Free Twelve Days of Christmas by Trisha Ashley Page B

born.’
    ‘Sad,’ she said. ‘Jude’s mother died several years ago now, but he adored her. I think that must have been where he got his arty ways, because there was never anything like that in the family before. And I expect that’s why he dotes on Lady too – but then, he loves all horses, even if they do sometimes look a bit tortured in those sculptures he makes!’
    ‘I don’t think the one I’ve seen near Manchester looked tortured, just . . . modern. You could still tell what it was.’
    ‘He has a studio in the woods just above the lodge – the old mill house. You’ll see a path going off the drive to it, but it’ll be locked up, of course.’
    There was nothing in the instructions about looking after that as well, thank goodness, though I expected I’d walk down that way with Merlin one day.
    Even though the family’s disappointment over Christmas was none of my doing, my conscience had been niggling away at me slightly, so when she got up to go I said impulsively, ‘You wouldn’t like the enormous frozen turkey and giant Christmas pudding the Chirks left, I suppose? Then you, your brother and sister-in-law and Jess could have a proper Christmas dinner together.’
    ‘Oh, I can’t cook anything more complicated than a boiled egg! So it looks like I’ll be eating Tilda’s roast chicken dinner at the lodge on Christmas Day and then going home to cheese, cold cuts and pickles.’
    That made me feel even more guilty, though why I should when none of these broken arrangements were my fault, I can’t imagine! It is all entirely down to the selfishness of Jude Martland!

Chapter 7
The Whole Hog
     
     
    Sister is a great lump of a woman, big and cold enough to sink the Titanic, though she moves silently enough for all that and caught Pearl sitting on the edge of the new patient’s bed, a heinous crime. Now Pearl has been moved to the children’s ward and I have taken her place, Sister saying she trusts me not to flirt with the patients! This does not, of course, stop them trying to flirt with me . . .
    January, 1945
     
    When Becca had gone (with a big wedge of foil-wrapped cake in her coat pocket), I finally had time to take another look around the house, Merlin at my heels. He had taken to following me about so closely now that if I stopped suddenly, his nose ran into the back of my leg. It felt quite cold and damp even through my jeans; generally a healthy sign in a dog, if not a human.
    I wanted to familiarise myself with the layout and especially with the position of anything that might be valuable, and make sure that I hadn’t missed any windows last night when locking up. I would mainly be living in the kitchen wing, unless the urge suddenly came upon me to watch the TV in the little morning room . . . Though actually, I’d really taken to the sitting room, vast though it was, so I might spend some time there once I’d lit a fire.
    I can’t say I found any valuables, apart from a pair of tarnished silver candlesticks and an engraved tray on the sideboard in the dining room, and a row of silver-framed photographs on the upright piano at the further end of the room.
    When I lifted the lid of the piano I was surprised to find it was only slightly out of tune and I wondered who still played it. I picked out the first bit of ‘Lead Kindly Light’ (a hymn Gran taught me to play on her harmonium), which echoed hollowly around the room. It was a lovely instrument, but in the event of a fire I’d be more inclined to snatch up the silver than heave the piano out of the window.
    Closing it, I examined the photographs, most quite old and of family groupings – weddings, picnics, expeditions in huge open-topped cars – all the prewar pleasures of the moneyed classes.
    At the end of the row was a more recent colour picture of two tall, dark-haired young men, one much bigger, more thick-set and not as handsome as the other, though there was an obvious resemblance. The handsome one was smiling at