Reginald Hill - Death

It was the Dance of Death.

A grisly enough subject, you are probably thinking, and not one a chap in young Fran's situation would wish to dwell upon, but why should it affect him so strongly?

The answer is this. In Beddoes' Jest-Book, that most terrifying scene in which the Duke, hoping to raise his wife from the dead instead resurrects the murdered Wolfram, is set before a ruined Gothic church on whose cloister wall is depicted the Dance of Death. My quest for Beddoes had brought me to this place, and now he seemed to be saying in that typically sardonic way of his, ‘‘ you want to see me plain, this way lies your route!

I know it sounds silly. After all, unlike the Duke, I have no murdered rival whose resurrection I need fear, have I?

And in any case my God-given reason tells me, as it told Beddoes, there are no ghosts to raise, Out of death lead no ways. Oh, that there were! How I would labour to raise dear Sam. But what horror if instead of Sam I found myself confronted by… some less welcome revenu!

What nonsense this seems in broad daylight.

But there in the dark forest close by the ruined chapel, I have to admit, Mr Pascoe, that both innocence and rationality failed me and I closed my eyes and said a prayer.

When I opened them, I saw that some god had heard me, but whether in the Christian heaven or some darker colder Nordic place, I wasn't yet ready to say. The light I had seen before showed itself again, much nearer this time, and approaching! I could see it intermittently among the trees, moving with a serpentine motion, now visible, now masked by the long straight trunks of the pines, a circle of brightness growing larger as it neared, putting me in mind of that shining sphere which marks the arrival of Glenda in The Wizard of Oz.

It was a happy comparison, for as – guided I presume by my almost hysterical shouting – it emerged from the forest into the clearing, I saw that it was the headlight on one of those snow buggies, and though the goggled and furred creature that bestrode it was sexless to the eye, I knew she was my Good Fairy when she spoke and said, 'Herr Roote? Willkommen in Fichtenburg.'

This, God bless her, was Frau Buff, the housekeeper, a woman it emerged of few words, and all of those German, but one whose good sense and ratiocinative powers make you understand why the Swiss lead the world in the manufacture of timepieces.

Mind you, it did occur to me as she indicated I should climb up behind her (she'd already found my luggage at the castle entrance) and we set off along a winding track through the dark pine trees, to wonder if she might not be a good fairy after all but the Snow Queen, and I, like little Kay, was being abducted to her ice palace at the North Pole.

No ice palace this, I'm glad to say, but a warm and comfortable and roomy cabin with all mod cons! This was the chalet Linda had referred to, belonging to the castle and used, I presume, to accommodate visitors like myself who for whatever reason were best kept separate from the beau monde in the big house. Frau Buff had been waiting for me here. When I didn't arrive at the expected time she'd made enquiries and discovered my plane was delayed. When I still hadn't appeared by the revised expected time, she contacted the taxi company and was told their driver had reported dropping his passenger at the castle some minutes earlier. She, deducing that the Dummkopf had dumped me at the wrong place, had come looking for me.

All this I pieced together with my slowly resurrecting schoolboy German and her sparing replies.

She was, God bless her, much more interested in feeding me than conversing with me. Fortunately, what she'd been preparing was one of those all-inclusive casserole dishes which, unlike airline food, only gets better the longer it stays in the oven.

Once she saw me tucking in, she indicated apologetically that she was leaving me to my own devices. I tried to say that it was me who should apologize for taking up so much of her free time, and I must have got my message across because as she furred herself up preparatory to stepping out into the cold night, she seemed to my slowly adjusting ear to say it wasn't her own pleasure which was taking her away but getting rooms ready in the castle for Frau Lupin.

Thinking I'd got her wrong, I said in my fractured German, 'But Frau Lupin isn't coming till next week.'

And as she went out of the door she tossed something over her shoulder which froze my forkload of delicious stew in mid-air.

'Nicht Frau sondern Frd'ulein Lupin. Ihre Tochter.'

Not Mrs but Miss Lupin. Her daughter.

Perhaps I had misheard!

I broke the spell and rushed out after Frau Buff. She was already on the snow buggy.

'Fraulein Lupin,' I cried to her. 'Wann kommt sie?'

'Morgen’ she called. 'Urn Schnittschuhlaufen!'

That baffled me. What in the name of hell was Schnittschuhlaufen?

'Was ist das?' I shouted as she started up and began to move away.

She pointed away from the chalet with her right hand.

'Auf dem See!' she tossed over her shoulder. Then she was gone.

On the sea? I stood there baffled. Then for the first time I noticed the snow had stopped, the clouds were breaking up and going about their business, leaving the sky to a scatter of diamond dust such as those of us in city pent never see, and a slice of moon hung there, bright enough to light up before me a level meadow almost perfectly round.

Except it wasn't a meadow! It was a small lake. Idiot! This must be the Blutensee which Fichtenburg was am, frozen over and besprinkled with snow. (See only means 'sea' when it's feminine; I once got my knuckles rapped for forgetting that!)

Skating. Schnittschuhlaufen was skating. Emerald was coming here in the morning for the skating!

Now my ever-optimistic mind was racing. Was this coincidence, I asked myself, or was it planned? Could Emerald have learned her mother's plans for me and decided to cut in? Or was I being absurdly arrogant to even imagine that it might be so?

These things distracted me so much that on my return inside I hardly noticed the delights of Frau Buff's casserole or the smoothness of the bottle of excellent burgundy I had chosen from a well-stocked wine rack. And I have even postponed the plateful of scrumptious-looking Sahnetorte the good woman has left for pudding so that once more I can write to you, my friend, my spiritual father, to clear my mind and remind me that in the midst of no matter what fiery -turbulence of spirit I can always find a small circle of coolness and calm, like the lake outside my window, to bring me peace.

Well, it's worked. Now I feel ready to face the future – and to enjoy my Sahnetorte.

Thank you.

Franny

In England on the whole even criminals celebrate Christmas, but rest for the wicked does not automatically mean rest for the law's guardians also. The crimes of greed which are proper to Advent may fade to nothing on the day itself, but they are more than compensated for by those crimes of new rage and old resentment which spring naturally from the close confinement, with large supplies of alcohol, of blood relations who have had the good sense to keep far apart for the previous three hundred and sixty-four days.

So as Pascoe hastened home on Christmas Eve, bearing with him gifts for Rosie which several of his generous colleagues had placed on his desk, he also bore the fear that the two days off he had won after much hard wheeling and dealing could be interrupted by a phone call saying, Sorry, but there's so much domestic mayhem going on we can't cope, and could you come in and give us a hand, please?

Or, if it were Dalziel calling, scrub the question mark and the please.

As he put his key into his front door lock, he looked at the brass lion's-head knocker which Ellie had 'rescued' from a derelict farmhouse up on Greendale Moor and waited to see if it would turn into the Fat Man's face..