Page 9 of One More Christmas at the Castle
‘Have you been googling it?’
‘Of course! But there isn’t a huge amount of information to be had, because it’s a private residence.’
He flipped open his laptop and turned it to show me a view of an old stone manor house on to which had been grafted a battlemented wing, like a giant turret, set against a dark backdrop of trees.
I frowned over it. ‘It looksvaguelyfamiliar. I know the area quite well because when I used to stay with Charlotte’s family near Hexham in the school hols, we often visited the Roman Wall, but I can’t have been to Mitras Castle if it’s never open to the public.’
‘Rowenhead Roman Fort is right next to it, though, so you might have glimpsed it from there,’ he suggested, and I agreed that that was probably it.
‘We visited the remains of a lot of forts; they’re dotted right along the wall.’
‘The Rowenhead one is run by a trust, but the land belongs to the family at Mitras Castle,’ he said.
‘Whoarethe family, other than this Mrs Powys?’
‘MrsSabinePowys, and she’s an elderly widow with no children.’
‘Did she tell you that, or was it more internet snooping?’
‘Internetresearch,’ he said with dignity. ‘And very interesting it was, too.’
He moved round to sit next to me, the laptop between us.
‘When I googled her name, a whole load of stuff came up about her and her husband, Asa Powys. Apparently, they were pioneers of marine archaeology way back in the late fifties, early sixties. They made several hugely popular TV documentary series.’
‘Just a little before our time,’ I pointed out, though I was interested.
‘It certainly was, but there are some clips of them on YouTube.’
His fingers moved on the keys and then he turned on the sound.
A deep voice intoned portentously: ‘Together with their photographer, Tommy Fellowes, and the trusty crew of thegood shipArtemis, Asa and Sabine Powys once more set sail to explore the lost underwater civilizations that lie concealed beneath the azure waters of the Aegean Sea.’
The film showed a tall couple, presumably Asa and Sabine, standing in the prow of a boat, gazing out to sea. Even captured in this old footage, they looked vibrantly glowing and alive. The man was dressed only in shorts, showing a well-muscled torso, and his arm was around his wife, who was laughing. A breeze was blowing their blond hair back from their tanned faces.
There was some underwater footage, too, where they were exploring a fallen statue of huge proportions, almost concealed by the sand, while fish flicked past, disinterestedly.
‘I didn’t know they had scuba gear back then,’ I said.
‘I think they called them aqualungs at the time, Dido. I found an obituary for Asa Powys with loads of info. He was a lot older than she was, but he only died a few years ago. I’ll email you the links to the interesting stuff later, if you like?’
‘OK,’ I agreed. ‘But although it’s fascinating to know that our client has had an interesting past, I’m more concerned right now with the present and the details of our booking – like, when do we start and how long is it for?’
‘Well, that’s the thing,’ Henry said, slightly shiftily. ‘She’s booked us for four weeks, from December the third.’
I stared at him for a moment, then exclaimed, ‘But that’s less than a week away! She’s not holding a Christmas house party for amonth, is she?’
While we often had longer bookings during the summer holidays, Christmas ones were usually confined to a week, at most.
A thought struck me: ‘She knows she’ll be charged the Christmas rate for the entire month, doesn’t she?’
‘Yes, I made that clear on the phone, before I accepted thebooking and she didn’t quibble about it at all,’ he assured me. ‘She said her health was declining and she wanted to hold one last family gathering, with most of the guests arriving only a few days before Christmas.’
‘How many guests?’ I demanded.
‘She thought a maximum of ten for Christmas dinner, including the household, which is usually just herself and this cousin.’
‘That doesn’t sound too bad. But why on earth does she want us so early, when it’s only going to be the two of them in the house?’
