Carolyn G. Hart (35 page)

Ducking beneath the low limbs of a gnarled live oak, she paced out the position of the tents. Then she scuffed a mark in the grayish dirt with her sandal. This would be a good place for the Death on Demand table. She could picture the table now, heaped with bookstore mementos, including blood-red, stiletto-shaped bookmarks, a stock of t-shirts with the store name, or pictures of favorite mystery sleuths, such as Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Sherlock Holmes, or Nero Wolfe, or slogans, such as I’D RATHER BE DETECTING, CRIME DOESN’T PAY ENOUGH, or POISON IN A PINCH.

Her irritation began to fade. She always enjoyed planning new and novel ways of spreading the good word about Death on Demand. And just think, most of the people signed up for the Mystery Nights must be mystery lovers. Why else would they come? She brushed away their interest in old houses and lovely gardens. These were
crime
enthusiasts, ready to swap knowledgeable tidbits about their favorites, ranging from
Bleak House
to
Home Sweet Homicide
.

And she had just had the marketing idea of the century. The watercolors! They were the first things everybody checked out at the store. The competition to be
the first to name author and title was fierce. What would it cost to have the watercolors run off as posters and offer them for sale, too?

Whipping out a notepad from her purse, she scrawled a reminder to check the cost and confer with Drew Bartlett, this month’s artist.

“Genius,” she murmured to herself complacently. “Sheer genius.”

Okay. Practical matters. Order the tents, tables, chairs. Make up instruction sheets for the teams.

The teams would be racing against the clock in their investigations. As soon as a team was certain it knew the murderer’s identity, the Team Captain would write this information, along with the incriminating evidence they had detected, put the information in an envelope, seal it, and turn it in to Annie, who would initial it and stamp the time on the outside of the envelope. At the climax of the grand Denouement Ball Friday evening on the tennis court of Prichard House, the winning team would be announced. The winner would be the team which discovered the murderer in the shortest time, no matter which evening the team competed. A team which turned in its correct answer at 9:03
P.M
. Wednesday would defeat a team which handed in the correct answer at 9:15 Monday night.

Now, where to put the body.

She looked again at the smooth lawn, bounded by beds of lavender-pink and rose-red azaleas, then paced along a wide oyster-shell path to the back of the enormous lot. Here a woodland garden bloomed with tangled dogwood, redbud, and wisteria. The snowy white of the dogwood contrasted brilliantly with the purplish red of the redbud. The path wound past a twelve-foot tall thicket of cane and emerged in a small clearing. A black water pond, ringed by clumps of royal purple
irises, lay in the sculpted shadows of immense, dark, knobby cypresses and graceful willows. Annie took a deep breath, enjoying the faint, sweet scent of the irises, barely distinguishable against the stronger smell of the still water. It was a secluded spot. She felt a rising sense of excitement. Rapidly, she discarded her original plan for Thompson Hatfield’s body to be discovered in his bank office and substituted the background of the annual bank picnic. The Victorian gazebo among the willows would be a superb spot. Of course, this change would entail a whole new set of clues, but she could manage that easily. She got out her notepad and sketched The Scene of the Crime. Oh, it was perfect.

The body. A dummy? A store mannequin? She must attend to that today, also. She glanced at her watch. Almost two. Somehow, between fending off Max and traveling to Chastain, she’d missed lunch. She’d noticed a chili dog stand on her way into town. That would do nicely. But first, she’d drop by the Historical Preservation Society and leave some information to be stapled to the brochures. Mrs. Webster was clearly uninterested in promoting the Mystery Nights program, but she needn’t think Annie Laurance was going to be fobbed off or ignored.

She was feeling fairly combative as she pushed through the massive wooden door of the old fort.

Two-foot-thick walls, inset windows, low ceilings, and forty-watt bulbs in wall sconces recreated the dungeon-like atmosphere the place must have had almost two hundred years before. The musty smell from long years of dust hung in the damp air. A wooden rack filled with pamphlets and brochures ran along the brick wall to her left.

“Good morning.” An elderly woman with the soft,
slurred speech of a native South Carolinian smiled and looked up at Annie with interest. She had masses of faded blonde curls and wore a shapeless baby-blue polyester dress and matching beaded earrings, but her heavy face radiated good humor and an unquenchable enthusiasm. She sat behind a mahogany Chippendale writing table. Both she and the old Remington on a typing stand behind her looked incongruously modern.

“I’m Annie Laurance, and Mrs. Webster has hired me to plan a Mystery Night program for—”

“The house-and-garden tours. Oh, I do feel this is going to be so thrilling. And such a wonderful idea. I think it was Mr. Merrill who thought it up. He and his wife went to a Murder Weekend in Atlanta last year and just had a wonderful time.” She heaved herself up and came around the desk. “I’m Louisa Binning, the secretary. What can I do to help?”

What a difference in blondes, a gorgeous viper and a frumpy delight. Annie began to nurture kindly feelings for the Chastain Historical Preservation Society as Louisa, who turned out to be not only chatty but efficient, loaded her down with brochures, provided the names of caterers and equipment rental companies, swiftly took down the details of the Mystery Nights program, and promised production, “Oh, by next Monday at the latest,” of a promotional blurb to be included in the previously printed House and Garden tour brochures.

“As for the body,” she riffled through a stack of papers on the writing table and handed Annie a Red Cross brochure, “you can stop on your way out of town and talk to Edith Ferrier, one of our very nicest Board members. I’ll call ahead for you. I just know she’ll be glad to help out.”

Adding the brochure to her stack of pamphlets, she
said gratefully, “Mrs. Binning, I can’t thank you enough for all your help.”

“Oh, I love doing it. And it’s my job.” She beamed. “Now, about the slip-ins for the tour brochures. We can manage one color on our mimeograph machine. Do you think a dagger dripping blood?”

“Fantastic,” Annie crowed.

“Disgusting,” a voice hissed from the cavernous dimness of a bricked archway behind the secretary.

Annie jumped, but mellow Louisa merely turned her head and said, “Oh, there you are, Miss Dora. Come meet our young mystery expert, Annie Laurance. Miss Laurance, this is Miss Dora Brevard, who is the mainstay of the Society. No one knows more about Chastain and its history than Miss Dora.”

A tiny figure, more like a gnome than a woman, poked out of the shadow. Shaggy silver hair framed an ancient face, the skin crumpled in cross-hatched lines. But the deep-set eyes, dark as raisins, peered out with ferocious intelligence. Dora Brevard wore a heavy black silk dress that rustled around her high-topped leather shoes and a rakishly tilted cloth hat with a purple feather. She gripped an ebony cane in one withered hand, but she moved with surprising speed, thumping across the stone floor to look up with keen suspicion at Annie.

“The goal of the Society is to preserve the heritage of Chastain.” She tapped the cane to the stone for emphasis. Her voice had a crackly, dry quality like the rustle of old paper. “Adding these Mystery Nights,” the words sounded like an epithet, “can do nothing but detract from our mission.”

The secretary interceded quickly. “Now, Miss Dora, this young lady has come here today to get materials about Chastain. She’s
very
interested in our history.
And she wants to help us raise as much money as we can.”

“Desecration,” the old lady muttered. “That’s what it is. All these people tramping through our houses—”

Louisa patted the bony shoulder soothingly. “Tourists come because they want to understand the past.”

The old lady shrugged away the secretary’s hand. Her beady eyes glittered with anger. “Cheap, that’s what the world is today. Everything tawdry and false. And I won’t stand for it here in Chastain. Do you hear?” She thudded the cane against the floor. Then, in a swift and disturbing about-face, the wizened features reformed in a cunning smile. “So you’re interested in our history, are you, young woman. That’s as it should be. And I’ll see that you aren’t filled with jiggery and pokery. You can walk me home, and I’ll tell you about Chastain. Here now, you can carry my bag for me,” and she thrust a crocheted receptacle into Annie’s hands. It was surprisingly heavy. She glanced down and saw it was crammed to the brim with books, papers, and photostats.

“Records.” Miss Dora stabbed a gnarled finger at the bag. “Deeds, land grants, birth and death certificates, and wills. That’s the heart of the matter, wills.” She cackled and darted toward the heavy door, the cane a staccato accompaniment. “Come along now. I don’t waste time.”

Annie glanced helplessly toward the secretary, who said meaningfully, “Miss Dora is Secretary to the Board.”

“Secretary,” Annie repeated blankly. “But I thought you—”

“Oh, I just work here. Miss Dora is
permanent
secretary to the Board.”

And Annie was employed by the Board. She got the
message, hefted the bag, and followed the tip-tap of the cane.

Out on the sidewalk, Miss Dora paused long enough to dart a malevolent glance down Ephraim Street. “I suppose Louisa gave you the brochure that describes the houses on the tour?”

“Oh yes, I have all the material on those houses.” Annie was surprised to find her hands sweating. She found Miss Dora unsettling, to say the least. There was too much force and intelligence in those piercing brown eyes to dismiss her as merely dotty. It would be easy to imagine her as a Salem witch or Florentine poisoner.

“It’s poorly phrased,” the old woman snorted, “but accurate. So we’ll walk up Lafayette.” One hand tapped the cane and the other gripped Annie’s elbow like a marsh hawk clutching a juicy rodent. The raspy voice swept ahead relentlessly, unfolding the pageant of the past. Annie, despite her wariness, was caught up by the vividness and pungency of the old lady’s descriptions, and, unexpectedly, she glimpsed visions of long ago: The huge grave they dug for the yellow-fever victims. The glorious night when General Washington came for a ball. “That was in the Smiley house. It stood on the bluff over there where the fire station is.” The devastating fire of 1756, which started on the docks, a careless match thrown into bales of cotton. “A new bride ordered the slaves to dip all her tablecloths and linens in the river and cover the roof, so the Mainey house was saved.” The duels, the horse races, the elegant and civilized parties. The long, heartbreaking Federal occupation, and the grim days that followed the War when the homes of most old Chastain families were sold for taxes.

Miss Dora paraded Annie up and down Federal
Street. “The first Episcopal Church stood just there. The present St. Michael’s and All Angels was established in 1760, after the fire.” She dismissed the stuccoed business buildings erected in the late 1800s as uninteresting, but grudgingly admired the Prichard Museum. “Built in 1843 by the Chastain Thursday Night Society. Men have always loved gaming.” She bracketed the word, “Men,” much as Miss Silver did when discussing the eating and drinking habits of the male species. But she wasn’t as genial as Miss Silver, by a long shot. Then, the indefatigable Miss Dora led her back to Ephraim Street and they followed the curve of the River past Lookout Point. More lovely old homes fronted the bluff. “They built them on high foundations of tabby, that’s the cement made from burning oyster shells to make a lime, then mixing it with crushed shells and sand. Two-story homes with front and side piazzas to catch the prevailing breezes from the southeast. It was hot in the summertime, mind you, but the open central hallways made the rooms as cool and fresh as the little airconditioned boxes they build today. There’s the Cannehill house, eight fireplaces and a fine double verandah. Early 1800s. That’s the Hapworth House, built in 1850, belonged to a doctor, sold for taxes after the War. A Board member, also a doctor, lives there today.” Then the old lady, her wrinkled face twisted in a fierce scowl, paused to lean against her stick and glare at a magnificent Greek Revival mansion with a portico that rivaled the Prichard House in grandeur. A quartet of huge Ionic columns rose two stories and supported a gleaming white pediment. A luxurious, classic yellow Bentley lounged in the drive, the kind of automobile that proclaims its owner’s wealth and cockiness.

“What a lovely home. And what a magnificent car,” Annie said admiringly.

“She defiles her heritage,” the raspy voice intoned.

Startled, Annie looked down at her tiny, black-clad companion.

“No better than a common whore, and I don’t care if her name is Chastain.”

“Really?”