Hush Now, Don’t You Cry

by Rhys Bowen

  My eyes were drawn to a collection of silver-framed photographs, grouped on a glass-topped table. “I suppose these are the family,” I said. “Look, this one is a group picture. They’re a handsome bunch. Which one is the alderman? There seem to be three men who look very similar.”

  “Hannan has a brother who runs the business these days, and there may well be another brother besides. Let me see.”

  He came to look at the photograph over my shoulder. There was something strange about it. The top and bottom had a white border but the sides of the photograph disappeared under the silver frame, almost as if they had been cut off.

  “Look at this,” I said, pointing at the sides of the picture. “Doesn’t it seem that there were more people in the picture when it was taken—look, to the left of that little boy. Isn’t he holding someone’s hand? And the right side has been cut off too. Why would anyone do that?”

  As I held out the photograph to Daniel a voice spoke right behind us, making us spin around guiltily. “Captain Sullivan! How on earth did you get in? I didn’t hear the doorbell.”

  Mrs. McCreedy was standing there looking almost flustered.

  “The front door was ajar,” Daniel said, replacing the photograph on the table. “We called out and nobody came, so we thought you were probably busy elsewhere.”

  “Indeed I was,” she said. “And I’ve no idea how that wretched door came to be open. The master wouldn’t be at all happy to hear that folks could walk right in off the street and help themselves to his things.”

  “We were interested to see the house before the family arrived,” I said, not liking this insinuation. “I assure you we weren’t about to pocket anything.”

  At this she became even more flustered. “Indeed no. I wasn’t insinuating anything of the sort. You’re the alderman’s guests and of course he’d want you to be welcome in his house. Any other time I’d be happy to show you around—it’s just that right now I’m up to my eyes in work, so if you don’t mind…”

  And she tried to usher us toward the front door, like a large sheepdog.

  “We can take a look around by ourselves if you’re busy,” Daniel said.

  “Oh, no. That wouldn’t do at all,” she replied hastily. “I’d rather everything was as it should be before you see it.”

  It occurred to me that perhaps she had been lax in her cleaning while they were away and was now rushing to make up for her laziness.

  “That’s no problem at all,” I said. “We have all the time in the world. We’ll leave you to get on with your work now, and you can let us know when you’ve a minute free for a tour.”

  “I will do that. Thank you kindly.” I could see the worry leaving her face.

  As we crossed that gloomy entrance hall I felt a sudden cold draft on the back of my neck and that strange feeling of being watched. I couldn’t help glancing up the stairs again. “Tell me, Mrs. McCreedy,” I said. “Is this house haunted?”

  “Haunted?” She laughed. “Oh, no, ma’am. This house is much too new to be haunted. Only finished in 1890 it was. That’s too young to have acquired a ghost or two, even if the master might have liked a resident ghost to add a little atmosphere to his castle. Now back in Ireland I’ve seen my share of haunted places and I expect you have too. We had a castle ruin near our village and the local people used to swear that they saw a white figure on the battlements. Well, one night my friends and I went there for a dare. As we got close we heard this unearthly moan and we all ran for our lives. I suspect, looking back on it, that it must have been a cow.” She paused, laughing. “Ah, well, no time for gossiping now. I’ve work to be done. But come back at tea time and you can sample my freshly baked soda bread. I’ll be baking a batch for the master. He’s particularly fond of his soda bread, he is, and he says I’m a dab hand at baking.”

  With that she almost pushed us out of the front door and shut it firmly behind us.

  Four

  “She was certainly in a hurry to get rid of us, wasn’t she?” Daniel looked back at the house.

  “I rather suspect she had been slacking on her chores and now has found herself with too much to do,” I said.

  “She could always bring in local girls to help her,” Daniel dismissed this. “What was all that about the house being haunted?”

  “I was thinking of that face I saw last night,” I said. “I know what I saw, Daniel. I didn’t imagine it. And I felt something today. Standing in that hallway. It was almost as if a presence was watching me.”

  “Are you always going to be this fey?” Daniel asked. “I saw no faces last night and felt nothing evil today. The only mysterious thing was where that dratted woman came from. She certainly didn’t come from the hallway and I didn’t notice a door behind us, did you? Perhaps she is your ghost herself and she can appear and vanish at will.” He looked at my worried face and chuckled. “Come on, let’s go and explore Newport while the sun is shining.”

  And so off we went. I could hear the click of shears and noticed a gardener at work on the rose bushes, and the big iron gates slid open easily. First we turned away from town and followed the street to our left. One lovely estate followed the next, each one grander than the one before. Through tall gates we glimpsed marble palaces and stately homes that made the Hartley’s manor house that I had always looked up to as the height of elegance look small and ordinary. One of these so-called “cottages” stood on the cliffs like a very posh hotel, one had a marble portico with columns like a Roman temple. I was overawed into silence as we glimpsed one after another. In fact I had never seen anything so grand in my life.

  “And these are just summer homes?” I demanded. “Look at them. You’d expect to find a king living in each of them, wouldn’t you?”

  “Well, they are owned by Vanderbilts and Astors, which is almost the same thing here in America,” Daniel replied. “They don’t need to count their pennies.”

  “But to build such places for just a few weeks in the summer, it seems criminal doesn’t it?”

  “They do a lot of entertaining,” Daniel said, “although I understand that most of them are built with few bedrooms. They expect their guests to own their own cottages.” He smiled.

  “I wonder what the Vanderbilts and Astors think about having Alderman Hannan as a neighbor.” I paused to stare through ornate gilded gates. “He’s not exactly one of the Four Hundred, is he?”

  “No, I don’t suppose he gets invited to dinner very often,” Daniel said. “But I expect they snubbed him in a very polite and well-bred manner. That may be one of his reasons for wanting to get into politics. Becoming an alderman certainly helps. If he becomes their senator he’ll find a lot of doors open to him. Everyone will want to be his friend then.”

  The road petered out at the end of a point. We stood for a while looking out at the ocean. There were yachts sailing in the stiff breeze, and a ferry crossing the Bay. Suddenly I found that I was enjoying myself enormously. Several days with nothing to do except making the most of sea and sun and fresh air was not something I’d experienced in my life before although I knew that the wealthy went away for holidays all the time. I was beginning to see that being married to Daniel might have its benefits!

  “We should go on a boat trip,” Daniel said, again as if reading my thoughts. “Do you feel up to walking into town and seeing what we can find there?”

  “I’m no little delicate flower.” I looked up at him, smiling. “I walk miles every day when I’m following someone in the pursuit of my profession.”

  “Walked,” Daniel said. “Past tense, remember. Now you will have no need to wear out your shoe leather, and you can take a pleasant stroll around Washington Square instead.”

  “Before I go back to my embroidery?”

  My giving up my profession as a detective had been a bone of contention between us for a long time. I had finally come to realize that Daniel not only worried about my safety, but also that it could compromise his own position with the police force. Sin
ce he was to be the breadwinner, I had agreed that I would take no more cases. As yet I hadn’t had time to see how I would handle boredom and domesticity. We’d just have to see.

  We turned and followed the street back into town, moving from the fantasy world out on the point back to reality. Soon mansions gave way to ordinary older homes, of a more colonial appearance, then to a little seaside town of plain clapboard houses with views beyond of a harbor and fishing boats.

  Daniel looked up at the street sign and grunted. “We could have followed this Bellevue Avenue all the way from town last night and saved ourselves an adventure on the cliffs.”

  “We’d have ended up just as wet I suspect,” I said. “Anyway it was an adventure and no harm done.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Daniel said. “My throat feels scratchy. I think I may have caught a chill from that wetting last night.”

  “Typical man,” I said scornfully. “I’m feeling hale and hearty myself. Ready for a good lunch at one of these little cafés maybe.”

  “I wouldn’t say no to some lunch,” Daniel agreed. “They do say feed a cold, don’t they?”

  I grinned and walked on ahead. We chose a place on the waterfront that advertised locally caught lobster, but my enthusiasm waned when I found I had to choose my lobster from those swimming around in a tank on the waterfront.

  “It seems rather brutal to select my food alive and have it killed in front of me.” I stared down at them, feeling pity.

  “Most of the food that you eat was alive at some stage,” Daniel pointed out. “Did you not catch crabs and mussels when you were a child?”

  “I suppose that I did,” I agreed.

  “Well then. Go ahead and select yourself a nice meaty lobster. Or do you want me to do it for you?”

  “You do it. I’d rather not look.”

  “And this is the woman who has taken on murderers single-handedly.” Daniel chuckled.

  I stared down the quayside, watching the fishermen unloading their catch while Daniel made the selection and not long after the lobsters appeared on a plate with crusty bread and a knob of corn beside them. And I have to confess that after the first mouthful I was tearing mine apart with no conscience whatsoever.

  After lunch we resumed our walk around town. There were pretty old churches and fine brick colonial buildings. Altogether a charming place and one that made me a little homesick for Ireland, since it felt so old and peaceful.

  “This place is really old,” I said, staring up at a house that bore the date 1631. “Even in Ireland that would count as old. I doubt we’ve many buildings of that vintage in Westport.”

  “Rhode Island was one of the earliest settlements,” Daniel said. “I find the simple styles of these old houses rather attractive myself. I never was one for extravagance.”

  “Which is why you chose a nice simple Irish girl,” I said.

  “I don’t know about that.” he laughed.

  “Let’s go down this street.” I attempted to steer him. “It has a row of quaint little shops.”

  “Women and their shops,” Daniel muttered. “Can they go nowhere and just admire the architecture? Must any outing include shopping?”

  “But of course,” I said, pausing outside a leaded glass window crammed full of souvenirs—china lighthouses, wooden fishing boats, and of course salt water taffy. Because of Daniel’s remark I contented myself with looking on this occasion, then moved on to the next shop window. One of the old cottages had been turned into an art gallery and as I peered in through the window a painting on the rear wall caught my attention.

  Daniel was already walking on ahead of me, having tired of my gazing in shop windows.

  “Wait, Daniel! We have to go in here.” A bell rang as I pushed open the front door then stood staring at the painting. It depicted a lovely little girl with a mass of blonde curls seated amid flowers, holding a lamb in her lap. She was smiling as if she was sharing a huge joke with someone we couldn’t see, standing off to her right.

  “What is it?” Daniel came in behind me. “We’re not about to buy paintings.”

  A man appeared from a backroom. He was dressed in a blue fishermen’s sweater with smudges of paint on it. “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “That painting.” I pointed at it. “Do you know the name of the child in that painting?”

  “I didn’t paint it myself,” he said. “It’s one of Ned Turnbull’s. He has a cottage down by the harbor, if he is not out somewhere painting.” He turned to examine the picture. It was small and dainty compared with its neighbors depicting seascapes and storms. “Pretty little thing, isn’t it? Just right for a lady’s boudoir wall. I wonder if Ned used a local child as a model or just created the whole thing from his imagination.” He leaned closer. “Oh, wait. He’s written it here—Miss Colleen Van Horn, May 1895.”

  “Thank you.” I turned to go.

  “Are you interested in the painting? I could hold it for you,” he called after me.

  I shook my head and managed to stammer out a thank you as I stepped out into the sunshine.

  “What was that all about?” Daniel asked, noting the expression on my face.

  “That child in the painting—there was something about her face. I know I’ve seen her before.”

  “Are you suddenly turning fey on me?” Daniel asked with amusement. “Seeing ghosts and children’s faces everywhere we go?”

  I grabbed his arm. “That’s it. That’s why it looked familiar, Daniel. I think it was the same face that I saw in that turret window.”

  Daniel sighed. “You’ve already been told that there was nobody in the house that night.”

  I shrugged. “If it was a ghost that I saw, it couldn’t have been this child. Van Horn obviously belongs in another of the mansions, not an Irishman’s castle.”

  “Van Horn.” Daniel repeated the name. “I’ve come across that name somewhere. It will come back to me. So have we taken enough exercise for one day? I’m ready to head back to our little cottage.”

  “Very well.” We set off in that direction. I was still looking around with interest, wanting to examine every church and monument we passed. Daniel had grown silent and unenthusiastic and I was about to allow myself to be led home when I spotted something.

  “Daniel, that old churchyard. We have to take a look at that before we go home. I find old cemeteries fascinating, don’t you?”

  “On occasion,” he said. We pushed open the rusty gate and wandered between moss-covered stones. I read off dates and names, commenting on each one. “Look, Daniel, this man had three wives and they are all buried with him. And this woman had fourteen children. Fourteen—imagine!”

  “I seem to remember reading that this was one of the places where they used to put bells above the graves,” Daniel said, now showing interest. “You don’t suppose there are still any to be found?” He started poking around in deep grass.

  “Bells—what for?”

  “If the person wasn’t really dead and had been buried by mistake he could tug on the string and the bell would alert people that he wanted to come out.”

  “Don’t.” I shivered. “That’s horrible. Buried alive by mistake. Surely that didn’t happen?”

  “In the old days they couldn’t tell the difference between a coma and death. Maybe sometimes they didn’t want to.”

  “Let’s go. I’ve seen enough.” I took his arm to lead him away. Then my eyes were drawn to a lovely marble monument in the classical style with an angel standing guard and cupids frolicking. I read the inscription and stood staring silently: COLLEEN MARY VAN HORN. BORN FEBRUARY 12 1891. TAKEN FROM US JUNE 15 1895.

  “Look, Daniel, how sad,” I said. “It’s the little girl in the painting. She died a month after it was completed.”

  Then I read the rest of the words carved into the white marble. OUR LITTLE ANGEL HAS BEEN TAKEN FROM US. BELOVED DAUGHTER OF ARCHIE AND IRENE VAN HORN. BELOVED GRANDCHILD OF BRIAN HANNAN, AND FREDERICK AND MARIE VAN HORN.
<
br />   “I was right, Daniel,” I said in a shaky voice. “It was her face I saw at the window. There is a ghost at Connemara.”

  Five

  We walked back to the cottage in silence. I couldn’t stop thinking of that adorable little girl, dead at the age of four. I suppose that now I was married the next logical step was children of our own and I tried to imagine how it would feel to lose a beloved child so young. Of course it happened all the time. So many childhood diseases, so many dangers in life. Daniel sensed my thoughts. “It’s not as if we knew her. Children die all the time. It’s a fact of life. One has to accept it.”

  “I could never accept losing my own child.” I went to say more but swallowed back the words. Actually I had lost my own child, an early miscarriage that Daniel had never known about. I had no hope of marrying him at the time, in fact he had been in prison when I found out, and even though it had never been a baby I had held in my arms, I still thought about it and mourned it in my way. I had wanted to tell Daniel about it but there had never been a suitable moment. Now it hung between us as a secret and I wondered if I would ever tell him.

  “Cheer up.” Daniel opened the gate for me. “We’ve just time for a rest before we have tea and soda bread to look forward to.” He put his hand up to his throat, rubbing it as he spoke.

  “Your throat is bothering you?”

  “Yes, it hurts like the devil. Let’s hope I haven’t caught a chill from last night. But I’m sure a cup of tea will make it feel better.”

  We reached the front gates and I stood staring up at the big house. Daniel went to walk ahead then saw me standing there.

  “Come on. What are you doing?” he called.

  “I’m wondering if the face I saw was the little girl’s ghost,” I said.

  “There is no such thing as ghosts.”

  “I can tell you never lived in Ireland. Everyone you ask would tell you of at least one encounter with a ghost.”