Literary Tour 01 - Frankly My Dear I'm Dead

by Washburn, Livia

  I watched for any signs of more trouble between Mr. Riley and Mr. Mueller, but other than a sour glance exchanged between them, each pretended the other didn’t exist. They sat at opposite ends of the bus, Mueller and his wife up front, Riley in the back.

  We reached the plantation at mid-morning, Mr. Cobb turning the bus from the main road onto a quarter-mile-long driveway lined with magnolia trees, some of which had hydrangea plants climbing them and blooming, in addition to the large, snowy-white magnolia blooms. The cotton plants were just beginning to flower in the fields that flanked the drive. It would still be at least a couple of months before the cotton started to produce fluffy white bolls. Workers hoed weeds out of the field of plants. The men wore overalls and broadbrimmed straw hats. The women were in long dresses and colorful kerchiefs. It was hard work out there in the sun, but they were being paid excellent wages. These folks were actors as much as they were field hands.

  The house at the end of the driveway was magnificent, a four-story structure with massive columns supporting a covered portico where the drive curved in front of it. Whitepainted walls, set off by elegant wooden and wrought-iron trim, shone in the sun. More magnolias, as well as towering cottonwoods, surrounded the house. Well-tended flowerbeds gave the grounds patches of brilliant color. Roses, lilies, gladiolas, and half a dozen other varieties were bursting with blooms. Think of the most beautiful, stately plantation home you can imagine, and that gives you a pretty good idea of what this mock-Tara looked like.

  Pretty girls in hoop skirts strolled the grounds, accompanied by young men in swallowtail coats, silk vests, and fancy cravats with jeweled stickpins in them. A few Confederate officers in spotless gray uniforms were mixed in for good measure. The sun shone on their brass buttons, scabbards, and insignia. The men all had muttonchop whiskers. Some had drooping mustaches and others sported Beauregard beards. The women’s hair was done in elaborate arrangements of curls, some of them adorned by flowers.

  A burly, middle-aged man in a fancy suit was waiting for the bus. As it came to a stop and the tourists began to get off, this man boomed out, “Welcome to Tara, folks!” He was bigger than Thomas Mitchell but did a passable imitation of that character actor’s voice. I thought I heard a hint of a British accent under the Southern drawl that he was putting on. He held out a hand and continued, “Scarlett and I are so glad to see you.”

  The woman who came forward to take his hand was beautiful, all right, no doubt about that. With her fair skin displayed to advantage in the low-cut gown she wore and ringlets of midnight-dark hair tumbling around her head and over her bare shoulders, she did Scarlett O’Hara proud. She smiled coyly and said, “Why, fiddle-dee-dee, Papa, who are all these nice folks who’ve come to see us here at Tara?”

  Her accent was thick as molasses. I felt a little like groaning because her Southern belle act was so overdone, but the tourists seemed to be eating it up, especially when she turned her head and called, “Rhett, come over here and say howdy to all these nice folks who’ve come to visit us.”

  The man who joined them wore a white suit and a broadbrimmed planter’s hat. He had an unlit cigar in his mouth. The strong chin, the narrow mustache, the cocky grin, and the twinkle in his eyes were all just about perfect. He took off his hat, revealing thick black hair, and gave a little bow to the group. Then he put the hat back on, took the cigar out of his mouth, and said, “Hello, everyone. I’m glad you ran the blockade to come see us today.”

  “We’ll be splitting up into three separate groups,” the older man explained. “I’ll take one group around and explain the workings of the plantation, while Captain Butler will accompany another group to the stables and Scarlett will show a third group through the house. Then we’ll switch around later, so everyone will get to see everything, don’t worry about that. There’ll be a picnic lunch served at one o’clock. After that, we’ll finish the tours, and you’ll have plenty of time to wander around the plantation on your own before the ball this evening. Are there any questions?”

  Mueller looked around and said, “Yes. Where are the slaves?”

  Mr. O’Hara—that’s how I thought of him, since I didn’t know his real name—looked a little surprised and said, “We, ah, don’t have any slaves here, sir. Slavery is—”

  “Illegal, yes, yes, I know. I meant people portraying slaves. We saw the field hands, but there must be house slaves as well, ja?”

  “When you tour the house, you’ll see some servants working there,” O’Hara explained.

  “Good. A plantation should have plenty of slaves.”

  I didn’t like Mueller much to start with, and I was starting to like him less. I glanced at his wife, a tired-looking woman with red hair. She was supposed to be the Gone With the Wind fan in the family, but she didn’t look as enthusiastic about seeing all this as her husband did.

  You don’t have to like the people who sign up for your tours, though; you just have to make sure they enjoy themselves. That way, maybe they’ll come back sometime, or recommend you to their friends. I put a smile on my face and said, “Let’s get started splitting up into groups.”

  With Luke’s help, I got everybody sorted out and on their way. I would have made sure to put Mueller and Riley into different groups if I needed to, but luckily I didn’t have to do that. Mueller and his wife went into the house with Scarlett while Riley attached himself to the group following Rhett toward the stables. Augusta and Amelia went with that bunch, too.

  I stood beside the bus and said to Luke, “So far, so good.” “Don’t worry, Miz D. It’ll all be fine.”

  Wilson Cobb said, “It’s air-conditioned inside the house, so I’m going in there to cool off for a while before I head back to town. Going to be a scorcher today.”

  “That’s fine, Mr. Cobb,” I told him. “We won’t need you until we’re ready to start back tomorrow.”

  He walked off, moving with the caution of the elderly. He didn’t want to fall and break a hip or anything like that.

  When everyone was gone, I was left by myself standing next to the bus. I looked around at the plantation and thought about how pretty it was. With my back to the bus, I could almost believe that I had gone back in the past a hundred and fifty years or so. The house and the grounds looked a lot like they must have back in those days. I wasn’t foolish enough to believe that things had been better back then for anyone, not just the slaves. The hardships of life were a lot rougher on everyone. Life was shorter, harder, and more brutal.

  But, my, the flowers were pretty, and their delicious fragrance filled the air. The sky was a beautiful blue, dotted with fluffy white clouds. The spreading trees around the house provided some welcome shade.

  It was only after a few moments of enjoying the solitude and the sense of being transported back in time that I began to notice things like the humming of the central air-conditioning system’s round condenser at the side of the house and the whisper of traffic from the nearby highway. I looked up and saw the little satellite dish attached to the fourth-floor balcony. There sure hadn’t been anything like that back in the real plantation days. Shoot, the country hadn’t even been crossed by telegraph wires back then.

  That was proof you couldn’t keep the modern world out, even when you tried.

  With a shake of my head at that thought, I went into the house to join the group being shown around by the actress playing Scarlett.

  The tour went well during the rest of the morning and the afternoon, with the three groups swapping around and, I hoped, learning a lot about life on a Southern plantation in the antebellum days.

  Luke and I kept ourselves available in the house all afternoon in case anyone had any questions or problems, but everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves. Even Elliott Riley gave me a smile when he ambled by during the time devoted to wandering freely around the grounds and the house.

  Dinner was served in a huge dining room lit by glittering crystal chandeliers. I knew there were electric lights concealed here and th
ere, but they weren’t in use. The oil lamps and the hundreds of candles provided plenty of illumination. The only real concession to the modern age was the air conditioning, and nobody who was used to modern conveniences could do without that, not even for the sake of authenticity.

  Following the banquet, everybody adjourned to an even more vast ballroom with gleaming parquet floors, and walls hung with tapestries and landscape paintings. An orchestra played waltzes and other dance music of the period. The actors who worked there started the dancing, but the tourists were welcome to join in, too, and they did. I kept expecting Riley to show up and ask me for that dance he had mentioned the day before, but he didn’t. In fact, I wasn’t sure where he was.

  But he had to be around somewhere, because the bus wouldn’t be back until the next morning.

  The phony Scarlett was the belle of the ball, of course. She danced with everyone—Rhett, Ashley Wilkes, the Tarleton twins, and several of the men from the tour group. The actors playing the Tarletons, who looked like real twins, made a point of dancing with Augusta and Amelia, which made the girls smile and laugh and prompted several people to take pictures of them.

  I didn’t dance at all, although Luke asked me. I knew he didn’t really want to and was asking more out of a sense of duty than anything else, so I told him that was all right, not to worry about it.

  A little later, I was standing next to the wall, under one of the big paintings, when an unfamiliar voice said from beside me, “Enjoying yourself, Ms. Dickinson?”

  I looked over, expecting to see one of the staff from the plantation house, but instead I saw a man wearing a corduroy jacket and jeans, rather than the period costume that the people who worked here wore. He wore glasses and had thinning blond hair touched here and there with gray.

  “Have we met?” I asked him.

  “No, but I know who you are. Mr. Ralston, who owns the plantation, pointed you out to me.” He put out a hand. “I’m Will Burke. Doctor Will Burke.”

  I shook hands with him and asked, “Doctor as in physician, or professor?”

  “Professor, definitely,” he said. “My doctorate is in English, and I teach at one of the local colleges. But I do some work on the side as a consultant here on the plantation, as well as at the Center for Southern Literature.”

  “So you’re here because of the Gone With the Wind connection?”

  “That’s right. My thesis was about the interrelationship between literature and history. I’ve always been interested in the subject.”

  “Well, no offense, Professor Burke, but I’m not that academically minded.”

  He smiled. “I try not to be except when I’m teaching a class. Kick me in the shin if I start sounding stuffy, okay?”

  “You’ve got a deal. What do you do here, anyway?”

  “It’s my job to keep things accurate both from a historical perspective and as they relate to Mitchell’s novel.”

  “I guess you know about other books, too?”

  “Some,” he said with a shrug and another smile. “Why do you ask?”

  “I was thinking about trying to set up some other tours that would be centered around different books and authors. I might just have to pick your brain about that sometime.”

  “Pick away,” he said. “I’d be glad to help if I can.”

  I chatted for a few more minutes with Dr. Will Burke, then he had to go off to check on some detail. He gave me a wave and a smile as he left, and I smiled back at him. He was a nicelooking, interesting guy, I found myself thinking. Soft spoken, but he was friendly and he obviously knew a lot.

  And I knew better than to be thinking such things, with the ink on my divorce papers barely dry, relatively speaking. Keeping my new business going would take all of my time for the foreseeable future.

  By late in the evening, I was convinced everything was going to be just fine for the rest of the tour. I’m not superstitious enough to believe I jinxed it by thinking that, but looking back now, I shouldn’t have done it anyway. No sense in tempting fate.

  Because right about then, somebody screamed and men started to yell in confusion and I looked around for the source of the commotion, halfway expecting that Mueller and Riley had gotten into it again. I was worried about my nieces, too, since I had sort of lost track of them during the evening and I was supposed to be looking out for them.

  I found Luke, grabbed his arm, and tugged him along with me. We bulled our way across the crowded ballroom toward the French doors on the far side, which seemed to be where most of the yelling was coming from.

  When we got there, I saw that one set of doors was standing open. They led out into an elaborate garden behind the house, which was lit by small colored lamps in the trees. Those lamps were electric, not gas, because nobody wanted to take a chance on setting the trees on fire.

  I spotted someone standing just outside the doors on the flagstone terrace. It was Elliott Riley, and he was staring down at his hands in horror. I saw the dark red stains on them and felt my insides go hollow. I hadn’t seen a lot of freshly spilled blood in my life, but my instincts told me that was what was smeared on Riley’s hands.

  “He—he’s out there,” Riley stammered, pointing toward a path that led through the garden. I looked where he was pointing and saw the shape sprawled there on the ground. The crazy thought flashed through my head that Riley and Mueller had been fighting again, and that Riley had killed the German somehow.

  But the man on the ground wasn’t Mueller at all, because Mueller came up to the French doors, craning his neck to see out.

  I started toward the motionless shape, but Luke pulled me back. “You better stay here, Miz D,” he said. “Whoever that guy is, you don’t want to see him.”

  “Let go of me, blast it,” I told him. “I’m in charge of this group, and if something’s happened, it’s up to me to see what it is.”

  Luke let go of my arm, but he stayed stubbornly beside me as I went along the walk. Within a few steps, I recognized the man lying there. He had changed from the white planter’s outfit he had worn earlier in the day, donning a tuxedo instead for the ball. Now there was a dark stain spreading on the snowy white front of his frilly shirt, spreading from the knife that was buried in his chest.

  Rhett Butler—or the fella playing him, anyway—was dead, as dead as the antebellum South that had been recreated here on this plantation.

  CHAPTER 5

  D

  on’t ask me how I knew Rhett Butler was dead. I’m not a medical person, and outside of a funeral home or an actual funeral, I’d never even seen a dead body.

  But as I looked down at him, there was no doubt in my mind. His eyes were open wide, staring but not seeing anything. His mouth was open and his jaw was slack. His face seemed to be getting paler by the second. I knew from watching crime shows on TV that that meant the blood was pooling in the back half of his body, since that was lower. Lividity, I think they call it. The bloodstain on his shirt was ugly, but it wasn’t spreading anymore because the heart had stopped pumping.

  All that’s logical enough now, looking back on it, but at the moment all I heard was a frantic voice in my brain yammering, Oh, no, he’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead!

  I took a step back and bumped into Luke. He jumped a little and I did, too, but both of us managed to keep from yelping. I guess Luke felt like letting out a holler. I know I sure did.

  “Holy cow, Miz D! Is that …is that …”

  “Rhett Butler,” I said. The strain made Luke’s voice sound strange to my ears, but my own voice sounded even more strange.

  “Is he—”

  I knew what Luke was going to ask, but he didn’t get a chance to finish the question. Instead another voice boomed out, “What’s going on here?”

  We turned to see a bulky, tuxedo-clad figure hurrying along the garden path toward us. The lights out here were bright enough for me to recognize the actor who played Scarlett’s father, the man with the faint, underlying British accent who slightly
resembled Thomas Mitchell.

  He saw the man on the ground and said, “Oh, my dear Lord.” His hand went to his pocket and pulled out a bandanna he used to mop away some of the beads of sweat that suddenly popped up on his forehead. The night was warm and humid, but not enough to make a fella look like he was in a steam bath in a matter of seconds. “What happened here?”

  “He’s dead.” Even as the words came out of my mouth, I knew it was a dumb, obvious thing to say.

  “He can’t be.” The man brushed past Luke and me and dropped to one knee on the path beside the corpse. The path was made of flagstones arranged on a bed of gravel, and the gravel crunched a little as the man leaned over and his weight shifted. “Steve! Steve, wake up!”

  So the dead man’s name was really Steve, not Rhett, I thought. The Thomas Mitchell look-alike reached for him, as if he were going to grab hold of him and try to shake him back to life, and I said, “You better not do that.”

  He stopped and looked back over his shoulder at me. “Why not?”

  “The police won’t like it if you disturb the body.”

  “Police?” His stunned eyes opened even wider. “Oh, my God. You’re right. We have to call the police.”

  “Got my cell phone right here,” Luke said as he pulled it from his shirt pocket. Before anybody could say anything else, he had thumbed in 911 and hit SEND.

  The man kneeling next to the body leaped to his feet. “Wait! We don’t know …” He stopped, his voice trailing off for a second before he went on, “We don’t know anything, do we? Only that he’s dead.”

  The police would have to be involved. This was a murder, after all. Unless, of course, Steve/“Rhett” had shoved that knife into his own chest, which didn’t seem likely to me. I was starting to get over my own shock to a certain extent, although I was still as horrified and, I admit it, creeped out as any person would be who doesn’t deal with violent death all the time.