I Shall Wear Midnight

man wouldn’t have been able to shift with a crowbar and dropped thirty feet to theground. That’s not natural, that’s not right. But it was the other thing he did – oh my word, it makes me sick thinking about it.’
    A warder was waiting outside the cell recently vacated by the absent Macintosh, but for no reason that Mrs Proust could recognize, given that the man had definitely gone. He touched the brim of his hat respectfully when he saw her.
    ‘Good morning, Mrs Proust,’ he said. ‘May I say it’s an honour to meet the daughter of the finest hangman in history. Fifty-one years before the lever, and never a client down. Mr Trooper now, decent bloke, but sometimes they bounce a bit and I don’t consider that professional. And your dad wouldn’t forego a well-deserved hanging out of the fear that fires of evil and demons of dread would haunt him afterwards. You mark my words; he’d go after them and hang them too! Seven and a quarter seconds, what a gentleman.’
    But Mrs Proust was staring down at the floor.
    ‘Terrible thing for a lady to have to see,’ the warder went on. Almost absentmindedly Mrs Proust said, ‘Witches are not ladies when on business, Frank,’ and then she sniffed the air and swore an oath that made Frank’s eyes water.
    ‘It makes you wonder what got into him, aye?’
    Mrs Proust straightened up. ‘I don’t have to wonder, my lad,’ she said grimly. ‘I know.’
    The fog piled up against the buildings in its effort to get out of the way of Mrs Proust as she hurried back to Tenth Egg Street, leaving behind her a Mrs Proust-shaped tunnel in the gloom.
    Derek was drinking a peaceful mug of cocoa when his mother burst in to the strains, as it were, of a large fart. He looked up, his brow wrinkling. ‘Did that sound like B-flat to you? It didn’t sound like B-flat to me.’ He reached into the drawer under the counter for his tuning fork, but his mother rushed past him.
    ‘Where’s my broomstick?’
    Derek sighed. ‘In the basement, remember? When the dwarfs toldyou last month how much it would cost to repair, you told them they were a bunch of chiselling little lawn ornaments, remember? Anyway, you never use it.’
    ‘I’ve got to go into the … country,’ said Mrs Proust, looking around the crowded shelves in case there was another working broomstick there.
    Her son stared. ‘Are you sure, Mother? You’ve always said it’s bad for your health.’
    ‘Matter of life or death,’ Mrs Proust mumbled. ‘What about Long Tall Short Fat Sally?’
    ‘Oh, Mother, you really shouldn’t call her that,’ said Derek reproachfully. ‘She can’t help being allergic to tides.’
    ‘She’s got a stick, though! Hah! If it’s not one thing it’s another. Make me some sandwiches, will you?’
    ‘Is this about that girl who was in here last week?’ said Derek suspiciously. ‘I don’t think she had much of a sense of humour.’
    His mother ignored him and rummaged under the counter, coming back with a large leather cosh. The small traders of Tenth Egg Street worked on narrow margins, and had a very direct approach to shoplifting. ‘I don’t know, I really don’t,’ she moaned. ‘Me? Doing good at my time of life? I must be going soft in the head. And I’m not even going to get paid! I don’t know, I really don’t. Next thing you know, I’ll start giving people three wishes, and if I start doing that, Derek, I would like you to hit me very hard on the head.’ She handed him the cosh. ‘I’m leaving you in charge. Try to shift some of the rubber chocolate and the humorous fake fried eggs, will you? Tell people they are novelty bookmarks or something.’
    And with that, Mrs Proust ran out into the night. The lanes and alleyways of the city were very dangerous at night, what with muggers, thieves and similar unpleasantnesses. But they disappeared back into the gloom as she passed. Mrs Proust was bad news, and best leftundisturbed if you wanted to keep all the bones in your fingers pointing the right way.
    The body that was Macintosh ran through the night. It was full of pain. This didn’t matter to the ghost; it wasn’t his pain. Its sinews sang with agony, but it was not the ghost’s agony. The fingers bled where they had torn steel bars out of the wall. But the ghost did not bleed. It never bled.
    It couldn’t remember when it had had a body that was really its own. Bodies had to be fed and had to drink. That was an annoying feature of the wretched things.