was twenty-two years old.”
“I’m glad you remembered it. But John, if Bobby Hannaford did this, he’d have had to get into the house and stay in it for over an hour without anyone seeing him. It took that long for the Demerol to kill Myra Van Damm.”
“Maybe Bobby fed it to her early this morning, before he left for ‘work.’”
“And came back,” Gregor pointed out, “and got in unnoticed—remember the guard at the gate. There’ll be a record, and there’s no way to sneak onto this property. That was the first thing you checked out. If Bobby left, there will be a record. If he came back, there will be a record. If he was in the house, he had to get around, use a poker on Mrs. Van Damm, hide the poker or wash it or whatever, get the candlestick out of Christopher’s room—”
“Assuming that’s where it was.”
“Assuming that’s where it was,” Gregor agreed. “But my objection stands. This house is full of servants. It’s better staffed than a hotel. Somebody would have seen him.”
“Crap,” Jackman said. He slumped. “Now what are we going to do? I can’t buy hate as a motive in this case. To kill three people out of hate you have to be certifiable. And besides—”
“You don’t think people kill other people out of hate?” Gregor smiled. “I don’t either. At least, I don’t think they kill in this way.”
“Right. Pick up a poker and bash somebody’s head in in a fit of pique, that’s hate. Run around exchanging suicide notes, that’s premeditation. And premeditation means a practical motive.”
“Which we don’t have.” Gregor stopped pacing and leaned against the wall. “I’ll tell you what we do have. Three people dead. Three very particular people dead. And three people involved in attempted frames.”
“This is not news, Gregor.”
“I know it’s not. But it’s the answer, John. It came to me as soon as I saw her in there. It can’t be Hannaford Financial, because everything possible has been done to point us to Hannaford Financial. It’s what we’re being pointed away from that we have to consider.”
“Gregor, there isn’t anything we’re being pointed away from. There isn’t anything to be pointed away from. There’s just Hannaford Financial.”
“There is something,” Gregor said. “And not only is there something, but it’s got to be someth
ing so obvious we’re going to kill ourselves when we find it. That’s the only way all this trash makes sense. There’s only one reason for strewing all these clues around the landscape, and that’s to make sure we don’t see what would otherwise be all too easy for us to see.”
“Crap,” Jackman said.
Gregor looked up at the hallway wall, to the picture niche where a Braque etching had been decorated, beyond all reason, with a cluster of Hannaford family ornaments. A cherub, a bell, a ball, an angel. Tin. Gregor sighed.
“That’s the only thing that doesn’t fit,” he said. “That’s the only thing that must be a mistake. That piece of tin on the floor of Robert Hannaford’s study. I wish it had been smaller. Then it could have been one of these decorations.”
“Well, it wasn’t smaller,” Jackman said. “And it probably was a decoration. The damn things are everywhere.”
“I know.”
Down at the end of the hall, a door opened. Gregor and Jackman raised their heads together, to see Anne Marie Hannaford walking slowly toward them, looking shaken and angry at once. Gregor knew all about the mood she was in. She was frightened at what was going on in her house and angry because it had been going on long enough so that she could no longer count on what they would do. Gregor didn’t blame her. If he was right—and he was right; Jackman’s skepticism notwithstanding—there would have to be another death in this house.
Anne Marie covered half the distance to them and stopped, reluctant to come any closer.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Mr. Demarkian? My mother—my mother would like to see you.”
TWO
1
GREGOR SPENT MORE TIME thinking about Cordelia Day Hannaford than anyone else in this case, but he didn’t like to. That was inevitable, given Elizabeth, but it had a few kicks to it he wouldn’t have expected. Until he had seen her that first time, on the night Robert Hannaford died, Gregor hadn’t thought he was a numb man. If he felt less than he used to, it was because he had less to feel. All the drama and emotion of a protracted dying: it was like living through a monsoon season. When the season was over, normal weather was bound to feel like no weather at all.
Then he had walked into the living room. Gregor could still see that: Cordelia in her chair, her dress covered with blood and her head held steady by act of will; the rest of them stretched out around her, like dangerous kittens protecting a mother cat. Gregor had felt made of eggshell, irreparably cracked. It was silly to tell himself that seeing her had “changed everything.” It hadn’t. It had simply changed him back.
Now he stood in front of Cordelia’s door, as reluctant to go in as Anne Marie was to let him in. If Anne Marie had her way, Gregor thought, he’d be packed up and sent back to Philadelphia without another word.
Because she couldn’t do that—sick or not, Cordelia Day got what she wanted from her daughters—Anne Marie made do with standing directly in front of the door, crossing her arms across her chest, and glaring. It didn’t quite come off. Anne Marie was a very shaky young woman at the moment. She twitched.
“My mother,” she said, “is a very sick woman. And she’s very tired.”
Gregor hesitated. It was always hard to know what to say to someone who was overstating the obvious.
“I’m not forcing myself on your mother,” he pointed out. “You said she asked for me.”
“She did ask for you.”
“So?”
Anne Marie wrapped her arms more tightly around herself, making herself look less angry than cold. “She doesn’t like to believe she’s sick. She never has. That’s why we’ve almost never had a professional nurse in the house, why it’s always been me. If it’s me, she can pretend it isn’t real.”
“I don’t think she pretends it isn’t real, Miss Hannaford.”
“She pretends it makes no difference. She’s been knocking herself out on charities for years. Visiting. Chairing meetings. Going to parties. And then coming home to collapse.”
“And then you had to take care of her.”
“I don’t mind taking care of her,” Anne Marie said. “I mind her trying to kill herself. Nobody wants to keep her alive more than me.”
Gregor nodded. He thought that might be literally true. Anne Marie probably wanted to keep Cordelia alive more than Cordelia wanted to stay alive.
“I don’t want you to go in there and upset her,” Anne Marie said. “She was better than she was. Now she’s looking worse. Up and down, up and down. This morning—”
“Yes?”
“Last night she was much better. Then this morning when I came in to bring her her tea, she was worse again. Much worse. I could see it. And now—”
“Now?”
“I should have called the doctor,” Anne Marie said. “That’s what I’m supposed to do. But he’s no help and I’m sick and tired of him, and I know what’s going on. I know it.”
“What is going on?”
“She isn’t going to last past New Year’s.” Anne Marie looked away, up the hall, even though there wasn’t anyone there. “I’d like her to last to New Year’s. I’d like it very much if you didn’t upset her.”
“I’ll try not to.”
Anne Marie stepped away from the door. “She thinks she wants to know all about it,” she said bitterly. “All about the murders and the investigation. She wants to take an interest. It’s going to kill her.”
“Miss Hannaford—”
Anne Marie shook her head. “Never mind. She’ll do what she wants to do. She always does. You wouldn’t know it to look at her, but she was a great beauty once. One of the most beautiful women in Philadelphia. And Myra was always asking me why I didn’t take care of myself.”
She stepped around him and began backing away. “Go on in. Just be careful. One death in the house a day is all I can stand.”
She turned around and went pumping off toward the doors to the balcony, a fat woman who seemed to get fatter as he watched her walk.
Gregor didn’t blame her for not “taking care” of herself. Under the circumstances, he couldn’t have put much energy into it himself.
2
Anne Marie had said her mother was “much worse.” Going into Cordelia’s room, Gregor expected to see a woman in a state of total collapse. That was the only thing he could think of that would be “much worse” than the last time he had seen her. It wasn’t like that. Cordelia was sitting in a wide wing chair, her legs stretched out on a matching ottoman. Her hair was “dressed,” in the old-fashioned meaning of the term: off her neck, and pinned around her head in an intricate pattern, fastened with four tin combs that echoed the decorations in the rest of the house: an angel, a cherub, a ball and a bell. Her nails were done and her makeup was on. Her body was covered from neck to ankles in a bright brocaded house dress. The house dress had Christmas trees and Santa Clauses on it, an expensive version of old George Tekamanian’s reindeer socks.
Gregor walked across the room to her and took the empty chair beside her, watching her watch him. Her eyes moved quickly, but her head didn’t move at all. Suddenly, Gregor realized she was much worse. She looked better, but with her disease what she looked like didn’t mean anything. On the night of her husband’s death, she had been able to move her head and talk clearly in almost-sentences. Now her head seemed fixed, and Gregor knew sentences were too much to hope for.
He leaned forward. He didn’t know if multiple sclerosis affected the hearing, but he didn’t want to take any chances. “Mrs. Hannaford,” he said, “I know you sent for me, but if you’re not feeling up to it—”
“Stay.”
It was one word, but it was clear enough. Gregor relaxed a little. “I’m very happy to stay. I know this must be frightening for you. If I can do anything at all to help you—”
Cordelia’s head jerked, back and forth. The movement was so swift and violent, Gregor thought at first it had been involuntary. It wasn’t. Cordelia was shaking her head no.
She closed her eyes and sat ve
ry still. She sat that way for a long time, second after second going by with no sound in the room but her labored breathing. Then she sucked in as much breath as she could, stiffened her arms against the arms of her chair, and said,
“Help—you.”
“You want to help me?” Gregor said. “Do you mean you want to help the police? Because of the—the deaths?”
There really wasn’t anything wrong with Cordelia’s eyes. She shot him a look as imperious as that of any able-bodied duchess.
“Murder,” she said.
Gregor nodded an apology, embarrassed. After Elizabeth, he should have known better. Especially because this woman reminded him so much of Elizabeth.
“That’s right,” he told her, “murder. Three murders, to be exact.”
“Yessss.”
“If you think you know something that will help, I’ll be glad to hear it. We’ll all be glad to hear it. Your children are very disturbed.”
Cordelia seemed to smile, although it was hard to tell for sure. She didn’t have much control of the muscles around her mouth. She let her beautiful eyes wander around the room and then stop.
“Table,” she said.
Gregor followed her gaze. This was a sitting room, not a bedroom—Cordelia had a suite—but on the other side of it, under a window, was a writing table much like the one in Emma’s room. Its surface was clean and polished, its drawers were tightly shut. It looked as if it hadn’t been used in decades.
“Draw-er,” Cordelia said.
“There’s something in the writing table drawer?”
“Yessss.”
“All right.”
Gregor got up and went over to it, shivering a little in the draft from the window above it. It had four drawers, one in the center under the writing surface and three down the side, like a desk—but no one in his right mind would have called it a desk. It didn’t look like one. Gregor opened the center drawer first, because it seemed the easiest one to get to. It was empty.
