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

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of physical abuse and child death.

Jackson researches Renaissance portrait artists in a café. He learns that sitters were often painted with animals from the mustelid family, such as stoats, minks, pine martens, and weasels. Jackson thinks of the missing painting as Woman with a Weasel. He calls his cultured ex-girlfriend Julia, who explains weasels symbolize fertility, and that the portrait was likely painted just before the sitter’s marriage. Exiting the café, Jackson bumps into an attractive woman and is flattered when she laughs flirtatiously.

Jackson interviews Dorothy Padgett’s neighbors, who variously describe Melanie as anywhere from 20 to 40 years old, with either blonde or brown hair. However, they all agree she was “very pleasant.” He also discovers that Ottershall House burned down in 1945 before the auction at which Hazel claims their father bought the painting. He also finds someone placed a tracker in his jacket pocket but does not remove it. Later, observing Jackson reading Hark! Hark! The Dogs Do Bark, his girlfriend Tatiana dismisses Nancy Styles as “a poor woman’s Agatha Christie” (74).

Jackson suspects that the Padgetts did not report the painting’s theft because someone in their family had stolen it from elsewhere.