Political Suicide (2 page)

“Would he win the seat, do you think?”

“Oh—winning. I don't know about that. But that's not really the point, is it?”

• • •

The leader of the Social Democratic wing of the Alliance was talking to the leader of the Liberal wing of the Alliance, during a regular Friday date that was aimed at keeping the Alliance green.

“They're pushing ahead with the by-election at Bootham, you notice.”

“So I gather. One of yours at the last election.”

“At this one, too.”

“Oh, of course. We wouldn't think of interfering. Got anything in mind?”

“Well, there's a perfectly respectable candidate left over from last time, I believe. I campaigned for him, but I can't remember much about him. Local man—councillor, social worker, or teacher, or something. Very worthy. Question is, should we try and draft in one of our senior people. One of our ex-MPs, perhaps.”

“Plenty of those.”

“You don't have to tell me. What I'd like to know is: would it do more harm than good? In these Northern constituencies it's often the really local man who goes down best. Westminster's another country to them. Then there's the question of whether one of the candidates at least shouldn't be a woman. The Tories won't pick one, they never do, and Labour's got Sam Quimby from the last election. It makes Parliament look like a male club.”

“Which it is. Were you thinking of Shirley?”

“I don't know that she wants to get back in yet. Thinks she's beginning to look like a political yo-yo. But there are others. The main thing is, not to give the appearance of dithering.”

“Quite.”

“Take a decision, and stick to it.”

“Exactly.”

“I wish I had a clearer picture of what grass-roots opinion in the constituency is likely to be . . .”

And so, determined to give an appearance of not dithering, they dithered.

• • •

The day had waned, and the watery half-light of a December dusk had given way to a chill and rainy darkness. The democratic processes which were to determine what choice was to be presented to the electors of Bootham were now so well under way that no one any longer bothered to mention the name of James Partridge, or to pretend that it was much too early to think about the by-election. The Prime Minister had long ago forgotten the death of this back-bencher, and
was giving an evening reception for a trade delegation from an obscure and unsavoury Sultanate in the Persian Gulf. But half a mile from Downing Street, in the shabby anonymity of the concrete and glass tower that is New Scotland Yard, Jim Partridge was still a live issue.

“Accident is a physical impossibility,” said Chief Superintendent Sutcliffe, stirring a cup of coffee and looking thoughtfully at Inspector Wendell, an old friend, and his own generation of CID man. “He was five foot eight, and the parapet on Vauxhall Bridge would be well above his waistline. He'd have had to be sitting on it to fall off accidentally, and the doc says he definitely wasn't drunk.”

He sat there, still stirring, forgetting to drink. He was fifty-seven, and ten weeks off his retirement date: he had a sad, grey moustache and kindly, tired eyes. His wife was dead, his two daughters grown up and married. He looked forward to his retirement with a strange mixture of hope and dread—would it be a liberation, or a death?

“We shan't get a proper post mortem report till tomorrow,” he said, “but on the face of it the obvious conclusion has to be that it was suicide.”

“Is there any reason why it shouldn't be?”

Sutcliffe shrugged, an uneasy shrug.

“None why it shouldn't, and none why it should, so far. I've only spoken briefly to the wife on the phone, but she said she knew of none. Perhaps she would say that. All they can suggest over at Conservative Headquarters is that he was over-conscientious, and that he's been snowed under with work connected with some private member's bill he was piloting through the House. It doesn't seem much of a reason for suicide.”

“I believe they
are
a hell of a lot of work, when you haven't got the government machine behind you.”

“Granted. But you don't have to take on a private member's bill if you don't want to. I'll just have to dig a bit deeper if I'm to come up with something that will satisfy the inquest.”

“Careful. It could be a hot potato. Keep the Old Man informed.”

“Oh, I will, naturally. Powerful Interests, as they call them, will be having their say. One thing about a political thing like this: I'll have to get it right, or I'll certainly be shot at from one side or the other. On the other hand, the worst thing you can do with something political is to try and sweep all the dirt under the carpet.”

He was quite wrong, of course. Before long it was being made clear to him from all sides that the one thing they wished more than any other was that he had swept all the dirt under the carpet. But by then it was too late.

Penelope Partridge was tall and elegant—no trace of disarray on this her second morning of widowhood. Her face was long and handsome, and all suggestion of the horse was kept at bay by skilful make-up. The eyes were dry but slightly reddened, almost (thought Sutcliffe, but kicking himself at the same time for the inbred cynicism of policemen) as if she had deliberately rubbed them before his visit, but not too much. Was she a good MP's wife? he wondered. He couldn't see her going down well in Bootham—not with that cool, reserved, condescending manner. Already he was being given the idea that being interviewed by a policeman, whatever his rank and whatever the circumstances, was something very much beneath her dignity. She was trying to make him feel like an upper servant.

“Of course, looking
back
,” she was saying, with an upper-class drawl that emphasized unlikely words, “one can see that his problem was that he was too conscientious—he
let things prey on him, took them too much to heart.”

“Personal things, you mean?”

Sutcliffe was surprised to see a flicker of apprehension flash through her eyes, but it was not allowed to change the expression on her face, and she retrieved herself immediately.

“Oh no—
no-o-o
,” She glanced around the drawing-room of their elegant Chelsea house, as if to say: who, having this, could have personal problems? “I meant political problems, of course. Governmental problems. He was a junior health minister, you know, for three years—dropped in the reshuffle after the last election. Dropped, just like that.” A trace of bitterness invaded her tone, but again she shook it off immediately. “I have a feeling the PM likes people who can take things a bit more in their
stride
; don't go around with the burdens of the world on their
shoulders
the whole time. That was James's problem: he worried, couldn't leave a thing alone if it was on his mind. I remember when he was having some troubles in the Department—you know, nurses' pay and suchlike—” she waved a long-fingernailed hand—“and he went to open some hospital or other, and there was a big demonstration—you know the kind of show they put on. They heckled him, and threw things—quite nasty, but of course if you're a minister
these
days, with current standards of behaviour, you have to get used to that sort of thing. But you know, for a week afterwards he could talk about nothing else—their case, pay guidelines, violence—until I could have screamed! Really, in politics these days one has got to be a bit more—
insouciant
.
Happy-go-lucky,” she added, for Sutcliffe's benefit.

“I see. So you think that that was why his career never really . . . took off?”

“I'm sure of it. He never got his priorities right—never worked out even what they were. I used to say to him, either you go all out for office, high office—because otherwise all this Westminster stuff is sheer drudgery, and damned dull to boot—or else you go after money. Let's face it, James wasn't born to money: he set up this small printing and duplicating business when he was quite young, with some money he was left. It was very efficient, used very modern methods and so on, and it positively spawned other little businesses all over the country. But James lost interest. Sold out. You've got to be single-minded if you want to make a
lot
of money.”

“Instead he went into politics?”

“Exactly. And he always kept very busy, even as a back-bencher. But he was much too wet—politically wet, I mean—to get anywhere much. And there doesn't seem to be any point unless you
do
, not in my book.”

“Perhaps not,” murmured Sutcliffe. “Was there any political problem in the last few weeks that seemed to be bothering him?”

“Well—” she seemed uncertain—“nothing special that I can
recall
. Constituency problems, naturally. He was depressed by the rising unemployment in Bootham. Have you been to Bootham, ever? No, well it's not the sort of place one
goes
to, deliberately. Between you and me, a
frightful
hole. He found the problems of the unemployed families terribly depressing, though one does sometimes feel, doesn't one, that
some
of them
have almost brought it on them
selves
, and if you can't
do
anything about it, there's not much point in bringing all their problems home. But there—that was James.”

“So you didn't live in the constituency?”

“Good Lord, no. Well, we have a cottage. In a little village called Moreton. Very much
outside:
still in the constituency, but not
in
Bootham. Bootham East is the better part of town, naturally, but even so there wasn't anywhere where I'd care to
live
, even for the odd weekend. We used the cottage when we went up on constituency business—James for his fortnightly surgery, me to open something or other. I'll get rid of it now, of course. Though, really—house prices in Yorkshire are rock
bottom.”

“Tell me: Thursday night, when he didn't come home—weren't you worried?”

“Well, I didn't
know.
I can see I shall have to enlighten you, Superintendent, as to how politicians' wives live, what they have to put
up
with.”

“You mean the hours—all-night sittings, and so on?”

“Exactly. And when they don't sit late, all the manœuvrings and conspirings, and the constituency business, and Christ knows what. We—we have a guest bedroom here, of course, and we have an agreement that if James comes in—came in—after I'd gone to bed, then he slept there. So really, when I didn't see him all day, I wasn't in the least surprised, because that was very much business as usual. I went to bed at—oh, about half past eleven, I suppose, and never gave a second thought to James's not being home.”

“And when you found out in the morning that he hadn't slept in the spare bed?”

“Well, actually, I didn't. I mean, I came down to
get the children's breakfast—I do that once or twice a week, because we've got a Danish
au pair
, and she gives them the oddest things on rye bread, so I do try to make sure they have something sensible now and again. And I was just sitting down to my own when your sergeant came.”

“And then you went up and found the bed hadn't been slept in, I suppose.”

“Naturally, of course it hadn't. I understand the body had probably been in the water some hours.”

“That's what we think. I'll be getting the results of the post mortem later today. So you can't think of any special reason—?”

But they were interrupted by the entrance of two wide-eyed children, very neat and clean, and an enormous flaxen-haired girl who looked as if she was about to play Brynhild in some open-air Scandinavian pageant play. Sutcliffe knew all too well the sort of questions intelligent five- and six-year-olds ask when they have just lost a parent. Muttering that he would get in touch, and that he hoped Penelope Partridge would contact him if she thought of anything relevant, he made a discreet exit. Walking from the front door to his car, he thought what a very unsatisfactory interview this had been, without being able quite to pin down in his own mind the reasons for his dissatisfaction. But one thing was certain: Mrs Partridge had not been able to put on even a pantomime of sorrow or regret.

• • •

The press-cuttings on James Partridge which Sutcliffe found waiting for him in a folder on his desk at New Scotland Yard confirmed the picture that his wife had
painted so pitilessly—that of a man whose career had never quite got off the ground. Early on in his stint as a junior minister a newspaper had called him “the thinking man's Tory,” and the label had stuck, possibly because there was so little competition. The occasion for the label had been a thoughtful speech on the nature of conservatism which could, by a generous stretching of the term, have been called philosophical. He had made one or two more such speeches, and it was perhaps to give him more time to think his conservative thoughts that the Prime Minister had dropped him from the government after the election. He had apparently accepted his dismissal without bitterness, had only joined one revolt against the government since, and seemed determined to be a conscientious back-bencher and a good constituency MP. He had appeared three years before in the “New Boys” column in the scandal sheet
Private Eye
, but they had found little dirt to fling at him. He had busied himself in recent months with a Private Member's Bill which one of the papers had dubbed “The Animals' Charter.”

Sutcliffe digested all this, and then he got on the phone to Conservative Central Office. The girl on the switchboard said that of course it
was
a Saturday, and there was only the tiniest skeleton staff there, just to deal with any emergency that came up, and naturally the Chairman wasn't there, but he could come and talk to Terry if he wanted to. Who was Terry? Well, Terry was sort of deputy-under-constituency-organizer—she'd forgotten his exact title, but he was a sort of liaison man. Sutcliffe said he'd come and talk to Terry.