Page 3 of One More Christmas at the Castle
She sat there, sipping tea and plotting, thinking that it would be fun to direct her cast of characters in the way she wanted, like a vintage murder mystery, where everyone was invited to a remote house and then events unfolded.
Of course, in her plot there would be no body in the library, or anywhere else, for Sabine Powys was not about to leave the building just yet.
She took a large pad of heavy cream writing paper from one of the desk pigeon holes, picked up a pen and began to write.
Christmas at the Castle
Cast of Characters
Sabine Powys, wealthy widowed owner of Mitras Castle
Lucy Ripley, companion and a cousin of Sabine’s father, Perry Mordue
Nigel Ripley, her older brother, a bachelor antiquarian bookseller
Xan Fellowes, historian and biographer, Sabine’s godson
Olive Melling, née Powys, Asa’s second cousin
Frank Melling, her husband, a semi-retired cosmetic surgeon
Dominic Melling, their son, a dentist
Sabine’s pen paused here. A dentist didn’t sound quite the thing for her cast list, even if he did only take private patients and called himself by some fancy name – ‘cosmetic orthodontist’, was it?
To leaven the mix, she added the name of her oldest – indeed, only – close friend:
Nancy Kane, academic turned vicar, now retired
She put down her pen and looked over what she’d written. They would be eight for Christmas dinner if everyone accepted her invitation, and she’d be very surprised if they did not.
There might even be another guest or two, for now she came to think of it, she would need to consult her solicitor at some point soon, so why not invite him to join the house party? He and Asa had been old friends, after all. She remembered that his divorced granddaughter had recently gone to live with him, and included her, too. Along with Dominic Melling, she would supply some younger company for Xan.
Timothy Makepeace, family solicitor and old friend
Sophie, his divorced granddaughter, now living with him
She laid down the pen with finality, feeling suddenly tired.
But as Scarlett O’Hara (a heroine she rather admired, except for her obsession with the milky Ashley) said at the end ofGone with the Wind, tomorrow was another day.
1
Disconnected
Dido
27 November
I flew across to California to spend my annual pre-Christmas week with my father, though it has to be admitted that he wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t. Dad was both absent-minded and unpaternal to the point of forgetting my existence, unless I actually appeared under his nose, the evidence of his brief lapse from the pursuit of academia some thirty-five years before.
My ex-fiancé, Liam, suggested in his parting letter that the lack of any paternal figure in my life was a big part of my problem … though actually, I didn’thaveany problems until that point, when he ran off with Mia, so I’d no idea what he meant by that.
My father, Thomas, was of medium height, stooping and scholarly, with a narrow, beaky face that looked as if it might once have been slammed shut inside a large book, possibly his own,The Cautious Conservator: An argument against excessive restoration.
That was hardly a runaway bestseller, but at least the factthat it was now in its sixth edition showed it was a valuable resource in his own rather rarefied field.
On my arrival, he seemed mildly pleased to see me, once he’d got over the surprise. Luckily, he must have told his employer about my email announcing my arrival date before it went out of his head, because a long, lush limo met me at the airport and whisked me to the mansion where Thomas both lived and worked: he had a small cottage in the grounds. He was in charge of an extensive private art collection, which had its own gallery wing attached to the main house, most of it underground, iceberg fashion.
