Southern Ghost (32 page)

Annie felt sufficiently embroiled in present-day heartbreak without adding dead-and-gone misery to her bag of emotions, but she knew that Laurel, once launched, was quite as impervious to deflection as Miss Climpson when in pursuit of information for Lord Peter Wimsey.

“… and so Ann Fenwick fell in love not only with the spirited racehorse her father ordered from England, but also with the groom who arrived with the horse. Ann was a favorite of her stern father, Edward Fenwick, who had always treated her gently and lovingly. But Fenwick lived up to his reputation for anger and harshness when his daughter informed him that she wished to marry the young groom, Tony. Her father, a titled lord in England, was enraged. He swore that this would never happen, his daughter would not wed a groom. Ann protested that Tony was the younger son of a clergyman and her father could aid him in entering a profession. But Edward Fenwick, Lord Ripon, vowed he would rather see his daughter dead.”

A delicate sigh wafted over the wire from Charleston. “My dear,
I
have loved as Ann loved.”

Annie bit her tongue. It wouldn’t be at all the thing to ask Laurel if Ann Fenwick had also married five times. That would
not be a proper filial response. Besides, Max was within earshot.

“It is,” Laurel enthused, “as if dear Ann were here with me.”

Annie also forbore to ask in which century Ann’s problems occurred and whether the presence so near Laurel was moldy. And chilly. Graves did have a tendency to be both damp and moist. Especially in the Low Country.

“I feel her so
near.
Her tears have been mine as I contemplate the horrible fate which awaited her. Suffice it to say—”

Did Laurel fear Annie’s attention might be wandering?

“—Ann and Tony continued to rendezvous, albeit secretly, of course, because of her father’s furious prohibitions. Ann tried one more time to persuade her father and was rebuffed, with equal anger. So she and Tony eloped. They found a minister who wed them and they set out for Charles Town.” (Annie got the clue; a long damn time ago when that city on the Ashley River still bore a double name.) “It was evening and too late to hail a boat to cross. They stayed their bridal night—I hope a
glorious
night—but when dawn came so did a search party headed by her father. It callously rousted out the newlyweds and placed them in a coach, with Tony bound in ropes, and set out for Fenwick Castle. When the coach arrived and jolted to a stop in the stable yard, Lord Ripon shouted for a horse to be brought. Then he ordered his men to place Tony on the steed and to take a rope, tie it to Tony’s neck, then fasten it to the limb of the huge oak which Ann had climbed as a child.

“Ann, screaming and weeping, struggled with her father, pleading for the life of her new husband. Silent and grim, Lord Ripon placed a whip in her hand. Then, holding her tight, he lifted her arm and flailed down viciously on the horse’s flank. As it bolted and her beloved swung by his neck in the air above her, twisting and turning, Ann gave a dreadful cry and collapsed.”

“Laurel,” Annie said faintly.

Max looked at her in alarm. Weakly, Annie waggled her hand that it was all right. But it wasn’t all right. This dreadful
story would haunt her sleep for many nights to come. Whatever possessed Laurel to—

“My dear, I know. Such nightmares I have had. But we must face the fact that evil acts create heartbreak that lingers through time. Poor little Ann never recovered. Oh, she regained consciousness, of course. But ever after, she wandered the halls of Fenwick Castle, crying out for Tony, searching for Tony. After she died, her spirit stayed. Even today, though Fenwick Castle lies in ruins, you can hear her footsteps as she paces halls that no longer exist and her mournful cry of ‘Tony, Tony!”’

Annie shivered. On winter nights when rain hissed against the windows, did Sybil hear Ross’s name? Or was the cry simply in her heart?

“I must say I now look forward to the day when I shall have completed my chronicle of South Carolina ghosts. As you know, dear Annie, I have never felt it my duty to wallow in tragedy. However, I—”

Actually, if Annie envisioned Laurel wallowing, it certainly wasn’t in tragedy. In fact … Annie sternly corrected the drift of her thoughts.

“—must hew to the course as I find it, and I’m confident my insights shall be of
inestimable
value to you and
dear
Max. Ta.”

Annie replaced the receiver and looked at her husband. As pleasantly as possible. “Wallowing in tragedy, but brave as hell.”

“Now, Annie, you know the old dear means well.” He got to his feet. “Lunchtime. Strategy time.”

Annie wasn’t altogether diverted, though she was ravenous. Was this the moment to point out to Max that he had a blind spot the size of Texas in his understanding of his mother, her motives and her actions? But, in this instance, maybe he had a point. Besides, how could Annie complain? After all, the old dear was in Charleston, not Chastain.

“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 to
unload 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 be 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?