Tomorrow's ghost

by Anthony Price

  ‘Where are they?’ Was that the right question?

  ‘Where are they?’ For a moment he was thrown by the sheer triviality of the present-whereabouts-and-status of Mrs Fitzgibbon-Fisher’s expensive khaki-green leather gloves. ‘They’re in his hotel—the Royal Europa, Harrogate. But I’ll get him to post them.’

  ‘No. I can make time to pick them up tomorrow.’ Frances curbed her excitement: if it wasn’t the right question it had been near enough. But what she had to do now was to reinforce its triviality. ‘Those are my very best gloves. They cost a fortune—‘ (That was safe. Anything made of leather cost a fortune) ‘—and the colour-match is perfect… I’m not trusting them to the Post Office. I shall pick them up myself.’

  ‘All right. Fisher—if you must!’ He chuckled. ‘Mulier est hominis confusio. ‘

  ‘What?’ She pretended not to understand the chauvinist jibe.

  ‘Nothing … As I said, just so you concentrate your energies on Colonel Butler, m’dear. Because … none of this has gone on record, but we’re relying on you to come up with something, make no mistake about that. Understood?’

  Promotion, riches and fame—or demotion, penury and oblivion.

  ‘I understand.’

  Click.

  Wait ten seconds.

  * * *

  ‘Directory inquiries, please … I’d like the number of the Royal Europa Hotel, Harrogate, please.’

  She rummaged in her handbag for her wallet. With phone charges what they were at peak times, how much did she owe Isobel?

  * * *

  ‘Royal Europa Hotel.’

  ‘May I speak to the Head Porter, please.’ (For a guess, Paul would start at the top.)

  ‘Head Porter. Can I help you?’

  ‘My name is—‘ (Frances experienced a moment of confusion: what was her name?) ‘—Fitzgibbon. I believe you have a pair of gloves for me. Left by a Mr Paul Mitchell?’

  ‘Ah… Miss Fitzgibbon—yes… And that would be Miss Frances Fitzgibbon, I take it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Frances licked her lips. ‘You have my gloves?’

  ‘Yes, madam. We have your… gloves.’ He placed a curious emphasis on gloves, turning the word into a conspiracy between them, and a pass-word too. Suddenly Frances felt hand-in-glove with him, and part of all the rendezvous in which he had played the role of go-between—his discretion and loyalty bought for a blue fiver—for other Paul Mitchells and Frances Fitzgibbons over the years.

  And, just as suddenly, the knowledge was painful to her, that there was no one now who would wish to buy that discretion for her and anyone else, for what Paul would have led this Head Porter to believe: a night in one of his double rooms—Where love throbs out in blissful sleep/Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath/Where hushed awakenings are dear …

  If that had been the case, what would she say now?

  ‘Was there a message… with the gloves?’

  ‘Ah… Would you hold the line for a minute, madam?’

  What was he doing? Turning on the tape? Putting the extension through? Or moving the Receptionist out of ear-shot?

  ‘Thank you, madam… Now, if you please, on one side of your fireplace there is a book-shelf—am I right?’

  ‘What?’

  He cleared his throat. ‘I am instructed to ask you, madam: on one side of your fireplace there is a book-shelf. What sort of books would there be on that shelf, now?’

  Frances closed her eyes. The fireplace—to take precautions like this Paul had to be scared—the fireplace had books on each side of it, she’d made the bookcases herself during Robbie’s second tour in Ulster … Robbie’s books on one side, hers on the other—her Faulkner and Hardy and Fielding, and all her poetry anthologies—God knows ‘twere better to be deep pillowed in silk and scented down—but why was she thinking of those lines, from one of Robbie’s favourite poems, and of all poems that one, the death one?

  She opened her eyes. Paul had only noticed Robbie’s books at his side when he had sat at that fireside, in the empty chair.

  ‘Fairy stories and folk-lore.’

  ‘Fairy tales—that’s correct. Thank you, madam.’ He drew a five-pound breath of relief. ‘If you have a piece of paper and a pencil handy, I have a message for you, madam.’

  There was a pad by the phone, with a biro on a string.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘”Ring 0254-587142”. Have you got that, madam?’

  It may be he shall take my hand/And lead me into his dark land—Damn! ‘Yes. 0254-587142’.

  ‘”Ask for the Adjutant”.’

  ‘Yes. Ask for the Adjutant.’

  ‘”Exercise caution”.’

  Paul really was scared. And as of this moment, since Paul didn’t scare easily—never had been scared in her experience—then Frances was frightened, thought Frances.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘That’s all, madam. Just that.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She waited, but he didn’t seem inclined to hang up. ‘Yes?’

  ‘The gloves, madam. What shall I do with them?’

  ‘Oh.’ So there really was a pair of gloves. But of course there was: Paul wouldn’t make that sort of error. And, by the same token, she must play her part in the charade.

  ‘I’ll be coming by to pick them up, probably tomorrow.’

  ‘Then I’ll leave them in Reception for you … And … good luck, madam.’

  Click.

  * * *

  One good thing about being frightened, thought Frances analytically, was that it dissolved both poetry and feminine vapours—that would be Wing Commander Roskill’s famous adrenalin overriding the central nervous system, making a superwoman of her.

  0254-587142. Poor Isobel’s phone bill!

  ‘Guard Room.’

  Frances frowned at the wall. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You’ve got the Guard Room, love.’ The owner of the voice appeared resigned, though not unkindly, to explaining what was bound to be a wrong number. ‘Queen’s Lancashire Regiment, Blackburn Depot—Salamanca Barracks. Is that what you want?’

  The adrenalin pumped. No need to wonder now what Paul was doing, of course; while she was excavating Colonel Butler’s marriage, he was turning over Colonel Butler’s military career, or some unresolved question mark in it—and who better than Paul Mitchell, the ex-military historian, to dig into that history?

  (And who better than Widow Fitzgibbon, the ex-military wife, to dig into that marriage? Ugh!)

  ‘I’d like to speak with the Adjutant, if you please.’ Frances heard her most county voice take over, turning the request into an order. ‘He is expecting a call from me.’

  Haughty sniff. ‘An urgent call.’

  ‘Very good, madam.’ The Guard Room came smartly to attention at the word of command.

  The past flooded back painfully, surging over her and then carrying her forward before she could check it into the might-have-been present. Robbie would have made captain now, and if they’d still been together she’d have been an established regimental wife—even maybe a wife-and-mother, with a son down for Wellington—If.

  No!

  Think of Colonel Butler—Major Butler, Captain Butler, Lieutenant Butler, Officer Cadet Butler … even Private Butler.

  Paul had been right: not quite out of the top drawer, our Jack—she ought to have noticed that, if not noted it (what did it matter where he came from?), because her ear was sharper than Paul’s (but maybe it did matter now, remembering how Colonel Butler—

  Captain Butler at the time, it had been—from the wrong side of the tracks had carried off Madeleine Francoise de Latour d’Auray Boucard, of Chateau Chais d’Auray, which sounded a long way beyond the other side of those tracks).

  (Because that had been as out-of-character for the dour Colonel Butler she knew, or thought she knew, as for the Private Butler who had risen from the ranks of his Lancashire regiment, out of the back streets of Blackburn … somehow inheriting the fortune of General Sir Henry Chesney en rou
te.)

  (There was more in Colonel Butler than met the eye, much more and very different. But how much more, and how different?)

  * * *

  ‘Miss Fitzgibbon?’

  The Adjutant. Widow Fitzgibbon could tell an adjutant when she heard one.

  Wellington and Sandhurst. Or any public school and Sandhurst; Johnnie Kinch, who had danced rather closely with not-yet-Widow Fitzgibbon, had been Eton and Sandhurst and Robbie’s adjutant, and that could have been Johnnie Kinch’s voice, down to the last inflection.

  ‘Could I speak to Mr Mitchell, please?’ said Frances cautiously.

  ‘Ah … jolly good!’ Caution met caution. ‘Would you hold the line for a tick?’

  For a tick she would hold the line.

  * * *

  (But it wouldn’t have been Private Butler, of course—his had been a rifle regiment, or was it a fusilier one? An Army wife ought to have made that important distinction—it would have been Rifleman Butler, or Fusilier Butler … Except, the truth was, she had never been a very good Army wife, imbued with the proper attitudes, but just a very young one full of learning and politics out of step with her situation, in which there was also more than had met her eye—more and very different.)

  * * *

  ‘Princess?’

  That was Paul—no doubt about that.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Where are you phoning from?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Where-are-you-phoning-from?’

  ‘A pub in the back of beyond.’

  ‘The pay phone?’

  ‘No. The publican’s private line. What’s your problem?’

  ‘You got my message. Did Control phone you? Or did you phone Control?’

  ‘What’s the matter, Paul?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake. Princess—answer the question!’

  ‘I phoned him. For Christ’s sake—what’s the matter?’

  Silence. Clever Paul was assessing the chances of putting himself on someone else’s record. Clever scared Paul.

  ‘Okay then. Princess. We’ve got things to talk about.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like … how you’re going to smear Jack Butler, maybe?’

  ‘What d’you mean—smear?’

  ‘Have it your own way—“investigate”, if you prefer. Just so you keep on digging until something starts to smell. Choose your own euphemism, I don’t care.’

  ‘I seem to recall, last time we met you weren’t so pleased with him,’ Frances snapped back defensively.

  ‘Hah! Nor I was. But that was … let’s say professional disagreement, tinged with envy. This is different—and don’t tell me you don’t know it … Come on, you tell me you’re not digging dirt. If you can do that then okay. But if not…’

  The challenge hit her squarely. That was the way it had seemed to her when Extension 223 had first talked to her, but somehow she’d forgotten her initial reaction.

  And now that he wasn’t talking to her—now that his voice wasn’t seeping into her ear—she could recall how she’d felt—‘Come on, Frances. Take me seriously just this once—is that what you’re doing?’

  Digging dirt—? Well, crudely put, that was exactly what she was doing, even if she didn’t want to find any.

  The voice of Extension 223 had been the voice of Saruman, Tolkien’s wicked wizard, who could always daunt or convince the little people.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good girl. Because that’s what I’m supposed to be doing too—digging dirt. My problem is your problem.’

  A moral Paul? Frances didn’t have to test the possibility in order to reject it. A delicate conscience had never hampered him in the past, and it wasn’t likely to be spiking him on one of its horns now. Paul’s dilemmas were always strictly practical ones.

  ‘So what? It won’t be the first time either of us has dug dirt, Paul.’

  ‘Very true. That’s where the gold is, in the dirt—I know.’

  ‘Then what’s so different now?’

  ‘Hah! The difference. Princess, is that then we were digging in the national interest.

  What old Jack would call “the defence of the Realm” … not as part of a bloody palace revolution.’

  ‘A—what?’

  ‘You heard me. A bloody-palace-revolution. The Ides of March in the Forum. A quick twist of garrotting wire and a splash in the Golden Horn. The Night of the Long Knives.

  And us in the middle of it, up to the elbows in gore.’

  ‘Paul … are you out of your mind?’ Frances stared at the white wall in dismay.

  For a moment the phone was silent. ‘Paul?’

  ‘All right … so I’m exaggerating. We do these things in a more civilised manner, of course … But if I’m crazy. Princess, then I’m being crazy like a fox, I tell you. And … you start thinking for yourself, for God’s sake. Have you ever taken part in anything as whacky as this before?’

  Frances started thinking.

  ‘Whacky’ was a typical Paul word, but it wasn’t too far off the mark. There had been something decidedly odd about this operation from the start, she had been telling herself that all along.

  ‘Who briefed you, Frances?’ He paused only for half a second. ‘Top brass? And off the record?’

  ‘Yes.’ Exercise caution. And that applied to her dealings with Paul as well, because if there really was a major security shake-up in progress—‘palace revolution’ was also typical Paul—then two things were certain: there would be rival factions jockeying for power, and Paul Mitchell intended to be on the winning side, regardless of the interests of Frances Fitzgibbon, never mind Colonel Butler. ‘But I wasn’t told to smear Colonel Butler, Paul.’

  ‘Don’t be naive, Princess. Whose side are you on?’

  He was being unusually direct or exceptionally devious, decided Frances. But which?

  ‘My side. Whose side are you on, Paul dear?’

  ‘Hah! I deserved that!’ He chuckled at his own self-knowledge. ‘Okay, Frances dear—Princess mine—my off-the-record top brass set me to inquire gently into two small areas of doubt about our Jack’s warlike career … gently and discreetly, but I’d better get the required answer if I value my civil service pension bien entendu. Namely, if he was so bloody good at his job, why was his promotion so slow? And was the late glamorous Madame Butler the pillar of wifely chastity—or wifely virtue—that the official records suggest? To which I strongly suspect the required answers are He wasn’t really any good, so he wasn’t promoted, and He wasn’t really any good because Madame B wasn’t so virtuous while he was away at the wars, and he found out and that screwed him up. Right?’

  Frances stared at the white wall. ‘Damn you, Paul -‘

  ‘I said required—hold on. Princess—I said required. I didn’t say “correct”. Those are the answers they want me to come up with, not the answers I may come up with.’

  ‘Damn you! I haven’t started yet!’

  ‘Well, hard luck! You wanted to know which side I’m on, and I’m telling you.

  Though it’s not easy on this bloody instrument—David Audley’s right: the telephone is the devil’s device, and God rot Graham Alexander Bell or Thomas Alva Edison, or whoever. You may be a female Bachelor of Arts in English Literature, Princess, but I’m a Master of Arts in History, where facts still count for something … and I’m not getting the right answers. Which worries me more than somewhat.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, Paul.’ Beneath the froth he did sound worried, and that purged her anger. ‘I really am.’

  ‘So you should be. Because you should be worried for yourself too, my girl. And worried on two counts, also. Or at least two.’

  ‘And what are they?’

  ‘Oh, you can laugh.’ He didn’t sound his casual self, and that equally purged any shred of humour from their situation. ‘It’s Jack Butler’s promotion we’re supposed to be superintending. Has it occurred to you … that might be true?’

  ‘I assume
d it was. Isn’t that why it’s important?’

  ‘Too true. But I think I know what the promotion is.’

  The Ring of Power, thought Frances—and then backed off from the image. Whatever power Colonel Butler was in line for, it had nothing to do with fairyland, or Middle Earth, or Cloudcuckooland; it was life-and-death power here on earth, her earth.

  ‘And what promotion is that, then?’

  ‘I’m not telling you—on this line. Four hours from now, where will you be, Frances?

  We have to talk, you and I.’

  He really believed his ‘palace revolution’ theory, she believed that now. And, allowing for paranoia being an occupational hazard of their profession, she was beginning to believe in his belief.

  ‘I’ll be at Colonel Butler’s home this afternoon—and this evening, I hope.’

  ‘Why there, for God’s sake?’

  ‘I have some answers to get, like you, Paul.’

  ‘Christ! I’m dim, aren’t I! Madame Butler, I presume?’ He breathed out. ‘They’re really pushing it, aren’t they!’

  ‘Has it occurred to you that they could be right?’ she pushed him deliberately, even though she knew the answer: Paul’s distinction between right and wrong was always strictly factual, not ethical. Neither cheating nor any other morality came into it.

  ‘You better believe that I have. Princess. That’s the main thing that worries me. And that’s why I need to see you. We have to talk!’

  He wasn’t going to go further on his own account. But he might go further on hers.

  ‘So what’s the second thing that should worry me? .You didn’t actually get round to telling me.’

  ‘Nor I did …’ He left the answer hanging in the air for a moment. ‘They gave you carte blanche for the job, did they? They said you’re the boss?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Me too. So who was the first person you wanted to talk to about Jack Butler?’

  David Audley—

  Paul hardly waited for an answer. ‘David Audley, of course. Because he’s known Jack from way back—even before that file started, if my scuttlebut is correct … Only carte blanche doesn’t include David Audley, does it? Right? Or Hugh Roskill?’

  Now he was pushing her.

  ‘I’ll bet you tried, Frances—because you’ve got some pull with Hugh Roskill from your happy little secretarial days … And did they tell you that your handsome Wing Commander just happens to have winged off somewhere on business, where you can’t pick his brains—did they tell you that?’