'Still, it would have been a bit difficult this year, what with my poor brother pa.s.sing away last January and then Jude falling out with Guy,' Noel sighed.

'It wasn't Guy's fault, really,' Tilda said dispa.s.sionately, 'that girl just got her hooks into him.'

I didn't ask who Guy was because, to be honest, I wasn't terribly interested in people I was never going to meet. I finished my coffee and put down my cup and plate. 'Well, that was unexpected but delicious: thank you so much! And now I'd better get up to the house and settle in.'

'Sharon, the cleaner, should still be there, so get her to show you round before she goes. It might be the most useful thing she's done all year,' Tilda suggested.

'I expect she does her best: it is a large house for one person to clean,' Noel said mildly. 'Not that Jude can make much of a mess, because when he is home he seems to spend most of his time down at the mill, working on his sculptures, or in his little study next to the library.'

'Oh yes, I heard he was a sculptor.'

'He's very famous,' Jess said, 'and very bad tempered. He only cancelled Christmas because he saw that engagement announcement and I think he's mean. I bet he didn't even remember that Mum and Dad wouldn't be able to be here this year and I'd be coming on my own.'

'Jess, that will do!' commanded Tilda, and she lapsed into sulky silence.

I got up. 'Well, I think I'd better go up to the house while it's still light and settle in.'

Noel also got up and found me a vast bunch of keys, pointing out the largest. 'That's the front door. I expect you will work the rest out for yourself.'

'I could come and show you,' Jess offered quickly.

'Now, Jess, you know you've promised Old Nan you will visit her this afternoon: you'd better go and get ready, you can't disappoint her,' Tilda said. 'She'll have made you a special tea.'

'More nursery food!' Jess said disgustedly.

'And change into something that isn't black.'

Jess groaned and stomped off upstairs.

'She's so disappointed not to have Christmas atOld Place,' confided Noel in a whisper, as though he thought we could be overheard from above, 'and whatever she says, she adores Jude. It will be very quiet here for her, I'm afraid. Mo and Jim kindly invited us to share their Christmas dinner and that would have been something.' He sighed again. 'I am an expert on Christmas, you know I've written a book on its history and traditions, so I do like to celebrate properly.'

'And so we will! I have a plump little chicken that will do very well for the three of us,' Tilda said stoically.

I suddenly wondered if they were expecting me to offer to cook Christmas dinner instead of the Chirks, even though I hadn't even arrived at Old Place yet, so I said quickly, 'I don't celebrate Christmas.'

'Not celebrate Christmas?' Noel looked as stunned as if I had admitted to some abhorrent crime.

'No, I was brought up as a Strange Baptist.'

'Oh right,' he said uncertainly. 'I think I've heard of those . . . And the lady who runs the Homebodies agency Ellen, is it? mentioned that you have not long since lost your grandmother, so I don't expect you feel particularly festive this year?'

'No, not at all . . . or any year, in fact.'

'My dear, I am so sorry,' Tilda said and added, graciously, 'We quite understand and if you feel at all in need of company at any time, you are always welcome to call on us.'

'But surely with a name like Holly you must have a birthday to celebrate during Christmas?' Noel asked suddenly.

'It's Christmas Day, actually, but I don't celebrate that, either.'

'So is mine and I feel just the same,' he said understandingly. 'It would simply be too presumptuous to share the Lord's birthday, wouldn't it?'

Chapter 4.

Rose of Sharon.

I was brought up to consider the tawdry trappings of Christmas and the practice of avarice and extreme gluttony to be far removed from the way we should celebrate Christ's birth. And yet, the gaiety of my fellow nurses was heart-warming as they decorated the hospital wards and endeavoured to bring some seasonal cheer to the patients.

December, 1944.

Safely back in the car I tried to decide what had been in the pinwheel sandwiches. Whatever it was had tasted like decayed fish paste, but looked like black olive pate. It was a complete mystery to me and I might have to ask Tilda for the recipe, out of sheer curiosity.

The drive went up one side of a steeply-banked stream through the pine wood and then turned away, opening up onto a vista of sheep-nibbled gra.s.s across which, beyond a ha-ha, I could see a long, low, Jacobean building. It was rather larger than I had expected, though I suppose the size of the lodge should have given me some idea. The low-slung wintry sun sparkled off the mullioned windows, but there was no sign of life: not even a wisp of smoke from one of the line of four tall chimneys.

I drove over a cattle grid and pulled up on the gravel next to a battered red Ford Fiesta, noting as I did so that the flowerbeds that flanked the substantial front door inside an open porch looked neglected and the doorknocker, in the shape of a Green Man with frondy foliage forming his hair and beard, had not been cleaned for months.

I longed to have a go at it with Bra.s.so. It's not that I love cleaning, because I don't, just that I like things neat, clean and orderly. I really have to fight the urge sometimes in other people's houses; you'd be surprised what a mess they can leave them in.

As I got out of the car, a youngish woman came out, a half-smoked cigarette in one hand. Her magenta hair was sc.r.a.ped back into a ponytail, apart from one long, limp strand that hung over her face like wet seaweed, and she was wearing a salmon-pink velour tracksuit that left a goose-pimpled m.u.f.fin top of flesh exposed.

'h.e.l.lo,' I said, holding out my hand. 'You must be the cleaner, Sharon? I'm glad you're still here, I'm late and I thought you might have gone by now.'

'I was just about to when I heard your car,' she said, taking my hand as if she wasn't quite sure what to do with it and then letting it go immediately. 'Call me Shar and I'm not really a cleaner, I've just been helping Jude out for a bit of extra cash since my Kevin's been laid off. Not that he pays me the going rate, he's too mean.'

'Isn't that illegal?'

'Cash in hand, innit? He's got me over a barrel. You'd better watch out you get your money.'

'Oh, that's okay, the agency pays me.'

'You won't see me no more after today, because I'm starting behind the bar in the pub in Great Mumming after Christmas, a regular job. So Jude Martland can stick his miserly money and his smart-a.r.s.e comments where the sun don't shine.'

'Right,' I said noncommittally, reeling slightly under this information overload. 'So . . . Mr Martland knows you're leaving?'

'I told him I wasn't doing Christmas and no-one works over New Year,' she said sulkily, 'especially if they don't get a bonus. Then he said since he could never tell whether I'd been in to clean or not, I didn't even deserve what he paid me, let alone any extra. He's such a sarky b.u.g.g.e.r!'

'I see.'

'So if I've took another job, it's his own fault, innit? I'm not bothered.'

'I expect it is.'

'If he rings, you can tell him I've had a better offer.'

'If he should ring, I'll certainly tell him you've resigned from your job,' I agreed. 'Now, before you go, do you have time to quickly show me over the house and where everything is?'

'I don't know where everything is, do I? I only vacuum and dust, and that's too much for one person. An old couple used to do the cooking and see to the house and generator, but they retired after the old gent, Jude's dad, died. January, that was.'

'So I've heard . . . and did you say there was a generator? I thought the house had mains services.'

'It does, but the electric's always cutting out and the phone line is forever coming down between here and the village because the poles need replacing. The TV doesn't work very well either, because there's no Sky dish, though they've got one at the lodge. It's a complete hole, I don't know what you're going to do with yourself.'

'That's all right, I'm not bothered about TV. I've brought my radio with me and lots to read.'

Sharon looked at me as if I was a strange and alien species with three heads. 'There's no mobile phone reception either, unless you walk halfway up Snowehill, or down past the lodge,' she informed me as a clincher.

'Well then, if the phone line goes dead, the exercise will do me good,' I said pleasantly. I have worked in remote places before the house I should have been minding in Scotland was much more isolated than this though I had not, admittedly, previously had to cope with a generator. I only hoped the electricity didn't cut out before I found the instructions on how to operate the thing!

I smiled encouragingly at her. 'Now, I'd really appreciate it if you could quickly show me round? Normally we try and visit a property beforehand to meet the owners and get the lay of the land, as it were, but obviously in this case it wasn't possible.'

Sharon sullenly and reluctantly agreed and stood back to let me past her into a long stone entrance chamber. It had a row of heavily-burdened coat hooks, a bra.s.s stand full of walking sticks and umbrellas, and a battered wooden bench, under which was a miscellaneous collection of wellingtons and walking boots.

'Go through the door at the end,' she directed and I found myself standing in a huge, high-ceilinged sitting room the size of a small barn with an open fireplace practically big enough to roast an ox in. A worn carpet in mellow, warm colours covered most of the stone floor and an a.s.sortment of occasional tables, velvet-covered sofas and chairs was grouped on it. A dogleg staircase rose from one corner to a bal.u.s.traded gallery above, that ran around three sides.

'What a lovely room! It looks as if it started out as a great hall in a much older building?'

'They say this is the really old bit in the middle, the rest was added on later,' she said indifferently. 'There's two wings the kitchen one is set back, you go through a door behind that wooden screen over there. This other side is bigger, with the family rooms and another staircase. Come on, I'll show you.'

She ushered me briskly through a series of dark-oak-panelled rooms with polished wooden floors. Some had elaborate white-stuccoed ceilings, but they all looked dusty, dull and neglected. There was a small morning room with a TV, a long dining room sporting a spectacular, if incongruous, Venetian mirror over the hearth, and a well-stocked library with a snooker table in the middle of it.

She paused at the door next to it. 'Jude uses this room to work in and he locks it when he's away.' She sniffed. 'You'd think he didn't trust me.'

He probably didn't, though actually I'd found that there were quite often one or two mysterious locked rooms in houses I was looking after: Bluebeard's chambers, as Laura had suggested, though their secrets were probably only of the mundane kind.

But this room revealed its secrets, for the top of the door was glazed perhaps it had been the land agent's office, or something like that. It held a tilting draughtsman's table, a large wooden easel and several tables bearing a silting of objects, including jars of pencils, brushes and lots of small models, presumably of sculptures. It was hard to make out what they were from that distance. There was also what looked like one of those hideaway computer workstations but if so, then it must be dial-up, because there was no broadband here and, given the apparent unreliability of the phone lines, being able to connect with the internet must be a matter of luck. But that was okay Ellen was the only person who ever emailed me much, with details of jobs.

'There's never been anything of value to lock away in Old Place anyway,' Sharon was saying scathingly, though I noticed a wistful look on her face like a child at a sweetshop window. 'Though Jude's that famous now, they're saying that even his little drawings of horses for those weird sculptures of his can fetch hundreds of pounds.' She nodded through the gla.s.s door. 'And he just crumples them up and tosses them in that waste-paper basket!'

'Well, that's up to him, isn't it? Presumably he wasn't happy with them.'

'You'd think he'd leave the basket for me to empty, but no, he takes them outside and puts them in the garden incinerator!' She obviously bitterly regretted this potential source of income going up in flames.

'That does seem a little excessive,' I agreed, amused.

Apart from a couple of china and linen cupboards, the only other door from the pa.s.sage was to a little garden hall with French doors leading outside. The trug of garden tools on the bench looked as if they hadn't been touched for half a century and were waiting for Sleeping Beauty to wake up, don the worn leather gauntlets, and start briskly hacking back the brambles.

'Is that a walled garden out there?' I asked, peering through the gathering gloom.

'Yes, though no-one bothers with most of it since Mrs Martland died . . .' She screwed up her face in recollection. 'That would be ten years ago now, thereabouts.'

'Is there a gardener?'

'An old bloke called Henry comes and grows vegetables in part of it, though he's supposed to have retired. He lives down in Little Mumming, in the almshouses those three funny little cottages near the bridge.'

'Oh yes, I noticed those. Victorian Gothic.'

'I wouldn't know, I hate old houses,' she said, which I could tell by the state of this one.

There was a little cloakroom off the hall, with a splendid Victorian blue and white porcelain toilet depicting Windsor Castle inside the bowl, and I was just thinking that peeing on one of the Queen's residences must always have seemed a little lese-majesty when Sharon said impatiently, 'Come on: I need to get off home,' and gave me a dig in the back.

We went upstairs by a grander flight of stairs than that in the sitting room, with a stairlift folded back against the wall.

'That was put in for Jude's dad,' she said, hurrying me past a lot of not very good family portraits of fair, soulful women and dark, watchful men, when I would have lingered. 'Six bedrooms if you count the old nursery and the little room off it, plus there's two more in the staff wing.'

She opened and closed doors, allowing me tantalising glimpses of faded grandeur, including one four-poster bed. The nursery, up a further stair, was lovely, with a white-painted wooden bed with a heart cut out in the headboard, a sc.r.a.p-screen and a big rocking horse.

'There are more rooms on this floor, but they're shut up and not used any more. The heating doesn't go up that far.'

'Oh yes, I noticed there were radiators all mod cons! I'm impressed.'

'I wouldn't get excited, it never gets hot enough to do more than keep the chill off the place.' She clattered back down the stairs and hared off along the landing. 'Two bathrooms, though Jude's had an en suite shower put into his bedroom since he inherited.'

'That isn't bad for a house of this size,' I said. 'There's the downstairs cloakroom, too.'

'And a little bathroom in the staff wing, where you're sleeping. This is the family wing, of course your room's in the other, where the old couple who used to look after the place lived.'

Evidently house-sitters ranked with servants in Jude Martland's eyes but so long as I was warm and comfortable, I didn't mind where my room was.

The bedrooms either opened off the corridor, or the oakfloored balcony, where I stopped to gaze down at the huge sitting room, which looked like a stage set awaiting the entrance of the actors for an Agatha Christie denouement, until Sharon began to rattle her turquoise nails against the banister in an impatient tattoo.

Once through the door into the other wing the decor turned utilitarian and the bathroom was very basic and ancient, though with an electric shower above the clawfooted bath. The bedroom that was to be mine was plain, comfortable and clean. I expect Mo and Jim did that as soon as they arrived.

As if she could read my thoughts, Sharon said, 'Mo and Jim changed the bed ready for you, but they hadn't time to wash the sheets, so you'll find them in the utility room, I expect. I don't do washing.'

I was tempted to ask her exactly what she did do, but managed to repress it: it was none of my business.

We went down the backstairs to the kitchen, a very large room with an electric cooker as well as a huge Aga, a big scrubbed pine table in the middle, a couple of easy chairs and a wicker dog basket. This looked like the place where the owner did most of his living it was certainly warmer than the rest of the house.

'The Aga's oil-fired the tank's in one of the outhouses and it runs the central heating, but you don't have to cook with it because there's a perfectly good stove over there.'

'Oh, I like using an Aga,' I said, and she gave me another of her 'you're barking mad' looks, then glanced at her watch.

'Come on. Through here there's the utility, larder, cloakroom, scullery, cellar . . .'

She flung open a door to reveal two enormous white chest freezers. 'The nearest one's full of Mo and Jim's food and so are the cupboards, fridge and larder.'

'Yes, they said they were leaving it for me, which was kind of them.'

She closed it again and led me on. 'That's the cellar door and there's firewood down there as well as the boiler. This by the back door is sort of a tackroom, it's got feed and harness and stuff in it for the horse.'

Something had been puzzling me. 'Right but where's the dog?'