The Devereaux Legacy Read online

  A current of air, fresh and damp, stirred her hair, curled like a cat around her ankles, fed the burning wick of the lantern.

  A shoe scuffed on the wooden flooring.

  Her heart began to thud, and she looked around cautiously.

  Cissy stood in the doorway of the closet, hugging her arms tightly against her body. “The floor’s dangerous, Leah.” She leaned forward, her eyes enormous in her white face. “What are you doing here?”

  “You didn’t throw my parents’ bodies into the river, did you?” Leah demanded, her voice high. “They’re somewhere in this tower.”

  Cissy stared at her, then shifted her eyes to the box kite with its silk hangings. “Just like Mary Ellen, aren’t you? So clever to figure things out.” She spoke almost in a conversational tone, but it held a metallic edge. “That’s what happened, you know. She found my prop.” Cissy nodded toward the glistening folds of white. “She knew then that either John Edward or I was The Whispering Lady. I suppose she knew it was me from the first. John Edward would never have been clever enough to plan it all. Anyway, Mary Ellen came up to the house and insisted I go to the tower with her. Then she showed me the ghost figure and accused me of trying to kill Aunt Carrie.”

  Leah stared up at Cissy’s lovely, impassive face, at the deadly green eyes watching her without a flicker of emotion.

  “Cissy . . .”

  “She was a fool. She said if I left Devereaux Plantation and promised never to come back, she wouldn’t tell anyone.” Her mouth thinned. “She said she’d protect me.” Cissy glared down at Leah. “You do see, don’t you? Mary Ellen brought everything on herself with her arrogance, trying to send me away.”

  “Grandmother took you in and made a home for you. Why did you try to kill her?”

  “That was Mary Ellen’s fault, too,” Cissy said bitterly. “If she had married John Edward, everything would have been all right. I wouldn’t have been mistress of Devereaux Plantation, but I could have been sure of my place forever. I could always make John Edward do what I wanted him to.” She paused, then said querulously, “I didn’t want to hurt Aunt Carrie. She had disinherited Mary Ellen, but I was afraid she might change her mind and that someday Mary Ellen and Tom would inherit Devereaux Plantation, and I would have to leave.”

  Leah stared at her in horrified fascination. “How could it matter that much to you?”

  “Why, I couldn’t leave the plantation. Hal couldn’t live anywhere but in Mefford County. The Winfreys have always lived in Mefford County.” She was trying to make Leah understand. “And that was when Hal had first started coming to see me. If I’d gone away, I would have lost him.”

  She didn’t say outright that Hal had come as much for Devereaux Plantation and the Devereaux name as for her. She had murdered three people and tried to kill three more, all for the love of a weak, idle aristocrat.

  Before Leah could grasp the import of what Cissy was doing, the woman had pulled the trunk close to her and put her hand inside. It came out holding a long-barreled dueling pistol.

  Cissy pointed the pistol directly at Leah, her eyes blank, her face a rigid mask. Leah’s throat tightened. She knew that death was very close.

  “Cissy, why did you kill Tom?” she asked desperately.

  For a long moment, the pistol remained raised, aimed at her face; then Cissy lowered it just a fraction. “He found us in the tower. He had come looking for Mary Ellen. I tried to make him think she had killed herself like Marthe had done, but he wouldn’t believe me. Then it all came to me so quickly, what to do,” Cissy continued with a perverse kind of pride. “Because of Marthe, you know. So I shot Tom, then dragged Mary Ellen’s body over near his and put the gun in her hand. It looked just right.”

  The rest had been easy. She’d run to the boat and managed to convince Louisa that Mary Ellen had shot Tom, then killed herself. She’d said Tom had discovered that Mary Ellen and John Edward had planned the ghostly appearances so that Mary Ellen would have an excuse to return to Devereaux Plantation and John Edward. Louisa Shaw, after all, hadn’t known Mary Ellen before the boat trip, and there was Mary Ellen’s cousin, grief-stricken and horrified, telling Louisa that her daughter-in-law had always been odd and violent-tempered. Cissy had sworn she was willing to do anything to keep the awful truth from Aunt Carrie and protect Leah.

  Evil. Easy and evil and successful for so long, Leah thought. “You must have been delighted when it was assumed that The New Star was lost at sea. Then you were safe, weren’t you?”

  Cissy reached up and pressed her forehead. “Everything was perfect. Aunt Carrie went to Nice, and I was mistress of Devereaux Plantation. Then Hal and I were married. Everything was perfect until this spring.”

  Spring, and a bearded archaeologist poking here and there, interested in the old tower and wanting to dig.

  “My parents are here, under the tower, aren’t they?” Leah said.

  Cissy nodded. “Old Jason buried them. It was an awful night . . . the wind howling, the rain coming in great waves. We had to use lanterns that night, too.” She glanced at the lantern, which was casting its uneven orange light against the walls. Then she looked back at Leah and raised the pistol.

  Leah’s breath clotted in her chest. She knew what was coming, and there was nothing she could do to stop Cissy.

  How would Cissy twist Leah’s disappearance to fit the old and tragic stories? Would she suggest to Carrie that Leah had been maddened by the storm that brought back so vividly its echoes of Mary Ellen and Tom’s disappearance? Would she suggest that Leah had walked down to the dock and fallen into the raging river?

  Mrs. LeClerc had said that Leah had a fated face. Perhaps she was fated to die violently, as her mother and Marthe had died. . . .

  The door to the tower slammed open. Merrick stepped inside, water dripping from his yellow sou’wester.

  “I’ll be damned. I thought I saw a faint glow from the tower . . .” His voice trailed away. He stared at his sister, at the gun in her hand and at Leah’s fear blanched face. “What the hell?”

  Cissy half turned. “Merrick, you’ve got to help me. You’ve got to.”

  He understood. Abruptly, he understood. He looked at her and tried to speak, but no words came out.

  “Merrick, it’s her fault,” she rushed on, waving the gun at Leah. “She’s just like Mary Ellen. And she’s treated you just like Mary Ellen treated John Edward. You were fool enough to fall in love with her—then she just danced away, chasing after that archaeologist. I saw it happen.”

  His face hardened. “Shut up, Cissy.”

  “But she did. And we can repay her—and get rid of her. Then Devereaux Plantation will be ours, and you can be sure of Ashwood—”

  “Cissy, for God’s sake!” he cried.

  “Merrick, we don’t have any choice,” she said, as if speaking to an unreasonable child.

  “She killed my parents,” Leah told him. “They’re buried under the tower. And Cissy’s been the ghost all these times. She tried to kill Grandmother and Kent and me. . . .”

  Now the gun pointed unwaveringly at Leah’s head.

  “Cissy,” Merrick spoke quietly, soothingly. “Give me the gun. I’ll take you in to see Dr. Raymond. He’ll know what to do.”

  She stared at him with glittering eyes and took a step back from the closet, nearer to the center of the room. She moved the pistol, and now it was pointed midway between Merrick and Leah.

  “No.” Sweat beaded her face. Her eyes darted back and forth, from the trunk to the stairway to Merrick.

  Leah understood what was happening before he did, and a great rush of grief flooded her. Once again, Cissy was thinking of that old story and the girl who’d shot her lover and then herself. But Leah couldn’t bear it if anything happened to Merrick.

  Cissy looked at her. “Just like Mary Ellen,” she said hoarsely. “Just like Mary Ellen.” She plunged across the few feet separating them and jammed the barrel of the weapon against Leah’s head.


  “Cissy—no—no. Merrick started forward.

  “Stop.”

  A single word, but he understood and stopped.

  “Stay there.” Cissy smiled. “It will be just like Mary Ellen.” Then her face twisted. “Merrick, why do you have to be with her? Don’t you see, she’s against us. We can put her down there, you and I, and no one will—”

  “Cissy, what’s going on here? I saw a light coming out of the tower door, and I thought perhaps there was a fire.” Hal stood just inside the doorway. Then he saw the gun in Cissy’s hand, jammed against Leah’s head.

  He looked so urbane in his pale blue slacks and navy blue trench coat, a spatter of rain glistening in his blond hair. For the first time, Leah saw a flash of feeling in his face. “Cissy . . .” He said her name with distaste. It was as if he’d caught her out in some unpardonable breach of etiquette.

  Merrick moved gingerly, but the old wooden floor creaked. The pistol swung away from Leah, toward him.

  “Stop.” Hysteria edged Cissy’s voice. She waggled the gun between Merrick and Leah. “Hal,” she said feverishly, “I need you. You can help me. It will all work out just like it did before. We can put them under the tower, and later we’ll sprinkle lime. Or we can set the tower on fire. That’s what we’ll do, and no one will ever—”

  “What are you talking about, Cissy?” Hal’s voice was cold and distant.

  “She killed Mary Ellen and Tom Shaw years ago,” Merrick said. “And now she intends to kill Leah and me.”

  Hal looked from Merrick to his wife, and his face changed. A withdrawn, dismissive expression settled over it before he shook his head as if in denial.

  Cissy’s mouth sagged. Her eyes became wild, tormented. “Hal! Hal!”

  Hal turned away and walked out into the storm.

  Cissy took one step, then she plunged out into the night, calling his name over and over.

  “Hal, come back! Hal!”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The police didn’t find Cissy that night. Her body washed ashore a week later. True to the closemouthed tradition of the South, the real story never came out. Instead, everyone spoke of the sad accident that had befallen Cissy Winfrey the night of the big storm. Whispers floated through Mefford about The Whispering Lady and the tragic Devereaux legacy.

  Leah and Merrick gently told Carrie the truth. She insisted it be kept within the family. Brutal as the truth was, Leah felt that her grandmother was now at peace with her memories of Mary Ellen.

  Kent Ellis agreed to explore the tower, so it was he who discovered the remains of Mary Ellen and Tom. That caused a flurry of publicity and speculation, but the family made no comment.

  The excavations in the tower revealed something else, too, when the sheriff brought a rotted valise to Leah. “Odd thing is, Miss Leah, it’s packed for a trip—with women’s things.”

  The Bible was on top. Leah carried it to a table in the library and opened it. She was curious, but she never expected to find what she did—a final entry in the marriage records, written in Marthe’s unformed handwriting. The date wasn’t filled in, but Leah understood.

  Thanking the sheriff, she took the Bible upstairs to show it to her grandmother.

  “Don’t you see, Grandmother, Marthe was packed and ready to run away with Timothy! She knew they were going to be married, so she entered it in the Bible but left the date blank to fill in later. That means she loved him. She was going to go with him that night . . .”

  “And someone stopped them,” the old lady finished. “It must have been Randolph.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad!” Leah cried.

  Her grandmother looked at her in surprise.

  “Oh, no, I’m not glad they were killed, but I’m so glad she loved Timothy, that she wasn’t twisted and hateful.”

  Smiling, Carrie Devereaux reached for Leah’s hand. “I’m glad, too.”

  Now Leah could look in the mirror, see her face and Marthe’s and Mary Ellen’s, and smile. She would have smiled a lot if her heart hadn’t ached so furiously.

  Everyone was kind. Mrs. LeClerc came to call and squeezed her hands. Even John Edward made his peace with her. Several days after Cissy’s funeral, he came to her door.

  “May I talk with you for a moment?” He rubbed his jaw with his knuckles. “Let’s take a walk.”

  They went down the oyster-shell path through the rose gardens. At the wooden bridge, he looked at her directly. “I didn’t know. I hope you’ll believe that.”

  When she looked into his eyes, she knew he was telling her the truth. She reached out and took his hand. “I do—and I’m sorry about Cissy. I’m really very sorry.”

  He bit his lip, then said huskily, “I believe you, too. Cissy . . . she was such a pretty little girl. But I think she was always afraid after our folks died. She wanted so much to feel safe.” He took a deep breath. “Maybe she’s safe now.” He patted Leah clumsily on the shoulder. “At least you care. I don’t think Hal’s given it any thought at all.”

  “That’s probably not fair. He must be terribly upset.”

  “All he seemed to care about was being sure all of his family stuff was moved back to the Winfrey house in town.” He shook his head. “Anyway, he’s gone, and I’ll be gone soon, too.”

  “Gone?”

  “I’m going to rent a place in town.”

  “No!”

  He was startled at her vehemence.

  “No, John Edward. You mustn’t leave. Grandmother depends upon you.” Her voice softened. “She loves you.”

  “You don’t mind if I stay?” he asked uncertainly.

  “I want you to stay.”

  Slowly, he smiled. “I can’t tell you what this means to me. We’ll take care of Aunt Carrie together.” Then, as he turned to go, he asked, “Have you talked to Merrick yet?”

  “No.”

  “Go see him.”

  She watched John Edward’s broad back disappear up the path.

  Go see him.

  Oh, she wanted to. She wanted to very much.

  She thought about that wonderful afternoon at Ashwood, the warmth of Merrick’s touch, the feel of his mouth on hers.

  She ran toward the garage. As she climbed into the Vega and backed it out, she could see Merrick’s face: loving, angry, hurt, brave. She drove fast, too fast, and dust boiled up behind the car as she ascended the last hill to Ashwood. After she braked beside the station wagon, her courage deserted her. How could he ever forgive her?

  Then she thought of her mother and Marthe.

  She found him behind the house in the garden, spading a flower bed. He looked wonderful, with sweat staining the front of his shirt, with dirt on his hands where he’d picked weeds. He turned toward her. At first he seemed surprised and eager, but then his expression became distant.

  “Hal’s moved into town,” she said.

  “Really?”

  “Yes. And John Edward was going to move, too, but I asked him to stay. Someone needs to be in charge and take care of Grandmother. And John Edward will want to oversee Kent’s excavations. He has lots more planned.”

  Merrick homed in on one particular sentence. “Why does John Edward need to take care of Aunt Carrie? I thought you would do that.”

  “Of course I will. And you will, too. But someone should actually be on the spot.”

  He stared at her. “Where will you be?”

  “At Ashwood—if you’ll have me.”

  He was silent for a long moment.

  “Can’t you forgive me? I always wanted to believe you loved me, but it’s hard to accept magic. I didn’t know why you would care about me—”

  “Care about you?” he said roughly. “I want you more than anything in the world.”

  “Take me.”

  He moved quickly, and she was in his arms. Her mouth sought his, and warmth and happiness and the beginnings of desire flamed within her.

  This, then, was the Devereaux legacy: to love passionately and well.

  About t
he author

  Carolyn Hart is the author of forty-seven mysteries. New in 2012 is Death Comes Silently, twenty-second in the Death on Demand series. Hart’s books have won Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards. She has twice appeared at the National Book Festival in Washington, DC. She is thrilled that some of her long-ago books are having a new life. She lives in Oklahoma City with her husband, Phil. She loves mysteries, cats, happy ghosts, Oklahoma, and South Carolina.