Twelve Days Of Christmas Part 4

'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 ta.s.sels, 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 was crammed with printed pages, mostly relating to the care of the dog and horse.

First I read the note that Mo and Jim had left tucked inside it, for a bit of inside information, and learned that the owner was more than happy for the house-sitters to help themselves to any of the food in the house, including the fish and game in the larger of the two freezers. 'But not the alcohol, since the wine cellar is locked' had been added, which was okay by me, because I wasn't much of a drinker. Other than that, the TV reception was lousy and mobile phones worked best if you stood in the ear of the horse on the hill, or ten paces down the lane from the lodge and two steps right. (I expect finding that out kept Jim occupied for hours.) I glanced at the generator instructions and discovered it was in an outbuilding and was automatic, so should in theory look after itself, and then made sure I knew where the main water stopc.o.c.k was and the fuse box. The latter I found in the tack-room, with a working torch next to it on a shelf, together with a couple of candle lanterns and a wind-up storm lamp.

I was starting to form a picture of Jude Martland, who was clearly quite practical and obviously cared about the animals . . . And yet, he paid his cleaner a pittance and neglected his lovely house, so he was either broke or mean maybe both. Or perhaps those with an artistic temperament simply don't notice muck?

I went back in the kitchen, poured another cup of coffee, and checked out the animal care instructions. Merlin, who was now leaning heavily against my leg with his head on my knee, was easy: two meals a day, with a pill for his arthritis crushed into the breakfast one, and he needed daily walks to help prevent him stiffening up.

Well, didn't we all?

I'd already spotted his brush, food, biscuits and a supply of rawhide chews in a cupboard in the scullery, next to a hook with a dog lead and a large brown pawprint-patterned towel helpfully marked 'DOG', in case I had found it a struggle to make the connection.

The horse was an Arab mare called Lady, which I would have thought a delicate breed for an exposed, upland place like this. She was twenty-five years old and that sounded quite an age for a horse too. But then, what do I know?

She had a paddock with a field shelter behind the house, where she spent the day unless the weather was extremely bad, though he had omitted to define what 'really bad' entailed. I should ensure the water in the trough was not frozen over and that a filled haynet was hung on the paddock fence. Billy would go out with her.

Who, I wondered, was Billy? I puzzled over that for a moment and then read on.

She was brought into the stables at night and this would need mucking out and the water replenis.h.i.+ng every day, a process I vaguely remembered from Laura's brief horse-mad phase. She was to keep her rug on all the time, except when it was removed daily for grooming and to check for rubbing.

In the evening she had a warm mash cooked up from ingredients to be found in metal bins in the tackroom and liberally spiced with a medication called Equiflex . . .

Good heavens! I was starting to think that Lady was going to take up most of my time and be a lot trickier to care for than I'd hoped, and I admit I was getting slight cold feet about it. So I thought I'd better take a proper look at her before the light totally vanished and Merlin, seeing me put my coat on, was determined to accompany me, even though I thought he ought to stay in the warm.

Along one side of the cobbled yard were the outbuildings that I knew contained the woodshed, generator and the extremely large oil tank that supplied both that and the central heating but exploring those would have to wait for the next day.

Merlin and I went into the barn and I found a light switch by the door. Lady put her head over curiously and I saw that she was not much bigger than the ponies Laura had ridden and had a gentle expression and big, liquid dark eyes. Emboldened, I opened the door of the loosebox and slipped in to check her water and hay, and the fastenings of her rug . . . and I was just stooping over the bucket when the straw rustled and then something b.u.t.ted me hard in the legs: it was a small, black goat.

Billy? Obviously. But someone might have mentioned it! Luckily it had no horns, but it was now staring at me with light, slightly-mad-looking eyes.

I topped up the water bucket from the tap just outside the loosebox, foiling Billy's attempt to get out, because I wasn't sure how easy he would be to get back in again.

There was plenty of hay, both up in a net out of Billy's reach and in a hayrack lower down. Lady's warmly-lined rug was secure and she looked comfortable, so I left them to it for the moment.

I'd taken Merlin's lead out with me and now attached it to his collar: I wasn't sure if he was likely to run away, but I have learned through long experience that it's better to be safe than sorry. We went out of the side gate and followed the track alongside the paddock towards the hill. We didn't go far, though, just enough to stretch Merlin's poor old legs and mine. By the time we turned back I needed the torch I'd put in my pocket, and the lights in the courtyard looked bright and beckoning.

The wind was biting, so the threatened cold spell might actually be coming and I think we were both glad to get back into the warmth of the kitchen. I was feeling really weary by now, but there was one last task to be performed before I could settle down there: Lady must have her hot mash.

I followed the recipe to the letter: one scoop of quick-soak dried beet, steeped in boiling water for ten minutes, one scoop of chopped alfalfa, two scoops of pony nuts and a handful of linseed cake. Then I left it to cool a bit before stirring in the Equiflex.

It smelled quite nice, considering.

Merlin would have come out to the stables again with me, except that I thought he had had enough of the cold for one day and so shut him in, despite his reproachful expression.

Lady was eager to get her head in the bucket, though I had to hold off Billy, who wanted to share. Even little goats, I found, were surprisingly strong. I'd taken a handful of biscuit-shaped things from a container marked with his name that I'd spotted in the tackroom, but he was more interested in the mash.

Horses give off a surprising amount of heat, don't they?

Merlin greeted my return with huge relief, as if I'd been gone a week, so I expect the poor old thing was feeling terribly confused.

When I'd thawed out I phoned Laura, but only for long enough to give her the number here to ring me back: clients don't appreciate you running up huge phone bills, but obviously using my mobile was going to be tricky. I only hoped Sharon was exaggerating the frequency of the phone lines going down . . .

'How are you getting on?' Laura asked. 'What are the animals like?'

'The dog's an old lurcher, a sweetie called Merlin he's a bit lost and lonely, I think, because he keeps following me around. The horse is a white Arab.'

'Grey, horses are never white.'

'You can call it grey, but Lady's as white as snow, with huge, dark eyes. She's very old, quiet and gentle, so I don't think looking after her is going to be a problem except she's living with this little goat no-one mentioned.'

'A goat?'

'It was in the loosebox with her, so I suppose it's keeping her company. It's got a bit of the evil eye and it kept trying to eat her hot mash. I had to hold it off, and it was surprisingly strong.'

'Hot mash? You had to cook dinner for the horse?'

I described the cordon bleu horse mash and confessed my worry about looking after the elderly, delicate-looking mare, and she made rea.s.suring noises.

'I'll tackle mucking out and grooming tomorrow. I only wish I'd been interested in that sort of thing while you were having riding lessons, though I expect it's just a matter of common sense.'

'You wheelbarrow the old bedding to the manure heap, and then spread a layer of new straw simple. Mucking out will be good exercise, too.'

'Yes, I expect it will.'

'So, what's the house like?'

'Lovely. I've only had a quick tour around so far but I can see it's mostly Jacobean, though part of it looks much older. The central heating isn't very efficient so I'll probably light a fire in the big inglenook fireplace in the sitting room tomorrow and that should warm the house through. My bedroom isn't too bad, because it's right over the kitchen with the Aga.'

'How big is this place?'

'Bigger than I expected, but I've cooked for house-parties in much larger and grander houses. The sitting room is huge and looks like it might have started life as a medieval hall, but then two new wings have been added and lots of dark panelling and moulded ceilings.'

'That sounds pretty grand to me!'

'You could fit the floor s.p.a.ce of my entire house in the kitchen wing with room to spare,' I admitted.

'That's a stately home as far as I'm concerned and you are in sole possession, the lady of the manor.'

'Yes, but I know my place: the hired help's bedroom is in the service wing, though there's a bathroom opposite with a decent electric shower. I expect I'll spend most of my time in the kitchen and just take a quick daily walk round the rest of the house to check everything is all right.'

'Sooner you than me, rattling around alone in a spooky old house in the middle of nowhere.'

I laughed. 'You know I don't believe in ghosts or the supernatural! No, I'll be fine. The cleaner showed me round when I arrived, but she isn't coming back because she's got another job. She won't be any loss, though, because the place is totally filthy and neglected, she can't have been doing anything. Then again, Jude Martland was paying her a pittance, so you can't really blame her for that.'

'So you'll be entirely alone all the time? It isn't really haunted, is it?'

'Sharon that's the cleaner tried to put the wind up me, telling me about ghosts and an annual local ceremony on Twelfth Night. She seemed to be implying that the villagers would want to use me as some kind of ceremonial sacrifice, but I wasn't really listening because it was all entirely daft!'

'You won't be there that night anyway, will you?'

'No, I'm leaving that morning, before the client gets back that was the arrangement Mo and Jim had.'

'Is it very isolated? I can't imagine what you'll do with yourself.'

'Apart from trying to finish off my cookbook, I've brought that tin trunk of Gran's papers to sort and I'm going to carry on reading her journal at bedtime, too. She's been sent to a new hospital and made friends, so it's getting more interesting.'

'Perhaps that Ned Martland she mentioned was one of the doctors and she had a crush on him?' she suggested.

'Maybe,' I agreed. 'I'll tell you if I find out. And I'm not totally isolated here, because the village is only about half a mile away and, if I feel like company, the old couple at the lodge have invited me to drop in any time. But you know me I like being alone.'

'Sam was really disappointed when I told him you weren't coming for Christmas Day after all,' she hinted, but I just laughed.

By now, it seemed like a week since I had set out for Little Mumming and I decided on an early night.

Merlin and I had our dinner, and then he accompanied me around the ground floor while I checked the doors and windows. We'd returned to the kitchen and I was just about to fill my trusty hot water bottle, when suddenly the phone on the large dresser rang loudly, nearly giving me a heart attack.

'Is that Holly Brown?' demanded a deep voice that seemed to vibrate right down to my feet and back again in a very novel, if slightly disturbing, way.

'Yes, speaking.'

'Jude Martland: I just caught up with my emails and found one from Homebodies saying the Chirks had had to leave and you were taking over.'

'That's right, and I'm so glad you've rung, because-'

'No, it's d.a.m.ned-well not all right!' he rudely interrupted. 'I've just called my uncle, and apparently you're not only alone in the house, but you've also no experience with horses whatsoever!'

'Look, Mr Martland,' I said soothingly. 'I always house-sit alone and your instructions were very comprehensive exhaustive, even. Well, apart from the goat,' I qualified.

'What?'

'Billy. There was no mention of him.'

'Of course there was you just didn't bother looking for it! But what really matters is that I left Old Place, Lady and Merlin in safe hands, with people I knew and trusted then suddenly I hear that someone totally unsuitable has been drafted in, without a by-your-leave!'

'Actually, I'm repeatedly rebooked by the same clients, year after year,' I said evenly. 'You were lucky that my Christmas placement had also fallen through, so that I was free to step into the breach! And thank you, Holly Brown, for coping with the emergency,' I found myself adding acerbically.

There was a pause, then he growled, grudgingly, 'I suppose there was no alternative, but I'm not happy with the arrangement or that Homebodies went ahead and did this without asking me.'

'Ellen did her best to contact you and, in any case, she knows I'm completely trustworthy and capable.'

'Sending a young woman to look after an isolated house alone, especially over Christmas, can hardly be ideal.'

'Thank you, but I don't celebrate Christmas, I'm not actually that young and I prefer isolation.'

'Noel mentioned you didn't celebrate Christmas and that's another problem, because my aunt and uncle were looking forward to having Christmas dinner with the Chirks and I felt better knowing Tilda wouldn't have to cook it. I know she still does most of their cooking, but she's looking quite frail these days.'

'Yes, so she said, but I don't think she's going to attempt the full monty they're having a roast chicken instead,' I said. 'And I expect her granddaughter will help her.'