“No wonder you wanted to get back when you came to Daniel the other night,” I said.
“I don’t like to leave her too long when people are here.” She glanced at the door. “I’ve had to put the fear of God into the child. I’ve told her that the bad people will take her away back to that dreadful place if they find her here, so she has to be as quiet as a little mouse. I hate doing it, but it’s for her own good. Poor little mite looks down from her window and doesn’t even know it’s her own brothers running around down there.”
“They saw her the other night,” I said.
She sighed. “I feared it would happen eventually. Usually it’s no problem because they bring their own staff with them all summer and I can watch over Kathleen, but this visit—well, it’s completely thrown me. Even before the master’s death I felt that something bad was about to happen to us.”
I didn’t quite know what to say. She still had the knife in her hand. She seemed to be considering things too because she said, “You don’t think, do you…?”
“That she had anything to do with his death?” I shook my head. “If he’d just been pushed off the cliff then I’d consider the possibility, although I doubt that she’s strong enough. She’s small for her age, isn’t she?”
She nodded.
“But I can’t believe that a child of limited mental abilities, who doesn’t even communicate, could plan a murder that involved putting poison in a glass of whiskey. How would she know that her grandfather drank whiskey? Can she even read? I don’t see any books. How would she know where poison was kept or even what it did?”
“My thoughts too,” Mrs. McCreedy said, “but that’s not how they will look at it. When they find out she’s here, she’ll be the one they want to pin it on, you mark my words. Because if it wasn’t her, then likely it was one of them and that’s too worrying to think about.”
“Maybe the police will soon find out who really killed him and then she’ll be safe,” I said.
“Maybe not.” She turned the knife over in her hand. “I don’t know what to do, Mrs. Sullivan. You’re a nice enough woman, I daresay, but I don’t see how I can let you go.”
I realized then that she had been pushed to the verge of madness. I had to tread most carefully. “I told my husband about finding a way up through the ivy into the tower,” I said. “He knows I’m here. Besides, I can tell you’re a good Catholic woman. You couldn’t kill someone and then live with yourself. Added to which I’m a trained detective. I know how to defend myself pretty well.”
She threw the knife down on the table. “Then help me,” she said, “because I don’t know what to do. You don’t know what she was like when she came here. A terrified little animal, that’s what she was. Crawling around on all fours and scurrying off to hide under furniture if I came near her.”
“I realize that it’s a problem,” I said. “And I’d like to help her if I could.”
“Then go away, go back to New York City with your new husband, and forget about us. Say nothing and she’ll be safe.”
“Look, I’ll do what I can,” I said. “I also have to remember that I’m married to a police officer. I’ll have to share this knowledge with him and he may feel that we have to report her presence to the Newport police.”
“Then the family will know and it will be all over.” Tears were now running down her fat cheeks. “He wanted to protect her. He made sure the family never found out she was here. I’d be letting him down as well as her.”
Tentatively I touched her arm. “I will try to do all I can to protect her, I promise.”
“Yes.” She wiped tears away with the back of her hand. “And we can pray, can’t we? We can pray that there is justice for the late master and for this little mite too.”
*
Kathleen was playing with her dollhouse as we came out of the kitchen area. She didn’t look up, instead went on singing nonsense in a sweet, high voice. “Na baba do, Coween.”
I squatted down beside the girl. “You have a nice dollhouse, Kathleen,” I said. “Are the dolls having their tea?”
She looked up at me with a puzzled expression then went back to her tuneless humming, moving the furniture around and ignoring me.
“You should go,” Mrs. McCreedy said, pulling me to my feet. She half pushed me to the door.
“Did she ever speak normally?” I asked.
“I hardly saw her before the—the tragedy,” she said. “They came with their nanny and were mostly up in the nursery. But I remember she and her sister were very thick, whispering and hugging together, but from what I hear she was quite normal in most ways.”
“Do you understand her? Does she use real words?”