Death at the Sign of the Rook (Jackson Brodie #6)

by Kate Atkinson

It wasn’t the siren call of a toasted teacake that drew him so much as the promise of order, of sanctuary even. “A clean, well-lighted place,” his ex, Julia, said when he had tried to explain the attraction. “That’s Hemingway, and don’t pretend you know that, because you don’t.”

“Its origins are lost in the mists of time, I’m afraid,” Hazel said. “It’s been hanging in Mum’s bedroom for as long as we can remember. Hasn’t it, Ian?”

He had spent a good several weeks being sensible and mature and then he bought a Land Rover Defender instead.

His granddaughter was called Niamh, after Jackson’s murdered sister. Jackson wasn’t sure it was a good idea to be named for the tragic dead, but Marlee had insisted that her baby be called after the aunt she had never known.

Dad was a bit of a bully,” he added softly. Ah, there it was, Jackson thought. Ian and Hazel went quiet for a moment, lost in a collective memory, and Jackson caught a glimpse of something long buried.

They had spent the last hour telling Jackson a lot of things that had nothing to do with why they had called him in. He still wasn’t entirely sure why they had called him.

Most of their ancestors had fled from the Famine, that much he knew because the folk memory of it had been in his mother’s bones. He supposed he should find out more, for the new Niamh.

Jackson didn’t know why he felt so suspicious of the pair. He just did. Sometimes your gut feeling was all you had.

Also in the room that Melanie Hope slept in was—clue alert!—a glossy, expensive hardback, titled Renaissance Portraiture.

“Mind if I take a quick look at the garden before I go?” “There’s nothing to see out there,” Hazel said. “No stone unturned,” Jackson said pleasantly. It was strange the way that Hazel and Ian gave off the aura of perpetrators, not victims.

Ian’s eyes moved rapidly from side to side (fascinating to observe) as he tried to remember his lines. He was more easily flustered than his abrasive sister. No helpful prompt was forthcoming from the living room. “Um,” he said eventually, “no idea.”

Absence was the foundation of a good marriage in Lady Milton’s opinion. At night they each kept to their own bedroom. Johnny had never been terrifically interested in that side of marriage.

And she had known, even then, that when you married the man you married the house as well. Sometimes, indeed, that was the better part of the bargain. And Burton Makepeace had been a rather grand house.

Apparently Johnny was “VSIT,” an older girl whispered in her ear. “Very safe in taxis.”

She could hear Nanny clumping about somewhere upstairs like a troll. She felt suddenly terribly weary. “Don’t worry,” Sophie said, getting up. “I’ll see to her.”

“The guilty always masquerade as the innocent but it is rarely the other way round.”

It was only later, when Lady Milton was pacing round the house, the dogs pattering at her heels, fretting about the whereabouts of a still-absent Sophie, that she noticed that although the Turner was hanging in its usual place, it was now merely an empty frame,

Sophie was nothing more than a lying thief. A viper in their nest.

A Scottish child masquerading as a detective had been sent to interrogate her for the umpteenth time. Lady Milton knew that the police were young these days (everyone was young) but this girl was surely an imposter.

Everything was in decline, almost as though the Turner had left a curse in its wake. It was not just Sophie who had gone, of course. Johnny was absent now, as were Trudi and the poppets.

He supposed that anarchy, like sex, was best left to the young, as they were blissfully blind to the consequences of both.

it was easier to believe in the devil than it was in God. The devil was everywhere, whereas God was, clearly, nowhere to be found.

He felt as if he were overseeing the final death throes of Christianity. Someone had to, it may as well be him.

He had tried to be quiet and discovered, not for the first time, how difficult he found it.

Religion indicated bias, like being a Tory or admiring Wagner’s music, no matter how left-wing or open to ideas he remained.

“I’m sure you’re not the only cleric who finds himself an atheist,”

“Best just to carry on as if you still believed. I don’t think it makes much difference, to be honest.”

Sold to the highest bidder, like any other object, except that she had to bring her own payment with her as a dowry.

Secondly, the couple in question had kept it behind their bedroom door, where they were the only people who ever saw it, and, thirdly, the painting was valued at a whopping one hundred and sixty-five million dollars.

Out of all the women he’d ever known, Louise Monroe was the one he probably shouldn’t have let go.

No spectacles though. The Ancient Egyptians would have buried them with her so she could see her way in the underworld.

Then, when Isaac was six months old, Simon woke up one morning and realized he’d slept for the whole night for the first time since his son was born. They had fed him at midnight, and he had slept through.

He suddenly felt very fond of her. He had a wife and a son. He was a Man of God. “All shall be well,” he murmured.

“Come on, sleepyhead. The Kraken is yet to wake, let’s make the most of it.” It was odd how he remembered those words.

Isaac was dead, of course, as cold as clay. He had died sometime in the night, while they were blissfully asleep. “Cot death,” the coroner said, no one was to blame, they couldn’t have known.

If Simon had loved his son more, if he had loved him as he should have loved him, perhaps the boy would have lived.

His love for his son had a ferocity that frightened him sometimes. There was no comfort to be had. All manner of things shall never be well.

Despite the coroner’s assertion that no one was to blame for Isaac’s death, Simon blamed himself every day. He wasn’t fit to look after anything, even a dog, perhaps especially not a dog.

He would not regain his voice. He would not be saved. He would not be forgiven. Domine, dimitte peccata mea.

What wounded him was that she had left without saying goodbye, as if their friendship was as false as her name. Another little rent in his soul, so torn now that it was nothing but rags.

She was an empathy-free zone, she should be working with objects not people, in Reggie’s opinion.

“I was a bright girl once,” she had said. “Now look at me, a boring old battle-axe.” She wasn’t, of course, she was handsome and whip-smart and about to be promoted to ACC, she’d probably retire as Chief Constable.

Words like fishwife, harridan, crone, virago, vixen, witch, harpy, shrew. There were a lot of them. The male equivalent was just “man.”

He constituted part of the mess out there on the mean streets. Whenever she saw him, he brought a tsunami of it in his wake that would have defeated Marie Kondo.

It was at times like this that she was surprised to find herself missing Johnny. He must have been more of a companion than she had realized.

Mushroom, as it happened, was a soup Johnny had been fond of, so at least his last meal had been something he liked. Trudi had picked the mushrooms herself.

Piers, lunching with his father, had been the sole family witness to his father’s demise. Johnny was the only one to eat the soup, but the

pathologist was confident his death had nothing to do with what he had eaten. He was an old pal of Piers ...

The roof would never be fixed properly now. It would cave in eventually and crush them all in their beds. “The Fall of the House of Milton,” Cosmo said, making it sound like a horror story.

Johnny had spent his last weeks on this Earth closeted in his study, plotting to disinherit both Piers and Cosmo.