D&P20 - Death's Jest-Book

by Reginald Hill

  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. Godrid, 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 astral

  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 Eeenie 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 to
ngues!

  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 "OF 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 sense.

  ' ............................................... 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!'

  ‘That's all part of it, don't you see? Like this play he goes on about, Death's Jest-Book, it's all some kind of grisly joke. That stuff about the ambiguities of revenge, one brother becoming dead friendly with the Duke, the other bursting with hate, that's Roote telling me how he feels.'

  'No it's not. In fact I recall he says quite clear he feels like the friendly brother. And all these crimes you're going on about, what would they be?'

  Pascoe opened the file he was carrying and produced several sheets of paper.

  'You've not been playing with your computer again?' said Dalziel. 'You'll go blind.'

  'Harold Bright, known as Brillo’ said Pascoe. 'Banged up in the Syke the same time as Roote. Had an accident in the shower. Cracked his head. Traces of ammonia-based cleansing fluid found in eyes but never explained. Complications during treatment. Died.'

  'And good riddance’ said Dalziel. 'I remember the Brights. Hospitalized two of ours when they got arrested, one of 'em had to take early retirement. Dendo still inside?'

  'No. Finished in Durham, but he got out last month.'

  'Problem solved then. Send him Roote's address. He sorts out your lad, we bang Dendo up again for the duration. Two for the price of one’

  Over the years Pascoe had come to a pretty good understanding of when the Fat Man was joking, but there were still some grey areas where he felt it better not to enquire.

  He said, 'My point is, we know a man died, and now we have Roote's confession.'

  'Bollocks’ said Dalziel. 'His admission might as well have been written by Hans Andersen. And, like he says himself, where are you going to get witnesses? Any road, if he did do it, he deserves a medal. Owt else?'

  'I checked that Polchard was there the same time as Roote, and the Syke's Chief Officer remembers they played chess together’ said Pascoe sulkily.

  'You going to do Roote for cheating then? I remember Mate Polchard. Right tricky sod. He out yet?'

  Wield whose job it was to know everything said, 'Yes, sir. Came out in the summer. Went off to his place in Wales to recuperate.'

  Polchard was out of the normal run of thugs in more than just his penchant for chess. Not for him the comforts of a Spanish villa with a plethora of Costa fleshpots on his doorstep. His preferred hideaway was a remote Welsh farmhouse in Snowdonia. But when it came to protecting his interests, he ran true to type. Shortly after he bought the farm, a barn belonging to it was burnt down and a message sprayed on a wall in Welsh with under it a helpful translation. Go home Englishman or next lime it's the house. A few days later the local leader of the main Welsh activist group awoke in the early hours to find three men in his room. They were unarmed and unmasked, which he found more worrying than reassuring. They spoke to him politely, showing him a list of the addresses of perhaps a dozen members of his group, his own at the head, and assured him that in the event of any further interference with Mr Polchard's property, every one of these houses would be reduced to rubble within a fortnight. Then they left. Fifteen minutes later his garden shed blew up and burned with such ferocity it was a pile of cinders long before the fire brigade got near. No complaint was made, but Police Intelligence soon picked up the story, which Dalziel retailed now, at length, to signal his interest in Roote was over.

  But Pascoe listened with barely concealed impatience to the oft-told tale and used it as a cue to wrest the subject back.

  'Polchard's not the only one who's good at fires,' he said. This fire Roote writes about at St Godric's, I've got several newspaper reports here arid I've been on to the Cambridge Fire Service Investigation Department and they're getting back to me

  'Hold on, lad. Stop right there,' said Dalziel. 'I've not had this letter X-rayed and-tested for poisoned ink like you, but I have read it, and I don't recall owt in it coming in hosepipe distance of an admission of arson! Did I miss summat? Wieldy, how about you?'

  The sergeant shook his head.

  'No, definitely no admission, not as such

  There you go again. Not as such! As what then if not such?'

  Pascoe had had enough.

  He interrupted angrily, 'For Christ's sake, what's up with you two? It's as plain as the nose on your face, he's mocking us, that's the whole point of the letter.

  Even without the letter, I'd have known something was wrong. Look at the facts. Franny Roote is a nobody, a
n ex-con, working as a gardener. Then his tutor, Sam Johnson, gets killed and Roote manages to sweet-talk Johnson's sister into dropping his almost completed book on Beddoes into Roote's lap. Suddenly from being an academic nobody, he's set for the big league. One obstacle - there's competition in the shape of this guy Albacore, who looks set to get his oeuvre in the shops several months earlier. Roote and Albacore meet. Albacore thinks he's cut a deal. Take Roote on board, squeeze the juice of Johnson's researches out of him, and then, of course, he'd be able to drop Roote like the nasty little turd he is. Only he doesn't know yet that this turd's got teeth.'

  Dalziel who'd been listening with his great maw open in maximum gobstopped mode burst out, 'A turd with teeth! I told thee, this is what comes of reading modern poetry!'

  Pascoe who was a trifle vain about his style looked embarrassed but pressed on, 'But what happens? There's a fire and Albacore ends up dead and his work goes up in smoke. Coincidence? I don't think so. Like I say, I'd have been suspicious if I'd read about it in the paper. But that's not enough for the scrote! He has to write to me and gloat about it!'

  'Gloat? I got no gloat. How about you, Wieldy? You step in any gloat? And if you say not as such, I'll pull your tongue out and ram it up your neb!'

  Wield touched his lips with his tongue as if rehearsing the manoeuvre and said, 'Not . . . that I could say definitely was gloating. But like I say, if Pete's got a feeling . . . and I agree that Roote's a tricky bastard

  'Not so tricky we didn't bang him up,' said Dalziel complacently.

  'He's had the benefit of a prison education since then’ said Wield.

  He was speaking figuratively but the Fat Man pretended to take him literally.

  'Fair do's but’ he said. 'He didn't come out a sociologist like most of the buggers as get educated inside. I really hate it when I hear one of them bastards on the chat shows’

  The DCI closed his eyes and Wield said quickly, 'Mebbe we should wait and see what the Cambridge fire people say’

  The phone rang so aptly that he wasn't in the least surprised when Pascoe, who'd snatched it up, mouthed Cambridge at them.