Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 37, No. 13, Mid-December 1992

Murder Below Broad Street by Janet O’Daniel

I have felt for some time that I should set down the truth concerning the night of the Historic Homes tour and what happened, if only because Deirdre Dorsette-Byers, my neighbor, has been telling her version all over Charleston and there is often a mile-wide gap between truth and fiction where Deirdre is concerned. Harmony Dupree, who has been with me for thirty years, gives one of those shrugs of hers when I mention telling the truth, saying darkly that truth is a hard bird to catch. But Harmony was raised on one of the offshore islands and thinks she knows a great deal about things the eye can’t see. There is even some of the old Gullah in her speech at times, and I will admit she has a formidable sense of things impending. Still, she has a superior way about reminding me of it as I have pointed out to her. We are both widows, Harmony and I, and making the best of it.

“Why not?” I replied when the Historic Homes committee first asked to include my house in the candlelight tour. “My house is rich in history.”

“We’re aware of that, Felicia. And very few of the historic homes are still in the same family after so long. I do hope it won’t cause your guests any inconvenience.”

“My guests,” I said firmly, “will adapt.”

Due to the pressing need for income, I have converted my home into a bed-and-breakfast. And that is a story in itself — which I will not go into here. The licenses, the permits, the requirements — sprinkler system, fire escapes — and with a Historic Oversight committee peering over my shoulder to make sure it was all done discreetly. Here in Charleston discretion is highly prized. Architectural discretion, that is. Other kinds I imagine run about the same as anywhere.

Deirdre Dorsette-Byers disapproved strongly.

“Strangers tramping through the house. I would find it very demeaning,” she said.

I said coldly, “I have strangers in my house all the time, Deirdre. And as far as the tour is concerned, I shall make the rules — no smoking, no sharp heels — I’m sure everyone will be quite happy to comply.”

“But so many out-of-towners,” Deirdre said.

“Well now, we can’t all be natives,” I said, still keeping a note of sweet reason in my voice, and Deirdre did blush slightly. She herself came to Charleston fifteen years ago from Greenville, but to hear her talk you would think she had lived south of Broad Street her whole life. Furthermore, Deirdre’s house, which is in the same block as mine, has never been included in a tour. I could have told her the reason: heavy use of wall-to-wall carpeting and plastic laminates when she redecorated the place.

Harmony’s disapproval was another matter! She had a premonition from the first that something was wrong about the tour. The fact that Harmony had an irritating way of being right in such things did not keep me from arguing the point with her.

“Perfectly ridiculous,” I said.

Harmony spooned sugar into the thick dark coffee in front of her. She had made it fresh, and we were sitting at the kitchen table with one of her rum-flavored cheesecakes on a plate between us.

“What I’m tellin’ you is what I seen,” she insisted. “If you set on goin’ through with it, what you better do is, you better put out everything you got that’s blue. Best color there is for warding off evil. We could use the blue and white china for the refreshments, and you could wear that blue dress of yours.”

“It needs to go to the cleaner’s,” I said, but it disturbed me just a little to hear her talk that way.

“Well then, take it,” she persisted.

“And nobody’s said anything about refreshments,” I pointed out, trying to deflect her.

“Guests in the house gets offered,” Harmony said severely, chiding me over amenities forgotten.

“Anyway, I don’t see how you can say there’s anything evil about this tour when it hasn’t happened yet. You don’t even know who’s going to be coming.” I dug into the cheesecake with my fork, some of my anxieties disappearing with the first bite. Harmony and I are neither one of us inclined to worry about our weight. I am a woman of comfortable, large measurements, while Harmony, small, dark-skinned, and wiry, eats just as much but never gains an ounce. However, as I say, I don’t worry about it.

“I see somebody with a aura,” Harmony said, closing her eyes and pointing heavenward with her fork.

“Oh, fiddle,” I said.

Harmony began a slight back-and-forth rocking motion that she does every once in a while when spirits are moving her.

“Danger comin’,” she said.

I went on eating, annoyed but also faintly uneasy, and got ready for Harmony’s recital, which was bound to come since I had questioned her credentials, so to speak.

“They passed me over my granddaddy’s grave when I was born,” Harmony said. “So’s Granddaddy’s spirit wouldn’t come back to plague me. And I always had my window frames painted blue so’s the evil hags couldn’t get in.”

I pointed out to her that none of our window frames were blue. “Nobody’s gotten in yet,” I said rather testily.

“Roots and spells, ghosts and hexes, I’ve handled ’em all,” Harmony went on, ignoring me. “You get that blue dress to the cleaner, all I got to say.”

“It needs to be let out just the teeniest bit at the sides,” I admitted.

And two weeks later, on that windy November night when the tour group arrived, I was wearing the blue dress as I greeted them at the front door.

I’d never seen Adam Quinelle in person. He was the first to enter — a small, delicate-looking man with little hands and feet — I could look over the top of his head as we shook hands. His wife was taller, a serious, thin-faced woman with dark hair skinned back tightly. Her name was Zoe. Another man was with them. He said his name was Rudy Barlow, and put out a hand to me when we met but didn’t smile. He said he was Mr. Quinelle’s assistant. Pale, dark, with eyes that darted around restlessly. Assistant my foot, I thought, noticing the curt way Quinelle addressed him. He was a gofer if I ever saw one.

Adam Quinelle was a bona fide celebrity, someone everybody knew about. He was a writer and critic — actually a sort of literary jack-of-all-trades. I’d read articles by him and seen him on television, where he waved his small hands and said acerbic things about other writers. There was a convention of authors and publishers that week at the Mill House, which accounted for his presence as well as that of some of the others, I gathered.

The rest of the tour group crowded in, along with Dulcey Peveridge, the lady from the Historic Homes committee. “This is Mr. Matthias Haverhill,” Mrs. Peveridge was saying. “One of our foremost Shakespearean scholars.”

I shook hands with a lanky middle-aged man with hair falling in front of his eyes. We had candles lighted all over the house, and some of them flickered now as a draft came in the open doorway. It was a cool, cloudy night, and the wind was strong enough to set the live oak in front of the house moving and rustling. The Spanish moss that hung from its branches swayed, gray and shroudlike. The group filling up the entrance hall stopped to sign a guest book I had placed there.

A couple wearing matching Hush Puppies were identified as Mr. and Mrs. Wilford Gunther of Grand Rapids, Michigan. They seemed to be unconnected with the literary convention. I greeted them, and Mrs. Gunther whispered excitedly in my ear, “I saw that man on Johnny Carson!”

I managed to smile and nod at her, but I was faintly disturbed at this celebrity atmosphere that was building. I would have preferred the focus of attention to be on the house, which was, after all, the object of the occasion.

“And this is Mr. Wyman Holcroft,” Mrs. Peveridge murmured. “He’s a reporter.”

“A local reporter?” I asked, eyebrows going up. Mr. Holcroft was young, with a shock of dark hair that looked uncombed. He wore a corduroy jacket, jeans, and Reeboks, and there was a camera around his neck.

“I’m from Currents magazine,” he said. “I like your house.”

“Thank you,” I said coolly. I had heard of Currents, a big national weekly, but I was of two minds about just how much I relished this sort of notoriety. Obviously his interest stemmed from the guest roster for tonight’s tour, not from the architectural significance of my house. It would, of course, kill Deirdre Dorsette-Byers when she heard about it. That at least was a comforting thought.

A gray-haired man named Hugh Merrifield was the last to enter. He identified himself as a writer working on a book about the South’s historic houses. (Another one? I thought, but didn’t say.)

It was right about then, with everyone assembled in my front hall, that I began to worry less about the publicity, which I detested, and began instead to be aware of another element that seemed to have entered with the group. There was a certain — how to put it without sounding like Harmony — a certain uneasiness among all of them. No one joked or smiled or looked cheerful — with the possible exception of little Mrs. Gunther from Grand Rapids, who, I suspected, would have bubbled happily at a tax audit.

It was Adam Quinelle, however, who remained the focal point of the group as the tour started, and I was obliged to admit he seemed knowledgeable.

“You see here, my dear,” he said to his wife, but his voice was clear enough that it carried to the whole group, “heart pine floors. The stair rail is mahogany, of course.”

I raised my own voice slightly to cut him off. “This house was built in 1769 by an ancestor of mine, Captain Emmanuel Leighton, a prominent merchant. He had a thriving store in Augusta, where goods from Britain were sold, and there he received skins coming in from the West and sent them on to England. At this time the Cherokee country was opening up, due in large part to the vigor of such early traders as Captain Leighton—”

“Those old pirates really cleaned up in the fur trade,” Adam Quinelle said, his voice at an easy conversational level, not even lowered for discretion. I glared at him and continued.

“On this floor, behind the entrance hall, two small rooms were made into one, which serves as a dining room. The rooms to right and left here are smaller and now function as guest bedrooms.”

“No living room?” Mrs. Gunther asked in some bewilderment.

“The drawing room is on the next floor,” I said. “We’ll get to that in a moment. First, if you all will step back this way, please. The dining room paneling extends to chair-rail height, as you see. Incidentally, the house was one of the first in Charleston to be piped for gaslights. These handsome crystal chandeliers are from that era.”

“May I take a picture?” Wyman Holcroft whispered as the group made its way around the room.

I frowned. “Well, I suppose—” I said, and watched as he snapped from various angles. I noted that he managed to include Adam Quinelle in most of the shots. I suppose Quinelle was what would be called newsworthy.

“May not use any of them,” Holcroft said cheerfully, “but it never hurts to have more material than you need. My magazine’s into distinguished homes this year.”

“I see.” Again I had the uneasy feeling that the evening was not entirely in my control, and seeing Harmony standing in the kitchen doorway, starched and rigid, glowering at the proceedings, was in no way reassuring.

“The house is built on a crib of palmetto logs sunk in sand and pluff mud,” I went on, “thus enabling it to sway slightly in high winds. It escaped serious injury in the great earthquake of 1886 and again in the recent hurricane. You may recall this principle’s being employed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the Tokyo hotel that withstood the disastrous earthquake of 1923...”

As I went on talking, I was observing the group, singly and collectively. Mr. Merrifield, the author who was doing the book on southern houses, had sidled up to Holcroft, and I heard him murmur, “I wonder if I could possibly see some of your pictures when they’re developed? I’d give credit, of course — I came along at the last minute, actually — didn’t know cameras would be permitted.” I didn’t hear Holcroft’s reply.

The Gunthers were tiptoeing along in their Hush Puppies, taking in everything, sticking close together, but as awed by the Quinelles as by the house, I thought. Anyone seen on television was by definition famous, I supposed. I myself seldom watch television.

Quinelle strolled around the room followed by his wife and Rudy Barlow. He had a great tendency, I noticed, to touch everything, to pick up objects and examine them, to run his small hands over furniture and along the top of the chair-high paneling.

“The cornice—” I began, and Quinelle chimed in, “Ah, yes. Look there, Zoe. Notice the rosettes and the egg-and-dart carvings. Excellent examples of the form.”

My mouth clamped shut with annoyance, and I was about to herd them all out of the room summarily when I noticed the two who followed in Quinelle’s wake — Zoe and Rudy. They were standing very close together and the backs of their hands were touching. As I watched, I saw her hand move slightly, not to pull away, but in an unmistakable stroking motion. A second later the group shifted, and they stepped apart.

I turned and caught Harmony’s glance, knowing in an instant that she had seen it, too. Very little escapes Harmony.

“Now, if you’ll all step this way,” I said, leading them back into the big front hall. “The house may be said to be a mixture of periods, but the Adam style is perhaps predominant. You will notice the carved woodwork and cornices, and the graceful curve of the stair rail, which is indeed mahogany.” I shot a look at Quinelle, who, standing on the bottom step, was still shorter than the other men in the group.

“If you’ll follow me to the second floor,” I said, brushing past him to go ahead.

I noticed Matthias Haverhill, the Shakespeare scholar, edging his way to Quinelle, and as we went up the steps I heard him say in a low voice, “Look here, Quinelle, do you actually plan to deliver that paper?”

“Certainly.” Quinelle’s voice, as always, was not lowered but at normal volume. “The verse is doggerel, pure and simple. If you’re going to claim discovery of a lost Shakespeare fragment, you’d better be prepared to back it up.”

“But I am! At the Bodleian, where I found it—”

“Piffle!” Quinelle snorted. “Rubbish! You never should have announced it to the newspapers anyway. Too quick off the mark, Haverhill. Too damned eager.”

I turned slightly as we reached the top of the stairs, just enough to catch a glimpse of Haverhill’s thin, ascetic features. They were twisted into a dark look of pure venom as he glared at Quinelle.

Hurriedly I said, “The drawing room opens here, off the hall, and runs the entire width of the house, behind the piazza. Please note the wide beveled cypress panels. The original wood mantel over the fireplace was replaced sometime in the early 1800’s by a marble one with carvings of grapes and grape leaves.”

I could hear little Mrs. Gunther’s voice. “Oh, Wilford, look. Did you ever see anything so beautiful?” But it was Adam Quinelle I kept my eye on. Once again he was touching, lifting, examining, running those little monkey-clever hands over everything. I think he really was interested, which was more than could be said for his wife Zoe and the gofer, Rudy, both of whom looked supremely bored, but even so I disliked watching him do it. Furthermore, here on the second floor the group seemed to be drifting apart, some going here, some there, some lingering in the hall looking at the portraits, some poking into the morning room across the hall. Mrs. Peveridge from the Historic Homes committee should have been alert to this, keeping them together, but she was in deep conversation with Hugh Merrifield, no doubt hoping to find herself quoted in his book. I have known Dulcey Peveridge since first grade and have never found her to be more than minimally intelligent.

“The house has seen a great deal of history,” I pushed on. “There has been speculation that ‘old Bory’, as General Beauregard was affectionately known, may have stayed here briefly before moving on to other quarters on Meeting Street. Later, of course, he was obliged to move farther uptown, beyond the range of the federal guns.”

“General Who?” Mrs. Gunther asked in a timid voice.

“General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard,” I said severely. “The defender of Charleston, he is often called.”

“Oh.” Mrs. Gunther looked suitably cowed.

I forged ahead. “Curiously, it is the house’s earlier history that is better authenticated. Hessian mercenaries were quartered here during the Revolution. When the British were ordered to leave Charleston Harbor, many of the Hessians fled inland. But some, including a few quartered here, hid in the chimneys and other niches and bolt-holes in the house to escape the general roundup.”

I glanced around the group, feeling I had their attention now. Even Adam Quinelle was silent for once, giving me his peculiar half-whimsical look.

“We know much of this from the letters of Sarah Boltman Bennett,” I went on. “A daughter of the house. Old Captain Leighton’s granddaughter. In them she speaks of an ‘attachment’ one of the Hessians had formed for her. She implies that the interest was returned.”

“Did he make it?” Hugh Merrifield, the house historian, asked. “Did he escape the roundup?”

“Apparently. But the story did not have a happy ending, even so. Sarah’s marriage to a local merchant — some years older, by the way — had been arranged, and she was obligated by her family to go through with it.”

Little Mrs. Gunther’s lower lip was trembling. “What a dreadful, beautiful story,” she murmured. And then, more practically, “Where on earth did he hide?”

“Perhaps in this chimney,” I said. “We can only surmise.” I knew, of course, but I wasn’t going to tell them. Certain matters should be kept within the family, I thought.

There was a collective sigh as the group started to move again, and I said briskly, “Suppose we step across to the morning room. It was there that old Captain Leighton used to sit to cast up his accounts. Later it was used as a ladies’ writing room, where invitations were written and correspondence answered.”

Adam Quinelle’s voice returned. “Just see the texture of this paneling. See that beveling? And done with hand tools, of course — but there were master craftsmen at work then.” Once again he was running his hands over things, touching, examining, handling.

“This way,” I said smartly and headed across the hall.

The smaller morning room was a tactile feast for him. The desk, covered with paperweights, inkstand, lamp, books, water jug, attracted him at once. Everything was lifted, stroked, turned upside down. Then the leatherbound books in cases against one wall were scrutinized, his hands running over their spines with what looked like sensuous pleasure. When he discovered Captain Leighton’s huge sea chest standing in a corner, he let out a little cry that was almost girlish and clapped his hands together.

“Oh, but this is marvelous!” he crowed, and proceeded at once to lift the cover for a closer look. The chest was empty, but Quinelle ran his hands over every surface, exclaiming over the workmanship, touching the leather hinges and straps. With everyone watching him, I thought much of his pleasure derived from being the focus of attention. I was torn between annoyance with him and a certain satisfaction at having the house so thoroughly appreciated.

I let them all soak in the atmosphere of the little room, then explained that the other rooms on this floor were bedrooms, and private, but that if they would follow me, we would go up into the attic for a look at the huge pine beams, iron nails, wooden pegs, and dowels that held the house together. Mr. Merrifield showed a great interest in this, and was at my side asking questions the whole way.

“Magnificent!” he exclaimed. “And the mahogany stair rail goes all the way up — God, how they built things in those days!”

Wyman Holcroft was busy with his notebook and camera, and the others wandered about peering into every corner. The attic seemed to fascinate them, and I might have had a hard time getting them to leave but for the fragrance of Harmony’s coffee, which had begun seeping upstairs. Then there was a general breaking up of the group. The Gunthers were halfway down the stairs before anyone else, and even dour Mr. Haverhill moved more briskly. I began to feel some gratification that the thing had gone off well and that the house had been a memorable experience for all of them.

Harmony, who wasn’t above a little showing off, had done herself proud, using the good silver coffeepot and laying out an assortment of her specialties — an apricot mousse, a lemon cheesecake, and a hazelnut torte. She was using the blue and white china. There was a clatter of conversation around the dining room, everyone becoming more at ease with each other, the earlier glumness dissipating, and then all of a sudden I heard Zoe’s voice, high and querulous.

“Where’s Quinelle?”

The room grew quiet as people looked around.

Lean and scholarly Matthias Haverhill paused in mid-bite, then began to chew slowly on his lemon cheesecake, eyes darting. Wyman Holcroft’s head shot up as he searched the room with a reporter’s probing look. Hugh Merrifield glanced up casually, not overly concerned. Mr. and Mrs. Wilford Gunther grew wide-eyed, and Dulcey Peveridge cleared her throat nervously. It was Zoe and Rudy Barlow I looked at. Their hands shot out and clasped each other for an instant, then let go. “Damn!” Zoe said, sounding exasperated. “Has he done it again?”

“Done what?” I inquired. I glanced at Harmony, just coming in from the kitchen with a tray of benne cakes. She paused in the doorway and shot me a stiletto look.

Zoe rolled her eyes up, then took a deep breath. “He’s done a bolt. He’s always doing that. Ducking out and leaving everybody behind. Mrs. Delavan, I do apologize.”

“It’s quite all right,” I said calmly. “Please, everyone, have some more coffee. Mr. Merrifield, won’t you try one of Harmony’s benne cakes? They’re a Charleston specialty.”

Movement resumed, conversation picked up, but in a muted undertone. And Zoe Quinelle, angry and white-faced, more disturbed, I thought, than the situation warranted, set her cup and saucer down with a clank.

“Hey, take it easy, honey,” Rudy Barlow said in a low voice that I was near enough to hear.

But Zoe was still angry, and over Dulcey Peveridge’s anxious protests announced that she was leaving. The others were to stay, please. Rudy had his car. No need to rush because of her. She shook her hand in a distracted way, and the two of them left.

The rest stayed only long enough for second helpings of the refreshments and then at last they were gone and Harmony and I cleared up, filled the dishwasher, and changed the tablecloth to be ready for serving breakfast. Our guests returned from their evening out — two couples from New Jersey who had stayed with me before in the first floor bedrooms — and we exchanged a few words before all of us turned in.

I was sitting up in bed reading and just starting to feel sleepy after a rather curious keyed-up mood when the telephone beside my bed rang.

“Mrs. Delavan? Wyman Holcroft.”

“Oh. Yes, Mr. Holcroft?”

“I’m at the Mills House. I’ve been covering the conference here, and Norman Mailer was supposed to be coming in tonight but he seems to be a no-show. Mrs. Delavan, have you seen anything of Adam Quinelle? I mean — he didn’t come back there, I suppose?”

“No — isn’t he at the hotel?”

“Doesn’t seem to be. His wife says he often walks back from parties and things, all by himself. Which really steams her, but now she’s running around looking for him and she’s even called the police.”

“Well, he certainly didn’t come back here.” I hesitated. “Are the others there? The ones attending the conference? Mr. Haverhill, Mr. Merrifield?”

“I don’t know. Haven’t thought to ask.”

“You might check on them,” I said slowly, and we hung up. I felt a curious churning inside — such a busy, jumbled evening it had been, so outside the normal quiet that Harmony and I shared day after day. But in spite of it, I was tired, and I knew Harmony was, too, although her back had been straight as a poker as she headed for her own bedroom downstairs off the kitchen. I had often suggested that she take the bedroom next to mine on the upper floor, but she always insisted she disliked the idea of sleeping that high off the ground.

I rather wished tonight that she were there next door to me. I tossed around uneasily for a few minutes, but then at last I dropped off to sleep, much like falling off a cliff. Complete darkness, total oblivion.

When I awoke, it was a sudden thing, and at first unexplainable. There had been no noise, and I didn’t have to go to the bathroom, so those two causes could be ruled out. But as I lay staring in darkness at the ceiling, my thoughts began to eddy around in a dark, pooling spiral, disturbing me.

Presently I got out of bed, feeling the November chill of the room and pulling on my warm dressing gown, locating my slippers. I tiptoed out of my room and down the hall to the morning room. I stepped inside, feeling my heart beating insanely against the walls of my chest. I tried my best to breathe deeply and control it, but it seemed to be spinning off with a life of its own, quite apart from me.

I switched on a small lamp and looked around. The desk with its pens and inkstand and paperweights seemed in order. Captain Leighton’s sea chest stood in its corner. Books were lined up, row on row, against the wall. I took a deep breath and went over to the shelves, removing two books at eye level and finding the small wooden handle concealed there. I pulled it, and a door built into the bookshelves swung open.

The space behind the shelves was small — scarcely closet-sized. Captain Leighton, who had apparently delighted in tricks and whims, had had it built for no better reason than to store some of his choice wines, and it hadn’t been used for that in years. It was quite adequate, however, for holding the doubled-up body of Adam Quinelle.

Soft footsteps sounded behind me, and I whirled around.

“What’s goin’ on?”

Harmony stood there, dressed much as I was in nightgown and wrapper, only her slippers were large yellow fluffy ones with cat faces on the toes.

“Harmony—” I, so seldom at a loss for words, was speechless.

She moved closer to look, in the low lamplight, at the body in the tiny space.

“Is he dead?” she asked practically.

“I’m sure he is,” I said. I reached out and touched the cold, lifeless body, avoiding the blood that had dripped from an obvious wound. I drew my hand back quickly.

“One of them did it,” Harmony said. “One of them that was here tonight.”

“It had to be.”

“Told you I saw somebody with a aura,” she said, shaking her head. “And the way they went after that apricot mousse of mine, too.” She pondered over this non sequitur for a moment. I felt my hands and feet turning to ice.

“Somebody hit him on the back of the head,” I said.

“But when? When they have time to do that?”

I shook my head helplessly. Then it came to me.

“When we all went to the attic.”

“But if you was all in the attic—”

“Well, but maybe we weren’t. I mean, not all at once. People were coming and going — I didn’t pay attention to who was there at any particular time. And we must have stayed up there ten minutes — maybe fifteen. I didn’t see Quinelle, though, I’m sure of that.”

I pulled myself up and tried to still the trembling that had overtaken me. I disliked this feeling of being so out of control.

“I’ll have to phone the police. And then we must try to remember things. I mean, things that might mean something.” I thought of Zoe Quinelle and Rudy Barlow, their hands touching down in the dining room — and of the way those hands had flown out to clasp each other later. I recalled the look of venomous hatred on Matthias Haverhill’s gaunt face. Look here, Quinelle, do you actually plan to deliver that paper? If a man’s professional reputation were at stake, if he knew Quinelle was about to pinion him with that sharp, ruthless wit—

“You don’t suppose,” Harmony said thoughtfully, and then paused.

“Suppose what?”

“Well, it happened in this room, didn’t it?” she said. “Do you reckon somebody might’ve found...” She let the thought trail off.

“Yes. I did think about that.” I stopped suddenly as a board creaked in the hall outside.

Both of us whirled around, and I heard an odd, gasping sound which I realized was coming from me. Framed in the doorway were Mr. and Mrs. Wilford Gunther of Grand Rapids. Only the Hush Puppies and polyester were gone, along with the ingenuous, wide-eyed wonder. Both were dressed in black. Close-fitting pants and sweaters, knitted caps, and smooth black leather gloves.

Mr. Gunther was holding a gun. It too was black.

“All right now, ladies, just move aside quietly,” he said. “We don’t plan to hurt anyone.”

“You’ve already hurt someone,” I said.

“Yes. Well. That little fellow was too sharp for his own good. He saw it at the same time we did. Even so, we’d have had it in a minute if he hadn’t started to raise the roof. Loud voice, for a little guy. Wouldn’t have had to hit him if he’d just kept his mouth shut. Wouldn’t have had to come back tonight. He brought it all on himself. Get it, Tessa.”

The woman slipped past me to Captain Leighton’s sea chest, opened it, and examined the inside of the lid quickly.

“It’s gone!” she cried out.

Annoyance and then anger flashed across his face.

“What the hell—” He turned on the two of us — Harmony in the shadows against the wall, me backed up to the desk, and glared at each of us in turn.

“Where is it?” he demanded.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, and I was pleased to note that my voice had returned to normal and my heart had stopped its pounding: I was feeling quite calm.

“Where is it?” he rasped again.

I closed my lips firmly and looked at Harmony, who returned the look and nodded very faintly. Two people do not share a home for thirty years without learning to read one another’s thoughts. Wiry and quick, she bent over and in a flash gave a yank to the narrow rug he was standing on — Captain Leighton’s India drugget. It slid on the polished floor. Off balance, the man toppled toward the desk and flung a hand out to catch himself. I gave a sharp chop to the hand at the same time that I seized a heavy glass paperweight and flung it at the woman. It struck her temple and she went down. Harmony was already busy flinging the rug over the man, winding him up as neatly as a fly being saved for lunch by a spider.

“Well done, Harmony,” I gasped. “I’ll call the police.”

Harmony was out of breath herself. “He’s the one with the aura,” she announced, looking at the man on the floor.

As it turned out, no call was necessary, for the police were at the door along with young Mr. Holcroft.

“Hurry, hurry,” I urged as I admitted them, and they were up the stairs in seconds. Wyman Holcroft lingered behind for a moment.

“Are you all right?” he asked anxiously. “I just had a hunch something was doing here. That’s what I told the cops.”

“I am so grateful for your hunch, Mr. Holcroft,” I breathed, adjusting my robe and patting my hair back into place. “And I’m perfectly fine.” I hesitated. “I’m afraid Mr. Quinelle — is not.”

“What were they after?” the detective asked me a half hour later. By now my house was buzzing with police, both uniformed and plainclothes. My guests from New Jersey were wandering around, bewildered but also bright-eyed with excitement. We were standing in the dining room, and Mr. Holcroft’s pencil was scribbling rapidly; he had already asked to use my telephone.

I took a deep breath. “They were after a book that is often referred to as the Hessian Diary. Its reputation is well known among collectors.”

The detective, a tall black man with a look of experience about him, asked, “It’s valuable, I take it?”

“It is,” I said. “I’m sure it would bring a great deal of money.”

“And where is it now?”

“Upstairs, in my bedside table. I didn’t like the way Mr. Quinelle was touching everything, so after everyone had left, I checked on the diary to be sure it was all right and then I took it into my room just because I wanted to look at it, have it near me. I do that often. I never dreamed those Gunthers — or whoever they are — had discovered it.”

“Professionals,” he said crisply. “We know them. And murder isn’t their usual way. But Quinelle was clever enough to catch them out as they tried to lift it.”

“What brought them here?” I asked. “How did they know about the diary?”

“There’s a lively underground in such matters,” Holcroft said, rejoining us. “My magazine did a piece on it recently. Some wealthy collector probably put the word out that he’d give a hefty price for the diary. And those two must be among the best in the business. That hick act they were putting on would have fooled anyone.”

“Surely no reputable dealer—”

“Oh no. Nothing like that,” the detective interrupted. “But some collectors deal directly with art and antiquity thieves. They do just that — collect. Stash the stuff in air-conditioned vaults and never show it to anybody.”

“But they have it,” Holcroft said. “That’s all they care about.”

“How did those two get back in here tonight?” I asked suddenly.

“Probably slipped the lock off one of these dining room windows when we were all having refreshments,” he said. “No one would have noticed.”

I could feel Harmony’s gimlet stare and purposely ignored it. But I knew well enough that the question of blue window frames would be raised again.

“That Hessian soldier who stayed here — the one who fell for, what was her name, Sarah Boltman Bennett. It was his diary, wasn’t it?” Wyman Holcroft asked.

“It was, yes,” I said.

He tilted his head to one side. “How come you never sold it yourself? To a reputable collector, I mean — or a museum.”

“It was a family treasure,” I said, and to me that explained it. But I saw his faint frown as if he were puzzled.

“I mean — it belongs in the house,” I went on. “And right where he hid it — in the false lid of Captain Leighton’s sea chest. I can picture him sticking it in there before he hid himself in the little wine closet. I’m sure that’s what he did.”

“But you said he escaped. Yet he didn’t take the diary with him.”

“Oh no. I think he left it there on purpose. Hoping, perhaps, that she’d find it. Sarah, you know. I like to think perhaps she did, although I don’t know if she could have read it. It’s all in German, of course.”

“I was just thinking — that money might’ve come in handy, though,” he said.

I gave him a severe look. “Mr. Holcroft, this is Charleston. We don’t just toss away our treasures.”

He stared at me for a moment and then grinned. “No, ma’am, you sure don’t. I just didn’t think.”

But mentioning Charleston suddenly made me think. I glanced across at Harmony, and she nodded and started for the kitchen. In no time at all I could smell the coffee, and she was bringing out the leftovers from earlier in the evening — along with some pistachio-cream eclairs she’d been holding back — setting out cups and saucers and plates. Everyone was milling around, the detective, the uniformed officers, the medical examiner, the four bewildered guests from New Jersey, Harmony and I in our robes and slippers. Poor Adam Quinelle had already been carried out and spirited away somewhere, and so had the Gunthers.

“My goodness,” I said. “I don’t know where my manners are. I just want you all to come in here and have a little refreshment before you go. Detective, what was your name, Hammond? Detective Hammond, now please have yourself a nice fresh cup of coffee. And you other folks, just come right over to the table. Mr. Holcroft, you’ve been up and working all night. I’m sure you’ve got room for a little something...”

That’s the way we do things in Charleston.