Twelve Days of Christmas Read Online Free PDF Page A

surprising that it was deserted, though I did have the sensation that I was being watched from behind the Nottingham lace curtains . . .
    But the only movement was the sign swinging in the wind outside the pub, the Auld Christmas, which depicted a bearded old man in a blue robe, holding a small fir tree and wearing a wreath of greenery round his head. Very odd. The pub advertised morning coffee and ploughman’s lunches, which would have been tempting had the journey not taken so much longer than I expected.
    The shop Ellen had mentioned was nearby, fronted by sacks of potatoes and boxes of vegetables, with the Merry Kettle Tearoom next to it, though that looked as if it had closed for the winter. It was probably just seasonal, for walkers.
    I consulted my map, started the engine, then continued on past a terraced trio of tiny Gothic cottages and over a second, smaller bridge to yet another signpost pointing to Great Mumming up an improbably steep and narrow strip of tarmac.
    No wonder all the vehicles parked outside the pub were four-wheel-drive!
    After half a mile I turned off through a pair of large stone pillars and came to rest on a stretch of gravel next to a lodge house that had been extended at the back into a sizeable bungalow.
    It was very quiet apart from the rushing of water somewhere nearby and the rooks cawing in a stand of tall pine trees that must hide the house itself, for I couldn’t see even a chimney stack.
    As I got out a little stiffly (I hadn’t realised quite how tense that drive up had made me), the lodge door opened a few inches and a tall, stooping, elderly man beckoned me in.
    ‘There you are! Come in quickly, before all the warm air gets out,’ he commanded urgently, as if I was a wayward family pet.
    I sidled carefully past a large and spiky holly wreath into a long hallway. Once the door was safely shut behind me he turned and came towards me with an odd, slightly crablike gait, holding out his hand.
    ‘Noël Martland. And you must be Holly Brown – lovely name, by the way, very suitable.’
    ‘Oh? For what?’
    ‘Christmas,’ he replied, looking vaguely surprised that I needed to be told. He wore a drooping, ex-Air Force style moustache, partially covering the extensive, puckered shiny scars of an old burn.
    He caught my eye: ‘Plane shot down in the war. Got a bit singed, landed badly.’
    ‘Right,’ I said, admiring the economy of description of a scene that would have occupied half a film and had you biting your knuckles on the edge of your cinema seat.
    ‘Best to say straight off: people always wonder, but they don’t like to ask.’
    He took my coat and hung it carefully on a mahogany stand, then ushered me into a small, square, chintzy sitting room that would have been very pleasant had it not been rendered into a hideous Christmas grotto. Festoons of paper chains and Chinese lanterns hung from the ceiling, swags of fake greenery lined the mantelpiece and the tops of all the pictures, and there were snowglobes and porcelain-faced Santas on every flat surface.
    In the bow window, fairy lights twinkled among so many baubles on the small fake fir tree that the balding branches drooped wearily under the strain.
    Observing my stunned expression with some satisfaction he said, ‘Jolly good, isn’t it? We like to do things properly in Little Mumming.’ Then he suddenly bellowed, ‘Tilda! She’s here!’
    ‘Coming!’ answered a high, brittle voice and with a loud rattling noise a tiny woman pushed a large hostess trolley through a swinging door from what was presumably the kitchen.
    ‘My wife, Tilda,’ Noël Martland said. ‘This is Holly Brown, m’dear.’
    ‘So I should suppose, unless you’ve taken to entertaining strange young women,’ she said tartly, eyeing me from faded but still sharp blue eyes. Though age had withered her, it had not prevented her from applying a bold coating of turquoise eye shadow to her lids and a generous slick of foundation, powder and