"Good. I'm glad to see you can sometimes be sensible. Now," Miss Dora cleared her throat, "to continue":
Chief Wells reported that the police laboratory confirmed the stains in the car are from human blood.
Darling was released late Wednesday night on his own recognizance.
Efforts by this reporter to contact Darling, owner of Confidential Commissions, a personal consultation company on Broward's Rock Island, have been unsuccessful.
An all-points‑
Heiress Disappears; Police Are Puzzled
A Beaufort heiress, Miss Courtney Kimball, 21, has been reported missing, according to Chastain police.
Police Chief Harry Wells announced today that a Broward's Rock businessman, Maxwell Darling, had an appointment with Miss Kimball on Wednesday night, and that Darling came to police with Miss Kimball's handbag claiming he found it at the site of their scheduled meeting,
An all-points bulletin has been issued. Miss Kimball is described as a slender, blue-eyed blonde. The missing woman is the daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. Carleton Kimball of Beaufort, one of that city's oldest and most prominent families. The familyattorney, Roger Smithson III, declined comment today on what might have brought Miss Kimball to Chastain.
Miss Kimball arrived in Chastain last week, renting an apartment unit behind the St. George Inn. Mrs. Caroline Gentry, owner of the inn, said,
said she was in Chastain to do research on her family history."
"Oh, this is so shocking. Such a charming young woman. She
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 Goldfield 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 cliffs 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. Sud‑
denly, 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—"