Tomorrow's ghost

suppose...' He trailed off uncertainly.

'So what were battle-cruisers used for?'

'What were they used for?' He paused for a moment. 'Well, if I remember correctly, the theory behind them was big guns plus high speed, but not much armour. So they could catch anything, and run away from anything they couldn't sink ... Though I don't think it worked out quite like that in practice ...' He paused again. 'But I thought you were an expert in fairy stories - I didn't know you were interested in naval matters.'

'I'm not.' Frances decided to let the negative serve for both subjects; it would be too exhausting to explain away the first misapprehension, and it really didn't matter any more, anyway.

'No?' The single word was heavy with curiosity and caution, carefully packed in his habitual politeness. He had decided to concede the initiative, and was waiting to see what she would do with it.

'But Paul Mitchell is.'

'Paul Mitchell? I thought military history was his special subject. In fact, I'm sure it is.'

'Well, he's into naval history now. Sir Frederick.'

'Is he now? With a particular emphasis on battle-cruisers?'

'Not particularly. He has some extremely complicated theories - mathematical theories - about the size of convoys in the last war.'

'Indeed?' He was smiling at her again. She couldn't see the smile, but she could sense it. 'That would be like him, of course - he has an insatiable appetite for facts and figures

... and for facts in general. It's the historian in him ... And you get on well with Paul, do you, Frances?'

If we're meant to be a team he's splitting us up before we've got started, thought Frances.

He meaning Butler -

It was time to stop sparring.

'So where did the battle-cruisers come in?' Sir Frederick jogged her obligingly.

'Yes. Well - ' Frances drew a long careful breath ' - he was wondering - Paul was wondering ... and so am I, Sir Frederick ... what a pair of battle-cruisers were doing in Colonel Butler's convoy, where they were absolutely useless - where they weren't needed and they weren't even wanted.'

'Ah - I see...' For a moment there was silence between them. 'Yes ... and where one of the battle-cruisers was very nearly sunk without a trace this afternoon, to no very good purpose too - so it seemed to you, eh?'

There was no answer to that, only a memory which would have been ridiculous if it had not been still so terrifying: sunk without a trace in a duck-pond, H.M.S. Fitzgibbon.

'And did you come to any conclusion about this ... incomprehensible piece of naval strategy, Frances?'

Frances swallowed. 'Not at the time. I think Paul was close, but he didn't have enough to go on.'

I need straw to make my bricks.

'But now you have enough to go on?'

He was here, standing in the darkness of her garden, that was all she had to go on, thought Frances. And if that was enough to make her reach for a conclusion, that certainty, it was still not enough to make the conclusion a believable one.

'I require an answer to that question, Frances.'

That was a direct order, as direct and explicit as he could make it short of grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking an answer out of her; require - she could remember David Audley defining the difference between 'request'

and 'require' in a way which made time stand still over two centuries of military and diplomatic semantics - require left a subordinate not a millimetre of choice, one way or another.

'Yes, sir.'

'Then why do you think you and Paul were sent to Yorkshire?'

'To watch Colonel Butler.'

'What makes you think that?'

Require was still in force.

'Because that's what we did, in effect.'

'Yes?'

'Because nothing else makes sense.'

'Go on.'

'And you are here now.'

'Which you think makes it a matter of internal security. Go on.'

She was tired, and the thick serge material of the old dressing gown no longer kept the night chill from her shoulders.

'Which still doesn't make much sense ... sir.'