Tomorrow's ghost

Royce (someone had advised young Captain Butler well) - and had shaken the dust of Blackburn (or the dirt and the grime), which Chesney and Rawle had turned to gold, from his feet... nevertheless he had been in Blackburn that November morning, when his wife had disappeared, and not in Harrogate, across the Pennines, where he should have been.

It might be nothing, it might be something. And it might be everything.

* * *

'Mrs Fisher?'

'She couldn't get Jane to go to sleep. I'm listening, Mr Hedges.' Frances amended her expression to one of close attention.

'Jane?' He frowned.

'The littlest one.' She must be more careful.

'Jane.'

'Yes.' He grudged her the knowledge of the smallest Butler's name. 'It was Jane -

that's right.'

Frances kicked herself. He'd been ready to tell her what he'd never told anyone else, and now she was on the cliff-edge of losing him because of her own stupid inattention.

'Yes?' She willed him back from the edge.

Where are my girls?

'He said 'I must go and see them'. And I said 'Is there anything you can tell us, that may be of assistance?' But he didn't seem to hear - he just went to the door, and then he turned back and said 'Do they know that she's missing? What do they know?' like it was something he'd just thought of.

'And I said we couldn't very well keep it from them, but we'd said she'd had to go away. So he looked at me for a moment, and then he went out. And I heard him pause at the bottom of the stairs, as though he was thinking - or as though he was looking at himself in the mirror there, for a moment. And then he went up.'

Not looking at himself, that didn't ring true, thought Frances. Of all men. Colonel Butler would be the least likely to need to straighten his regimental tie or smooth his regimental hair, which was too short to need smoothing, before going up to his girls.

'Looking at himself?'

Hedges ignored the question. 'A little while after that I heard her laughing.'

Frances blinked. 'Laughing?'

'I went to the foot of the stairs and called the WPC down. I asked her what they were doing up there.

'She said he'd looked into the elder girls' bedroom, just for a second or two, then he'd gone into the little one's. 'He's reading to her', she said. 'He's got this book, her favourite book. I was reading it to her - it's called Felicity Face-maker. I think he's making faces at her.''

Hedges stared at her, as though he expected her to make a face at him. 'Do you know why I'm telling you this?'

There was no answer to that.

'Perhaps you think I've got a remarkable memory - nine years ago?'

There was no answer to that either. 'No' would be a lie, and 'yes' would be a mistake.

'I haven't. Not more than the next man, anyway.'

That wasn't a question, it was a challenge.

'There are some things no one forgets,' said Frances.

Hedges nodded. 'So ... when I told him how she'd gone missing - his wife - he knew what I was telling him. He knew what I thought, it was in his face. I suppose it must have been in mine, come to that.

'Except there wasn't anything in his face. Not a thing.

'We had a man once - a constable on point duty who went to pull a woman out of a car that'd run into the back of a petrol tanker. It went up just as he was trying to get the door open.

'He didn't get her out. A nice-looking boy he was, too - ' he looked away from her for a moment, into the heart of the fire which was burning up nicely in the grate ' - and they did remarkably well with him, the surgeons in the hospital. What they couldn't give him back was the muscles, in his face. He had his face back, more or less, but not any expressions to go with it.

'And that was the way it was with the Major - Major Butler. No expressions for me -

and then he went up and made his little 'un laugh ... and he read to the other two as well

... took about half an hour, thirty-five minutes - and then back to me. Like he was in shock, and the shock had burnt out the muscles ... Or as if he was holding himself steady, and if he didn't he'd burst into tears. And he wasn't going to do that in front of a stranger, not ever.

'I had him for about an hour, too. He went through her clothes, just to make sure what she'd been wearing. Or that she hadn't taken anything else to wear.'

At that stage he still hadn't been quite convinced: it might have been foul play or it might have been deep design.

'And a couple of days later, after they'd told us we could check on his movements locally, I went through the