Death at the Sign of the Rook - Jackson Brodie Series 06 (2024) by Atkinson Kate

Author:Atkinson, Kate [Atkinson, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Jeopardy

George had gone to forage for Seville oranges in Hebden Bridge to make marmalade later and Fran was out somewhere, killing some poor creature, so Ben spent a pleasantly solitary morning chopping more logs.

Chop, chop, chop. There was something satisfyingly brutal about chopping wood – the primitive act of slamming an axe into an adversary, even if that adversary was only innocent pine, had an air of revenge about it. Displaced, obviously. These days, if Ben were ever actually to come face to face with the man who had planted the IED that had blown up his life, he suspected he would probably shake his hand and say something about letting bygones be bygones. The Jennings were unfailingly polite, even to their enemies, unless they were actually killing them. Chop, chop, chop.

It was a brilliantly cold morning, the sky a bright winter blue, and he was having a hard time believing the forecast of heavy snow later. George and Fran had been less sceptical, they had grown used to the capricious nature of the weather here. Fran returned in time for lunch and said that she had been up at Burton Makepeace as one of the ponies needed an injection.

‘Not a lethal one?’ Ben said. The idea of killing a horse seemed particularly horrible to him.

‘No, no. God, no. Just an antibiotic. Did you know they’re having a Murder Mystery thing up at Rook Hall this weekend? Could be fun,’ she added, looking rather wistful. Was his sister getting enough fun? Ben wondered. She spent most of her time euthanizing creatures with fur, and on the home front George could be rather dour, to put it mildly.

Jemima had once dragged him along to a play by the crime novelist Nancy Styles. Jemima was a theatrical agent, and it was her job, she said, to go along and effuse over the performances of her clients. The Styles was a long-running play, the audience mainly consisting of tourists and coachloads of pensioners bussed in from the provinces. The Body Walks – that was the title, he remembered now – had an endlessly revolving cast and Jemima always seemed to have at least one of her clients in it. Which probably explained why as soon as she was settled in her seat she closed her eyes and fell fast asleep. She woke up for the ice-cream he fetched her in the interval and then promptly fell back asleep, waking again just before the dénouement so that she could reveal to Ben, and half the stalls, the identity of the murderer. He had feared that the audience was going to lynch her.

The Body Walks had been peopled with all the stock characters that usually appeared in Nancy Styles’ bloodless plots. Ben had read the entire oeuvre during the course of the rainy afternoons of his school holidays. The novels belonged to his father, who was a surprising devotee of crime fiction. The books, all first-edition hardbacks that might be worth something now, contained a

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