The Butler Has Published a Correction

How it begins

The correction arrived after Florence Ward had set the obituary in type.

It read: Sir, Mr Harcourt did not die on Tuesday.

Beneath the sentence, in a smaller hand, the writer added that he regretted any inconvenience caused by accuracy.

Florence looked toward the newsroom clock. The funeral had taken place on Thursday. Half the town had watched the carriage pass. Several people had supplied recollections that improved the deceased considerably.

She found the messenger waiting beside the back door. Edward Lane had been the dead man's butler for twenty-nine years and wore retirement as though somebody had given him the wrong coat.

'You wrote this?'

'I did.'

'Is Mr Harcourt alive?'

'No.'

'Is he dead?'

'Yes.'

Florence waited. She had interviewed enough respectable people to know when silence was doing paid work.

'He died on Monday,' Edward said.

'Why does that matter?'

'Because on Tuesday he signed something.'

Outside, a delivery boy wheeled a bicycle through a puddle. Florence heard the ordinary splash with an unreasonable sense of relief. At least some events were occurring on their proper days.

She brought Edward into the office and closed the door. He placed a folded household schedule beside the proof. Meals, visitors, coal deliveries. On Monday evening, in a hand different from the rest, somebody had written that the master did not require supper.

'Who certified the death?' she asked.

'A man who was told when to arrive.'

Edward looked at the obituary. Florence had described his employer as punctilious. The word now seemed less like praise than a clue someone had overlooked.

She picked up the correction again. One changed day could be a small newspaper matter. It could also be the distance between an inheritance and a forgery.

'We will need more than your word,' she said.

For the first time, Edward looked relieved.