Death

unselfish enthusiasm for the poetry, very little of it might have survived.

The other lawyer, to whom the note was addressed, was a man called Revell Phillips of the Middle Temple who seems to have become Beddoes' consultant on financial matters, though, as with Kelsall, there was clearly something much deeper in the relationship. Together, Sam speculates, these two lawyers may have provided in some wise the substitute he was always seeking for that father he lost so young.

In the note Beddoes writes the phrase which provided Sam with the title for his book.

I should have been among other things a good poet.

And typically he ends with a macabre jest.

Buy for Dr Ecklin [his attending physician] one of Reade 's best stomach pumps.

Knowing, of course, that next time Ecklin sees him he'll be dead from poisoning!

It's a letter that makes me cry every time I read it. And smile too. He was truly a merry mad tragic figure.

But I mustn't end on a melancholy note this letter which has been concerned with this most merry of times! I hope you and yours have had as good a Christmas as I have.

Yours fondly,

Franny

Pascoe frowned as he read the letter, then tossed it across to Ellie who read it and laughed out loud.

'What?' he said.

'The farting poem. I begin to warm to Beddoes. Who on earth is St Gingo, or did he just make him up for the rhyme?'

'Wouldn't be surprised. Making things up to suit his own weird purposes, sounds just the sort of thing that would appeal to Roote.'

'And what precisely do you think he's making up here?'

Pascoe thought, then said, 'Himself. He's making himself up. This jolly, sociable fellow who gets on with people and has serious conversations with his spiritual advisor and goes off to work out of sense, of duty. He's telling me, 'Look, Mr Pascoe, I can be anything I want to be. Try to get hold of me and you'll find yourself clutching air.''

'Ah, now I'm with you. He's telling you this in the same way he told you he'd just bashed Albacore over the head and left him to burn to death in the Dean's Lodging?' said Ellie. 'Peter, I suggested you got this business sorted, but I meant by doing your job. All you seem to be doing is diving into Roote's letters like some religious fanatic reading Nostradamus's texts and finding in them whatever fits his particular world-picture.'

'Yeah? Well, Nostradamus was mad too,' said Pascoe stubbornly. 'And Pottle agreed there was something seriously disturbed about the guy when I showed him the letters.'

'Yes, and didn't he say that Haseen was a psychologist of good standing in the trade, not the idiot you took her for?'

'Just shows how clever Roote is, doesn't it?' said Pascoe. 'All that crap about his father, she swallowed it hook, line and sinker.'

Ellie shuddered at the confused image and said, 'So how about maybe it's you who swallowed the crap?'

'Sorry?'

'What do you really know about Roote's childhood and early family background? I mean, where did you get it from?'

'I don't know, the records, I suppose.'

'Right. But where did the stuff in the records come from? Maybe that's the crap and Franny put it there. Maybe Ms Haseen was good enough to dig some of the truth out of Fran and, when he saw it in her book, he was really pissed off at how much he'd let slip.'

'Yes, but it's Roote in his letters that draws my attention to this. I mean, he's not mentioned by name in Dark Cells, is he? I'd probably never have known about the sodding book if he hadn't referred to it.'

'Yes, but he knows you're a clever clogs, Pete. OK, he may overdo the admiration for you, but my reading is, he's only exaggerating what he really feels. In his eyes, you'd have no difficulty in tracking down the book and his part in it. So he makes a pre-emptive strike and draws your attention to it and his cleverness in deceiving Haseen about the father he never knew. Because that's what he wants the world to think, that he never knew his father, that he never had this close worshipping relationship with him and suffered this huge psycho-trauma when he left them and’or died.'

Pascoe finished his coffee and rose from the breakfast table, shaking his head in mock wonderment.

'And to think’ he said, 'you're the one tearing me off for reading between the lines! I may be stretching things sometimes trying to break his code, but you're into astrology!'

He stooped and kissed her and made for the door.

She called after him, 'Don't forget the champagne.'

They had decided to celebrate the New Year at home. They'd received a couple of party invitations, and Fat Andy had assured them that an invite to the Lord Mayor's Hogmanay Hop in the old Town Hall was theirs for the arm-twisting, but they'd turned down everything on the grounds that they couldn't get a babysitter. Which was probably true. But in fact Ellie knew she hadn't tried very hard, and Peter hadn't looked at all disappointed. Is this how middle age begins? she wondered. Which gloomy thought had made her insist that staying in didn't mean they couldn't celebrate expansively and expensively.

'And get the real stuff,' she shouted after him. 'None of your sodding Cava!'

'You saying you can taste the difference?' he shouted back.

'Maybe not, but I can read it!' she yelled.

She went up to her study to check on Rosie. The genealogy kit she'd got for Christmas had been a great hit, mainly because of a jocular suggestion in the preamble that a study of your ancestry could reveal that you were in fact really a prince or princess.

'Mum,' she said when Ellie entered the room, 'will I ever see Granddad Pascoe?'

Pascoe's father lived in Australia with his eldest child, Susan. Ellie had met him once when she and Peter were students and she'd stayed overnight at their Warwickshire home. She hadn't cared for the way he brought up his son's plans to join the police force and tried to engage her in his objections against them. The fact that she too thought Peter would be throwing himself away made no difference. Fathers should be concerned about their children, but with warmth and understanding, not with chilly uncaring self-righteousness. She sometimes wondered, but not aloud, how large a part the desire to disoblige his father had played in helping Pascoe make up his mind to join the Force.

It had come as no surprise when she re-engaged with Pascoe to learn that his father had joined his favourite daughter in Australia on retirement. He'd never been back. The loss of one grandfather to Alzheimer's had clearly got Rosie wondering about the other.

'One day, I'm sure you will’ she said brightly. 'And all your Australian cousins.'

Who might be all right. She'd seen photos and they looked quite normal. Anyway, there was time enough for Rosie to learn that families weren't all sweetness and light.

'How's it going, dear?' she asked. Yesterday she'd got the impression that where dialectics had failed, simple tedium might be succeeding.

'It's all right but I think Tig gets a bit bored’ said Rosie.

Ellie smiled. More and more it was Tig who got bored, Tig who got hungry, Tig who got tired. It was a masterly transference strategy which left Rosie able to assert herself without overt selfishness. Everyone, thought Ellie, should have a Tig.

It was certainly true that the little mongrel sitting under the desk had an air of patient long-suffering which seemed to say, this genealogy's OK, but when does the action start?

Now! was clearly the answer as Rosie's mention of his name brought him to his feet with a tail wag that started at the neck.

Rosie slid off her chair.

'Shall I clear up later?' she said. 'Tig looks like he might want to do a dump.'

Clearing away all her gear had been a condition of Rosie's use of the study, but cleaning up after Tig got precedence.