Murder at Mansfield Park

already perceived her to be a quick-looking girl, with such an abundance of freckles and red hair as to confirm her Irish parentage before
she had uttered a single word. Maddox had no quarrel with the Irish—indeed he had once been much enamoured of a girl from Baly-craig, and young O’Hara’s native volubility might be
of singular value to him; after all, if anyone was privy to what had been passing in Fanny Price’s mind in the days before her disappearance, it was the young woman before him. He had also
taken the wise precaution of erecting a small screen at the farther end of the room, and installing his assistant Fraser there, with a memorandum book and pencil. It was his usual practice, and had
been of the greatest utility in a number of previous engagements of a like delicate nature: his own memory was first-rate, but Fraser’s notebook had often proved to be even more reliable.
Maddox had not deemed it necessary to inform the maid that her words were being recorded; he rarely accorded such a courtesy even to those who employed him, and never, yet, to a servant.
    ‘So, Hannah. What can you tell me about your mistress?’ he began, in what he designed to be a fatherly manner.
    ‘Miss Fanny, sir?’
    ‘Come now, Hannah, who else would I mean?’
    The girl coloured, and gripped her glass a little tighter. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I’m a mite nervous, that I am.’
    ‘I quite understand. But there’s nothing to fear. All you have to do is tell the truth. I’m sure you can do that, can’t you, Hannah—a good God-fearing girl like
you?’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘So. Miss Price. Was she a kind mistress?’
    If he had thought the girl was blushing before, it was nothing to the scarlet that flooded her face now.
    ‘We-ell,’ she said, ‘that’s not quite the word as I’d have chosen. She was very partic’lar— very partic’lar. Every thing always had to be
just so. ’Specially with her clothes. Many’s a time I’ve sat up all night sewing, mending some thing as she’d torn, or finishing some thing as she wanted to wear the next
day.’
    Maddox smiled, a picture of sympathy. ‘Young ladies can be most trying, can they not? Ever prey to the most petty whims and caprices, and it is people like us who stand the brunt of it.
But in my experience, even the mistress who is a tyrant to her maids, may appear quite differently among her equals. Would that apply to Miss Fanny, would you say?’
    O’Hara gave him a look he could not at first decipher. ‘You could say that, I suppose. When she was wit’ her family she was like a different person. Then it was all “Yes
Sir Thomas”, “No, Sir Thomas”, “Three bags full, Sir Thomas”. Eyes always down, that prim mouth of hers set in plaits.’
    ‘Indeed?’ said Maddox, wondering, not for the first time, at the verbal ingenuity of the Irish. ‘How very interesting, Hannah. And which, would you say, was the real Miss Fanny?’
    O’Hara gave a short laugh. ‘Mine, to be sure! She might ’a looked as if butter wouldn’t melt, but I’ve seen the looks she gave Miss Maria, when she thought
she’d stole that Mr Rushworth from her. We all thought as it were him she ran off with, but it seems it must ‘a been someone else entirely.’
    ‘You have no suspicion of who that might have been?’
    O‘Hara drained her glass, and put it down; her cheeks were somewhat flushed. ‘If it ’a been me , I’d ’a gone off with that Mr Crawford as soon as look at him.
He’s a fine gentleman, and no mistake.’
    ‘But since Mr Crawford was not in the neighbourhood at the time—’
    O’Hara shrugged her shoulders. ‘All I can say is she definitely meant to meet someone that morning. That pelisse she was wearing? It was the best she had, and she had some
beautiful things. She wouldn’t ’a worn that for a walk in a muddy garden with no-one round to see.’
    Maddox nodded thoughtfully; Mary Crawford had made a similar observation, but it had taken this girl’s rude simplicity to make its full meaning manifest. He decided it was time to question
her more minutely on the matter in hand.
    ‘Do you know of anyone who might have wished Miss Fanny harm?’
    O’Hara’s eyes widened in alarm. ‘Killed her, you mean? I can’t tell you any thing about that—I don’t know nothing about it, and that’s God’s
honest truth.’
    Maddox cursed himself; terror would only petrify her into silence. ‘No, no, do not fret about that. I only wish to know