Tomorrow's ghost

'In November. One year exactly,' Shapiro nodded. 'We have one year - to the day, near enough. He'll be at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday, and that'll be the last time.'

The irrelevance of the exact dating threw Frances into confusion. Sir Frederick Clinton had always attended the Remembrance Day parade in Whitehall, every Sunday of every November that she could remember, with his medals on his chest. Twice, when she'd been duty officer, he'd quite deliberately taken her too - had put someone else on duty for an hour quite deliberately.

'You'll want to come of course, Frances. You have something to remember.'

She'd never seen David there - in spite of the Wessex Dragoons' 80 per cent casualties. But-then David wasn't sentimental.

She'd never seen Butler there either... And that was much stranger, with his passion for anniversaries and the Lancashire Rifles' battle honours, which must be scattered across dozens of cemeteries all the way to Korea and back.

But that was all irrelevant: she was being diverted from the wood by the ba-rk on the trees.

Paul noticed her confusion at last, and took pity on her.

'Frances - I'm sorry! I am dim-witted.' But he was pleased with himself, nevertheless.

'Fred Clinton's retiring next year.'

'Yes?'

'It's as plain as the nose - ' Paul's eye flicked to Shapiro's beak, which almost rivalled Nannie's, and then came back to her ' - as the pretty nose on your face. I just didn't get it until I realised that no one would expect me to be altruistic - to want to do the right thing just for once for the right reason, like poor old Thomas Archbishop in Murder in the Cathedral.

Exasperation. 'Paul, what are you talking about?'

'He turned the job down - David did. Stocker's job. And he pushed Butler for it - '

Paul pointed at Colonel Shapiro ' - and he lobbied all over the place for Butler to get it.

And David doesn't normally play politics, he despises politics almost as much as Fighting Jack does. Right, Colonel?'

'Correct.' Shapiro nodded. 'And a grave mistake, too. David Audley is a professional who tries to behave like an amateur. He suffers from the gentlemen-and-players syndrome - a common British disease afflicting ex-public schoolboys.'

'Very true. But not a common Israeli disease afflicting ex-tank commanders,' Paul agreed, deflecting the insult back at the Colonel. 'So few gentlemen in that line of business, I suppose?'

Frances looked at them angrily. 'For God's sake - both of you - why are they after David, not Butler? What's David done?'

'It's not what he's done, it's why he did it,' said Shapiro.

'Or rather, dear Princess, why everyone thought he did it,' said Paul.

Motive again, thought Frances bitterly. She had already found a motive Colonel Butler had had for something he hadn't done; now all she had to find was a motive David Audley had lacked for something he had done.

It came to her a second before Paul spoke, but too late.

'They thought David was going for Sir Frederick Clinton's job,' said Paul.

Just like that. Simple, obvious and self-evident. Like the nose on Nannie's face - plain as the nose, plain as the face.

David Audley for Number One.

Therefore, in advance, to prepare the way for the lord, his old friend and colleague -

godfather to his daughter - for Number Two.

'Correct,' said Shapiro.

David Audley for Emperor.

But first Colonel Butler for Grand Vizier.

It was safe as well as simple: the Grand Vizier never got the Emperor's job, that required different qualifications as well as cojones. But the Grand Vizier was uniquely well-placed to influence the succession ... and - God! - also to eliminate rivals.

Frances stared at Paul. Was he thinking what she was thinking: that whoever was urging them both on to dig the dirt on Colonel Butler, was acting in self-defence, to avert the possibility that before long, otherwise. Butler would be urging Mitchell and Fitzgibbon to dig the dirt on them with his new Ring of Power? Everybody had dirt hidden somewhere, and given time and resources someone else could find that dirt.

(She went on staring at Paul. It wouldn't take him long to find out that Mrs Frances Fitzgibbon's marriage had been breaking up because Mrs Fitzgibbon was rotten in bed; and that Captain and Mrs Fitzgibbon both knew that Captain Fitzgibbon wouldn't come back to her from that last Ulster tour, one way or another. It wouldn't take him long. He might even know already, at that, being Paul.)

(She mustn't think of that. She didn't want Robbie to come back any more than Colonel Butler would not want Madeleine Francoise to come knocking at his mock-Tudor door again.)

David Audley for Emperor.

No wonder there was a palace revolution in progress!

'I know what you're thinking,' said Paul. That wasn't possible. She had to head him off, anyway.