Tomorrow's ghost

'He's doing that, madam.'

'And the people upstairs must stay where they are.'

Ballard nodded. 'Mr Collins, sir! I wonder if you would be so good as to go to the Common Room and prevent the ladies and gentlemen there from leaving? You can tell them there's been a slight delay in the schedule.'

Collins and Dickson exchanged glances.

'Perhaps they'd both better go,' said Frances.

Ballard cleared his throat again. 'Mr Dickson found the - ah - object, madam,' he said.

'I thought you might want to have a quick word with him.'

Frances could feel the seconds ticking away from her life.

'Of course ... Thank you, Mr Collins ... Mr Dickson?' Frances attempted to exude confidence. 'I won't keep you a moment, Mr Dickson.'

Dickson nodded to his friend. 'Off you go, Harry.'

They both looked old enough to have seen war service, thought Frances gratefully.

Certainly they were behaving like veterans.

Collins bobbed his head. 'See you upstairs then, Bob.'

Frances watched him depart for five heart-beats before turning back to Dickson. 'You found this thing, Mr Dickson?'

'Briefcase, madam. Dr Penrose's briefcase.'

'Briefcase?' Frances looked at Ballard. 'But all the briefcases were checked.'

'This one was checked,' said Dickson quickly. 'I saw it checked myself.' He pointed to the glass doors. 'Then I took it off of Dr Penrose, and labelled it up like the rest, and took it into the cloakroom.' He indicated the door on his left with a nod of the head.

'Yes?'

'Officer there asked me to check out the cloakroom again, just now - ' another nod, this time to Ballard ' - so I reaches up to the top shelf, to make sure there's nothing else there but the cases, just to make doubly sure, like. And Dr Penrose's case - I can't hardly move it. 'Fact, it took me all my time to lift it down.'

'To - lift it down?'

Dickson sniffed. 'I put the heavy cases on the lower shelves, and the light ones up top. Dr Penrose's was light as a feather, like there was nothing in it. Now it's heavy ...

And, what's more, it's locked. And it wasn't locked when I put it in - because I saw Dr Penrose close it up right here, on this desk-top.'

Frances found herself staring at the door towards which Dickson had nodded, which bore the legend GENTLEMEN.

Heavy - but still on the top shelf - and locked, when it should have been light and unlocked. Those plain facts disposed of the faint hope that Dickson and Ballard had raised a false alarm with good intent, it didn't take a computer to produce that unpalatable print-out of the statistical probabilities for her. But how -

'Madam!' said Sergeant Ballard sharply. Someone who was certainly no gentleman had somehow got into the cloakroom, so that now there was only one adequate thickness of brick between whatever he had left behind him and her own shrinking flesh and blood. But Ballard was right:

this was not the time to inquire further into that particular mystery.

'Thank you, Mr Dickson.' Frances swallowed a quick lungful of air. 'You'd better go and help Mr - Mr - '

'Collins,' supplied Ballard, stepping towards the cloakroom.

* * *

Francis had never in her life been inside a gentleman's cloakroom.

Once, by accident and in semi-darkness, she had taken the first few steps down towards a men's lavatory in London, at which point the atrocious smell had warned her of the error she was making.

She had never expected to have the door of a gentleman's cloakroom held open for her.

* * *

There was a strong smell in the new English Faculty Library gentleman's cloakroom -

a smell so cloying that it rasped on Frances's dry throat.

But its dominant ingredient was lavender, not ammonia.

And there was also a large, ruddy-faced man clutching a walkie-talkie to his cheek and sweating profusely.

As well he might sweat, decided Frances with a sudden sense of detachment which surprised her as her eyes were drawn instantly to the briefcase at his feet. It was enough to make anyone sweat.

'Mrs Fitzgibbon is here now, sir,' said the sweating man in an unnaturally steady voice.

He had never set eyes on her before, thought Frances, but it was an entirely reasonable deduction in the circumstances.