Page 81 of One More Christmas at the Castle
I’d brought my letters up with me but found nothing more interesting than a few Christmas cards, until I came to a strong manila envelope of the type used by my private detective, Mr Jarrold.
Until that moment, I’d almost forgotten that I’d asked him to investigate Dido’s birth mother, but when I pulled out the printed report, there were three photographs folded inside it.
I’d been so sure that Dido must have got her striking appearance and golden hair from her mother that I had to check the enclosure to be sure this reallywasher.
She’d been snapped both full face and in profile, showing a narrow, aesthetic face and a nose that, though straight, was most certainly not Grecian. Her hair, according to the letter, was sandy, her eyes hazel and she was of medium height and slight build.
Briefly, I wondered if he could possibly have got the wrong person. But his firm had always in the past been both thorough and reliable.
I read the report again, more slowly. The woman was a research chemist in Switzerland, which explained why she was wearing a white lab coat in the third picture.
I unlocked the flap of my small desk and laid the photos out on it and then, from the small inner drawer, I took the snaps of Dido’s father, Thomas, and placed them in a row above the others, like a strange game of patience.
Thomas Sedley Jones was tall, but that was the only resemblance to his daughter. He was thin, brown-haired and had aslightly beaky nose. He’d looked such a very nondescript and commonplace child in that first photograph I’d had sent to me, after I’d become aware of his existence.
Of course, in the most recent photo I’d realized he had a slight look of my father … who, of course, was Faye’s father, too. But there was no Archbold blood to pass down to Dido and explain her height and golden fairness.
And as I sat there, a suspicion I’d hardly acknowledged to myself rose like some unspeakable flotsam from the depths of the past and a fresh tide of hatred, stronger than any I’d ever felt before, swept over me, entirely obliterating any softening of my feelings towards Dido.
24
Force of Nature
When I knocked and entered Mrs Powys’s bedroom next morning, bearing her breakfast tray, I wasn’t expecting that my Christmas surprise would haveentirelythawed out her chilly manner towards me, but I had thought it might have melted just slightly around the edges.
But no, she glanced up on my bidding her a cheerful good morning and gave me such a look of what I could only describe asloathing, that I was quite taken aback.
Yet she’d sent me her thanks by way of Henry, who’d said she’d been delighted with my gesture, and I couldn’t for the life of me think what I might have done since then to blot my copybook!
While I’d come to believe that she simply felt a natural antipathy towards me – we do sometimes take instant and unreasoning dislikes to people – that morning it seemed to have increased to a whole new level.
‘There you are,’ she said coldly, as I approached and laid the tray over her knees, just as if I was late – which I wasn’t, but on time to the second. She cast a critical look over the tray, too, as if wanting to find fault with it, but there was nothing she could quibble at: the egg was perfectly cooked, the toast the exact shadeof brown she preferred, the butter in little curls in its dish next to the miniature pot of honey and the coffee hot and strong. Underneath it all, the embroidered tray cloth was spotless.
Finding no fault, she said, in the same cold voice: ‘I will not require a tray tomorrow, because once Mrs Kane is here, I’ll breakfast with everyone else in the morning room.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Shall I put out a full cooked breakfast from tomorrow?’
‘Do. Mrs Kane likes a substantial breakfast and I assume you’ve already been cooking one for Xan, even if Lucy won’t touch anything other than toast.’
‘That’s so,’ I agreed, though of course I didn’t mention that Xan always ate his in the kitchen with Henry and me. I was sure she didn’t know about that, but from tomorrow, he’d have to join the rest of the party in the morning room.
I took out my notepad and pen. ‘Bacon, fried and scrambled eggs, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, sausages …? I queried.
‘All of those, though I think only scrambled eggs – and then, once the other guests arrive, you can put out a plate of cold sliced ham, too.’
‘Got that,’ I said, making a note. Henry always helped me cook the breakfast when it was a large party, even though he was happy to do it solo when it was just us … theushaving recently stretched to include Xan, of course.
In turn, I’d be helping more with the serving of meals and the bed-making. We were used to working as a team, fast and efficient.
I stowed the little notebook and pencil away in my tunic pocket and said, ‘Henry says he’ll cut the Christmas tree for the Great Hall today and then put it up tomorrow, ready for decorating.’
‘Tell him to come and discuss it with me in the library aftermy recordings session with Xan this morning,’ she said shortly and, since the audience was clearly over, I made my escape.
The supermarket shopping arrived, bearing a lordly whole fresh salmon for that evening’s dinner. I wanted it to be extra special, in honour of the arrival of Mrs Powys’s friend. And perhaps dauphinoise potatoes and amacédoineof vegetables to go with it …
Henry had charmed the recipe for themacédoineof vegetables out of the proprietor of a small family restaurant near Autun in France, where we’d stopped for lunch after a detour to see an outcrop of rock that was supposed to resemble President de Gaulle, though I can’t say I could see it.
Salmon is so easy to cook, baked in a sealed aromatic parcel of tinfoil, yet always looks impressive.
