She jumped at the sound of my voice. “Goodness, you startled me, Mrs. Sullivan. If you want to know, I’m burying a dead bird. It flew into the window and died. The gardeners were about to throw it on a bonfire but I thought it deserved a proper burial.” She smiled up at me. “We always used to bury dead pets in this part of the grounds when we were children. Terrence was always killing things—” she paused when she saw my face. “Not on purpose, you understand, but he would have mice and rats and things as pets and then he’d lose them or hug them too hard and there would be another funeral And I have to confess that the funerals were as much fun as the pets had been.”
She straightened up and brushed earth from her skirts. “Such a disturbing time, isn’t it? It suddenly made sense to revert to childhood.” She looked up at me. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard but they say it was the prussic acid sitting on the shelf in our shed that was used. That could only mean one of us, couldn’t it? I can’t bear to think about it.”
I nodded. “It is horrible, isn’t it? You don’t have any suspicions yourself, do you?”
“None at all. My father and Uncle Brian didn’t always get along, but poison wouldn’t be my father’s modus operandi. If he wanted to get rid of his brother, he’d hire a gangster to do it on a New York street. Besides, for all their disagreements I think my father realized how much he needed Uncle Brian. Brian was the levelheaded, practical one.”
“My husband says you always have to ask the question, ‘Who benefits?’”
“And the answer to that would be nobody, I’d say—unless he’s left all his money to one person, which I’m sure wasn’t the case. Uncle Brian was extremely generous to all of us—especially to Irene and Archie of course. But he was trying to groom Terrence to take over the firm, he hired young Sam in the hopes of making something of him. He was even generous to my mother’s charities.”
“But he ran the family like a dictator, didn’t he? He expected you to live up to his standards from what I’ve noticed.”
“Well, yes,” she agreed.
“So if someone was not behaving in a way he thought fit, might he have threatened to cut off that person?”
“I suppose so,” she said, frowning now. “It’s hard to say because money has never meant much to me. But Terrence needs a good deal of it. So does my father. And Irene and Archie. But none of them would have poisoned him. It’s too grotesque to think about.”
“And you didn’t see anyone leaving the house around seven-thirty the night Mr. Hannan was killed?”
“We were all together, waiting for dinner. Irene went up to check on the children at one stage, I believe. Terrence went to find a bottle of wine. But that was all.” She shook her head again. “I can’t believe it. There must be another explanation. Somebody knew the poison was there. Somebody sneaked in. But not one of us.”
She bent to pat the earth down firmly.
“Tell me what happened the afternoon that Colleen died,” I said.
She almost lost her balance as she stood up, stepping away from me as if to defend herself. “Who on earth told you about that? I thought it was a family secret. We never mention her anymore.”
“But you were there. You can recount the events.”
“Why would you want to know?”
“Because it might have some connection to your uncle’s death.”
She shook her head vehemently. “That’s absurd. It’s just not possible.”
“Nevertheless, humor me,” I said.
She frowned. “Who are you, exactly? Why are you snooping into our family affairs? Why did my uncle invite you here with us? Do you know something we don’t?” Her face was flushed with anger suddenly.
“Look, I just want to help, that’s all. Don’t you want to know who killed your uncle? My husband is a detective and he always says there are no coincidences in life. If two people were found in the same place at the bottom of a cliff, then maybe the two deaths are linked.”
Eliza shook her head. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. Uncle made us all promise … but Colleen was pushed over the cliff by her twin sister, in a fit of jealousy. Horrible but true. We witnessed it.”
“Did you?” I asked. “Did you actually see one twin push the other over the cliff?”
“I didn’t, but we were all sitting together at tea and other people saw it.”
“Tell me about it,” I said. “You were all sitting on the lawn, in the same area where we had tea yesterday?”
“Not far from there.”
“So you all had a view of the cliffs?”
“I didn’t,” she said. “We were sitting in a circle. I had my back to the ocean.”
“So who exactly saw the deed being done?”
She frowned. “I’m not sure. The first thing we heard was this awful, awful scream. We jumped up and somebody shouted, ‘She pushed her. She pushed Colleen.’
“And we all rushed to the cliff edge. Kathleen was standing there, staring down at her sister’s lifeless body. People grabbed her. ‘What happened? Did you do that to your sister?’ someone demanded. But she just kept staring down as if she didn’t hear them. And I gather she never spoke another word. Her mind must have gone, poor little thing. I like to think her mind went before she did the deed, so that she wasn’t responsible for her actions, because until then she’d been a nice enough little thing.”