Tomorrow's ghost

'This house.' Now she wanted to get it over. 'There isn't a thing of hers in it. Not an object, not a piece of clothing - not a handkerchief, not a book. Not even a picture. Not a single thing.'

He looked around him.

'This was always his room. His books and his desk - they are the same. But the curtains are different. He replaced them.'

He wrinkled his nose. 'Not in very good taste.'

Frances swallowed. 'He hasn't got very good taste. She furnished the whole house when they moved in.'

'Elegantly, I presume?'

She looked at him interrogatively. 'You presume?'

'She was French, wasn't she?'

Deep breath. 'Yes. And yes, I think. From what the middle daughter remembers.'

'But he chucked it all out?'

'He sold it. The daughters - the two elder ones - are just starting to get him to re-furnish again. The eldest girl has made him sell all the pictures he bought - the paintings

- and has replaced them with ones she likes. She's studying Art at college.'

'He does what he's told, does he? Well, I suppose he can afford to indulge them, anyway ... But how d'you know all this? Did they tell you?'

'Some of it. But he keeps very careful accounts - ' she nodded towards the desk ' - it's all neatly filed in there.'

Paul stared at the desk for a moment. 'So ... he blotted her out.' He turned back to her. 'You knew this before you talked to the girls - that he hated her?'

'Yes.'

He frowned. 'But couldn't it have meant great love - la grande passion, possibly? All reminders unbearable?'

'Possibly.'

'But not likely?' The frown became perplexed. 'He met her at the end of the war, just before or after ... the file doesn't say which. But he didn't marry her then - he didn't marry her until he came back from Korea in '53 ... So ... he -

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