Dying Fall

results and then I’ll contact her. Until then, I won’t tell anyone except
    And there, maddeningly, the entry ended. Ruth sits, staring at the words, feeling slightly dizzy. She has often wondered what other people think of her. Well, now she knows. Ungainly, that’s about right. But – lovely eyes, terrific in bed? Ruth loves sex but has never wondered whether she’s good at it. That’s something new to think about it. She recognises the bitterness of thinking that everyone else your age is married with children. How often, over the last twenty years, has she felt the same thing? First it was the wedding invitations, then the birth announcements. When, in her forties, they eventually stopped coming, she had felt relieved. Now, at last, they would leave her alone. And then she had her own miracle baby. Dan couldn’t have expected that. No one did, least of all Ruth herself.
    Thinking about babies makes Ruth want to check on Kate. She is stretched out sideways in the double bed, sleeping deeply, mouth open. She has caught a slight cold, probably from paddling yesterday. The joys of a summer holiday in England. Not that this is a holiday exactly, what with a sinister fascist group spying on her, death around every corner and the shadow of the Raven King looming over them all. And Dan had been contacted by University Pals, the outfit Tim suspects of being an internet scam designed to steal your identity. It’s a frightening thought, put like that.
    Cathbad’s door is shut and Ruth does not go in.
    Downstairs she pours herself a glass of wine and goes back to the diaries. Thing settles heavily on her feet. Like Kate, he’s a noisy breather.
    22 May 2010
    Threatening letter received today. Know it’s from the WH as it has all their stylistic signatures. The references to pure-blood, England (not Britain) and the so-called Gods of Yore. The salutation ‘Dear Jew’ was a nice touch, I felt. What worried me more was they obviously know something about the Raven King. There was a line ‘Curst be he who touches the bones of King Arthur’. That mock-archaic sentence structure is also typical. How did they know about the possible Arthurian link? Maybe someone from LAS has been gossiping. News travels fast around here.
    I told Clayton about the letter and he panicked as usual. I said I thought that we should involve the police but he said no, the uni had had enough bad publicity lately. Be worse publicity if someone’s killed, I said (joking). Clayton went white and said ‘Oh, dear boy, it won’t come to that’. I wonder if he has been threatened himself.
    When I got home there was a dead bird on my doorstep. Neighbouring cat or death threat? It’s hard to tell. Elaine looked over the wall when I was burying the bird and asked what I was doing. ‘Gardening,’ I replied. She flounced off inside, obviously thinking that I was taking the piss. After all, as Howard Jacobson says, who’s ever heard of a Jew gardening?
    Later
    Just occurred to me that if someone did leave the bird as a message, they must know about the bird skeletons we found on the site. Uncomfortable thought.
    Ruth wonders what LAS stands for. She googles and comes up with the Lancashire Archaeological Society. She remembers Clayton telling her that some members of the society were present at the dig, ‘old dears’, Dan calls them. Even so, it might be worth the police checking the names of the old dears. She adds that to her list for Tim tomorrow.
    Dan had sounded slightly shaken in the diary entry, she thinks, but not scared. He was blasé enough to joke about someone being killed. In fact, he sounds every inch the contemptuous academic – take the references to ‘mock-archaic sentence structure’ and ‘stylistic signatures’. Even the anti-Semitism is treated lightly, though Ruth is surprised how much Dan obviously thought of himself as Jewish.
Who’s ever heard of a Jew gardening?
She is sure that in all the years she knew him he never once referred to himself as a Jew.
    The tone of Dan’s letter to her had been very different. Then he had seemed genuinely frightened.
I’m afraid … and that’s just it. I’m afraid.
What happened to make him change his mind?
    25 May 2010
    Elaine called me today. That’s unusual in itself. And she suggested meeting at the Mount Hotel, which seemed astrange choice of venue. I was teaching all day and couldn’t get there until six. I knew when I arrived that she’d already had a lot to