55 pages • 1 hour read
Kate AtkinsonDeath at the Sign of the Rook: A Jackson Brodie Book
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “We Invite You To”
An advertisement promotes a murder mystery weekend in Yorkshire. The event is at Rook Hall, a hotel within Burton Makepeace House, owned by Lord and Lady Milton.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Red Herrings”
The Red Herrings Theatre Company begins its performance in Rook Hall’s library. The characters, including Sir Lancelot Hardwick, Major Liversedge, the Reverend Smallbones, and Swiss detective René Armand, are trapped in a country house during a snowstorm. Lady Milton is confused by the performance, complaining of too many characters. However, Reggie Chase assures her that several will soon be killed off. Jackson Brodie reflects he may be tempted to kill them himself.
Chapter 3 Summary: “The Mysterious Affair at the Willows”
A week earlier, private detective Jackson Brodie met Ian and Hazel Padgett at the home of their late mother Dorothy. The Padgett twins revealed that 96-year-old Dorothy died of natural causes, but a Renaissance painting disappeared from her bedroom on the day she died. They suspect their mother’s live-in-carer, Melanie Hope, who disappeared at the same time.
The Padgetts claim that the painting was uninsured and the artist unknown. A photograph of the picture shows a beautiful young woman with a weasel on her lap. Hazel states that their father likely bought the portrait from an auction at Ottershall House in September 1945. Insisting they did not want to involve the police, the Padgetts asked Jackson to find Melanie and the painting.
Hazel claims that she and Ian inherited all their mother’s assets. She speaks proudly of their father, Harold, revealing he was at El Alamein. However, Ian admits their father was “a bit of a bully” (13). Dorothy had many interests her husband did not share—she enjoyed ballroom dancing, learned Italian, and wrote romantic stories.
Dorothy kept the painting in her bedroom, and Jackson notes that it can only be seen when the door is closed. Searching Melanie’s room, he finds a copy of the detective novel Hark! Hark! The Dogs Do Bark by Nancy Styles and the tabard Melanie wore for work. The burned remnants of Dorothy’s romantic stories are in the garden incinerator.
Jackson does not trust the Padgett twins or believe their claim that the painting is only of sentimental value. He reflects that Melanie seemed to care for Dorothy better than her children and hopes he can prove she is innocent. Jackson is now a grandfather, and his recently purchased Land Rover Defender is fitted with a baby seat for when he looks after his granddaughter.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Ancien Régime”
Lady Honoria Hamilton recalls being “betrayed” by her housekeeper, Sophie Greenway, two years earlier. Sophie was calmly efficient and an agreeable companion. A vicar’s daughter, she dressed modestly and often made allusions to 19th-century novels that went over Lady Milton’s head. Lady Milton preferred Sophie to her adult children, Piers, Arabella, and Cosmo.
Sophie was an art lover and was curious about the Miltons’ famous Madonna and Child by Raphael. The painting was bought with the compensation the Miltons received when they were forced to give up their Caribbean plantation upon slavery’s abolition. Cosmo secretly sold the painting to a Russian oligarch to pay off his debts, but if asked about the painting’s whereabouts, the Miltons claimed it was being restored.
The family’s only remaining masterpiece was Sunset over Fountains Abbey by Turner. The evening before Sophie disappeared, she surprised Lady Milton by kissing her when saying goodnight. The next day, she and the Turner painting were gone. The case was investigated by a young Scottish DC, Reggie Chase. Reggie found a copy of The Secret of the Clock Cabinet by Nancy Styles at Sophie’s bedside with the following passage underlined: “The guilty always masquerade as the innocent but it is rarely the other way round” (44).
Burton Makepeace was once a grand country house, but it is now dilapidated and runs “on a skeleton staff” (41). When his father died, Lady Milton’s husband Johnny was forced to sell several valuable artworks to pay the death duties. Piers calls their home “Burden Makepeace” due to the cost of maintaining it, and they have opened the house to the public to help pay the bills. Piers converted the East Wing into a hotel called Rook Hall, sold the Dairy Cottage, and turned the old workers’ cottages into holiday rentals.
Lady Milton cannot understand why Johnny and the footman spend so much time alone together. She is unsure if her husband is Cosmo’s father, as she once had a passionate affair with an art valuer. Lady Milton’s only grandchildren are Arabella’s twin girls and, as females cannot inherit the estate, a distant Australian relation (presently a sheep farmer) is likely to become Burton Makepeace House’s future owner. In the meantime, Cosmo must marry for money to support the estate.
Reverend Simon Cate, the vicar of St Martin’s Church, visits Lady Milton. He is unable to speak, using sign language to communicate. Lady Milton disapproves of the vicar’s unconventional ministry—he is known for holding church services for pets, and she once encountered him hugging a tree.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Return from Damascus”
Reverend Simon Cate has lost his voice. He has been unable to speak since discovering he could not say “Amen” at the end of a prayer. Simon has been diagnosed with hysterical aphonia, a psychological condition. His ex-wife Rosalind used to complain he talked too much. After she left him, Rosalind died in a terrorist attack while on vacation.
Before becoming a vicar, Simon was a TV producer. One day, he traveled to York for a friend’s wedding and visited a medieval church. Experiencing an overwhelming rush of emotion as he heard York Minster’s bells, Simon believed he was in the presence of the Holy Ghost. Later, he wondered if the sensation was caused by ischemia, a restriction of blood to the brain.
By the time he was ordained, Simon no longer believed in God. However, when he confessed his lack of faith to the bishop, he was advised to continue in his role. Simon perceives his primary responsibility to be looking after the elderly in his community. He expects that when his current parishioners die, no others will take their place. Trees and animals provide his spiritual sustenance.
Chapters 1-5 Analysis
In the novel’s early chapters, Atkinson establishes several parallel plots: the murder mystery weekend, Jackson Brodie’s inquiry into a missing Renaissance portrait, the theft of a Turner painting from Burton Makepeace House, and the disappearance of Reverend Simon Cate’s voice. Throughout the novel, various characters provide narration, and their points of view also provide insight into their inner lives and histories.
In these chapters, the novel’s plot strands are woven together by the theme of The Legacy of Loss. In addition to the mysteries of two lost artworks, the impact of personal loss is explored through the characters of Lady Milton and Simon. Simon’s loss of his voice as he attempts to say “Amen” is a physical manifestation of his loss of faith, and its timing signals an inability to continue reciting doctrine he no longer believes in. Lady Milton loses both her housekeeper, Sophie Greenway, and the Turner painting, and as she grapples with these losses, she is also forced to confront her gradual loss of privilege.
With the Milton family, and particularly Lady Milton, the novel also explores the theme of Change in British Society through the decline of the aristocracy. Lady Milton’s lifestyle and core identity are threatened as the family is forced to open their home to the public, sell parts of their estate, and open a hotel to sustain themselves financially. The motif of Burton Makepeace House illustrates Lady Milton’s increasing impotence, the decayed state of the formerly grand country house paralleling the erosion of her family’s former power. The title of Chapter 4, “Ancien Régime,” refers to the political power of the French aristocracy before the French Revolution transformed the social order. The allusion suggests that it is only a matter of time before families like the Miltons become similarly obsolete.
In exploring social change in these chapters, the narrative begins a dialogue surrounding the ethics of land ownership. Lady Milton’s horror at the prospect of selling portions of the estate is countered by Sophie’s suggestion that land belongs to everyone, while references to the Milton family’s profitable involvement in the slave trade highlight how their land ownership is intrinsically linked to their oppression of others. Beyond illustrating the aristocracy’s decline, these chapters address the moral ambiguity of their wealth, suggesting that the disappearance of their influence, which so upsets Lady Milton, signals an evolution to a more modern society.
Multiple allusions to classic detective fiction establish Death at the Sign of the Rook as both a homage to and a pastiche of the genre. The title of Chapter 3, “The Mysterious Affair at the Willows,” is a play on Agatha Christie’s novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Meanwhile, the books of the fictional Christie-esque author Nancy Styles become vital clues, linking two art theft cases. The murder mystery performance of the Red Herrings Theatre Company adds another layer to the narrative’s exploration of the genre’s tropes as the plot of Death Comes to Rook Hall utilizes the popular conceit of the closed circle, or locked-room mystery, where the murderer and their victims are trapped and isolated from help. In another allusion to Christie, a Hercule Poirot-like “fastidious little Swiss detective” and stock characters such as a major and a reverend further emphasize these similarities (2). Atkinson creates a playfully self-aware tone as her characters critique the very genre they inhabit. For example, Reggie’s prediction that the characters will “get picked off one by one” (2) emphasizes the predictability of the plot’s trajectory.
The novel’s metafictional aspects are highlighted by the author’s emphasis on The Theatrical Nature of Everyday Life. Characters such as Lord Milton and Reverend Cate echo the stock characters of Lord Hardwick and Reverend Smallbones in the production of Death Comes to Rook Hall. Meanwhile, when the Padgett twins relate the story of the missing portrait, Jackson has “the distinct feeling that the two of them [are] reading from a script. One they’d agreed on beforehand” (5). Jackson’s perception of Hazel and Ian as “leaden” actors in a play highlights the inextricable merging of art and life.
In this section, the theme of The Moral Complexities of Justice is also introduced in the passage Reggie finds underlined in The Secret of the Clock Cabinet: “The guilty always masquerade as the innocent, but it is rarely the other way round” (44). This quote hints at the lack of distinction between victims and perpetrators of crimes in the novel, suggesting it is a matter of perspective. This concept is further highlighted by the depiction of the Padgett twins. While claiming to be the victims of an art thief, Hazel and Ian are presented as greedy, untrustworthy, and neglectful toward their mother. Furthermore, although the Milton family is the target of a similar crime, their secret (and illegal) sale of a Raphael painting indicates a lack of honesty and integrity. Conversely, the con artist Melanie Hope/Sophie Greenway is revealed to have been a caring presence in the lives of the elderly women she duped. These characters complicate the ideas of good and evil, victim and criminal, subverting the way that these roles are usually clear-cut in a mystery novel.
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