"I wouldn't believe a word Enid says," Charlotte said harshly.
Lucy Jane McKay stared somberly at the ruins of the Tarrant House Museum. "Ashes to ashes," she murmured. "I don't rightly know what's right or wrong, but it's a bad thing to drag the dead out of their graves. Leave the dead to themselves."
"That might be the thing to do," Max agreed quietly, "but we must find out what happened to Courtney Kimball."
Thunder exploded with an earthshaking roar. A sheet of brilliant white lightning cut a jagged rent in the black clouds. Wind spurted against them. Leaves and dust swirled in the heavy air.
The former Tarrant cook lifted her face to look up at the storm-freighted sky. The wind flattened her dress against her. She spoke above the growing clamor of the wind. "It's wrong that a young girl should be taken away." She turned to Annie. "On the telephone, you asked me about Miz Amanda and Miz
Julia. I don't know the truth of it, but that morning the Judge told Miz Julia she would have to leave Tarrant House and take Missy and go back to her parents. I saw Miz Julia's face. It was . . . so pitiful."
Thunder crashed nearby, followed immediately by a cascade of sheet lightning. Julia, clutching a shabby umbrella, huddled on a wooden bench near the back wall in a shady glen surrounded by azaleas. She looked up blankly as Miss Dora, followed by Annie and Max, ducked beneath overreaching branches of vivid crimson-flowered shrubs.
Miss Dora planted her cane firmly on a stepping stone. "Julia, why didn't you go to lunch—the day the Judge was murdered?"
"Lunch?" Julia fingered the tassel to the umbrella. "I don't know. I wasn't—I suppose I wasn't hungry."
"What did the Judge say to you?" Annie asked.
Julia worked the umbrella tassel between her thumb and forefinger, faster and faster. Her face was slack. The dark smudges in the hollows beneath her eyes gave her an abandoned, neglected look. "He was so angry. Amanda tried to tell him—and he wouldn't listen." She spoke in a rapid, dull monotone, never once looking up. "I didn't know what I was going to do. I came out to the garden, and I dug and dug. Later, I went back and there was a hole"—her hands spread until they were two feet apart—"and I dug it." Surprise lifted that monotone for an instant. "I dug it. Maybe I thought I could dig my way to China—anywhere. Anywhere but home. I wasn't going to go." Now she did look up. Her voice was suddenly childlike, but her face was older than time. "I wasn't going to go. No matter what happened. I'd already decided that." A quirky half-smile tilted her lips. "Everyone's so ugly about Milam. But he promised me. He said Missy and I didn't have to go."
Max leaned forward. "Go where, Julia?"
"Back . . . home." A shudder racked her thin body. "I couldn't do that. If I did, then Missy—" Tears welled in hereyes. "Everything was always good for Missy. Nothing ugly ever happened to her. We all loved her. And Milam did, too. But the right way. The right way."
The three of them looked at her in silence. Max crouched on one knee by the bench and took Julia's hand, quieting the spasmodic quiver of that hand working the tassel. "Your father—" Max's voice was gentle. "It wasn't right, was it?"
Those dark, pain-filled eyes stared at Max, then tears began to streak her cheeks. "Not Missy." Her voice was hoarse. "I would have died first."
Max loosened his grip and reached into his pocket. He handed his handkerchief to her.
She took it and held it tight, but made no move to wipe away the tears. "Not my baby."
Annie and Miss Dora leaned closer, straining to hear that soft, agonized voice over the rustle of the leaves, the whipping of the branches, the growl of thunder.
"When I heard he was dead, I was glad." She lifted her head and glared at them defiantly. "Glad. Glad!"
For a crackling instant, Chastain House stood out against the lightning-white sky. The vivid explosion of the storm limned Sybil, too, her dark hair whipping in the freshening wind as she stood with the wild arrogance of a Valkyrie beside the gleaming bronze gates at the foot of the Chastain drive. Beside Sybil, his clothes crumpled now from having been slept in, his eyes red-rimmed from exhaustion, stood Harris Walker, his face bleak and hopeless.
"Tell us," Sybil shouted over the crash of the thunder. "Who, dammit, who?"
4:16 P.M., SATURDAY, MAY 9, 1970
Just short of the end of the drive, Ross Tarrant slammed on his brakes. He sat, his shoulders heaving, gripping the steering wheel. Then, with an unconscious moan, he threw open the door and ran to the brick wall he'd climbed so many times when he was a little boy. He pulled himself up, tearing away swaths of ivy, but pulling and climbing until he could see over the top.
He hung there and looked and looked, for this was the glimpse to last him a lifetime.
Sybil stood beside the bronze Chastain gates, her raven-black hair stirred by the breeze, her lovely face lifted to the sun, her mouth curved in a smile of joy, her eyes glowing with happiness. She walked up and down in front of the gate, not anxious, but eager, so eager. Then she glanced down at her watch, cast a quick look at the suitcase on the sidewalk, and turned to hurry back up the drive.
. . . something borrowed, something blue . . .
Ross landed heavily on his feet and ran to his car.
All the long drive out to the hunting lodge, he held tight to the sprig of ivy in his hand.
Chapter 21.
Miss Dora lifted the mallet and swung at the bronze temple gong that sat opposite the silent grandfather clock.
Charlotte straightened the rose scarf at her throat. "Great-grandfather Jemson Tarrant brought it home from Ceylon. Such an interesting life he led. The captain of his own ship, of course. He was lost in a hurricane in 1891."
The mallet swung again and again, the somber tone echoing in the hallway.
As they came—from outside, from upstairs, from other rooms—Miss Dora pointed with her cane toward the drawing room. Sybil came with white-faced Harris Walker at her side. Miss Dora looked at him searchingly, then nodded in acquiescence. Milam was the last to appear, swaggering insolently down the stairs.
Miss Dora followed him into the drawing room.
In its dramatic and scarred history, the drawing room of Tarrant House must have welcomed many unlikely visitors. But Annie felt certain that in its century and a half of exis‑
tence, this Saturday afternoon gathering was perhaps strangest of all.
Chief Wells, hands behind his back, stood next to a dainty Chippendale piecrust table, dwarfing it. His white hat, the curved rim undented, rested next to a Spode clock. In deference to his surroundings, the ever-present hunk of tobacco was absent from his cheek. He glanced at Max, then at Annie. As usual, his icy dark eyes evinced no joy at seeing them.
But Annie ignored him. Her eyes kept returning to the Spode clock. It didn't surprise her that the hour hand pointed to four, the minute hand to two past the hour.
Miss Dora, so tiny she didn't even reach the chief's elbow, stood beside him. But she gave him no heed. Her gaze, too, focused on the clock. Slowly, she lifted her cane and pointed at the delicately tinted china clock.
"The hour has come. I have summoned you here to conclude my inquiry into the death of Augustus Tarrant." There was a terrible dignity in her voice. "But I am not alone. Augustus and Amanda demand justice."
The tiny old woman looked around the drawing room.
The glistening chandelier with its brilliant pinpoints of light emphasized the gloom beyond the storm-darkened windows. Thunder rumbled almost incessantly, a reminder that nature is inimical, untrustworthy, dangerous. Annie thought of Courtney Kimball, last seen on a soft spring night receding in time, and put away her last hope for Courtney's survival. How could they continue to believe Courtney would be found when there was no reason to hope? Three full days had passed since Max found her half-open purse flung to the ground in St. Michael's Cemetery. The steady rumble, the rattle of wind-whipped branches, the sighing of wind through the eaves sounded a requiem. Was Courtney's killer listening in this room? Who struck Courtney down? And why?