A Murder in Mayfair (8 page)

“What a very silly thing to do a thesis on.”

“Not at all. The color supplements have molded middleclass tastes in the last thirty or forty years. They say you ought to want it, and in no time at all you do. They also contain articles of general interest . . .”

“Such as the Revill affair.”

“Such as indeed. My informant came up with three, all in the last twenty years.”

“‘Where are they now?' stuff?”

“To some extent. Pictures of the children grown up, but never anything more than that. Caroline and Matthew their names are.
They've never cooperated with any of the muckrakers, or any of the serious investigators, come to that.”

“There are some serious investigators?”

“Well, one. Someone who seems to have done his homework.” She rummaged in the plastic bag and pulled out a color supplement with an anorexic and slightly stoned-looking model on the cover.

“He didn't make the front page,” I commented.

“Articles like this are essentially fill-ups to the ads and the fashion and furniture features. You know that, Colin. Still, the man who wrote this got five pages, and he really used them. Mind you, he makes mistakes.”

“What sorts of mistakes?”

“About English titles. Says that Lord John could sit in the House of Commons because his father, the Marquis of Aylesbury, was still alive—that sort of thing. I think the author may be American.”

“That sort of thing confuses us as well.”

“His name is Elmore Hasselbank.”

“Well, you could be right. But remember we're a global village, and we get some pretty way-out names here too these days.”

“Anyway, he's got a very good picture of the wife—something not posed or prettified.” She flipped through the magazine and found the page. “Does your heart warm to her?”

I looked at the picture.

“No,” I said at once.

The photograph was an off-guard one, like the earlier ones of Lord John snapped at a party, probably a fashionable one. Lady John was talking to another woman, of whom only the bare shoulder was visible. Lord John's wife was clearly retailing and relishing scandal: her mouth was twisted, her eyes had an
icy sparkle, and one had a sense of a corrupt nature under a glossy exterior.

“You know,” I said, “I'm almost getting a very ideologically incorrect view of this case, with Lord John as this woman's victim instead of vice versa.”

“Oh, these days feminism doesn't demand that female monsters have to be explained away as a reaction to the prevailing male dominance. Women have to be given the freedom to choose to be monsters. Still, that is rather a ridiculous view of things.”

“Of course it is. He did kill her, after all.”

“Is it the permanent secretary's view of the man that is influencing you?”

“You know, I rather think it is.”

“Was she in love with him?”

“A little, I'd guess. But love is not really her line, and I don't think that affected her judgment.”

“Hmm. It usually does.”

“Anything else in the article?”

“One or two suggestive things. Read it for yourself—you'll probably pick up more. And there's certainly one thing that will interest you.”

“What's that?”

“At the time of the murder, the nanny was pregnant.”

I
t was about ten days after this that a disturbing thing happened.

It was a hot Wednesday, and I'd been working on new initiatives for autistic children all morning and into the early afternoon in the Department in Great Smith Street. I left my office in my shirtsleeves and walked toward Victoria in the nourishing sunlight, registering the brown or peeling red office workers coming from the direction of St. James's Park after their lunch hour. I meditated getting into my car—my little-used car as it was, these days—and driving out into the country for a pint and something to eat. I wondered if Susan would come with me. In case neither thing happened—and things did crop up with increasing frequency now that I was a minister that stopped me doing what I wanted—I dropped into Marks & Spencer for a prepared meal.

Once in the middle of the lazy person's cuisine I avoided the slimmer's meals and even the meals for one. I like a hearty-sized main course, and can do without any of the other courses. Anyway it was not beyond the possible that I would be feeding Susan as well as myself. I chose something called Chicken Fiorentina, then went round the food section picking
up things I'd made a mental note I needed: marmalade, fresh peas, and a packet of frozen whole prawns. I went to the checkout, paid with a ten-pound note, then put all my bits and pieces into a plastic carrier bag. This is one of those Markses where you have to go back through the food section to get to the door, and I did this and tripped up some steps to the door out to the street.

Suddenly an electronic bleep sounded, and before I realized what had happened a man in brown was at my elbow.

“Could I look at your purchases, sir?”

I suppose this or something like it is a common nightmare. For a politician it comes below being caught soliciting in a public lavatory, but it nevertheless ranks pretty high. I was led through to a little room with frosted glass and no connecting window to the main store. The security man pressed a button on the little table there, then began going through my bag. Luckily I had dropped the till slip in with my purchases, but it didn't save me.

“You don't seem to have put this through the till, sir.”

He proffered toward me a packet of sticky toffee pudding.

The whole thing began to take on the air of black farce. The young man, with his subuniform of brown trousers and epauletted shirt, seemed in his youthful solemnity like something out of Gilbert and Sullivan. At any moment he might be expected to burst into a patter song in which Gilbert would discover outrageous rhymes for sticky toffee pudding.

“That's certainly not mine,” I spluttered, acutely aware of sounding pompous and unconvincing. “I'm not fond of sweet things, and I certainly wouldn't eat anything as sickly as that.”

The young man gave a dubious shake of the head, to show he wasn't interested in my tastes, only my actions.

“Look I'm an MP,” I said unwisely, “a government minister. We're sometimes targets for people . . .”

A righteous light came into his eyes.

“You're not suggesting we should apply different rules because you're a government minister, are you, sir?”

“No, of course not,” I said, aware that my voice was rising in timbre and volume. “But I am suggesting that people have a vested interest in embarrassing us or trying to bring us down, even.”

More people had come into the little room, summoned by the buzzer. Two of them were in uniform, but one was a middle-aged woman with a sensible face, in street clothes.

“If I could say a word.”

I looked at her with ridiculous apprehension, as if she was about to say she had seen me slip something into my bag. That sort of situation makes one unsure even of things one should be most certain of. She nodded toward the package of sticky toffee pudding.

“I don't know anything about that, but I was watching a woman in the food section. She was shabbily dressed, and had a large, floppy hat on. In any case I was watching her from behind, so I couldn't see her face. I didn't see her take anything, but I realize now she was following this gentleman fairly closely. He went to definite sections—the fresh vegetables, the jams, the frozen section. She went behind him. I saw him go through the cash desk, and while he waited in the queue I saw her leave off trailing him and going in the direction of this door. I didn't see him or her after that—I was called away to look at a suspected young addict who was pocketing stuff.”

And that, effectively, was that. She was quite convinced that I couldn't have concealed anything so large in my trousers or my shirt pockets before going through the cash desk. The fact that the woman had been following me suggested a doubt as to whether I or she might have slipped it into my bag on my way out. Marks & Spencer is vigilant, but it doesn't like unnecessary
public fuss. The young man, still solemn, said he was sure there was no wrongdoing on my part, and he hoped I would be careful in the future. That was ambiguous if you like, but I didn't feel I was in a position to argue or protest.

There was no trip to the country that evening. I walked the mile or so back to my flat pondering, and I lay on the sofa for some time afterward, still pondering. It was lucky that the matter had come up so immediately, because such memories as I had of the trivialities of my shopping trip were still very fresh. I tried first of all to recollect other shoppers in the food section, but could manage no more than one or two: a smart, bejeweled old lady with ravenous eyes, a hungry-looking young student. I could put no face or form to the person described by the store detective: a shabby woman with a hat. But then she had been following me, so probably I wouldn't have seen her. Where, I wondered, had she followed me
from?
The Ministry? Or had she encountered me by accident in the street?

Was it in fact a woman, or a man dressed as a woman, aided by a large floppy hat? If I could get no handle on the person I tried to be more definite about the moment. The crucial time was between the cash desk and the door to the street. I could remember tearing a carrier from a small stack of them, loading in my four purchases, then setting off for the door. After that . . . after that I could remember only one tiny thing—one moment when I thought the bag had bumped against the side of one of the stands of sandwiches. That could have been when she slipped it in—though if she was an expert shoplifter and exceptionally light-fingered it could have been at any time. But
very
deft she must have been, because two sticky toffee puddings in a carton are not light.

Sticky toffee pudding! I thought disgustedly.

Whoever chose that to plant on me knew nothing about me. I do not have a sweet tooth: I have no taste for puddings, trifles,
ice creams, sorbets—whatever. If I am out to dinner I either refuse them, or I toy with them. Any sugar I get comes from fruit and nut chocolate, which for some reason I relish. So maybe it was the slightly ridiculous nature of the pudding that made her choose it. If so perhaps I didn't have too much to fear. If all this woman wanted was to make me into a figure of fun, then there was no reason to get worked up about her and her intentions.

Then another thought struck me: what wonderful headlines the papers would have come up with if the matter had gone any further:
THE STICKY-FINGERED MINISTER; MINISTER CAUGHT STICKY-HANDED.
They would have had a field day in the popular press, left or right wing. I wouldn't be the first politician whose career had foundered on a public guffaw. What kind of mind was it, what kind of twisted sense of humor, that could think up such a scheme?

I shook myself. I was getting paranoia—the occupational disease of the politician.

Nevertheless, the next day I told my driver to take me first to the Palace of Westminster. I know a lot of policemen there to talk to, but as luck would have it the first one I saw, taking a rest from dealing with the tourists on the pavement outside, was Geoff Marrit, whom I had spoken to on my first day in office as a minister.

“'Ullo, 'ullo,” he said, in parody-policeman style. “It is you today, is it? What can I do for you?”

“It's a silly little matter,” I said, “but I thought it best to register it with the police here.”

So I gave him a potted version of what had happened since we had last talked, omitting my fascination with my own origins. That, of course, was the only thing that gave the story any interest, and the thing that really suggested someone was directing my attention to those origins in some kind of spirit of
derision or revenge. I could tell from his expression as my narrative proceeded that he was not impressed.

“Nothing in it for us, is there, sir?”

“Oh no.”

“There's no definite connection between the postcards and what happened yesterday, is there?”

“Nothing demonstrable. I quite realize I'm sounding paranoid. But I do get a definite sense of someone taking a malicious interest in me, wanting to do me some harm. After all, the woman was definitely following me.”

“Do you expect us to look into that aspect, sir?”

“No, I don't. But I would like you to take note of it. The possibility exists that the jokes or whatever they are could become more serious. Then I'd like to be able to refer to the police here as witnesses that some kind of malicious campaign had been registered as a possibility.”

PC Marrit's face showed he realized I hadn't taken leave of my senses.

“Fair enough, sir. That's often a useful precaution. I'll write a brief report, give it to the appropriate person, and you'll know it's on the files.”

“I'm very grateful.” I had been storing something up in my mind while we'd been talking. “By the way, when you saw me coming up to you, you said, ‘It is you today, is it?' What on earth did you mean?”

He looked a mite embarrassed.

“Oh, more talking to myself than talking to you, sir. There was a bloke through here yesterday—well, I won't say he was the spitting image of you, but there was a definite resemblance. I tell you, I started toward him, thinking to swap a few words, being convinced it was you—had to fall back when I found it wasn't.”

“I see. What told you it wasn't?”

“Oh, he was a bit older, more wrinkles around the eyes, losing a bit of hair on either side of the temples, fuller face altogether. As I said, he wasn't a spitting image, so I knew when I got closer it wasn't you.”

“You didn't get his name, I suppose?”

“I did. I looked in the register just out of interest, to see if it could be your brother. His name was Matthew Martindale.”