Page 105 of A Good Heart is Hard to Find
‘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, wasdeeplyworrying.’
‘Oh, I always have a surprise ending – a twist in the tail.’
‘It certainly surprisedme,’ he agreed. ‘Especially what you did to Sylvanus. Doesn’t yourlover 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 meup 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 physicalfitness 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 thehaunting?’ I qualified. ‘I didn’t actually signup 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 secretsince 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.’
‘Likethe 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 thebrandyagain,’ he said. ‘And aren’t I supposed to be the one giving orders?’
I gavehim 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 stirredand 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 absolutelynothingcould 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 seemedto 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 housewell if she was doing a headlong streak down the Long Gallery. Must ask Dante later if he knew.
