Tomorrow's ghost dda-9

by Anthony Price

  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.

  And yet ... in another way and in her own sweet vengeful time, she had come back, had Madeleine Francoise. And even now she was reaching out to catch her husband's heel from behind, when he least expected her touch.

  * * *

  She shook her head again, decisively. 'No.'

  'No?' He was no longer searching for doubt in her. Instead he was superimposing her conclusion on top of his own knowledge in the last hope that they wouldn't coincide.

  Finally he sighed: one thing Paul never did was to argue with inconvenient facts, or not for long.

  'Okay. So they adore him, he adores them. And he hated her.9 The corner of his mouth drooped. 'So you've got the one bit of dirt no one else came up with - the Reason Why. And they're really going to adore you for that. Or he is.'

  'He? Who?'

  'Our Control. Our esteemed Control. He who will give us anything we want, everything we want, provided we will give him exactly what he wants. Namely, the dirt on Jack Butler - a dirty knife in the back for Fighting Jack: the Thin Red Line attacked a tergo, with no time to turn the rear rank back to back, like the 28th at Alexandria - '

  'What d'you mean?' Frances quailed before his summer-storm anger.

  'Battle of Alexandria, March 21st 1801. French dragoons caught the 28th - the Glosters - in the rear when their infantry was attacking from the front. So their colonel turned the rear rank round and fought 'em off back-to-back - I know you don't go much for the military. Princess, but you ought to remember that from your Arthur Bryant - '

  He swung away suddenly, towards the bookshelves, scanning the titles ' - and he'll be here somewhere, Sir Arthur will be, you can bet your life - '

  Frances took a step towards him, but he -was already moving down the long shelving. 'I didn't mean that, Paul.'

  'No? The Years of Endurance - it has to be here, the old General would never have missed it ... No? Well, perhaps you ought to have meant it - there's something in it you ought to see, by God!'

  'Paul - '

  But he ignored her, pouncing on a maroon-coloured volume and thumbing through the pages without looking up as he swung back towards her. 'Yes - '

  'Paul - listen to me, please.'

  'No. You shut up, Princess, and listen to me. Listen to this, in fact - '

  Frances opened her mouth, and then shut it again as he looked for a moment at her.

  '1801. We beat the French in Egypt. Everyone knows about Nelson sinking their fleet at the Nile, but that was no contest - no one remembers we beat their army, Bonaparte's veterans of Lodi. No one ever gives a stuff for the British Army, they just take it for granted - and pay it wages that would make your average car worker go screaming mad with rage, and rightly so - ' His eyes dropped to the page ' - now, listen - '

  This was the obsessive Paul again, the military historian who had never worn a uniform. But there was something more to it than that obsession this time, thought Frances: something in his mind had connected now with 1801, which she could only discover by holding her tongue.

  'Abercromby - General Sir Ralph Abercromby, commanding the army that beat the French. Died of wounds a week after - gangrene from a sword-cut - 67 years old, but he wouldn't give up until the French retreated from the battlefield ... they put him in a soldier's blanket and he insisted on knowing the name of the soldier, because the man needed his blanket ... Here it is: when he died there was a General Order of the Day published:

  "His steady observance of discipline, his ever-watchful attention to the health and wants of his troops, the persevering and unconquerable spirit which marked his military career, the splendour of his actions in the field and the heroism of his death are worthy the imitation of all who desire, like him, a life of honour and a death of glory!"

  He didn't look up when he'd finished reading the passage: he was re-reading it, memorising the words for himself, for his own purposes, for the secret Paul, to make sure he was word-perfect.

  But where was the connection?

  He looked up at last. 'Well ... at least he's not quite dead yet. Princess - our General Abercromby.'

  So that was the connection: somewhere along the line during the past twenty-four hours Paul Mitchell had finally changed his mind about Colonel Butler, from anger to approval, to admiration. And if it didn't quite make sense to Frances - computers like Paul shouldn't have emotions - it was altogether fascinating that he should in the end have come to the same conclusion as the irrational one she'd had at the beginning.

  'I haven't killed him off.'

  'You're going to give them a motive.'

  'But no proof.'

  'They don't need proof. Control doesn't need proof.' He shook his head. 'They're never going to hang anything on him - even if they could that would be bad publicity.

  All they want is enough to put the big question mark on him, and means and opportunity never were enough for that. But if you can add a motive to it ... that'll be enough to swing it.'

  He was right, of course. If the marriage was on the rocks ... and nothing could be proved against her ... then Butler wouldn't have got the children - my girls. And that, in the whole wide world, was the one thing he might have killed for out of the line of duty, they could argue.

  And that would be enough to swing it.

  What have I done? thought Frances. I don't for one moment think that Colonel Butler killed his wife - but if I put in a true report of my conclusions I shall suggest that he did.

  'You agree that there is a motive?' The cold, pragmatic half of her still wanted to know why Paul was so emotional about the job of excavating Colonel Butler's past.

  Because it couldn't be that Paul simply admired Butler's Abercromby performance in the Korean trenches and the Cypriot mountains - not enough to hazard his own career, anyway.

  'A motive?' Paul's voice was suddenly casual - as casual as a subaltern of the 28th echoing the command Rear rank - Right about - Prepare to repel cavalry! 'Frankly, Princess. I don't give a fuck about motives. Or wives. Or murder - '

  That was David Audley speaking: David never swore, except very deliberately to shock, or to emphasise a point by speaking out of character ... And Paul was a chameleon like herself, taking his colour from those he observed about him.

  ' - Or anything else, but what matters - what really matters.'

  'What really matters?'

  'What matters is - we don't kill off Fighting Jack. That's what matters.'

  'Kill off?'

  'We don't block his promotion. All we have to do is disobey orders - give him a clean bill of health - lie through our teeth: happy marriage, tragic disappearance, "Motorway Murderer".'

  So Paul had done his homework - naturally. Paul knew reporters and news editors.

  Like David Audley, Paul was owed favours and collected on them, promising future favours. Paul was born knowing the score, down to the last figure beyond the decimal point.

  But did Paul know about Trevor Anthony Bond, and Leslie Pearson Cole (deceased, restricted) and Leonid T. Starinov (restricted)? And the curious not-alibi which lay between grimy Blackburn in the morning and medieval Thornervaulx in the afternoon -

  did he know about that too?

  At the moment he didn't care, anyway: he was bending all his will on bending her will.

  Make me an offer, thought Frances cynically. It would have to be either an offer she couldn't refuse or a threat she couldn't ignore, nothing else would serve - that must be what he was thinking, not knowing what she had already done for his Fighting Jack.

  'Can you give me one good reason why I should do that, Paul? Why I should risk my neck?'

  'Why?' He snapped The Years of Endurance shut and reached up to slot it back into its space in the shelf. 'Say ... the best interests of our country - ' He glanced sidelong at her, and then straightened the books casually ' - would that do?'

  That was the offer: the National Interest, with no direct benefit attached f
or her.

  Quite a subtle offer.

  He faced her. 'And in our best interests too, as it happens, Frances.'

  She had been too quick off the mark:

  Self-interest as well as National Interest - that was more like Paul.

  'Our best interests? How?'

  He grinned. 'Didn't I tell you? Nor I did!'

  I think I know what his promotion is, Frances remembered. She had been staring at Isobel's white wall when he had said that, deliberately tantalising her.

  'You didn't quite get round to that, no.'

  The grin vanished. 'You've been playing pretty hard to get. Princess. It's been all give and no take, don't you think?'

  The threat was coming.

  'I wouldn't exactly say that.' But it was true nevertheless, she decided. She had been a pretty fair bitch to Paul, matching his hang-ups with her own.

  'Okay - have it your way ... I'll tell you.' He nodded slowly. 'But first I'll tell you something else: if you tell Control that Butler had a motive for chilling his missus ... then I'm going to phone the Grand Hotel in Blackburn - '

  'Blackburn - ?'

  'That's where Jack is tonight - and I'm going to tell him the score. At least he'll have the chance to face the enemy at his back then - '

  'What's he doing in Blackburn?'

  He did a double-take on her. 'How the hell do I know? I don't know - Jim Cable said he'd be there tonight, until about midday tomorrow - what the devil has that got to do with it? It's his home town, isn't it?'

  'You were in Blackburn today.'

  'Ah ... Yes. But he's not on my trail, if that's what you mean.'

  'How d'you know he isn't?'

  'Because Jim Cable booked the hotel for him the first day they went up to Yorkshire, more than a week ago. Which was at the start of the O'Leary hunt - long before the Butler hunt started, Princess.'

  'He's on O'Leary's trail, then?'

  'Yes, he is - and very hot too, Jim says.' He nodded.

  'In Blackburn?' Frances persisted.