Political Death (22 page)

Millie Swain looked at her. As she lounged, one long leg dangling over the chair, her expression was almost insolent.

"You needn't tell me about my mother's Diary. I can tell you what it said without having read it. The Diary said I stabbed him. With her knife.

"It was that ornamental knife, incredibly sharp, our father brought back from Malaya or Burma, some place like that. She kept it in her bedroom as a kind of protection. She once let me feel the blade, otherwise we just looked at it with awe.

"That knife has killed people," Madre used to say. I was ten years old, I was big for my age, I was strong and I suppose I struck lucky where I hit him. He fell and I think he must have struck his head on the marble mantelpiece. There was blood, lots of blood. Why did she have that knife there, on that table? To kill him, she told me. And why? I don't understand."

"He was blackmailing Burgo about homosexuality at Oxford," said Jemima. "I've read that too by now. Illegal of course. Dangerous stuff."

Millie pushed back the dark hair styled to be both boyish and sexy, which had made her many thought the perfect Viola.

"Once Hattie reminded me, I remembered it, every single detail. Before that, there was only some kind of horror, a fear that was always with me. I came down from upstairs, our ghastly Nanny was asleep, snoring away, and I thought Olga was asleep too. I watched them, Madre so little, but not with Burgo. With another man. Faber, I suppose. She was crying and his arm was around her. I thought... I thought he was her lover, and that she was betraying Burgo. Isn't it odd? I was madly, childishly in love with Burgo. So handsome, my Prince Charming. I used to imagine that I would marry him when I grew up. Madre would die and I would marry him.

"So I saw this man, he put his arm round Madre for some reason. Arguing with her perhaps. And I ran in. I took the knife, her knife, and stabbed him... the rest you know. What happened to that knife, I wonder," Millie added suddenly. "Did the Diary say ?"

"Your mother says she washed it and washed it before Burgo came. Then she buried it in the garden some time later."

"Where I suppose it still is. Ah, well."

"I don't think Burgo had anything to do with that, just helped her with the body, which obviously he had to do. But she got the cellar blocked up, from outside that is, handled it all by herself. She was quite proud of all that, how she was managing," said Jemima. "At that point she was so sure that it wasn't for ever, the separation, that it couldn't possibly be for ever."

"But it was." There was a short silence. "Would you believe me, Jemima," Millie went on, 'if I told you that I remembered none of that? I repressed it all; I think that's the phrase. Olga knew or guessed something had happened. I used to have nightmares... but it all got covered up under the general convenient blanket of "Millie's lies"..."

"I believe you. You were only a child. But that's not why I'm here, Millie, the other deaths'

"She Madre was going to blow everything right up in smoke. She was going to broadcast to the Press about Burgo. I couldn't let there be a scandal," said Millie sharply. "This was my big chance, wasn't it? Not only on stage, of course, but with him, with Randall. I couldn't lose him, as Madre lost Burgo. It simply wasn't possible. He's my whole life."

Jemima, recalling some of the phrases in Imogen's Diary, thought: Like mother, like daughter. That seemed to be the lesson from this hideous tangle, not the cheery message of the curtain of Twelfth Night Love Conquers All. Except that as it turned out, Imogen Swain had never been a murderer, which was more than you could say about Millie. Lady Imogen's cover-up had possibly been as much to protect Millie as to protect her lover. At least one should give her the benefit of the doubt. And Burgo too had acted to protect the child as well as himself.

"You've killed three times. In the name of love." Jemima, who had intended to sound aloof at this point, realised that she sounded what she felt: angry.

"Three times?"

"Your mother?" In spite of Pompey's pronouncement, she had to test it.

Millie seemed genuinely astonished. Then she laughed; it was not a pretty sound. Her lovely musical stage voice had been abandoned for one more like the harshness of her sister Olga.

"Oh you think I killed Madre? My dear, I can assure you that was simply not necessary. Madre killed herself all right. A horrible scene it was. And yes, I was there when she did it. I went back after the theatre, I was furious with her. It was easy. I helped myself to the extra key in the bowl when Olga wasn't looking and let Olga think she had the only key. I had to come back and confront her. Suddenly I couldn't bear it any more, this dreadful pretence that she was a young woman, a beautiful woman with a lover, I was the young woman with the lover and she was wrecking everything I'd worked for.

"We went first to the drawing-room and I tried to put away her photo, the bride. We struggled. So I grabbed that terrible false picture of her with both of us, the devoted mother we never had, and smashed it. Nothing she could do about that. Then we went to her bedroom. I picked up a mirror. After that, the nursery. I took her, I led her, quite gently. Firmly. And I said, "Madre, look it's empty. There are no children here. And Madre," I said, "Burgo is not coming back for you. He's never coming back for you. You're not a Beaton Beauty any longer. You're old, Madre, wrinkled, a horrible old lady. It's over. If you don't believe me, look, look in this mirror." I turned the mirror and showed her her face. She screamed. She ran to the balcony, it was very windy, but she managed to open the doors and she flung herself over. "Burgo." Her last word was "Burgo", Not "Millie". Not "Olga". "Burgo"."

"Do you think that makes you free of her death?"

"Oh no, I'll never be free of Madre, I know that now," said Millie. The insolence had gone.

"But Hattie, poor little Hattie."

"She was going to betray me. She told me. She read the Diaries. She shouldn't have done that. She taunted me. She said there was something horrible in it about me. I pretended not to know what she was talking about. But that's when it came back to me. In all its horror. And she said she would show them to Randall she was in love with him, you see and then he would be disgusted by me and our relationship would be over. And then he would turn to her. And after that, she deliberately let them be stolen, or stole them herself."

"It wasn't deliberate, except in so far as Hattie was Randall's pawn." Like a few others, Jemima thought. "Randall stole them. Your beloved Randall. And put them back into Hippodrome Square so that Sarah Smyth could find them."

Millie ignored the reference to Sarah Smyth. She simply smiled. "Hattie poor little fool. As if Randall would ever turn to anyone who couldn't be of use to him. Helen Troy all the time Helen Troy was waiting for him. And I was a poor fool too, I didn't know that."

"All this, for love." Jemima took a deep breath. "He wasn't worth it."

"How would you know?"

"I would know," said Jemima.

Millie gave another of her smiles, terrifying because they were mirthless. "Ah, I see. Another rat, like him, only a she-rat."

"I'm not particularly proud if it, if that interests you. But it enables me to tell you that he wasn't worth it." She went on more fiercely, "Keeping Randall Birley was not worth the casual death of Hattie Vickers. No love affair could ever be worth that. Nothing was worth that, the death of a human being."

Millie looked at her speculatively. "About that, you wouldn't know." It was a statement, not a question; once again she was almost insulting in her calmness. "I wouldn't have thought passion was your thing. You're detached, aren't you?" She made it sound like a disease, like leprosy, as scornful as Archie was of a 'caring' MP. "No, not sex, I don't mean sex, I'm sure you're terrific in bed, but actual passion for another human being."

Jemima saw no reason to answer the taunt. "What happens now?" was all she said.

"What do you think? No, don't worry, I'm not going to kill myself, jump off any balcony. And I'm not going to sit like bloody Patience on a monument, never telling my love. Not for me the life Madre lived silence, hope, despair, and nothing. I'm going to confess to the police. That's what I'm going to do. It should be a good scene, shouldn't it? And the trial even better. I shall tell all. How I did it all, absolutely all, for Randall Birley."

Jemima considered her. "Must you? Another ruined life..."

"How little you know about it. That sort of thing may ruin lives in politics. But in show business, just wait and see... Watch our Randall survive even this and with one bound be free, unlike Burgo Smyth. Randall will be the hero, if you like, of a crime passion el So much more satisfactory, the theatre than politics, don't you think?"

Jemima Shore thought of Millie Swain's bitter words, as she watched the election results until the early hours of the morning. She had forced Cherry to come around and share a bottle of pink champagne.

"At least our champagne is pink even if the country is once more turning blue," she said to Cherry. It was true. Remorselessly the map of Britain went bluish, then bluer. It was not a landslide. The margin was narrow. But it was a victory. Britain remained blue in principle. By the time H.G. was eating his proverbial hearty Scottish breakfast cooked by Miss Granville (did ever a spare man put so much food away?), Helen Macdonald had become the latest in the long list of Labour and Liberal leaders to act the gallant loser.

As the champagne flowed, Jemima confided to Cherry something of the story, hoping that she was the one person whose gossip Cherry would honourably protect. About Randall Birley, however, she told Cherry nearly everything.

"You really fancied him."

"Yes, Cherry, that's exactly what I did do. Purely physical, I have to admit. A fantasy fulfilled. But Ned comes back in two days' time. He's not a fantasy. And now please pass the champagne. Damn, it's getting low. No more pink, I'm afraid. Still, it hardly matters now. Oh God, Cherry, there goes poor old Holy Harry."

On the screen Jemima saw Olga at defeated Harry's side, fighting back tears. At least there was no sign of Elfi; she must be safely in bed, sated with chocolate.

Jemima told Cherry, "Harry Carter-Fox, a decent if pompous Tory, has just lost his seat."

An hour later Sarah Smyth also lost her seat on the third recount. Jemima watched her and admired the sangfroid with which Sarah, blonde hair impeccably groomed even at three o'clock in the morning, flashed her strong white teeth in a smile and waved cheerfully. "I'll be back," she was saying. Her huge blue rosette was exactly the right colour to complement her smart pale blue jacket. You might have thought that no scandal threatened or would ever threaten her family.

The Right Honourable Burgo Smyth held his seat by one of the biggest majorities in the country. How long he would be allowed to stay there, Jemima wondered. She did not know the careful timing set out by the Prime Minister: Burgo was to resign as Foreign Secretary in a few days 'for personal reasons' and give up his seat after a personal statement in the new House of Commons. In the course of time, Harry Carter-Fox, the conscience of the party, would be selected for this seat, with a little discreet pressure from above.

The next day, around lunch-time, Archie Smyth was elected with a passable majority (although considerably down from that of his more Liberal-minded Tory predecessor) . "A new member very much on the right wing of the party," said the television commentator. There were some Nazi salutes in the Town Hall, and a scuffle when the neo-Nazis were ejected by angry Tory workers.

Afterwards Archie Smyth telephoned his mother at the house in the country. As usual, Mrs. Dibdin, the housekeeper, answered the telephone.

"Dibs, I want to speak to Mum. I won, I won, I'm in."

"I saw you on telly and told your Mum. Now she's asleep, fast asleep in her bedroom," said Mrs. Dibdin. But it was not true. Teresa Smyth was lying awake, not quite sober, but sober enough to be terrified. What was frightening her was the prospect of her son, he too, vanishing from her into the political world. She was as yet unaware that her husband, for better or worse, would be leaving it.

About the same time Millie Swain went voluntarily to Bow Street police station and made a statement. On this occasion Randall Birley did not escort her as he had done when she attended the coroner's court. He was busy with Helen Troy, giving a Press conference about the coming film of Twelfth Night. The money was promised; even before the film was made the Oscar nominations were surely half-way there. Yes, thought Jemima, Millie Swain had been right: you could indeed say that show business was more satisfactory than politics.

Jemima understood anew the force of Millie's cynical saying when she had a drink with Randall Birley. She asked to meet him, against her better judgment, because there was a question she had to ask, to satisfy her curiosity. Randall agreed to slip away from the morbid excitement of the Press and the unsolved question of what happens to A Hit when its leading lady is arrested for murder on her own confession. (That was certainly A Happening in its own right, as many discovered that they had discerned violence in Millie Swain 'ages ago'.) Would Kath Lowestoft take over the part of Viola? Would Suella be given her big chance? Would Helen Troy deign graciously to step on to the London stage in preparation for her role in the film?

Jemima met Randall in a small, rather dark bar near the Irving, which she liked because its background music was an eternal tinkling Vivaldi rather than something more aggressive. Despite the semi-darkness, she noticed heads mainly female turning at Randall's entrance.

Jemima asked the question which was still unanswered in her mind. Why had Randall put the Diaries back in Hippodrome Square to be conveniently and secretly destroyed by the Smyths? A plan that had gone wrong with the unexpected and grisly discovery of Franklyn Faber's skeleton.

"Why did you do it?"

To protect her."

"To protect Sarah Smyth?" Jemima thought you might just as well protect the railings in Hippodrome Square. Both seemed to her impregnable.