Come to that, he’d probably be feeling pretty much as I did about Max just then.
Finding I was starting to empathize with Sylvanus more than Keturah, which wouldn’t do in the least at this point, I plunged suddenly off the path and cast myself full length over the newly sodded grave of Isaiah Kettlewell.
How surprised (but not displeased) he would have been had he been able to appreciate it, the old rogue!
Turf had been jigsawed back over the mound so I couldn’t dig my fingers into the soil like Keturah, but actually the image of those other fingers coming up between the sods to close on her as she lay there was much, much better …
Then something cold squirmed under my cheek and dragging fingers closed on my shoulder.
‘Eeee-yaargh!’ I screeched, wrenching free with one mighty bound and leaping away in an acrobatic manner I hadn’t realized was in me, except in my nightmares.
As I was about to hurdle the nearest gravestone a familiar voice stopped me in my tracks: ‘It’s only me, Cass,’ Jason said apologetically.
He uncurled his long body from a graveside crouch. ‘I followed you to make sure you were all right, but I didn’t mean to frighten you.’
‘Frighten me? I nearly died when you touched me, you imbecile! My heart stopped beating. Three million brain cells ceased to exist. The shock could have—’
I stopped, illumination suddenly dawning. ‘Of course! That’s what would have happened!’
‘What would have?’ said Jason, puzzled. ‘When?’
‘Keturah would probably have passed out from the shock, if not died of fear on the spot. She’s such a weak-spined creature.’
‘Look, Cass, just who is this Keturah?’ demanded Jason. ‘And why were you lying on Isaiah’s grave? I hadn’t realized you were so fond of the old villain!’
‘Keturah is the living main character of my new novel, Lover, Come Back to Me.’
‘Appropriate title, with Max going off like that, isn’t it?’ he quipped unfeelingly, and I glowered at him.
‘No, it isn’t. And although I quite liked Isaiah, I was just using his grave to get the feel of what it would be like to—’
I didn’t finish the sentence, since Jason was looking at me with puzzled affection, like a large, friendly, but not terribly bright dog.
I gave him a pat. ‘Never mind, Jason. I think I’ve got what I needed, and certainly more than I intended, and I’m going home.’
‘Can I come?’ he asked pathetically.
‘No. It’s too late, I have a tattered reputation to uphold, and if you were cherishing any hopes, forget them, because I don’t intend being unfaithful to Max.’
Not yet, anyway.
‘But I wouldn’t take you for granted like he does, and, anyway, why stay faithful to a married man when you could play the field a bit with an unmarried one – sort of? Besides,’ he added, ‘Tom’s home for the weekend and I don’t want to go back. Strange music will blast the air until three in the morning, and the lounge will be littered with bodies.’
‘I think that sounds pretty much like the next chapter of my book,’ I mused, seeing my way forward at last. ‘A sort of Wreck of the Hesperus effect.’
Their naked bodies slithered and writhed together like snakes in a pit? No, perhaps that’s a cliché.
Jason was still thinking along different lines … or maybe not. ‘You could come back to my place and distract me,’ he suggested.
‘No thanks,’ I said shortly, brushing grass and earth off my cloak and not feeling even remotely tempted. Tom made rather gross sexual suggestions to me whenever Jason was out of the room, and he was not only young enough to be my son, but had spots the size of puffball mushrooms.
‘Well, I’d rather come back with you,’ he conceded, removing a worm from my hood and tossing it aside. Then he swept me into a warm embrace which, since I was still wrapped in the cloak, was rather unpleasantly strait-jacketing. ‘Cassy, you know I’m mad about you. If Max hadn’t taken you away from me when we were students—’
‘Jason, Max didn’t take me away from you, you were going out with Tanya by the time he came on the scene. And you know we’d already agreed to be just friends.’
‘Well, that was then, and this is now. Couldn’t you just think seriously about me?’
‘I have – I do,’ I said truthfully. ‘And you know I’m very fond of you, Jason, but that isn’t enough, is it?’
‘I don’t know. Couldn’t you try it and see?’ he suggested, and kissed me.
Not until I find out where Tanya’s got to, I thought, but relaxed into the kiss anyway, and very pleasant it was, too, once he’d negotiated his way around the vampire teeth.
But it wasn’t more than just pleasant, and since Jason was starting to get a bit carried away I wrenched my head back and tried to free myself, before things really got out of hand.
‘Jason, stop,’ I said. ‘No, Jason! I’m sorry, but this just isn’t right, and—’
‘You don’t mean it,’ he said thickly, trying to kiss me again. ‘Forget Max.’
I was starting to get a bit cross, for although I didn’t really think Jason was dangerous (down, Shep!), he was big, focused and had drunk enough to make him stubbornly single-minded. As his mouth closed on mine with passionate determination, I was forced to employ the fangs for the second time that night.
I’d be a full-time vampire before I knew it at that rate.
Jason yelled and let me go so suddenly I staggered back, observing with some interest the way the dark blood welled from his lower lip, and the sudden expression of fury turning his craggy face into a gargoyle’s mask.
Scrub what I said about him not being dangerous. Knowing his rages of old I realized it was quite time I removed myself, and so took to my heels through the graveyard and out through the gates into the lane, with Jason in hot pursuit.
Perhaps it was because I was too busy looking over my shoulder to see how close he was that I wasn’t aware of the dark sports car hurtling round the bend until it screeched to a halt barely inches from me, warmly quivering.
The driver, a large, dark and unequivocally masculine shape, was making movements as if to get out and probably yell at me, if not worse, though it certainly wasn’t my fault he’d taken a wrong turn down a dead end.
… the vampire cruised the dark lanes seeking his next victim, the sleek, fast car making him feel even more powerful than before …
Vampires in cars? I hadn’t considered the possibilities motor transport would open up to the Undead before …
But the driver of this one opened his door, and feeling that I was about to turn into whatever the female equivalent of a misogynist is (and contrary to male belief it isn’t necessarily a feminist) I bared my fangs in a snarl that he could take either as a propitiating smile or a threat, and began to sidle round the further side of the car towards home.
Do you know, I’d quite forgotten I still had the ghastly greenish complexion and dark crimson lipstick on until the door slammed shut again, the central locking went down with a loud ‘clunk!’, and the car shot backwards, executed a rapid three-point turn, and roared away.
I took it as a compliment, and it’s not the first time this sort of thing has happened either. I am quite tall, dark-haired, and naturally pallid of complexion, with deep-set eyes and a rather lugubrious cast of countenance, and in full escapee-from-the-crypt make-up and dress in a darkened room have been known to scare more nervous telegram recipients into a dead faint.
How people do love to be petrified, don’t they? Or maybe they thought I was going to do an Ozzy Osbourne with the Bat? (Ex-bat. Alas, poor Clive! I knew him well …)
Once the car had gone, I became aware of blasphemous sounds from the graveyard indicative of Jason’s having measured his length over a gravestone, so seizing the opportunity I quickly made myself scarce.
Back home it was midnight at the oasis. Mrs Bridges had gone to bed, and even Birdie was silent in her little nest.
The
message light lured me to the phone, but it was just Jane with Max’s number. Nothing from Max personally, then or later, though Jason rang the doorbell repeatedly while I wrote through the witching hours with a red-hot pen.
5
Mistress of All She Surveys
Another chilling little potboiler from mistress of the macabre Cass Leigh, Nocturnally Yours will delight only her fans.
Daily Telegraph
At some time during the night, whilst I was pleasantly engaged in causing poor Keturah to pass out with terror as something unspeakable grabs her in the graveyard, only to find when she wakes up that—
No. I’ll stop there because I’m not going to tell you what Keturah sees when she wakes up: buy the book and boost my sales.
In any case I am digressing from the point, which is that at some time between Jason’s final assault on the doorbell and the first squawk of Birdsong, Jack Craig pushed a key through my letterbox.
Not just any key: the key. Large, sturdy, old-fashioned, and the sort of thing that would open Drac’s castle or the House on Haunted Hill. Which is pretty close, actually, since it was the key to Kedge Hall that I’d spent so much time trying to borrow.
It came wrapped in a piece of paper that said, thrillingly: ‘Tonight!’, and included a map of the drive, and the little path under the arch at the side of the house that would take me to the kitchen door, all very Enid Blyton. All it needed was Timmy the dog. Or maybe Jason would do?
The thick plottens.
While delighted that Jack had at last capitulated it was odd of him to deliver the key in such a mysterious manner, when he might slip it into my hand down at the pub most nights.
And why ‘tonight’? Though of course I would go, because it would be just like him to demand the key back the next day, and it had been such amazingly hard work to get the thing at all.
Jack’s appearance was clearly against him, for you wouldn’t think from looking at him that he had any principles. Indeed, I often wondered how he got the job of caretaker at all, except, I suppose, that Craigs have always occupied the lodge, and he was simply the Last Man Standing.
It’s amazing how everything happens at once, isn’t it? But having finally worn him down into agreeing, I’d have to seize the moment.
Miss Kedge was a very reclusive old lady who never even bothered answering my letters pleading for a quick look round, and I had no reason to think the new owner, if he ever appeared, would be any different. Apart from the haunted bit, Kedge Hall was one of the nicest small manor houses in the country, so you’d think the heir would hotfoot it back if only to put the house on the market, wouldn’t you?
Rumour had it that he was – or had been – some kind of foreign correspondent, and was currently abroad somewhere; but other than that no one seemed to know anything much about him, or had ever seen him here apart from Jack Craig on that one brief visit months ago.
Dawn was breaking and Birdie was squawking, but instead of going to bed for a couple of hours (with earplugs) like I usually did, I listened to Jane’s message again, writing down Max’s phone number. And this time I actually registered the end of her message, the scary bit, where she’d added: ‘Clear out the spare bedroom, I might just want to come and stay with you soon.’
Stay with me? With me? Did she want to get excommunicated from the parental nest too?
Or was it just a Jane thing to put me on edge?
After that I dithered about with Max’s number in one hand and the strangely reassuring weight of the Hall key in the other, while I tried to summon up the courage to call him.
When I finally did, it rang for such an awfully long time before it was picked up that I’d started to think Jane had got the wrong number.
Even then, there was silence from the other end, except for the faint seashell whisper of someone breathing.
‘Max, is that you? Are you there? It’s me, Cass.’
‘Cassy?’ He sounded more stunned than pleased. ‘How on earth did you get this number? And do you know what time it is over here?’
‘No, of course I don’t. I don’t know what time it is here, either – what does it matter? Max, Jane told me about Rosemary, and she got your number for me.’
‘Jane knows already? My God! Then I suppose everyone knows?’
‘Everyone except me! Why didn’t you phone, Max? It was so horrible finding out from Jane, not you. And – I’m really sorry about Rosemary,’ I added, rather awkwardly. ‘I mean, I know you were still fond of her, and—’
‘Yes, it’s been quite a shock,’ he interrupted brusquely. ‘I haven’t been thinking straight. Sorry, Cassy, I did mean to call, but it’s all been so difficult. I knew you’d understand, darling.’
Yeah, just take me for granted as usual, faithful old Cass, I thought disloyally, and then felt immediately guilty. Guilt on guilt: I had more layers of the stuff than an onion has skins. (And I wished he wouldn’t call me Cassy, it’s so Jane Austen!)
‘I’ll come over as soon as I can get a plane seat,’ I assured him. ‘You shouldn’t have to be alone at a time like this.’
‘No,’ he said sharply. ‘No, you can’t, Cassy! It wouldn’t look good at all if you came here.’
‘Of course I wouldn’t stay with you, Max: that would look a bit too “off with the old and on with the new”. (Or ‘off with the old, and on with the nearly as old’.) ‘Why shouldn’t a friend come to support you without anyone suspecting there’s anything between us? But I must see you and I ought to be with you at a time like this.’
‘No,’ he repeated with unflattering force. ‘You don’t understand at all, Cassy! There was a slight difficulty with the police over the accident. They didn’t think she was strong enough to get her chair out on to the sun deck like that, and then for it to go over the edge at the highest point, and they’ve been very awkward about it.’
‘But of course it was an accident,’ I cried. ‘I mean – wasn’t it?’
‘Of course, and they fully accept that now. Rosemary had great strength in her arms, especially since Kyra’s been working with her, and, in any case, who would do such a thing on purpose to a helpless invalid? I was lecturing all that day, or with colleagues, of course,’ he added.
‘Yes, of course,’ I echoed, thinking the alibi came a bit pat.
‘But now it’s turned out that the braking mechanism on her chair was faulty, so she probably wheeled up to the low parapet too fast, couldn’t stop, and was tipped over.’
‘Oh, I see,’ I said, relieved. Not that I’d really thought Max would have had any hand in it, because he valued his venerable tanned and toned hide too much to do anything illegal.
‘So however much I’d like to see you, it’s better if you don’t come out just now. And there’s another thing, Cassy: Rosemary knew all about us.’
‘What do you mean? Of course she knew you were having a relationship with someone else, you had an understanding, didn’t you? You went off for weekends of “golf”, and she never asked any questions?’
‘She never asked me anything because she already knew the answers: among her papers are reports on us she’d had done. The police found them, and it made things sticky for a while, until they accepted that it wasn’t possible for me to have been there when the accident happened. But it means that you must keep away.’
I felt suddenly like someone had lifted my rock and left my conscience exposed and squirming.
‘Max, that’s horrible! That she should care enough – be jealous enough to find out about us. And you said when you told her you would never leave her, she more or less said she would turn a blind eye to … well to me.’
‘No, I could never leave her, she knew that,’ he said slowly.
‘Let me come out and be with you,’ I pleaded again, needing to see him face to face.
‘No, I’ve already said. Don’t you understand? Besides, I’m flying back with – flying back for the funeral. I’ll come down and see you after that, before I return here to finish my
year. We’ll talk then.’
‘But, Max, you do still—’
The phone went down with a click.
I don’t know what I did for the rest of that morning, except at some stage Pa phoned me again, with his usual message: ‘You’ll burn in hell, girl,’ he assured me with characteristic fervour and no preamble, although he did sound sober this time. I waited for him to put the phone down, but after a small pause he sighed deeply and added: ‘And your sister with you!’
Then he put the phone down.
I stared at it like it might suddenly wake up and explain that I’d just had an auditory hallucination, and not to worry, but it stayed mum.
The telephone stirred like a snake under Keturah’s hand, the cord rippling and flexing—
What had they found out about Jane? That she only looked like an angel? Well, that took long enough. The evidence had been there before and they’d always managed to ignore it, just like all the other poor suckers.
Maybe they’d finally discovered what she got up to as a student in Oxford, which was far more than I did at my university, before Max began his siege of my heart – and the rest of me.
Whatever it was, I expected Jane would manage to explain it all away to their complete satisfaction, since she seemed to weave some hypnotic spell over the gullible so that they believed exactly what she wanted them to.
How many years of evolution will it take, before mankind realizes that the truth gene does not always go hand in hand with the ones for blond hair and blue eyes?
But something had clearly cast a blip in her relations with Ma and Pa, and I wondered if this was what had caused her to lay claim to the spare room? If so, by then I expected she had realized that staying with me (indeed, even admitting that we ever saw each other) would not help her cause with the parents.
At eight, the postman brought me a badly wrapped foreign package containing a pair of pink Chinese silk slippers, but no message. They were exquisite but tiny, and I feared it was now too late to have my feet bound.
Not that I didn’t think I deserved the torture it would cause me, so perhaps I had better try it?
A Good Heart is Hard to Find Page 6