Page 86 of The Secret Christmas Library
‘No, I mean, they’re just a bunch of letters from his dad telling him he has to look after the house and he can’t do what he wants.’
‘Which is what?’
‘Well, I only have one half of the correspondence, but it looks like he applied to libraries, publishers, that kind of thing, and his dad is telling him he can’t take up any jobs because he has to stay and work the estate.’
Jamie blinked several times. ‘Right,’ he said.
‘I mean,’ said Mirren, looking at him sideways, ‘I don’t know if you feel that is something that applies to you?’
‘Huh,’ said Jamie. ‘No. He couldn’t have left. He had his duty . . . ’
He read a few of them.
‘He really . . . he hated it,’ he said. ‘He didn’t get to be with the person he loved. He didn’t want to work the estate. His life . . . he really did not enjoy it.’
‘He must have liked some of it,’ said Mirren, thinking again of the huge windows and the great moon in the sky. ‘He did the best he could. Surrounded himself with things he loved. His books.’
‘Why didn’t he . . . why didn’t he tell me before?’
Mirren looked at him. ‘Are you talkers, your family?’
Jamie laughed hollowly. ‘Then why did he tell me to do my duty?’ He thought about it. ‘Mind you, that was mostly Mum. And my grandmother, I suppose.’
‘Not him?’
‘No, that’s why I’m always complaining. He didn’t teach me anything – nothing about land management or how it was meant to work. I thought he just didn’t trust me.’
‘Do you think he was maybe leading you another way?’
Jamie didn’t say anything.
‘I understand about duty to a house like this,’ said Mirren. ‘I mean, lots of people do think it’s your duty. Maybe he thought you thought it was too. That everyone else was right; that it was just him who had failed.’
‘Until the very end,’ said Jamie, and Mirren suddenly felt so sorry for him. ‘Until the end, when he thought,I’ve wasted my life. That’s it. It’s done. And walked out into a field.’
There was a silence then.
‘I think this is actual filth,’ said Theo loudly, banging down the cup of Bovril. ‘I’m going to find Esme. I think she absolutely would prescribe some whisky. Es!’ And he left the kitchen.
Jamie and Mirren both looked again at the papers.
‘Is there another clue?’ said Jamie, and they both sifted through. ‘Was there nothing else there?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Mirren. ‘Theo brought it all up in one, the wax paper bundle. He fished down again afterwards for snake eggs or something but that was definitely it.’
They leafed through the letters, but they all seemed normal.
‘Shit,’ said Jamie.
‘What?’
‘You don’t think it was on the envelopes?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The envelopes we burned.’
‘What do you mean? How?’
