Death at the Sign of the Rook: A Jackson Brodie Book

“Did he want this job? Not really, but he was intrigued by Melanie Hope, and if she had not stolen the painting—and there was no actual evidence that she had—then perhaps he could do a good deed and clear her name, innocent until proven guilty and all that. And he had to admit that he was drawn to the enigmatic, nameless woman in the portrait, gazing at him through the glass of time.”

Jackson’s motivations as a private detective are underlined as he assesses whether to accept an assignment from Hazel and Ian Padgett. His instant dislike of the Padgett twins makes him disinterested in helping them, but, he takes the case hoping to prove their allegations about Melanie Hope are unjust. His decision highlights The Moral Complexities of Justice, as Jackson prioritizes compassion over pursuing and punishing a potential criminal. Jackson’s fascination with the image of the missing portrait also introduces the motif of Woman with a Weasel, emphasizing its timeless allure.

“The plants in the conservatory, sensing encroaching ruin, had abandoned it some time ago, leaving behind an earthy aroma that was not entirely unattractive. Lady Milton imagined that when she was mouldering in her coffin she would experience much the same scents.”

Atkinson explores Change in British Society through the metaphor of the deterioration of Burton Makepeace House. The author uses personification to suggest that the plants abandon the conservatory, recognizing that it will soon be uninhabitable, while the Miltons stubbornly continue to live there. The inextricable connection between Lady Milton’s identity as an aristocrat and the house’s condition is emphasized as the conservatory’s scent of decay prompts thoughts of “mouldering in her coffin.”

“They had sold off nearly all their Old Masters to pay the bills. The Raphael, the most valuable of them all, had gone, of course. The ‘Burton Makepeace Raphael’—a Madonna and child—was famous. It had been in the family for over two hundred years, bought with some of the compensation the Miltons received after the Abolition of Slavery Act when they had to give up their plantation in the Caribbean.”

Lady Milton’s interior monologue highlights the novel’s connections between art ownership, land ownership, and exploitation. Her reflection that their Raphael masterpiece was bought with compensation money from the abolition of slavery underlines how the Milton family’s wealth has been acquired through the “ownership” of other people. This history of exploitation includes not only involvement in Colonialism and slavery but also the oppression of the British working classes.

“You went to bed one night, in a happy daze because you had waltzed all night with eligible young men, and you woke up the next day and found yourself living on a bleak planet inhabited by alien creatures.”

Here, Lady Milton’s thoughts convey her sense of dislocation due to changes in British society. Her nostalgic recollection of being in a “happy daze” emphasizes how wealth and privilege protected her from the harsh realities of life as a young woman. Meanwhile, the metaphor of living “on a bleak planet inhabited by alien creatures” conveys that she is an anomalous presence in a modern world that has stripped her of those comforts.

“His rural parishes were very small and very white, and when the last of their worshippers died he supposed there would be no more church attendees. He felt as if he were overseeing the final death throes of Christianity. Someone had to, it may as well be him.”

Reverend Simon Cate’s reflections emphasize change in British society, as the aristocracy’s decline is accompanied by the Church of England’s diminishing power. He notes how his uniformly white rural congregation does not reflect the composition of British society as a whole. Furthermore, Simon anticipates that when his elderly parishioners die, it will signal the end of the Church of England. His assertion that “it may as well be him” who oversees the Church’s “final throes” suggests that, as an atheist vicar, he is well-placed to represent an increasingly obsolete tradition.

“Which was she, Jackson wondered, Saint Teresa or a cunning thief? Perhaps she was both. He never ceased to be surprised by how complicated some people could be.”

Jackson’s musings on the art thief who posed as Melanie Hope and Sophie Greenway emphasize the Moral Complexities of Justice. While the mystery woman is a fraudster, accounts of her agreeable disposition and care of Dorothy Padgett and Lady Milton suggest she is also compassionate. By creating a criminal character with admirable qualities, Atkinson highlights the complexity of human nature.

“There was a ‘before’ and ‘after’, and in between was the Leg.”

The devastating impact of his leg’s amputation on Ben is emphasized in the stark separation of his life “before” and “after” the event. The Legacy of Loss is underlined as the capitalization of “Leg” emphasizes its importance to Ben as an integral part of his identity.

“It was the perfect disguise, wasn’t it? Whoever took any notice of a cleaner or a carer? It wasn’t just a hi-vis jacket or a clipboard that gave you immunity from query, an overall and a service job would do just as well. Jackson thought of that ugly brown and yellow tabard that Melanie Hope had worn every day for four months in Dorothy Padgett’s house—it was the only aspect of her that the neighbours remembered accurately. It might as well have been a cloak of invisibility.”

In assessing how Beatrice engineered the art thefts, Jackson recognizes that the class implications of her roles played a vital part in her success. The figurative comparison of Melanie Hope’s tabard to a “cloak of invisibility” emphasizes how individuals who perform service jobs, such as cleaners and carers, are undervalued and therefore overlooked by the rest of society.

“Jackson Brodie’s MO was disruption. His attitude to the law was like a Wild West sheriff. All that coincidence-being-an-explanation-waiting-to-happen baloney was just a cover for not following procedure. Procedure was good, you knew where you were with procedure.”

Reggie’s disapproval of Jackson’s investigative methods plays on a popular trope of crime fiction: the partnership between a strait-laced detective and maverick investigator. Reggie’s emphasis on the importance of following procedure humorously foreshadows her inevitable entanglement in Jackson’s chaotic modus operandi while developing her approach as fundamentally different from his.

“‘It’s strangely symbolic, isn’t it?’ He said. ‘After all, isn’t something that is lost also something that is waiting to be found?’”

Here, Reverend Simon Cate comments on the empty frame left hanging in Burton Makepeace House after the Turner painting’s theft. His observation concerning the frame’s symbolism echoes the novel’s exploration of the legacy of loss. The bereft characters, including Simon, are shown to “find” themselves by the end of the narrative.

“Reggie picked up the photograph and gazed into the eyes of the unknown woman. There was a gulf of centuries between her and this lovely woman, but Reggie was moved by an unexpected feeling—not kinship exactly, but a kind of nod to the continuum of existence. She took out her phone and took a photograph. An image of an image of an image. Somewhere at the end of that meta chain had been a real woman.”

Reggie’s response to a photograph of ‘Woman with a Weasel’ underlines the ability of great art to provoke emotion and transcend the passage of time. Despite the Renaissance portrait’s age, she feels an immediate connection to its subject and an awareness of their common humanity. Reggie’s recognition of the “real woman” the painting depicts is even more remarkable given that she is not viewing the original but “an image of an image of an image.”

“As far as she was aware, all Styles’ novels followed the same pattern. They took place in a large house with a big cast of characters, hierarchical class divisions firmly in place and everyone a suspect until they were bumped off. […] She had fallen asleep before reaching the dénouement.”

This passage emphasizes the metafictional quality of the narrative as Reggie is bored to sleep by a Nancy Styles novel. Atkinson creates an Agatha Christie-esque fictional author in Nancy Styles, whose novels adhere to the predictable tropes of Golden Age crime fiction. In ‘Death at the Sign of the Rook,’ Atkinson creates a pastiche of traditional murder mysteries by emulating both the country house setting and class-conscious cast list of a typical Nancy Styles novel. Reggie’s critique of the genre adds a further layer of irony.

“The shoots were for game birds, but sometimes Piers transported a few deer from the deer park on to the moors. They were so tame that they provided easy targets for the hotel’s guests, most of whom had never seen a shotgun, let alone fired one.”

The Theatrical Nature of Everyday Life is underscored through the performative aspect of the country house weekend package offered at Rook Hall. The Miltons provide a faux experience of aristocratic life as tame deer are introduced as “easy targets” for guests unaccustomed to hunting and shooting. The sacrifice of the deer for the entertainment of guests also highlights the Miltons’ disregard for the welfare of animals and nature.

“Was it possible that he poisoned his father? There was no way it could be proved, of course, unless you exhumed poor old Johnny from the family plot in the local graveyard. Piers had pushed for cremation. Lady Milton had resisted. Miltons didn’t go up in flames, they rotted slowly, giving themselves back to the earth in exchange for everything they had plundered from it over the centuries.”

The moral complexities of justice are explored as Lady Milton suspects that her son Piers murdered her husband. While initially presented as the victims of art theft, the Miltons’ corrupt morals are emphasized throughout the narrative as their involvement in fraud and possibly homicide is revealed. The allusion to repaying the soil with their rotting corpses highlights the aristocrats’ historical exploitation of the land’s resources. The verb “plundered” conveys a particularly aggressive form of theft, underlining the family’s historical thoughtless sense of entitlement.

“It was a vehicle that Lady Milton was unreasonably fond of. Her father had always driven a Land Rover on his estate, and it had never occurred to her to do otherwise. Her father, the Duke, had killed himself in his vehicle, firing off a shotgun into his mouth, an awkward thing to do at the best of times, let alone in a Land Rover.”

Atkinson’s use of vehicles as symbols is highlighted in Lady Milton’s emotional attachment to her old Land Rover. Traditionally a status symbol of royalty and the landed gentry in Britain, the Land Rover represents Lady Milton’s nostalgia for the aristocratic privileges of the past. The author’s dark humor is also showcased as Lady Milton’s affection for her Land Rover is apparently untainted by memories of her father’s violent death in the same type of vehicle. The reference to the Duke’s death by suicide hints at the happiness money cannot buy.

“Reggie had once tucked a kilo of heroin into a coffin and sent it blazing into the next world. It had been a good deed, the kind of thing that Jackson himself would do. He was always making the distinction between justice and the law.”

Here, Reggie’s memory demonstrates that, despite her belief in the importance of legal procedures, she has sometimes contravened them for the greater good. Jackson’s influence on Reggie as a mentor and father figure is evident in her acknowledgment of the moral complexities of justice.

She wasn’t an idiot, she wasn’t about to go rogue. She wasn’t some maverick cop in a TV show, like Collier.”

Reggie’s interior monologue on learning that Carl Carter has escaped prison illustrates the novel’s metafictional tone. Her self-reassurance that she is not “about to go rogue” is a nod to the fictional trope of a detective who ill-advisedly embarks on a dangerous mission without backup. The statement also humorously suggests that, despite her protestations, Reggie is about to embody the role of the “maverick cop” by confronting Carter. Reggie’s reference to the fictional TV show Collier, in which Jackson’s ex-girlfriend stars, adds a further metafictional layer.

“Ben was not someone who had previously done much in the way of role-playing—it wasn’t exactly the Army’s way—but now he was beginning to rather enjoy this adopted persona. Perhaps this was the way out of depression—simply to become someone else?”

Ben’s first attempt at acting emphasizes the fragile boundaries between reality and fiction. Assuming the dual role of the Miltons’ butler and Lord Milton is a liberating experience for him, temporarily freeing him from his identity crisis. Furthermore, Ben’s ability to be convincing in both roles highlights the arbitrary nature of rigid class distinctions.

“The Murder Mysteries were set in some mythical pre-war England […] where vicars came to tea and jolly girls played tennis and the hierarchy of the class system was firmly in place. You could get away with a lot in this kind of fictional England without being blackballed. People hankered after it, they just didn’t like to admit it.”

Atkinson highlights how the Red Herrings Theatre Company’s productions, like most Golden Age detective novels, cater to the public’s nostalgic yearning for a bygone England. The author points out the inherent contradictions of an idealized fictional world where a rigid and inequitable class system is “firmly in place.”

“Each room in the house had at least two doors, Titus had counted four in the Red Room. It was like the stage set of a farce, rigged for endless comings and goings.”

The fragile boundaries between reality and fiction are highlighted through the layout of Burton Makepeace House. Titus North’s comparison of the stately home to the “stage set of a farce” is later illustrated when its profusion of doors and labyrinthine arrangement of rooms leads to cases of mistaken identity and the surreal merging of the theatrical production and real-life events.

“What Lady Milton found was a ‘Bleu Céleste’ Sèvres dish. It was a kind of fat banana shape, and no one had any idea what it was for. Most of the objects at Burton Makepeace were without purpose.”

Confronted by the killer, Carl Carter, Lady Milton searches for an object to use as a missile. Her discovery of the Bleu Céleste’ Sèvres dish is symbolic of her character’s development in this moment. Like Lady Milton herself, the dish is a valuable antiquity but, at the same time, purposeless. While its “fat banana shape” suggests it once had a specific use, its relevance has been lost with time. Lady Milton’s decision to use the dish as a weapon, giving it a purpose, signals her new sense of agency. The smashing of the antique hints at the identity she will embrace beyond that of an aristocrat.

“A dishevelled Reverend Smallbones charged into the room, brandishing a large brass poker like a weapon and wearing a stagy look of horror on his face. Yet another bad actor, Reggie concluded. He was saying nothing (had he forgotten his lines?), just gesticulating wildly like someone who was very poor at Charades.”

Reggie mistakes Reverend Simon Cate, who has newly arrived after discovering Janet Teller’s body, for the character Reverend Smallbones. The boundaries between reality and fiction blur, creating humor and a farcical tone. Reggie’s misinterpretation of the “stagy look of horror” on Simon’s face as bad acting is in keeping with the overblown performances of the cast of the Red Herrings Theatre Company. Meanwhile, Simon’s horrified expression is the result of his belief that he has entered his second murder scene of the evening. Atkinson employs dramatic irony in this scene: While the characters are overwhelmed by confusion, only readers retain a complete understanding of unfolding events.

“Thinking of the bees brought comfort. He wanted to die with peaceful thoughts in his head and he settled on the quiet industrious hum around the hive on a summer evening. The bees seemed to gather around him as he drifted away. No stinging with their little rapiers, just the occasional delicate wing fluttering on his cheek. Or perhaps it was snowing again.”

Ben’s focus on the bees as he believes he is about to die highlights Atkinson’s depiction of animals and nature as a source of spiritual sustenance. The comfort Ben derives from his connection with the bees is emphasized by adjectives conveying serenity, such as “peaceful” and “quiet.” The description of a “delicate wing fluttering on his cheek” presents the bees as an alternative form of guardian angel, reassuring Ben that he is not alone in his final moments.