Reginald Hill - Death

She gave a nervous smile and began to turn away. Not once had her gaze gone to the Hoover bag – which must have been quite an effort, thought Rye. You spot someone emptying their vacuum cleaner in a churchyard, you're entitled to wonder if there's anything wrong!

'No, hold on,' she said. 'You're going back to Church View? I'll walk with you.'

She fell into step beside Mrs Rogers and said, 'My name's Rye. Like the whisky. Sorry I was so brusque, but you gave me a shock.'

'I'm Myra. I'm sorry but I thought that anything in a place like this… even a polite cough's going to sound a bit creepy!'

'Especially a polite cough,' said Rye, laughing. 'Which flat are you then?'

'The other side of you from Mrs Gilpin.'

'Ah, you've met Mrs Gilpin. No surprise there. Not meeting Mrs Gilpin is the hard thing.'

'Yes,' smiled the other woman. 'She did seem quite… interested.'

'Oh, she's certainly that.'

They had reached the gate. Across the road they saw a figure standing at the front door of Church View. It was Hat.

Rye came to a halt. She wanted to see him but she didn't want him to see her, not coming from the churchyard with a Hoover bag in her hand.

Mrs Rogers said, 'Isn't that the detective?'

'Detective?'

'Yes, the one who was round earlier asking if we'd seen anyone suspicious hanging around the building over the weekend’

'Ah. That detective,' said Rye coldly.

She watched Hat out of sight along the street, then opened the gate.

'And did you see anyone?' she asked.

'Well, there was a man last Saturday morning. I hardly noticed him, but Mrs Gilpin seems to have got a closer look.'

‘I'm amazed. Look, do you fancy coming in for a coffee? Unless your husband's expecting you’

'Not any more,' said Myra Rogers. 'That's why I needed to find a new flat. Yes, a coffee would be lovely. Are you planning to use that bag again?'

They were at the front door and Mrs Rogers looked significantly down the basement steps to where the building's rubbish bins stood.

'My domestic economy hasn't sunk that low,' said Rye, smiling.

She went down the steps, took the lid off a bin and dumped the empty bag inside.

'Now let's get that coffee,' she said.

Letter 4. Received Dec 18 ^ th. P. P

Sunday Dec 16th

Night, somewhere in England, heading north

Dear Mr Pascoe,

It was only a few hours since I posted my last letter to you, and yet it seems light years away! Train travel does that to you, doesn't it? Stop time, I mean.

You will recall I was on the point of leaving Cambridge in the company of Professor Dwight Duerden of Santa Apollonia University, CA. During the drive to London we talked naturally enough about the recent unhappy events at God's, and Dwight returned once more to his theme of good from evil, urging me to at least explore the possibility of completing Sam's book myself and finding a new publisher. He would be returning to St Poll for the holidays, and he promised me again that he would make enquiry of his university press. When we arrived at the Ritz we exchanged addresses and farewells and he instructed his driver to take me anywhere I wanted.

I had travelled to Cambridge via London, spending the night at Linda's flat in Westminster, and, rather than risk the purgatory of a Sunday train journey, I decided to take advantage of her kindness again, so that's where I told the driver to go. The flat is a hangover from the days when Linda was an MP before she spread her wings and flew to Europe. It's quite small – a tiny bedroom and a tinier sitting room plus a shower – but comfortable enough and conveniently placed. So, having a longish lease, she decided to keep it on as a pied-a-terre. A crone who lives a troglodyte existence in the basement has charge of the spare key and, if you're on the list of favoured friends, it provides a nice central location to lay your head on a visit to town.

On my first visit, the scowling crone had required three proofs of identity before she would hand over the key. This time I got a friendlier welcome, but I soon realized this was down to the pleasure of telling me I was too late, the flat was already occupied.

That's the trouble with generous people, they can be so indiscriminate.

I was turning away when she tried to rub salt in my wounds by making it clear it was no use me dossing down on a park bench and coming back in the morning.

'It's Miss Lupin's foreign clerical friend,' she said. 'He'll be staying several days.'

'Not Frere Jacques?' I said. 'Is he in? I must say hello.'

And I ran up the stairs before she could reply.

I had to knock twice before Jacques opened the door. He was clad in slacks and a string vest and looked a bit ruffled. But he smiled broadly to see me and I stepped inside without waiting for an invitation. And stopped dead when I saw he wasn't alone.

There was a young woman sitting on the solitary armchair.

Now Jacques is a man of indisputable holiness but also a man, if I am any judge, in whom the testosterone runs free, and it wouldn't have surprised me to find that his love of things English included our gorgeous girls.

But the easy way he introduced me was so guilt-free that I reproved myself for my suspicions, and even more so when I realized what he was saying.

This lovely young woman regarding me with an indifference worse than hostility was Emerald Lupin, Linda's daughter. Even if innate holiness and religious vows weren't enough to keep the old Adam at bay, surely, being a man of considerable good sense, Jacques wasn't going to take the slightest risk of getting up the nose of one of his movement's most influential patrons!

It occurs to me that I am assuming in you an at least passing familiarity with the Third Thought Movement, but in case I'm wrong, let me give you the briefest of outlines.

To begin at the beginning, which in this case is the movement's founder, Frere Jacques. He is a brother of the Cornelians, an Order little known outside the region of Belgium which contains its sole monastery, L'Abbaye du Saint Graal. From various sources I gather that Jacques led an active life as a soldier till he was invalided out of the army seriously wounded during service in a UN peace-keeping unit. Happily for him, and for all of us, his birthplace was close by the Cornelian Abbaye and a relapse necessitated a move to their Infirmary, followed by a long convalescence in their Stranger House. During this time he experienced that sense of peace and acceptance of whatever must come which later he was to formulate into the Third Thought philosophy, and eventually he presented himself to the monks as a candidate for admission to their order.

Their vote was unanimous. I say vote because the Cornelians are peculiar in that all major decisions are taken by the full brotherhood, one monk, one vote. Indeed they are a very liberal and democratic Order, which perhaps explains why Rome not too secretly hopes they will wither on the vine. Their founder, Pope Cornelius, you will recall, was banished and beheaded after a bitter doctrinal dispute in which he argued the Church's capacity to forgive apostates and other mortal sinners. Not much sign that he'd win the argument today, is there?

Jacques, not unnaturally, had found himself much preoccupied by death, particularly death unexpected, which it is, he assures me, even in battle. You always think it will be the next guy! He himself had grown up in the heart of the great Flanders killing grounds where it's still not possible to spend an hour digging in your garden without turning up a button or a bullet or a piece of bone, and none of this had put him off joining the army.

But his own close encounter had been something of an epiphany, and as he worked in the hospice section of the abbey infirmary, it occurred to him that while the patients there all knew that the end was in sight and were preconditioned to try and come to terms with it, for the vast majority of people, it was a bolt from the blue.