both black and white. Still, the Beauforte name had prestige, and the general used it to his family's advantage. He sold off his up river plantations and with the proceeds established a foundry that thrived throughout his lifetime. He died at the house in 1878, one of many victims of the yellow fever epidemic that swept the city that year.
His son, John Frederick, didn't do as well. The Reconstruction was hard on New Orleans, sending the city into a decline that it didn't recover from until the Louisiana oil boom and burgeoning war industries brought the economy back to life in the 1940s. Sugar and cotton prices fell. Trade on the river waned, and John Frederick was slow to modernize the Beaufortes' businesses. He kept the family going by selling off parcels of the land around the house, until by 1890 it stood on the urban lot it now occupied. When he died, his widow sold the property.
'I do recall a Beauforte legend from that period,' Charmian said. 'One that might interest you. John Frederick killed one of his servants.'
'What!'
'John Frederick had been born in the era of slavery and never really adapted to the idea that his servants were now free people. It was not at all uncommon in those years. He believed in, shall we say, 'firm discipline.' Apparently there was a horseman, a big, strapping Negro, who gave him a great deal of trouble. One night they came to blows, and John Frederick beat him to death with the fireplace poker. Richard's father wasn't born until twenty years later, but he used to tell the tale with a… certain amount of pride.'
Cree couldn't hide a shiver of revulsion. 'Do you remember the servant's name? Or when this happened?'
'Lionel. Just the first name, Lionel. I believe this was in the 1880s.'
'Was John Frederick charged for the murder?'
Charmian's mouth turned down as if the question were absurd. 'A white man killing a truculent black servant? Not in that century! But I take it that's the sort of thing that arouses your morbid curiosity?'
It was the second time Charmian had made a point about the role of violence or trauma in hauntings, and Cree felt it deserved to be addressed. 'There is often a morbid element to my job, it's true. But it has to do with how extracorporeal manifestations originate. My partner, Edgar Mayfield, has a theory that powerful emotions create electromagnetic 'broadcasts' that imprint naturally occurring geomagnetic fields. They're like tape recordings that replay under the right conditions. Not every emotion is intense enough to accomplish that imprinting. It makes sense that mortal moments are full of intense feelings, so often the ghost is a reenactment of the state of mind he or she had at death. But that varies greatly. People might feel shock and fear, or horror and anger. Or they might feel a surge of affection or concern for loved ones, or intense relief and ecstatic serenity. Quite often, they relive memories of important earlier experiences, recollections that may not seem directly connected with what happened at the moment of death. The range of perseverating experiences varies enormously.'
'So conceivably, agreeable, or… happy emotions could also become ghosts.'
'Absolutely. But usually perseverating emotions tend to be feelings that are unresolved – the frustrated need for closure or resolution seems to be a constant.' Unexpectedly, the image of Mike's face, full of that yearning, came to Cree and her voice faltered. But she banished it and went on deliberately: 'That's the one thing the folklore has right. Ghosts are most often created when the individual dies with something important pending, up in the air, unexpressed, and their dying emotions usually orbit around that yearning for closure. Positive emotions are not as often so unresolved. So my interest in deaths and so on really isn't my own morbid curiosity. It's just that I don't often get called to investigate a happy or benign ghost. I consider it one of the… downsides of my profession.'
Charmian's gaze showed she caught the undercurrents in Cree's comments. She thought about it for another moment and then asked, 'So the ghost that's ostensibly terrorizing my daughter, it's an unpleasant one? Of course it is – that's why it's so upsetting for her.'
' I 'm sorry, but Lila has asked rne not to discuss the specifics with anyone.' Cree almost gave her statement the inflection of a question, that irritating propensity for turning tentative around Charmian's forcefulness.
'Why on earth? I'm her mother!' Charmian tucked her chin indignantly.
'Because she's afraid you'll think she's crazy. That she's weak. She's very concerned with what you and Ronald and Jack think of her. She longs for your respect and doesn't want to lose what little she feels she has. I also think she wants to process this by herself, without anyone's interference, however well meaning. And I think that's a wise decision, because she needs to master this on her own terms.'
Charmian raised one eyebrow. 'I had no idea this was such a… nuanced process,' she said drily.
Cree shrugged. 'Can be.'
The sweet scent of roses thickened as sun squares from the windows inched across the tiled floor. Cree steered Charmian back into more recent times, trying to assemble in her mind a list of the people who had inhabited the house. During Charmian's life there, it was a short list: Richard, Charmian, Ronald, Lila. Charmian's brother Bradford had stayed at the house for a time before he got his own place, and was a constant visitor. Houseguests stayed over now and then – friends and relatives. And of course there were the servants. Charmian remembered the names of many of them; she'd employed four different live-in housemaids and five or six groundskeepers from 1972 until her stroke in 1991. Before that, they'd had the same housemaid from the mid-1950s until Richard's death: Josephine, who'd been a mainstay of the household and nanny to both kids, raising them from birth until boarding school. Where any of them were now, God only knew. Only one person had died at the house during the forty-one years Charmian had lived there: Richard, who had died of a heart attack in 1972, leaving Charmian a widow.
Charmian's face became inscrutable again as she told about Richard's death. Then she paused and fixed her raptor's gaze on Cree. 'You're a widow, too, aren't you,' she stated.
Caught off balance, Cree just looked at her.
'It's not just that you call yourself Ms. Black but wear a wedding ring. Let's just say I recognize the… signs. When our conversation approaches certain topics. I know the symptoms. The style.' Charmian raised her own gnarled hand to show Cree the gold band she also wore, and her unrelenting eyes took on a satisfied look. Pleased at her own insight, or at Cree's discomfort? Both, Cree thought. And maybe, just maybe, there was some genuine commiseration there, too, appreciation for this small measure of shared circumstances.
'I ordinarily answer yes,' Cree confessed, suddenly tentative again.'But I've been wondering if there's a time limit for it. The way people who are recently divorced say, 'I'm divorced,' but at some point they say, 'I'm single'? Maybe I'm… single.'
Charmian appeared not to have heard her. Instead, she moved her hand among her roses again. 'You know, I only select the very best. A bloom past its peak will not have the scent, and it'll quickly shed its petals. So one gets an instinct for knowing when a rose is at its prime. For cutting it at just the right moment. And even then, perfection is a fleeting thing.' She paused and then went on with certainty: 'You are not past your peak, Ms. Black. You are in prime bloom, and you should not waste that bloom. At the same time, you are indeed a widow. Very much so. A most difficult dilemma, I'm sure. Oh, you conceal it well – the chipper smile, the quick recovery, the dogged persistence, the pretense that you haven't heard or been affected by insults. The blue-collar-with-a-Ph. D., wholesome, plain-Jane girl-Columbo act. But when all is said and done, they are all stopgap stratagems, aren't they. Because none can solve the fundamental problem – the best they do is postpone the reckoning. Yes, I am familiar with such.'
Charmian leaned back to watch Cree's response closely. Her eyes took on that satisfied gleam as she saw she'd hit her mark, saw Cree's utter inability to think of a comeback. But there was the other glint there, too, the ancient, enduring thing that verged on commiseration. After a moment she stood up briskly, then quickly caught the edge of the table as her reluctant leg didn't quite get under her in time.
'And now I have to get ready for my luncheon with the ladies. Club sandwiches, bridge to follow. And then my physical therapy session. You can see I live a demanding life.'
Cree had found her breath again. 'Can we talk again soon?'
Straight-backed, regal, Charmian paused at the doorway to the sunroom. 'Why, I look forward to it! I haven't enjoyed myself so much in years.'
14
Cree called again on her way out of Charmian's house, but there was still no answer at the Warrens'. The
