Twelve Days of Christmas: A bestselling Christmas read to devour in one sitting!. Trisha Ashley

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 scrap-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 dénouement, until Sharon began to rattle her turquoise nails against the banister in an impatient tattoo.

      Once through the door into the other wing the décor 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?’

      ‘In the yard, I don’t want him under my feet when I’m cleaning, do I?’

      ‘Isn’t it a bit cold out there?’ I asked and she gave me a look before wrenching the back door open. A large and venerable grey lurcher, who had been huddled on the step, got up and walked in stiffly, sniffed at me politely, and then plodded past in the direction of the kitchen.

      ‘That’s Merlin. He’s past it, should be put down.’

      I said nothing and she added, leading the way across to a small barn on the other side of the cobbled yard, ‘Like the horse – it was Jude’s mother’s and it’s way past its three score years and ten, if you ask me. But he won’t hear of it.’

      There was something familiar but very spiteful about her tone when she mentioned Jude Martland’s name that made me suspect a touch of the woman scorned. Maybe she had taken the job hoping for a bit more from him than a weekly pay-packet?

      Now she looked at me sideways, slyly. ‘You single?’

      ‘Well, yes – widowed.’

      ‘Don’t get your hopes up, then – he goes for skinny blondes, does our Jude – though his brother stole his last one.’

      ‘I’m not remotely interested in what he goes for and anyway, I won’t meet him: he’ll return after I’ve left, on Twelfth Night.’

      ‘Oh – Twelfth Night! You want to watch yourself in Little Mumming if you’re still here on Twelfth Night! Did you ever see that old film, The Wicker Man?’ And she laughed unpleasantly.

      ‘Well, I’ll just have to take my chance, won’t I?’ I said cheerfully, since she was obviously trying to put the wind up me. Sure enough, she was talking about ghosts and haunting a minute later as she slid back the bolt and opened a barn door.

      I’ve cooked in some of the most haunted houses in the country and all I can say is, the kitchen and the servants’ bedrooms are not where they generally hang out.

      Failing to get a rise out of me, she said, ‘Your instructions for looking after the horse are on the kitchen table in that big folder thing. He’s a great one for instructions, is Jude Martland.’ She gestured inside the barn. ‘The horse is down the other end.’

      I could see a couple of looseboxes and a pale equine shape in one of them, but I didn’t disturb it: time enough when I had read the instructions!

      ‘Well, that’s it then,’ Sharon said, bolting the door again and leading the way back into the kitchen, where she pulled on a red coat that clashed with the magenta streaks in her hair and picked up her bag. ‘I’m off. I expect the old people at the lodge will tell you anything I’ve forgot and you won’t starve, at any rate, because there was enough food here to withstand a siege even before Mo and Jim brought all their stuff.’

      When she drove off I was more than glad to see the last of her. I think the old dog was, too, because when I went back into the kitchen carrying the first load of stuff from my car, he wagged his tail and grinned in that engaging way that lurchers have, with a very knowing look in his amber eyes.

      ‘Well, Merlin, it’s just you and me, kid,’ I told him, in my best Humphrey Bogart voice.

      Chapter 5

       Hot Mash

       Hilda gave me a bar of good soap, which I was veryglad of, and Pearl a lovely purple felt pansy she had made to pin to my coat. Luckily Mr Bowman – Tom’s father and the minister at the chapel here – had recently presented me with several very pretty old bookmarks with Biblical texts and silk tassels, so that I had something by me to give them in return.

       Christmas 1944

      By the time I had brought all my stuff in, put the perishable food in the fridge and taken my bags up to the bedroom allocated to me, I was more than ready to sit down at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and the Homebodies file, which Ellen gives to all the clients to fill in with essential information and emergency phone numbers. Jude Martland’s