A Good Heart is Hard to Find

by Trisha Ashley

  I jumped, and was just about to nudge her awake when she said in a deep voice totally unlike her normal mincingly precise one: ‘I am here. Who summons me?’

  Leo Bream leaned forward and whispered: ‘She’s in a trance! That is her control, Two Bison, an Indian chief.’

  ‘Two Bison?’ I queried, feeling the hysterical laughter bubbling again, but then there was an intake of breath from Madame’s direction, probably indignation due to being upstaged in the medium stakes.

  But if so she managed to control it, saying clearly: ‘Welcome, Two Bison! Can you give us news of our loved ones, now passed to the other side?’

  ‘Some are here awaiting,’ said the deep voice. ‘Whom do you seek?’

  ‘My daughter. Emma, my daughter – is she there?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Mother …’ whispered a thread of a voice that seemed to issue not so much from Mrs Bream but from thin air.

  ‘Emma? My Emma – at last you have come to me!’

  ‘Mother,’ sighed the voice. ‘Leave him be.’

  There was a gasp: ‘Who – what do you mean? I—’

  ‘Leave him. The baby … not his. Leave him, leave Dante … alone.’

  There was a muffled exclamation from Dante, and I pressed his hand in the darkness.

  ‘Emma …’ sobbed Madame Duval. ‘Emma …!’

  ‘Emma has gone,’ Two Bison said levelly. ‘Soon I too must go, but first Paul is here. Paul wishes me to say: Dan, my friend. Always my friend. Not your fault.’

  Dante’s fingers clenched painfully over mine.

  ‘If you’re still there, Two Bison,’ I found myself saying to an entity that might, or might not, be real, ‘can I just ask you if Tanya is there? Can Tanya speak to us?’

  There was the ghost of a laugh. ‘She is not here, but she is closer than you think,’ he said, and then there was nothing except the sound of harsh breathing and Madame Duval’s sobbing.

  As you can imagine, that was pretty well the end of that, although Madame got even more hysterical and told Dante that she’d known it wasn’t his baby all along, but it was all still his fault.

  Then she sort of collapsed, and had to be escorted by Reg to her room.

  Eddie, who seemed to have sailed through the experience with his mind on other things, went to help him, then came back and started rearranging the room.

  Dante hadn’t said anything at all to Madame Duval, or indeed anyone else, just sat there looking somehow drained. I simply didn’t know what to think about the whole experience, except that Mrs Bream looked pretty well flaked out, and that seemed genuine enough.

  ‘She’s always like this afterwards,’ Leo explained, tenderly helping her to her feet. ‘And we didn’t expect the spirits to come through her tonight, but through Madame Duval, or she’d never have tried the pendulum for Jason first. She’s exhausted, and had better go to bed.’

  ‘Oh God, more trays!’ Rosetta muttered.

  Mrs Bream protested weakly at being removed: ‘No, no, Leo! The haunting tonight … we must stay up to record and film. The manifestations are the strongest we have come across!’

  ‘I think the spirits have been disturbed enough for one night,’ Dante said, raising his head to show eyes like glacier melt-water. ‘I doubt that anything more will happen after this commotion, so I should call it a day and try again tomorrow.’

  ‘I suppose he’s right,’ Mr Shakespeare said reluctantly. ‘Things have been stirred up, and it might be better to leave it for now.’

  ‘Much better,’ I agreed thankfully, smiling at him. ‘How sensible of you, Mr Shakespeare.’

  ‘Call me Frank,’ he said. ‘I don’t think any of us need to be on formal terms after that experience.’

  ‘You won’t leave me alone tonight, Leo, will you?’ pleaded Mrs Bream.

  ‘Of course not, Nancy.’

  ‘Perhaps I’ll just spend the rest of the evening writing my notes up on last night’s manifestations,’ Frank conceded. ‘It’s all been pretty tiring, so if we are to make an attempt to record the spirits tomorrow, an early night for us all would be in order. Perhaps I might take some of these leftover sandwiches up with me?’ he added plaintively.

  ‘Of course: let me get you a fresh plate,’ Rosetta said. ‘And I’ll bring a tray up for Mrs Bream and Madame Duval shortly,’ she added wearily.

  Slowly they dispersed, and Rosetta and Eddie went into the kitchen.

  Left among the incongruous birthday debris Dante heaved a sigh, got to his feet, and said abruptly: ‘I’m going back to the west wing.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ I said. ‘I don’t know about you but I don’t feel like being alone tonight.’

  ‘Are you afraid?’ he asked, looking at me searchingly. ‘But all our ghosts seem to have been laid to rest today, haven’t they, Cass? Though how or why Emma …’ He shook his head. ‘I still don’t believe it was her … But then, how would Mrs Bream know about the baby? Or that Paul always called me Dan?’

  ‘Telepathy?’ I suggested. ‘Madame Duval knew about Emma’s baby, and I knew from reading your diaries that Paul called you Dan, and I suppose other people might have had a sneaky look at them. But who knows? And the truth is out now, for both of us, and I’m not really afraid any more, I just feel terribly empty and insecure and sort of adrift.’ (And a bit puzzled, too, actually: why on earth didn’t Rosemary put her four penn’orth in, while the opportunity was there?)

  ‘We’ve both undergone a sort of catharsis today,’ he agreed, ‘I think that’s it. Come on.’ He held out his hand and I took it.

  The west wing was starting to feel like home.

  We spent the night together, but neither took advantage of the other, we just held each other close, and it was good.

  At some time in the night I got up, switched on the little desk light Dante had found for me, and wrote furiously for a couple of hours.

  He half opened his eyes when I got out of bed, but closed them again and slept on until I climbed back in again and snuggled up for warmth some time just before dawn.

  I do love a heavy sleeper.

  Dante’d gone when I woke up next morning, rather earlier than usual, although that was probably due to the sound of loud voices under my window.

  Looking out I saw him talking to Jason and Orla (she was dressed in Jason’s jeans and shirt with the sleeves and legs rolled up), who carried various digging implements and last night’s map.

  After a few minutes conferring they all set out in the direction of the lake, and I began rather languorously to wash and dress, still feeling strangely detached and, truth to tell, a smidgeon anticlimaxed.

  By the time I finally got to the excavation they had been joined by Leo and Frank and were down below the rockery into loose earth, digging carefully.

  Then there was the clink of metal on something hard, and they all stopped and stared into the hole.

  ‘There’s something there,’ Jason said unnecessarily.

  24

  Buried Treasures

  Shock to the Spirits, yet another macabre offering from horror writer Cass Leigh, certainly lives up to its title. I am never going to see the word ‘goulash’ (or should that be ghoulash?) on a menu again without wanting to throw up …

  Surprise! Magazine

  There was silence except for the sound of soil being shifted, then a rather incongruous crockery-rattling noise.

  ‘Careful,’ warned Jason, muffled. ‘It seems to be some kind of china bird, loosely wrapped in sacking. And there’s another …’

  ‘A collection of porcelain cockatoos?’ I quoted.

  Dante looked up. ‘I suppose it must be. Let us hope he didn’t bury the Tunbridge Ware boxes down here too, or the damp will have ruined them.’

  ‘What? Why cockatoos?’ demanded the others, baffled, and I explained about Jack Craig and the missing valuables.

  The excavation revealed a lot of birds, none of them Tanya, and a couple of nice bits of Chinese pottery.
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  ‘So it’s just a cache Jack Craig’s hidden away meaning to recover later?’ Jason asked. He was still pale, but sweating from his exertions.

  Orla, brushing earth from bright cockatoos, said indignantly: ‘He might have packed them up a bit better! Some of these look valuable.’

  ‘Oh well, that’s good news then, isn’t it?’ asked Leo. ‘I mean, Nancy wasn’t quite sure she’d found what Jason was looking for, but she did find something.’

  Dante was exploring the bottom of the hole to see if they’d missed anything. ‘The soil’s loose at the bottom – I think there’s something else here,’ he said, brushing more earth away, ‘Something that feels like …’

  He stood up suddenly, staring down, and we all crowded up and stared too.

  A hand as white as marble, the fingers curled upwards, seemed to be pushing its way up from the dark soil like yet another resurrection.

  … pushing through the dark soil, the white fingers clawed for …

  No, as you were, I’d already done that in Lover, Come Back to Me.

  Jason said hoarsely: ‘Oh God, it’s not …?’

  ‘It’s Diana, I think,’ Dante said coolly, and bending down irreverently tapped the naked white arm with the end of his trowel.

  ‘Diana?’ echoed Jason.

  ‘Second niche on the left in the rose garden wall?’ I asked. ‘The missing statue, possibly Roman, or an Italian copy?’

  ‘That’s the one,’ he agreed, excavating further. ‘But that seems to be it – the ground’s like a rock below her. Well, I suppose I’d better let the police know … and the insurance company.’

  He eyed the collection of cockatoos with disfavour, but actually I thought they were quite jolly.

  Jason was sitting on the ground looking white and a bit sickly. ‘For a minute there, Cass, I thought it was Tanya,’ he said faintly.

  ‘Really, Jason!’ I said impatiently. ‘That statue is half life-size and Tanya was a strapping woman, how could it possibly be her?’

  ‘But you must admit that arm looked a bit grisly, pointing out like that,’ Orla agreed, sitting down next to Jason and putting a comforting arm around him. ‘And after all, we were looking for Tanya, weren’t we?’

  ‘Yes, but not in the form of a calcified midget,’ I pointed out a trifle tartly. ‘Still, I suppose it was unexpected. We all seem to be having shock therapy this weekend, don’t we? Let’s hope that’s it.’

  ‘Except for pleasant shocks, like good manifestations tonight when we’ve got the cameras and recorder set up,’ Frank said.

  We trooped back to the house with our booty just in time to see the departure of one problem: Madame Duval was seated in a taxi on the drive, while Reg was taking his leave of Rosetta and Eddie. As we came up he extended a hand to Dante, too.

  ‘Goodbye, lad,’ he said genially. ‘Sorry for the kerfuffle, but all’s well that ends well, eh?’

  Dante seemed a bit lost for words, but took the offered hand. Reg started down the steps and as he drew level with me I put a hand on his arm and whispered on impulse: ‘Mr Bangs – Reg – just what exactly did you do when you were on the stage?’

  He twinkled and said: ‘You’re a sharp one! I think you’ve guessed, though.’

  ‘Ventriloquism?’ I suggested.

  ‘Reg!’ shrilled his wife from the open taxi window, and he winked conspiratorially, gave me a friendly buffet on the arm, and strolled off to the taxi, whistling.

  ‘Off with a Bang,’ I said, waving after them and feeling suddenly much cheerier. Presumably Ma and Pa had also left yesterday, and were on their way home – and if they hadn’t they would by now be leaving in high dudgeon over the disappearance of their hostess.

  ‘Oh Jason,’ Rosetta said, ‘there was a phone call from your son – Tom, is it? He said could you go home urgently, something’s come up.’

  Jason sighed. ‘He’s probably had a rave and wrecked the house. I was going to call in on my way to open the shop for the afternoon.’

  ‘I hope he hasn’t done anything dreadful,’ Orla said apprehensively.

  He smiled at her. ‘I don’t think I care any more. But I’ll just get my things from my room, and then I can drop you at home on the way.’

  ‘I’ll come round to the shop later … or you could come round to my house when you’ve closed?’ she suggested, and they exchanged one of those very private smiles.

  Looked like our nightly Singles Club was about to be reduced to Single Club of one: me.

  I went back to my room and caught up on my sleep while Dante dealt with the police and the insurance company, and then later we went for a walk together, not saying very much, and I for one strangely weary but content.

  While we were out Jason had left a message asking us to go down to the pub tonight.

  What on earth had Tom done?

  We found Jason and Orla already there and, despite the night being young, pretty well oiled.

  ‘Are you celebrating?’ I asked. ‘What? Tom’s left home for ever or something?’

  ‘Tanya’s turned up!’ Jason announced.

  ‘Well, not so much turned up as made contact: she’s written through a solicitor, asking for a divorce!’ Orla explained. ‘Tom, being that kind of boy, opened Jason’s letters and read it.’

  ‘But where’s she been? Did she say?’

  ‘Spain. Now she wants to get married again and she says she just wants a quickie divorce, and no maintenance or anything. Suits me,’ Jason said, ‘but Tom’s a bit upset, because she didn’t mention him at all, not even to ask how he was.’

  ‘Poor boy,’ I said charitably.

  ‘Yes,’ Orla agreed. ‘Of course, now he insists that he wants to go out there and see his mother, so Jason is giving him the money.’

  ‘Serves her right.’

  ‘I’ve never met this repellent-sounding youth, but I’m beginning to feel sorry for him,’ Dante commented.

  ‘He’s not that bad,’ Jason said automatically. ‘In fact, he’s taken this better than I expected: he seemed to have had some silly idea that I’d killed her, because he overheard our argument and her telling me I wasn’t his father. He was afraid if it was true I’d throw him out, but I’ve said I’ll never do that – he’s my son, whatever happens.’

  ‘He doesn’t deserve you!’ Orla said warmly.

  ‘He deserves better than he’s got,’ Jason said. ‘And I hope he can make some sort of peace with Tanya, though she can never make up for deserting him like that.’

  ‘Have another drink?’ suggested Orla happily. ‘After all, there’s more to celebrate than not.’

  ‘Not for us, I’m afraid we’ll have to get back,’ Dante said. ‘We’ve got a heavy night’s haunting ahead of us before the Spectrologists depart, hopefully with a lot of hazy shots of Cass. Luckily the moon is far from full tonight, it’ll make it easier.’

  ‘One last haunt,’ I agreed.

  ‘And then no more Ghastly Weekends,’ Orla added. ‘You can have your home back to yourself, which must be a relief.’

  ‘No more weekends like that, certainly,’ Dante said firmly.

  ‘No more at all, unless you run it yourself,’ Orla pointed out. ‘Once Rosetta’s gone off with Eddie, I mean.’

  Dante paused in the act of putting his jacket on and gazed at her. ‘Once Rosetta’s gone where with Eddie?’

  I was pulling faces at Orla behind his back when he glanced round and caught me.

  ‘What do you know that I don’t?’ he demanded.

  I sighed resignedly. ‘It’s not for me to tell you, but now Orla’s let it out I suppose I’d better: Rosetta was waiting until after the weekend to tell you that she’s going to live with Eddie.’

  ‘Live with Eddie?’ he echoed blankly. ‘So, how would you describe what she’s doing now?’

  ‘In his van, travelling about with him, I mean. I think one weekend of the B&B trade has been enough for her. Anyway, they’re in love!’

  ‘You mean I set all this up fo
r nothing?’ he demanded.

  ‘I wouldn’t say that, Dante! A lot of good has come out of the weekend.’

  ‘It certainly has!’ agreed Orla enthusiastically, and Jason grinned and put his arm around her.

  ‘It’s not good that my only sister intends travelling about the country with a shiftless, pot-smoking layabout in an old van!’ snapped Dante furiously.

  ‘He’s not shiftless,’ I said coldly, ‘he’s very useful. And he’s good-tempered, so he will always be kind to her. I’m sure they’ll be very happy.’

  I didn’t mention the baby. Time enough for that when he’d cooled off a little.

  His lips were back into that knife-crease origami fold again and he maintained a deep silence all the way back to the Hall, but he did have a firm grip on my hand, though whether to stop me making a bolt back to my cottage or not was a moot point.

  He stopped just before we got there, turned my face up to his, muttered: ‘Oh, to hell with it!’ and kissed me.

  After that, I wouldn’t say Rosetta and Eddie had his blessing, just that he temporarily lost interest in their future plans.

  I gave a faint scream and then ran silently down the dimly lit, carpeted hall, my eyes and mouth stretched wide in terror, gossamer white draperies flying behind me …

  Only this time I was running towards the fearsome thing in the dark cupboard, not away from it.

  ‘Got you!’ Dante whispered, snatching me into the blackness and the panel slid silently shut behind me.

  He certainly had. The Superglue of love welded our lips together, while faint and faraway scratchings and squeakings from the frustrated Spectrologists told of their fruitless search for poor blind Betsy’s secret.

  ‘Past midnight – and you’re free,’ Dante said at last, though he showed little signs of suiting his actions to the words.

  ‘Free?’ I echoed, thinking I was never going to be free again.

  ‘You’re no longer my unwilling slave.’

  ‘I never was.’

  ‘No, it was pretty much the other way round from the minute I saw you. Damn!’ he added, as the thumpings and mutterings grew closer: ‘They’ll find the opening to the panel in a minute if they carry on like that! Come on, we’d better go.’