Page 72 of One More Christmas at the Castle
After that, I left Henry in the kitchen, baking traditionalcaraway seed cake for tea, and went to spend a bit of time in the study helping Xan.
He’d been doing a little internet shopping himself and had ordered some of those magazine file boxes, for the journals I’d started to sort out. I suspected he had ordered that copy of his book for me, too, but he didn’t say.
‘I noticed there were some empty shelves in the library and thought the journals could go in there,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot of good reading in them and it’s not like they’re the sort of thing that goes out of date.’
‘Good idea,’ I said, settling down on the floor again and pulling the nearest unsorted box of them towards me.
‘I’m just going to finish typing up my notes from these letters between Tommy and Asa, then I thought I’d go through the desk drawers. I meant to do it before, but when I pulled one of the top drawers out, it was just as crammed to bursting point as the cupboards, so I shoved it back again.’
‘The rest might not be like that, though,’ I suggested, weeding out copies ofPopular Archaeologyfrom a stack of more learned periodicals. ‘Why not empty them into heaps along the other pasting table, like we did with the cupboards?’
‘Might as well,’ he agreed, and gave me a running commentary while he did so.
‘The top ones on either side are packed with letters and newspaper cuttings … The next are for stationery and books of stamps … packets of rubber bands and paperclips … pens, probably dried out … highlighters, ditto …’
He paused. ‘There’s a stack of old desk diaries in this one, though Asa only seems to have used them to make brief notes of appointments. But they go back a long way, so might be useful. Can you pass me up one of the smaller cartons?’
I passed him up a tall, narrow box that had held wine. ‘Is that big enough?’
‘Just right. I’ll label it, before I forget what’s in it.’
When he’d done that, he emptied the next two drawers on to the table with a slithery sort of noise. ‘Old packets of photos and several loose ones. I’ll need to go through those carefully and I expect Sabine will like to look at them too.’
‘Were those the last drawers?’
‘No, there are two more.’
From my cross-legged seat on the floor I watched his feet return to the desk.
‘The bottom left drawer is full of bits of pottery in zip-lock bags, all carefully labelled … but the one on the right appears to be locked.’
‘Probably just well and truly jammed?’ I suggested.
‘No,’ he said after a few moments. ‘I’msureit’s locked, and none of the keys on Asa’s ring fit it.’
‘Perhaps he hid it somewhere because he kept a secret stash of whisky in there,’ I joked.
‘Actually, that’s a possibility, because Sabine was very strict about his diet in the last few years. His doctor had told him to eat more healthily and cut down on alcohol.’
‘It might be full of chocolate as well as whisky, then, but if he hid the key in here, it’s bound to turn up while I’m cleaning.’
‘Yes, I expect so, and I don’t want to force the drawer, since it’s a nice old desk. I’ll go through the stuff out of the others and that one can wait.’
We settled down to our respective tasks, exchanging desultory remarks from time to time, while Plum snored loudly and incessantly.
It felt so cosy and companionable that I really had to tearmyself away eventually, in order to get tea ready and make a start on prepping dinner.
The kitchen smelled deliciously of seed cake and also, since Henry had got carried away, of sticky ginger cake, too.
Outside, as the early dusk drew in, the temperature dropped even further and snow began to fall more heavily, whispering on the windowpanes.
‘Is this what you wished for when we were stirring the Christmas pudding?’ I asked Henry suspiciously, but he just smiled cherubically and tapped the side of his nose in a highly irritating manner.
‘Let’s watchMiracle on 34th Streettonight, the original one,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘I bet Xan hasn’t seen that, either.’
‘OK, but if you’re going to hammer the tin of chocs again, you’d better add another one to this week’s shopping list!’
‘And more caraway seeds,’ he said.
