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,
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?”
“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.
Lark could hear Lightner’s voice rising. Somebody on the other end of the line in London, or wherever it was, was exasperating him.
Of course it wasn’t the family’s fault that Gifford Mayfair had died unexpectedly in Destin, Florida, that the last two days had been entirely devoted to a wake and a funeral and a sustained pitch of grief which Lark had seldom witnessed in his lifetime. Lightner had been drawn away over and over again by the women of the family, sent on errands, called for consolation and advice. Lark had scarcely had two words with him.
Lark had gone to the wake last night out of prurient curiosity. He could not imagine Rowan Mayfair living with these strange garrulous southerners, who spoke of the living and the dead with equal enthusiasm. And what a handsome well-oiled crowd they were. Seems everybody drove a Beamer or Jag or Porsche. The jewels looked real. The genetic mix included good looks, whatever else came with it.
Then there was the husband; everybody was protecting this Michael Curry. The man looked ordinary enough; in fact, he looked as good as all the others. Well fed, well groomed. Certainly not like a man who’d just suffered a heart attack.
But Mitch Flanagan on the coast was breaking down Curry’s DNA now and he’d said it was extremely strange, that he had as unusual a blueprint as Rowan. Flanagan had “managed,” as the Keplinger Institute always did, to get the records on Michael Curry without the man’s knowledge or permission. But now Lark couldn’t get Flanagan!
Flanagan hadn’t answered last night or this morning. Some sort of machine kept giving Lark some minimal song and dance with the customary invitation to leave a number.
Lark didn’t like this at all. Why was Flanagan stalling him? Lark wanted to see Curry. He wanted to talk to him, ask him certain questions.
It was fun to party and all-he’d gotten much too drunk last night after the wake-and he was headed to Antoine’s tonight for dinner with two doctor friends from Tulane, both of them roaring sots, but he had business to do here, and now that Mrs. Ryan Mayfair was buried perhaps they could get on with it.
He stopped his scribbling as Lightner came back into the room.
“Bad news?” he asked.
Lightner took his usual seat in the morris chair, and pondered, finger curled beneath his lip, before he answered. He was a pale man with rather attractive white hair, and a very disarming personal manner. He was also really fatigued. Lark thought this was the one with the heart to worry about.
“Well,” said Lightner, “I’m in an awkward position. It seems Erich Stolov was the one who signed for Gifford’s clothes in Florida. He was here. He picked up her old clothes at the funeral parlor. And now he’s gone, and he and I have not consulted on all this with each other.”
“But he’s a member of your gang.”
“Yes,” Aaron answered with a slight sarcastic grimace. “A member of my gang. And the advice from the Elders according to the new Superior General is that I am not to question ‘that part’ of the investigation.”
“So what does all this mean?”
Lightner grew quiet before answering. Then he looked up.
“You said something earlier to me about genetic testing of this entire family. You want to try to broach that subject with Ryan? I think tomorrow morning would not be too early to do it.”
“Oh, I’m for it. But you do realize what they’d be getting into. I mean they are the ones taking the risk, essentially. If we turn up congenital diseases, if we turn up predispositions to certain conditions-well, this information might affect everything from insurance eligibility to qualifying for the military. Yes, I want to do it, but
