Page 27 of The Secret Christmas Library
Outside the drawing room, the house felt colder than ever. The mercury really was dropping, and it was getting steadily darker. Following Jamie up the corridor, Mirren stopped and listened. She could hear the wind outside.
‘It’s over . . . ’ Jamie screwed up his face for a moment.
‘You can’t remember where a room is in your own house?’ said Mirren, shaking her head in amazement.
‘I absolutely can,’ said Jamie straight away. ‘I’m just figuring out the quickest way to get to it. Right, follow me.’
And he charged off to the left, past an old stand that was, according to the ancient, stained card next to it, where a suit of armour used to be. They followed him to the end of the corridor, then he made a sharp left and disappeared through a hole that turned out to be a door hidden in the panelling. They were now in a grey stone stairwell, a carved spiral staircase heading up and down, into gloom, where a clear dripping could be heard. There were tiny lead-lined windows cut into the wall and Mirren correctly surmised that they were inside one of the smaller turrets. The light was fading fast, though, and she couldn’t see the bottom at all.
Their breath showed in front of their faces. Theo got his phone torch out. ‘This is literally all it’s good for here,’ he said ruefully, checking his reception again: none. They followed Jamie as he scampered upwards, clearly very familiar with where they were, and came out goodness knew how many floors above.
Mirren was glad someone else opened the cobwebby door; it was extremely spidery in there. They were now on a quiet, dusty landing. The ceilings here were lower; this was a private, rather than public space. The great old wooden doors looked as if they hadn’t been opened in decades. Mirren decided to ignore the cobwebs. She was broadly in favour of spiders, she told herself firmly, as long as they weren’t dropping down her neck.
‘Now, which is it?’ said Jamie to himself. He counted four along and opened a door. Mirren screamed, and even Theo started back, until Jamie turned the lights on. It was a room entirely filled with taxidermied animals – badgers, raccoons,even a lion, staring back at them, glassy-eyed. Mirren took in a rearing cobra, poised to strike, and grabbed in alarm for the nearest person, which happened to be Theo – who didn’t look much less shocked than she was. It was unbelievably unpleasant in there.
Behind the army of moth-eaten animals were, of course, more bookshelves. Mirren very much hoped she wouldn’t have to clamber over the animals to get to those books, and in fact had absolutely no intention of doing so.
‘Snakearoonie!’ said Jamie to the cobra, in seeming delight. ‘Oh, my goodness, it’s been ages!’
‘You guys are friends?’ said Mirren when she’d got her breath back.
‘Oh, Bonnie and I used to take beasties out of here and put them in people’s rooms – we’d scare the wits out of them.’ He patted the cobra jar affectionately.
‘I bet you bloody did,’ said Mirren. ‘Also, if you even think of doing that to me, I’m out of here in five seconds flat.’
‘As,’ said Theo, trying to sound dignified, ‘am I.’
Jamie grinned and turned out the light and shut the door.
‘I think that’s worse,’ said Mirren. ‘Knowing they’re all in there. In the dark. Plotting how to kill us.’
‘It’s just a collection,’ said Jamie.
‘Yes, of HORRIFYING THINGS.’
But he was striding on.
‘Where is it, where is it . . .? Ah, of course.’
In front of them was a pair of heavy wooden doors with black studs in them. Jamie rifled in the capacious pockets of his waxed jacket which, like the rest of them, he hadn’t bothered to take off, and withdrew a huge ring of keys.
‘When’s the last time anyone was in here?’
Jamie shook his head. ‘Not the foggiest.’
‘It sounds,’ said Mirren, ‘like your grandfather . . . he needed a lot of help. Like he wasn’t well at all.’
‘It’s hardly unusual for a McKinnon to turn eccentric in their old age,’ said Jamie. ‘And I was here a lot. But he didn’t want any help. He just wanted to tell me about new books he’d bought, and crossword clues.’
‘Your mum didn’t . . .?’
‘She sided with my grandmother in that particular divorce,’ said Jamie. ‘Hardly spoke to the old man at all. She’d leave me and Esme here for the holidays while she went swanning off on the proceeds of whatever there was left to sell.’
He tried to sound cheerful about it, not entirely satisfactorily.
He finally found the right key – a large black iron thing with an elaborate rounded end – and the wooden doors creaked open.
The air inside the room was like a tomb. Jamie fumbled for the lights, an ancient switch in a round setting. The bulbs had mostly blown; there were one or two weak bulbs left in a dusty chandelier hanging from the roof.
