‘Even if I had married Max, it would never have made things right again,’ I told him.
‘Maybe not. Well, anyway, then this old bat next door opened her window and started screaming at us, and singing snatches of “Men of Harlech”, and Pa told her she was possessed by the devil and she must be a great sinner.’
‘Oh dear! Mrs Bridges will keep watching Zulu, and it always upsets her. Perhaps I ought to steal it next time I’m in her house? Or Eddie, if he goes round there to do something for her?’
‘Is Eddie here? In Westery?’
‘Yes, didn’t you know? His van’s up at the hall because he’s helping Rosetta – she’s the sister of Dante Chase, the new owner of Kedge Hall – to run her Ghastly Weekends. Sort of a themed country house weekend.’
Francis looked at me like I was mad but I’m not the one who swings about on sheer rock faces on a bit of string.
‘Maybe I’d better not mention Eddie,’ he suggested. ‘Ma would want to see him, but I always worry that Pa will have a stroke. It’s touch and go with his outbursts lately, sober or not.’
‘No, better keep Eddie quiet if you can.’
‘Jamie isn’t still here somewhere too, is he? Only Ma and Pa were expecting him home, and he never turned up. He just sent a postcard that didn’t make sense.’
‘No, he was here, but he lost his bottle and bolted. So, what’s Pa’s next move, Francis?’
‘Well, he asked me where you were, but luckily I didn’t know. But then he asked Orla. Great outfit, by the way!’ he added enthusiastically.
‘Stick to the point,’ I told him severely.
‘Right. So Orla told him you were Dante Chase’s slave for the weekend. That went down a treat.’
‘I’ll have to thank Orla for that one. What was she thinking of?’
‘Well, you know Pa – can charm the birds from the trees when he’s sober and puts his mind to it, even if he’s damning them all to hellfire for wanton tweeting ten minutes later.’
‘True. I suppose I’ll have to forgive her.’
‘So now Ma and Pa think you’re having some kind of dirty weekend with bondage and stuff, but at least it should put them off following you up there to demand Jane’s whereabouts. I tried phoning Phily’s house again to speak to Jane, but there was no answer.’
‘Probably out having fun. I remember fun – I think,’ I said bitterly.
‘Orla explained to me about the slave auction. She said you were going to frighten the guests, that’s all.’
‘Perhaps you should let Pa come up, he’d frighten them even more,’ I suggested.
‘I’m hoping that I’ll manage to get hold of Jane on the phone tomorrow and then they will have to admit she isn’t here and we can all go home. After all, I’ve been away for days and I’ve got a business to run.’
‘And mountains to climb,’ I agreed. ‘I’ll give you a ring at Orla’s tomorrow and see if you’ve succeeded.’
‘Right.’ He downed the rest of his pint and got up. ‘I’d better go before they miss me.’
I fished in my bag and handed him an Extra Strong Mint. ‘Here – suck this on the way back, or you’ll be excommunicated for devil-brew drinking.’
Orla and Jason seemed to be having a promising quarrel, so I just slipped out and walked slowly back. I was tempted to return to my cottage for a while, since Pa’d already visited it so it should be safe; but then thought it would be just like him to sneak back later and try and catch me out.
On the way up the drive the two male Spectrologists, Mr Shakespeare and the Birthday Bream, passed me, going the opposite way, probably heading for the graveyard and other haunts.
They didn’t see me, since I stepped into the bushes when I heard them coming. If I was going to appear as a ghost later, I thought it better that they didn’t see me by moonlight now in case it gave them suspicious ideas.
I wondered what Mr Bream would think of his singing telegram. And what would Mrs Bream think of the change of character? Marilyn Monroe is one thing, and Barbarella is quite another. Especially Orla’s version of her.
I went round to the kitchen, which was empty and quiet apart from the dishwasher chugging away under the counter, and Dante sitting morosely at the kitchen table with a glass of red wine and a copy of Britain’s Most Haunted Houses.
He frowned at the sight of me and snapped: ‘Where have you been?’
‘My bondage doesn’t start until midnight,’ I pointed out. ‘But if you really want to know, I’ve been down to the pub for something to eat and to talk to my brother Francis.’
‘Oh … sorry,’ he muttered. ‘Have a glass of wine?’ He pushed the bottle towards me and I noticed that his greeny-blue eyes glittered a bit.
I held the bottle up to the light, and there wasn’t a lot in it. ‘Have you drunk all this?’
‘Yes. I needed something to take the taste of guilt out of my mouth.’ He got up and opened another bottle and handed it to me as if he expected me to drink it straight down like a wino.
‘You’ve nothing to be guilty about,’ I said, opening and shutting cupboard doors until I found a glass, because I’m not one to leave a man to drink alone – though you’d think I’d have learned my lesson by now with this one.
‘I have at least one outstanding guilty verdict against me, according to my delightful former mother-in-law. She’s demanding we hold a seance here – one last one – and if I co-operate and Emma doesn’t contact her she will give up and leave me alone.’
‘So what did you say?’
‘That I wouldn’t do it. I’ve already done everything she asked me, even though I knew it was all dangerous nonsense. But Reg – who is an inoffensive little man, too good for her – is afraid she’ll work herself up into a full-blown heart attack if I don’t agree. And I suspect she’ll try and hold one secretly anyway, even if I refuse.’
‘I share your feelings about seances and that sort of thing, though probably for different reasons. But maybe it would be worth it just to get her off your back once and for all?’ I suggested. ‘Hopefully, no harm will come of it, but if it does, we’ll get the vicar to come in with bell, book, and candle and sort it out.’
‘I said I’d sleep on it, in the end,’ he said, running his fingers distractedly through his dark hair. That was probably as close to being combed it had come to for some time, and it all instantly sprang back into a wild mane anyway.
Getting up he poured us both more wine. It was good stuff.
‘Have you been in the cellar again?’ I asked, but unfortunately my innocent remark brought a reminiscent glint to his eyes, and also seemed to remind him that he had a grievance or two against me.
‘I’m afraid so,’ he said gravely. ‘And neither of us will be doing much sleeping tonight. Or tomorrow night.’
‘Oh?’ I stared at him, my glass halfway to my lips. ‘We won’t?’
‘No, we’ll be a-haunting. I’ve told the Breams and Mr Shakespeare about Betsy’s midnight runner and the haunted rose garden and they’re all agog.’
‘I didn’t agree to do Betsy!’
‘But I thought you were going to do anything I wanted?’ he said. ‘Though I’ll let you off nude: I’ve put some floaty white ghost clothes on your bed that should look pretty effective. You can run down the corridor looking as if you’re silently screaming and terrified.’
If he carried on looking at me like that I might be loudly screaming and terrified.
‘I only start my slavery at midnight,’ I pointed out.
‘But you could stretch a point and get changed and in position for midnight? Then you can do it again tomorrow, but I’ll let you off on Sunday,’ he offered.
‘Gee, thanks.’
‘I half expected Jason to insist on coming here tonight as well as tomorrow to protect you from my wicked wiles. Are you losing your charms?’
‘I don’t think I’ve got any to lose, and Jason’s busy tonight. If he does turn up at all tomorrow I don’t think he will make muc
h of a fuss, because Orla’s managed to distract him with her new singing telegram outfit. You’ll see it tomorrow.’
He’d see most of Orla tomorrow, too.
‘Will I?’
‘Yes, because it’s Mr Bream’s birthday, and his wife has hired Orla to come here, and Rosetta says we’re all invited for cake and stuff at four tomorrow in the big sitting room. But Mrs Bream thinks she’s getting Marilyn Monroe.’
‘And in fact she’s getting—?’
‘Wait and see,’ I said darkly. ‘Where are Rosetta and Eddie?’
‘They said something about an early night because of cooking all those breakfasts tomorrow, and left me to it.’
‘Yes …’ I said slowly, looking at Dante’s dark and shadowed face. ‘I think Rosetta’s finding the weekend a bit more exhausting than she thought. But then, she didn’t bank on your ex-mother-in-law coming along, and everyone wanting meals on trays and birthday teas, and all the rest of it.’
Dante rose to his feet and said abruptly: ‘Come on.’
‘Where?’
‘Back to the lonely west wing. I’ve got something I want to show you. Bring your glass, and I’ll take another bottle.’
‘I think you’ve had quite enough,’ I said severely. ‘And what do you want to show me?’
‘Wait and see.’
I went, although not without certain nervous qualms, but he led me straight to his study, where he had now ranged the diaries in date order and typed up the first as Chapter One. There was a title page, too: ‘Travelling to Alaska’.
‘What do you think? Is it set out right?’
I was quite touched that he’d used my suggested title. Picking up the chapter, I flicked through it, then went back and started to read from the beginning.
… my New York hotel bedroom at first seemed a far remove from the earth-floored dark hut I shared with Paul for so many months of our captivity. Yet in a way it still seemed to cage me from the urban jungle outside with its different dangers …
When I looked up from the last page of the chapter I realized that I’d sat down with it at some point. Dante was sitting opposite me on one of the old armchairs, quietly and intently watching me.
He raised one black brow. ‘So you’re back?’
‘Sorry – it’s gripping stuff. I’m dying to read the whole thing when you’ve finished it.’
‘So you think this way of writing it is going to work, then?’
‘Work? It’s brilliant!’ I said enthusiastically. ‘I couldn’t put it down, you must have seen that?’
‘Well, I couldn’t put Lover, Come Back to Me down, if it comes to that,’ he replied. ‘But for entirely different reasons. I kept wondering if any of the characters were based on real ones – especially Vladimir, who this Keturah seems to find so very attractive but scary.’
‘Oh, no, I make them all up,’ I said hastily. Which I do, I only borrow aspects of people I find interesting and jumble them up with some invented bits to make a new character.
‘You don’t find me attractive but scary, by any chance?’ he asked with interest. ‘Just wondered.’
‘No, not at all,’ I said firmly. ‘I made Vlad’s character up entirely. And it’s Keturah who felt that, she’s such a wimp! Or she started out as a wimp, until she took a turn for the worse and got more interesting.’
‘Interesting? I suppose that’s one word for it!’
‘Well, interesting to me.’
‘You know, it’s a pretty disturbing book, especially if you happen to have both a house and an ancestor with starring roles in it. The ending, particularly, was deeply worrying.’
‘Oh, I always have a surprise ending – a twist in the tail.’
‘It certainly surprised me,’ he agreed. ‘Especially what you did to Sylvanus. Doesn’t your lover find it a bit unsettling, the stuff that’s going on in your mind?’
‘I haven’t got a lover, I told you: I’ve finished with Max.’
‘That’s not what he thinks. He told me how you’ve loved each other for all these years, and that you’re going to get married once you are over your upset feelings about Rosemary’s letter.’
‘He said? When did he say?’ I demanded, startled.
‘When he phoned me up to warn me to mind my manners while you were here,’ he said amiably. ‘Said he’d just spoken to you, and you were worried about coming here in case I made a pass at you, and so he wanted to tell me not to lay a finger on you, or else.’
I stared at him: ‘Doesn’t he ever listen to a word I say? I finally finished with him when Jane’s husband told me he’d been having an affair with some physical fitness instructor over there.’
I told him about Kyra and a push too far. ‘And I told you even before that that I’d decided it was over. Not that it’s any of your business,’ I added tartly. ‘I’m going to my room.’
I got up and laid the manuscript on the table. ‘When do you want me?’
He raised a quizzical eyebrow.
‘When do you want me for the haunting?’ I qualified. ‘I didn’t actually sign up for anything else.’
Come to think of it, I didn’t even sign up for that.
‘How about just before midnight, so we can get you into place well beforehand?’
‘All right, but how will I get away afterwards without being seen? If I hide in one of the rooms they might catch me.’
‘I’ve discovered a secret stair at the end of the hall, and I’ll be waiting for you. Actually, it wasn’t that secret since it’s in the house documents, but it isn’t in the haunted house books, so the Spectrologists won’t know about it.’
‘It will be a waste of time if they don’t watch me – or manage to catch me!’
‘I’ve told them they will only see the ghost from the balcony at the end, because if anyone’s in the Long Gallery she doesn’t appear. By the time they get down from there you’ll be long gone.’
‘Like the wine: that’s long gone, too,’ I said tartly. ‘You’d better not drink any more tonight.’
His eyes glittered like chips of ice floe, and he pushed his black hair back off his bony face with both hands, like he wanted to study me in detail.
‘If there are going to be any resurrections it might have to be the brandy again,’ he said. ‘And aren’t I supposed to be the one giving orders?’
I gave him a look and went to my room, locking the door firmly behind me, but I thought that might have been to keep myself in rather than him out, since Dante in his black T-shirt and leather trousers brought the words ‘moth’ and ‘candle-flame’ strongly into my mind.
I did not go quite so far as to toss the key out of the window, though, because when I turned around something white and gauzy stirred and whispered within the open wardrobe.
It was a white dress. A white Ghost ghost dress, to be exact … expensive and quite beautiful, a long gossamer concoction.
I’ve never been the Woman in White … and absolutely nothing could have stopped me wearing that dress that night.
It was a strange but fortunate coincidence that although only the more frivolous items of my underwear were white, I seemed to have packed them along with the sensible everyday black things …
I tried the dress on, and I looked like someone else. I felt like someone else. And if I accidentally stood in front of a light, I’d be nearly fully exposed to everyone else.
That would be pretty authentic for Blind Betsy. Which reminded me, I couldn’t remember what she was running from or to, but she must have known the house well if she was doing a headlong streak down the Long Gallery. Must ask Dante later if he knew.
If he expected me to flit round the garden in this outfit afterwards I’d catch my death even with all that wine inside me.
I wondered if Dr Amulet Bone always wore white.
… chained to the bed he saw her coming slowly towards him, a glimmer of white in the darkness. Then he heard the soft susurration of her long skirts against the cold stone floor and began un
controllably to shiver …
As the clock sonorously struck midnight somewhere down in the dark depths of the house, I ran barefoot down the carpeted hall, my gauzy draperies streaming behind me.
My eyes had adjusted to the faint moonlight coming from the tall windows down one side, but as I reached the dark, blank panelling at the end where the gallery turned, a dank waft of air touched my face and then something – or someone – snatched me into cold, muffling blackness.
My scream must have been cut off by the closing of the secret panel behind me, and was probably most effective, but as I drew breath for another mighty shriek, a large hand covered my mouth.
‘Shh! It’s only me – you’re safe!’ hissed Dante. He must have felt me shaking uncontrollably, because he gave an exclamation and, wrapping his arms around me said apologetically: ‘Sorry, Cass – I was so made up with finding this stair and the panelling that I forgot about the cupboard effect. And it isn’t a cupboard, because there’s a way out.’
I rested my head against his broad chest: déjà vu again.
‘If you ever do anything like that to me again, I’ll kill you, Dante Chase,’ I promised, waiting for my heart to stop pounding away.
‘It must have looked pretty authentic to our Spectrologists, though – they were up on the balcony when you ran from under it, bang on the stroke of midnight. Come on,’ he added, switching on a small torch and pointing it down some shallow, twisting steps. My Chinese shoes sat sedately side by side on the top one. ‘It’s the rose garden now.’
I noticed that he was wearing his ruffled shirt and breeches again.
‘You’re going to do some haunting too?’
‘We’re going to do some haunting, as the doomed lovers who walk the rose garden.’
‘We are? I don’t remember hearing about those.’
‘Probably not, since I took a leaf out of your book and made it up. However, it’s a sad and tragic tale. Come on.’
We emerged on the kitchen floor through what looked like a china cupboard, and leaving the house by a side door, sneaked around to the rose garden.
Dante took my hand in a lover-like fashion, but when I shivered he put his arm around me instead, which was much warmer and equally authentic. As we strolled through the formal pathways I wondered how many of the visitors had read Dante’s thoughtfully printed hand-out and were even now observing us through the windows.
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