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

by Kate Atkinson

He was in a dark mood, feeling the weight of history on his back. His teenage son, Nathan, clearly wasn’t going to take up the burden.

He supposed she was the sort of woman who thought he was an idiot from the get-go, although he seemed to meet no other kind these days.

A woman’s world. “Well, you’re an honorary woman now,” Marlee laughed. “Have been for a long time,” he said. “Not really,” Marlee said.

He shot a worried glance at his sister. Seemed like he was going off-script, improvising. “Mum was a wonderful woman,” he said, changing tack and grabbing the nearest sentence and hanging on for dear life.

She seemed as if she was part of the weight of history, too. Even the weasel added a couple of pounds to the total, he supposed, although he had no clear idea of the weight of a weasel.

“It must have been lovely once,” Sophie said, casting an eye around the dusty glass panes and rusting ironwork. “Everything was lovely once,” Lady Milton said. “Perhaps not everything,” Sophie murmured.

It was a mental asylum by any other name, but you weren’t supposed to call them that any more. Best simply to keep one’s thoughts to oneself. (Difficult.)

“Have another sponge drop,” Sophie said, urging the plate on her. “I shouldn’t,” Lady Milton said glumly. “But I shall.”

A Scottish child masquerading as a detective had been sent to interrogate her for the umpteenth time.

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

“What shall we pray for, Reverend Cate?” “Do call me Simon, Beryl. I don’t know—you choose, Beryl.” You could pray for my soul, he thought. Did he have one? Good question.

“Find anything?” his “girlfriend” Tatiana asked. “I have no idea.” “Some detective,” she said.

Tatiana’s current bedtime reading was a book about poisons. Should he be worried? “Hobby?” he enquired mildly. “Opposite,” she said cryptically. “Why are you asking?” “Just curious,” Jackson said. “Good job you’re not a cat, then.”

She couldn’t accompany him, she said, she was “terrifically busy” as “there’s so much to do when someone dies.” Jackson had always found the opposite—when people had died in his life, there had been nothing to do but grieve.

“Oh, yes, watching the world go by,” he said. Bob’s house and the Willows next door were the last two houses in the street, so hardly anyone passed by. Bob Gordon must spend a long time waiting for the world.

Ben thought that if he was euthanized he would like it to be at the hand of his compassionate sister. Killed with kindness. He supposed she had quite good drugs to get the job done. “Pentobarbital,” she said, “but I’m not going to put you down, Ben. So don’t ask.”

There was so much he seemed to have blanked out of his life. The good bits, mostly.

“One looks to the Church in times like this,” she said to him. He felt like telling her that she would be better off looking to the brandy bottle, but he supposed it was not the kind of advice she was seeking.

She had recently decided to practise being as serene as a Zen nun. It was a daily—nay, hourly—challenge. With Tiffany, it was every minute.

“You don’t understand consequences at that age,” Reggie said. Well, you did, but somehow they didn’t apply to you.

It was true she could be a bit of a battle-axe, but that was the kind of sexist terminology you were supposed to avoid. Words like fishwife, harridan, crone, virago, vixen, witch, harpy, shrew. There were a lot of them. The male equivalent was just “man.”

No one in the village had CCTV or alarm systems. “We trust each other,” Janet Teller said. Perhaps they shouldn’t.

But—and this is interesting—” “Are you sure?” “Yes.

He started the engine and said to Reggie, “Nothing like a funeral for a good day out, is there?” “Depends on who’s dead,” she said.

His heart was the repository of guilt. It was crammed now, painfully swollen with sins and misdemeanours. He fully expected it to burst any day.

One black dress looked much like another to Jackson, but what did he know? (“Nothing,” the Court of Women declared predictably.)

“Lost my way for a bit back there,” Lady Milton said. Me too, Ben thought, although for him it felt more like a metaphor.

“Where do you want to put us?” Hell, preferably, Ben thought, scanning the hall’s icy acreage of marble for somewhere to square the actors away.

He clinked glasses with everyone and said, “Here’s to a fun evening.” (Who was this person? Ben liked him. He might keep him.)

Apparently Roundhay Park had been a favourite hunting ground of the Yorkshire Ripper, something that was pointed out to Titus by several police officers and some angry women. (But then, weren’t they all? Certainly the ones he encountered.)

Reggie felt her heart skip a beat (yes, she did!) and thought—a man who enjoyed words! A handsome man who enjoyed words. A handsome man who enjoyed words who would also drag you out from a house on fire, pull you from the water if you were drowning, find you on the side of a mountain if you were lost. Of course, a good dog would also do all those things.

Creation was a lovely idea, but preferably without any people attached.

Man had fallen and had kept on falling and there was no sign of him stopping. The abyss was bottomless, apparently.

Can faith save him?’ Can it, Pastor Simon? Can faith alone save us?” Nothing can save us, he thought gloomily. Certainly not faith.

Lambskin. Was there a sadder word? Well, yes, many.

She sighed. Carl Carter had at least one gun, according to the news. Armed and extremely dangerous. Do not approach without back-up. And here she was, no back-up. Approaching. “Give me that poker,” she said to Simon Cate.

She was a criminal and a liar. Let’s face it, Jackson thought, that was his kind of woman. “In your dreams, old man,” a woman’s voice in his head said. Probably hers.

It had been therapeutic—not that she needed therapy, she was pretty mellow these days. (Really? she questioned her “mellow” self.)

“Some people have no sense,” Louise said. Most people, she thought.

And the sight of him still made her heart beat faster. She wouldn’t forgive her heart for that. It would be getting a good talking-to later.