Southern Ghost (33 page)

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 Annie 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.”

After a final lingering look at the clock, Miss Dora said soberly, “Augustus was not a fool.” She stared at the desk and Annie was certain her eyes beheld another figure there. “However”—and her tone was full of reluctance—“if one of his sons came in to see him—not Ross certainly after their fiery quarrel—but either Whitney or Milam and the talk led to hunting and guns, would Augustus have been suspicious if his visitor professed interest in that relic from the War and asked to see it?”

Max pushed back the desk chair. “If a man has murder in
mind, it would be a little foolhardy merely to assume that the gun was in working condition. How could he count on it being loaded?”

“That could have been determined earlier,” Miss Dora replied dispassionately. “Besides, loaded guns are no rarity in Chastain.”

Max walked toward the French doors and looked out into the garden. “Would these doors have been locked that afternoon?”

“No. In Chastain, locked doors, of any kind,
are
a rarity.” The old lady too looked out at the garden. “So, of course, the murderer could easily have entered from the piazza.”

Loaded guns and unlocked doors. And someone with murder in his heart. Or hers.

On the way out of the study, Annie glanced back at the tranquil room. Murder had occurred there, at that desk. Nothing today remained of that moment—except the time captured by the silent clock on the beautiful old Queen Anne table. Annie shivered.

Her sense of horror grew as they climbed the magnificent staircase. This was a house teeming with violent memories. The bloodstain just before the landing was evident, a dark discoloration of the wood. It was obvious that the step had been scrubbed and scrubbed, but no amount of effort had washed away the last vestige of Robert Tarrant’s blood. Annie skirted that uneven splotch and hurried after Miss Dora. Max gave her elbow a squeeze.

“Plenty of room up here.” Miss Dora stood at the top of the stairs like a tour guide. “That door leads out to the second-story front piazza.” She turned, pointed her stick the opposite way. “That door at the end of the hall goes out onto the second-story back piazza.

“There are six bedrooms upstairs.” Her silvered brows drew down in thought. “It’s been a good many years since I’ve been upstairs, but I believe the master bedroom is in the southeast corner.”

She stalked down the wide hall. Annie hoped her cane wouldn’t snag the carpet runner. Miss Dora rapped the knob
of her cane against the door, then opened it. “Hmm, yes. As I thought. This is the master bedroom.”

Annie and Max peered over her shoulder. Annie definitely felt like a trespasser as she scanned the room, home now to Whitney and Charlotte. A pair of trousers in a pants press. An ornate silver jewel case on the dressing table, the lid open to reveal a handful of antique rings with stones of opal or carnelian or jade. A book of poetry—Longfellow—facedown on the pale gold of the bedspread, which matched the linen window hangings and the delicate background color of the Chinese wallpaper. Acanthus leaves decorated the posts of the four-poster bed. Past the half-open closet door, Annie glimpsed a row of Whitney’s suits and shirts.

Miss Dora thumped her cane to the floor and gripped the silver head. “Now you’ve seen it. Much as it was twenty-two years ago. Let’s go to the garden.”