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.
