Southern Ghost

by Carolyn Hart

  "So, trauma lingers," Max summed up as Annie concluded her report of the conversation. He put two plates on the golden oak table in their suite's breakfast room and began tounload the box lunches they'd bought en route to the inn. "Did you see the card from Henny?"

  Annie rustled through the stack of mail and pulled out the postcard. She studied the Corinthian portico and baroque tower of an elegant church. Flipping to Henny's message, she read: I thought I'd died and gone to heaven—this is St. George's, Hanover Square, where Harriet and Lord Peter were wed in Bus­man's Holiday! Annie, I do wish you and Max were here. But I shall be home soon. Duty calls. Love—H.

  As they raced through lunch—they had to hurry if they were going to be on time to meet Miss Dora for a guided tour of Tarrant House and its grounds—discussing whether they were prepared for the afternoon, Annie struggled to discipline her thoughts. Images whirled: Ann Fenwick's desolate cry for love and life destroyed, Julia's strangely passionate desire to protect Milam's memory of his mother, acid-tongued Enid's advice to Courtney Kimball that Miss Dora alone among the Tarrants could be trusted, a little girl waking early and hurry­ing outside to death, Lucy Jane pleating her apron and picking her words so carefully. . . .

  Annie put down the last half of her sandwich. She checked her watch. Almost two. They mustn't he late to meet Miss Dora. She pushed back her chair.

  Max looked across the table. "What's up?"

  Annie hurried to the desk and grabbed the phone. "I need to make a couple of calls before we go." It was the first time in her life she'd ever left a smoked salmon/cream cheese sandwich unfinished. And she was hungry enough to devour a twelve-ounce T-bone. (As a native Texan, she fully subscribed to the ideal of real food for real people.) But the uneasiness that had plucked at her mind, conjuring up images of restless spirits and tragic losses, was too powerful to ignore. She had a dark vision that she desperately wanted to dispel.

  Lucy Jane McKay answered on the first ring.

  "Mrs. McKay, this is Annie Darling. We're still working for Miss Dora"—it wouldn't hurt to underscore their friend in high places—"and I wondered if you could give us some back­ground information on Missy Tarrant's accident."

  "Missy." The older woman's voice was soft. "One of God's angels, Mrs. Darling. That's why she went home to be with the Lord so young."

  Annie could see the comfort behind this rationale, but theologically speaking it didn't appeal to her. "I know that she drowned in a pond, but do you know the circumstances?"

  "Oh, Mrs. Darling, it was just so sad and it goes to show the evils of alcohol that every young parent should take to heart." Lucy Jane was firm, but her voice was thick with tears. "Now, there wasn't anybody who loved that baby better than her mamma and her daddy, but they liked to stay up nights drinking too much and then they didn't get up in the morn­ings like they should. A friend of one of my girls was helping out at Wisteree is how I know what happened. Missy lost one of her favorite toys, a big brown bear she called 'Bear-Bear." How she cried and cried for him. Anyway, that last morning —it was a Sunday—Missy woke up early, but her folks didn't get up and Cathy, my daughter's friend, had a flat tire on her way out to Wisteree so she wasn't there to take care of the little girl—oh, still just a baby—like she would have usually. Missy got up and went downstairs and nobody locks doors—or did then—out in the country or in town either. So Missy let herself out of the kitchen door and she wandered down to the pond. When her daddy found her, she was floating facedown in the water and there was Bear-Bear floating beside her. No­body knows how he got there. You'd think if she'd thrown him in the water when he was lost, she would have said so. And why didn't someone notice him floating out there? Any­way, they think Missy saw him in the water and went in after him. That's how it was when they found them, Bear-Bear and Missy."

  "That's dreadful," Annie cried.

  "It was awful." Lucy Jane's voice was low and grieved. "It broke Mr. Milam's heart and for a long time they thought it would be the death of Miz Julia."

  But it was never Julia who died. Annie tried to push the thought away. Julia's sister. Her father-in-law. Her daughter. Her mother-in-law. But never Julia.

  So? Annie demanded of herself. That could be said of them all, couldn't it?

  No. Not quite.

  But why would Julia—and the very thought sickened An­nie's heart—murder her own daughter?

  There could be no rational reason. But there might be many twisted reasons in the mind of a woman as miserably unhappy as Julia.

  She passionately loved her little girl.

  The same way she'd loved her sister?

  Annie forced herself to pursue the phantasmagoria taking shape in her mind, a vision of a mind and heart engulfed by evil, the kind of evil Poe described with hideous clarity in "The Black Cat" and "The Tell-Tale Heart."

  "Did Missy die before Mrs. Amanda fell from the cliff—or after?" Annie demanded. She saw Max's quick, curious glance.

  Lucy Jane knew at once. "About a month before. They say death comes in threes. I thought we were all finished—what with Mr. Ross and the Judge and Missy all gone within a year —but Death wasn't satisfied yet."

  Annie had a ghoulish picture of a dark-cloaked figure with a grinning skull face reaching out greedy fingers of bone.

  "No wonder Julia was so stricken," Annie said softly. "Mrs. McKay, why didn't you tell us about Julia and Amanda and the fact that the Judge knew about them?"

  There was a long silence; then, quietly, firmly, decisively, the receiver clicked in place.

  Annie stared at the phone for a moment. She didn't feel good about it, but she had her answer. Julia had denied an affair and denied that the Judge could have known. Amanda wasn't alive to answer, but Lucy Jane McKay was an honest woman. She wouldn't lie—so she wouldn't answer.

  Annie looked across the room at Max. "The Judge knew. About Julia and Amanda."

  Max said quietly, "Julia would know where the gun was kept."

  The telephone rang. Annie's hand still rested on top of the receiver. She snatched it up, glad to be connected to the here

  and now, not part of a shadowy, frightful world of imagined evils.

  "Time to go." There was more than a hint of displeasure that the telephone had been answered. It was clear Miss Dora thought Annie and Max should at that very moment be en route to their rendezvous with her at Tarrant House.

  As usual, Annie had to grab her temper and hold on. Now was not the time to tell the old harridan that she was rude, overbearing, and obnoxious.

  "We're just getting ready to leave." It was an achievement to enunciate through clenched lips. Perhaps it was Annie's irritation that gave her the courage to snap a sharp query. "Miss Dora, did Courtney Kimball contact you the day she disappeared, last Wednesday?"

  The sudden silence on the part of Chastain's most voluble and opinionated old lady caught Annie by surprise. And so did the rather odd answer that finally came.

  "Wednesday?" It was the only time in their acquaintance that Annie had the feeling that Miss Dora was at a loss. "Why do you ask?" she demanded brusquely.

  "Enid Friendley talked to Courtney on Wednesday. She told her you were the only person connected to Tarrant House that Courtney should trust."

  "I see." Miss Dora cleared her throat. "Well, if Enid indeed did say that to Courtney, it's a shame the child didn't call on me. Now, I wish to speak with Max."

  Annie wasn't unhappy to hand over the receiver.

  But Annie had the damnedest feeling. Miss Dora had lied. Why?

  If Miss Dora had seen Courtney Kimball on Wednesday, why lie about it?

  Miss Dora was an old woman.

  That didn't mean she wouldn't cling to life, grasp it with fingers tight as talons, and do whatever she must to ward off death. Especially, perhaps, if she would die with murder on her soul.

  If Miss Dora had lied about Wednesday, how many other lies might she have told?

  4:04 P.M., SATURDAY, MAY 9, 1970

 
; Ross Tarrant clung to the doorjamb for support. "Dad!" Footsteps sounded behind him. A hand clutched his arm. "Oh, God, did she shoot him?"

  "She?" Ross's voice cracked.

  "She ran upstairs. Just now."

  "Mother?" Ross's voice shook.

  "Yes. Oh, God, what are we going to do? We have to call the police."

  Ross shrugged off the hand. He ran to the desk and stared down at the gun for a long, anguished moment, then grabbed it up. As he brushed past the figure at the door, he said roughly, "Don't tell anyone you saw Mother. No one, do you under­stand?"

  Chapter 20.

  Tarrant House lay straight ahead, framed between the avenue of live oaks. On this cloudy, sultry afternoon, the plastered brick varied in shade from pale green to beige to misty gray, depending upon the slant of sunlight diffused through the clouds.

  The-air was moist and sticky, as humid as a July day. Not a vestige of wind stirred the shiny, showy magnolia leaves. Sharp-edged palmettos stood like sentinels on either side of the house. Gossamer threads of Spanish moss hung straight and limp on the low-limbed live oaks, their beauty as delicate as the brushwork in a Chinese landscape. Purplish clouds darkened the southern sky. It wasn't storm season, but a storm was surely coming.

  This house had weathered more than a century and a half of storms and stormy lives. Tarrant House had seen happiness and loss, love and hatred, plenty and famine, peace and war. It seemed to Annie—though she knew it was fanciful—that the house had a wily, watching, wary appearance, drawing into

  itself in preparation for the promised winds, the coming tem­pest.

  It was a day as fated for storm and death as the day Faulk­ner's Addie Bundren lay listening to the chock and thunk of her coffin being constructed.

  What would this day see?

  Without question, a murderer would walk the halls of Tar­rant House once again before the storm broke.

  Annie wondered if she and Max would be clever enough to determine the truth of May 9, 1970.

  Miss Dora appeared suddenly, stepping out from behind a hedge of pittosporum. "I've been waiting." There was, as usual, no warmth in her greeting or in the midnight-dark eyes that looked at them so intensely, as if to rake out the secrets of their souls by sheer impress of will.

  But, dammit, it was Miss Dora who had lied!

  Abruptly, as they looked at each other, the young woman and the old, Annie glimpsed—for an instant that seemed an eternity—a welter of emotion in Miss Dora's gaze, uncertainty and terror and a terrible resolution.

  Then the moment passed. Annie was left to wonder, as the old woman lifted her stick, gesturing for them to hurry, if that glimpse of agony in those implacable eyes reflected nothing more than the turmoil in Annie's own mind. Certainly, Miss Dora gave no other hint of distress as she led the way up the crushed-shell drive, using her cane as a pointer.

  "That oak—the huge one to the south—was the site of a hanging in 1862. A Yankee spy. Redheaded, they say." The old voice was brisk, matter-of-fact.

  How old was he, Annie wondered, and why had he come to Chastain?

  As if she'd heard the unspoken query, Miss Dora contin­ued: "Scouting to see about the fortifications and whether the harbor could be captured. Said to be a handsome young man. One of the Tarrant girls fainted at the sight, and everyone always wondered if there were more to his coming than was

  said to the world."

  At least, Annie thought, it had not been the girl's arm,

  raised in the iron grip of an angry father, that struck the mount beneath the victim.

  The scene before them darkened, the sun now hidden be­hind thick clouds. Annie looked up at the old house, at the double piazzas, at the four massive octagonal columns sup­porting the five-foot-high decorated parapet, at the four huge chimneys towering above the parapet.

  "There are seventy-two windows," Miss Dora observed, as they started up the front steps. The stairway was necessary because the house was built one story above ground, supported by brick columns. A sour, musty smell rose from the arched entrances to the space beneath the house.

  Cemeteries weren't high on Annie's list of places to spend time, but she felt certain no graveyard ever smelled earthier than the dark nooks beneath Tarrant House.

  She was glad to reach the broad, first-floor piazza. Pompeian-red shutters framed the immense windows. An enor­mous fanlight curved above the double walnut front doors. The glass panes were clear as ice.

  Miss Dora ignored the bell punch. Opening the door, she motioned for Annie and Max to enter. "Whitney and Char­lotte know we're coming. Can't say they're thrilled." She gave a high cackle of malicious amusement.

  Annie stepped into the entrance hall, a broad sweep of old wood flooring with occasional rugs. An elegant French chan­delier hung from an intricate Adam plaster medallion.

  So this was Tarrant House.

  Annie's first impression, despite the gloom of the day, was of brightness and beauty. Archways opened off either side of the hall. A monumental grandfather clock stood near the cross hallway.

  The soft rich glow of cypress, gloriously carved, dominated the drawing room, from the magnificent chimney breast and mantel to the archway decorated with surrounds of fluted Co­rinthian pilasters. Over the mantel was an oil portrait of a lovely woman with soft auburn hair and kind blue eyes. Her white ballgown was modestly cut. A pink sash curved around her waist.

  Miss Dora saw Annie's glance.

  "A lovely likeness of Amanda. She was," and the tart voice softened, "as good and kind as she looked. She deserved better than she got."

  The dining room was equally beautiful. Other family por­traits lined these walls. The peach walls made a gorgeous background for the Hepplewhite dining table and shield-back chairs. The drapes were of ivory silk. Crystal hung in delicate swags from the chandelier. Ivory and peach predominated in the rug.

  Miss Dora jabbed her cane. "Drawing room to the left, dining room to the right. A cross hall opens to the side piaz­zas. Past the stairs, the sewing room, study to the left—"

  The study. Annie took a step forward. Where the Judge was shot.

  "—kitchen, wash areas to the right."

  Miss Dora started down the hall. She was almost past the grandfather clock when she stopped. Her body went rigid. Then, slowly, she turned to look up at the clock face.

  Annie and Max looked, too.

  The hour hand stood at four, the minute hand at two minutes past.

  The clock was silent.

  "Four-oh-two." There was no mistaking the note of fear in Miss Dora's voice. Her silver head swiveled around, her eyes darted toward the stairs. "Dear God."

  "Miss Dora, what's wrong?"

  "The clock—that time—that's when Augustus died." She leaned on her stick, as if, suddenly, she needed support. Her eyes gazed emptily at the clock. She spoke in a voice so low she could scarcely be heard. "The clock in my bedroom—this morning it was stopped. At four-oh-two." A shudder moved through her small frame. "What does it mean?" She looked at Annie, then beyond her. "Charlotte, have you seen?" The cane pointed at the clock.

  Annie and Max turned to see Charlotte standing in the doorway of the kitchen.

  Annie knew that if ever she had seen fear on a human

  countenance, it was at this moment. All the color had seeped from Charlotte's plump face. She tried to speak and no words came. She turned, and the kitchen door swung shut behind her.

  She was gone, but the taste and smell of fear hung in that elegant hallway.

  Miss Dora stared after her. Then, slowly, an implacable calmness spread over her sharp features. "What will be, will be," she intoned. "Come."

  As Miss Dora moved on down the hall, Annie glanced back. She wished she'd insisted that they look more closely at the clock. Miss Dora apparently believed some ghostly force had summoned back the time of the Judge's death. That was sheer nonsense.

  Of course it was.

  They passed the staircase to the upper floors, and An
nie welcomed the distraction. It was an absolutely gorgeous stair­case, the elegant banister and balusters carved from rich red mahogany.

  The study was a warm and welcoming room with a broad fireplace and more cypress paneling. Two walls were filled with books. Many, with leather bindings and faded gilt titles, were obviously old. The desk glistened with polish. There wasn't a smudge upon it. It may have been a desk for work when it belonged to Judge Tarrant. Today, it was part of a room for show. The only hint of anything out of the ordinary was the broken window in one of the French doors that opened onto the back piazza. The pane was temporarily replaced by a piece of plywood.

  Max walked to the desk and sat behind it. His eyes scanned the room, the back piazza, and the cloud-muted flame of flowering azaleas in the garden.

  A scholar's room. A retreat from the world of action to the world of ideas. How often had the Judge stood beside the bookcases to choose a volume? Dickens perhaps? Chesterton? Montaigne?

  "If the gun was kept in that drawer—"

  Max reached down, slid open the lower left-hand drawer.

  "—and if the Judge was sitting there," Annie asked, "how did the murderer get it?"

  She came around the desk to stand beside Max. But, as she looked down, her glance was caught by the porcelain clock on the Queen Anne table between the French doors.

  This clock, too, wasn't running.

  The hour hand pointed at the four, the minute hand at two past the hour.

  Annie scarcely heard Miss Dora's comment.

  "Quite a pertinent question, young miss." Miss Dora gave her a grudging look of respect.

  "It certainly is." Max's look of admiration wasn't the least grudging.

  But Annie hardly noticed. She pointed at the silent clock. Max's lips curved in a soundless whistle.

  Miss Dora's eyes widened. "Again." The old lady touched the ruby brooch at her throat. "Dear God. It can only mean that the hour of judgment is drawing nigh."

  Max said gently, "Miss Dora, don't be frightened. Some­one's playing tricks."

  "I only wish that were true." Her voice was somber.

  "Maybe the point is to keep us from thinking—but it isn't going to work. Now"—he pointed at the drawer—"how did the murderer get the gun? The Judge wouldn't have sat here and let someone reach into the drawer, take out the gun, and shoot him! That means the killer took the gun out of the desk earlier in the day and came into the study with it. So the murder was premeditated."