by Rhys Bowen
“I’ve done looking up here, ma’am,” Sarah called. “And she’s not anywhere.” She hesitated and then shouted with alarm in her voice, “Where are you, ma’am?”
“I’m coming,” I called back. I saw the relief in her face when I reappeared. I wondered if she sensed my alarm or had her own reasons to be uneasy up here. “I think we’d better check the grounds. She’s nowhere in the house.”
We went back to the staircase and walked down one flight then the next.
“Should we go and see first whether she’s turned up outside?” Sarah suggested, clearly not welcoming a long search around the estate.
“I suppose that might be a good idea,” I agreed. We reached the cavernous foyer at the front of the building. As we crossed it we heard footsteps. We looked up as someone came down the main stair toward us.
“Was someone calling my name?” Mrs. McCreedy asked.
Twenty-two
“Where were you?” I asked. “We were looking all over for you.”
“We searched the whole house,” Sarah added.
Mrs. McCreedy was obviously flustered but trying not to show it. “I don’t know what all the fuss is about,” she said. “I’ve been here all the time. Up and down taking the clean laundry up to bedrooms. There’s never a moment’s peace in this house. You say you’ve been looking for me? We must have just missed each other, that’s all.”
I didn’t see how she could have escaped us upstairs but I did wonder if she had a private little corner behind one of those locked doors where she could retreat and take a rest.
“Anyway, we’ve found you now,” I said. I felt a wave of relief that my vision of her lying on the rocks had merely been a product of my overactive imagination.
“What’s all the urgency, anyway?” she asked.
“Police Chief Prescott is here and wants all the servants outside, also the names and addresses of all the gardeners who aren’t here today.”
“All the gardeners?” She sniffed. “What’s all this about now, I’d like to know? Why don’t they just give the poor man a proper burial and let him rest in his grave?”
“I expect the police chief will make everything clear when we’re all assembled,” I said. “He’s waiting for us on the lawn with the family.”
We headed out of the front door. The servants had now added to the tableau, standing uncomfortably at attention behind those seated in the wicker chairs. The chef looked distinctly annoyed, the others worried. Chief Prescott looked up as we approached. “Ah, you’ve found her. Well done. Mrs. McCreedy, we need the names and addresses of all the gardeners. Then one of my men will go to their homes to fetch them.”
“I doubt you’ll find them at home on a fine Sunday afternoon,” Mrs. McCreedy said stiffly. “Newport men are mostly fishermen at heart. They’ll be out on a boat somewhere.”
“It will be dark before long. I expect we’ll find them,” he said. “My man here has a pad and pencil. So if you’d be so good…”
“I only know where you’d find Parsons, who is head gardener,” she said. “He’s in charge of the hiring and firing of the under gardeners. I can give you his address.”
“Very well.” Chief Prescott was looking decidedly vexed now, as if Mrs. McCreedy was deliberately holding things up—which maybe she was. Something had to explain her jumpy manner, her recent disappearance. I had thought before that she knew more than she was willing to tell us, but now I found myself wondering if maybe she had something to do with her master’s death. I looked at her—a big-boned, typical Irish woman of peasant stock. The kind I passed on the way to market every day at home. Surely such a woman would never concoct a plot to lure her employer outside and then poison him?
A young policeman scribbled down the address and then went over to the automobile. Chief Prescott waited until it had driven off, and then looked around the assembled group. “And while we’re waiting for the gardeners to arrive, we can maybe get some basic facts concerning the death of Brian Hannan. It is now confirmed that his death was no accident.” A gasp from one of the local girls. “Brian Hannan was poisoned, and the poisoner used prussic acid.” He paused. “I’m sure we’ve all come across it from time to time, dealing with wasps’ nests, for example. A fast-acting poison and a horrible death from suffocation. Somebody wishes that kind of death on a man who had apparently been a benefactor to all of you.”
A breeze from the ocean stirred ribbons in the maids’ caps and the womens’ skirts.
“So I think it behooves each and every one of you to help us find the cold-blooded killer and bring him to justice.”
“Or her,” I said.
Prescott looked sharply at me.
“Or her,” I repeated. “It is often said that poisoning is a woman’s crime.”
“Yes, but not in this case, surely.” He was clearly rattled by this. “A man does not drink a secret glass of whiskey with a woman. Simply not done, is it? And as for making sure he fell over the cliff—well, I think that might require a modicum of strength.”
Again my eyes went to Mrs. McCreedy, she who made up the beds in eight bedrooms and kept a house the size of a castle going year round. She’d have the modicum of strength all right.
Chief Prescott had clearly put me and my suggestion aside. He turned back to the group. “So I’m asking now, is there anything at all that you saw or heard that evening that would shed light on this horrible crime. Remember, a man who uses prussic acid to kill deserves no loyalty.”
There was silence apart from the sigh of the wind that was now gathering force again. I looked out to see a bank of storm clouds on the horizon. One of the maids put a hand up to hold on to her cap.
“And I ask you again—did not one of you see Brian Hannan arrive that evening?”
“I thought I saw him, sir,” one of the maids said hesitantly.
“And you are?”
“Alice, sir. Mrs. Van Horn’s maid. I was unpacking the mistress’s things and I just happened to look out across the courtyard and I saw a man going into the stables and it looked like Mr. Hannan. Of course it was almost dark by then and I don’t know him that well, and I know that he has two brothers, so I might have been wrong.”
“Thank you, Alice. Most helpful,” Chief Prescott said.
“Anyone else?”
“You might ask the servants if any of them spotted an outsider on the premises, someone they didn’t recognize,” Archie said. “And you might want to find out where someone got their hands on prussic acid in the first place.”
“I do know my job, sir,” Prescott said. “I was getting to that. So let me ask right away—is there any prussic acid stored in this house that any of you know about?”
“There is not,” Mrs. McCreedy said firmly. “I can tell you the exact contents of the cupboards in this house. I do the purchasing and I have had no need for prussic acid.”
“I have my men doing a search at this moment,” Chief Prescott said. “Let’s see what they turn up, shall we?”
“Searching our personal things?” Terrence said. “You’ve no right to do that.”
“Unless you’re hiding a vial of prussic acid you’ve no need to be alarmed, sir,” Chief Prescott said. “You’re not, are you?”
“Of course not. I don’t even know what the stuff looks like.”
“It can take several forms, as I’ve been told,” Prescott said. “But to go back to the first part of Mr. Van Horn’s question—did anyone notice an outsider on the premises that evening?”
“I already told you about the man at the gate,” I said, “but he couldn’t get in. The gate was already shut for the night.”
“About this gate,” Prescott said. “Is it usually locked at night?”
“It is,” Mrs. McCreedy said. “The gardeners do it when they go home around sundown. I feel more secure when I’m on my own here knowing that strangers can’t get in after dark.”
“So nobody can get in or out after that?”
“They can if th
ey know how to,” she said. “There is a secret way in through a small door in the wall, but a stranger wouldn’t know where to look in the ivy. It’s not easy to find, especially not in the dark.”
“But as I pointed out before, anybody could get in during the day and it would be simple enough to elude the gardeners, by hiding out in the wilderness or one of the outbuildings,” Joseph said.
“Yes, we understand that, sir. But the intruder would have had to come out of the stable or the wilderness to meet Mr. Hannan, wouldn’t he? So how about it—did anyone here notice a person they didn’t recognize at any time during that day or evening?”
“I saw a woman creeping around the side of the house,” the footman said. “I remember thinking it was strange that she hadn’t gone to the front door and concluded that it was one of the local women coming to help with the serving that evening.”
“I believe I can explain that,” I said. “I walked down the side of the house in the dark that evening. I was going to the kitchen to see if Mrs. McCreedy could give me the ingredients to make my husband a soup. He was already feeling unwell, you see, and I didn’t want to disturb the family.”
“Could the woman you saw have been Mrs. Sullivan?” Prescott asked.
The young footman looked at me and then nodded. “Could have been.”
I had been wrestling with my own conscience about the person I had seen that evening. Now that prussic acid was involved I realized I could keep quiet no longer. “I saw somebody,” I said. “When I was passing beside the flower beds I saw the French doors open and a man came out. He looked around then set off, walking past in the direction of the wood, and the gazebo for that matter.”
“And that man wasn’t Brian Hannan?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I never met Mr. Hannan. I suppose it could have been, but it didn’t look like the man I saw in the photographs. He seemed to be taller and slimmer. I thought at the time that it was Mr. Terrence Hannan.”
“It most certainly was not me,” Terrence said angrily. “I can tell you exactly where I was all that evening. I was playing with my small nephews, which I’m sure they will be only too happy to confirm, and then I went to my room to change for dinner. We met for sherry in the music room and waited for Uncle Brian to arrive so we could go in to dinner. We all became rather annoyed and hungry when he did not show up. Finally we decided to go in to eat. After dinner I sat smoking with the other men. Archie tried to get us interested in playing whist, but we were all rather tired from the journey. I read the paper for a while then went to bed.”
He cast me a glance letting me know that he was hurt by my accusation.
“Do we actually know what time frame we are looking at?” Father Patrick asked quietly. “Can a doctor tell the approximate time of death?”
“Only approximate,” Chief Prescott said. “It’s still an inexact science.”
“So we couldn’t, for example, be looking at some time late at night or early the next morning?”
Chief Prescott shook his head. “Definitely before midnight the doctor says, most likely before nine o’clock. Of course with the body lying half in water, it makes such estimations more difficult.”
There was the crunch of feet on gravel as one of the constables came toward us. “I’ve found it, sir,” he said. “I believe I’ve found the prussic acid you were looking for.”
“Good man,” Prescott said. “Where was it?”
“In the shed next to the stables,” the constable said. “A little packet of it in a jar on a high shelf.”
“You didn’t touch it, did you? We’ll want to test for fingerprints.”
“I had to lift it down, sir, but I used my handkerchief, knowing what you’d told us.”
“Can anybody throw light on why there would be prussic acid in the shed?” Prescott asked.
Nobody answered. Prescott shrugged. “Let’s go and see, shall we?”
He set off across the forecourt. Some of us got up to follow him. The servants hovered behind, not sure what they were supposed to do. The constable flung the shed door open, like a conjurer producing a rabbit from a hat and Prescott went inside.
“I put it back in its original position for you to see, sir. Up there. That jar on the top shelf. That’s the one,” the constable said proudly.
“I see. Clearly visible, isn’t it?” He poked around, looking from side to side like a dog looking to pick up a scent. A workbench ran around the walls and under it were shelves and cupboards. There were also shelves above containing plant pots, jars of seeds, tools, and hung on hooks against the wall was fishing tackle. I remembered that young Sam claimed to have gone fishing that morning, when he spotted the body. Had that been a clever way of explaining possible fingerprints in the shed? I turned to look at the boy, who was standing at the back of the group, close to his grandmother. He couldn’t be more than seventeen or eighteen—raised in the Lower East Side and then taken to work by his great uncle as a messenger boy. Surely such a youth would not possess the knowledge or sophistication to think about alibis and fingerprints. If he were going to kill his great uncle, he’d have bashed him over the head, or pushed him off the cliff. And yet … He was the one who led us to the body, something murderers are known to do.
Chief Prescott worked his way around the shelves and cupboards, opening each one cautiously, using his handkerchief. When he reached the far recesses of the shed we heard him say, “So that’s where it was.”
He came back out to us. “I’ve just found where Mr. Hannan kept his stash of alcohol. There’s a bottle of whiskey and one of gin, plus a bottle of tonic water. And there’s a space where I suspect the tray and decanter had stood.”
“Ah, so that’s where he kept it,” Joseph said. “We thought as much. That means presumably that the gardeners were in on his secret. He probably paid them to keep quiet.”
“We’ll have to ask them when they arrive,” Prescott said.
“So it’s possible that one of the glasses had the poison put in it right here in this shed,” Archie Van Horn said slowly, as if still thinking this through.
“Probably not, sir. Doing that would risk that Mr. Hannan would take a drink and die too far from the cliff. No, I surmise that the poison was administered at the last possible moment.” He closed the shed door behind him. “I want this place sealed off,” Prescott said. “And I want one of you to get Sergeant Rawlins out here. He knows about fingerprint testing. Is there a telephone on the premises?”
“There is,” Joseph said. “Mrs. McCreedy will show you.”
“Go and telephone headquarters and have Rawlins brought out here,” Prescott said.
The constable he was talking to looked alarmed. “I ain’t never actually used a telephone, sir,” he said.
“It’s not hard, man. You just pick up the receiver and speak into it. Ask the operator to connect you with the police station. Go on. Get on with it.”
As we were coming away from the shed the automobile arrived, with Parsons, the head gardener, and one other gardener sitting in the backseat. My friendly fellow was missing.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the police constable said as he climbed out of the auto, “but the other man, Ted Hemmings, was out fishing today. We’ve left word that he’s to come here as soon as he gets back.”
“No matter,” Prescott said. “Which one of you is the head gardener?”
“That would be me, sir.” Parsons stepped forward. “Frank Parsons, sir.”
“We’ve just discovered a jar containing prussic acid in your garden shed. Can you tell me whether you knew it was there and what it might have been used for?”
“Knew it was there? Of course I knew it was there. I was the one who bought it,” Parsons said. I noticed his temperament had not improved since the last time I saw him. “I got it last year when we had a wasp’s nest in that big cedar tree and Mr. Hannan told me to get rid of it before the family came for the summer.”
“So the prussic acid has been up there on the
shelf for anybody to see?” Chief Prescott asked.
Parsons gave him a withering look. “I don’t know about that. Who’d come in the shed except for the other gardeners?”
“This young man came in yesterday morning to find fishing tackle,” Prescott said, indicating Sam. “And I now know that Mr. Hannan kept a private supply of whiskey and gin in that little cupboard under the counter. So I suppose any number of people might have spotted the prussic acid on the shelf.”
“Up there on the top shelf? You’d have to be tall and poking around where you’ve no business to be in order to spot it among all the other garden things up there.”
“This presents a sobering thought, doesn’t it?” Prescott turned back to look at us. “It means that we can narrow the list of suspects, most likely to someone who is now present.”
Twenty-three
I saw a swift glance pass among those standing outside the shed. Irene shuddered and drew her shawl around her.
“Preposterous,” Joseph said.
“And not necessarily,” I added. “An outsider could have come prepared and brought his own cyanide with him. It may be a complete coincidence that you’ve found some on the shelf.”
“My thoughts precisely,” Archie said, nodding heartily. “This sounds to me like a well-planned crime. We had all only just arrived when it happened. The murderer would not have waited on the supposition that the jar containing the poison was still on that shelf. It could have been thrown out or used while we were absent.”
