Death’s Jest-Book. Reginald Hill

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      Letter 2. Received Mon Dec 17th. PP.

      St Godric’s College

      Cambridge

      My dear Mr Pascoe,

      Honestly, I really didn’t mean to bother you again, but things have been happening that I need to share and, I don’t know why, you seemed the obvious person.

      Let me tell you about it.

      I got down to the Welcome Reception in the Senior Common Room, which I found to be already packed with conference delegates, sipping sherry. Supplies of free booze are, I gather, finite at these events and the old hands make sure they’re first at the fountain.

      The delegates fall roughly into two groups. One consists of more senior figures, scholars like Dwight who have already established their reputations and are in attendance mainly to protect their turf while attempting to knock others off their hobby-horses.

      The second group comprises youngsters on the make, each desperate to clock up the credits you get for attendance at such do’s, some with papers to present, others hoping to make their mark by engaging in post-paper polemic.

      I suppose that to the casual eye I fitted into this latter group, with one large difference – they all had their feet on the academic ladder, even if the rung was a low one.

      Of course I didn’t take all this in at a glance as you might have done. No, but I related what I saw and heard to what Sam Johnson had told me in the past and also to the more recent and even more satirical picture painted by dear old Charley Penn when he learned I was about to attend what he called my first ‘junket’.

      ‘Remember this,’ he said. ‘However domesticated your academic may look, he is by instinct and training anthropophagous. Whatever else is on the menu, you certainly are!’

      Anthropophagous. Charley loves such words. We still play Paronomania, you know, despite the painful memories it must bring him.

      But where was I?

      Oh yes, with such forewarning – and with the experience behind me of having been thrown with even less preparation into Chapel Syke – I felt quite able to survive in these new waters. But in fact I didn’t even have to work at it. Unlike at the Syke where I had to seek King Rat out and make myself useful to him, here at God’s he came looking for me.

      As I stood uncertainly just within the doorway, the only person I could see in that crowded room that I knew was Dwight Duerden. He was talking to a long skinny Plantagenet-featured man with a mane of blond hair so bouncy he could have made a fortune doing shampoo ads. Duerden spotted me, said something to the man, who immediately broke off his conversation, turned, smiled like a time-share salesman spotting an almost hooked client, and swept towards me with the American in close pursuit.

      ‘Mr Roote!’ he said. ‘Be welcome, be welcome. So delighted you could join us. We are honoured, honoured.’

      Now the temptation is to class anyone who talks like this, especially if his accent makes the Queen sound Cockney and his manner is by Irving out of Kemble and he’s wearing a waistcoat by Rennie Mackintosh with matching bow tie, as a prancing plonker. But Charley’s warning still sounded in my mind so I didn’t fall about laughing, which was just as well as Duerden said, ‘Franny, meet our conference host, Sir Justinian Albacore.’

      I said, ‘Glad to meet you. Sir Justinian.’

      The plonker flapped a languid hand and said, ‘No titles, please. I’m J. C. Albacore to my readers, Justinian to my acquaintance, plain Justin to my friends. I hope you will feel able to call me Justin. May I call you Franny?’

      ‘Wish I had a title I could ignore,’ said Duerden sardonically.

      ‘Really, Dwight? That must be the one thing Cambridge and America have in common, a love of the antique. When I worked in the sticks, they’d have thrown stones at me if I’d tried to use my title. But here at God’s, antiquity both in fact and in tradition is prized above rubies. Our dearest possession is one of the earliest copies of the Vita de Sancti Godrici, you really must see it while you’re here, Franny. Gentlemen –’ this to a group of distinguished looking old farts – ‘let me introduce Mr Roote, a new star in our firmament and one which we have hopes will burn very brightly.’

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