Death's Jest-Book

by Reginald Hill

  Albacore smiled and said, ‘Why, this is a pearl worth more than all your tribe, Dwight. Think what you have here. A contemporary copy of the contemporary life written by a man who actually visited Godric in his hut at Finchale, Reginald of Durham, a man himself of such piety and erudition that these qualities are said by tradition to be accorded to all subsequent clerks who bear that name and title. In other words you are touching the book that touched the hand of a man who touched the hand of the saint himself. Who could put a price on something like this?’

  ‘Well,’ said Dwight, unputdown, ‘I know a dealer called Trick Fachmann in St Poll who’d take a shot at it.’

  Even Albacore laughed, and now the conversation became general, running like quicksilver from tongue to tongue, good thing following good thing, wisdom and wit doled out in a prodigality of plenty, and I felt tears prick my eyes at the sense of privilege and pleasure in being part of this company in this place at this time.

  If it were now to die, ’twere now to be most happy …

  I could have stayed there forever, but all things have their natural foreordained ends, and finally we dispersed, some to their student staircases, Dwight and I making our unsteady way back to the Q’s Lodging, arm in arm for mutual support.

  I undressed and climbed into bed, but I could not go to sleep. At first it was because of my excitement at the world of profit and delight which seemed to be opening up before me. But then a sudden and complete reversal took place … from the might / Of joy in minds that can no further go, / As high as we have mounted in delight / In our dejection do we sink as low. Which is why, dear Mr Pascoe, my old leech-gatherer, I am sitting here propped up against my pillow, penning these words to you. Have I done the right thing in giving in to Albacore? In my last letter I was sure I had your approval. Now I am equally certain that you with your strong principles and unmoveable moral convictions will despise me for my venality. It’s so very important for me to get you to see my side of things. I am an innocent abroad here, a pygmy jousting with giants. It is not always given to us to choose the instruments of our elevation. You must have felt this sometimes in your relationship with the egregious Dalziel. You may well have wished on occasion that the glittering prizes of your career were not in the gift of such a one. And by indignities men come to dignities. And it is sometimes base.

  So if I seem to be asking for your blessing, it is beca

  Another interruption!

  What soaps my letters are turning out to be, every instalment ending in a cliffhanger!

  And this time what a climactic interruption, fit to rank with those end-of-series episodes of shows like Casualty and ER designed to whet your what-happens-next appetite to such an edge that you will return as hungry as ever after the summer break.

  But I mustn’t be frivolous. What we have here isn’t soap, it’s reality. And it’s tragic.

  It was the fearful clamour of a bell which distracted me.

  I leapt out of bed and rushed to the open window. Since my time in the Syke, I always sleep with my window open whatever the season. Looking out into the quad I could see nothing, but I could hear away to the right a growing hubbub of noise and, when I thrust my head out into the night air and looked towards it, it seemed to me that the dark outline of the building forming that side of the quad was already being etched against the sky by the rosy wash of dawn.

  Except it was far too early for dawn and anyway I was looking north.

  Pausing only to thrust my feet into my shoes and drag a raincoat round my shoulders, I rushed out into the night.

  Oh God, the sight I saw when I passed from the Q’s quad to the D’s quad!

  It was the Dean’s Lodging, no longer a thing of beauty but now crouched there, squat and ugly as a marauding monster, with a great tongue of flame coiling out of a downstairs window and greedily licking its facade.

  I hurried forward, eager to help but not knowing how I could. Firemen bearing hoses from the engine, which seemed to have got wedged under a Gothic arch that gave the only vehicular approach to this part of the college, some wearing breathing apparatus, moved around me with that instancy of purpose which marks the assured professional.

  ‘What’s happening for God’s sake?’ I cried to one who paused beside me to cast an assessing eye over the scene.

  ‘Old building,’ he said laconically. ‘Lots of wood. Three centuries to dry out. These places are bonfires waiting to be lit. Who’re you?’

  ‘I’m a …’ What was I? Suddenly I didn’t know. ‘I’m at a conference here.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, losing interest. ‘Need someone who knows who’s likely to be in there.’

  ‘I do know,’ I said quickly.

  He turned out to be the Assistant Chief Fire Officer, a good-looking young man in a clean-cut kind of way.

  I told him that, as far as I knew. Sir Justinian and Lady Albacore were the only inmates of the Lodging and tried to indicate from my memory of our tour where they were likely to be found. All of this he repeated into his walkie-talkie. Behind him as we talked, I could see that the fire had reached the upper storeys. My heart began to misgive me that we were witnessing a truly terrible tragedy. Then his radio crackled with the good news that Amaryllis was safe and well. But my joy at hearing this was immediately diluted by the lack of any news about Justin.

  It began to rain quite heavily at this point, which was good news for the firefighters. I could see no point in catching my death of cold watching a fire, so I returned to my room and letter. Might as well go on writing as I doubt if I shall be able to fall asleep.

  Wrong again!

  I was woken in my chair by Dwight shaking my shoulder.

  As I struggled out of sleep I could see from his face the news was not good.

  Indeed it was the worst.

  They’d found Justinian Albacore’s body on the ground floor where the fire had been at its fiercest.

  I was devastated. I had little cause to love the man but perhaps something in his mockingly subtle character appealed to me and I’d found last night that I had no problem with the prospect of spending much time in his company.

  Dwight wanted to talk but all I wanted was to be left to myself.

  I got dressed and went outside. The shell of the Dean’s Lodging, gently steaming in a Fennish drizzle, stood as a dreadful illustration of the power of flames. As I stood and contemplated it I was joined by my handsome young Fire Officer who gave me the fullest picture they could piece together of last night’s events.

  It seems that Amaryllis had been woken by Justin getting out of bed in the early hours. Drowsily she asked him what was up, to which he replied he thought he’d heard something downstairs but it was probably nothing so why didn’t she go back to sleep, which she did. She woke again some time later to find the room full of smoke. On the landing outside her bedroom she found things even worse with flames plainly visible at the foot of the stairs. She retreated into her room and rang the fire brigade. Then, pausing only to put on slacks, T-shirt, several warm pullovers and a little make-up, she opened the bedroom window which overlooked the roof of an architecturally incongruous conservatory, built by an orchidomaniac Victorian dean before there were such things as conservation orders, on to which she descended with the help of a drainpipe and from which she slid into the arms of the first fireman on the scene.

  As for Justin, all that is possible at the moment is speculation.

  It seems likely that when he descended the stairs he found his study already well ablaze. His awareness that lying within was the college’s greatest treasure, Reginald of Durham’s Vita S. Godrici, which he had personally and recklessly removed from the college library, must have blinded his judgment. Instead of raising the alarm, he probably rushed inside to rescue the precious manuscript but found himself driven back by the heat to the threshold where, overcome by fumes, he collapsed and died.

  From what I can see for myself and from what my new friend told me, it’s pretty clear that not only has
the Vita been reduced to ashes, but not a page of Albacore’s Beddoes manuscript or a single card from his card-index system can have survived the inferno.

  It is still early days to reach conclusions about causes, but when I told the Fire Officer that we had all been sitting around the study last night drinking brandy and smoking cigars, his large blue eyes sparkled and he made a note in his note-pad.

  The conference has naturally been cancelled and, after a morning spent answering questions and making statements, I am sitting here once more writing to you, dear Mr Pascoe, in the hope of clearing my thoughts.

  I know you will think me selfish, but deep down beneath all my real sorrow over Justinian’s death is a tiny nugget of self-pity. All my hopes have died too, all the glorious dreams of a Cambridge future I was having only last night.

  Poor old me, eh?

  One more interruption, this one, I hope, definitely the last!

  As I wrote my last self-pitying sentence, Dwight came into the room and said with that American directness, ‘So what are your plans now, Franny, boy?’

  ‘Plans?’ I said bitterly. ‘Plans need a future and I don’t seem to have one.’

  He laughed and said, ‘Jesus, Fran, don’t go soft on me. It’s an ill wind … Seems to me you’ve got a great future. From what I’ve picked up over the last couple of days, you’ve inherited a half-written book about Beddoes which looks like it’s got the field clear after what happened last night. Tell me, you got any deal going with a Brit publisher?’

  ‘Well, no,’ I said and explained the situation.

  ‘And there’s no way these guys can come back at you now and say they’ve got a claim to anything that Dr Johnson did while he was taking their money?’

  ‘No. In fact I’ve got a written disclaimer. It seemed a good thing to ask for …’

  ‘I’ll say!’ he said approvingly. ‘So now you can go ahead and finish the book any which way you want and make your name, right?’

  I thought about it. This was an aspect of the tragedy that hadn’t occurred to me before. Truly, God works in a mysterious way!

  He said, ‘Ever think about getting it published in the States? Lot of interest in Beddoes over there, you know. Lot of money available too, if you know where to look.’

  I said, ‘Really? I wish I knew where to look then!’

  ‘I do,’ he said. ‘My own university publishers have been stirring themselves recently. They’re just waking to the truth I’ve been telling them for years, either you grow or you die. Tell you what, I’m going to pack now, then I’m being driven up to London …’

  ‘Down,’ I said.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I think from Cambridge you always go down to London. Or anywhere.’

  He came close to me and said, ‘Listen Fran, that’s the kind of thinking you want to get out of your head. OK, Cambridge was once the place to be, but that was costume drama time. Nothing stays still. Either you go away from it or it goes away from you. Hell, I was in Uzbekistan recently and being an old Romantic I wanted to take a look at the Aral Sea. Well, I got to where my battered Baedeker said it ought to be and you know what I found? Nothing. Desert. The Russkis have been siphoning off so much water for so long that it’s shrunk to half its size. I talked to this old guy still living in the house he was born in and he pointed to the cracked stony ground outside his front door and said that when he was a kid he used to run out of the house naked on a summer morning and dive straight into the waves. Now he’d have to run two hundred fucking miles! Same thing with Cambridge. It’s all dried up. Look real close at it and what do you see? It’s an old movie set where they once did a few good things, but now the cameras and the lights and the action have moved on. Nothing as sad as an old movie set that’s been left to rot in the rain. Think about it, Fran. I’ll be moving out in an hour. Hope you’ll be with me.’

  Well, after that I needed a walk to clear my head. Once more I strolled along the Backs. Only this time I looked at all those ancient buildings with a very different eye.

  And you know what I saw this time? Not temples to beauty and learning, not a peaceful haven where a man could drop anchor and enjoy shore leave for ever more.

  No, I saw it with eyes from which Dwight had removed the scales, and what I saw was an old movie set, looking sad as hell in the rain!

  Why on earth would I want to spend my days gossiping and bitching and boozing my life away in a dump like this?

  So now I’m packed – my few things only take a minute to throw together – and waiting for Dwight. He should be ready soon, so at last I’ll bring this letter to a conclusion rather than an interruption.

  I hope I’ve cleared the air between us. Perhaps some time in the future I may be moved to write to you again. Who knows? In the meantime, as the year draws to its close, may I once again wish yourself and your lovely family a very Merry Christmas?

  Yours on the move per ardua ad astra!

  Franny Roote

  Sore arse and rusty bum,’ said Andy Dalziel.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Aral Sea. Christ, I’ve not thought of that for years. You never know what’s going to stick, do you? Is it really drying up?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir,’ said Peter Pascoe. ‘But does it matter? I mean …’

  ‘Matters if you dive in and it’s not there,’ said Dalziel reprovingly. ‘Sore arse and rusty bum! Old Beenie would be chuffed.’

  Pascoe looked at Edgar Wield and saw only an incomprehension to match his own.

  His decision to bring up Roote’s letters at the CID meeting was mainly pragmatic. He’d spent much of the morning so far following up various lines of enquiry relating to Roote and did not doubt that the eagle eye of Andy Dalziel above and the cat eye of Edgar Wield below would have noticed this, so it was best to make it official. But that triumphant feeling that his enemy had delivered himself into his hands had gradually faded. Indeed recollecting it now made him feel faintly ashamed. The investigation of crime should be a ratiocinative process, not a crusade. So he had introduced the letters in calm measured tones and passed them to his colleagues without (he hoped) letting it show how desperate he was for their confirmation that here was cause for concern.

  Instead he was getting the Fat Man, like some portly prophet, speaking in tongues!

  The rambling continued.

  ‘He once said to me, old Beenie, “Dalziel,” he said, “if ever I want to torture a man of letters, I’ll make you read blank verse to him.” Right sharp tongue on him, knew how to draw blood. But, God, it were a long boring poem! Mebbe that’s why I recall the end, because I were so pleased it had got there!’

  ‘What poem?’ said Pascoe, abandoning his efforts to swim against this muddy tide.

  ‘I told you. Sore arse and rusty bum, did you learn nowt at that poncy kindergarten of thine?’ said Dalziel. Then relenting he added, ‘“Sohrab and Rustum” were its Sunday name, but we all called it sore arse and rusty bum. Do you not know it?’

  Pascoe shook his head.

  ‘No? Oh well, I expect by the time you got to school, it ’ud be all this modern stuff, full of four letter words and no rhymes.’

  ‘Blank verse doesn’t rhyme,’ said Pascoe unwisely.

  ‘I know it bloody doesn’t. But it doesn’t need to ’cos it sounds like poetry, right? And it’s a bit miserable. This poem’s right miserable. Sore Arse kills Rusty Bum and then finds out the bugger’s only his own son. So he sits there all night next to the body in the middle of this sort of desert, the Chorasmian waste he calls it, while all around these armies are busy doing what armies do, one of the saddest scenes in Eng. Lit., Beenie said, and this river, the Oxus, keeps on rolling by. Bit like “OL’ Man River” really.’

  ‘So where’s the Aral Sea come in?’ asked Pascoe.

  ‘I’m telling you,’ said Dalziel.

  He struck a pose and started to declaim in a sing-song schoolboy kind of way, end-stopping each line with no regard for internal punctuation or overall se
nse.

  ............................................... till at last.

  The long’d-for dash of waves is heard and wide.

  His luminous home of waters opens bright.

  And tranquil from whose floor the new-bathed stars.

  Emerge and shine upon the Aral Sea.

  ‘Now that’s fucking poetry, no mistake,’ he concluded.

  ‘And that’s the end of this sore and rusty poem?’ said Pascoe. ‘And old Beenie … ?’

  ‘Mr Beanland, MA Oxon. He could have thrown chalk for England. Put your eye out at twenty feet. He went on and on about this Aral Sea, how remote and beautiful and mysterious it were. And now this Yank says it’s drying up, and tourists go to see it, and it’s not there. Like life, eh? Like fucking life.’

  ‘It isn’t a correspondence that leaps up and hits me in the eye,’ said Pascoe sourly.

  ‘Which is what I’d do if I had a stick of chalk,’ growled the Fat Man. ‘Any road, talking of correspondence, why’m I wasting precious police time reading your mail?’

  ‘Because it’s from Franny Roote, because it contains implied threats, because in it he admits complicity in several crimes. And,’ Pascoe concluded, like an English comic at the Glasgow Empire seeing his best gags sink in a sea of indifference and desperately reaching for any point of contact, ‘because he refers to you as Rumbleguts.’

  But even this provocation to complicity failed.

  ‘Oh aye. When you’ve been insulted by experts that sounds like a term of endearment,’ said the Fat Man indifferently.

  ‘Glad to find you so philosophical,’ said Pascoe. ‘But the threats …’

  ‘What threats? I can’t see no threats. How about you, Wieldy? You see any threats?’

  The sergeant glanced apologetically at Pascoe and said, ‘Not as such.’

  ‘Not as such,’ mimicked Dalziel. ‘Meaning not at fucking all! The bugger goes out of his way to say that he’s not writing a threatening letter. In fact he seems to rate you so highly, it wouldn’t surprise me if he ended up sending you a Valentine card!’