Everything seemed all right. Eugenia was not here. But from the servants’ porch he could see the distant guest house in back, ail aglow as if there were a party going on. That was Eugenia. She always turned on all the lights. She and Henri swapped shifts now, and so this was her turn to be alone back there, with the radio playing in the kitchen and the television tuned to “Murder, She Wrote.”
The dark trees shifted in the wind. He could see the still lawn, the swimming pool, the flags. Nothing stirred but the trees themselves, making the lights of the distant guest house twinkle deceptively.
On to the third floor. He had to check every crevice and crack.
He found it still and dark. The little landing at the top of the stairs was empty. The street lamp shone through the window. The storage room lay with its door open, all empty shelves clean and white and waiting for something. He turned and opened the door of Julien’s old room, his own workroom.
The first thing he saw was the two windows opposite, the window on the right, beneath which Julien had died in his narrow bed, and the window on the left, through which Antha had fled only to fall to her death from the edge of the porch roof. Like two eyes, these windows.
The shades were up; the soft light of early evening flooded in on the bare boards and on his drafting table.
Only those were not bare boards. On the contrary, a threadbare rug lay there, and where his drafting table should have been was the narrow brass bed, which had long ago been moved out of here.
He groped for the light.
“Please don’t turn it on.” The voice was frayed and soft, French.
“Who the hell are you?”
“It’s Julien,” came the whispered response. “For the love of heaven. I am not the one who came to the library door! Come in now while there is still time, and let me talk to you.”
He shut the door behind him. His face was teeming with heat. He was sweating and his grip had tightened on the hammer. But he knew it was Julien’s voice, because he had heard it before, high high above the sea, in another realm, the very same voice, speaking to him softly and rapidly, putting the case to him, so to speak, and telling him he could refuse.
It seemed the veil would lift; he would see the shining Pacific again, his own drowned body on the heaving waves, and he would remember everything. But no such thing occurred. What occurred was infinitely more frightening and exciting! He saw a dark figure by the fireplace, arm on the mantel, long thin legs. He saw the soft hair, white in the light from the windows.
“Eh bien, Michael, I am so tired. It is so hard for me.”
“Julien! Did they burn the book? Your life story.”
“Oui, mon fils,” he said. “My beloved Mary Beth burnt every page of those books. All my writing…” His voice was soft with sad wonder, eyebrows rising slightly. “Come in, come closer. Take the chair there. Please. You must listen to me.
Michael obeyed, taking the leather chair, the one which he knew to be real, lost now among so many alien dusty objects. He touched the bed. Solid. He heard the creak of the springs! He touched the silken quilt. Real. He was dazed, and marveling.
On the mantelpiece stood a pair of silver candlesticks, and the figure had turned and, with the sharp sudden scratch of a match, was putting a light to the wicks. His shoulders were narrow but very straight; he seemed ageless, tall, graceful.
When he faced Michael again, the warm yellow light spread out behind him. Perfectly realized, he stood, his blue eyes rather cheerful and open, his face almost rapt.
“Yes, my boy,” he said. “Look at me! Hear me. You must act now. But let me speak my piece. Ah, do you hear it? My voice is getting stronger.”
It was a beautiful voice, and not a syllable was lost on Michael, who all his life had loved beautiful voices. It was an old-fashioned voice, like the cultured voices of those long-ago film stars he so cherished, the actors who made an art of simple speech, and it occurred to him in his strange daze that perhaps this was all more of his own fancy.
“I don’t know how long I have,” the ghost said. “I don’t know where I’ve been as I’ve waited for this moment. I am the earthbound dead.”
“I’m here, I’m listening to you. Don’t go. Whatever you do, don’t go!”
“If only you knew how hard it has been to come through, how I have tried, and your own soul has shut me out.”
“I’m afraid of ghosts,” Michael said. “It’s an Irish trait. But you know that now.”
Julien smiled and stood back against the mantel, folding his arms, and the tiny candle flames danced, as if he really were solid flesh and he had stirred the air. And solid enough he seemed in his black wool coat and silk shirt. He wore long trousers and old-fashioned button shoes, polished to a perfect luster. As he smiled, his gently lined face with its curling white hair and blue eyes seemed to grow ever more vivid.
“I’m going to tell my tale,” he said, as a gentle teacher might. “Condemn me not. Take what I have to give.”
Michael was flooded by an inexplicable combination of trust and excitement. The thing he had feared all this time, the thing which had haunted him, was now here, and it was his friend, and he was with it. Only Julien had never really been the thing to fear.
“You are the angel, Michael,” said Julien. “You are the one who still has a chance.”
“Then the battle isn’t over.”
“No, mon fils, not at all.”
He seemed distracted suddenly, woefully sad, and searching, and for one second Michael was terrified the vision would fail. But it only grew stronger, more richly colored, as Julien gestured to the far corner, and smiled.
There the small wooden box of the gramophone stood on a table at the very foot of the brass bed!
“What is real in this room?” Michael demanded softly. “And what is a phantom?”
“Mon Dieu, if I only knew. I never knew.” Julien’s smile broadened, and once again he relaxed against the mantel shelf, eyes catching the light of the candles, as he looked from left to right, almost dreamily over the walls. “Oh for a cigarette, for a glass of red wine!” he whispered. “Michael, when you can’t see me anymore, when we leave each other-Michael, play the waltz for me. I played it for you.” His eyes moved imploringly across the ceiling. “Play it every day for fear that I am still here.”
“I’ll do it, Julien.”
“Now listen well…”
Ten
NEW ORLEANS WAS very simply a fabulous place. Lark didn’t care if he never left here. The Pontchartrain Hotel was small, but utterly comfortable. He had a spacious suite over the Avenue, with agreeable, traditional furnishings, and the food from the Caribbean Room kitchen was the best he’d ever tasted. They could keep San Francisco for a while. He’d slept till noon today, then eaten a fabulous southern breakfast. When he got home, he was going to learn how to make grits. And this coffee with chicory was a funny thing-tasted awful the first time, and then you couldn’t do without it.
But these Mayfairs were driving him crazy. It was late afternoon of his second day in this town and he’d accomplished nothing. He sat on the long gold velvet couch, a very comfortable L-shaped affair, ankle on knee, scribbling away in his notebook, while Lightner made some call in the other room. Lightner had been really tired when he came back to the hotel. Lark figured he’d prefer to be upstairs asleep in his own room now. And a man that age ought to nap; he couldn’t simply drive himself night and day as Lightner did.