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transpired he did not, since Rufus Greenwood was as passionate about restoring the Winter’s End gardens as he was himself. He stayed on and Ottilie had the old coach house converted so she could divide her time between her husband at Winter’s End and her studio in Cornwall. Still does, though she is now widowed.’
‘So, who else is there? I remember a cook-housekeeper…’
‘Yes, Mrs Lark and her husband, Jonah, are the only live-in staff now. There are three gardeners—four, if you include the head gardener…’ He ruffled the papers a little, seemed about to say something, and then thought better of it. ‘Ye-es. There is a daily cleaner…and Mr Yatton, the estate manager, who like myself is semi-retired, but he comes in most mornings to the office in the solar tower.’
‘Four gardeners and only one cleaner? For a place that size?’ I exclaimed, amazed, because if there is one thing I do know about, it is the upkeep of old houses.
‘At first a cleaning firm was brought in occasionally, but I don’t think that has happened for three or four years now.’
‘A specialist firm? One used to dealing with the contents of historic buildings?’ I asked hopefully.
‘No, a local agency called Dolly Mops. They are very thorough—my wife uses them.’
I winced, thinking of all the damage a well-meaning but untrained cleaner might have inflicted on the fabric and contents of Winter’s End.
‘Then, of course, there are the Friends,’ Mr Hobbs added.
‘The…friends?’
‘The Friends of Winter’s End, a local group of history enthusiasts, who volunteer to come in on the summer opening days to sell tickets, and look after those rooms open to the public—the Great Hall and gallery. The houseand gardens are open two afternoons a week, from May to the end of August.’
‘I understand from Jack that the house is in very poor condition and there isn’t enough money to restore it. Is that so?’
‘While it is true that your grandfather diverted most of his income into renovating the gardens, he did not touch the capital, which is securely invested—though of course, no investments bring the returns they used to, and an old house like Winter’s End needs a considerable amount of keeping up. And unfortunately, he took out a bank loan when he started to restore the maze and the terraces, secured against the property, which is a drain on the estate.’
‘Jack mentioned that. How big a bank loan?’ I asked hesitantly. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know.
‘I believe there is still twenty thousand pounds outstanding.’
‘Good heavens!’
‘Yes, indeed—it is all quite a responsibility.’
The ‘r’ word again—and although I had pretty well run Blackwalls for Lady Betty, having the ultimate responsibility for my own stately pile was still a scary prospect. On the other hand, the thought of having a whole neglected house to put right sort of appealed…OK, I admit it, it drew me like a magnet, especially if this time the house I would be working in would actually be mine !
But I now had two rather differing views of my inheritance to compare—three, if you counted the letter from my grandfather that Mr Hobbs now handed to me, though actually it was more of a brief note scrawled in thin, spidery writing, urging me to complete the garden restoration project—his ‘Memorial to Posterity’ as he put it. It was abundantly clear that I needed to see Winter’s End for myself before deciding what to do, and the sooner the better: I would beupping sticks and decamping to rural west Lancashire as soon as I could get my act together.
Besides, I was beginning to feel a strong, almost fearful tug of attraction, as though some connecting umbilical cord stretched almost to invisibility had suddenly twitched, reminding me of its existence.
Mr Hobbs must have drawn his own conclusions from the expression on my face, for he seemed to relax and, with a satisfied smile, said, ‘So, I may inform the family that you will be