Tomorrow's ghost

by Anthony Price

‘In his bedroom.’

  ‘Indeed? Books in his bedroom? Well, well!’ He was interested in spite of himself.

  ‘What dark secret have you uncovered there, then?’

  Frances thought of the hard, narrow bed and the carefully adjusted reading lamp, as well as the well-thumbed books. And also what the children had said.

  ‘No dark secret, Paul. Just Hardy and Dickens and Thackeray … he’s re-reading Henry Esmond at the moment.’

  ‘Re-reading?’

  ‘And Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year. And Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men.

  And Hemingway and Stephen Crane. And Jack London’s Martin Eden.’

  ‘That would be rather suitable,’ murmured Paul. ‘But Hemingway—that’s a turn-up, I must say!’

  ‘And John DOS Passes … Thoreau, Mark Twain … and Faulkner—every bit of Faulkner …’

  She trailed off.

  ‘Hmm . ..’ There was a frown on his face now. ‘Not a simple soldier, you mean? But maybe a man after your own heart, perhaps?’

  He had seen her books, Frances remembered, even though he had also confused Robbie’s with hers to her discomfort.

  And then … after her own heart?

  Well, they both had the same Yoknapatawpha County tales, except that his had been bought new in ‘55—J. Butler 1955—and hers picked up, dog-eared, in the Charing Cross Road fifteen years later.

  Heart—

  And except his had an underlining in it (and it was his underlining too, in the same coal-black ink of J. Butler 7955), and as he had never underlined anything in any other of his books, so far as she could discover, that passage from Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech had to be strong magic for him:

  … the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths … love and honour and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice…

  ‘You favour the psychological approach this time, then? “Know the man, and you’ll know where to find the facts everyone else has missed”?’ At least he was deadly serious and not making fun of her.

  ‘Are there any facts everyone else has missed?’

  He didn’t reply at once; he was still adding the unsuspected literary Butler to his Fighting Jack, and getting no sort of answer.

  At length he nodded. ‘I think there are, somewhere—yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of us, Frances. You and me.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘I mean … I don’t believe they would have detached us without a reason—I don’t think it can be just because someone high up hopes to block Butler’s promotion. I think that a word has been dropped somewhere that there is something. And if they put the same people on it who checked him out before, they think those people will find the same things, which will amount to nothing. But you and I—we start out fresh. That’s what I think, Frances.’

  And we’re the best too, he left unsaid.

  ‘Which leaves us with the old “means, motive and opportunity”—if he killed her, then how did he, and why did he, and when did he?’ He paused fractionally. ‘Only we already know that there could have been a “when”, because he never produced an alibi.

  And the “how” hardly matters, because when it comes to killing he’s got more notches on his belt than Billy the Kid.’

  ‘But only in war.’

  ‘But he enjoyed it. That’s what the chap who was with him on the Imjin in Korea said. They were in trenches-trenches and dug-outs and wire, and it was bloody cold, and they were overrun by rats. Rats don’t like cold, they like nice warm dug-outs. And you can’t poison them because they go home to die, and then they smell. And there were plenty of dead bodies to smell, too … In fact, it was like the ‘14-‘18 War—in some ways it was even worse, because there weren’t any billets behind the lines, or if there were they were full of rats and lice—and the rats and lice were full of scrub typhus and Songo fever, neither of which Butler senior had to contend with on the Somme. Apart from which there was foot-rot and ring-worm and malaria. And, of course, there were a million Chinese who were quite prepared to swop casualties at ten to one—‘

  This, again, was the other Paul: a Paul transformed by his private military obsession, convoys and battle-cruisers forgotten now.

  ‘Butler admired the Chinese—wouldn’t let anyone despise them, said they were damn good soldiers who deserved to be better supported. Said it was unlucky for them they were up against the British Army, who couldn’t be beaten in defence if they were properly led, and he intended to see that they were. Absolutely mad on weapon training and leadership and physical fitness—no one in his company was allowed to get sick, he’d have a chap’s boots off and examine his feet as soon as look at him, he said he could tell when a man had bad feet just by looking at him … Absolutely revelled in it—‘ he stopped short as he caught sight of Frances’s expression. ‘What’s that look supposed to mean?’

  ‘You haven’t said anything about killing, Paul.’

  ‘No. But –‘

  ‘You’ve described the General and the father in their trenches, maybe. You haven’t described a professional killer,’ said Frances.

  Paul’s jaw set hard: he didn’t like to be caught out on his own battleground. ‘There was Cyprus, Princess—his first bit of Military Intelligence. That shoot-out in the Troodos Mountains in ‘56 wasn’t trench warfare. And the I-Corps sergeant’s automatic jammed, so those were all his kills.’

  He was into the small print now. And obviously he knew a great deal about the military Butler—more than she did. But he hadn’t mentioned Trevor Anthony Bond and Leslie Pearson Cole, and that could mean that they hadn’t exposed that chapter of the Butler file to him, although he’d had the military chapter in greater detail.

  ‘All right, Frances. We’ve both been digging, and we both know something we didn’t know before … I know he was a damn good soldier in the trenches. And that he was a one-man execution squad in the mountains. And you know his taste in literature—would that qualify as an old-fashioned hunger for self-improvement, now?’

  ‘Self-improvement?’

  ‘That’s right. An old northern working-class passion that’s gone out of fashion with the coming of the welfare state.’ He paused. ‘I agree he’s a complex character. A working-class boy who struck it rich. Maybe a schoolmaster manque … a self-made officer and gentleman of the old school, anyway—self-made in someone else’s image, or his version of someone, that was maybe two wars out-of-date. Perhaps that was why his face never quite fitted in his regiment: he thought he was conforming, but he was conforming to the wrong pattern.’ He paused again. ‘And then out of the blue, in the sort of dirty fighting he’d never prepared himself for, he finds he has a natural talent for counter-intelligence work—unregimental work, just when his regimental career is beginning to go sour on him … and also just when they’re beginning to cut the army down, and amalgamate the famous regiments out of existence. And he really hated that, I can tell you. No Lancashire Rifles any more, no Mendip Borderers. No family to belong to—or pretend to belong to. Just duty. And Madame Butler.’

  He stared at her. ‘We have to put it together and get an answer to our question, one way or another, Frances.’

  Frances knew that she couldn’t put it off any longer. If she did she’d merely delay him, he’d come to it himself eventually.

  ‘He hated her too.’

  Somewhere deep in the house behind and above her she could just distinguish the thump of pop music.

  The means and the opportunity had always been there as a possibility; they had been so obviously there that they’d never really mattered.

  Either the girls’ TV programme was a Pick of the Pops variant, or they required a background of noise for the assimilation of their set-books.

  But no one had ever produced a motive.

  ‘You’re sure?’ He had been expecting something like it; it was just as well she hadn’t flannelled him.

  ‘Yes.�
��

  ‘From the children?’

  ‘Indirectly.’ It had been close to directly, but the circumstances in which the information had been given made that admission stick in her throat. ‘They confirmed it indirectly.’

  ‘You knew already?’

  ‘By the time I … talked with them … yes.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘This house.’ Now she wanted to get it over. ‘There isn’t a thing of hers in it. Not an object, not a piece of clothing—not a handkerchief, not a book. Not even a picture. Not a single thing.’

  He looked around him.

  ‘This was always his room. His books and his desk—they are the same. But the curtains are different. He replaced them.’

  He wrinkled his nose. ‘Not in very good taste.’

  Frances swallowed. ‘He hasn’t got very good taste. She furnished the whole house when they moved in.’

  ‘Elegantly, I presume?’

  She looked at him interrogatively. ‘You presume?’

  ‘She was French, wasn’t she?’

  Deep breath. ‘Yes. And yes, I think. From what the middle daughter remembers.’

  ‘But he chucked it all out?’

  ‘He sold it. The daughters—the two elder ones—are just starting to get him to re-furnish again. The eldest girl has made him sell all the pictures he bought—the paintings—and has replaced them with ones she likes. She’s studying Art at college.’

  ‘He does what he’s told, does he? Well, I suppose he can afford to indulge them, anyway … But how d’you know all this? Did they tell you?’

  ‘Some of it. But he keeps very careful accounts—‘ she nodded towards the desk ‘—it’s all neatly filed in there.’

  Paul stared at the desk for a moment. ‘So … he blotted her out.’ He turned back to her. ‘You knew this before you talked to the girls—that he hated her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He frowned. ‘But couldn’t it have meant great love—la grande passion, possibly? All reminders unbearable?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘But not likely?’ The frown became perplexed. ‘He met her at the end of the war, just before or after … the file doesn’t say which. But he didn’t marry her then—he didn’t marry her until he came back from Korea in ‘53 … So … he—she was very young when he first met her. And she waited eight whole years for him.

  That doesn’t sound like a passing fancy to me. Princess, you know.’

  ‘Or alternatively, she waited until he was rich,’ said Frances brutally.

  ‘Hmm … ye-ess.’ He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

  ‘You know something?’ She could hear a slight rasping of stubble.

  ‘Maybe.’ He stopped rubbing. ‘I haven’t picked up the least suggestion that she ever played around.’

  ‘No?’ There was more to come.

  ‘If anything she was … rather un-French.’

  ‘Un-French?’

  ‘Rather cold. Say, beautiful but unapproachable.’

  That was a typical chauvinist judgement: if Madeleine Francoise had been English her coldness would have been unremarked (or not even noticed, as her own had never been noticed). But as a Frenchwoman Mrs Butler was expected to be sexy and available, as well as having good taste in house-furnishing.

  ‘She wasn’t affectionate, in fact?’

  ‘Yes. That’s about it.’ The chauvinism had restored some of his confidence. ‘Is that what you wanted to hear?’

  At the same time he didn’t sound wholly convinced, and Frances could understand why. That first meeting, in the excitement of the war or the chaos of its aftermath, touched a chord of romance in him. Men, even men like Paul with his calculating-machine passion for facts, very often had foolish romantic streaks in them somewhere which the right stimuli activated. And in his case, with his passionate interest in things military, the imagined picture of the young British soldier meeting the young French girl might just do that trick.

  Come to that, it might also have done the trick with Madeleine Francoise, she thought with a sharp spasm of memory. In his old pullover and cavalry twill trousers Robbie had been just a very ordinary boy, just another young man, if a little shorter-haired and better-mannered than average. But in his uniform, very straight and very young, he had been something else … The old song was right—there was something about a soldier .. . something enough to delude clever little Frances Warren anyway, once upon a time, so maybe enough for Madeleine Francoise too.

  But that didn’t really fit this case, because it hadn’t been a wartime romance. There were those eight years to swallow: had Butler waited until he could afford to marry, or had Madeleine Francoise waited until he was worth marrying?

  ‘Or is that what you expected to hear?’ Paul pressed her. ‘The daughters told you as much—how the devil did you get them to tell you a thing like that?’

  That was one thing she wasn’t going to tell him.

  ‘They had their reasons … and I said “indirectly”.’

  ‘And this house.’ He looked around him again, then back at her. ‘You’re still not levelling with me, Princess.’

  ‘Not levelling? What d’you mean?’

  ‘I mean … you came here, and you talked to them—and you somehow got them to talk to you, God knows how. But you couldn’t have known what they were going to say, or what you were going to find. But you came.’

  It would be easy to say ‘Where else could I start?’ It would even be logical, so that he couldn’t argue with it.

  But it wouldn’t be the truth, or the most important part of the truth, and he would know that too. Because there were rare moments when Paul’s instinct also operated independently from the data in his memory store, and this was one of them.

  All the same, if she could avoid admitting the whole truth—

  ‘It was in the report … Or rather, it wasn’t in the report, Paul.’

  ‘What wasn’t?’

  ‘It never stated that they were a devoted couple.’

  ‘Would you have expected it to?’ He regarded her incredulously. ‘Hell, Princess—those Special Branch chaps of ours are bright coppers, but they haven’t exactly been raised on Shakespeare’s sonnets.’

  ‘I’ve talked to the inspector who was on the case at the time…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He was quite sharp too. And he liked Butler. I was waiting for him to say it—there were half a dozen times when he could have said it—“It was a happy marriage”. Or even “There was nothing wrong with the marriage”—anything like that—‘

  ‘Or “It was a bad marriage”? He didn’t say that either?’

  ‘He didn’t say anything at all, not deliberately.’

  ‘So it didn’t stick out enough to seem important to him.’

  ‘But in this case it was important. Because there was no circumstantial evidence either way, so the motive had to be twice as important.’

  ‘Okay, Princess.’ Paul conceded the point gracefully. ‘Then he liked Butler—so he didn’t push it, you may be right. But, a bit of cold fish is our Jack. And cold fish plus stiff upper lip plus duty—it doesn’t make for demonstrations of affection.’

  ‘No! That’s just where you’re wrong, Paul. Colonel Butler isn’t really a cold fish at all.

  He’s terrifically affectionate with his daughters.’ Frances swallowed. ‘And I mean, physically affectionate. I mean … for example, every night he was home—right up until they started to develop, anyway—he’d insist on bathing them. And they loved it. In fact … they still don’t mind if he sees them naked—they actually tell him their measurements—‘

  * * *

  ‘—and Father always has to have the scores when he gets home, Frances. Like “Australia 356 all out, England 129 for two, and Jane 31-23-31—“

  * * *

  ‘Good God!’ Paul sounded not so much surprised as slightly shocked at her intimate revelation of Butler family life. (But then, of course, Paul was an only son of a widowed mother
, and a boarding school boy too, so under the Cavalier exterior there was probably a Puritan hang-up or two about adolescent girls, thought Frances nastily.)

  ‘They adore him.’ She struck at his embarrassment. ‘They’d do anything for him.’

  The blow rebounded instantly: anything even included attempting to conscript the wholly unsuitable Mrs Fitzgibbon as a potential Second Mrs Butler. And how many others before her? she wondered, remembering the eager, scheming little Butler faces.

  ‘Uh-huh?’ Paul quickly had his hang-up under control. ‘But mightn’t that make them perhaps not so reliable witnesses to the marriage?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’ Frances shook her head. He still wasn’t totally convinced, and she couldn’t blame him. The omission of any judgement of the quality of the Butler marriage, either in the report or in William Ewart Hedges’ recollections, was negative evidence, and her own investigation of the house was hardly less subjective, even when added to his own findings. But she could hardly admit to him that all this, plus what the girls had told her, were merely corroborative to the instinct she’d had from the beginning about Butler. How could she ever tell anyone that she knew what she was going to find before she had found it? That the knowledge was like a scent on the wind which she alone could smell? That this house itself still smelt of that old hatred?

  * * *

  ‘One thing about Maman, though—she always smelt beautiful, I do remember that.’

  Jane had closed her eyes.

  ‘Lancome “Magie”, I think it was—‘

  ‘It wasn’t Lancome “Magie”,’ Sally had said professionally . ‘It was Worth “Je Reviens”.’

  * * *

  In the circumstances of a nine-year-missing mother, that wasn’t funny, Frances had thought—and still thought: Je Reviens was a promise too horrible to think about nine years after a possible encounter with Patrick Raymond Parker, ‘The Motorway Murderer’ of the headlines which suddenly came back to her. The women who met Patrick Raymond Parker didn’t ever come back: they were planted deep—Julie Anne Hartford, Jane Wentworth, Patricia Mary Ronson, Jane Louise Smith … and Madeleine Frangoise de Latour d’Auray Butler, nee Boucard—they were planted deep under his stretch of motorway, compacted by his great earth-moving machines and held down by the thickness of hardcore and concrete and tarmac, and millions of speeding vehicles, until doomsday; and even if the world ended tomorrow, and it took another thousand years for green-growing things to push up through that hard surface, they wouldn’t come back.