Political Suicide (11 page)

But Sutcliffe was out of earshot, going down the lane very much quicker than he had come up it.

Manor Court Farm (Ltd) was about eight miles from Moreton-in-Kirkdale, apparently situated near a village even smaller than Moreton. Wanting to see it in daylight, Sutcliffe left it till the morning, and spent the evening listening to gossip about the campaign and its personalities from the motley collection of journalists at the Happy Dalesman. These turned out to be mostly from the provincial dailies—Johnnies-come-lately, or men whose editors had tight budgets—with only a sprinkling of men from the nationals—men like the
Grub
reporter, who had come out to Moreton because Bootham was so nasty. There was also a melancholy little Spaniard, doing a report for Spanish television, who had been going round Bootham asking people their views on the Gibraltar question, and the London correspondent of a German daily, who seemed to have no more than ten or fifteen words of English, all of them guttural.

The next morning he set out for Cordingate.

The village itself turned out to be fifteen or twenty cottages and small houses, clutching the side of a hill. No such village in Yorkshire is entirely lacking in attraction if it is built of the local stone, but there was about Cordingate something skimped and furtive, as if it had never had much reason for being there, and apologized for disturbing the rural calm. It was not the sort of village that anyone would choose to have a country cottage in—not even a Conservative MP whose constituency gave him a limited choice in the matter. Sutcliffe inquired at the village shop the way to Manor Court Farm, and after driving half a mile on tarmac, turned off on to a rough track that soon landed him up outside a large and heavy farm gate.

That gate, in fact, was the most conventionally rustic thing about Manor Court Farm, though its Constable-esque quality was impaired by a notice which read:

M
ANOR
C
OURT
F
ARM
L
TD

NO ADMISSION EXCEPT ON BUSINESS

RING BELL AND WAIT

Sutcliffe got out of his car, rang the bell, and waited, leaning in a traditionally rural pose across the gate, taking in what little he could see of Manor Court Farm.

What had once been the farmhouse was now merely a wing to a solid and assertive main block, which faced the gate and said “Here I am” in a tremendous manner to the visitor. It was red-brick and regular, in a vaguely eighteenth-century way, with its porched main door set in the middle, and the windows on both floors arranged symmetrically around it. It was a dull day,
and through the windows Sutcliffe could see strip lighting in all the rooms. The house fitted its environment about as well as if Wuthering Heights had been set down in the middle of nineteenth-century Manchester.

Beyond the house were long, barrack-like sheds, more like hangars or warehouses. They stretched into the distance, so many of them that one could barely glimpse the fields beyond. They were long, roofed in corrugated iron, and shut in; and from them came very little noise: no warmth, no natural vigour, no sense of the unpredictable, the dangerous, the vital. Sutcliffe was not a fanciful man, but he found the place eerie. More like a concentration camp than a farm, he said to himself.

That door in the centre of what he could only call the admin block opened. The young man who came down to the gate was lithe and jaunty, in a slightly shabby grey suit and a collar and tie that seemed to have been brought together especially to encounter this visitor. The cheeriness of his manner was entirely urban.

“Good morning, good morning. And what can I do for you?”

It was the accent of a cockney barrow boy, whom you might like, but wouldn't trust an inch.

“I wonder if I might have a word with Mr Abbot?”

“Not easy, mate. He's a very busy man. Could you give me an idea of your business?”

“No. Would you just tell him that Superintendent Sutcliffe would like a word with him?”

“Oh. Oh, I see. Right. Won't be a tick.”

He bustled back, less cockily, into the house, and was succeeded after a further wait by a very different
figure. Walter Abbot was not tall, but he was square and enormously powerful, giving the impression of a rugby player gone to seed. He was brown-suited and bristling with energy that seemed likely to spill over into aggression at any moment—the sort of man whose natural arena would seem to be the boxing ring or the American football field. Not a man to work for, or to live with. Forewarned that his visitor was a policeman, there was a patina of geniality over his aggression, but it was the fleeting geniality of the pugnacious, not the geniality of the genial.

“Well, well, Superintendent. What can I do for you? You'll excuse my not inviting you in, but we
are
very busy today. Just a matter of routine, is it?”

“Not quite routine, sir. I'm investigating the death of Mr James Partridge.”

The man's bushy eyebrows raised themselves.

“Really? Funny, I thought everyone agreed that was suicide.”

“The inquest returned an open verdict, in fact. Why did you assume it was suicide?”

“Thought they were just being tactful. The rumour around these parts is that the marriage wasn't going too well. She hadn't been up here much of late, his lady. Fine figure of a woman, but a handful, I'd guess. Wouldn't have thought he was much of a dab with the whip hand, the late Mr Partridge. But it was a sad business altogether. He was a fine MP.”

“You thought so, did you?”

“Yes, indeed. I'm a member of the local Association—was on the committee that short-listed him for the seat, as a matter of fact. That would be—what?—five,
six years ago, just before the 'seventy-nine election. We thought he'd go far—high office and all that. Didn't quite make it, but a fine man all the same.”

“So you didn't have any disagreements with him, later on?”

The eyes narrowed, and a rasp entered the voice.

“No. I've said I thought he was a fine MP. Has some sillyarse been talking?”

“Not so much that, Mr Abbot. But I found your letter yesterday when I went to his cottage.”

The man's face was an open playground of emotions. He must certainly be quite unused to hiding them, which surely meant that life was sticky for his workers. Clearly he would have liked to bawl Sutcliffe out for snooping. On the other hand, he was a policeman, and quite possibly he had a warrant or Mrs Partridge's permission. For the moment prudence was victorious in this man of sudden rages and perpetual ill-will.

“Oh, that. Just a little local difficulty. That blew over in no time. We smoothed it over before he died.”

“Really? When would that be?”

“Oh, he wrote me a conciliatory reply, and I accepted his apologies by phoning him. We ended the best of friends.”

“You couldn't show me his reply?”

“ 'Course I couldn't. I wouldn't keep things like that.”

“I would have thought you
would
—any business would keep correspondence with an MP. In any case, Mr Abbot, I have a copy of his reply. And it was not conciliatory.”

“God damn it!” shouted Abbot, banging his fist down on the gatepost. “If you had a copy of his reply why didn't you say so?”

“To spare you the need of a lie? Why should I? Look, I've got some idea of what this business is all about. Why don't you give me your side of it?”

Abbot looked hard at him, then with an effort brought himself down below boiling point. Sutcliffe had half hoped to be invited into the “farmhouse,” but Abbot showed no inclination to do that. Instead he continued leaning on the gate, a massive and intimidating presence.

“I tell you, the man was a busybody and an ignoramus. As you'll know if you've seen the letters, he got a bee in his bonnet about factory farming. I needn't spell it out to you: you'll know the general line these cranks take. ‘Will you tell your constituents how much meat will go up by?' I asked him, when I heard about this damned bill of his. It was sheer do-goodery, and ignorant into the bargain. Got it into his head that our animals are mistreated—”

“And are they not?”

“Don't be daft. It's like a four-star hotel in there. Anyone can inspect our premises, and I defy them to find a suffering animal.” Since he made no effort to shift his bulk from the gate, Sutcliffe realized his words did not constitute an invitation. “No, it was starry-eyed nonsense. I ask you: would it make sense? Any fool can see it wouldn't be in our interests to mistreat them.”

“Isn't that the sort of thing Southern slave-owners used to say?” asked Sutcliffe. The man flashed brick-red and seemed about to explode, so Sutcliffe went on hurriedly: “But I'm not primarily interested in your
farm. I'm interested in your quarrel with Jim Partridge. When did you first write to him?”

“When I heard about this bill. A load of sentimental twaddle
that
was. I hear it's stone dead now—”

“Quite. Like James Partridge.”

“Yes, well . . . Sorry. Unfortunate turn of phrase. Well, I wrote to him when I first got wind of what you might call the general tendency of this bill. Brought a few facts to his attention.”

“And he replied?”

“Yes, he did. Impertinent bloody piece of work. Acknowledged the truth of some of what I said, but . . . well, talking a lot of rot about the unnaturalness of the life. Bloody fool. I wouldn't call an MP's life natural, but that doesn't mean I want to abolish Parliament!”

“And that was when you wrote that rather intemperate letter that I saw?”

“Intemperate! You call that intemperate? When the man is threatening my livelihood!”

“And after you received his reply, there was no more communication between you?”

“No, there wasn't. There was only a week or two, and then he was dead.”

“You never went to his cottage?”

“What would be the point? That time he wrote to me was the last weekend he was up here.”

But Sutcliffe had noted the shadow of equivocation cross his eyes.

“You haven't answered my question.”

“No. I never went there. Only been there once in my life.”

“And you didn't go
after
his death?”

“No, I did not. Now, if you've quite finished—”

“Can I be quite specific? You didn't go to his cottage late one night and try to break in?”

“No. No. No. Get me? No!”

The man bellowed like a bull, the most naturally animal thing in his entire farm.

“Well, well. I'll be saying goodbye for the present. But I might well be back.”

“I can't think of any good reason why you should be. Just what sort of an investigation is it you're conducting, Superintendent?”

“It's a very vague, fluid sort of investigation at the moment, sir. But you might say it has murder at the back of its mind.”

The man looked at him, curiosity, cunning and apprehension battling it out across his red, porcine face. Then he turned and stumped back into the administrative office. Sutcliffe felt he would not like to be one of his underlings there for the rest of the day.

As luck would have it, the visit was to have a follow-up, and from one of the underlings Sutcliffe had pitied in his heart. That evening, after he had eaten an execrable meal of boiled greens, mashed potato and supermarket meat pie, and while he was washing it down with a glass of tolerable beer in the bar and listening to the assembled hacks swapping the day's campaign gossip, the landlord came in from the back.

“Here, are you a policeman?”

“That's right.”

“There's someone on the phone for you, then. You can take it through there in the passage.”

Sutcliffe was mystified, and when he found the dingy little nook with the phone said a very cautious “Hello?”

“Are you the policeman that was out at Manor Court
Farm today?” asked a male voice with a rural Yorkshire accent. “Investigating the murder of the MP?”

“The
death
of the MP. Yes, that's right. How did you know I was here?

“To tell you the truth, I had a pint or two myself in the Happy Dalesman last night, and when I looked out the window this morning, I thought I recognized you. Abbot was swearing up hill and down dale when he came in from talking to you, going on about the police, so it wasn't difficult to put two and two together. The thing is, I wondered if he'd told you the whole truth.”

“I should think it's very unlikely. Are you willing to fill me in a little?”

“Well now; no names, no pack drill, and then I might. But I don't want any fall-out from what I'm going to tell you. Manor Court Farm is about the only employer that there is in Cordingate, so they've got us all in a cleft stick there. So, I'm not going to give you my name—”

“And I'm in no position to get it, over the telephone.”

“Right. Well, this thing goes back well before this bill that Partridge was bringing in. In fact, I'm not sure the bill didn't spring from this visit he made—well before the last election it was, when Partridge was still a minister for something or other—was it Health?”

“He was an under-secretary in the Ministry, yes.”

“Right. Well, he came to the farm to see Abbot on some constituency business, Abbot being a big shot with the local Conservative Association, as you probably know. Trouble was, this Friday he came along at five o'clock, just as all of us were streaming out of the place. Now, one of us said that Mr Abbot was still at
work, and Mr Partridge just strolled in, and nobody liked to stop him, though it was strictly against house rules. Well, unfortunately Mr Abbot had gone along to the lavatory: he spends a fair time on the lavatory seat does Mr Abbot, him being a heavy eater, a heavy drinker and a heavy anything you'd care to name. So after he'd waited around for a few minutes, Partridge goes out to the farm proper, to see if Abbot was down in any of the sheds.”