Death's Jest-Book (45 page)

At first the guy's absence was
just a cause of irritation. But soon, when he couldn't be found
anywhere, it became a matter of real alarm.

Concern that he might have
slipped and hurt himself sent us out into the pine forest, looking
for tracks and calling his name. We all tried to recall when last
we'd seen him, and established that since Jacques and I said
goodnight to him in the chalet the previous evening, nobody had had
sight of him. Except of course me, and I could hardly explain about
that. The weather, after the brief interlude of clear frosty skies we
had on New Year's Eve, has returned to low cloud and swirling mist
and temperatures high enough to turn the snow soft and mushy.
Darkness will be upon us even earlier than usual this afternoon. It
was time, Linda decided, to call off our amateur search and inform
the authorities. So now I'm back here in the chalet, turning to you
for comfort again, Mr Pascoe. Everyone else is back in the castle,
waiting for the police. Only Jacques is still out there with a couple
of local forestry workers, refusing to give up the search.

I can hear shouting outside,
perhaps they've found him, I hope to God they have.

This is truly dreadful. I went
out and saw that the disturbance was coming from the lake shore.
Jacques was in the water up to his waist and the forestry men were
having a hell of a job to drag him out.

It seems one
of the men spotted tracks leading out on to the ice and, without a
thought for his own safety, Jacques had rushed out there. The ice,
weakened by the thaw, soon gave way. Jacques, thank heaven, is safe
and well. We got him into the chalet and dried him off. Half an hour
later the police arrived with proper equipment. As they started work,
the snow stopped and the clouds thinned enough for the dying rays of
the declining sun to cast a sickly pink patina across the lake's
surface.
Blutensee,
I thought. At that moment I knew the
worst, and a minute or two later, the cries of the leading policeman
confirmed it.

A little beyond where Jacques had
reached, only a few inches beneath the water, rested the body of
Frere Dierick.

What had induced him to walk on
the lake we can only surmise. Perhaps in the swirling snow he wasn't
even aware he was walking across ice. I feel full of guilt lest it
was the sight of Mouse and myself naked on the bed which had so
distracted him he did not pay heed where he was going. But I comfort
myself with the memory of his smile, and his careful closing of the
door, neither of which suggested any great mental distraction.

Whatever, it is another tragedy.
How they seem to follow me around. Or perhaps it is Thomas Lovell
Beddoes they follow. Remember Browning's strange superstitious fear
at the prospect of opening the Beddoes box? Perhaps he was right.
Could it be that Death, who was such a close and well-loved companion
of Beddoes for so many years, still stays close to those who would
uncover his friend's secrets, and that his company is the price that
must be paid for understanding?

But enough of horrors. There will
be an enquiry, of course, and we shall all have to make written
statements, but I do not doubt that the combined weight of authority
to be found in Linda and her guests will expedite matters and we
should all be on our way tomorrow at the latest.

I'll write again soon. And, by
the way, if you get any enquiries from the CIA or FBI or whoever does
the immigration checking at the US Embassy, I know I can rely on you
of all people to assure them that I'm leading a blameless life!

Yours fondly,

Franny

Ellie
Pascoe didn't know whether to feel happy or sad as she opened her
front door. January 7th, first day of waking to a Christmas-free
house after the traditional Twelfth Night clearance, and also the
first day of the new term. So now the place felt empty in every way
as she returned from dropping Rosie off.

She stooped to pick up the mail
from the hall floor and sorted through it quickly. There was one with
a Swiss postmark. She made a face as she put it on the hall table
with the rest of Peter's mail. Despite her public indifference to,
tinged with amusement at, the Roote letters, she wished they would
stop. To see a rational man irrationally troubled was a trouble.
Plus, the longer they went on, the more she began to question
Franny's motivation.

What was he getting out of
writing them? At first she'd seen them as a snook-cocking joke. But
now the joke was wearing thin, and when Roote talked about the
correspondence becoming a necessary part of his life, she half
believed him. So now she had two cases of obsessive behaviour to be
concerned about.

Perhaps, being further removed
from it, she would have a better chance of understanding Roote's than
her husband's.

She looked down at the letter,
felt tempted to open it, resisted. Women who opened their husband's
mail deserved everything they read. She knew how she'd react if she
found Peter had been at hers. If she were going to do anything, best
to throw it in the fire. But no doubt there'd be more and there was
no way to guarantee she'd get to the others first.

In any case, that was almost as
bad as opening them.

She checked her own three
letters. Two were charity follow-ups. Nowadays no one wrote just to
say thanks, they wrote to say thanks but it's not enough.

The third had an official but
non-charitable look.

She opened it as she went through
into the kitchen, read it quickly on the move, then sat down and read
it more slowly a second time.

Her intermittent researches into
Roote's genealogy had quickly run into the sand. Using as a starting
point Franny's assertion in his first letter that he had been born in
Hope, she had looked up the name in her Ordnance Survey atlas and
been a little taken aback to discover half a dozen places called Hope
and as many again which had enough of Hope in their name to make the
young man's jest allowable. She'd written to all the relevant
registrars' offices with the information she had and their replies
had been trickling in over several days. They ranged from the formal
to the friendly with one thing in common: no child with the name
Francis Xavier Roote had been registered inside the given time-frame.

Soon she was down to her last
Hope, a Derbyshire village in the Peak District, not far out of
Sheffield, and it was the County Registrar's letter she had in her
hand now.

She read it a third time. Yes, it
said, there was an entry for the name and date specified. Address 7
Post Terrace; mother Anthea Roote nee Atherton, housewife; father
Thomas Roote - and here came the bit that made her sit and read it a
third time - police officer.

She reached for the phone to ring
Peter. But to tell him what? Surprise surprise . . . but being
surprising wasn't the same as being helpful. Did it really matter?
Wasn't she by doing this merely feeding his obsession when she should
have been starving it?

She went back into the hall and
looked again at the letter with the Swiss stamp.

Sod it, let
Roote decide. If this was as innocuous as the last with its account
of Christmas fun, why keep the pot boiling? It might even be a
farewell. ..
Dear Mr Pascoe, my New Year resolution is to write to
you no more. Sorry for any trouble I've caused. Yours etc.

She ripped it open. No point
pussyfooting. If a woman was going to open her husband's mail, sod
steaming kettles. Let him see you might be nosey but at least you
weren't sneaky!

When she'd read it, she said, 'Oh
shit.'

Another death. Another death
which advantaged Roote. Truly the guy was either very lucky or. .
.No! That was like jumping into quicksand to save a sinking man.

But she could almost hear Peter's
reaction to the account of Frere Dierick's death.

Knowledge is power. She'd let
herself be talked once again into going shopping in Estotiland with
Daphne Aldermann. Daphne, an unrepentant shopaholic, had a theory
that the first Monday in January was the time to go to the
post-Christmas sales. 'In the early days’ she said, 'there are
so many people, they turn into a kind of lynch mob and you can wake
up next morning aghast at the memory of what you did the day before.
So wait till the crowds have gone, bearing with them most of the
chronic sales junk, and step in when they're putting out real
bargains to tempt the discerning customer.'

Ellie had let her arm be twisted
and now she was glad. Estotiland was a large step on the way to
Sheffield, the other side of which lay Hope. So an hour's shopping
with Daphne, then off south, and tonight with luck she'd be able to
amaze Peter with more than a mohair sweater in the kind of bold
design she loved but he hated.

In fact the
visit to Estotiland was quite useful for another reason. In a couple
of weeks' time Rosie was going to her friend Suzie's birthday party
in the Junior Jumbo Burger Bar. Ellie had promised she'd help. At the
same time her early-warning system had gone on to red alert at the
mention of burgers and this trip today gave her the chance to check
the kitchens for potential sources of salmonella,
E. coli,
and
CJD.

Daphne gave a long-suffering
sigh, but as she'd resolved long ago never to let Ellie have the
satisfaction of seeing her embarrassed, she strode boldly with her
into the kitchen where they were greeted with great courtesy and
invited to examine whatever they wanted to examine and ask any
questions they wanted to ask. All the meat was local, they were
assured, an assurance backed up with written details of provenance.
Standards of hygiene were exemplary, and supervision of the young
staff was militarily strict.

'Told you,' said Daphne as they
left. 'Estotiland is Paradise Regained. Now, let's go and pluck
ourselves some apples!'

A couple of hours and as many
mohair sweaters later, they reached the upper retail floor and Daphne
turned instinctively towards the lingerie department. Whether it was
Daphne or her husband, Patrick, who got off on silk next to the skin,
Ellie didn't know, but she saw that glazed look come into her
friend's eyes as they entered. Then she paused, wondering if the
condition was contagious, as everything seemed to tremble in front of
her as though somewhere deep beneath them an underground train had
gone rushing by.

'You OK?' said Daphne.

'I think so. Just something
walking over my grave, you know. Something big.'

'Probably that fat bastard poor
Peter works for. Let's go and find a seat, get a coffee, or take
lunch early. Did you eat any breakfast this morning?'

Touched by her friend's
willingness to turn away even from the gates of Paradise to offer
comfort, Ellie said, 'No, really, you go on. But I think maybe I have
had enough. I'll skip lunch, if that's OK, and head off. I've got
something I need to do in Sheffield.'

For some reason she didn't want
to give chapter and verse on Roote, maybe because it would have been
hard to explain without inviting comment on Peter's obsession.

An hour later she found herself
standing on the doorstep of 7 Post Terrace in Hope talking to a woman
called Myers who'd bought the house three years ago from a couple
called Wilkinson and had never heard of anyone called Roote.

As Ellie turned away in
disappointment, she heard an eldritch screech. She'd often wondered
what one of these would sound like, but she recognized it as soon as
she heard it. Its source seemed to be a neighbouring window, which
Ellie had noticed was wide open despite the cold, dank weather.

Peering in, she discovered that
the reason for the open window was to ensure as little as possible of
anything interesting was missed by an aged crone in a rocking chair
who without preamble told her that Mrs
Atherton-who-used-to-live-there-before-the-Wilkmsons' daughter Anthea
had married a man called Roote and, if Ellie cared to step inside,
all would be made clear.

Ellie was in like a shot and soon
discovered that her informant wasn't quite so ancient nor so
crone-like as at first appeared. Her name was Mrs Eel and she made a
nice cup of tea and a lovely Victoria sponge, and what was more she'd
lived there all her life and what she didn't know about Hope simply
wasn't knowledge.

From a somewhat rambling
narrative Ellie extracted a classic plot line.

Anthea Atherton's parents had
skimped and saved to give their attractive daughter the kind of
education which fitted her to move in circles full of rich young men
who spoke proper, lived in big houses, drove Range Rovers, and wanted
only the company of a beautiful and intelligent young spouse to make
their comfortable lives complete.

Then she'd thrown it all back in
their faces and married a cop.

Mrs Eel pronounced this punchline
with all the revulsion of Tony Blair discovering that one of his
cabinet was a socialist.

'How dreadful!' said Ellie. 'I
knew a girl who did the same. It never works. And this policeman, was
he local then?'

'Oh no. That would have been bad
enough. But this 'un worked down South’

More shock-horror. Ellie tried
for detail but it soon emerged that while Mrs Eel was needle-sharp on
Hope, she was a bit vague on South, which began immediately after
Bradwell two miles away. But she knew the cop's name was Tommy Roote
and he was a sergeant and how they'd met was there'd been some bother
at the posh boarding school Anthea went to, and the sergeant had been
part of the investigating team, and Anthea was only seventeen then.

‘Taking advantage of a
child, there should be laws against it,' concluded Mrs Eel.

‘I think there are,' said
Ellie.

'Likely, and him being a cop,
he'd know about 'em, which is why the cunning devil waited till
Anthea reached eighteen afore he married her.'