Political Death

by Antonia Fraser

  “You mean on a professional basis, just man to man?” queried Archie.

  “In a manner of speaking,” said Jemima sweetly. On second thoughts, she really must bring Archie and the New Cherry together one day. The results could be interesting.

  Sarah Smyth’s farewell was characteristic: “And now are you going to jog home in that wonderful suit?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” repeated Jemima with even greater sweetness. In fact she could hardly wait to get into a taxi. She needed to rush back to her flat, perhaps to find messages from Swain women, but also to go through the Burgo Smyth saga—the Faber Case—yet again. And she needed to sort out, away from the dominant Sarah Smyth and the joker Archie, just what had struck her as false about the recent conversation.

  Once in the flat, she established that there were four messages for her, but they were all from Cy Fredericks at Megalith, who had “a most exciting proposition, which only you can handle” to put to her. On the second and third messages he sounded extremely put out that she had not rung him back although, according to the timer on her machine, a mere five minutes had elapsed between each call. On the fourth message he sounded quite heartbroken, “Jem, oh my gem …” The message clicked off.

  Jemima put her telephone firmly back on answer (by now Cy would have put the exciting proposition which only she could handle to someone else) and reached for the video of her programme on the Faber Mystery once more. By her side, she also put the Faber Mystery file, clippings and all, which Cherry had managed to acquire surreptitiously from Megalith TV, to whom it technically belonged (with the aid of some admirer who, like Jemima, was too much in awe of the New Cherry to resist her).

  What on earth had happened to Franklyn Faber? People, even dead people, didn’t just vanish off the face of the earth. True, Lord Lucan had, but the comparison was apt: in the case of Franklyn Faber, as in that of Lucan, many wild theories had been put forward to explain the absence of the corpse. For example, Faber had been a passionate gardener and naturalist at his Dorset cottage, not far from Power-stock Manor, the Queen Anne house belonging to the Smyths, for which Imogen Swain had felt such passionate jealousy (or at least of the connubial life lived in the house). Dorset was an ancient and mysterious county, as Jemima knew, and Ned Silver would discover if he ever managed to get there. One theory—unconfirmed by any evidence but popular for all that—was that Franklyn Faber had chosen to go literally to ground in Dorset, killing himself in a remote cave which he knew would never give up its secrets. She realised now that some people had linked Teresa Smyth to all this. Maybe even Imogen Swain had?

  Why on earth should Faber do that? asked the voice of reason. The note he left in his London flat—not far from where Jemima now lived—did not point to Dorset. It pointed to no particular place. It was true that Faber was reported by “a friend” to have reflected more than once on the possibility of disappearing in an unspecified Dorset cavern or pothole. “It was an obsession with him,” said this friend (such intriguing situations always produced such anonymous friends). But another “friend” was equally convinced that Faber’s real heart (or rather his body) lay in the Highlands since he had been on a walking tour of the north-west at some point and at the time he had talked about disappearing there. Nobody explained how Faber had got to Dorset, let alone the north of Scotland, without a single plausible witness sighting him. (There had been some implausible ones, to say nothing of the voluntary contributions of a seer and a medium who backed Lake Windermere and Epping Forest, respectively.)

  One had the impression that both friends had been male. Had Faber been gay? Jemima rather thought so and her friend Pompey of the Yard had tipped her off that there had been at least one incident of a dropped prosecution, to do with a young man (or men) in a public lavatory. The dropping, it seemed, had been due to the influence of the Press lord who then owned the paper on which Faber worked, the Sunday Opinion. This Press lord had long ago gone to his rest or wherever media tycoons went, leaving the Op in the hands of Mack McGee.

  Faber’s sexuality was of course difficult to tell from the Press reports. The coded words of the sixties were very different from those of the nineties, and needed to be, given that homosexuality between consenting adults was only legalised in 1967, three years after Faber’s disappearance. Nowadays the old euphemism of “a confirmed bachelor” was hardly necessary. An interest in nature, in gardens, in long-distance walking; none of these were indications of special sexual proclivities. Long-distance walking was after all a hobby that Faber had had in common with Burgo Smyth at Oxford; they had gone on expeditions to Scotland together. And no one had ever suggested that Burgo was anything but heterosexual.

  Back to the suicide note itself: did it in fact point to suicide? There had been a fierce argument about that at the time, but as the months passed and Faber did not reappear, the likelihood of suicide naturally increased. It was true that accounts of Franklyn Faber being spotted abroad also proliferated. The United States, his country of origin, provided a large field; but since the offence with which he had been charged was probably not—so far as she could now recall—extraditable, it was difficult to see why Faber should not have emerged there after a while (perhaps under another name, and perhaps in another profession). Faber was after all still an American citizen, and his Irish Catholic Boston family, which had known a black sheep or two in its time and understood how to deal with them, could have gathered him discreetly to its bosom.

  Then there were classic haunts of fugitives, Brazil and so forth. Once again, there had never been any plausible stories of encounters. One surely had to discount the piece about Franklyn Faber marrying and bringing up a family in a remote corner of the South African veld, since his views on the South African state in those days would have kept him well away, even supposing he could have gained entry.

  As for the note, it was found by the man who was temporarily sharing Faber’s flat following the break-up of his marriage: John Barrymoor, a fellow journalist on the Sunday Opinion. Barrymoor had handed the note to Faber’s solicitor the next morning when that solicitor, a woman named Laurel Cameron, came around to collect Faber to go to court (when Franklyn disappeared he was technically jumping bail). Finally the note reached the police, having been read first by the judge; it could not under these circumstances be kept from the Press.

  “I’ve gone out,” the note read. “I’m keeping a rendezvous, a strange rendez-vous. And as Captain Oates said in a very different kind of storm, I may be some time.” The note was signed “F.F.” (At the Opinion Faber was generally known as F.F., the initials by which he signed his weekly column of radical denunciation.) The mention of Captain Oates was surely a reference to suicide, given that Oates had deliberately abandoned Scott and his companions towards the end of that ill-fated Antarctic expedition, when he believed his frostbite was hampering them all. And Oates had perished: unquestionably that had been a form of suicide.

  Jemima Shore, in her account of the mystery, had come down on the side of suicide, while hedging her bets at the very end with the words “The Question Remains Open,” the convenient title of that particular series. After all no one at Megalith, not Jemima Shore and certainly not Cy Fredericks, wanted to be confronted by the sight of Franklyn Faber, emerging from obscurity alive and well, and flanked by libel lawyers.

  That left the real puzzle; why Faber should have killed himself at that precise juncture in the trial. He had not yet been found guilty (the jury was still undecided on the morning that Laurel Cameron had to report her client’s absence). Even if he were to be found guilty, it was not clear that Faber would go to prison. It might be a case of a heavy fine, in which case the Opinion would presumably pay. There was however an unpleasant element in the whole case, of course, the hub of the prosecution’s argument: the fact that Faber had copied a Top Secret document taken from his friend’s briefcase in the country, and then sold it to his own newspaper through an alleged intermediary (actually himself operating under a fa
lse name and from an accommodation address). The money—£10,000, a handsome sum in 1964—might well stick in the jury’s throat. The judge had not let the point be overlooked.

  Jemima riffled her way to the crucial place in the transcript. She found Mr. Justice Lionnel in full flow in his summing-up. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Mr. Faber has been painted to you as an idealist or at the very least as a campaigning journalist, whatever that may mean.” (Sycophantic laughter from all those in court who wished to keep on the right side of the judge.) “This is the primary defence which is offered for his action, which he does not deny, in abstracting the Special Armaments Supply Briefing from Mr. Smyth’s briefcase, copying it, and causing it to be published in a national newspaper.

  “You must ask yourself whether an idealist or even a campaigning journalist” (another mild titter) “would be interested in acquiring £10,000 in the course of the deal. You will remember Mr. Faber’s own explanation for this: that he wanted the newspaper to take the Briefing seriously and you may well wonder why a newspaper should not take any suggestion from one of its leading journalists seriously. You may wonder what it was about the money, an enormous sum, which was supposed to validate the document, a document Mr. Faber might otherwise have validated personally. And you will recall that Mr. Faber on his own admission put the money into his personal account, where it allowed him to clear off his overdraft.”

  Mr. Justice Lionnel continued, “We have of course heard a great deal of evidence in this court of the high reputation of Mr. Faber, from people of the greatest probity, including the proprietor of the Opinion, who spoke of his campaigning zeal. And to this evidence too you must pay most serious attention. It is your duty, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, to weigh all this in your own minds.” No, Mr. Justice Lionnel had definitely not summed up in favour of Faber, although he had been careful to be fair-minded, no doubt with the aim of avoiding an appeal against his judgment. The money was awkward, Faber’s overdraft even more so. The suicide—for one had to accept the explanation—must have been caused by the prospect of a ruined reputation.

  Laurel Cameron’s take on all this was interesting. Jemima went back to the video, flashed forward to her interview with the solicitor, whose wild iron-grey hair and full figure in a denim jacket and long denim skirt contrasted with the photographs of her in the sixties, back-combed black hair, piquant flicks of which framed her pixie-like face with its pink lipstick and black-ringed eyes. Whatever had happened to her appearance, Laurel Cameron remained a radical campaigner. In her interview with Jemima, Laurel Cameron spoke, as she generally did these days, of injustice. But for once it was injustice past, not injustice present or (a favourite theme) injustice to come.

  “Yes, I believe Franklyn Faber committed suicide,” she said to the camera. “All that about the money broke his heart. He was a real person who cared for others. Just because he got his finances in a muddle—we all do that. But we don’t all get pilloried for it. That rotten government pilloried him just to draw attention away from their own cover-up. The Special Armaments Briefing was so politically embarrassing, wasn’t it? Imagine selling to Cuba—however indirectly—in 1964! Our American masters must have had a fit! They did everything to blackguard poor F.F. to draw attention from what they were doing.”

  Laurel Cameron had gone on, with a certain grim humour, to issue some frank comments on the character of the current Foreign Secretary, well aware that they would not survive into the programme. “As for that slimy creep, Burgo Smyth, with his big soulful eyes, talking about ‘his friend’ and ‘the years of friendship,’ and his ‘great trust, unfortunately not justified,’ he got away lightly, didn’t he? What was he up to, do you suppose, with that document in an unlocked briefcase? Or are they suggesting that poor F.F. picked the lock? There were a lot of questions that were never put about Burgo Smyth’s part in all this, and I know why. The government, in order to cover up, needed to keep Burgo Smyth loyal and pour all the dirt on Faber … It stank, Jemima, it stank then and it stinks now.…” But as Laurel Cameron had known, all that fell on the cutting-room floor.

  Jemima flashed forward over her next question and picked up Laurel again: “Yes, he did telephone me that night, the night of his disappearance. Briefly. He had some appointment, or I got the impression he had some appointment. Afterwards I racked my brains of course but he really didn’t say more than that. He was in an odd mood, and F.F. was an unpredictable person in some ways, moody, yes, which doesn’t mean he wasn’t an idealist.” Laurel Cameron’s voice was rising at this point, and there had to be another cut (this was not one Laurel had anticipated) since she held forth for some time on the idealist in society. (Laurel Cameron wrote Jemima a cross note afterwards: “I’m sorry I bored you so much—or perhaps your boss—on the subject of idealism.”) The crucial passage was her account of Franklyn Faber’s conversation on the telephone.

  “What he said to me was, ‘They’re trying to make me the fall guy. You’ve been great, no question about it. A rock. But I can’t go through with it. Not prison, if it’s a question of prison. I’ve been betrayed. I never thought it would end with a betrayal.’ ” Laurel’s huge dark eyes, so vibrant under the wild grey curls, dilated as she emphasised the word “betrayed.” “And so he had,” she added, “betrayed like so many others by the Establishment. He died because of that.”

  The Establishment! That word again. According to Archie Smyth, it was the workings of the Establishment which had caused the upright Mack McGee (in a white tie at a City dinner) to tip off the Foreign Secretary about his mistress’s inconvenient revelations. Now Laurel Cameron, from the opposite angle, blamed the Establishment for Franklyn Faber’s death. And Lady Imogen’s death? As convenient as her revelations were inconvenient. Jemima sighed. She pondered television’s role in the Establishment. Where would one place Cy Fredericks, for example?

  It was at this moment that the telephone rang. No doubt Cy himself … she did not move to answer it. But it was a very different voice she heard—a woman’s voice, quite deep, rather beautiful and well modulated. “Jemima Shore? This is Millie Swain returning your call. I too very much want to meet. I’m hoping you’ll be able to help us. I’m just leaving the theatre …” Jemima grabbed the receiver but it was too late. She cursed Cy Fredericks for the missed opportunity and cursed him even more when the telephone rang again. This time she answered it and it was Cy Fredericks. “My gem …” he began tenderly.

  CHAPTER 7

  AGES AGO

  The next night found Sarah Smyth, Archie Smyth and Harry Carter-Fox in their respective constituencies (two in or near London and one in Surrey, the latter being Archie’s, and a safe seat, unlike either of the others). It found Burgo Smyth on television leaning forward in that paternal way he had, as though he might at any time stretch out his hand from the screen and pat the grateful viewers on the head. But Jemima Shore did not watch him. Instead she went to the Irving Theatre to see Twelfth Night and visit Millie Swain afterwards.

  The theatre gave the impression of being completely full. But Jemima had known that the production was A Hit long before she entered the dark crimson auditorium, with its wild gold cherubs flying from the boxes. On second thoughts it was not so much A Hit, as A Happening. It was the people in the foyer bar—and above all their conversation—which informed her that she was present at A Happening. These were the people who always just happened to be there, where everyone who was anyone needed to be. They didn’t need to consult one another, let alone read the newspapers (since they formed the fashion rather than followed it). Some inborn herd instinct guided them to the right play, the right film, the right music festival, and of course the right restaurant afterwards.

  A favourite phrase of the naturally fashionable, Jemima had discovered, was “ages ago.” Indeed she heard a woman with a tanned face and long streaky expensive looking hair, use it even as she entered the foyer.

  “We first saw it ages ago,” the woman was saying. She was wearing tigh
t faded jeans with a black velvet jacket and antique diamond earrings. And it turned out that a number of the foyer fans (as Jemima mentally termed them) had already seen Twelfth Night on the fringe at the Addison Theatre. Her companion, also a woman, small and neat, in a very pretty pink Chanel suit which was probably the real thing, replied, “Oh, but I spotted Randall Birley and really fell for him ages ago, in fact ages before the Addison, though I did see it of course there, but ages before that—”

  “I love being with Randall,” one confident beauty in black suede platform soles exclaimed. Then the beauty trod on Jemima’s foot. Her companion—male, in what looked like an Armani suit—was holding himself in that particular crouchant position, somewhat resembling a discus-thrower in Greek statues, which indicated that he was talking on his mobile phone.

  In a rage as she rubbed her foot Jemima wanted to point out, “Well, you’re not going to be with him tonight, are you? Unless you plan to clamber on stage with those massive hooves of yours.” She began to wonder whether it was necessary for the foyer fans to go to the performance at all (since they had all seen it ages ago). The foyer itself being sufficient for The Happening to take place, special tickets might be sold for it which did not necessitate sitting through the performance.

  The one thing that no one in the foyer talked about was politics. Perhaps they were crowding into the theatre to get away from the eternal ding-dong battles of the politicians on television. With under a week to go, the pollsters were becoming increasingly breathless—like racecourse commentators—as the race remained so thrillingly open. Everyone agreed (night after night the same cliché) that “it could go either way.” No wonder the Smyth twins were worried about their father: a nice juicy scandal might indeed tip the balance. And in that case, the foyer fans probably would be overheard talking politics, or at least their version of it. Jemima could just imagine the phrases: “Oh, I knew Imogen Swain ages ago …” and “I’ve known Burgo Smyth for ages, you see …”