Hour Two: the order on the door
Nudge. Read the order the right way round and count forty days on from the day it names. Then find out what the Church calls that date: look up the feast that falls on it.
Harder
The house was shut up on the second of October. October has thirty-one days, so twenty-nine of the forty fall in October and eleven in November. The eleventh of November is the feast of St Martin.
The answer
The word is martinmas.
Read forwards, the order says the house was shut up the second of October till forty days be past. Twenty-nine days take you to the end of October and eleven more to the eleventh of November, the feast of St Martin, which the Church calls Martinmas.