Authors: Anthony Price
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 route.)
(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 c
aution.
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 assumed 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?’
She hadn’t even got as far as a refusal on Hugh, thought Frances: she hadn’t even understood what she was into at that stage. ‘So what?’
‘Roskill doesn’t matter much, but David Audley does—did you know that Jack Butler is godfather to David’s daughter, the apple of his eye?’
‘Yes—‘
‘Of course, David makes no secret of it. And I bet Jack Butler’s a damn good godfather too. He’s a great one for anniversaries, so he’d never forget a birthday—and he probably checks on the poor kid’s catechism too, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘Get to the point, Paul.’
‘Don’t be dim, Frances—that is the point. Among other things David Audley is almost certainly the greatest living authority on the life and times of Jack Butler.’
‘But also a friend of his.’
‘After a fashion. It’s more of a love-hate relationship, actually—old Jack doesn’t altogether approve of some of David’s professional attitudes, David’s too much of a maverick for him … But even if I grant you friendship—and admiration—it wouldn’t make a jot of difference if it came to a security crunch. Because under the skin our David is a real hard bastard—which you should know as well as anyone, Frances, having seen him in action.’
That, undeniably, was true, thought Frances. In professional matters David was not, decidedly not, a follower of the Marquess of Queensberry Rules.