Singled Out (35 page)

‘Where is the Birthday Boy?’ she asked seductively, fluttering her gilded eyelashes. But before Leo Bream could do more than gulp nervously and Mrs Bream utter an outraged hiss, Jason had sprung to his feet, tossed an embroidered Chinese shawl over Orla like someone extinguishing a particularly noisy cage-bird, seized her by the arms, and hustled her out.

You know, I think he had that planned.

‘Happy birthday, Mr Bream,’ I said kindly.

‘Leo,’ he murmured weakly, gazing after them as after a vanished dream.

‘Shall we cut the cake?’ asked Rosetta brightly into the ensuing silence. ‘Mr Bream – Leo – I’m lighting the candles, if you’d like to blow them out?’

He had barely enough breath but he managed it in the end, and then we all had a slice of cake that had been exhaled all over, and toasted him in something cheap, thin and sparkling. (A bit like his wife’s sari.)

Jason and Orla didn’t return, and I wondered if they’d retired to Jason’s room or if he’d insisted on taking her home. Whichever, I hoped she was managing to take his mind off tomorrow’s excavations.

After the normality of the tea party, if such it could be called with Dante looking as if he was about to be involved in something noxious (which he was), Madame said we might as well rearrange the room and have what she called her ‘little gathering’ right away.

‘But shouldn’t it be later – after dinner?’ I said, surprised.

‘It’s late enough, and the light’s gone,’ she said in her deep voice. ‘Besides, I never partake of food or drink before I call upon the spirits.’

It was true she’d eaten and drunk nothing, but then neither had Mrs Bream, who seemed to be exhausted after her pendulum swinging (and possibly the shock of Orla’s appearance).

Dante shrugged: ‘As well now as later. The sooner we get this nonsense over the better.’

Madame Duval bridled. ‘I hope you are going into this with a positive attitude, unlike previous occasions when you have maliciously prevented my poor child from contacting me.
This
time I had hoped—’

‘I’ll do my best,’ Dante promised. ‘I said so, didn’t I? One last time, and that’s it.’

‘We will support you, dear,’ Mrs Bream said. ‘And we three are not unbelievers, but open to all new paranormal experiences.’

‘And I’ll stay, and Eddie,’ Rosetta declared firmly. ‘I want it finished with, too.’

‘And me,’ I said.

Dante looked at me. ‘No.’

‘I want to, Dante. I want to be here for you,’ I said stubbornly.

‘It could be dangerous. You’ve had enough upsets for one day.’

‘Let her sit with us,’ Madame said. ‘It is clear to me she has some connection with you, and so might provoke my poor abandoned child to speak. To speak!’ she exclaimed on a slightly more rising note that had poor Reg scrabbling for the smelling salts.

But her colour remained steady, and she bossily directed the repositioning of the chairs around two of the tables, pushed together, and the extinguishing of all but one dim wall light and the flickering log fire.

We all sat around the table holding hands, with Dante next to Madame and me on his left. Reg sat on his wife’s right, saying cheerfully: ‘What larks!’

Even through the gloom I could see Eddie’s white teeth as he smiled at me across the table with happy unconcern. Mrs Bream took my left hand in her cold, bird-boned claw.

‘Open your minds,’ whispered Madame Duval thrillingly. ‘Close your eyes, and let the Others make contact with us … Are you there? We hear you!’

There was a silence, during which I for one was not thinking about lost wives, but about Dante, and about how we seemed to be strong for each other when we couldn’t be strong for ourselves, and of how I felt slightly affronted by the ghastly secret in my nightmare cupboard merely being Elvis.

I mean, how scary is
he
? Even Jane made a more satisfiying monster.

‘There is a dark presence here, trying to bar our way … one who seeks to stop us making contact with the Other Side,’ Madame hissed rather pointedly, and I heard Dante give an exasperated sigh.

‘But we are stronger – we will open the door to our loved ones!’ Mrs Bream declared. ‘I feel them close to us, waiting.’

After that it was all very peaceful for several minutes except for the crackling of the logs, until Mrs Bream’s hand jerked in mine and she gave a sudden snoring snort.

I jumped, and was just about to nudge her awake when she said in a deep voice totally unlike her normal mincingly precise one: ‘I am here. Who summons me?’

Leo Bream leaned forward and whispered: ‘She’s in a trance! That is her control, Two Bison, an Indian chief.’

‘Two Bison?’ I queried, feeling the hysterical laughter bubbling again, but then there was an intake of breath from Madame’s direction, probably indignation due to being upstaged in the medium stakes.

But if so she managed to control it, saying clearly: ‘Welcome, Two Bison! Can you give us news of our loved ones, now passed to the other side?’

‘Some are here awaiting,’ said the deep voice. ‘Whom do you seek?’

‘My daughter. Emma, my daughter—is she there?’

There was a pause.

‘Mother…’ whispered a thread of a voice that seemed to issue not so much from Mrs Bream but from thin air.

‘Emma? My Emma – at last you have come to me!’

‘Mother,’ sighed the voice. ‘Leave him be.’

There was a gasp: ‘Who – what do you mean? I—’

‘Leave him. The baby … not his. Leave him, leave Dante … alone.’

There was a muffled exclamation from Dante, and I pressed his hand in the darkness.

‘Emma…’ sobbed Madame Duval. ‘Emma…!’

‘Emma has gone,’ Two Bison said levelly. ‘Soon I too must go, but first Paul is here. Paul wishes me to say: Dan, my friend. Always my friend. Not your fault.’

Dante’s fingers clenched painfully over mine.

‘If you’re still there, Two Bison.’ I found myself saying to an entity that might, or might not, be real, ‘can I just ask you if Tanya is there? Can Tanya speak to us?’

There was the ghost of a laugh. ‘She is not here, but she is closer than you think,’ he said, and then there was nothing except the sound of harsh breathing and Madame Duval’s sobbing.

*   *   *

As you can imagine, that was pretty well the end of that, although Madame got even more hysterical and told Dante that she’d known it wasn’t his baby all along, but it was all still his fault.

Then she sort of collapsed, and had to be escorted by Reg to her room.

Eddie, who seemed to have sailed through the experience with his mind on other things, went to help him, then came back and started rearranging the room.

Dante hadn’t said anything at all to Madame Duval, or indeed anyone else, just sat there looking somehow drained. I simply didn’t know what to think about the whole experience, except that Mrs Bream looked pretty well flaked out, and that seemed genuine enough.

‘She’s always like this afterwards,’ Leo explained, tenderly helping her to her feet. ‘And we didn’t expect the spirits to come through her tonight, but through Madame Duval, or she’d never have tried the pendulum for Jason first. She’s exhausted, and had better go to bed.’

‘Oh God, more trays!’ Rosetta muttered.

Mrs Bream protested weakly at being removed: ‘No, no, Leo! The haunting tonight … we must stay up to record and film. The manifestations are the strongest we have come across!’

‘I think the spirits have been disturbed enough for one night,’ Dante said, raising his head to show eyes like glacier melt-water. ‘I doubt that anything more will happen after this commotion, so I should call it a day and try again tomorrow.’

‘I suppose he’s right,’ Mr. Shakespeare said reluctantly. ‘Things have been stirred up, and it might be better to leave it for now.’

‘Much better,’ I agreed thankfully, smiling at him. ‘How sensible of you, Mr Shakespeare.’

‘Call me Frank,’ he said. ‘I don’t think any of us need to be on formal terms after that experience.’

‘You won’t leave me alone tonight, Leo, will you?’ pleaded Mrs Bream.

‘Of course not, Nancy.’

‘Perhaps I’ll just spend the rest of the evening writing my notes up on last night’s manifestations,’ Frank conceded. ‘It’s all been pretty tiring, so if we are to make an attempt to record the spirits tomorrow, an early night for us all would be in order. Perhaps I might take some of these leftover sandwiches up with me?’ he added plaintively.

‘Of course: let me get you a fresh plate.’ Rosetta said. ‘And I’ll bring a tray up for Mrs Bream and Madame Duval shortly,’ she added wearily.

Slowly they dispersed, and Rosetta and Eddie went into the kitchen.

Left among the incongruous birthday debris Dante heaved a sigh, got to his feet, and said abruptly: ‘I’m going back to the west wing.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ I said. ‘I don’t know about you but
I
don’t feel like being alone tonight.’

‘Are you afraid?’ he asked, looking at me searchingly. ‘But all our ghosts seem to have been laid to rest today, haven’t they, Cass? Though how or why Emma…’ He shook his head. ‘I still don’t believe it was her … But then, how would Mrs Bream know about the baby? Or that Paul always called me Dan?’

‘Telepathy?’ I suggested. ‘Madame Duval knew about Emma’s baby, and I knew from reading your diaries that Paul called you Dan, and I suppose other people might have had a sneaky look at them. But who knows? And the truth is out now, for both of us, and I’m not really afraid any more, I just feel terribly empty and insecure and sort of adrift.’ (And a bit puzzled, too, actually: why on earth didn’t Rosemary put her four penn’orth in, while the opportunity was there?)

‘We’ve both undergone a sort of catharsis today,’ he agreed. ‘I think that’s it. Come on.’ He held out his hand and I took it.

The west wing was starting to feel like home.

We spent the night together, but neither took advantage of the other, we just held each other close, and it was good.

*   *   *

At some time in the night I got up, switched on the little desk light Dante had found for me, and wrote furiously for a couple of hours.

He half-opened his eyes when I got out of bed, but closed them again and slept on until I climbed back in again and snuggled up for warmth some time just before dawn.

I do love a heavy sleeper.

*   *   *

Dante’d gone when I woke up next morning, rather earlier than usual, although that was probably due to the sound of loud voices under my window.

Looking out I saw him talking to Jason and Orla (she was dressed in Jason’s jeans and shirt with the sleeves and legs rolled up), who carried various digging implements and last night’s map.

After a few minutes conferring they all set out in the direction of the lake, and I began rather languorously to wash and dress, still feeling strangely detached and, truth to tell, a smidgeon anti-climaxed.

By the time I finally got down to the excavation they had been joined by Leo and Frank and were down below the rockery into loose earth, digging carefully.

Then there was the clink of metal on something hard, and they all stopped and stared down into the hole.

‘There’s something there,’ Jason said unnecessarily.

Chapter 24: Buried Treasures

Shock To the Spirits,
yet another macabre offering from horror writer Cass Leigh, certainly lives up to its title. I am never going to see the word ‘goulash’ (or should that be
ghoul
ash?) on a menu again without wanting to throw up …

Surprise! Magazine

There was silence except for the sound of soil being shifted, then a rather incongruous crockery-rattling noise.

‘Careful,’ warned Jason, muffled. ‘It seems to be some kind of china bird, loosely wrapped in sacking. And there’s another…’

‘A collection of porcelain cockatoos?’
I quoted.

Dante looked up. ‘I suppose it must be. Let us hope he didn’t bury the Tunbridge Ware boxes down here too, or the damp will have ruined them.’

‘What? Why cockatoos?’ demanded the others, baffled, and I explained about Jack Craig and the missing valuables.

The excavation revealed a lot of birds, none of them Tanya, and a couple of nice bits of Chinese pottery.

‘So it’s just a cache Jack Craig’s hidden away meaning to recover later?’ Jason asked. He was still pale, but sweating from his exertions.

Orla, brushing earth from bright cockatoos, said indignantly: ‘He might have packed them up a bit better! Some of these look valuable.’

‘Oh well, that’s good news then, isn’t it?’ asked Leo. ‘I mean, Nancy wasn’t quite sure she’d found what Jason was looking for, but she did find
something.
’

Dante was exploring the bottom of the hole to see if they’d missed anything. ‘The soil’s loose at the bottom – I think there’s something else here,’ he said, brushing more earth away, ‘Something that feels like…’

He stood up suddenly, staring down, and we all crowded up and stared too.

A hand as white as marble, the fingers curled upwards, seemed to be pushing its way up from the dark soil like yet another resurrection.

… pushing through the dark soil, the white fingers clawed for …

No, as you were, I’ve already done that in
Lover, Come Back To Me.

Jason said hoarsely: ‘Oh God, it’s not—?’

‘It’s Diana, I think,’ Dante said coolly, and bending down irreverently tapped the naked white arm with the end of his trowel.

‘Diana?’ echoed Jason.

‘Second niche on left in the rose garden wall?’ I asked. ‘The missing statue, possibly Roman, or an Italian copy?’

‘That’s the one,’ he agreed, excavating further. ‘But that seems to be it – the ground’s like a rock below her. Well, I suppose I’d better let the police know …
and
the insurance company.’

He eyed the collection of cockatoos with disfavour, but actually I thought they were quite jolly.

Jason was sitting on the ground looking white and a bit sickly. ‘For a minute there, Cass, I thought it was Tanya,’ he said faintly.

‘Really, Jason!’ I said impatiently. ‘That statue is half life-size and Tanya was a strapping woman, how could it possibly be her?’