Oh, this is simply too much,’ said Audrey. ‘Christmas Eve and we’ve doubled the numbers for lunch tomorrow…’
‘Your idea,’ said Daniel, ‘so don’t complain,’ though he knew that complaining about a predicament his mother had engineered herself was half the fun.
Audrey had insisted Lord Bernard de Floures and his family join them for Christmas lunch at the rectory after hearing that their cook had been called away on a family emergency. The de Floures lived just half a mile away at Champton House, their family seat since the Norman Conquest.
Along with Lord Bernard, his children, Honoria and Alex, his cousin Jane and her American husband Victor, Audrey had also invited Miss March, who ran Elite Fashions, the local dress shop.
‘But must you invite every waif and stray, Daniel?’
‘Neil. I invited Neil. You’ve invited half the county.’
DS Neil Vanloo and Rev Daniel Clement had become somewhat of an unlikely crime-solving duo, solving a string of murders which had of late plagued the picturesque village of Champton. Daniel sorely hoped they would not have to put their detective skills to the test this Christmas.
Audrey wasn’t listening. ‘Theo…’
The cover of Murder Under The Mistletoe by the Reverend Richard Coles
Her other son had been cutting crosses into a pile of Brussels sprouts – a pointless exercise he suspected, needless effort for a loveless vegetable.
‘…We need a whole new plan.’ She sat down at the kitchen table. ‘Sit, sit, sit!’
Theo and Daniel sat.
‘Christmas Eve,’ she said out loud as she wrote, ‘prep veg… Theo’s on sprouts and carrots; Dan, you’re on parsnips and potatoes…’
‘I have to take Midnight Mass, so I may have to leave you to it…’
‘Don’t make it unnecessarily long,’ said Audrey. ‘You’ll need to lay the table when you’re back. We’re ten. Have we got enough of everything for ten? I think we’ve only got eight of best.’
‘Then we’ll have to mix and match,’ said Theo. ‘They’ll think us savages…’
After Midnight Mass, Daniel stood at the door shaking hands and saying ‘Happy Christmas’ so many times the words began to detach from their meaning.
One of the last to appear out of the shadows was Victor, third husband of Jane, Lord De Floures’ cousin.
Jane had married into a fast set in London, then remarried into a faster set in New York and now lived with Victor on the Upper West Side. Jane had never been a low-maintenance kind of girl. Bernard often joked that the Nizam of Hyderabad couldn’t keep her in diamonds.
Daniel noticed that Victor was wearing a three-piece suit in tweed that looked like the sort of thing an American might think was standard uniform for a winter visit to an English country house. The look was undone, however, by a pair of penny loafers that stuck out from his turn-ups as incongruously as clown shoes on a coroner.
‘Hello,’ said Daniel. ‘Are you on your own?’
‘I am. Too late for Jane. And Bernard.’
‘The de Floures genes are not noted for producing an inexhaustible appetite for worship.’
‘I guess not,’ said Victor.
‘But you?’
‘I find it fascinating, what you do here. My religious commitment was nominal. Not a big thing for us. Not until recently. But as I’ve got older, I’ve got more curious about… faith. I’d love to talk it through with you sometime, if we get the chance. It’s not something I can talk about much. Jane doesn’t like it. She thinks it’s like golf.’
‘Golf?’
‘Yes, something husbands abandon their wives for.’
Daniel smiled. ‘There are worse things you can abandon a wife for.’
‘Not as far as Jane’s concerned. But I try to keep her happy. She’s coming in the morning for the service. Bernard kind of insisted.’
‘I’ll see you then. Perhaps we can find some time to talk tomorrow.’
‘Maybe. Thanks. And goodnight.’ Daniel locked up, made his way silently through the churchyard and let himself into the rectory as quietly as he could through the back door, but the dogs, Cosmo and Hilda, barked before he’d even turned the handle. He went to hush them, but the door opened onto a scene busy with industry.
Theo was sitting at the kitchen table wrapping presents and Audrey was standing at the counter studding an onion with cloves.
‘Oh, bread sauce!’ said Daniel.
‘Naturally,’ said Audrey. ‘No bread sauce, no Christmas.’
Every family has its own bespoke delicacy, and for the Clements it was Audrey’s bread sauce, a rich and creamy confection of breadcrumbs with butter, milk, cream, cloves, peppercorns, onions and bay, and an ingredient that was known only to Audrey – an ingredient she flatly refused to share with anyone.
Whenever Daniel asked Audrey for the recipe she just said, ‘Oh, just take a bit of this and a bit of that…’ A bit of what…? ‘Breadcrumbs, milk, an onion…’ How long should I cook it for…? ‘As long as it takes…’
‘I wonder if it goes with venison,’ she said. The de Floures were bringing the venison, their family tradition. ‘Do you think the American will want ketchup?’ Audrey continued, ‘Have we got any? But, darling, hadn’t you better get to bed? You have to be up early.’
Daniel sat at the kitchen table. ‘I wouldn’t mind a whisky first.’
‘There’s one in for Christmas,’ Theo told Daniel, ‘the Macallan, your favourite.’ Theo poured three whiskies. They clinked their glasses, although Audrey thought this was common.
Dan said: ‘Don’t put our presents under the tree. We’ll have them later when everyone’s gone home.’
‘What about the dogs’ presents?’ said Theo. ‘I’ve done their stockings.’
‘What?’ cried Audrey ‘But they’re still awake!’
In church the next morning, the de Floures sat slightly apart from the rest in the family pew, with its own door, velvet kneelers and access to the family tombs behind, anticipating a distinction in the afterlife as in this.
Today the pew was fuller than usual; Bernard, dressed like a farmer in his Sunday best, was joined by his daughter Honoria in jeans and boots and a cashmere shawl, which made her look glorious, and his son Alex in jeans and boots and a leather jacket, which made him look Camden Market.
Artwork by David Young depicting a scene from the festive murder mystery novel
Jane and Victor were there too; she was dressed like Nancy Reagan at Thanksgiving, he in the same tweed suit he had worn yesterday, which looked even more out of place because he had tried too hard to look right.
That awkwardness was evident again when he tried to join in. He may have started to rediscover the faith of his fathers, but he was still unsure when to stand and when to sit, holding his hymn book upside down and back to front. He stood when Bernard got up to read the lesson and sat down again in a slightly pantomime way, as if it were something he had intended to do.
At the end of a service, Bernard was normally out of his pew and halfway down the aisle before the organist had played three bars but, at Christmas especially, noblesse oblige, so he stood at the door with Daniel wishing parishioners ‘a very merry Christmas!’
When all the parishioners had left, Daniel stood talking to Honoria and Alex by the porch. ‘Your mother is being quite mysterious about the bread sauce,’ said Honoria. ‘I can’t wait to try it.’
‘Yes, Mum does something with hers that elevates it. I don’t know what.’
‘Shall we go?’ Bernard said – it was a command, not a question. ‘We’ll be with you at half past twelve, Daniel. What’s the time now?’
‘It’s nearly twelve,’ said Honoria. ‘Why don’t you just come to the rectory now?’ said Daniel. ‘Pointless to go home only to turn round again and come back.’
‘Alex and I have got to pick up the venison,’ said Honoria. ‘But, Daddy, you don’t need to come back.’
‘Why don’t you go over to the rectory?’ Daniel told Bernard. ‘I’ve just got to lock up, won’t be a minute.’
Arriving at the rectory, Bernard went to the back door. The kitchen windows were steamed up thanks to the battery of pans boiling on the Aga.
The radio was now playing Christmassy comedy clips, and Audrey was singing Stately As A Galleon and did not see Bernard let himself in. It was only when he wished her a merry Christmas that she turned round.
‘Bernard!’ she said crossly. ‘Really!’ She was not only startled, but disconcerted that his Lordship had caught her in the kitchen in her floury pinny.
‘Audrey,’ he said, unusually defensive, ‘Daniel said I could…’
Audrey recovered herself.
‘I wasn’t expecting you for another half an hour! I’m not respectable.’
She wiped her hands on her pinny, emblazoned with the
logo of the Champton and Badsaddles WI. ‘Come through,’ she said. ‘Theo’s in the drawing room… Theo, would you please take care of Lord de Floures? I’m at a critical stage with lunch.’
‘Oh, hello,’ said Theo, peering behind him, ‘Can I get you a drink? Sherry? Henkell Trocken? Shloer?’
Bernard could not help saying, ‘What sort of sherry?’
‘Croft Original, I think,’ said Theo, then he added in a fruity voice, ‘One instinctively knows when something is right…’
In this instalment, a post-Christmas dinner game of charades turns a sinister turn
‘What?’
‘It’s from the advert on telly.’
‘I’ll take one.’
Theo poured him a glass.
‘Don’t you do television advertisements?’ said Bernard. ‘Alex told me you were once a squirrel eating a chocolate bar. Was it a squirrel?’
Theo was an actor, quite well known now, and for that reason, when he spent Christmas at Champton, was rather a draw with the locals.
‘Yes,’ said Theo, ‘at the start of my career. It’s mostly television now, a bit of film.’
‘What might I have seen you in?’
‘I play a character in a soap opera. A policeman. In Appletree End.’
Bernard took a sip of sherry. ‘I think that’s the programme our cook likes. But what might I have seen you in?’
Miss March was the first to arrive after Bernard on the very stroke of half past twelve. The owner of the dress shop was dressed as she was always dressed, soberly, in a grey tweed suit from Harvey Nichols but in a concession to the gaiety of the season she wore a holly-shaped brooch.
Audrey introduced her to Bernard, ‘Miss March, you know Lord de Floures?’
‘Yes, merry Christmas, m’lord,’ said Miss March, and for an awful moment Audrey thought she might curtsey.
Bernard was not quite sure what to say for a moment, for his social antennae flashed contradictory messages – shopkeeper and fellow lunch guest – but he decided on ‘Merry Christmas’ because you can’t go wrong with that.
Daniel came back from locking up the church next, followed by Alex and Honoria.
Honoria had the large wicker basket she usually took shopping, picturesquely, on London’s King’s Road and Alex, in oven gloves, had an enormous stock pot.
As Audrey took control of supplies in the kitchen, Theo went to see to the guests’ refreshments in the drawing room: Shloer for Miss March, who did not drink, which made Bernard less inclined to make an effort; another sherry for him; a first sherry for Daniel.
Alex and Honoria had been crisply ordered out of the kitchen and been given plates of hot appetisers – devils on horseback and prawn vol-au-vents – to take to the drawing room.
‘Didn’t you bring Jane and Victor?’ said Bernard.
‘They decided to walk, Daddy,’ said Honoria.
‘Jane? Walk?’
‘I thought it odd too,’ said Honoria, for her father’s cousin was notorious for doing nothing energetic at all when she came to stay.
There was another ring on the doorbell. It was Neil, who for Christmas Day had put on his court-appearance suit, in which he looked more like a defendant than a police officer for he was built for sport, not elegance.
‘Merry Christmas, one and all,’ he said, and presented Theo with half a dozen bottles of Stella Artois.
The door bell rang again. Audrey ran out of the kitchen to open the door to Jane and Victor, who both had red spots on their cheeks. ‘You must be freezing!’ said Audrey.
‘So cold, but we wrapped up warmly,’ Jane replied, and almost did a twirl.
Oh, thought Audrey, now I know why you chose to walk. ‘Let me take your coat, Jane,’ she said. It was a fur. Not just fur; a sable, knee length, cut beautifully. ‘What a glorious thing,’ she said.
‘Thank you. Present from Santa,’ said Jane. ‘Lovely Santa, though if he had really thought it through, it would have been ankle length.’ She gave her husband a sour little smile.
As Audrey hurried back to the kitchen, Theo came over with the plate of devils on horseback.
‘But there’s some sort of sweet pickle on it,’ said Jane.
‘It’s marmalade.’
‘Good lord!’ said Jane.
‘One of my mother’s innovations,’ said Daniel.
Theo offered them to Victor. ‘No, thanks,’ he said, ‘I can’t.’
‘I thought that when I heard ‘marmalade’ too,’ said Theo, ‘but it works.’
‘It’s not that. I have a strict diet. Allergies.’
Jane gave him a chilly look. ‘No one’s interested in that.’
Daniel said, ‘But you must say if there’s anything you can’t eat. I’m sure we can find something you can.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Jane, ‘he’s fine with vegetables and… are we having turkey?’
‘There’s turkey and venison.’
‘Ours?’ asked Jane.
‘It’s from the estate. Does that make a difference?’
It made no nutritional difference at all, but Jane would not let an opportunity to remind her interlocutors of the social distance pass.
Soon all were at their appointed places at the table, Audrey having lain awake much of the night agonising over ‘placements’.
Theo got up and took a claret jug from the sideboard.
‘Ah, is that my claret?’ said Bernard in a faintly seigneurial way.
‘It is, and thank you,’ said Theo, starting to pour for Jane.
‘Not for Victor,’ she said, ‘sulphides.’
‘Oh, come on, it’s the holidays!’ Victor said.
‘You can if you want to, but you know you’ll pay for it if you do.’
‘Just a small glass?’
‘On your own head be it.’
Theo poured a full measure of wine into Victor’s glass. He noticed Jane’s lips purse as she said, ‘Do you have a jug, I’m going to get some water.’
Theo said, ‘In the corner cupboard in the kitchen.’
Audrey looked up from carving the turkey and said in her brightly menacing tone, ‘Theo will take care of that, Jane!’
Now Jane was heading for the door to the kitchen. ‘I’ll just follow my nose,’ she said, ‘and it smells so delicious.’
‘Dan, carve,’ ordered Audrey, ‘I’ll go and fetch the gravy and the… extras.’
She patted down her pinny and scooted off towards the kitchen.
There she found Jane, not by the sink but standing over the Aga.
‘Jane, you wanted a jug
of water?’
Jane turned. ‘Oh, yes, I couldn’t find…’
‘The tap is over the sink, dear, where it usually is.’ She smiled. ‘The cold one is marked with a C.’
‘Yes,’ said Jane, pretending not to notice the barb, ‘but I’m so intrigued by these’ – she extended her hands over the hot plates – ‘I haven’t had bread sauce since… I think it was after a shoot here, years ago.’ She sniffed. ‘What is it… nutmeg?’
‘Just store-cupboard basics…’
‘And there’s bay and there’s… something else.’
The pudding had burnt with a satisfactory blue flame. The silver sixpence buried within was preserved for this use in the Clement family for three generations, writes Reverend Coles
‘Oh, it will stick and burn!’ said Audrey, and half shoved Jane out of the way to rescue the sauce, which didn’t need rescuing. Audrey stirred the bread sauce with a purpose that suggested that as far as she was concerned the conversation was over.
Audrey was enjoying a moment of triumph. Around her table her guests awaited: a peer of the realm! Two Honourables (perhaps three; she wasn’t sure if Jane was one or not)! A Boston Brahmin! Her marvellous sons! Her eye rather glided over Miss March and DS Vanloo, and instead took in the magnificence of her table. Silver glowed and crystal shone; the plates were laden with food; holly and ivy had been carefully strewn around.
She sat, which Bernard took as a cue to start, but as he reached for the gravy Daniel stood and said, ‘Let us pray for these and all his gifts. May God’s name be thanked and praised…’
‘Amen!’ said Bernard, but Daniel wasn’t done.
He concluded – ‘… we ask this, through Our Incarnate Lord, Jesus Christ, in whose name all gifts are blessed…’ – he said ‘Amen’ and there followed one of those distinctively Church of England moments of confusion when no one was sure what they were meant to do, and a little Mexican wave of uncertain movement passed round the table.
‘Oh, how… gymnastic,’ said Jane, reaching resolutely for the bread sauce.
The Christmas pudding had burnt with a satisfactory blue flame. The silver sixpence buried within the pudding, preserved for this use in the Clement family for three generations, went to Honoria. Jane, having asked for a fruit plate for Victor instead, had said, ‘See, it’s not only the nuts that could have choked you, Victor.’
The fire suddenly spat and roused Audrey, who looked at the clock on the mantelpiece and shouted ‘The Queen!’
She shooed all her guests into the drawing room, and, as three o’clock struck from the church tower, the television screen lit up.
There was an awkward moment when the National Anthem was played and Bernard thought it proper to stand, so everybody else had to also, but he rather struggled to get out of the sofa, and by the time he was up the sovereign was already victorious, happy and glorious.
After the Queen’s speech, Theo suggested a game of charades.
‘Sure,’ said Victor, ‘I love charades!’
‘Just a minute,’ said Jane.
‘No charades?’ said Victor with a note of impatience.
‘Yes, charades, but there’s another custom of the season you seem to be forgetting.’ She pointed up. A pale greeny-grey ball of mistletoe was directly overhead. Victor looked surprised. ‘You mean you want…?’ ‘What does everybody do under the mistletoe? Merry Christmas, darling,’ said Jane, and she went to embrace her husband. She more than embraced him; she planted her mouth on his in a way that went beyond the far edge of convivial.
‘Anyone else?’ said Jane.
They all took a step back.
Miss March made the error of being the first to guess Theo’s charade, The Go Between.
‘I will pass my go onto someone else,’ she said, ‘I’m a far better guesser than a doer.’
This was met with universal dissent.
‘Please I would rather sit this one out. I think I will nominate…’ she glanced around the room and her eyes fell on Victor.
‘Great, I’ve got one,’ said Victor and went to stand in front of them. ‘What’s the sign for a movie?’
‘No talking!’ said Alex snippily. ‘There are rules.’
They all mimed a film camera being cranked.
‘OK! Sorry!’ said Victor.
He cranked.
‘Film!’ they said.
He held up three fingers.
‘Three words!’
He held up one finger.
‘First word!’
He mimed a pistol and shot Jane, which struck Audrey as unhusbandly, but she said nothing.
‘Shoot!’
‘Murder?’
‘Murder on the Orient Express?’
He shook his head and held up two fingers.
‘Second word.’
He thought for a moment and then loosened his collar.
‘Collar!’
‘Hot?’
He shook his head, then pretended to write something. Then he looked up in a fey way, as if for inspiration, and wrote again.
‘Oscar Wilde!’
He mimed a ‘sort of’.
‘Shakespeare?’
Another ‘sort of’.
‘Hamlet!’
He shook his head, tried to loosen his collar again and gulped.
‘Strangle?’
He shook his head.
He mimed writing again, took a couple of mincing steps, then fell to the floor dramatically, clutching at his throat.
Victor shuddered and lay still.
‘Got it,’ said Honoria. ‘Dead Poets Society!’
‘Brilliant!’ said Alex and they all applauded. ‘And marvellous performance, Victor, you should get the Oscar.’
But Victor did not stir.
- Adapted by James Carey-Douglas from Murder Under The Mistletoe by Reverend Richard Coles (Orion, £12.99). © Richard Coles 2024. To order a copy for £11.69 (offer valid to 04/01/25; UK P&P free on orders £25), go to www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.
