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Jasper Fforde

THE FOURTH BEAR

^{“DCI Spratt of the Nursery Crime Division,” announced Jack, holding up his ID. “Put down the scissors and step away from the thumb. ”}

For my mother

Because the Forest will always be there… and anybody who is Friendly with Bears can find it.

A. A. MILNE

1.  A Death in Obscurity

Last known regional post-code allocation: Obscurity, Berkshire, Pop. : 35. Spotted by an eagle-eyed official and allocated in April 1987, the post-code allocation (RD73 93ZZ) was a matter of such import among the residents of this small village that a modest ceremony and street party were arranged. A bronze plaque was inscribed and affixed below another plaque that commemorated the only other event of note in living memory—the momentous occasion when Douglas Fairbanks Sr. became hopelessly lost in 1928 and had to stop at the village shop to ask for directions.

The Bumper Book of Berkshire Records, 2004 edition

The little village of Obscurity is remarkable only for its unremarkableness. Passed over for inclusion into almost every publication from The Domesday Book to Thirty Places Not Worth Visiting in Berkshire, the hamlet is also a cartographic omission, an honor it shares with the neighboring villages of Hiding and Cognito. Indeed, the status of Obscurity was once thought so tenuous that some of the more philosophically inclined residents considered the possibility that since the village didn’t exist, they might not exist either, and hurriedly placed “existential question of being” on the parish council agenda, where it still resides, after much unresolved discussion, between “church roof fund” and “any other business. ”

It was late summer. A period of good weather had followed on from rain, and the countryside was now enjoying a reinvigoration of color and scent.

The fields and trees were a vibrant green and the spinneys rich with the sweet bouquet of honeysuckle and dog rose, the hedgerows creamy with cow parsley and alive with cyclamen. In the isolated splendor of Obscurity, the residents enjoyed the season more as they had fewer people to share it with. Few people came this way, and if they did, they were invariably lost.

The Austin Somerset that pulled up outside a pretty brick-and-thatch cottage on the edge of the village was not lost. A dapper septuagenarian bounded from the front garden to greet the only occupant, an attractive woman of slender build in her late twenties.

“Welcome to Obscurity, Miss Hatchett,” he intoned politely.

“Were you lost for long?”

“Barely an hour,” she replied, shaking his outstretched hand.

“It’s very good of you to talk to me, Mr. Cripps. ”

“The gravity of the situation is too serious to remain unremarked forever,” he replied somberly.

She nodded, and the sprightly pensioner invited her into the garden and guided her to a shady spot under an apple tree. She settled herself on the bench and tied up her long, blond, curly tresses. These were her most identifiable feature, one that in the past had made her the subject of a certain amount of teasing. But these days she didn’t much care.