Eustace fitz John construction of fortifications at Tickhill and Knaresborough in Yorkshire are also recorded in this pipe roll. This and evidence of royal writs show that Eustace and Walter Espec had justiciar responsibility for the counties of Cumberland, Northumberland, Durham, and Yorkshire, a role that involved hearing pleas and conveying instructions from central government. The death of Henry I on 1 December 1135 led to the accession of Stephen de Blois, to whom Eustace submitted. Stephen's seizure of the throne was contested by Henry I's daughter, the Empress Matilda, who had been Henry's designated heir. The "Gesta Stephani" claimed that certain "very
Death in the Clouds every mental nerve to prove that she has failed, at last, to hypnotise me. On finishing "Death in the Clouds", I found that she had succeeded even more triumphantly than usual." He concluded, "I hope that some readers of this baffling case will foresee at least the "false" denouement. I did not even do that. Agatha Christie has recently developed two further tricks: one is, as of the juggler who keeps on dropping things, to leave a clue hanging out for several chapters, apparently unremarked by her little detective though seized on by us, and then to tuck it back