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"She had sent me here. I had a right to touch the skull, and as I did so it disintegrated before my eyes. It was no more now than a heap of white powder along with all the other bones. I should never have touched it! But it was too late.

"Quite suddenly I flew into action. I stood up. I secured the earrings and the brooch in my pocket. I pulled out my hunting knife -- the kitchen knife was in the pirogue -- and I spun round to face the stairs. No one had come, that was obvious, but at any moment someone might.

"And who were they, or who was he, I should say, who could sit at a desk and read by the light of candles when such a horror existed on the floor above?

"This had been a house of torture, this place, and surely it had been my great-great-great-grandfather Manfred who brought his victims here, I reasoned, and here it was that Rebecca had met her end.

"Who was it now who knew these things and did nothing about them? Who was it who had brought a fine marble desk here and a golden chair? Who was it that was buried in that doorless mausoleum? The whole pattern was overwhelming to me. I was shaking with sheer exhilaration. But I had to determine certain things.

"I went to the windows and was amazed to discover how well I could see over the swamp. And there, way far away, I saw Blackwood Manor very distinctly on its raised lawn.

"Whoever lived in this place, whoever visited it, could spy upon the house if he wanted to; he could see -- among other things -- my very windows and the windows of the kitchen as well. If he had a telescope or binoculars, and I saw neither one here, he could have studied us all very well.

"It was chilling to see this clear view of the house, but I used it to check my compass. I had to get home and fast.

"The voices threatened again. The dizziness came over me. I reeled. The wild cries of the birds seemed to mingle with Rebecca's voice. I was near to fainting. But I had to resist this.

"I went down the steps, through the big room and down onto the island and explored every inch of it that I could reach. Yes, the cypress trees had created it and anchored it, and from the west and the north they were so thick that the island itself must have been invisible. Only the eastern bank, where I had come ashore, was the way of access.

"Regarding the strange structure of granite and gold, I couldn't discover anything more about it, except that when I cut back the wisteria the graven figures were as beautiful there as anywhere else. The worth of the gold must have been staggering, I reasoned, but no one had ever stolen it; no one -- it seemed -- had ever tried.

"But I was so hot now, so coated in sweat, so bitten up by the mosquitoes and harassed by the lonesome cries of the birds and the way that they mingled with the half-heard voices that I had to get out of here. I had to get safe.

"I jumped into the pirogue, caught up the pole, pushed off the bank and headed for home. "

Chapter12

12

"JASMINE WAS WAITING for me at the landing, in a perfect fit over the fact that I hadn't told anyone where I was going, and she was losing her mind with worry; and even Patsy was here and Patsy was worrying because Patsy had had a dream that I was in danger and she had driven in from New Orleans just to see if I was all right.

" 'Aunt Queen's here, isn't she?' I asked impatiently as I made my way to the kitchen with her. 'And as for Patsy coming in from New Orleans, it's probably because she needs money, and we'll be in for a big argument tonight. But I don't have time for this. I have to tell you what I found out there. We have to call the sheriff right away. ¡¯

" 'The sheriff? For what!' Jasmine demanded. 'And yes, your Aunt Queen is here. She arrived about an hour ago, and nobody could find you, and the pirogue was gone,' and so forth and so on for a straight three minutes.

"No sooner had she stopped her harangue than Aunt Queen appeared, and she threw her arms around me, dirty though I was from the swamp. She was her usual elegant self, right to the perfect curls of her white hair and her soft green silk dress. With Aunt Queen, it's silk or silk, that's about the extent of it, and I can't think of embracing her without thinking of silk.

"Patsy also came into the kitchen and sat down opposite me as I settled at the table, with Aunt Queen taking the chair to the right of me and Jasmine putting a beer down in front of me and then sitting to my left.

"I pulled off my dirty garden gloves and drank half the beer in one swallow, and Jasmine shook her head but got up to get me another.

" 'What is this about the sheriff?' Aunt Queen asked. 'Why do you want the sheriff?¡¯

"I laid out the earrings and the brooch, and I told them all about everything I had seen. I told them about the skull just disintegrating, but that I knew the sheriff could get the DNA from the white powder left of it to prove it was Rebecca's, and that for a DNA match there was hair in the brush that Rebecca had used, upstairs in the trunk that bore her name. There was hair in her comb too.

"Aunt Queen looked at Jasmine and Jasmine shook her head.

" 'You think the sheriff of Ruby River Parish is going to run DNA tests on a pile of white powder!' Jasmine declared. 'You're going to tell this cockamamy story to the sheriff of Ruby River Parish? You, Tarquin Blackwood, dedicated buddy of Goblin, your spirit duplicate? You're going to call the sheriff? I don't want to be in this kitchen when that conversation takes place. ¡¯

" 'Listen to me,' I insisted. 'This woman was murdered. There's no statute of limitations on murder, and --¡¯

"When Aunt Queen spoke, she was very soft and reasonable-sounding. 'Quinn, my darling, I don't think the sheriff will believe this story. And I don't think he will send anyone into the thick of the swamp. ¡¯

" 'All right,' I said, 'I see. No one cares about this. No one believes it. ¡¯

" 'It isn't that I don't believe it,' said Aunt Queen, 'it's that I don't think the outside world will believe it. ¡¯

" 'Yeah, that's it,' chimed in Patsy. 'The outside world is going to think you're a crackpot, Tarquin, if they don't already from all these years of your talking about that damned spook. Tarquin, the more you carry on about this, the crazier everybody thinks you are. ¡¯