Tomorrow's ghost (6 page)

And they lived happily ever after.’

The young man frowned at her. ‘Yes … but I don’t quite see how…?’ he trailed off.

She smiled her careful tight-lipped smile at him.

But Granny, I don
’
t quite see
…

‘Neither did he, of course,’ she said. ‘Because—can’t you guess?’

‘He was blind,’ said Professor Crowe.

Frances looked at him in surprise. ‘You know the story?’

‘No.’ Crowe shook his head. ‘And you say your grandmother told you the story? And she’d had it from her grandmother?’

‘Yes. Why d’you ask? Is it important?’

‘No. But it is significant, I fancy.’ He nodded thoughtfully at her. ‘I rather think it isn’t a true fairy story, though. It has elements of the traditional folk-tale, of course—the original enchantment sounds typical enough. And the test-kiss, or kiss-test, is straight out of Perrault, so you’ll probably find it classified in Thompson’s
Folk Motif Index.
But I suspect they’ve all been grafted on to a very much darker superstition—a pagan-Christian tradition, possibly …’

The young man laughed. ‘Oh—come on, Hugo—‘

‘It’s no laughing matter, dear boy. In fact, it reminds me of nothing so much as one of the superstitions associated with the Madonna del Carmine at Naples—or with the Madonna della Colera herself even…’ He nodded again at Frances. ‘In which case you were quite right to be scared, my dear—which is itself an interesting example of a child sensing the truth of something she didn’t understand and couldn’t know. Because even the telling of the Neopolitan story is considered to be unlucky except under special circumstances, and if I were a Neapolitan and a good catholic I should be crossing myself now, I can tell you.’

Frances stared at him. She had always felt there was something in Granny’s tale of the blind prince and the ugly princess which had eluded her, and Robbie too. Yet now she felt an irrational reluctance to collect the answer simply by asking the Professor to retell the Madonna’s story. She knew that she still wanted to know, but that she didn’t want to find out.

The young man experienced no such qualms. ‘Your grandmother wasn’t from Naples by any remote chance, I take it?’

‘No.’ Frances, still staring at Crowe, caught the hint of a reluctance similar to her own.

‘A pity! Well … tell us about the Madonna del Carmine, Hugo. Or, better still, the Madonna della Colera—she sounds positively fascinating!’

Crowe regarded the young man distantly. ‘That, my dear Julian, you must find out for yourself. Those are two ladies whose acquaintance I have not the slightest desire to make at present. You may inquire of
Professore
Amedeo in the Languages Faculty, though I doubt that he will choose to enlighten you, prudent fellow that he is.’

The hint of reluctance was overlaid by the donnish repartee, so that Frances was no longer sure that Crowe had ever been serious, or whether he had merely been fencing with a favourite young colleague—and ‘Julian’ was almost too good to be true, anyway.

Yet she could have sworn that there had been something there more than mere erudition in that withdrawn look, a touch of an older and humbler instinct, a different wisdom.

Julian gaped at the Professor. ‘Good God, Hugo! Are you asking for cold iron and holy water and the Lord’s Prayer?’

‘Or bread and salt, and rowan berries … and if you must resort to the Lord’s Prayer—‘

Professor Crowe craned his neck and gazed around him as though he had just remembered an important message as yet undelivered to someone who ought to be in the room ‘—don’t forget to pray aloud, dear boy…’

That, at least, was one allusion Frances could place accurately: Robbie himself had once explained to her, at a Stratford-upon-Avon
Macbeth,
how both spells and counter-spells only worked when spoken out loud or traced in blood because the Devil could never see into a human soul and consequently required verbal or written undertakings, like those she had given at the marriage ceremony.

‘I see that the long arm of the law is back,’ murmured Crowe to Frances. ‘And I rather think it is reaching out towards you again. Miss Fitzgibbon.’

And not a moment too soon, decided Frances as she smiled at them both. ‘I don’t think I’m on their list, or something like that,’ she said vaguely.

‘Really…’ Julian grimaced at the Professor. ‘You know, Hugo, if we had a proper trade union this sort of thing wouldn’t happen, you realise that?’

‘Dear boy—if we had a proper union we should probably be out of a job by now. Or reduced to time-serving impotence by the National Union of Students under a closed shop agreement, which would be well enough for me, at my age, but which you would find altogether insupportable—off you go, my dear.’

‘Well, I think that’s damned unchivalrous of you, Hugo—‘

Frances ducked away from them as they started to chase this new hare.

As before. Sergeant Ballard held the door open for her.

‘Yes, Mr Ballard?’ As he squared up to her she sensed that the civilian ‘mister’ was no more to his liking than his formal ‘madam’ was to her. So they were both equally disadvantaged by protocol.

‘Madam…’ The Sergeant focused on her. ‘Two faculty members have left the building in the last half hour. Dr Penrose and Mr Brunton.’

The names meant nothing to her, so that when he showed no sign of elaborating on this information she was unable to decide whether Messrs Penrose and Brunton were exhibiting behavioural deviations, or whether Sergeant Ballard was a .man of few words.

‘You were expecting them to stay?’

‘They were both on the invitation list for the unveiling, madam.’

The unveiling. At her back Frances could hear the noise of scrambled conversation in the crowded Common Room. In a few minutes’ time they would all troop down dutifully to witness the Minister unveil the marble plaque in the foyer which declared the building open; that ceremony, together with his acceptance of the honorary degree, was the main event of his visit. But as the building had actually been in use for more than a month this hardly rated as an earth-shaking occasion in the brief annals of North Yorks University; so that, short of Comrade O’Leary adding his own brand of excitement, Messrs Penrose and Brunton were not passing up anything interesting by absenting themselves.

On the other hand, if O’Leary had somehow managed to outsmart the computer then any departures from potential target areas were highly suspicious.

‘Anything else of significance?’

‘One of the university staff on the desk in the foyer received a rather curious phone call, madam.’

He was overdoing the ‘madam’ bit. ‘What sort of phone call, Mr Ballard? How was it curious?’

‘It was on the pay box in the foyer, not to the desk. But that’s happened several times before—the numbers are similar. Only, when he took the call he was cut off before the caller could say anything.’

‘You mean he never established the origin of the call?’

‘That’s correct, madam. The telephonist at the other end said “I have a call for you, Mr Dickson—I’m trying to connect you”. So he waited, and the telephonist repeated that she was trying to connect him. And then finally the line went dead.’

‘He wasn’t expecting a call—this Mr Dickson?’

‘No, madam. He phoned his wife to check, but she said she hadn’t phoned him.’

Frances bit her lip. Knowing the Post Office, she could not see anything particularly curious in an abortive phone call. But it would be better to be safe than sorry.

‘How many university staff are there on the desk?’

‘Two madam. Mr Dickson and Mr Collins.’

‘What’s their job—today?’

‘They are checking coats and belongings into the cloakroom, madam. No coats, or briefcases and hand-luggage is allowed beyond the foyer today—it’s all being checked into the cloakroom.’ The Sergeant spoke as though he was reciting a brief he had learnt by heart. ‘And of course they’re also doing their usual duties, running the information desk and working the switchboard.’

‘You mean—they are searching people?’

He gave her a long-suffering look. ‘No, madam. All the search procedures are being carried out by our personnel at the entrances.’ He paused. ‘But the advantage of having university staff on the foyer desk is that between them they know everyone on the invitation list personally, by sight and voice. And they also know the building—Mr Collins has accompanied me on each of my security checks. If there had been anything odd, he’d have spotted it.’

That made sense, thought Frances. But she had to do
something.

‘Well … we’d better inform Control about Penrose and Brunton.’ If there was a behavioural deviation there, maybe the computer could spot it. ‘Did they have any hand-luggage?’

‘One briefcase each.’ Sergeant Ballard forgot the ‘madam’ for once. ‘Searched at the door, checked in by Mr Collins and Mr Dickson respectively. Checked out by Mr Dickson, searched at the door again on leaving.’

Everything would have been listed, naturally.

Today no absentminded professors were permitted in the new English Faculty Library Building, searched and scanned and sniffed as they had been by the Special Branch, and booked in and out by Mr Dickson and Mr Collins, vigilant of eye and ear-Respectively.
Respectively?

‘But if Mr Collins was doing the rounds with you, Mr Ballard—‘

‘Yes, madam?’

‘Then Mr Dickson was on the desk
alone
for a time.’

‘Yes, madam.’

Sergeant Ballard looked down on her as from a great height.

Frances stared at him.

‘I’ll have everything in the cloakroom checked again, madam,’ said Sergeant Ballard heavily. ‘And we’ll have a word with the exchange about that call to Mr Dickson.’

‘Thank you, Mr Ballard.’ Frances looked at her wristwatch. ‘Then we shall be joining you in about … ten minutes?’

The Sergeant checked his own watch. ‘Fifteen minutes exactly, madam.’

It was almost a relief to return to the Common Room, where she was hardly less inadequate as an expert on Faerie than she was as the nominal madam-in-charge of a Special Branch anti-terrorist section which clearly functioned just as well, or better, without her, thought Frances miserably. Because when ex-Royal Navy Lieutenant Cable had no doubt quickly established a working man-to-man relationship with the world-weary Sergeant Ballard, she had just as quickly revealed herself as a Girl Guide amateur.

The Equal Opportunities Act to the contrary, it was still a man’s world, that was for sure.

She caught Professor Crowe’s eye directly.

‘Dr Brunton and Mr Penrose—I mean, Dr Penrose and Mr Brunton … Who are they?’

Crowe looked round the room. ‘I don’t see them here—‘

‘They aren’t here.’

Crowe gave her a quick glance. ‘Penrose’s a crafty fellow from Cambridge who knows a little about the Romantic Poets and a great deal about student psychology. He should make professor in about ten years’ time … Brunton is a dark horse from McGill University, allegedly pursuing the Great American Novel, there being no Great Canadian Novelists—‘

‘Did I hear the ill-omened name of Brunton?’ cut in a short dark man with pebble-thick spectacles.

‘You heard the ill-omened name of McGill,’ said Julian.

‘Your insular prejudices are showing, Julian, dear boy,’ said Crowe. ‘If Dr Pifer hears you he will simply roll on you, and that will be the end of you, I fear.’

A man’s world, thought Frances. But today was the man going to be the Minister, or Professor Crowe, or the handsome Julian—or Colonel Butler, or Comrade O’Leary?

‘Whatever the ample Dr Pifer may do to me does not alter the sum of what McGill has given to the world,’ said Julian.

‘Stephen Leacock?’ suggested the pebble-spectacled man.

‘Stephen Leacock
and
the geodesic dome,’ said Julian with an arrogantly dismissive gesture. ‘Why are you pulling that hideous face, Tom? Or should I say that
more
hideous face?’

Tom peered at him seriously through the thick lenses. ‘Eh? Oh… I was pondering why “geodesic” with an “s”, that’s all.’

‘It’s the science of geodesy with an “s”, that’s why.’

‘Ah… but those imaginary lines which the geodisists draw—or perhaps they are properly geodesians—those are geodetic lines, with a “t”. So why not “geodetic domes”?’

Tom frowned at Julian as though the fate of the English Faculty, if not the nation itself, hung upon the answer to his question.

‘Well, Tom, you’ll just have to look it up in your Shorter Oxford.’ Julian shrugged and grinned mischievously at Frances. ‘Did you know. Miss Fitzgibbon, that the Shorter Oxford Dictionary weighs thirteen pounds—six-and-a-half pounds a volume? That is, Tom’s 1950 edition does. He had occasion to carry them from one set of lodgings to another recently, and when he arrived in an exhausted state the first thing he did was to weigh them on the kitchen scales.’ He looked down at Tom benevolently.

Tom blinked, found himself looking at Frances, and flushed with embarrassment.

‘More to the point -‘ Professor Crowe intervened quickly ‘—has the egregious Brunton discovered the Great American Novel yet?’

More to the point, thought Frances, has the egregious Brunton exhibited behavioural deviations recognised by Colonel Butler’s computer, always supposing they had any data on him at all?

‘Perhaps he ought to borrow Tom’s scales and judge them by weight, like vegetable marrows at a horticultural show,’ murmured Julian. ‘Eh, Tom?’

‘Well…’ Tom ignored Julian ‘… he does show signs of appreciating William Faulkner.’

‘Faulkner?’ Julian refused to be ignored. ‘I find him unreadable. That convoluted style—sentences going on for pages, and then ending with a semi-colon! Quite unreadable!’

‘Oh—nonsense,’ said Frances involuntarily.

‘Indeed?’ Julian regarded her with a mixture of interest and surprise, as Doctor Johnson might have viewed a dog walking on its hind legs, thought Frances angrily.

‘Nonsense?’

All three of them were looking at her now, and she was aware of the chasm at her feet. Her preoccupation with O’Leary had finally betrayed her into expressing a genuine literary opinion.