I did have a bit of a party when I moved in. But all very low key and sophisticated. I’d been hoping to get my leg over Jackie, but she wasn’t having any. She told me that even though there wasn’t much that she wouldn’t do for a man in a Paul Smith suit, there was no way she was going to shag a bloke who was a painter and decorator. What did I think she was, a slapper?

I took that one on the chin and determined that one day...

One day...

Norman spoiled the party for me somewhat. He’d brought with him several bottles of home-brewed sprout brandy, of which he imbibed too freely. In a moment of drunken bonhomie, he called me his bestest friend and said that this was the bestest party he’d ever been to.

Except for one he’d been to back in ‘sixty-three, where somebody had blown up the host’s dog with dynamite.

Oh how we laughed.

I was really up for rebuilding that conservatory. I’d managed to get copies of the original plans from the Memorial Library and a nearby foundry had agreed to take on the job of casting the columns and decorative ironwork.

When, in the January of the following year, the Doveston told me that it was time to move again, I said no. I wanted to stay where I was, complete the conservatory and once again be a Brentonian.

To my great surprise the Doveston said that he didn’t mind. I could keep the house, but on one condition. He himself had recently acquired a property in Sussex. If I would decorate that for him at no charge, the house in the Butts was mine.

I readily agreed.

I was pretty nifty now, when it came to the old renovating. I had a small team of lads who worked for me and we breezed through it at the hurry-up. I figured that a month or two’s work on the Doveston’s property, in exchange for Uncle Jon Peru’s house, was an offer I couldn’t refuse.

There was just the one question that I should have asked.

And this was: ‘How big is this property?’

The winter of ‘eighty-five was the coldest ever on record. The River Thames froze over and thousands died from hypothermia. Few of these thousands, I suspect, left Filofaxes to their next of kin. The nation had divided itself into two separate classes. The we-have-lots and the we-have-bugger-alls. The we-have-lots were topping off their walls with razor-wire. The we-have-bugger-alls were planning revolution.

The Doveston’s limo, an armoured affair with bullet-proof glass and gun-ports on the roof, picked me up on a February morning to ferry me down to Sussex. The snow had been falling non-stop for almost a month and if it hadn’t been for the chains on the tyres and the snow-plough on the front, I doubt whether we could ever have completed the journey.

I’d never been to Sussex before and all I knew of the countryside was what all Londoners knew: the folk there lived in thatched cottages, hunted foxes and shagged the sheep. When not shagging sheep, they shagged their daughters, and if their daughters weren’t keen, they set to work on the chickens.

I am prepared to agree now that this commonly held view of country folk is not altogether accurate. Most country folk do not shag their sheep, their daughters or their chickens.

They do, however, practise human sacrifice in their worship of Satan. But who doesn’t nowadays?

And they do make nice jam.

The Doveston’s property was situated on the edge of a picture-postcard village called Bramfield, some ten miles north of Brighton.

Bramfield skulked in the South Downs. Most villages nestle, but not Bramfield. Bramfield was a definite skulker. It had its head down. It was cowering. And, as we reached the end of the High Street, it was plain to see from what.

Ahead, across the snow-covered fields, arose a terrible building. It looked as I imagine Gormenghast must look. A great black hulking Gothic nightmare of a place, all twisted towers and high cupolas, gabled roofs and flying buttresses.

‘Look at that bloody horrible thing,’ I said as we approached it.

The Doveston raised an eyebrow to me.

‘It’s not?’ I said.

‘It is,’ was his reply.

And the nearer we got, the bigger it grew, for such is the nature of things. When we stepped from the car into three feet of snow, it was heads back all and gape up.

Jackie huddled in her mink and her mouth was so wide that I’m sure I could have climbed in there to shelter from the cold. The Doveston’s chauffeur, Rapscallion, took off his cap and mopped at his African brow with an oversized red gingham handkerchief ‘Lordy, lordy, lordy,’ was all he had to say.

I, however, had quite a bit more. ‘Now just you see here,’ I began. ‘If you think I’m going to decorate this monstrosity for you, you’ve got another think coming. Who owned this dump before you bought it, Count Dracula?’

‘Most amusing.’ The Doveston grinned a bit of gold in my direction. ‘I have my laboratory here. I only wish you to decorate some of the apartments.’

‘Laboratory?’ I shook my head, dislodging the ice that was forming on my hooter. ‘I assume that you have an assistant called Igor, who procures the dead bodies.’

‘He’s called Blot, actually.’

‘What?’

‘Let’s go inside before we freeze to death.’

‘We belong dead,’ I muttered, in my finest Karloff.

Inside it was all as you might have expected. Pure Hammer Films. A vast baronial hall, flagstones underfoot and vaulted ceiling high above. Sweeping staircase, heavy on the carved oak. Minstrels’ gallery, heavy on the fiddly bits. Stained-glass windows, heavy on the brutal martyrdoms. Wall-hanging tapestries, heavy on the moth. Suits of armour, heavy on the rust. Authentic-looking instruments of torture.

Heavy.

It was grim and lit by candles and the fire that blazed within a monstrous inglenook. Everything about it said, ‘Go back to London, young master.’

‘Let’s go back to London,’ I suggested.

‘Too late now,’ the Doveston said. ‘It’s getting dark out. We had best stay for the night.’

I sighed a deep and dismal. ‘This is undoubtedly the most sinister place I’ve ever been in,’ I said. ‘It literally reeks of evil. I’ll bet you that all the previous owners came to meet terrible ends. That half of them are walled up in alcoves and that at midnight you can’t move for spectres with their heads clutched underneath their arms.’

‘It does have a certain ambience, doesn’t it?’

‘Sell the bugger,’ said I. ‘Or burn it down and claim the insurance money. I’ll lend you my lighter if you want.’

‘I have plenty of lighters of my own.’ The Doveston took off his designer overcoat and warmed his hands beside the fire. ‘But I have no intention of burning it down. This is more than just a place to live. A title goes with it as well.’

‘The House of Doom,’ I suggested.

‘A title for me, you buffoon. I am now the Laird of Bramfield.’

‘Well pardon me, your lordship. Does this mean that you will soon be riding to hounds?’

‘It does.’

‘And shagging the sheep?’

‘Watch it.’

‘Oh yes, excuse me. If I recall correctly, it will be the chickens that have to keep their backs to the henhouse wall.’

A look of anger flashed in his eyes, but I knew he wouldn’t dare to strike me. Those days were gone, but it wasn’t too smart to upset him.

‘So that’s why you bought it,’ I said. ‘So you could be Lord of the Manor.’

‘Partly. But also because it can be easily fortified. I’m having the moat redug and a high perimeter fence put up.

‘That should please the locals.’

‘Stuff the locals.’

‘Quite so.’

‘But don’t you see it? The kudos of owning a place like this? I shall be able to entertain wealthy clients here. Hold stupendous parties.’

‘Hm,’ I went. ‘You’ll have to do something about the ambience then.’