Page 112 of A Good Heart is Hard to Find
23
The Pendulum and the Pit
Cass Leigh’s new novel is a bursting boil on the face of publishing …
(Extract from a letter to the editor, by Outraged of Upper Slaughter)
My legs (together with my brain) ceased to function with dramatic suddenness, though I don’t know whether it was the shock or the anti-climax that did it. Or maybe it was the fearsome image of the monster, freshly releasedfrom the cupboard, in his tight, white, rhinestone-studded suit?
As I crumpled, Dante swept me into his arms and carried me back towards the west wing, and over his shoulder I saw Max, a surreal figure in silky Armani suiting, step through an archway into the rose garden and stop dead, staring.
His appearance was even more incongruous than Pa’s, but just as unwanted. I put my arms around Dante’sneck and turned my face into his shoulder.
I did glance back once, but Max had gone.
Had he really been there? And if so, had his beard really vanished, and been replaced by its own ghost in white skin? Neither question seemed very important any more.
I was not quite so out of it that I didn’t notice andappreciate how effortlessly Dante carted my not-inconsiderable weight about … And I nowhad no ideawhatfilm I was starring in, except that it seemed to be somewhere betweenGone With the Windand a remake ofJaws, where the shark turned out to be the good guy.
Far from being afraid of him any more I now didn’t want to ever let go. He was safe, strong, solid, sensible, and even my father had backed down from a confrontation with him. (He was also tall, dark, brooding, haunted andintense – but hey, who isn’t?)
I decided to elect him Champion of my Sanity, and once I was curled up cosily with him on the old sofa in his study, hovering somewhere between hysterical tears and laughter, it was tempting to elect him something else, too.
He held me close, murmuring comforting words and stroking my hair, and then after a while I gave him a watery smile and he kissed me … andI kissed him back, and one thing led to another.
Only unfortunately it didn’t lead all that far, since he said I was deeply shocked and upset and he wasn’t going to take advantage of me, andIwas definitely too exhausted to take advantage of him … this time. It was nice of him, though, and I certainly wasn’t about to disillusion him by saying I’d appreciate a little less consideration and abit more action.
Eventually he remembered the birthday party and seance and duty called, so I went to my room to wash and tidy up. Then we went down to the visitors’ sitting room for Ghost Cake together: for after all, why shouldn’t the Lord and Master of the Manor take his hired help around with him if he wanted to?
The room had been decked out in ghost-shaped Halloween balloons, and Clara’scake occupied a small table in a central position. While her knitted sweaters were all extremely zany shewas not the most artistic of cake designers, so the cake was just round and blue with a cut-out icing ghost in a conventional white sheet on top, and ‘Happy Birthday, Leo’ picked out in yellow around it. There were a few token candles.
Eddie and Rosetta were setting out glasses, teacups andlittle plates of sandwiches and stuff, and looked pleased to see us, although Eddie always looked pleased to see everyone, so that was nothing new. His hair was tied up in a flowered silk square, like a sunny-natured pirate.
The others were all grouped in an incongruous tableau around a table at the end of a room: Madame Duval, vast in midnight-blue velvet and Egyptian beads, with Reg in anxiousattendance; Jason and Mrs Bream bending over what seemed to be a map, watched with keen interest by her husband and brother.
‘What’s going on?’ Dante asked suspiciously. ‘Oh, you’ve all met Cass, haven’t you?’ he added, without bothering to add who or what I was, which was probably just as well since evenIwas finding my position pretty hard to define.
‘Jason just got here,’ Rosetta explainednervously. ‘Mr and Mrs Bream visited his shop earlier and got talking, Dante, and it turns out that Mrs Bream can find missing people using a map and items of their belongings and a crystal. Jason’s wife disappeared, you know … and I thought you wouldn’t mind if they tried?’
‘I can hardly complain, since I’m going to let Madame hold her seance later,’ he said bitterly. ‘It sounds perfectly harmlessby comparison!’
Dante and I watched as the crystal pendulum hung still over a detailed map of the area around Westery. I suppose they were making sure she wasn’t nearby first before going for the large-scale stuff.
Then suddenly the crystal began to move. Mrs Bream muttered a bit, her eyes half shut, and a slither of cerise nylonsari unfolded down her arm. Then she opened her blue-lidded eyesand laid a pointed fingernail on a spot on the map. ‘There!’
We all crowded up but Dante, being taller than the others, was the first to spot the significance: ‘That’s on my land,’ he said. He leaned closer. ‘Somewhere in the overgrown flower gardens beyond the pond?’
‘There’s a new rockery,’ Eddie said unexpectedly. ‘In the old gardens. Someone made a rockery.’
We all looked at him.
‘JackCraig? Must have been, no one else would have bothered,’ I said. ‘But why? Surely he—’
‘He must have liked rockeries,’ Eddie said simply.
‘Or he made it to hide something!’ Jason said, leaping slightly wildly to his feet. ‘My wife had been having an affair with him just before she vanished but I came here that night looking for her, and he swore he hadn’t seen her!’
Dante laid a restraininghand on his arm. ‘Don’t jump to conclusions, Jason. There’s probably nothing in it. Anyway, the light’s gone, there’s nothing you can do until morning.’
