Southern Ghost

by Carolyn G. Hart

  Miss Kimball arrived in Chastain last week, renting an apartment unit behind the St. George Inn. Mrs. Caroline Gentry, owner of the inn, said, “Oh, this is so shocking. Such a charming young woman. She said she was in Chastain to do I research on her family history.”

  Miss Dora removed the pince-nez, folded the news clipping into a neat square, and returned both to her black bombazine pocket. She whipped the cane up and pointed it peremptorily at Max. “Why was Courtney meeting you?”

  “I had undertaken a commission for her, Miss Dora.” Max looked intently at the old lady. “The landlady at St. George Inn said you recommended the inn to Courtney. That means you and Courtney met. Why?”

  Miss Dora’s eyes sparkled. Her sudden cackle made Annie’s spine crinkle.

  “Not so mealymouth as you look, are you, young Max?” The cane dipped, as if in reluctant recognition that she had met her equal. “Polite enough, but nobody’s fool. Yes, I can see why you might wonder. Well.” Miss Dora sat upright in the prim chair, her shoulders as straight as any soldier on parade. There was a contained ferocity eerily like that of obsessive Miss Rosa Coldfield in Absalom, Absalom!, Annie thought with a shudder, remembering William Faulkner’s splendid novel of gothic passions and doom. “There’s more to this than meets the eye. Much, much more.”

  “Do you know who Courtney’s parents were?” Annie interjected impulsively.

  The shrewd black eyes focused on Annie. “That’s the question, isn’t it?” And she cackled again.

  “Miss Dora, you know more about Chastain than anyone.” Annie felt as if she were on the verge of great discoveries. “Do you know what happened to Judge Tarrant and Ross Tarrant and—”

  Miss Dora thumped the cane once, resoundingly. “Just wait, young miss. That’s you all over, fly off like a flibbertigibbet chicken trying to go after all the grain at once. That way, you end up with nothing. First things first.” She pursed her lips into a tight bow. “There is evil abroad.” Her whispery voice was as low and deep as water rushing through a cavern. “I won’t have any more misery. Too much misery’s been visited already.”

  The old, implacable voice hung in the elegant room like the echo of funeral bells. Miss Dora’s face, crosshatched like parchment, looked for all the world like a skull unearthed from an ancient grave.

  Annie shivered.

  Abruptly, the tiny old lady was on her feet. The black cane swept toward them. “Come with me.”

  Annie and Max looked at each other in surprise as she darted out into the hall, then hurried to follow.

  Miss Dora thumped down the central hallway to an enormous door. She pulled the silver handle and stepped out onto the back piazza.

  As she and Max joined their elderly hostess, Annie’s eyes widened. For a moment, she had no thought but for the beauty that lay before them. The magnificent garden reached all the way to the river, a paradise of scent and color. Delicate lavender wisteria bloomed against mossy brick walls to either side. A glorious profusion of azaleas, pink and rose and crimson and purple and yellow and white, ran in dazzling swaths all the way to the cliff’s edge.

  She started when Miss Dora’s wiry fingers fastened on her wrist.

  “These homes along the bluff”—the cane swung in an arc to her left—“were built when the river was king. This”—her silver head jerked to indicate the wide door behind them—“was where visitors were welcomed. Oh, the excitement when the wide-bottom canoes came into view, the eagerness with which they awaited the latest news from Savannah—the price of rice, the most recent ship from England, who the governor favored, what lovely daughter would wed and whom—gone, all gone. Only the ghosts remain.”

  Her voice sank at the last into a husky, chilling whisper.

  “Sometimes—when the wind is right—you can hear laughter and the clink of glasses and faintly—very faintly—strings from a harpsichord.”

  The breeze rustled the leaves of the nearby magnolia. Suddenly, the sweet scents from the garden—from the magnolia and the wisteria and the banana shrub and the thick white blossoms of the pittosporum—caught in Annie’s throat, choked her.

  The cane thumped against the wooden porch. The cold fingers tightened on Annie’s wrist. “Ghosts.” Ebony eyes looked from Annie to Max. “Are they real? Or are they memories? I didn’t hear the cry the night Amanda died.”

  Was the old woman mad? Was she caught up in a family’s demise, chained to memories of graves and worms and epitaphs?

  Miss Dora’s mouth trembled. “My favorite niece. Such a pretty, lighthearted girl. Everyone was surprised when she married Augustus Tarrant. He was close to thirty and she a girl of eighteen. Everyone said what a fine man, what a good man. True enough. But too old to marry a young girl. And three sons so quickly. She moved through the days and years quietly. Then, it was like a second youth, that year before Ross died. Amanda bloomed. A light in her eyes, a smile on her lips. But when Ross died, the light went out and she was an old woman. I would see her in the evening, walking along the bluff. …” The cane pointed toward the river. “They found her body at the foot of the cliff, a year to the day that Ross died.”

  Miss Dora loosed her pincer-tight grip on Annie and placed both hands on the silver handle of her cane. She stared toward the river, her face wrinkled in misery. “Sometimes at dusk or early morning, fog boils up from the water. It billows over the azaleas, swirls up into the live oaks.” The silver head nodded. “That’s when they see Amanda, walking on the path at the edge of the bluff, dressed all in white to please Augustus.” It was said so matter-of-factly that it took a moment for its import to register.

  “They see Amanda?” Goose bumps spread over Annie.

  Miss Dora’s unblinking eyes never wavered. “They say her soul can’t rest, that she’s looking for Ross.” A sudden cackle. “But he’s not there, is he? Ross is in the graveyard. I went there last week and looked at a young man’s grave. Twenty-one. Too young to die. An accident. That’s what they said at the time. Well, that had to be a lie, do you know that?” She stamped the cane on the porch and started down the broad wooden steps.

  Annie touched Max’s arm. “Max, she’s…”

  The old woman turned, stared malevolently up at them. “I’m what, young miss?”

  Annie swallowed. She couldn’t have answered had her life depended on it. Was this how the second Mrs. de Winter felt when she faced the cold enmity of the housekeeper at Manderley?

  But Max wasn’t daunted. “Miss Dora, are you saying Ross Tarrant was murdered?”

  The old lady gave an appreciative nod. “You can follow a thread, can’t you? Trouble is”—another shrill burst of laughter—“nobody knows the truth. But you’re going to find out,” and the cane pointed squarely at Max’s chest. “Because Harry Wells is sniffing after you, young man. He wouldn’t pay me any mind when I told him about Courtney Kimball coming here. Harry said Amanda acted real funny a few weeks before she died, everybody knew it, and he was as sure as a ’coon dog after a possum that Amanda just walked right off that cliff, driven mad by grief. He’s right about one thing. Amanda wasn’t herself when she wrote that letter—”

  “The letter to Delia?” Annie demanded. The letter was a fact, something to hold onto in the welter of emotion and inference created by Miss Dora. The letter and Courtney coming here, that was what mattered. As for Amanda’s ghost, who knew what kind of turmoil existed in Miss Dora’s mind?

  “Yes’m, that letter. Date’s on it and everything. Amanda wrote it. I know her handwriting.” The old mouth pursed, and she stared at them grimly. “Amanda wrote it one week before she died.”

  “The letter in the blue silk packet.” Max was making sure.

  White hair shimmered in the sunlight as Miss Dora nodded vigorously. “Saw it with my own eyes,” the old lady said fiercely. “Harry Wells can’t say that letter doesn’t exist. But he won’t pay it any mind, even though Amanda wrote that her son Ross was innocent and that someday, if ever Delia told Courtney about her parents, sh
e was to tell her, too, that ‘they lied about her daddy. Oh God, Delia, they lied about Ross.”’ The last, the part that Miss Dora was recalling from the decades-old letter, was said in a high, clear tone completely unlike Miss Dora’s. With a prickling of horror, Annie realized Miss Dora was mimicking Amanda Tarrant, speaking in a voice not heard since a grieving mother was found at the foot of a cliff.

  “How did they lie?” Annie whispered. “Who lied? What happened to Ross Tarrant?”

  “If I knew that, do you think I’d have called you here?” Miss Dora snapped. “That’s for the two of you to discover.” Her eyes darted from one to the other. “And you’ll start here—tonight.”

  9 A.M., SATURDAY, MAY 9, 1970

  The neatly folded newspaper lay near the front of the desk. Judge Tarrant finished reading the plaintiffs brief and returned it to the file. The work of a second-rate, jackleg ambulance chaser. Obviously, the plaintiff had been negligent, and the mill shouldn’t bear any expense for the injuries. A summary judgment would answer. He lifted his head and squinted as he thought about his order. Anger still smoldered deep within, but he was a man who would never let his personal feelings distract him from his work. His cold, sunken eyes swept past, then returned to focus on the Sargent portrait of his mother, painted when she was a girl of seventeen. She wore a white organdy dress and, in her hands, held a closed pink parasol. The sudden softness in his melancholy brown eyes merely underscored the severity of his features, a long supercilious nose, gaunt cheeks, thin firm lips, bony chin. With that haunting sense of loss that had never left him, he stared across the sunlit study at the oil portrait above the Adam mantel. He had been only four when she died. She was a faint memory of warmth and softness and the scent of roses, a mystic sensation of safety and goodness and well-being. She had been the mother of five children but he could not—had never—pictured her in a passionate, sweaty embrace.

  What kind of difference might it have made to two generations of Tarrants if he had seen his mother as a woman, not a Madonna?

  Chapter 9.

  Max didn’t need to glance at his watch. He’d been sitting in the dusty, spittoon-laden waiting room of the Chastain courthouse for almost an hour, waiting for His Highness, the chief, to deign to see him. He forced himself to remain at ease in a chair harder than basalt. He hated every ponderous click of the minute hand on the old-fashioned wall clock. It was late afternoon now, almost exactly twenty-four hours since that frantic call from Courtney.

  Blood on the front seat of her car.

  Dammit, where was Wells?

  And where, dear God, was Courtney?

  Annie was lousy at geometry and worse at what math teachers so endearingly call story problems. So her sense of accomplishment when she held up two sheets of paper, the Tarrant Family Tree in one hand and the Chastain Connection in the other, was monumental.

  Because this was essential.

  She and Max could easily slip into a morass of confusion if they didn’t get a good sense of who was who both now and then.

  Now she could see at a glance how Miss Dora figured in and why Courtney had come to see her.

  Courtney knew from the letter to Delia that her father was Ross Tarrant, which made Judge Augustus and Amanda Tarrant her paternal grandparents. Miss Dora was the sister of Ross’s maternal grandfather (father of Amanda), and, therefore, Amanda’s aunt and Ross’s great-aunt. It was interesting to wonder why Courtney chose to visit her father’s great-aunt. Why not her father’s brothers? She and Max needed to pursue this.

  The laboriously drawn family charts also revealed, to Annie’s distinct amusement, that Miss Dora was related—a cousin of sorts—to Chastain’s naughty lady, Sybil Chastain Giacomo, whom Annie and Max had met a couple of years ago during the house-and-garden mystery program. No wonder Miss Dora took Sybil’s lustful life-style so personally. Not, of course, that Annie cared at all how attractive Sybil was to men, even to one particular blond whom Annie cherished.

  Annie forced her mind back to relationships (other than carnal). After all, she wouldn’t have to deal with Sybil during this visit to Chastain. In fact, Annie fervently hoped the incredibly gorgeous mistress of another of Chastain’s storied homes was at that moment far away. Far, far away. Maybe at her villa in Florence.

  Annie double-checked her dates and put the sheets on the bedside table. She chewed on her pencil point for a moment, then marked a series of lines, connecting Dora to Amanda (and thereby Ross) and to Sybil.

  The phone rang.

  As she reached for the receiver, Annie was suddenly certain of her caller. But she refused to accept this intuitive knowledge as a presentiment.

  “…do hope that dear Dorothy L. is being cared for, as well as Agatha.”

  “Laurel”—Annie was outraged—“of course they’re both fine! Barb’s going by the house morning and evening to feed Dorothy L. And Dorothy L. purred like a steam engine when I went by the house this afternoon to pack a couple of suitcases.” Annie felt no need to elaborate on her packing objectives, which included not only clothes and toiletries, but a coffeemaker, two pounds of Colombian Supreme, and a container of peanut butter cookies. She’d stopped by Death on Demand, too, and borrowed two coffee mugs, one inscribed in red script with The House on the Marsh by Florence Warden and the other with The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart. After all, even armies maintain troop morale with food. Besides, did Laurel think she and Max were cat abusers? Who could possibly forget Dorothy L., a cat with more self-esteem than Nancy Reagan and Kitty Kelly combined. And not, as habitués of the bookstore knew, exactly a bosom companion of Agatha, Death on Demand’s resident feline. Sometimes separate maintenance is an inspired solution.

  “… surprised that I don’t know of a single cat!”

  Annie knew she’d missed something. Laurel knew many cats in addition to Agatha and Dorothy L. Could this be selective memory loss? What might it augur for the future? Would Laurel soon begin dismissing from her memory persons, as well as cats, for whom she didn’t cherish an especial passion? Such as Annie?

  “… it’s curious to me because they are the most empathetic of creatures, as we all know. Instead, there is this huge white dog, apparently not the least bit charming. In fact, he quite terrifies travelers on the road that passes by the ruins of Goshen Hill near Newberry. And has been doing so for more than a hundred years. But I simply don’t understand why not a can However, it isn’t mine to criticize the workings of the other world; it is mine simply to report, and I did think, Annie, you would find it interesting to know that Chastain is quite a hotbed of ghosts!”

  Oh, of course. No ghost cats. A ghost dog. And a hotbed of ghosts in Chastain. Since most references to ghosts with which Annie was familiar stressed the icy coldness that enveloped those in close proximity to otherworld visitants, Annie thought the term “hotbed” a curious word choice, but she had no intention of delving for the reason, ostensible or unstated.

  “Annie, are you there?”

  “Oh, yes, of course, Laurel. I was merely considering the question of no ghost cats.”

  “My dear child”—a throaty sigh—“how like you to focus upon a philosophical aside. Your concentration here should surely be on the ghosts associated with Tarrant House.”

  It was difficult not to be offended. After all, it was Laurel who had brought up ghost felines or their Jack, not Annie.

  Annie counterattacked. “Oh, sure,” she said offhandedly, “those ghosts. We know all about them. The ghostly gallop heard when the moon is full is Robert Tarrant rushing home to see his sick sister. And no amount of scrubbing has ever been able to remove his bloodstains from the step next to the landing. And everyone knows about Amanda Tarrant walking along the side of the cliff by the river.”

  “Oh.” The simple syllable sagged with deflation.

  Annie felt an immediate pang of shame. How could she have been so selfish? Poor Laurel. Confined to bed, no doubt her ankles throbbing, reduced to phone calls (although Annie did
remember that Laurel had elevated this means of communication to an art form), how could Annie have been so callous? “But I’m sure you have a much better sense of what these appearances mean,” Annie said quickly.

  Laurel was never quashed for long. “Certainly there is that.” The husky voice was emphatic. “And I know—because I’ve developed such rapport—that these spirits are tied to Earth because of the trauma involved in their leave-taking. Such heartbreak for a family. The War, of course.”

  Annie raised a sardonic eyebrow. Was Laurel aspiring to true southernhood by referring to the Civil War simply as the War?

  “Three sons lost fighting for hearth and home, the fourth lost through a father’s uncontrolled rage—and you know the guilt and misery that must have stemmed from such an act.” Her tone was funereal. “One can only guess at the kind of passions aroused that day when Robert came home—only to shed his heart’s blood on the very steps he’d lightly sped up and down as a beloved child.”

  For just an instant, Annie experienced a wave of sadness that left her shaken. She could see the father’s distraught face, feel Robert’s determination, hear the sharp crack of a pistol shot.

  “Laurel,” she cried. “That’s dreadful.”

  “Oh, dear Annie, you feel it, too!”

  Annie looked down at the sketch pad beneath her hand. Most of the sheet was taken up by notes she’d made concerning the Tarrant and Chastain families. It unnerved her to see that she’d also drawn a cat with a quizzical expression, a dog with his lips drawn back in a ferocious snarl, and a stairway with a dark splotch near the landing. Dammit, she wasn’t a Ouija board!

  “… so disturbing to all the family that Ross and his father had that hideous quarrel on the day both died.”

  “Quarrel!” The pen in Annie’s hand scooted along the page as if possessed, leaving a trail of question marks. “What quarrel? How do you know?”

  “Obviously, my dear.” The husky tone was just this side of patronizing. “As a competent researcher, I do seek information from those still inhabiting this earthly vale. It should be apparent to the meanest intelligence that I can’t communicate in person with figures involved in events where the primary participants are now on the Other Side. Although one has heard of astounding success with channeling. But rather a different objective, don’t you think? It was séances in the nineteen-twenties and -thirties. But so many did turn out to be contrived. So disillusioning for true believers. I know that Mary Roberts Rinehart—such an adventurous woman, especially for those days, nurses’ training in the most arduous early days of nursing, camel journeys, rugged camping, even going to war—cast a jaundiced eye upon the results. I for one—”