Tomorrow's ghost

It was going to be hard work.

'At least I can get rid of the police for you, anyway,' she offered her first olive branch with a conspiratorial grin. 'There's no need for them to hang around now that I'm here.'

As an olive branch it was not an overwhelming success: Nannie simply nodded her acceptance of the lesser of two evils.

More than hard work, decided Frances. 'In the meantime, perhaps we could go somewhere a little less ... public?' She looked at her watch: it was two o'clock already.

'Somewhere where there's a telephone?'

Nannie glanced at the telephone on the table at the foot of the staircase, then back at Frances.

'There is a telephone in the library,' she admitted grudgingly, indicating a door to Frances's right.

Frances followed her to the door. There had to be a bridge between them somewhere, or a place where the bank was firm enough to construct a bridge. Or even a ford where she could cross over to Nannie's side without drowning in the attempt.

The library really was a library: a long, high room entirely walled with books from floor to ceiling except for its two immense mullioned windows. The wooden floor shone with the same high gloss as that of the hall, but here there was no smell of polish, only the dry odour of accumulated knowledge on paper, compressed between old leather and matured over dozens of years. At the far end was an immense mahogany desk, in the direct light from one of the windows. All its drawers were open, one of the top ones pulled out so far that it rested at an angle on the one beneath it. A silver-framed photograph lay on the floor, face down.

Frances heard Nannie draw in her breath sharply beside her.

Suddenly Frances remembered how hot her own dear Constable Ellis had been on the subject of burglary -

* * *

'But I've nothing worth taking, Mr Ellis. I might just as well leave the cottage unlocked.

They wouldn't find anything, no matter how hard they looked.'

'Don't you believe it, Mrs Fitz. They'd take something you wouldn't want to lose, even if they left empty-handed.'

'Now you're being too clever for me, Mr Ellis. Shame on you!'

'Oh no. If it happens to you, you'll know sure enough. And it'll make you sick, too. Because breaking into a woman's house - goin' through her private things, like the flimsy things she wears next to her skin, if you'll pardon me, like her knickers and her silk slips an' suck-like -

that's almost like rape when a stranger does it. So ... breakin' into a house is like raping it.

Raping its privacy, you might say. It isn't changed, not really. But it isn't the same, even if they don't take a thing.'

* * *

Frances looked at Nannie. 'Have the Police been through here?'

'Yes.' Nannie continued to stare at the desk.

'Right, then.' Frances walked across the library to the desk. First she fitted the displaced drawer into its runners and pushed it back into its proper place, and then slid back the other drawers, one after another (very neat and tidy was Colonel Butler; his letters held together with elastic bands, still in their original envelopes; his receipted bills in their appropriate folders - School Fees was the topmost folder in one drawer.

Insurance in another; a place for everything, and everything in its place, that was Colonel Butler). Then she methodically straightened the desk diary and the pen-holder and the leather-bound calendar. And last of all she set the silver-framed picture in its proper place, on the left. The photograph was of Nannie herself and the three children at the seaside; judging by the size of the largest child it dated from the early 1970s.

'It's all right now - everything's all right. He - they were only looking for money, Nannie. The picture glass isn't broken.'

'There wasn't any money in the desk,' said Nannie, not to Frances but to the library itself, as though the thief was still hiding in it.

But then, of course, she was right: the thief was still hiding in it. A different thief, yet one who knew what she was after even if she didn't know what she might find. Not a conventional thief, who would take the water-colours off the walls and leave the drawers gaping, but certainly a thief within Constable Ellis's definition.

A thief, no doubt about that.

The thought was painful to Frances, but the pain helped to concentrate her mind on the job just when she'd been in danger of letting sympathy cloud her judgement.

'Don't worry, Nannie.' She touched Nannie's arm reassuringly. Just a touch - a Judas touch; a pat would have been too much. 'It won't happen again, we'll see to that.'

Nannie looked down at the slender hand, then up at Frances.

'You know, I think we probably have friends in common,' said Frances, testing the bridge cautiously. 'Isn't the Colonel one of Cathy Audley's godfathers - David Audley's little daughter?'

Nannie regarded her for the first time with something approaching recognition.

'David Audley is another of my bosses.' Frances smiled. 'And I know his wife too.