A Good Heart is Hard to Find

by Trisha Ashley

  Samuel Butler: Notebooks

  Found myself idly thumbing through the Dictionary of Quotations, where there were lots of good Dante ones but, I was extremely aggrieved to find, no Cassandra ones.

  Maybe there are male and female versions of the Dictionary and I’ve got the wrong one? I mean, it wasn’t like she didn’t have an interesting life: someone must have mentioned her.

  Mind you, she was a striking example of what can happen to a woman when she reneged on a promise. Keturah should bear it in mind, although in her case it wasn’t a lot of petulant gods who were about to become the thingummy in the machine.

  Tried to discuss this with Jason when he popped in at lunchtime to share a pizza, for he was not unintelligent, although he had stopped thinking deeply about anything much since he settled here.

  All he said was that I was cute when I talked mythological, and then I said I hoped he choked on his black olive.

  Such childish depths are, I’m afraid, our usual comfortable mode of conversation when he is not fancying himself in love with me.

  Later I popped into the Haunted Well B&B, where Orla was fully occupied with a party of Australian family-tree researchers. The house seemed to be covered in people poring over vast photocopies, and Orla was quite distracted.

  She said the only Cassandra she’d ever come across before me was Mama Cass, who was a striking example to us all.

  I agreed, but afterwards wondered quite what sort of example.

  An almost incoherent phone call from Max, who had been ‘taken in for questioning’ by the American police the moment he stepped off the plane in sunny California.

  ‘Incompetence!’ he spluttered. ‘They already know I’m innocent of anything to do with Rosemary’s death, and whatever Kyra says she did had nothing to do with me!’

  ‘Kyra, as in your personal trainer?’ I asked, my heart sinking. ‘What did she do?’

  ‘Only confessed that she was responsible for Rosemary’s death! They had an argument which ended with Kyra giving the wheelchair an almighty shove and walking off. Afterwards, she realized Rosemary hadn’t been able to stop it and gone over the edge, but she was too frightened to say anything even though it was an accident.’

  ‘So why is she saying anything now?’

  ‘Goodness knows!’

  ‘And why did the police want to question you again, if you weren’t there at the time?’ I pondered aloud.

  ‘Some busybody – that home-help we had to fire for incompetence, probably – told them that Kyra was getting a bit … well, frankly, she had a crush on me,’ he hedged. ‘Rosemary told me the day before she died that she’d had enough of Kyra trying to flirt with me under her nose and she would have to go, so that’s probably what the argument was about.’

  ‘You were having an affair with her, weren’t you?’ I asked bluntly, a lot of long-suppressed suspicions bobbing up to the surface, all thanks to Rosemary.

  ‘How can you even suggest that, Cassy, when you know how I feel about you?’ he said, sounding deeply wounded. ‘Of course I wasn’t, and in the end the police just let me go home, because clearly I had absolutely nothing to do with it. Only now the university has asked me not go in until further notice, and I feel I’m being unfairly punished and harassed for poor Rosemary’s tragic death, which was little more than an accident anyway, as it turns out.’

  I think Rosemary might have described it a little differently – and there was definitely some subplot there that he wasn’t telling me about.

  ‘So what will happen to Kyra?’

  He didn’t sound too concerned: ‘There were no witnesses, but with any luck it will be brought in as an unfortunate accident. It certainly wasn’t premeditated – she had no reason to want her dead, as she told the police – and everyone knows Rosemary was a quarrelsome woman.’

  ‘Was she? I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned that.’ It was strange how I was getting to know Rosemary after her death.

  ‘There’s no one else I can talk to about the whole sorry affair except you, Cassy – you understand me like no one else does.’

  I think he meant that I’d been blind to all his faults, but hadn’t realized Rosemary had ripped the blinkers off, leaving me squirming in the light of day.

  ‘And I’m sorry if I was unreasonable when I came to see you, and that we argued, but I really wasn’t myself after the funeral and everything. I’ll make it up to you when I get back, darling: marriage, babies – anything you want.’

  I muttered something non-committal, not wanting to be the straw that broke the camel’s back, but longing to tell him that the magic had not only worn off our relationship but the base metal was beginning to tarnish.

  Charles was so right: when the right time came and I could tell Max that I never wanted to see him again it was going to feel such a release. Guilt had been dragging me like an anchor, and soon I would be able to sail serenely away into the seas of desiccated spinsterhood.

  Portsmouth, 19 March

  Dear Sis,

  Docked. See you soon on way to my duty-visit to Ma and Pa. Pa says Jane’s staying with you, and I’m to take her home with me. No bloody fear! Rather be tied to an alligator than cooped up in a car with Jane for hours.

  Boz and Foxy and me are going poultry-farm hunting after that, but don’t tell Ma and Pa yet.

  Love, Jamie

  PS. is that yummy blonde friend of yours still single? Give her my best!

  Belgravia, 19 March

  Dear Jane,

  Tried to phone you the other day, but Gerald informs me you are staying with Cassandra and completely incommunicado. I’m surprised you should want to stay with Cassandra in her hideously uncomfortable little hovel when you could stay with us, which is why I was calling: Phily’s had a spot of her old trouble, and the court case comes up next week.

  Unfortunately I have to be away for several days then, so could you possibly come and keep an eye on Phily and support her, and all that? Her doctor will be giving evidence, of course, so there will be no problem. It is ridiculous to put her through this when she cannot help herself, as I know you understand.

  Let me know as soon as you can if you will be able to come.

  George

  ‘Do you know what Phily’s “old trouble” is, Eddie?’ I asked, frowning over Jane’s letter. I’d started opening all her mail, since she’d been gone days by then and no word on yurts. No word at all, in fact.

  Eddie shook his blond dreadlocks and carried on eating peanut butter with a spoon straight from the jar.

  ‘Well, whatever it is, she will have to cope on her own, because I don’t know the address of Clint’s yurt in Cornwall. If yurts have addresses?’

  ‘The peanut butter’s gone,’ he said, smiling vaguely at me as he put the jar down.

  Hello, Planet Eddie. Are you receiving me?

  ‘There are four more jars on the shelf behind you.’

  ‘I know Clint Atwood,’ he suddenly announced, to my astonishment. ‘Crap painter, weird bloke. Nice yurt.’

  I stared at him, astounded. ‘You never said. And what do you mean, weird?’

  I mean, if Eddie thought he was weird, then there was something seriously off-centre about Jane’s lover.

  Eddie just shrugged. ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Do you know the address of this yurt?’

  ‘No, but I could find it.’

  ‘Well, that’s a fat lot of good. Eddie, Jamie is calling in sometime on his way home. He thinks Jane is here – everyone thinks Jane is here, not cavorting in Cornwall with her lover.’

  ‘Well, it’ll be good to see old Jamie again,’ Eddie said amiably, filling the kettle and plugging it in. ‘Have you seen my bong?’

  ‘No, and you know I won’t let you smoke that stuff in the cottage – it smells vile.’

  ‘I know, but I’ve put it down somewhere.’

  He wandered round the kitchen, lifting things up as though the pipe might be playing a game of hide-and-seek with him. I had a su
dden strange vision of Eddie as the next TV chef: ‘Naked Stoned Old Hippie in the Kitchen’, perhaps? Buy his new cookbook now: Fifty Fun Ways with Weed. Not so much a recipe book, more a way of life.

  ‘Jamie’s going to leave the navy and run a poultry farm somewhere with those two daft friends of his, Boz and Foxy.’

  ‘Even chickens have souls,’ he said absently, turning over the contents of the bread bin.

  ‘I dare say they have, especially compared to Jane,’ I agreed, trying to remember where the conversation had started out and failing.

  I finished the last of my late breakfast and just sat there feeling exhausted but sated, for last night I worked non-stop like someone had cut open a major writing artery.

  Lover, Come Back is not far off completion, and so is Keturah – she’s pregnant with something, though until it arrives she won’t know quite what, or who – or even how. And considering what she did to Sylvanus and Vladimir, I now feel quite benign towards them both and the world in general. Sated, even.

  There’s nothing like a bit of blood-letting.

  ‘I’ve nearly finished my book,’ I said, more for the glow of saying it than expecting an answer, but Eddie beamed his lighthouse smile at me and said warmly: ‘Clever Cass!’

  The doorbell rang, and since Eddie seemed quite happy to stand there and beam indefinitely without even noticing it, I heaved myself up and went to answer it.

  A young woman stood on the doorstep, and one glance told me that this must be Dante’s sister Rosetta even before she told me, for the resemblance was striking.

  In her, Dante’s springy, raven’s-wing hair had been downgraded to shaggy dark brown curls, and her eyes were an everyday blue-grey, but she certainly had the nose. It was not pretty on her, but combined with the rest to give her a pleasantly rangy, Afghan hound sort of appeal, like Cher before the nose-job.

  ‘I’m Dante’s sister, Rosetta, and I hope you don’t mind me calling?’ she asked anxiously. ‘Only Dante says you’re the local ghost expert, and you were terribly kind to him when he first got here, so he thought you wouldn’t mind answering a couple of questions.’

  My mouth fell open. What did he mean, kind?

  ‘I thought perhaps you might have some books on local hauntings that I haven’t found yet – you know, to add a bit of spice to the ghost-hunting?’

  ‘Come in,’ I said, finally remembering my manners. ‘Your brother said I was kind to him?’

  ‘Yes, and I was quite surprised, because he’s always been reserved, and now he’s so withdrawn and – oh!’

  I wasn’t surprised at her losing the thread of the plot, because she’d suddenly come face to face with Eddie; and though thankfully he was wearing the clean but tattered remnants of a pair of jeans, he did look like a half-naked Saxon wandered in from the wrong century, though they probably didn’t put multicoloured beads on the end of their braids.

  ‘This is my brother Eddie,’ I said, but I might as well have been speaking to myself for they were staring into each other’s eyes like a pair of telepaths. Maybe they were a pair of telepaths, and that’s why communication with Eddie had never been entirely straightforward?

  Neither of them seemed able to look away. I hadn’t seen Eddie so serious since the time we were little, and he managed to open the cupboard door with a bit of bent wire to let me out, and Pa caught us.

  Then Eddie’s pearly smile returned four-fold. He held out his hand, Rosetta took it, and he led her outside without a word.

  ‘Eddie?’ I called. ‘Rosetta?’ But without a backward look they climbed into Eddie’s van and vanished from my view.

  Well!

  I sat down again at the table with another cup of coffee, waiting for them to reappear, but when I looked out later the van had gone too.

  Ruffled by Dante’s references to my kindness, I found it hard to fall into my early afternoon doze, and then when I did drop off I was instantly awoken by Max phoning again.

  He’d simmered down about the police questioning: seemed to have put it right out of his head, strangely enough, and instead asked me all sorts of inane questions about the slave auction, which he had never shown any interest in before.

  Perhaps he was feeling lonely and just making conversation, because he also asked about my new book and the Crypt-ograms, which was unusual: normally he just talked about himself.

  He was at his most charming, too, his voice low and caressing. But somehow it didn’t seem to be working any more, and I didn’t think the fact that I was still exhausted but exhilarated after my mammoth blood-letting-by-proxy stint, and so not in a receptive frame of mind, had any effect on the matter.

  After that I tried to settle back down again, but before I could insert the earplugs against the surrounding Birdsong and TV babble, Dante called to ask if I’d seen his sister.

  ‘She left hours ago to visit you.’

  ‘She was here,’ I told him. ‘Briefly. But then she went off somewhere with Eddie.’

  ‘Eddie? Who the hell’s Eddie?’ he snapped.

  ‘My brother. One of them: I’ve got four.’

  ‘He lives with you? Why haven’t I seen him around, then?’

  ‘He lives in a van, he’s just visiting me. And you probably have seen him around: he looks sort of like a blond Rastafarian.’

  ‘I’ve seen him,’ he said after a short but menacing silence. ‘But I don’t know why my sister would go off with him. And where have they gone?’

  ‘No idea. He’s old enough to stay out without telling me, and so is your sister.’

  ‘My sister’s emotionally fragile. She’s just come out of a violent relationship, and the one thing she doesn’t need is to get involved with some New-Age weirdo.’

  ‘Eddie’s entirely harmless, peaceful and non-violent,’ I told him. ‘He’s vegetarian, he doesn’t drink, and he likes to commune with the wild creatures in the woods, playing his flute.’ I didn’t mention the weed.

  ‘Could he possibly be communing with my sister in the woods?’ he enquired rather nastily.

  It was by no means an impossibility.

  ‘Yours are the nearest woods, so why don’t you go and look?’ I suggested.

  ‘No need,’ he said in a different voice. ‘There’s an old van with big psychedelic daisies painted all over it coming up the drive. Your brother’s, I take it?’

  ‘Sounds like it,’ I admitted.

  ‘Yes: he’s getting out, and so is Rosetta. They’re coming in – and they’re holding hands.’

  ‘I think it’s legal in public,’ I told him. ‘I thought they seemed to hit it off.’

  Dante put the phone down on me. I only hoped he didn’t do anything hasty to Eddie, though it was very difficult since Eddie tended not to notice people being annoyed or irritated by him and it’s hard to hit anyone radiating indiscriminate peace and love at you.

  It sounded to me as though Rosetta deserved a good time, and I only hoped Eddie was it.

  Eddie’s van still hadn’t returned by the time I went down to the pub, so perhaps he was staying up at the Hall. And what did Dante think about that?

  The vicar and Jason had evidently been having a boys-together session going by the empty glasses in front of them, but Charles was just getting up to go when I got there.

  After reminding me once more about the impending slave auction and trying a last, unavailing attempt to get Jason to put himself up for bidding too, he went off to his t’ai chi class. He said when he had mastered the art, he would run classes on the vicarage lawn until the whole village stopped and did them every morning like the Chinese peasants.

  I couldn’t see it myself but I was willing to give it a go, and so was Mrs Bridges.

  Before he left, I asked if he would let me hold his hand for a minute.

  ‘Any time, my dear!’ he agreed enthusiastically. ‘Any particular reason? Not that I’m complaining, mind.’

  ‘You’re a sort of control – something to judge other men against,’ I told him, and he lo
oked baffled but pleased.

  His mind was the equivalent of a sunny cloudless day, what guilt there was being the very faintest tinge of the ‘perhaps two helpings of apple pie and custard shows ungodly greed?’ kind.

  After he’d gone, beaming, Jason held his hand out to me, too. ‘Go on – you’ve been dying to do your mind-reading bit on me, ever since Tanya vanished.’

  ‘You know I don’t read minds,’ I protested weakly, because he was quite right: I had. ‘Only emotions. Do you mind if I take a quick peek into your subconscious?’

  ‘Not really. Not if I can hold your hand and leer at you while you do it. I don’t see why the vicar should have all the fun.’

  Jason’s subconscious was like the bits from several jigsaws jumbled in a bag, one of them a big chunk of guilt. In the ratings chart it was somewhere between Max and Dante.

  There was also lust again, but rather warmer in tint, Jason being of an affectionate disposition.

  ‘What’s the verdict? Did she go, or was she murdered?’

  ‘She went. You’re guilty about it, but you didn’t do anything to her.’

  ‘No: except argue, and threaten to throw her out over her affair with Jack Craig, and then not go back that night until too late to ask where she was going.’

  ‘I know, Orla told me.’

  ‘She did?’ He shifted uncomfortably. ‘What, you mean—?’

  ‘Yes, everything: but I already guessed something had happened between you and Orla, so it wasn’t a huge surprise. And we thought your argument that night with Tanya was probably because she’d taken up with Jack Craig again.’

  ‘Yes, it was the last straw: she’d promised me she wouldn’t have anything more to do with him, we’d try and start again, for Tom’s sake. And then she told me … threw back at me …’ He looked at me, his brown eyes full of hurt: ‘I’ve never told anyone this, Cassy, because then everyone would think I’d done away with her, but she said Tom wasn’t my son.’

  ‘Not yours?’ I exclaimed. ‘Do you think it’s true?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure it is. I’ve tried to love the poor brat, God knows, but it’s been an uphill struggle. And now he thinks I’ve done away with his mother. I think he found that easier to believe than that she could abandon him.’