In any case, that was almost as bad as opening them.
She checked her own three letters. Two were charity follow-ups. Nowadays no one wrote just to say thanks, they wrote to say thanks but it's not enough.
The third had an official but non-charitable look.
She opened it as she went through into the kitchen, read it quickly on the move, then sat down and read it more slowly a second time.
Her intermittent researches into Roote's genealogy had quickly run into the sand. Using as a starting point Franny's assertion in his first letter that he had been born in Hope, she had looked up the name in her Ordnance Survey atlas and been a little taken aback to discover half a dozen places called Hope and as many again which had enough of Hope in their name to make the young man's jest allowable. She'd written to all the relevant registrars' offices with the information she had and their replies had been trickling in over several days. They ranged from the formal to the friendly with one thing in common: no child with the name Francis Xavier Roote had been registered inside the given time-frame.
Soon she was down to her last Hope, a Derbyshire village in the Peak District, not far out of Sheffield, and it was the County Registrar's letter she had in her hand now.
She read it a third time. Yes, it said, there was an entry for the name and date specified. Address 7 Post Terrace; mother Anthea Roote nee Atherton, housewife; father Thomas Roote – and here came the bit that made her sit and read it a third time – police officer.
She reached for the phone to ring Peter. But to tell him what? Surprise surprise… but being surprising wasn't the same as being helpful. Did it really matter? Wasn't she by doing this merely feeding his obsession when she should have been starving it?
She went back into the hall and looked again at the letter with the Swiss stamp.
Sod it, let Roote decide. If this was as innocuous as the last with its account of Christmas fun, why keep the pot boiling? It might even be a farewell… Dear Mr Pascoe, my New Year resolution is to write to you no more. Sorry for any trouble I've caused. Yours etc.
She ripped it open. No point pussyfooting. If a woman was going to open her husband's mail, sod steaming kettles. Let him see you might be nosey but at least you weren't sneaky!
When she'd read it, she said, 'Oh shit.'
Another death. Another death which advantaged Roote. Truly the guy was either very lucky or… No! That was like jumping into quicksand to save a sinking man.
But she could almost hear Peter's reaction to the account of Frere Dierick's death.
Knowledge is power. She'd let herself be talked once again into going shopping in Estotiland with Daphne Aldermann. Daphne, an unrepentant shopaholic, had a theory that the first Monday in January was the time to go to the post-Christmas sales. 'In the early days’ she said, 'there are so many people, they turn into a kind of lynch mob and you can wake up next morning aghast at the memory of what you did the day before. So wait till the crowds have gone, bearing with them most of the chronic sales junk, and step in when they're putting out real bargains to tempt the discerning customer.'
Ellie had let her arm be twisted and now she was glad. Estotiland was a large step on the way to Sheffield, the other side of which lay Hope. So an hour's shopping with Daphne, then off south, and tonight with luck she'd be able to amaze Peter with more than a mohair sweater in the kind of bold design she loved but he hated.
In fact the visit to Estotiland was quite useful for another reason. In a couple of weeks' time Rosie was going to her friend Suzie's birthday party in the Junior Jumbo Burger Bar. Ellie had promised she'd help. At the same time her early-warning system had gone on to red alert at the mention of burgers and this trip today gave her the chance to check the kitchens for potential sources of salmonella, E. coli, and CJD.
Daphne gave a long-suffering sigh, but as she'd resolved long ago never to let Ellie have the satisfaction of seeing her embarrassed, she strode boldly with her into the kitchen where they were greeted with great courtesy and invited to examine whatever they wanted to examine and ask any questions they wanted to ask. All the meat was local, they were assured, an assurance backed up with written details of provenance. Standards of hygiene were exemplary, and supervision of the young staff was militarily strict.
'Told you,' said Daphne as they left. 'Estotiland is Paradise Regained. Now, let's go and pluck ourselves some apples!'
A couple of hours and as many mohair sweaters later, they reached the upper retail floor and Daphne turned instinctively towards the lingerie department. Whether it was Daphne or her husband, Patrick, who got off on silk next to the skin, Ellie didn't know, but she saw that glazed look come into her friend's eyes as they entered. Then she paused, wondering if the condition was contagious, as everything seemed to tremble in front of her as though somewhere deep beneath them an underground train had gone rushing by.
'You OK?' said Daphne.
'I think so. Just something walking over my grave, you know. Something big.'
'Probably that fat bastard poor Peter works for. Let's go and find a seat, get a coffee, or take lunch early. Did you eat any breakfast this morning?'
Touched by her friend's willingness to turn away even from the gates of Paradise to offer comfort, Ellie said, 'No, really, you go on. But I think maybe I have had enough. I'll skip lunch, if that's OK, and head off. I've got something I need to do in Sheffield.'
For some reason she didn't want to give chapter and verse on Roote, maybe because it would have been hard to explain without inviting comment on Peter's obsession.
An hour later she found herself standing on the doorstep of 7 Post Terrace in Hope talking to a woman called Myers who'd bought the house three years ago from a couple called Wilkinson and had never heard of anyone called Roote.
As Ellie turned away in disappointment, she heard an eldritch screech. She'd often wondered what one of these would sound like, but she recognized it as soon as she heard it. Its source seemed to be a neighbouring window, which Ellie had noticed was wide open despite the cold, dank weather.
Peering in, she discovered that the reason for the open window was to ensure as little as possible of anything interesting was missed by an aged crone in a rocking chair who without preamble told her that Mrs Atherton-who-used-to-live-there-before-the-Wilkmsons' daughter Anthea had married a man called Roote and, if Ellie cared to step inside, all would be made clear.
Ellie was in like a shot and soon discovered that her informant wasn't quite so ancient nor so crone-like as at first appeared. Her name was Mrs Eel and she made a nice cup of tea and a lovely Victoria sponge, and what was more she'd lived there all her life and what she didn't know about Hope simply wasn't knowledge.
From a somewhat rambling narrative Ellie extracted a classic plot line.
Anthea Atherton's parents had skimped and saved to give their attractive daughter the kind of education which fitted her to move in circles full of rich young men who spoke proper, lived in big houses, drove Range Rovers, and wanted only the company of a beautiful and intelligent young spouse to make their comfortable lives complete.
Then she'd thrown it all back in their faces and married a cop.
Mrs Eel pronounced this punchline with all the revulsion of Tony Blair discovering that one of his cabinet was a socialist.
'How dreadful!' said Ellie. 'I knew a girl who did the same. It never works. And this policeman, was he local then?'
'Oh no. That would have been bad enough. But this 'un worked down South’
More shock-horror. Ellie tried for detail but it soon emerged that while Mrs Eel was needle-sharp on Hope, she was a bit vague on South, which began immediately after Bradwell two miles away. But she knew the cop's name was Tommy Roote and he was a sergeant and how they'd met was there'd been some bother at the posh boarding school Anthea went to, and the sergeant had been part of the investigating team, and Anthea was only seventeen then.
‘Taking advantage of a child, there should be laws against it,' concluded Mrs Eel.
‘I think there are,' said Ellie.
'Likely, and him being a cop, he'd know about 'em, which is why the cunning devil waited till Anthea reached eighteen afore he married her.'
News of this event was greeted by such cries of rage and despair from the Atherton household they were,
