Page 22 of The Secret Christmas Library

Jamie whistled.

‘What is it?’ said Mirren in excitement.

They decamped to the nearest desk, an ancient wooden thing with drawers all over it, stuffed with feathers, thimbles, old fountain pens, blotting paper.

This time Jamie, the tallest, held his phone torch overhead, as Theo carefully unfolded the object.

Flat out, the swan was a square of ancient heavy paper. It was completely covered in tiny letters, separated, in pale blue fountain pen ink. Theo took out a pair of black-rimmed glasses and put them on.

‘Hmm,’ he said.

‘Is that your professional opinion?’ asked Mirren.

She looked more closely at it. In fact, they were not letters. They were minute, and each figure was either a zero or a one.

‘Oh, what?’ she said.

‘Binary?’ said Jamie.

Mirren screwed up her face. ‘I don’t understand. He wrote computer code? But this . . . this looks really old. Like, before computers? Or did he work in early computers?’

Theo shook his head. ‘No, binary is a code that computers use, but they didn’t invent it.’

‘It looks like The Matrix,’ said Mirren.

‘It does,’ said Theo. ‘But it’s ancient. We’ll need to type it in to a computer. And not get any of it wrong.’

Jamie nodded. Suddenly, surprising two of them, a bell sounded, a deep clanging, somewhere far away. ‘This seems,’ he said, ‘like a job for tomorrow.’

Mirren looked at her watch and was surprised to see it was six-thirty. It had been dark for so long she’d lost track of time. And she was, after hours in the book stacks, completely and utterly filthy.

‘Shall we dress for dinner? And meet in the Chinois . . . that room we were in before?’ said Jamie.

‘Oh, you are kidding me,’ said Mirren. ‘I don’t have any more dresses! This is meant to be a work trip!’

Jamie shrugged. ‘Check the wardrobes. You never know.’ He turned to Theo. ‘You alright?’

Theo nodded. Well, he would be, thought Mirren.

‘Okay, well, good luck with the hot water,’ said Jamie, then, as they left the room, ‘Don’t . . . don’t mention this to Esme. Please. I’m not trying to cheat anybody, but . . . who even knows what this is? If it’s even anything?’

‘It would seem a lot of trouble to go to for nothing,’ said Theo.

‘You could probably say that about this whole house,’ said Jamie.

Mirren finally found her way back to the bedroom.

Second floor, east side, she told herself.

It was easy to remember it was east, because it looked out over the cliff, on to where, somewhere out in the dark, the freezing North Sea was pounding, far below at the bottom of the dramatic cliffs.

She was expecting the room to be freezing but to her absolute delight, Bonnie, true to her word, had been in and lit a fire.

There was a pile of logs next to it too; tentatively she put one on it and it caught in an incredibly satisfying way.

She smiled and nearly clapped her hands together.

The lights buzzed, ominously, but she was growing used to that.

Mirren glanced at the window. The snow was still swirling, in a way that now seemed more threatening than charming; Esme had already implied that the roads were impassable, and that was a couple of hours ago.

And she’d been in a big car. Mirren wished she could phone her mum and let her know she was okay.

Not that her mother would necessarily notice that she hadn’t been in touch for a couple of days – in fact, she’d be horrified if Mirren rang her up out of the blue, and would assume something terrible had happened.

Nora wasn’t entirely convinced that Mirren qualified for adulthood, at thirty-one. Or ever would.

As she turned back from the window, she realised something amazing. A tin bath was set up in front of the fire, the metal warmed by the flames. There was a rough bar of soap, a flannel and a large fluffy towel. The water was scorching.

You couldn’t lie in it or even properly sit down, but Mirren managed a surprisingly adequate bath crouching in the hot water, scrubbing herself down with the warm flannel and drying herself off with the huge, washed-soft towel.

Flushed from her unusual ablutions, she glanced around at the room.

Indeed there was a wardrobe there. Jamie had told her to help herself .

. . she couldn’t help being curious as to what on earth was inside.

With the towel wrapped around her, she sidled over, her cheeks flushed from the hot water. It was one big wardrobe, the type that had a mirror in the door. Mirren tried the handle. She was quite sure it would be locked, and was surprised when it opened easily, and two mothballs fell out.

The door swung open, and, as she glanced up, her face broke into a smile of pure surprise.

She had expected – well, nothing, really. She hadn’t had a clue what Jamie was talking about. Maybe that there would be a bunch of old tweed mouldering away – more tat.

But no. The wardrobe was stuffed full of dresses. No, she thought again, these were not dresses; they were gowns. Wrapped in plastic, draped on soft padded hangers.

Mirren lifted them down. There was a fifties floral dress with a wide neck, in a stiff, shiny material with flowers appliquéd on to it.

There was a high-necked, ruffled Victorian long frock that looked like The Vampire’s Wife brand – ironic, thought Mirren, given who was across the corridor – but was far too old and frayed.

There was a silvery nineties-style slip, a sliver of a thing which looked gorgeous but also freezing; and a bright orange, rather fabulous muumuu which came with a matching turban.

Finally, she came across the simplest dress: a dark red, almost burgundy gown that was made of softest silk; it had little bell sleeves, and a full hem.

She pulled it out and held it up against herself, wonderingly.

Whose dress was this? Whose had it been?

Then she found a tag, still on it, with a designer label, and a breathtaking price.

This dress had never been worn. They’d do better on Vinted than looking for a book, Mirren thought.

She checked the others: many were the same.

Someone had bought these and stuck them in a room and forgotten all about them.

Cut on the bias, the wine-coloured dress was also extremely forgiving, and she slipped it on and looked at herself in the mirror on the front and smiled.

It was so utterly unlike anything she would ever wear; she looked like a flapper, getting ready to go down to the drawing room to find out who’d been murdered.

She smiled to herself. She had one pair of black shoes, which were not ideal, being flat and rather sturdy, but actually, when she put them on, they rather added to the effect; they could easily be 1920s.

She ran back to the bathwater and flattened down her curly hair behind her ears, then pulled out from her make-up bag a packed, but rarely used red MAC lipstick.

Mixed with her regular browny lip gloss, it almost matched the colour of the dress.

She lashed on some mascara, then picked up her black cardigan.

It slightly spoiled the effect but there wasn’t much she could do about that.

Then she put it down again. No. Things were a bit mad.

She was hundreds of miles away from anyone who knew her, who would judge her – her family, her friends, her colleagues.

This place was ridiculous – an endless crumbling castle – but it was magical too.

It had a deep enchantment all of its own, in the ancient walls, the whirling snow, the empty spaces on the walls where the pictures had once been, the unhappy man and his unhappy antecedents, the endless, endless books.

This was a holiday from real life, a different way of being, and she could behave however the hell she wanted.

It wasn’t as if she’d ever be in this situation again, being summoned in an ancient Scottish castle by a clanging old dinner bell.

She glanced around the room, spotting another bookcase, this time full of hardback fiction from the last quarter of the twentieth century – The Thorn Birds; A Year in Provence; Lace.

Amazing! She could rifle it later – and next to that, an old leather seat, beside the window.

On the back of the chair was a tartan blanket, the deep red of the stripe, on a neutral background, matching her dress almost exactly.

She gave it an experimental sniff, but it smelled absolutely fine, of soft lambswool infused with woodsmoke.

She sprayed it quickly with perfume, then wrapped it around her elbows.

That was more like it. She glanced at herself once more, almost lost her nerve, wondered whose dress it was, and if this was a completely ridiculous idea.

Then she heard, once again, the bell clanging, deep within the building, summoning her, and without another thought, before she could change her mind, she opened the bedroom door.