Raucous laughter filled the richly ornate room. The house was one that slept by day and came into its own at night. Way beyond the shacks on the outskirts of the city, it was a house unknown to decent people. A house visited only by the disreputable and dissolute. Once it had been the gracious home of a plantation owner. Cypress swamps flanked it on one side, the broad sweep of the Mississippi on the other. It was known to those who frequented it as simply ‘The Château’. Two storeys high, embraced on all sides by balconies and Doric columns, it had been built by its original owner with lavish expense and pride. Now the heavy drapes at the tall French casement windows were seldom drawn back. The high-ceilinged rooms were no longer the scenes of elegance and refined entertainment. While the marble mantles and crystal chandeliers remained, the overall effect of the crimson velvet sofas and faded tapestries was one of uncaring shabbiness. Cigarette and cigar ash was dropped indiscriminately, the sweet smell of marijuana and not potpourri pervaded the mirrored rooms.
Outside it was hardly visible from the road. Dense oaks shielded it from view. Riverwards, what had once been carefully tended gardens ran wild with tropical vegetation and a tangle of orange and lemon trees. The Château was as unapproachable as its occupants could wish.
Beauregard Clay laid down his hand of cards and tipped his chair back on two legs against a gold flock-papered wall, surveying the man opposite him through half-closed eyes. His opponent was an out-of-towner, a Northerner who had already lost twenty thousand dollars in the game that had started only hours earlier. Von Laussat and Shenton Ross, Beau’s shadows, sat tensely, well aware that even at this stage, if he lost, Beau could not make true his debt. Judge Clay had issued orders to the bank that no more of Beau’s cheques were to be honoured. As the money Beau habitually drew was deposited by the Judge, the bank had nervously acceded to his request. Beau had been indifferent.
The stakes on the table went up by another five thousand dollars. Idly Beau scanned his hand and topped two pairs with a flush.
A girl whose beauty showed her mixed ancestry entered, hips swinging, from a distant smoke-filled room, a bottle of bourbon and a glass in her hand. Beau stretched out a free hand and the Northerner frowned, studying his cards with tense scrutiny. The girl gave a throaty laugh and sat easily on Beau’s lap, one arm around his neck, the other pouring bourbon into the glass. Beau drank deeply, aware that the Northerner was carefully calculating the amount of alcohol he consumed. Beau’s mouth curved in the semblance of a smile. If the Northerner was hoping that the bourbon would cloud his judgement, he was hoping in vain.
Another hand went down to Beau, and Von and Shenton exchanged triumphant glances. With Beau holding the cards, gambling was a cinch.
By eleven-thirty the Northerner knew the game was lost beyond recovery. Grinding his cigar into the onyx ashtray, he accused Beau of cheating. In three hours he had lost fifty thousand dollars. Beau shrugged nonchalantly, pointing out that the stakes had not been of his calling.
‘Bastard! Cardsharp!’ the Northerner yelled, sweeping the cards from the table, the inch of liquor remaining in the bottle gurgling to the floor.
With the sigh of a man facing the boring inevitable, Beau pushed the girl unceremoniously from his knee.
‘Thieving son-of-a-bitch!’
The table went crashing as the mottle-faced Northerner sprang to his feet and lunged at Beau.
Von folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the wall. He liked to see Beau in action. It was poetry in motion. No matter how beaten and bloody his victim, Beau always emerged unscathed, his expression as confident as ever, his breathing prefectly in control, his clothing barely disarranged. Moving adroitly he side-stepped the vicious punch intended for his face, seized hold of a shoulder carried forward by its own momentum, steadied it and then smashed a clenched fist into a helplessly waiting jaw. The sound of bone against bone made Von wince. The Northerner was on his knees, blood pouring from the follow-up blow Beau had delivered to his nose. Through the mask of blood Von judged that it was broken. He watched with grudging admiration as the man struggled to his feet, arms flailing wildly in Beau’s direction.
An expression of distaste flicked across Beau’s face. He had no desire to bloody his silk shirt or exquisitely tailored tuxedo. With a swift blow to the stomach he rendered the Northerner senseless. Contemptuously kicking the inert body with the toe of his shoe, he left Von and Shenton to crawl on the floor, scooping up the confetti of one hundred dollar bills, and with an arm around the girl’s waist, strolled negligently into a lavishly furnished bedroom.
He stretched out on the bed, his arms locked behind his head, his shirt open to the waist, displaying a mass of tightly curling hair and gold chains.
The girl took her time. She knew Beau’s mood and she knew that he was in no hurry. Tonight was going to be good for her as well as for him. With the provocativeness of a professional artist she began to undress, her honey-gold skin glowing satin-soft in the lamplight. Beau watched her with appreciative eyes. It was no wonder the clubs paid her a thousand dollars a week for a ten-minute-a-night spot.
The bed was tented and canopied, mosquito netting looped loosely against the bedposts. Her breasts teased him through their restraining wisp of black lace. His sex throbbed and his eyes darkened. The three-times married, twenty-seven-year-old socialite he had dated in the afternoon had thought herself devastatingly experienced. If he had wanted, Beau could have told her she still had a lot to learn.
Deep in the cypress swamps an owl hooted and there came the screech of a taloned rabbit. He glanced at his watch. It was five to midnight. Afterwards there would be a game of cards until dawn and then he would fly his Cessna to La Jolla and the stunning Californian who had graced the centre spread in last month’s Playboy.
The girl twirled, discarding the wisp of lace. Beau eased himself up on one elbow, about to reach out for her and then stopped. A pain shot up his arm and into his chest and for one shattering moment he thought he was experiencing a heart attack. He gasped and the girl halted, her fingers hooked into the top of her panties.
‘What is it, honey? What’s the matter?’
Beau stared at her and through her. Augusta Lafayette. Why the hell was he thinking of Augusta Lafayette at a time like this? The pain receded, leaving a burning sensation, as if he had been scorched.
The panties went the way of the bra and the girl swayed towards him, winding her fingers in his hair, pressing his face against her breasts. Brutally he pushed her away.
Augusta Lafayette. Her face swam before him as if it were in the room. Strange how he had never noticed before how ethereally beautiful she was. Those eyes, velvet-soft, violet-dark. A man could lose himself in such eyes. Drown in them. He felt as if he were drowning now. He wanted to reach out and seize hold of her but all that was before him was a heavily perfumed body that held no allure.
Augusta Lafayette’s body held allure in plenty. He remembered holding it at a nameless party, feeling the incredible smallness of her waist, the high pert breasts, the willingness as she had pressed close against him. His head swam. He was aware of the girl’s indignant exclamations and was uncaring of them. Why hadn’t he stayed with Augusta Lafayette at that party? The answer was swift. He had thought her a child and had treated her as such. He swung his legs off the bed, trying to think clearly. She was a child. Sixteenor seventeen-year-olds held no charms for him. He liked his women experienced. He left the deflowering of virgins to Von, who couldn’t get enough of them. As if from a vast distance, he heard a female voice rising higher and higher. He swore savagely. He wanted to think; he wanted to hold on to the vision before him.
Her sun-gold hair was shining like a halo, spreading over her shoulders and down her back to the base of her spine. Hair like silk. Hair to lose himself in. Her lips were parted and smiling invitingly. She was radiant, lit with an inner flame.
He sprang from the bed, grabbing his jacket as he strode from the room.
‘Where are you going? What’s gotten into you?’ the girl asked indignantly, seizing his arm. She was rewarded by a thrust that sent her sprawling to the floor.
‘I thought we were having a game of poker?’ Shenton said bewilderedly as Beau slammed the door of the bedroom behind him and headed for the marbled entrance hall. ‘Your cards are waiting.’
‘Another night.’
Shenton shrugged and prepared to follow him. Beau swung round, and at the expression in the black eyes, Shenton faltered.
‘I’ve a visit to make,’ Beau said tersely. ‘Alone.’
Around the room the kissing and cuddling, the card playing had come to a halt. His friends eyed him nervously. Beau’s temper was legendary but it was generally only directed at outsiders; at men like the Northerner. Now, the restraint he usually exercised while in the presence of his friends, was gone. There was a wildness about him that was almost demonic. Pausing only to drain Shenton’s glass of brandy, he stalked out of The Château and into the sultry night like a man possessed.
‘Should we go after him?’ Von asked hesitantly.
Around the room feet shuffled, but no one moved forward.
A car door slammed. There was the sound of an engine being revved viciously.
‘Perhaps he’s drunk?’ Von’s girl suggested.
‘He’s always drunk,’ Shenton said curtly, eyeing the empty bottle of bourbon. ‘But it doesn’t usually take him this way.’
‘We’d never catch up with him now,’ the son of one of New Orleans’leading citizens said as the sound of the engine faded into the distance.
Shenton still hesitated.
‘Aw, come on. It’s after midnight. If we’re going to play poker, let’s play. Beau can look after himself.’
Reluctantly Shenton sat down at one of the tables. He was filled with a sense of unease. Beau’s behaviour had been out of character. He had looked like a man demented when he’d stormed out of The Château: a man not in control of himself. Unhappily he picked up the cards that had been dealt Beau and his scalp tightened and prickled. The ace of spades: the card of death.
Beau sped suicidally down a road bounded by cypress swamps and occasional sheets of moonlit water. The urgency he felt inflamed him. He’d wasted weeks, months. He wasn’t going to waste another hour. He would break down the door of St Michel if necessary, but he would have Gussie Lafayette. The tyres screeched as he took a corner on two wheels. There would be no need to snatch Gussie from her father’s grasp. The doors of St Michel would be open, waiting for him as Gussie would be.
The needle on the speedometer flickered from ninety to a hundred. He could see her face as clearly as if looking at a reflection in a mirror. Her eyes were aglow, her hair cascading down her back, her small rounded breasts rising and falling beneath her rose-pink gown.
She was in candlelight and he felt as if he could almost touch her. The blood coursed through his veins. Augusta Lafayette. Of all the women in the world to fall in love with, he’d fallen for little Gussie Lafayette!
‘I’m coming, sweetheart,’ he said, his black eyes dancing at the thought of Charles Lafayette’s horror, of his father’s staggered amazement. ‘I’m coming, Gussie, and we’ll be together forever! Forever!’
The wheel spun beneath his strong hands, the needle flickering to one hundred and five, one hundred and six. Out of the darkness the giant oak seemed to race down on him. He screamed in protest, raising his arm to shield himself as the car rocketed into the tree and then soared into the air with the momentum, rolling over and over, glass shattering and steel crashing as it somersaulted into the sucking blackness of the swamp. ‘If that’s for me, tell them I’m out,’ Judge Clay growled as the telephone rang insistently.
‘Yes, sir.’ The maid deposited the fresh coffee on the breakfast table and silenced the offending ringing. She came back into the sun-filled room apprehensively.
‘It’s the Sheriff for you, Judge. Says it’s mighty important.’
‘Goddammit, can’t a man have breakfast in peace?’ Judge Clay slammed down his napkin and stormed to the telephone. Seconds later he was out of the house and heading east.
‘Of course, we don’t know for certain yet,’ Sheriff Surtees said as chains were manacled to the underside of the car, ‘but the plates were visible and when I saw the make and that it had been sprayed black with a fancy gold trim …’
The Judge wasn’t listening. The tree lay across the road, decapitated at its point of impact with the car. The vehicle lay in the swamp, only the wheels and underside exposed. Whoever had been driving was long dead. Some yards away an ambulance waited, but only to serve as a hearse. Around him the rescue services were working smoothly and efficiently. The car was anchored, the crane creaked and the swamp reluctantly released its prize.
If Judge Clay had hoped that his son’s car had been driven by one of his wild friends, his hopes were in vain. Beau was at the wheel, rigid in death, his arm still across his face, his neck broken.
‘Beauregard Clay’s dead!’ Eden Alexander’s mother said over the phone to her closest friend. ‘I heard it from Ellen Surtees.’
‘Beau Clay’s finally overreached himself,’ Jason Shreve Sr said to his wife at lunchtime. ‘Drunk out of his skull, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘Beauregard’s dead,’ his brother said tearfully to his wife. ‘That was Pa on the phone. A car accident …’
‘Beau Clay’s dead. My, that is tragedy,’ Natalie Jefferson said as she supervised lunch. ‘He would have settled down in time. Why, what’s the matter Mae? You look quite pale. Don’t you want another piece of pecan pie?’
‘Beau Clay dead?’ Charles Lafayette said queryingly to his third client of the morning. ‘I can’t say I’m surprised. That kind of wildness can only end one way. Still, it’s a tragedy. He had promise. I feel for his father. Now, what were you saying about the oil refinery’s requirements?’
‘Judge Clay’s son is dead,’ Don Shreve’s mother said, wide-eyed, to her husband. ‘Hit a tree and died instantly. At least, I hope he died instantly. His neck was broken but he could still have been alive, couldn’t he? Drowning in that hideous swamp. It makes me quite ill to think of it. Him so handsome, too.’
‘Beau’s dead,’ Augusta’s Cousin Tina shrieked, the blood draining from her pretty face as she stared at the ghastly headlines in the paper. ‘It can’t be true! It can’t be! Oh my God! Beau! Beau!’
‘I always did say that Beau would come to a bad end,’ the town’s leading matron said to her sister, helping herself to a glass of sherry and ignoring the fact that it was only four in the afternoon. ‘Wild as an unbroken stallion, he was. Why, I remember him flying that plane of his so low it near took the roof off the Shreve’s place. And then there was the time with Judge Foster’s wife. Never gave a flying damn whether the Judge knew or not. He had the Devil in him all right. My, but his death is going to cause a lot of broken hearts.’
‘It’s a tragic waste,’ Bradley Hampton’s father said to the to the head of Nadvasco Oil, removing his glasses. ‘Dead at twenty-seven.’ He shook his head. ‘He had talent for all he was wild. All that young man needed was the steadying influence of a good wife.’ He eyed the photograph of his son on his desk speculatively. ‘Marriage can settle a boy like nothing else. I know. I married at twenty and never regretted it. I’ve been thinking lately that Bradley is growing too headstrong for his own good.’ He tapped his glasses on the leather surface. Something would have to be done concerning Bradley. He had narrowed his choice of suitable daughters-in-law down to three. There weren’t many girls fit for marriage to a Hampton.
‘He’s dead!’ Shenton’s mother said to her husband unbelievingly. ‘Beauregard is dead!’ She stumbled for a chair. ‘What if Shenton had been with him? It could have been Shenton at the bottom of that swamp! Oh, I think I’m going to faint. Brandy, somebody, quickly!’
‘Lord, Lord, but that boy sure done it this time,’ the Laussat’s oldest family retainer said, shaking her head and rocking vigorously in her chair. ‘Ah remember when he was knee-high to a grasshopper. Had the light of the Devil in his eyes even then.’
Eden sat on her bed hugging herself. She’d never known anyone who had died. Even her grandparents were still alive and indecently healthy. Now Beau Clay was dead: someone she had known, seen, talked about. She shivered. She had been talking about him only last evening. Talking about him when perhaps even then his car had been careering down a darkened, swamp-flanked road.
Her elder sister Romaine came into the room, her face flushed.
‘Isn’t it terrible? They say his neck was broken and that he drowned! Can you imagine it? Drowning in that terrible swamp, unable to move, just waiting …’
Eden did not have a very high opinion of her twenty-year-old sister. Faced with Romaine’s dramatics, some of Eden’s old good sense reasserted itself.
‘If he did die like that, there’s no need to dwell on it,’ she said sharply.
Romaine was about to flounce indignantly from the room at being spoken to in such a manner by a mere seventeen-year-old, but Eden checked her. It was obvious that her mother had been talking about the tragedy and perhaps imparting information she would not give to Eden.
‘Was he driving alone?’ she asked, trying to close her mind to the dreadful images her sister’s revelations had conjured up.
Slightly mollified by being in-the-know, Romaine halted at the door.
‘Yes. And they say his father is nearly out of his mind. I mean, everyone in New Orleans knows the future Beau had.’
Eden raised a finely shaped brow and lit a forbidden cigarette. Perdition had been the only future she had heard predicted for Beau Clay. Death, apparently, was already lending enchantment.
Her sister was already gushing on like a child of thirteen.
‘He was so talented. I guess that’s why he was so wild. It takes talented people that way. Think of Scott Fitzgerald. And so sexy. Mom said it reminded her of when James Dean died. That …’
Eden sighed. There were times when she felt that she was the only sensible person in the house, with the exception of her father. She wanted to discuss Beau Clay’s death rationally. And with a semblance of respect.
She wondered if Mae had heard the news. Mae’s parents were good friends of Sheriff Surtees. If anyone knew the details of Beau’s death, the Jefferson family would. Grabbing her car keys, she excused herself from Romaine’s irksome company and left the house. On the drive over to Mae’s she considered the possibilities.
Perhaps Beau had had someone with him when he died. Perhaps he had quarrelled with his latest girlfriend. Perhaps he had been drunk or on drugs. Perhaps he had even meant to kill himself.
With scant regard for other traffic, she raced her Cadillac down Louisiana Avenue and out towards St George Avenue.
Mae looked distinctly strained. Her usually rosy cheeks were pale, her eyes blue-rimmed.
‘We can’t talk here,’ she whispered to Eden. ‘My mother won’t leave me alone. She keeps talking and talking about it.’
‘Let’s go down to Ruby Red’s,’ Eden said practically. ‘We can have hamburgers there and talk undisturbed.’
Mae nodded assent. She, too, wanted to talk about what had happened. She fought back a sudden rush of tears. She’d had a crush on Beau for as long as she could remember, though it had been a secret she had kept to herself. And she had never been obsessed with him as Gussie had.
She froze. ‘Gussie!’ she said, horrorstruck. ‘What about Gussie?’
‘I tried to call her but that stupid maid of theirs said she wasn’t taking calls.’
‘Then she knows?’
‘She must do. Her father is a friend of Judge Clay’s.’
‘You go on down to Ruby Red’s,’ Eden said decisively. ‘That’s where all the news will be. I’ll go to Gussie. She’ll have taken Beau’s death badly, especially after last night.’
‘Yes.’ Mae looked ghastly. ‘About last night, Eden. You don’t think …’
‘You must come round more often, Eden,’ Mrs Jefferson was saying. ‘We don’t see enough of you. Oh, my, is that the phone again? Please excuse me, girls.’
‘Ruby Red’s in half an hour,’ Eden said, leaving an auguished Mae with tears in her eyes.
‘Eden …’
The Cadillac door slammed and the engine revved. Mae ran after her but was too late. She halted miserably. She had wanted a quick word with Eden before her courage failed. It would be too late for what she had to say when they were joined by Gussie.
Miserably she reversed her own car out of the Jefferson garage and drove down past City Park and on to their favourite bar on the edge of the French Quarter. It was decorated in the manner of a 1920 speakeasy and though only early, was already crowded, the air full of one topic and one topic alone. Beauregard Clay’s untimely death.
Eden motored at her usual high speed back to the Garden District and the Lafayette house that stood way back from the road, screened by palm trees, oaks and lush magnolias.
‘Ahm sorry, Miss Eden, but Miss Gussie told me quite particular …’
Eden didn’t wait for the little maid to finish. At least in the Lafayette household there was no Mrs Lafayette to contend with and Gussie’s father would be in his high office block negotiating another deal to enhance the Lafayette bank balance. Impatiently she strode past the protesting girl and headed up the wide staircase towards Gussie’s bedroom.
‘It’s Eden,’ she said through the door. ‘Can I come in?’
There was no reply. Eden tried the door. It was locked. She swore beneath her breath.
‘Please open the door, Gussie. I want to talk to you.’
‘I don’t want to talk to anyone: not ever again,’ a muffled voice said, thick with tears.
Eden leaned against the door and momentarily closed her eyes. ‘I thought he was wonderful too, Gussie. I know how you must be feeling. Mae is waiting for us down at Ruby Red’s. We can eat there and talk. It will make it easier. You’ll be able to pick up a paper, too. There was nothing in this morning’s Figaro. I guess the news came too late for their first edition, but the States Item will have the full story. Come on, Gussie. Please open the door.’
There was a wait that seemed interminable to Eden. Then, very slowly, the key turned in the lock. It was left to Eden to open the door. When she did so her eyes widened, and she stopped. Gussie was wearing the rose-pink gown of the previous evening. Her hair still streamed down past her waist, but this time in wild disarray and not glossy sleekness. She stared at Eden with lifeless eyes.
‘He’s dead,’ she whispered piteously. ‘Dead.’ Two large tears slid down her face and then Eden circled her in her arms and the dam broke. The tears that shock had refused to release poured down Gussie’s face as she sobbed and sobbed.
‘How could he die, Eden? How could he die when I love him so much? I shall die, too. I know I shall!’ Her voice rose hysterically.
Eden shook her hard. ‘Stop talking like that, Augusta Lafayette! He’s dead and I don’t blame you for crying, but it’s not as if it’s your father or your boyfriend!’
Gussie wrenched herself away from Eden’s grasp, her eyes wild. ‘How … dare … you say such things to me!’ she said, gasping the words between her racking sobs. ‘He was my boyfriend. He was more than my boyfriend. He was …’ She was choking on her own breath.
‘He was a man you spoke to only half a dozen times in your life. A man you danced with once. A man who barely knew who you were,’ Eden said cruelly.
Gussie grasped a bedpost for support. ‘He would have loved me! He would! I shall never be able to love anybody else! I shall stay true to him! I shall never forget him! Never!’
‘You will,’ Eden said with a maturity beyond her years. ‘It may seem like the end of the world now but in six months’time you’ll barely remember the name of Beau Clay.’
‘I will!’ Gussie cried vehemently. ‘I swear I will!’
‘Come on,’ Eden said gently. ‘Mae is waiting. Change your clothes and come for a drink and something to eat.’
Gussie’s tears flowed with fresh impetus. ‘How can you talk of eating when Beau is dead? Can’t you understand what has happened? Can’t you understand that I’ll never see him again? Never hear his voice?’
‘You’re overreacting, Gussie. Even if he’d lived, you would only have seen him at a distance or perhaps once a year at your cousin’s.’
Gussie threw herself full-length on her bed and beat the pillows with clenched fists.
‘I wouldn’t! He would have loved me! Oh, Beau! Beau! I wish I were dead too!’
Eden regarded her despairingly. She had known Gussie would react badly to Beau Clay’s death, but had not anticipated distress on such a scale. It was patently obvious that she could not take her for a drink and a hamburger when she was in such a state of emotional hysteria. She was weeping unrestrainedly, seemingly, oblivious of Eden’s presence. Reluctantly Eden left the room and closed the door behind her. For once in her life she felt unable to deal with the situation with which she was confronted.
With none of her usual zest she drove sedately to Esplanade Avenue and squeezed into the crowded bar. More newspapers were out, the headlines screaming Beau’s name. As she made her way through the mass of bodies she heard the same words repeated on every side.
‘A tragedy …’
‘Such a waste …’
‘Dead, at twenty-seven …’
‘… speed must have been suicidal …’
She sat beside Mae and sipped the glass of wine that was pushed across to her.
‘Where’s Gussie?’
Eden nursed the wine glass. ‘Face-down on her bed and crying as if her heart is broken.’
‘It probably is,’ Mae said compassionately. ‘She was head-over-heels in love with him.’
‘She barely knew him,’ Eden repeated. ‘None of us did. He was a film-star figure. Someone whose picture was always in the paper. Someone whose private life was led publicly. You may as well say the women who swooned when Valentino died were in love with him. They weren’t. They were in love with the idea of being in love with him.’
A hint of colour returned to Mae’s cheeks.
‘I’m glad you said that, Eden. It makes me feel better. I was getting so worried; thinking all kinds of stupid things. Of course Gussie will get over it in time. It’s a bit of a shock, that’s all.’ She managed a tremulous smile and looked towards the door.
‘The Shreve boys have just come in. They look dreadful. Were they close to Beau?’
‘Not that I know of,’ Eden replied drily. ‘But I imagine they modelled themselves on him.’
‘There’s Bradley. He’s the only person I’ve seen so far who doesn’t look to be in shock.’
A smile tinged Eden’s mouth. It would take a lot to shock Bradley Hampton.
He had seen them and was approaching their table. Mae shrank back and tried to make herself invisible. Their date had been a disaster. His only interest had been in talking about Gussie.
‘Isn’t it dreadful?’ Eden said as he crossed to their table. ‘Have you heard some of the rumours?’
Bradley wasn’t remotely interested in rumours.
‘Where’s Gussie?’ he asked with apparent indifference.
Despite herself, Eden felt her nerves begin to throb. There was something overpoweringly masculine about Bradley Hampton. If it wasn’t for the fact that she was in love with Dean …
‘At home, grief-stricken at Beau Clay’s death,’ Mae said timidly, near to tears. ‘It’s my belief she’ll waste away and die, just like that Frenchwoman in the book we had to read for English Lit.’
Bradley stared down at Eden grim-faced. ‘Is that true?’
Eden forced a laugh.
‘No. She’s a little upset, that’s all. She knew Beau slightly. He was a close friend of her cousin Tina’s at one time.’
Bradley swung his jacket negligently over one shoulder. He knew just what kind of a friend Beau Clay had been to the provocative Tina Lafayette. He wondered if Gussie did, and doubted it. He took a sip of his beer, turned as his name was called and drifted away.
‘He really does care about Gussie, doesn’t he?’ Mae said enviously. ‘I don’t understand why she won’t date him. He’s so handsome, and so …’ She struggled inadequately for the right word.
‘Male,’ Eden said obligingly. Bradley Hampton’s charms were not lost on her either. ‘Restrain your thoughts, Mae. Here comes Austin.’
‘What are you girls drinking? White wine?’ Austin asked, blinking at them through his thick glasses. ‘Let me get another bottle. Nice to see you, Eden. Where have you been lately?’
Eden smiled. ‘Around,’ she said, wondering when Austin would ask Mae to marry him and when Mae would accept.
‘Have you seen the headlines in the paper?’ Mae asked as he sat down. ‘Do you think he was drunk, Austin? He must have been, mustn’t he? I mean, he could drive a car like no one else I’ve ever seen. How could it have happened? He must have been near out of his mind not to have seen a tree that size.’
Eden flicked open a packet of cigarettes and resigned herself to the fact that she was going to hear a lot of talk about the way Beau Clay had met his death. She looked at her wristwatch. It had been three hours since she had left the Lafayette home. Perhaps Gussie would be grateful if she called round now. Excusing herself and leaving Mae in Austin’s company, she left the bar.
When she turned into the Lafayette driveway she halted and whistled expressively. Bradley Hampton’s distinctive blue Thunderbird was parked conspicuously in front of the porticoed entrance.
So … Mae was right. Bradley Hampton really did care about Gussie. And, on hearing of Gussie’s distress, he had driven straight over. It showed a brand of courage Eden admired. She put the Cadillac into reverse and backed out into the Avenue. It seemed as if Gussie was getting all the comfort she needed.
‘I wish you’d go away,’ Augusta said, her eyes blue hollows in a fragilely pale face. ‘I want to be left alone.’
She was sitting on the porch swing. The rose-pink dress had been discarded. Her father would be home soon. Dying of love though she was, she could not allow her father to know. It would cause too many questions, be an invasion of her grief. Instead of her habitual jeans and T-shirt, she wore a white silk dress with a slim, gold rouleau belt. Her hair had been carelessly caught in a ribbon in the nape of her neck. Her face was devoid of make-up. Bradley thought she had never looked so beautiful.
‘I thought you might like dinner tonight; at Agostino’s.’
A flicker of interest pierced Gussie’s grief. She wondered how Bradley Hampton knew she had a penchant for Sicilian food. She’d cried for so long that she couldn’t remember when last she’d eaten. Agostino’s did a marvellous Spiedini Al serri-Rotoli. For a moment she was tempted and then she remembered Beau and that he was dead and that she was going to devote the rest of her life to grief.
Tears hovered in her violet-dark eyes. ‘If you don’t leave I’ll call Louis and have him remove you.’
A brief smile touched Bradley’s mouth. ‘I think he would find that a little difficult, Gussie. I don’t leave anywhere unless it’s of my own free will.’
Gussie blinked back her tears and looked across at him. She had never realized before how tall he was, or how broad-shouldered. Nearly as broad-shouldered as Beau.
‘You’ve overstayed your welcome, Bradley Hampton,’ she said, springing to her feet, her eyes filling with tears. ‘I don’t want you to come here again. I don’t want anyone to come and see me. Not ever again.’ Covering her face with her hands, she rushed into the house and the sound of her sobs could be heard fading into the distance until at last her bedroom door silenced them.
Bradley remained on the porch, a savagery on his usually good-humoured features that would have stunned his friends and shocked even Gussie. Damn Beau Clay. He was exercising as powerful an effect on Gussie dead as he had when he had been alive. His eyes blazed with fierce determination. He would take no notice of Gussie’s request. He would come back tomorrow and the next day and the next. He would come back until she had forgotten her dream of Beau Clay, and until she fell in love with flesh and blood reality: until she fell in love with him.
In her room, above her sobs, Gussie heard his car door slam and the engine rev. She ran to the window and peeped surreptitiously outside. It was strange that she had never noticed before how handsome Bradley Hampton was. But not as handsome as Beau. No one was as handsome as Beau had been.
She sank onto the bed and began to sob bitterly, remembering Beau’s devastating down-slanting smile, the way he had held her at the New Year party, the feel of his body close to hers.
At her request, the maid told her father that she had a headache and did not want to be disturbed. As the evening drew on into night she gave herself up to grief for Beau Clay, but occasionally, insidiously, his lean dark face merged with that of Bradley Hampton’s. Angry whenever it did so, she buried her face in her pillows, reminding herself that she was inconsolable. That the rest of her life was to be spent in grief for Beau.