“Somebody was here,” answered Mary Louise. “Haven’t you been up in Miss Grant’s room?”
The woman shook her head.
“No, I ain’t. I’ve been too busy out in the garden helpin’ William and gettin’ dinner ready. I figured you girls’d make your own bed. Elsie always did most of the upstairs work.”
“Well, I couldn’t very easily make the first bed I slept in,” remarked Mary Louise. “Because the mattress was torn to pieces.”
“Miss Mattie’s?” gasped Hannah, in genuine terror. She looked so frightened that Mary Louise could not believe she was acting.
“Yes. Somebody bound and gagged me and locked me in the closet and then proceeded to strip the bed. They must have found Miss Grant’s precious necklace—for that’s what it was, John Grant said.”
The servant woman bowed her head.
“May the Lord have mercy on us!” she said reverently. “It’s His way of punishin’ Miss Mattie fer keepin’ the thing her dead mother warned her agin’.” She looked up at Mary Louise. “Eat your dinner quick,” she said. “Then let’s get out of here, before the spirits come agin!”
“But where’s Elsie?” insisted Mary Louise, knowing that it was no use to argue with Hannah about the “spirits.”
“She went off soon after you girls left. I thought she changed her mind and went to Sunday school. She had on her green silk.”