“When Miss Torrington had any medicine for herself, was it kept in this cupboard?” asked Macdonald.
“ ’Tis hard to say, sir. Her never had no medicine in her room, but if her kept any in here, ’twould be in that locked part, and her didn’t often open that for me to see. And her wouldn’t let me see her taking no medicine, because her was proud of never being sick.”
Macdonald set both cupboard doors open wide, together with the “poison cupboard.”
“When did the bottle of brandy disappear, Hannah?” he asked quietly.
She shook her head. “ ’Tis hard to say. I’d tell you and welcome. I’d tell you anything, you been that homely and quiet with it. But her didn’t often open that part o’ cupboard so’s I could have a good look, see. I know that be there. For years ’twas there, and Sister’d say, ‘ ’Tis of the evil one, Hannah, and if so be I didn’t lock it away safe, maybe ’twould be putting temptation in the way o’ poor weak souls.’ That was there, sure enough, but when Sergeant opened the cupboard, that’d gone. I don’t know how long ago that went.”
She picked up her apron and began pleating it in her fingers, her face puckered up like a troubled infant’s. “Was it that . . . made Sister come over dizzy-like, sir?”
“What made you think of that, Hannah?”
She went on screwing up her apron. “Her’d got queer-like. Her was always hard, hard as a stone her heart was for all her loving talk, but these last months her’s changed. ’Tis true. Something about she was fair frightening. I can’t tell you for why——”
“But when did it come into your mind that she’d been drinking brandy? You say you didn’t know the brandy bottle had gone until Sergeant Peel opened the cupboard.”
“No. Not till Sergeant opened it, like ’tis now. Then I saw ’twere gone.”
“Did you think Sister had taken it when you saw the bottle wasn’t there any longer?” Macdonald’s voice was as even as ever, his tone pleasantly conversational. Hannah sidled up to him and put out her knobbly hand and twitched his coat, looking up at him in a way that was oddly childlike, but something about her eyes was different: their silly complacency had given way to a distraught look, halt wild, half sly. “She’s going to tell she murdered the woman,” flashed through Macdonald’s mind, but Hannah whispered:
“I smelt her breath when I went to pick her up.” The knotted fingers still twitched at Macdonald’s coat, and her words came in a rush now. “’Twas so long ago since I smelled that. Years and years ’twas. But I knew it. My pa, he drank. In Bristol us lived, down by the docks, and us was poor . . . poor. Hungry and cold I was. Him was like a mad thing when him was drunk. He beat my ma, beat her like a dog. I mind the smell o’s breath, all that time ago. I’d Forgotten that; never give it a thought all these years, but I minded it when I picked Sister up.” Her breath was coming fast and she was nearly sobbing, struggling to get her words out, her hand still pulling at Macdonald’s sleeve. “I never thought o’ that, not all these years. I put that behind me. I’d not smelled that since he hit ma over head with poker: him killed she, poor besom . . . and me there . . .”
Her laboured voice broke off in a clucking sound, and then she began to scream, and went on screaming with a shrill dreadful iteration, while her fingers still clawed at Macdonald’s sleeve.
CHAPTER XV
Hannah’s screams were dying away as Cook came pounding upstairs, her heavy tread slamming on the linoleum, shaking the staircase.
“Sakes alive, what be that?” she burst out as she flung the door open. “’Twas like a soul in torment. God ha’ mercy, what be you done to her?”
Macdonald had got Hannah on to the chair and she sat crumpled up in it, her puckered face clay-coloured now. Her eyes were shut, though tears still trickled down her cheeks, and her mouth was open. Macdonald found the pulse in the skinny wrist and realised that Hannah hadn’t even fainted. She had screamed her nerve storm out and exhaustion had claimed her. Her head fell sideways grotesquely, and she sobbed jerkily, in the exhausted state that can come suddenly to children and the subnormal after a crisis of excitement.
“I haven’t done anything to her. She started talking about her own mother’s death and worked herself into a state of hysteria over it,” said Macdonald. “I’d better carry her upstairs to her room and get the doctor to come and see to her.”
“Sakes, her do look in a bad way,” said Cook. “Had us better get her summat—brandy or some such?”
“Have you got any brandy?” asked Macdonald.
She flashed him a glance. “In this house? O’ course not. But I could run across to Mr. Barracombe. Sister wouldn’t have no liquor in this house.”
Macdonald picked up the skinny little form. “Go on upstairs and open her bedroom door for me. It’s not brandy she wants. It’s something to get her quiet.”
Cook thudded out of the room and on up the stairs, panting and muttering, and Macdonald followed and laid Hannah on a narrow bed in a room almost as bare as a prison cell.
“Cover her up with some blankets and then get a hot-water bottle,” he said, “but don’t give her anything. I’ll go and ring up the doctor.”
“Her do look mortal bad,” groaned Cook.
Macdonald ran downstairs to the office again and called Ferens’ number on the telephone. “Is that Dr. Ferens? Macdonald here. Will you come over to Gramarye at once, please?”
“Gramarye? You want Dr. Brown.”
“I don’t. I want you. At once, please.”
Ferens expostulated, “My God . . . what for . . .”
