Reginald Hill - Dialogues of the Dead

But local knowledge, like love, can o’erperch the highest walls, and as Peter and Ellie Pascoe made their way up the gravelled path towards the church door, what looked like a lapidary Death detached itself from a tombstone and revealed itself as Sammy Ruddlesdin.

“Time for a quick word, Peter?” he asked.

Pascoe shook his head and pressed on. Ruddlesdin kept pace with them.

“At least say if you’re here in your official capacity or as a family friend,” he insisted.

Pascoe shook his head again and went through the doorway into the church porch.

Ellie paused on the steps and hissed into Ruddlesdin’s ear, “In which of his capacities would you like to be told to fuck off, Sammy?”

As she followed her husband, the reporter yelled after her, “Is that a quote, Mrs. Pascoe?”

She sat down next to Peter, kicked her shoes off and rested her feet on a hassock.

Pascoe murmured, “Thought I’d lost you.”

“Just having a word.”

“Oh hell. What did you say?” he asked in alarm.

“Nothing printable,” she assured him. “I told him to fuck off.”

“You didn’t? You did. Bit rough, weren’t you? It’s only old Sammy.”

She turned her head to look at him and said, “Peter, I don’t know what capacity you are here in, but me, I’ve come to say goodbye to someone I’ll miss, someone I regarded as a good friend, and that doesn’t involve being polite to journalists, whether it’s old Sammy or any of those other hyenas prowling around out there. So just let me get on with mourning, OK?”

“Fine,” he said. “So you won’t be assaulting Loopy Linda with a custard pie then?”

Linda Lupin was one of the Left’s pet hate figures.

Ellie considered.

“No. Not till she’s off holy ground, anyway.”

One thing that even her many enemies had to acknowledge of Linda Lupin was that she had presence. Not even a coffin could upstage her. The solemn progress of the last remains of Sam Johnson up the aisle went almost unremarked as all gazes focused on the unexpected sister.

She was of stocky build, medium height, with cropped black hair, wide-set eyes which never seemed to blink, a long nose, a rubber mouth and a chin to break ice with. Yet she was not unattractive. Indeed a retired politician famous for his amours had confessed to getting more pleasure out of a recurring fantasy involving Linda and a cat-o’-nine-tails than real-life affairs with two or three women he most ungallantly named.

Her strength, thought Pascoe, was that in any company on any occasion she never for one moment showed doubt that she was the most important person present. Her current entourage, consisting of the university Vice-Chancellor and the senior members of the English Department all in their academic robes, looked like a Gilbert and Sullivan chorus doing their stiltedly intricate little routines behind the principal singer.

Indeed most of the chief mourners were university people, including several colleagues Pascoe had heard Johnson in his cups categorize as “plagiarizing plonkers who haven’t had an original idea since they cut off their bollocks to see where their watery spunk came from.” Two in particular he’d mocked for their alleged attempts to wheedle their way into his confidence so that they could gain access to his painstakingly acquired Romantic database. Well, perhaps now was their chance. He couldn’t see Loopy Linda having much use for it, so presumably it would go to the most successful sycophant.

One absentee, whom he’d expected to see if not among the chief mourners, at least on the fringe of the group, was Franny Roote. He and Ellie were seated quite near the back of the church and the student/ gardener certainly wasn’t in front of them. Odd, he found himself thinking. Then, recalling Dalziel’s warning against obsessionalism, he firmly put the matter out of his mind.

The service got under way. The university chaplain, a young man who was almost brutal in his determination to avoid the old orotund style, gave an account of Johnson’s life which, whatever it did to the traditionalists, moved Ellie to tears.

When he finished, the chaplain said, “And now, if anyone here would like to say something more about Sam, please come forward …We don’t often get the chance to speak from the heart. Don’t be afraid to take it.”

He descended from the pulpit and took his seat below, gazing out with an encouraging smile at the congregation who, naturally, being British, lowered their eyes, shifted uneasily on their buttocks, and generally gave every sign of acute embarrassment.

Pascoe bowed his head in deep prayer, in fact in two deep prayers, the first being that Loopy Linda wouldn’t seize the chance for one of her famous bring-back-the-bastinado rants. The second, and more fervent, was that Ellie wouldn’t make a move. Believing that God helps those who help God, with his right foot he edged one of her discarded shoes out of her reach. Not that that would stop her. If the fit came on her, she was quite capable of advancing bare-footed, like a penitent of old.

He felt her muscles tense preparatory to rising. Then good old God at last showed his appreciation of his servant Pascoe’s efforts to give Him a helping hand. Or foot. Somewhere behind them there was a susurrus of rising bodies and speculation as someone moved along a pew. Everyone turned to gawk, as if the “Wedding March” had just struck up to announce the bride’s arrival in the church.

But Pascoe knew who it was before his eyes confirmed it.

Slowly, silently, the slim figure of Franny Roote advanced up the aisle and climbed into the pulpit. He was wearing his usual black, broken only by a tiny white cross which, despite its size, seemed to burn against his chest.

For a long moment, he stood looking down on the congregation, his pale face expressionless, as if gathering his thoughts.

When at last he spoke his voice was low, yet like an actor’s whisper, it carried without difficulty to the furthermost corners of the silent church.

“Sam was my teacher and my friend. When I first met him, I was coming out of a bad time without any certain knowledge that a worse did not lie ahead. Behind me was a known darkness; before me was a darkness I did not know. And then, by human chance but, I am sure, by God’s design, I met Sam.

“As a teacher, he was a light in the darkness of my ignorance. As a friend, he was a light in the darkness of my despair. He showed me that I had nothing to fear by going forward in search of intellectual knowledge and everything to gain by going forward in search of myself.

“I last saw him not long before his dreadful death. Our talk was mainly of matters academic, though as always other things were mixed in, for Sam didn’t lock himself away in some elitist ivory tower. His domain was very much the real world.”

He paused and his gaze flickered towards the array of academics surrounding Linda Lupin in the front pew. Then he resumed.

“I’ve tried to think of the things he said at that last encounter, for it is my belief that death, even when he comes-indeed perhaps especially when he comes-violently and unexpectedly, never comes without sending ahead messages that he is near.

“I know we certainly spoke of death. It is hard not to speak of him when discussing, as we were, Sam’s favourite poet, Thomas Lovell Beddoes. And I know we spoke of death’s mystery, and of the way our usual, though not our sole, medium of communication, language, by its very complexity often conceals more than it reveals.

“Did he have a premonition? I recall how he smiled, it seemed to me wryly, as he quoted a fragment from Beddoes: