Page 17 of The Secret Christmas Library

They all jumped up, galvanised. Then Mirren glanced back down and grabbed the last bit of her scone. It had been a very good scone.

‘Bring your notebook,’ said Jamie. ‘That method obviously works.’

‘I wouldn’t say “obviously”,’ said Theo. ‘Seeing as, you know. We haven’t actually found anything yet.’

‘Copying things out works?’ said Mirren, ignoring him. ‘Do you think?’

‘I’ve stared at that thing for three months without figuring a thing out,’ he said.

‘Why didn’t you just put it on the internet?’ said Mirren, puzzled.

‘Sure,’ said Jamie. ‘What I absolutely want is hundreds of weirdos turning up here and pulling the house apart. Thanks, that’s exactly what I had in mind.

’ He shivered. ‘Oh, guess what, every rando on the internet? There might be treasure in my house and by the way, the doors don’t lock because they’re completely warped! ’

Outside the drawing room, the house felt colder than ever. The mercury really was dropping, and it was getting steadily darker. Following Jamie up the corridor, Mirren stopped and listened. She could hear the wind outside.

‘It’s over . . . ’ Jamie screwed up his face for a moment.

‘You can’t remember where a room is in your own house?’ said Mirren, shaking her head in amazement.

‘I absolutely can,’ said Jamie straight away. ‘I’m just figuring out the quickest way to get to it. Right, follow me.’

And he charged off to the left, past an old stand that was, according to the ancient, stained card next to it, where a suit of armour used to be.

They followed him to the end of the corridor, then he made a sharp left and disappeared through a hole that turned out to be a door hidden in the panelling.

They were now in a grey stone stairwell, a carved spiral staircase heading up and down, into gloom, where a clear dripping could be heard.

There were tiny lead-lined windows cut into the wall and Mirren correctly surmised that they were inside one of the smaller turrets.

The light was fading fast, though, and she couldn’t see the bottom at all.

Their breath showed in front of their faces.

Theo got his phone torch out. ‘This is literally all it’s good for here,’ he said ruefully, checking his reception again: none.

They followed Jamie as he scampered upwards, clearly very familiar with where they were, and came out goodness knew how many floors above.

Mirren was glad someone else opened the cobwebby door; it was extremely spidery in there.

They were now on a quiet, dusty landing.

The ceilings here were lower; this was a private, rather than public space.

The great old wooden doors looked as if they hadn’t been opened in decades.

Mirren decided to ignore the cobwebs. She was broadly in favour of spiders, she told herself firmly, as long as they weren’t dropping down her neck.

‘Now, which is it?’ said Jamie to himself.

He counted four along and opened a door.

Mirren screamed, and even Theo started back, until Jamie turned the lights on.

It was a room entirely filled with taxidermied animals – badgers, raccoons, even a lion, staring back at them, glassy-eyed.

Mirren took in a rearing cobra, poised to strike, and grabbed in alarm for the nearest person, which happened to be Theo – who didn’t look much less shocked than she was.

It was unbelievably unpleasant in there.

Behind the army of moth-eaten animals were, of course, more bookshelves. Mirren very much hoped she wouldn’t have to clamber over the animals to get to those books, and in fact had absolutely no intention of doing so.

‘Snakearoonie!’ said Jamie to the cobra, in seeming delight. ‘Oh, my goodness, it’s been ages!’

‘You guys are friends?’ said Mirren when she’d got her breath back.

‘Oh, Bonnie and I used to take beasties out of here and put them in people’s rooms – we’d scare the wits out of them.’ He patted the cobra jar affectionately.

‘I bet you bloody did,’ said Mirren. ‘Also, if you even think of doing that to me, I’m out of here in five seconds flat.’

‘As,’ said Theo, trying to sound dignified, ‘am I.’

Jamie grinned and turned out the light and shut the door.

‘I think that’s worse,’ said Mirren. ‘Knowing they’re all in there. In the dark. Plotting how to kill us.’

‘It’s just a collection,’ said Jamie.

‘Yes, of HORRIFYING THINGS.’

But he was striding on.

‘Where is it, where is it . . .? Ah, of course.’

In front of them was a pair of heavy wooden doors with black studs in them. Jamie rifled in the capacious pockets of his waxed jacket which, like the rest of them, he hadn’t bothered to take off, and withdrew a huge ring of keys.

‘When’s the last time anyone was in here?’

Jamie shook his head. ‘Not the foggiest.’

‘It sounds,’ said Mirren, ‘like your grandfather . . . he needed a lot of help. Like he wasn’t well at all.’

‘It’s hardly unusual for a McKinnon to turn eccentric in their old age,’ said Jamie. ‘And I was here a lot. But he didn’t want any help. He just wanted to tell me about new books he’d bought, and crossword clues.’

‘Your mum didn’t . . .?’

‘She sided with my grandmother in that particular divorce,’ said Jamie. ‘Hardly spoke to the old man at all. She’d leave me and Esme here for the holidays while she went swanning off on the proceeds of whatever there was left to sell.’

He tried to sound cheerful about it, not entirely satisfactorily.

He finally found the right key – a large black iron thing with an elaborate rounded end – and the wooden doors creaked open.

The air inside the room was like a tomb. Jamie fumbled for the lights, an ancient switch in a round setting. The bulbs had mostly blown; there were one or two weak bulbs left in a dusty chandelier hanging from the roof.

Just as before, in the East Library, this had two storeys, and they had entered on the mezzanine.

They must have been designed this way. But the windows didn’t face east, to the wild sea, or west, to the beautiful dying rays of the setting winter sun.

They looked out on the harsh landscape of the northern hills, where there was no heather left now, so late in the year.

Hardy sheep were dotted here and there; everything in shades of grey, cold and inhospitable.

Mirren shivered. The books here, as dishevelled as anywhere else, were covered in a thick layer of dust. Nobody had been here for years, surely. Thousands of volumes lined the mezzanine, then down below there was shelving and cupboards, all full.

‘So . . . it’s in here, whatever it is?’ said Mirren. They stood, staring around at the vastness of the task.

They decided to divide the room up methodically, and Jamie found a collection of Post-its in an old desk. Every shelving stack they’d finished needed a Post-it, and if they fell off, well, that would be a problem for another day.

Anything that looked vaguely old or precious or promising, they decided, they would pull out to examine properly later.

Any famous editions of well-known books, they were to ask Theo, who had the expertise; anything local or handwritten, they would put aside in case that meant something, and if James had written in it or on it, Jamie could check the handwriting and confirm it either way.

Mirren wished she’d worn gloves – she was sure there was some disease you could get from handling old books, something to do with spores – but she wasn’t sure how to politely bring it up.

She had wanted an adventure, she reminded herself.

A change in her life. And here she was, up in the Highlands in a crazy old castle.

Okay, she had been anticipating rather less indexing of old titles about – she picked up one at random – great chess games from the International Bradford Chess Competition, but maybe people forgot about the slightly duller parts of adventures.

They got their heads down as dusk fell. Jamie went and scared up some light bulbs from various other rooms – Mirren hoped he hadn’t annoyed the animal gods next door – to give them a bit of light, and plugged in an ancient radio on one of the desks, which pleasingly still worked, although the choices were limited to the local Gaelic radio station or Russian seafaring channels.

They went for the former, which played enough jolly jigs and reels to keep them moving.

What, though, thought Mirren, as she sorted through the stacks, did James mean?

What could the book be? Really rich people did buy and sell books for absolutely loads of money, she knew that.

Silly money, for things that nobody else could have, rarities or special things.

Because, when they’d run out of every commonplace thing, every single normal mass-produced thing a human could ever want to buy, they had to spend their money somewhere, so they spent it on pointless things nobody could possibly want or need: engagement rings the size of hen’s eggs for marriages that wouldn’t last; rocket ships that exploded all over the place; artworks that only existed on the internet, for heaven’s sake.

Houses so big, so impossibly huge and useless that you couldn’t even go in every room and you could get lost just looking around them.

What on earth was the point of this, truly?

she thought, as the windows showed full dark outside now on the long, wild grounds of the north.