Tomorrow's ghost

'Okay - have it your way ... I'll tell you.' He nodded slowly. 'But first I'll tell you something else: if you tell Control that Butler had a motive for chilling his missus ... then I'm going to phone the Grand Hotel in Blackburn - '

'Blackburn - ?'

'That's where Jack is tonight - and I'm going to tell him the score. At least he'll have the chance to face the enemy at his back then - '

'What's he doing in Blackburn?'

He did a double-take on her. 'How the hell do I know? I don't know - Jim Cable said he'd be there tonight, until about midday tomorrow - what the devil has that got to do with it? It's his home town, isn't it?'

'You were in Blackburn today.'

'Ah ... Yes. But he's not on my trail, if that's what you mean.'

'How d'you know he isn't?'

'Because Jim Cable booked the hotel for him the first day they went up to Yorkshire, more than a week ago. Which was at the start of the O'Leary hunt - long before the Butler hunt started, Princess.'

'He's on O'Leary's trail, then?'

'Yes, he is - and very hot too, Jim says.' He nodded.

'In Blackburn?' Frances persisted.

Paul frowned. 'No, not in Blackburn. What's so all-fired important about Blackburn?'

'You said you didn't know what he's doing there. But you know what he isn't doing.'

He shook his head. 'I meant that literally. He told Jim he was taking a half-day off on the Friday week ahead, and he'd be spending the night before in his home town, that's all. He'll be back on the job by 1.30 tomorrow, anyway - you can pick him up at the University then if you want him.' He continued to frown at her, half puzzled, half suspicious. 'We seem to have lost the thread rather, Princess. And you haven't yet revealed what you intend to do.'

The heavy door-knocker on the mock-Tudor door boomed out, echoing in the empty hall outside the library.

'Are you expecting callers?' asked Paul quickly.

Frances shook her head, listening intently. Even before the echoes had died away she could hear other sounds mingling with them inside the house.

'Then who - ?'

She raised a finger to cut off his question. That first sound had been the clatter of the latch on the TV room door. Then there had been a burst of unmuffled pop music - at that volume it was amazing that the girls had heard anything else, even that thunderous door-knocker - but the music had been quickly muffled again as the door was closed on it. Now there came the distinctive clackety-click of Sally's fashion clogs crossing the parquet floor of the hall, ending with the thud and rattle of mock-Tudor bolt and safety chain on the door itself.

At least it couldn't be Colonel Butler himself, because Colonel Butler was in the Grand Hotel, Blackburn, this night - this Thursday night (that other November night, nine years ago, had been a Monday night).

What was strange was that she wasn't as relieved as she should be that it couldn't be Colonel Butler. Indeed, analysing the strangeness, she came upon the beginning of a day-dream that he had come back, very late, after the girls were safely tucked up and asleep, and she herself was comfortably curled up (in Diana's exotic nightie and warm dressing gown, which Jane had found for her), reading his Tales of Yoknapatawpha County

- reading in it maybe 'As I Lay Dying', or 'A Rose for Emily', or perhaps 'The Bear', which she had first encountered so unforgettably at college - young Frances Warren as excited as John Keats On First Looking into Chapman's Homer - in 'Go Down Moses' -

* * *

'I

hope you don't mind me reading your Faulkner.'

(One hand clasping the book to her breast, the other modestly joining the edges of the gown together at her throat.)

Wo? at all, Mrs Fitzgibbon.' (Very formal, he would be.) 'You like Faulkner, do you, Mrs Fitzgibbon?'

'Very much! ('The old verities and truths of the heart,' Colonel Butler.) I think we've both read him in the same way, you know.' (Deduction: From the dates on the fly-leaves, each meticulously recording the book's date of acquisition. Butler had read his way through Faulkner at break-neck speed, book after book, in the midst of his duel with the EOKA terrorists in the Troodos Mountains, beginning with Intruder in the Dust, and then Absalom! Absalom! He must have had them flown in, money no object by then, for by then he was a rich man, the ex-poor boy from Blackburn, self-made officer-and-gentleman... Maybe lying in ambush all day on those rocky hillsides with his sub-machine gun and his newest Faulkner?)

(Well, in the same way, if not in the same circumstances exactly. Except that it was all in her imagination, every word, every picture. All a dream.)

* * *

'Frances,' said Sally. 'Frances - there's a policeman at the door, for you, he says. Not the one who brought the Chinese grub - food, I mean.'

Frances smiled at her, sisterly-step-motherly. 'Yes, dear?'

'He says he's a policeman, anyway. He says he'll show you his ... his warrant card.