Page 29 of A Spell of Midlife Mayhem

Two other women sat inside at a small table. I introduced myself, and they both welcomed me.

Lydia Barksworth was the senior house guide. She was about ten years older than me and was wearing a dark green jacket and a white top. She had a self- assured manner, and she greeted me warmly.

Penny Bishop was a similar age to Lydia. She didn’t smile and presented a standoffish manner. Perhaps she was slow to warm to other people, in which case she might be hard work to befriend. Or maybe she simply hadn’t had enough coffee this morning—or tea, I corrected myself. This was England, after all. I wouldn’t pass judgement. I could be crabby and sour too.

As we completed the introductions, I relaxed. Working in this amazing place with these people would be awesome.

Pastries in a box sat on the table. We shared them for a work breakfast. I could certainly get used to that.

‘This is a great way to start the day. Thank you,’ I said.

‘It’s a ritual of ours,’ Melissa said, taking a dainty bite from a Danish.

Penny added, ‘We all take turns at buying them on the way here. There’s a roster pinned to the wall.’ She pointed with the tip of a half-eaten croissant.

‘Where should I buy them from when it’s my turn? Is there a place you recommend?’

‘The best place we know is a bakery on the fringe of Richmond. I’ll give you the directions later,’ Lydia said. ‘I hope you’re happy to join in?’

‘Of course. I don’t mind at all.’ Perhaps I’d better reconsider joining the gym after all to counteract the extra calories.

When we’d finished the pastries, Lydia drew me aside while the others went to set up the house for visitors. ‘Penny and Melissa are going to put out the signs and the guide ropes so eager tourists don’t smear sticky hands on our valuable paintings and furniture,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you a quick walk-through of the house. What we normally do is spread ourselves around, trying to keep an eye on as many tourists as possible at any one time, and tell them interesting things about the house.’

‘But this place is huge! It must be impossible to check on everyone!’

Lydia nodded. ‘It is. Chirtlewood is simply too big for that. We’d all have to be in five places at once. All we can do is monitor the house and any tourists as best as we can. One of us must always be at the front entrance to sell tickets and to ensure no one walks off with an oil painting or a Louis thirteenth chair. A few rogues have tried it before.’

‘Really? Has anyone gotten away with it?’

‘Nothing that large and valuable has been taken, but some items of value have gone missing. That’s why we put in this security system.’ She indicated the cameras and alarms placed in the upper corners. ‘But it doesn’t always help.’

Lydia motioned for me to follow her. We left the small office and entered a dim passageway running the width of the ground floor.

‘This is a seventeenth-century house,’ Lydia said with the practised ease of someone who had spent years educating tourists. ‘Most of the furniture is from that time. This hallway would have been lit by candles in those days, and servants would have to replace them several times a day. Now, of course, we have electric candles to give a sense of what it would have been like to walk along here in those times.’ She smiled brightly at me.

‘Any secret doors here? I’ve heard that old English homes sometimes have them.’

‘Sure. There’s at least one that we know of upstairs. The door at the end of this corridor opens onto the servants’ staircase. There’s a sign on it to prevent people from going that way. The staircase is narrow and too dangerous for the public. The treads are quite slippery in places, worn smooth by centuries of servants’ feet. We don’t want anyone falling.’

We took a doorway that led to the entrance hall, where Melissa was setting up the ticket sales desk. The front double doors were open, leading to wide stone steps down to a pathway bisecting the front garden. The floor of the entranceway itself was marble tiles. Massive portraits hung on the wooden walls, their subjects appearing to glare down their noses from up high, an army of ancestral faces.

‘On this floor is a ballroom, a morning room, a drawing room and a formal dining room, among others. There is also the kitchen and pantry. You can see all those later. Let’s go upstairs.’

We mounted a wide wooden staircase that turned back on itself as it rose to the next floor. The thick balustrades bore carvings of hunters and mythological creatures.

Some stairs creaked as we went up, but it wasn’t the boards beneath our feet. It was the steps below us, where we’d already passed.

A chill ran up my spine, and I gritted my teeth to prevent myself from flinching.

‘Old floorboards,’ Lydia said. ‘Don’t mind them.’

I wouldn’t have minded, but someone was following us, and it wasn’t Melissa. She was knocking information signs about in the entrance hall. And Penny was upstairs somewhere. So... who was it? One of the infamous manor ghosts?

Don’t turn around. I want to keep this job. Being a scaredy-cat before the house even opens on my first morning wouldn’t be a good sign.

Lydia stopped and glanced back. ‘Everything okay?’

I’d paused on the stairs. ‘Yes, fine. Just not used to so many stairs, that’s all.’ That was certainly true.

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