Political Suicide (14 page)

“And that was the last time?”

“The last time. It was a miracle I recognized him then, because I'd only seen him five or six times. I think he knew
me
, in fact, from the odd television appearance. As you see, though I was reasonably maternal with twerpie's mother, by the time I got to be a
grand
mother, the instinct was wearing very thin indeed. Perhaps it was just intuition—telling me how he would turn out.”

“So he wasn't brought up by his mother?”

“Good Lord, no. That wasn't Virginia's line at all. I'd had
her
right at the beginning of my career—1934, it was, when I was still doing little bits and pieces for Mr Cochrane.”

“You were married?”

“Good heavens,
yes.
One
was
in those days. He was someone who did things with stocks and shares in the city—just like little Antony . . . in many respects. Sleek and ever so slightly crooked. We were married at least in name until I came to Sheffield, which he said was the last straw. Anyway, I did my best with Virginia, but then I began to get small parts in films, and one had to, well, farm her out, find people to look after her most of the day. By the time she was in her teens
she was
lovely
—just beautiful, darling—but the teeniest bit wild.”

“What happened to her?”

“Virginia? . . .
What
an unfortunate choice of name! . . . Well, when she was seventeen she married, very hurriedly, Mr Fisk, who was a solicitor in Great Yarmouth, of all places. That didn't last, as anyone could have predicted. There was Antony, but when she bolted she took him with her.”

“Bolted?”

“With Mr Craybourne. He became a Tory MP, and the marriage lasted five years or more, which was something of a record for Virginia. When she bolted the second time she didn't take Antony with her . . .” Meditating, she emitted a fruity chuckle. “Probably a good thing, really: young puppy out there would probably have a seven-barrelled name instead of a double-barrelled one by now.”

“She changes partners, does she?”

“Worse than a square-dance, darling! Gets passed from hand to hand. Marvellous really that she can still do it at her age, though I remember I . . . Ah well. Nothing worse than the salacious reminiscences of the elderly, is there?”

“So Antony was brought up by step-parents, was he?”

“Actually by this Craybourne's
mother.
She was a silly creature, and she made a bad job of it by the look of the little creep, but I do think one should be grateful that she did it at all, don't you? I rather gather he came to her as a sort of godsend, to give her an interest in her old age, and certainly it must have been good for
the poor little mite to feel
wanted
by someone. But perhaps she rather overdid it, don't you think? He rather does assume that he is the centre of everybody else's universe, as well as his own. When he asked me to come up, it was definitely as if he were doing a favour to me, rather than the reverse. No, a silly woman, I'm afraid. She suggested he take the double-barrelled name, you know, and in giving him that she seems to have given him a double-barrelled opinion of himself.”

“And did he keep contact with his mother?”

“Oh yes,
some.
It was always, frankly, rather difficult to keep
track
of Virginia, let alone contact with her, but she would phone now and then, or descend on the Craybournes for a visit, or take him off for a meal or a pantomime somewhere. She meanwhile went from flower to flower: there was Rotherbrook the newspaper tycoon, there was Lord Prestonpans—she never actually married either of those, so she never got a title, poor duck. There was supposed to be an Arab sheikh, and she
did
marry him, but he turned out to be an Egyptian greengrocer, and I think all her experience of the mysterious Orient took place in the Cromwell Road. There were others—heavens there were others!—and now I believe she's married to some Greek gigolo or other. Talking of which—”

Sutcliffe signalled to Gianni to bring replenishments. As he did so, something caught his eye in the street outside. The Labour Party march through town, headed by Jerry Snaithe and Albert Scadgett, was leaving the town square and threading its way past the Unicorn Hotel. Sutcliffe recognized Jerry Snaithe from his picture in the newspapers, and Albert Scadgett from his
innumerable appearances on television during the sheet metalworkers' strike of last year. He was a conservatively-dressed man with a prim, rosebud mouth, on which was planted an expression of the most intense self-approval. Last year had been his great year: then he had led the sheet metalworkers to defeat through month after punishing month, had appeared daily on the news bulletins, had had missiles hurled at him by Tory harridans. Then it had been his proud boast to have brought the soup kitchen back to Yorkshire. Now, since the strike had collapsed, his fame was on the wane. Already the other couple in the Trueman Bar were discussing whether he was a television quiz-show chairman, or the villain in
Emmerdale Farm.
But today was Albert Scadgett's big chance to relive fleetingly the heady days of last year's fiasco, and hence that expression of self-approval that curled his tiny mouth into something approaching a smile.

“No, darling,” Mrs Masterson was saying, over her second Campari soda, when Sutcliffe brought his attention back to her, “I only had the one, but Virginia goes through husbands as if they were paper tissues.”

“All well-heeled, I suppose?”

“Yes, darling, but
less
so, as she's got older. Of course it was always her great ambition to get into the aristocracy. I've never understood that, myself. To me they're overrated. Always wanting something
new
and
outré
, which can be tedious as well as physically dangerous. Jaded palates aren't very interesting to the other party. Anyway, she never
did
get in, though she's certainly frisked around the fringes.”

“And what has your grandson done since school?”

“Oh, darling—why ask me? The last few years it's
just been the ring on my birthday between Virginia and me.
If that.
So I really haven't heard. When I lived in London I heard a bit more. There
was
some scandal about forged ballot papers for an election to the Oxford University Conservative Association. Antony was standing for President, but the election was disallowed. Antony said it was some over-enthusiastic supporter of his, and that this sort of thing happened all the time in the Oxford Conservative Association anyway, so nobody took it too seriously . . . I can't really imagine what an over-enthusiastic supporter of Antony would
look
like, can you, darling?”

“Difficult. Was there anything else?”

“Oh—so
long
ago . . . Women—just the odd one or two, I think, who could be useful to him . . . One or two little financial coups, but don't ask
me
about
them
, because I never did understand my husband's little coups (probably just as well) and I really know nothing at all about Antony's. Funny how he's taken after Masterson, isn't it? Perhaps that's why I've taken against him . . . I do know he has a very good friend who's MP for Crawley or some such place (I remember the name because it seemed somehow appropriate), and they've been in one or two ‘good things' together . . .”

She had been talking away, propelled along by Sutcliffe's discreet questioning. Now she pulled herself up, as if she didn't quite know how it had happened.

“But darling—what am I talking about my daughter and my grandson for, to a
fan
? Naturally you want to talk about me!”

• • •

Sutcliffe had become very fond of Isobel Ainslie, and he let her talk about
“me”
for quite a time, during
which the old lady bought two rounds of drinks, and determinedly paid Gianni at roughly 1964 prices. When Sutcliffe emerged again into the street (having seen her to her bedroom and left her to have her “afternoon zizz”), he realized that it was already half past three. Bootham in mid-afternoon was displaying no signs of election fever: it was merely being its listless and depressing self. Sutcliffe did see Albert Scadgett, wandering around rather disconsolately, as if his moment of glory had been much briefer than he had expected, as indeed had been the case. He had, when the march ended, volunteered enthusiastically for anything that Jerry or his Campaign Manager would care to give him to do, but he had been given the same casual brush-off by Jerry that Sue had got earlier in the day. Albert Scadgett had served his turn: he had come, he had said nothing (just five words from Albert Scadgett could mean hundreds of lost votes), but Jerry had been seen with him, to the delight of his militant supporters. Now he could be dropped—and Jerry dropped him. Won't somebody recognize me? Albert Scadgett seemed to be saying, as he wandered listlessly around. Perhaps even ask for my autograph?

Sutcliffe made several attempts to phone Bootham Conservative Headquarters, and when he finally got through,
another
young lady with a Roedean accent (not very wise, surely, in Bootham?) informed him that the Tory Agent was fan
tas
tically busy as he could imagine, and really an interview was
quite
out of the question . . . Unless, perhaps, he was from the Press?

“Not the Press, the Police,” said Sutcliffe.

“Ah—oh yes—ah well . . .” It was clearly a matter
of comment at Tory Campaign Headquarters that investigation was still continuing into the death of Bootham's former member. The girl was uncertain what to do, or what tone of voice to adopt. Finally, and in chilling tones, the girl said that she could
squeeze
him in for ten minutes tomorrow at three-fifteen.

“I might need fifteen minutes,” said Sutcliffe.

“That you will have to arrange with Mr Fawcett,” said Roedean, severely.

So Sutcliffe, in watery, late-afternoon sun, went and did what he had intended to do for some days: pay his respects to the local police. The Bootham superintendent was pleasant and cooperative, but Sutcliffe refrained from telling him that from tomorrow he was officially on holiday. The man was interested in the case, because he had actually met James Partridge, on more than one occasion.

“Intelligent man. I liked him. Interested and sympathetic—to the police, I mean—without being uncritically fulsome, in that way Tory politicians have. He understood at once the real problem of police work.”

“Boredom?”

“Aye. There's not many grasp that. He was a quiet type (not many politicians like
that
, in my experience) but you felt he was completely dependable.”

“Ever meet his wife?”

“Aye.”

“Impression?”

“Bitch.”

“Got it in five letters. Want to do something that would have pleased Partridge if he were still alive?”

“I'd be happy to, if I can.”

“Know a man called Walter Abbot?”

“I
do.”

“Got anything on him?”

“Not anything like what I ought to have on him, I suspect. One drunken driving conviction, three years ago. Gets himself driven around by his underlings these days. Makes a great noise around town, that one—a blow-hard and a bully. Still, he's not one we can cross without good reason.”

“Could you organize a spot-check on his so-called farm—by your men, who would then submit a detailed report to the Ministry of Agriculture? There've been Ministry inspections, but the man has obviously got inside contacts, so none of them have been worth the paper they're written on. I'd like to see a real report on the state of the place—and I know James Partridge would have done too.”

“It could be done, I suppose. But is it worth it? Has it got anything to do with the man's death?”

“I've no idea. But it has a lot to do with his life—what he had been giving his time to in the last few months before he died. Will you do it?”

“Surely. What you've got in mind is some sort of tribute to his memory, is it?”

“Right. But take your time. I hear my visit has made him nervy. Leave it for four or five weeks, till after the election. Then go in and get him.”

“You did me a good turn with that suggestion,” said the
Grub
man to Sutcliffe that night in the Saloon Bar.

“Suggestion?”

“About Snaithe's schooldays. I've been following it up, and they're making a spread of it in tomorrow's paper.”

“What was he? The rabble-rouser against clerical tyranny? The Robespierre of the Fourth Form Revolution?”

“Not at all. Quite the reverse, and it makes an even better story, from our point of view. I'm glad I made the trip there. It was all quite interesting.”

And so it had been.
Grub
had driven over to Amplehurst, having first ascertained that it was a Catholic Public School run by members of the Benedictine order. This information conveyed little to him, beyond some associations with a liqueur, but he sat in his car in the centre of the little village of Amplehurst, and
waited until he caught sight of a tall, elderly gentleman in a billowing habit. Rightly judging this to be one of the adherents of St Benedict, he followed him into the village store, where he was purchasing tobacco (the founder of the order, whose rule Chaucer's Monk had found over-strict, had presumably not foreseen the invention of tobacco), and there he struck up a conversation with him. Then he had walked back with him—a leisurely, chatty walk—to the gates of the school itself. The conversation had ranged over a variety of subjects, for
Grub
was under no illusion that the monk, courteously chatty though he was, would talk knowingly about ex-pupils to a member of the Press. But eventually they had got on to the subject of Jerry Snaithe.