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

by Kate Atkinson

Then, of course, poor Johnny handily succumbed to the mushrooms. Inocybe rimosa. It was a mushroom whose effect mimicked the signs of a stroke. Lady Milton had found it “on line.”

Lady Milton had hoped to have been banished to the Dower House by now, but instead Piers had let it out as an “Airbnb,” which was just a badly spelled bed and breakfast without the breakfast, as far as she could see.

Was it possible that he had poisoned his father?

Piers had pushed for cremation. Lady Milton had resisted.

Lady Milton was startled by a disturbingly loud thud-thud-thud, climaxing in a tremendous crash. It was exactly the kind of noise that Nanny would make if she fell down the stairs.

Lady Milton braced herself for disaster. “Is it Nanny?” she hazarded. Both girls nodded mutely.

Nanny was so resilient it wouldn’t have surprised Lady Milton if she hadn’t already turned up as a ghost in the yew.

The line had ended in daughters, as it said in Debrett’s. Girls, let’s face it, were a curse on a family.

She pushed on stubbornly past the point of no return.

She must get a grip, mustn’t fall prey to hallucinations. That had been Ariadne, Piers’ first wife. Always seeing things that weren’t there. Said she was being “gaslit” by Piers, which was ridiculous, there’d been no gas lamps in the house since long before the war.

“Steady the buffs,” Lady Milton said to herself, lifting the barrel of the shotgun and talking into the snow. “Halt!” she said in the voice she had to use sometimes to the dogs. “Who goes there?”

How long-suffering dogs were, how uncomplaining. He would try to be more like a dog in future. A purposeful collie, perhaps. Or a big, easy-going Leonberger.

He yomped on though, trying to conjure the spirit of Shackleton. Ben admired Shackleton enormously. He had cared about the survival of his men more than he had cared for himself or for glittering prizes.

He felt a sudden surge of compassion for the world in general, for the dog in particular. “Come on, now,” he said softly in the dog’s frozen ear, “best paw forward.”

“Fingerprinted like a common criminal,” she complained. “Why don’t you just put me in handcuffs and throw me in an oubliette?”

Fingerprinting had been no help at all, except to reveal that there wasn’t a single member of staff, apart from the butler,

who didn’t have a conviction of one kind or another, even Cook.

“There’s a ghost up here, the Grey

Lady—some Milton woman who jumped off the battlements after her fiancé died. She wanders around looking for him.” “You’ve seen her?” she asked cynically. “Me? No. It’s a bitch if you see her, because it means that you’re about to die.”

The maw of oblivion was where all the lost things were kept. It would be discovered at the end of time.

Her heart had, undeniably, warmed when he had introduced her as his daughter at Dorothy Padgett’s funeral. It unsettled her more than she would ever be prepared to let on.

Who did you call when you’d got yourself into this kind of trouble? The AA? The traffic cops? Ghostbusters?

Its uncertain status made him cautious—who was to say a thief hadn’t parked it temporarily in the church and wouldn’t come back for it? He decided he’d better keep it close and take it with him to Janet’s, that being the most likely place he would find his phone.

No, what Janet had was a hole in the middle of her forehead, like a stigma.

The so-called “golden years” (really should be called the “rust years”) came attended by a retinue of unfriendly ailments.

Something was nagging at the corners of his brain. An omission. Something he hadn’t asked.

When you witnessed the codicil to Dorothy’s will, you said ‘the wee lassie’ was present as well.” “I did. Alice often popped in to see her gran, with the bairn. None of the others ever bothered.”

The place was in chaos, drawers upended, papers scattered everywhere. Somebody had been very keen to find something.

Best to be practical in the face of madness, Ben thought. “Let’s find something to move her with, then,” he said.

Cosmo had been unfazed by Nanny. “Ding-dong! The witch is dead,” he said. Lady Milton was surprised to find herself feeling almost sorry for Nanny. “Yeah,” Cosmo said, “I suppose she must have been human once.”

Private Dogsbody had been promoted to Major Domo, or perhaps even to General Factotum.

Be still, my beating heart, she thought. She felt slightly sick.

The dish found the tracksuited man’s head, knocking him off balance and resulting in him discharging the gun into the air.

The man slunk off, blood pouring down his face. Lady Milton was rather proud of herself, and it was not often that she felt she could say that.

A woman rendered in flesh and blood rather than oil paints. Put a short black wig and spectacles on her and she was the waitress who had cleared away the drinks in the Library before the start of the Murder Mystery.

Put a sensible skirt and blouse on her and brush her hair and she was Sophie Greenway. Give her a brown and yellow tabard and she was Melanie Hope.

she might bump into you in a café in Leeds and slip a tracker in...

The Turner was all that was left of any real value, so Piers said to take that instead.”

I was genuinely fond of Lady Milton. Dorothy Padgett, as well. I was a good friend to her.” “Such a good friend that you robbed her blind. So what happened to the Turner?” She laughed. “Turned out it was a fake. I couldn’t sell it. Piers still owes me for that.”

“Come on,” she said. “You haven’t touched your whisky. Drink with me.” He sighed. He drank.

You know he caught gonorrhoea in Cairo during the war but didn’t tell his new bride? She was an innocent. When her GP told her, Dorothy thought Gonorrhoea was a girl’s name. It made her infertile, hence the adoption of the twins.”

He was in the air, looking down at himself lying on the battlements. That woman in grey flitted into view again. He doubted she could help him. Was he dying?

The someone smiled at Beatrice as she handed her a helmet. Jackson couldn’t hear what they said to each other, but there was no doubt who the someone was. Alice Smithson.

“Reggie? Reggie’s here? Reggie Chase?” He was trying to destroy her mind. Yes, that’s what he was doing, destroying her mind. Nothing new there, then.

An escaped prisoner shooting at people (at her!) and the vicar succumbing to a heart attack. Lady Milton hadn’t enjoyed herself this much in years. They must hold more Murder Mysteries at Burton Makepeace, she thought happily.

Ben came, attached to his drip, every afternoon to have a chat with Simon. When Simon woke up in the hospital, he found that his voice had returned.

“Good old Ben, not many people acquire a girlfriend when they’re lying at death’s door.” The door hadn’t opened. Ben was lucky.

“I just wanted to say that I was sorry I never came to see you before I left Burton Makepeace. I should have said goodbye. I suppose I left in a bit of a hurry. Mea culpa.

“Open it after I’ve gone,” she said. She rose from her chair and said, “I’d love to stay, but I’m afraid I can’t.” She kissed him lightly on the cheek and said, “Goodbye, Simon.” And she was gone.