Page 34 of The Secret Christmas Library

It was several moments before Mirren’s brain caught up with her terrified racing heart, her anguished scream caught in her throat, to realise what she was looking at was of course her own reflection, on the door of a wardrobe.

‘Bloody hell,’ she found herself swearing gently under her breath, then she looked up, ready to apologise to the others when they came running to help her.

Of course nobody did, and she realised with a shiver that no one could hear you scream here, with the thick stone walls and miles of passageway between them all.

No wonder Agatha Christie had murdered so many people in places like these.

She looked at herself in the old, spotted wardrobe mirror.

Her hair was wild and dark; the large jumper gave her a bulkier look.

She looked like a terrifying stranger. She shivered again, just a tremor.

A goose walking over my grave, she thought, then told herself to stop being an idiot. This was a quick rush-through.

But this was not somebody’s bedroom, it was just ‘a’ bedroom.

Nothing personal in it at all; there was tapestry-style flock wallpaper that in a normal house would have been terribly naff but which here was magnificent; ancient dried flowers in the grate; a bed.

She bravely opened the wardrobe; there was nothing but a dead bluebottle.

She realised suddenly that she was disappointed.

If there was ever a magical wardrobe, surely it would be in a room like this, in a world of snow.

On the other hand, she thought, looking out of the window .

. . She felt she was in Narnia already: the elusive grandfather was the mysterious professor, and Esme could be the White Witch, which would make Jamie Mr Tumnus, she supposed, and she smiled at the thought. She wondered if Theo was Edmund.

She lit a candle and looked around but there was nothing else in here; she moved out and back into the corridor, listening for the others, but there was not a sign. They might be on different floors.

The next room was more promising: a study, rather tidy.

Books were stacked high, but they were stacked rather than thrown in piles; she could run her eye and her finger over them.

She realised suddenly she needed to mark which rooms she had seen and which she hadn’t.

She looked for Post-it notes on the study desk, and found only blotting paper.

She opened one of the drawers: sheets of writing paper bloomed; old airmail envelopes, and thick, good-quality headed paper with the castle name engraved on the top, and From the desk of Laird McKinnon underneath.

His writing room, she thought, looking around.

Where he must have sat, probably made up this very game they were currently caught in.

Which meant, she figured, he wouldn’t hide the book in here. Not if his tricksy ways were anything to go by.

She picked up a dusty old photograph on his desk.

It was an angelic-looking baby in a dress, sitting on a tartan rug in the garden.

She turned it over. 1943, it said. JMK. So it must be him – male babies used to wear dresses in those days, didn’t they?

She wondered why he kept a photo of himself as a baby on his desk.

You would think his loved ones might make the cut, not just himself.

What a peculiar sort of fellow he must have been.

‘You’re not going to beat me, Baby in a Dress,’ she announced aloud to the picture frame to give herself courage. ‘It’s around here somewhere, and I’m going to find it. And I reckon if this is your study, your bedroom cannot be far away.’

In fact, she realised, what she had taken for a cupboard was in actuality a connecting door. She pulled it open. How funny, she thought, to build a connecting room that wasn’t a bathroom. Although the idea of having a bedroom with a study attached was not, she thought, a bad one.

The room she now found herself in was vast; you could play cricket in it.

A large bed was at one end; to her surprise it was a modern bed, no four-poster here.

Instead, this bed had a vast, comfortable-looking mattress and a thick modern duvet.

There was a side table, piled high with books, of course, but also a box of tissues, and a remote control for a small, old-fashioned television sitting on a dressing table by one of the floor-to-ceiling windows.

The only view from the bedroom was the pounding sea and the full vastness of the weather, beautiful and wild.

The clouds were thick, the flakes dancing.

The expanse of glass made the room cold; Mirren found herself huddling in Jamie’s sweater.

It could have been such a lovely sight, though, on this bleak December’s eve.

The drapes were not the old rotting curtains in every other room; they were thick and handsome and looked relatively new.

The fireplace was large; if the fire was lit it would be pleasant, surely; homely almost. If you were warm and cosy in the bed, watching the freezing waves dance far, far beyond the window frame, safe and sound.

But then the laird had not felt safe, had he? He had been all alone. Out by himself, on a freezing night, one just like this. She stared again and shivered.

The surrounds of his bed were bookshelves, reasonably new again, at least compared to the rest of the house. This must have been the one place he could have things as he wanted them, rather than covering the ancient acquisitions of generations past in endless dumped tomes.

She looked at it. My goodness. To her surprise, these books were organised.

From the very start: Ackroyd. Adams. Adichie.

Alighieri. An extraordinarily broad but very high-quality selection, she noticed approvingly.

Kept tidily and well, rather than just dumped willy-nilly.

How very strange. She suddenly found herself smoothing the old duvet.

There was a faint smell of pipe tobacco and stray cologne, which made her feel oddly sad; it was a grandfathery smell.

But he should have been here, cosy in bed, fire blazing, moon up over the water, surrounded by a doting daughter and his grandchildren. Not out all by himself.

She lit the candle – it was still early afternoon, but dusk was already making its presence felt through the thickly falling snow – and scanned down the shelves till she reached G: Paul Gallico, Alan Garner, Rumer Godden . . . Lewis Grassic Gibbon.

And there it was. There it was. Tucked right away where you wouldn’t notice it in a million years. A Scots Quair. Sunset Song.

This edition was green and white. The book felt . . . it felt heavy, as an old hardback would. But there was something else; it felt a little lumpy; misshapen, even.

The temperature in the room was absolutely freezing; it was ridiculous.

Her hands were trembling too much to even open the book, and she fumbled it and nearly dropped it in her excitement.

She should, of course, have run back down to the kitchen with it immediately, got Bonnie to ring the bell, informed the others.

But something stopped her. She found she wanted to look at it herself, before everyone started scrambling, and Theo swooshed in with his ‘I know everything about books’ face on and Esme made smart remarks and wondered how long it would be before she could get her hands on her money.

Mirren wanted to have a look, just her, before she announced it to the others.

She didn’t think he’d mind. Would he mind? Surely not.

She could not have said what exactly possessed her.

Getting into strange beds in strange houses wasn’t something she made a habit of.

But she found herself putting the candle and the book carefully down on the side table, shaking off her boots, clambering up on to the comfortable bed, and slipping underneath the soft duvet.

Mirren sat on her hands till the feeling came back into them.

She had been right: it was a wonderful cosy duvet, crunchy with goose feathers.

She had taken her shoes off, obviously, but kept her jacket on, and she gradually felt herself beginning to warm up.

She also felt rather sleepy – it had been hearty exercise, snowshoeing across the property; she was absolutely feeling quite ready for a nap.

But, just as her eyes were gradually drifting closed, she jerked them open again and sat bolt upright. The book!

She left the candle where it was and took her hands out of the bedclothes again, reluctantly. She let her eyes adjust for a moment then picked the book up carefully.

‘Okay, Baby in a Frock,’ she said. ‘Let’s see, shall we?’

She opened the first page, and realised the book was in fact a compendium of three books in one, and Sunset Song was the first. It was obviously well read, and, as she flicked through, she saw bits of it were underlined. She hoped this did not make up the next clue.

But it was the second book, Cloud Howe, that made her stop. Because when she got to the first page – there was nothing there. Just as with the Bestiary, there was an actual, honest-to-goodness hole cut neatly out of the book, as if for a gun, made by a spy. Only this time it was much bigger.

And it was filled with letters.

She ought to take it to the others at once, she knew. But then she remembered Esme being so dismissive of the old man’s sad experience at boarding school. She would go soon.

She glanced to the side of the bed and noticed a discarded crumple of paper that was covered in faded ones and zeros.

He must have practised his binary code up here, in bed.

Esme and Jamie were so dismissive of him, but Mirren suddenly felt close to this old man who had filled his last days with something so intricate.

She unfolded one letter and began to read.

Once more they were replies; clumsily written, in a fountain pen that leaked quite heavily to the side.

There was none of the refinement of the father’s letters, but there was an envelope included – Sir James McKinnon, Faculty of Land Management, University of Edinburgh.

So that was where they had found him. They were dated 1962. Such a long time ago.

Dearest James,

I hope youse are having fun in the big city.

I know you say it is bad and you miss home, but I cannot imagine that.

A fine fellow like you must be having a fine time, you and all your old friends from school.

Bullies change, don’t they? And so much going on all the time.

You’ll be having fun right enough, won’t give us a thought.

Of course I miss you, my only one. But I want you to be having a good time, don’t I? We were not a possible thing, now, were we? We could not have been, could we now?

So enjoy yourself, in the bright lights, please. I’ll be waiting.

There was no signature. Nothing to give the person’s identity away. No return address. Mirren couldn’t even tell from the blotted handwriting whether the author was a man or a woman.

She picked up the second. The tone was quite different.

I thought when you left for the university everything would change and it would be different and you would forget me and I could forget you.

But seeing you again made that a foolish promise, every bit of it. All I wanted, all I want is you. I will say it, and I should not send this letter and I will deny every word of it if it is ever traced.

But I want you and only you, James.

I want you and only you, James, thought Mirren to herself.

Then, later, dated 1964.

You were so cold to me the day. I understand it, I do. And your friends . . . well, they’re aye loud. I . . . no. You’re alright. Just . . . I want to say that I’ll always be here, but that’s a ridiculous thing to say. I will always. I will. I would . . .

The letter trailed out, perhaps in tears. There was one after Christmas.

I can do nothing without you. To see you and not be able to touch you is torture, and I know you share it, I see it on your face.

You think nobody knows you, but I do. All of it.

Your funny ways. The way you light up when you see a new book.

How much you love Forres, even if you don’t quite know how it works.

I know you; I love every part of you. And your father will not let you see me .

. . well, I hope it is him. I truly do hope it is him, James, and not you.

There had been, then, a love affair. That had ended very badly. A school that had gone horribly wrong, then a love affair that had ended in disaster, in fact.

It occurred to Mirren, with some trepidation, that this man, who had walked out into an icy field to die alone, wasn’t just leaving them a puzzle. He was telling them everything he hadn’t been able to tell them in real life. A guide to his unhappiness; his eccentricities.

And then, at the very bottom of the hole in the book, a locket – not expensive, Mirren didn’t think, by candlelight. A heart shape, in burnished gold. She held it up to the light to see if there was something engraved on it—

‘What the hell are you doing?’