by Carolyn Hart
“Let’s have some coffee now, and you can tell me all about yourself.”
He dragged two camp chairs out of his tent and insisted on pouring coffee from his thermos into pottery mugs. The coffee tasted wonderful and reminded Leah that she hadn’t breakfasted yet.
Kent told her about his excavations on Devereaux Plantation and about his companion project, oral history interviews with the oldest county residents.
“Old Jason claims he’s one hundred and three. His father was a house slave, so he knows a lot about the Devereaux from the time of the Civil War on.”
Their coffee finished, Kent showed Leah the excavations. He took her first to the kitchen midden behind the former overseer’s cabin, pointing out the grid of heavy twine that marked the site, the three different levels and some of his findings. “They ate lots of possum and raccoon and catfish. They probably also ate a bunch of salt pork and dried beef, but those don’t leave any bones.”
As they walked away from the midden, he paused to whistle. “I don’t know where my mutt’s gone.”
“Have you lost your dog?” She wondered whether or not to tell him of the yelps she’d heard the night before.
“Oh, he’s not really my dog. I found him down by the river a couple of weeks ago. Somebody’d dumped him. Out-of-sight, out-of-mind murder, you know. Bill’s a cute pup, about three months old, part collie and part Lab. I’ve been feeding him, and he likes to snuggle up to my sleeping bag at night. But he must have given up on me last night. I was really late getting back.”
They walked past the overseer’s cabin, and Kent looked at her hopefully. “You didn’t see a puppy this morning, did you?”
“No-o.”
He caught the peculiar tone in her voice and regarded her with curiosity.
She didn’t want to tell him, but she did. “I heard a dog yelp last night. I was afraid he was hurt, so I came out and looked.”
“But you didn’t see him?”
She hesitated, fearing ridicule; then, abruptly, she told him of the luminous whiteness she’d seen across the pond.
His reaction was not one she would have expected. His face hardened, its pleasant good humor lost. “Oh,” he said flatly, “that damned ghost again.”
“Do you know about it?”
“You bet I do. I heard about Marthe-in-the-garden after I’d been in Mefford a couple of weeks. Our-famous-ghosts sort of thing. Every old Southern town has at least one resident ghost, sometimes two or three. There’s a little old lady in a pale yellow dress who occasionally answers the door at the Wallace house, usually around Christmas. She lets the visitors in but never speaks. She takes them to the drawing room and leaves them. They’ll wait awhile, then get impatient, and when they look around, get somebody’s attention, it turns out that the little old lady in the yellow dress lived there more than a hundred years ago.
“But your Marthe doesn’t have the charm of the lady in yellow. Marthe only walks in the garden when somebody’s going to die.” His voice was angry. “The first time Marthe showed up again was in June, a couple of weeks after I got settled in my tent and started digging.”
He seemed to take Marthe’s appearance as a personal affront, and Leah couldn’t imagine why. Until he told her.
“I didn’t see her myself,” Kent continued. “Old Jason told me, his eyes bigger than buckets. I didn’t laugh at him. I mean, he’s the closest thing to living history around here, but I sure thought he was nutty, because I could tell he believed it. He had seen her. And he thought, God love him, that she’d come for him. He told me, ‘Mr. Kent, I done lived a long time and my time’s a-comin’, I know.’ I told him not to be a fool or he’d talk himself into the grave. But he just shook his head. The surprise was on both of us. I’m the one who had an accident, almost a fatal one. The first time I thought it was a coincidence. The second time, I knew it wasn’t. And now you tell me you’ve seen the ghost, too.”
They skirted a clump of oleander and came out into a clearing. Kent’s head snapped up as though he’d been struck. His face twisted in anger.
The land had been cleared of trees many years ago, probably when these buildings had been built. There were six slave cabins, a barn and several outbuildings. Leah could see where Kent had been excavating, just to the back and the side of one of the slave cabins. But the twine grid wasn’t neat and taut, as it had been at the first excavation. It was pulled loose and lay limp and tangled. Uneven tracks of a wheelbarrow showed where dirt fill had been rolled and dumped back into the pit.
Kent started toward the vandalized pit, then paused and glanced toward a huge cottonwood tree not far from the barn.
Leah saw a jumble of boards, haphazardly flung about.
The effect on Kent was galvanic. “What the hell!” he exploded and began to run.
Chapter Eight
In his loose-fitting Levi’s and pulled-out work shirt, Kent had impressed Leah as being a little soft and out of shape, but he left her a good fifteen feet behind as he ran. He was already kneeling over a dark circular hole when she caught up to him.
“Can’t see . . . surely nobody’d just wreck . . . what the hell . . .” He pulled himself back from the edge, his expression contorted from outrage and exertion. “Can’t tell what’s been messed up. You stay here. I’ll get a flashlight from my tent.”
He loped off, moving again at a surprising speed. Leah stepped a little nearer the opening and peered down. She smelled the dust and age and decay. Apparently, the well had been level with the ground, which seemed dangerous to her. Then she decided that the wall circling the top of the well had probably been removed when the decision was made to board it over. She couldn’t see into the depths, so she turned her head and listened. But no sound came from below. If water lay at the bottom, it lay unmoving.
The boards had lain across the top of the well, a necessary precaution for passersby even though there couldn’t be much traffic in this remote area. She wondered why Kent Ellis was so upset about the boards’ removal. Of course, if he had excavated down in the well . . . Then she saw the pitons driven into one side of the hole, and the sturdy manila ropes knotted through the eyes. She looked over the edge again and discerned the rope ladder. Obviously, Kent had explored the shaft, and there was something important to him down there.
Leah shivered, though the early sun lay warmly against her shoulders. She wouldn’t want to go down into a dank and musty hole—not for anything.
Kent returned with a huge flashlight and a coil of rope and knelt by the opening. When he saw the rope ladder still in place, he dropped the coil of rope to one side. “Thought they might’ve ripped out the ladder while they were at it.” Then he swung the huge flashlight over the side and turned it on.
“Oh, hell.” His voice was shaky.
Leah saw several things at once—the uneven, rockstrewn bottom of the well; chalk marks down the shaft denoting water levels; the shiny, fresh glisten of the rope ladder; and, shockingly, a limp and bloody hump of fur next to a mound of rocks.
“Bill.” Kent didn’t call out the little dog’s name. He said it with a grim finality.
Kent sat back on his heels. “Poor little guy. Thrown out on the river to die, and now this. He was . . .” Kent paused for a moment, then continued gruffly. “He was scared spitless the first few days I had him. Then he came out of it and was friendly to everybody. Trusting.” He took a deep breath. “If I just hadn’t been gone so long last night! I’d driven into Charleston to pick up some stuff I needed. On the way back, I had a flat, and I didn’t have a spare, so it took awhile.”
“Did anyone know you were going?”
“Yeah. I left word up at the house that I’d be coming back about nine or so. I’ve tried to let them know whenever I’m getting back after dark so the sound of the truck won’t worry them.”
If someone—Cissy? John Edward? Merrick?—wanted to vandalize Kent’s work, Leah thought, it wouldn’t be hard to find a good time to do it. It wouldn’t be hard, eithe
r, to discover that his truck had no spare.
Kent was thinking, too. “There was a nail in the right rear tire.”
They looked at each other, but neither put suspicions into words.
“What time did you hear the dog?” he asked abruptly.
“It wasn’t very late. I’d gone to bed early, and his cries woke me up out of that first deep sleep. I don’t imagine it was much after ten.”
“So if somebody wanted to mess up my stuff, he could be pretty sure the flat would keep me out of the way long enough. I didn’t get back till after midnight.” Kent looked toward the well. “If somebody came and started ripping stuff up, the pup could have got frisky, wanting to play. If he kicked the dog . . .” He turned his head and gazed down the hill, and she knew he was trying to judge how far a sound might carry in the night stillness.
If a dog hurt, if it yelped in pain, yes, that sound could carry on a still night.
Kent’s face hardened. “Poor little guy,” he said again. “Okay, I’m going down.” He shoved the flashlight into a hip pocket, then swung agilely over the side of the well and onto the ladder.
Leah saw the top of his head descending into the murky air. Then, suddenly, he lurched violently to the left. The movement was utterly unexpected. Yet in the half instant of time that he had, Kent reacted, gaining a chance where he should have had none at all.
As the rope ladder ripped away about three feet below the lip of the well, he thrust his hands out backward and his feet out forward. With the force and strength of his body, he wedged his hands against one side of the well, his feet against the opposite wall.
Leah saw his peril. If he eased his pressure, if his hands or the soles of his boots slipped, he would crash far below on the uneven mound of rocks.
Turning, she grabbed up the coil of rope he had dropped earlier. But as he leaned over the side of the shaft, she felt a pang of horror. What good would the rope do? His hands were jammed behind him. How could he possibly catch the rope if she tossed it down? But she had to do something and do it quickly. He couldn’t possibly maintain the pressure necessary to hold himself against the well walls for very long.
She almost dropped down a length of rope, hoping he could somehow manage to catch hold of it. Then she stopped, her heart thudding. How could she be such a fool? If she did, Kent Ellis would be doomed because she could never support his weight.
“Hurry.” He said it calmly enough, but she didn’t mistake the urgency in his voice.
If she could tie the rope . . . She knelt and yanked at the remnants of the rope ladder, but it was securely tied through the eyes of the pitons. She couldn’t pick it loose and she didn’t have a knife.
Desperate, she looked around. The cottonwood tree loomed above. It was immense, and the lowest branch was out of her reach.
“Hurry.” His voice was harder to hear now.
Leah damned her ineptitude. A moment later she knew what she had to do. Scrambling to her feet, she uncoiled the rope and ran to the tree. She circled it once, twice, then hurried back to the well and dropped to her knees.
“I’m going to let the rope down near your right hand. I’ve looped one end of it around the tree trunk to ease the strain, and I’ll hold on to the other end.”
She dropped the loose end of the rope as near to his right hand as she could. He watched it coming closer and closer. Then, quickly, in a superb athlete’s gamble, he twisted to his right, shifting his body’s pressure to his right shoulder and elbow and turning his feet at the same time. Now he was pressed sideways across the well, and his left hand was free and reaching out for the dangling rope. His fingers closed on it convulsively, but he didn’t jeopardize his fragile balance. First he looped the rope around his forearm; then, cautiously, he tested his lifeline.
Leah watched, scarcely breathing, and braced her feet against the edge of the well, but the trunk of the cottonwood held the rope taut.
Sure now of his support, Kent worked his way up the rope, hand over hand, feet braced against the wall, until he was at the top and over. He collapsed on the dusty ground and drew in great heaving gulps of air. Finally, when he could talk, he sat up and looked at Leah. “Thanks, lady.” His face was ashwhite. “Almost nobody ever comes this way.”
If he had fallen to the bottom of the shaft, even if he’d survived the fall, he could have lain there for a long, long time.
“Why did the rope ladder break?” she asked.
In answer, he leaned over the well and fished up the short end still dangling from the pitons. He held it up, and Leah saw the neat, clean slice three-fourths of the way through the rope and the jagged tears where it had given way beneath his weight.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I’ll be damned if I know.” He shoved a hand through his tight brown curls. “I’d go to the cops, tear this wide open, if there were something concrete to tell them.”
“Cut ropes are pretty concrete.”
“Yeah. And you know what the sheriff would say?”
She shook her head.
“He’d say, ‘That’s a shame, young man. Must be a vandal. Kids these days don’t know where to stop. A lucky thing you weren’t hurt.’“
“But I could tell him about hearing the dog and seeing the . . . the ghost.”
Kent laughed grimly. “Sheriff Hailey’s about six-four, two hundred and forty pounds. He doesn’t believe in ghosts, just in colorful shades for the tourist trade. If you even hinted you thought Marthe was flesh and blood—or worse, a Devereaux up to no good—it would blow his mind. People like the Devereaux . . . well, honey, they’re so far above suspicion that anyone pointing a finger at them would automatically be classified as nuts or some kind of troublemaker.”
The sun was over the trees now, the air soft and steamy. Leah felt the warmth against her skin, but it didn’t help against the coldness that swept through her. She might be a Devereaux, she was a Devereaux, but she was also a stranger in a strange land.
Kent got up, brushing the dirt from his jeans. He recoiled the rope, then, tied it over the cottonwood branch that had been out of Leah’s reach.
She realized he intended to go back into the well. Because, of course, the dog’s body was still there. She didn’t watch, but she listened and knew when he’d reached the bottom. She heard him swear.
It seemed like a very long time before he started up. As he came over the edge she saw he had brought up Bill. She turned away, but he called out to her, his voice hard and angry. “Look at this—look at it!”
He laid the dog on the sandy ground. Leah saw stiffened fur and a gaping wound in the narrow throat. Thick clots of dried blood clung to the chest and forelegs.
Kent held up a bayonet. The bronze metal glistened in the sunlight except where it was stained a darkish red. “This was wedged in the rocks. It pointed up.”
If Kent had fallen down the shaft, he would have been gigged like a fish, speared by the bayonet.
“It could have been passed off as an accident,” Kent said. “This is period stuff, a Civil War bayonet. It was made in Charleston from melted-down bronze gates. Everybody would’ve said I’d found it, dug it up in the well and been so excited I probably lost my grip on the rope ladder and fell down the shaft.” His eyes blazed. “You can figure it out, too, can’t you? Do you suppose anybody would have noticed how very sharp the blade is? Or wondered how the dog and I both got ripped up?” He shook his head. “Hell, no. It would’ve been another unfortunate accident at Devereaux Plantation.” He balanced the bayonet in his hand. “Somebody’s too damned clever, and it isn’t any ghost.”
Leah stared in horror at the glistening weapon. “Did the dog fall down the well and . . .”
Kent shook his head. “No. He was lying to the side of the bayonet. Like I told you, it was wedged down in those rocks, fixed for me to land on. No, Bill must’ve come up on somebody when he was ripping off the boards. Maybe that was when Bill got kicked. You
said you heard one yelp, then later some more. Maybe Bill nipped around at the person, and whoever it was got sore, swiped the bayonet across his throat and tossed him down.” Kent frowned. “But that wasn’t too smart, because it would have looked odd, both me and the dog down there dead. Maybe it was doubly clever, though. He killed the dog and tossed him down, knowing I’d find the uncovered well and be looking for Bill and go after him. Maybe the guy intended to climb down and get Bill out to bury him, then discover my body and raise the alarm.”
Yes, it was clever. Clever and horrible. Evil. Someone had moved quietly in the soft-scented Carolina night, keeping to the shadows, ready to kill and destroy anyone or anything in his path.
“I guess that’s what happened,” Leah said slowly.
“You don’t agree?” Kent’s voice was sharp. “You think that bayonet just grew down there?”
“No. No, I believe someone planted it.” She frowned. “But why you, Kent?”
“I don’t know! But let me tell you, there’s no doubt about it. Listen.” He thumped an index finger against the opposite palm. “The ghost shows up the first week in June. Three days later, I’m down in the dig behind the slave cabins, and it’s just God’s grace I stopped working for a minute. I heard something, a different kind of sound, and I looked up.” He paused and swallowed. “You see, the old chimney, a huge thing, was still standing. I’d started my pit behind it. I knew it was kind of unstable, but it was safe enough as long as nothing jolted it.” His face tightened in remembrance. “I looked up, and that chimney started to fall.”
He’d lunged, throwing himself to the side. An instant later, rubble five feet deep had covered the spot where he’d been working. Again, it was his agility that had saved him. If he hadn’t paused for that instant, hadn’t looked up . . .
Three weeks later, the ghost had walked again. Lilac had seen it that time, the white, luminous movement deep in the shadows of the willows. She’d told Old Jason.
“But when he told me, he still thought it meant his time had come. And it really didn’t occur to me to link it up with my accident.”
