Page 51 of A Good Heart is Hard to Find
Quite unaccountably, considering I was hellbent on pretending the whole sorry thing never happened, I began to feel piqued and stopped switching on and off like a thermostat.
Instead I set Jane on to him so I could watch him unnoticed while she worked her mojo on him. ‘This is my sister, Jane. Jane, this is Dante Chase, who’s just inherited Kedge Hall, the lovely old manor house outside the village.’
The total stranger I slept with the other night.
‘Hi,’ she said alertly, bestowing on him her full panoply of winsome, white-toothed charm. ‘You look so familiar: now wheredoI know you from?’
‘No idea,’ he said curtly, and turning abruptly met my eyes. His were the greeny-blue of a Caribbean sea – or a glacier’s depths – and showed a momentary glint of some emotion.
I couldn’t for the lifeof me decide what it was.
Can glaciers burn?
‘Jane’s Cass’s twin sister: isn’t it amazing how different they are?’ Orla asked, changing the subject, because Dante was clearly not about to regale us with jolly tales of his hostage days.
He shrugged, seemingly uninterested. ‘It often happens that way with non-identical twins.’
‘Dante has been telling me his plans for the Hall,’ Orla told us,persevering.
‘You mean, about setting up in competition with your B&B?’ I said helpfully.
‘It’s not a B&B,’ Dante said shortly. ‘My sister, Rosetta, just aims to run themed ghost-hunting weekends, so there’s no competition. There seem to be more alleged ghosts per mile round here than anywhere in the country, most of them haunting my house,’ he added distastefully.
‘It’s noted for it,’ I agreed.‘And Hanged Man Lane runs right past it.’
‘There’s the Haunted Well too, but it’s not really haunted, we made that one up,’ Orla confessed. ‘It’s in my garden, and passers-by love to throw money down it. It’s great!’
‘You made it up?’ he frowned. ‘But I bought a booklet about it from that general shop this morning. Emlyn’s, is it? All about the history of the well, going back centuries!’
‘Oh,Cass wrote that.’
‘I thought it seemed a bit over-imaginative.’
‘So, aren’t you afraid of all the ghosts, up there in your lonely old house?’ asked Jane sweetly, having another go. She’d been looking a bit miffed at his lack of interest, but perhaps the fact that he’d been equally brusque to me, too, had encouraged her. ‘Or – sorry, is there a Mrs Chase?’
‘No,’ he said shortly, scowling atme likeI’dasked the nosy questions. ‘I’m a widower. And I don’t believe in that sort of supernatural rubbish, so I might have to take a leaf out of Cass’s book, and create an apparition or two to please my sister’s visitors.’
‘It wasn’t an apparition, just a haunted well,’ I said. ‘Andourmotives were pure.’
‘Yes, my husband had just left me, and I was desperate for money!’ Orla agreed. ‘Sincethen, of course, I’ve starteddoing B&Bs, and the singing telegrams, so I’m managing fine; but the Haunted Well is a permanent fixture.’
‘You mean, you just made a well in your garden and people come and throw money down it?’ demanded Jane, round-eyed.
‘Oh, there was an old well there, but it was covered over,’ Jason said. ‘We got some stones from an old garden wall and made it look a bit moreinteresting, then erected an information board, and off it went.’
‘Why didn’t you put it inyourgarden?’ Jane asked me. ‘You never have enough money either.’
‘I get the proceeds from the little booklet,’ I said. ‘And I didn’t have a well to start with.’
‘If you need the money, I told Orla just before you got here that I’d like to hire you for a couple of appearances over Easter weekend, whenRosetta intends to open for business … night-time ones,’ Dante told me, looking deadly serious.
Mind you, with that face it must be hard to look any other way. I’d rate his chances of being voted Mr Congeniality at nil.
‘What, Crypt-ograms?’ I asked doubtfully.
‘No. No singing, no vampire teeth, just flitting around looking scary in the rose garden at night – and maybe the Long Gallery,’ headded, raising one eyebrow at me.
‘No way,’ I said hotly, rising to the bait. ‘I don’t do flitting, and if you have any idea that I’m going to run along the gallery at midnight, stark naked like poor blind Betsy …’
