Before they parted, Lord Arthur had taken the opportunity to raise, not without diffidence, a question which had been worrying him.
‘Look here, Isabel… that chap Lacy… does he often come to see you?’
Isabel had looked surprised. ‘No, that was the first time. Why?’
‘Oh, nothing. I just wondered. Fellow’s perfectly all right, no doubt. Decent family, and all that. But…’ Lord Arthur had begun to wish he had not introduced the subject at all, for Isabel had laughed delightedly.
‘Arthur, you’re not asking me if Mr Lacy has been – what’s the phrase? – paying me his addresses? I do believe you are. Well, rest assured. His attentions are reported to be turning quite elsewhere; and if you want any more information, try Sheila Lloyd-Evans.’
‘Oh!’ Lord Arthur had been too relieved to try to hide his relief. ‘Is that so? I didn’t know. Very good match if it comes to anything. Lacy’s got a big future in front of him.’
‘Yes, and Sheila’s a bit negative; she’d suit him very well,’ Isabel said perfunctorily. ‘Her parents apparently aren’t too keen, but that doesn’t matter much nowadays… Why did you ask, Arthur?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Silly of me. I just thought…’
‘You just thought that you’ve heard that girls do foolish things on the rebound, and Mr Lacy wasn’t any more right for me than Eric was.’
‘Exactly,’ Lord Arthur had said with gratitude. ‘That was it, exactly.’
‘Well, I wish that one day,’ Isabel had retorted, with sudden asperity, ‘you’d tell me who in your opinion is right.’
‘I’ve promised already,’ Lord Arthur had smiled, and Isabel had then announced that she must go; her father might be wanting her.
The conversation recurred to Lord Arthur when, his business at the Office done, he turned into Whitehall on his way to lunch. It had been clever of Isabel to tumble to the extraordinary idea he had conceived; but then Isabel was clever – clever as a monkey. How lost she would be when her father retired from political life. Somehow Lord Arthur did not like the proposal that she should stand for Parliament on her own account; Isabel would be far more use pulling the right strings behind the scenes.
On a sudden whim Lord Arthur decided to lunch in the dining-room of the House of Commons instead of at home. The loneliness of his flat appeared distasteful: he wanted company.
Before lunching he took a stroll round to see what precautions were in hand. Plain-clothes men were everywhere, in the most sacred corners and recesses. Lord Arthur wandered into the Chamber itself. A few Members were already on the benches, making sure of their seats; even the usual card seemed to be distrusted today. Several nodded to him in silence and in silence he returned their greeting. Faces everywhere were grave; an atmosphere of foreboding and uneasiness hung over the whole place. The great Chamber seemed to be holding its breath.
Lord Arthur stared at the portion of the front bench sacred to England’s Prime Minister. What had that shabby upholstery with its missing button seen in the past? What was it to see today?
He shook off the fears which suddenly crowded in on him and hurried away to lunch. The Minister for the Dominions was there, and beckoned to him. Lord Arthur had never been conscious before of any particular affection for Mr Lavering, but he accepted the invitation with pleasure.
At lunch Mr Lavering imparted a piece of information. Seven Cabinet Ministers had decided to call upon the Prime Minister at the very last moment and try to persuade him not to speak. If he persisted they would resign on the spot, as a last resort. Lord Arthur learnt with some surprise that Mr Lloyd-Evans was among the seven. On his asking how the belief had arisen that it was the Prime Minister himself who was to speak, Mr Lavering had divulged that a process of elimination among the Cabinet had left this as the only logical conclusion.
After lunch Lord Arthur was bereft of his anchor. Having deliberated with himself at considerable length in his rich, fruity voice, Mr Lavering had decided to add himself to the seven and make an eighth, giving his reasons at considerable length. Lord Arthur refused a tentative invitation to accompany the deputation to No. 10 and add his moral support. He could not disapprove of any effort to make the Prime Minister change his mind, but hardly thought this one was likely to be successful. He contented himself with telling the Minister for the Dominions that he had already pressed to be allowed to make the speech himself and that this offer still held good: a piece of news which the Minister received with undisguised relief and gratitude.
With an hour or more before the House would assemble, Lord Arthur found himself too restless to remain. The Prime Minister had hinted already that he wished to see no more of him at No. 10, and Lord Arthur hardly liked to intrude upon Isabel’s anxiety. In the end he walked quickly over to the India Office and manufactured some work for himself there.
It was a lucky choice. He had not been in his room for ten minutes before a telephone-call came through from the Treasury.
It was the same official whom he had already consulted about Mansel. ‘I don’t know if you’re still interested in our friend, dead as well as alive,’ he said at once, ‘but I thought you might like to hear the news.’
‘What news?’ Lord Arthur asked.
‘Panic,’ replied the other laconically. ‘Or something so near it as makes no odds.’
‘Panic?’ Lord Arthur repeated, puzzled. The crowds had seemed orderly enough, more interested than frightened.
‘On the Stock Exchange,’ the other explained. ‘There’s been the usual rush to unload any stock that had Mansel’s name attached to it. Very silly, because a lot of his concerns are still sound. Of course the Indian ones have suffered most. There’s not a buyer. That isn’t surprising, as most of the Indian shares aren’t fully paid-up. There’ve been three suicides reported to date; I dare say there’ll be a dozen before the day’s out.’
‘Good Heavens!’ Lord Arthur was horrified.
‘Oh, it’s the usual thing; when a big man crashes, he brings hundreds of small ones down with him. This crash is going to be a bit worse than usual, because not only was his position in India thoroughly unsound with an enormous amount of capital tied up in it, but he was murdered. You may say that shouldn’t affect the financial situation, but believe me, it does. It’s no good looking for logic when a panic’s in the air.’
‘This looks pretty bad,’ Lord Arthur muttered.
‘It’s certainly bad. I shouldn’t be surprised if it turns out the worst crash on record in this country. Mansel always was spectacular. And to add to the irony, I’ve a report through this morning from a highly reliable source that platinum has been discovered in the hinterland of Barghiala in remarkable quantities; in fact, the reports suggest that the deposits may be the richest in the world. If Mansel had lived to bring off that deal, not only would everything have been saved but most of the people now committing suicide would have been something like millionaires. He was conducting negotiations in the name of his Indian company, we’ve heard, not in his own. A pretty stroke, eh?’
‘It’s all on a par,’ said Lord Arthur.
So the Terrorists had not only the murders of two British Cabinet ministers to their credit, but the indirect murders of half a dozen harmless British investors. It had hardly seemed possible that such a bad business could become worse, but…
Putting off his return as long as possible, he found the House already in session when he got back to Westminster. Only two or three questions were down on the list, and these were answered perfunctorily, in lowered tones by the Under-Secretaries concerned. From the thinned-out aspect of the front bench as Lord Arthur slipped into a seat directly behind the Prime Minister’s own, he gathered that the Cabinet deputation was still urging its case.
If the atmosphere of the House had been tense three days beforehand, when Middleton rose to speak, it had been nothing compared with the painful rigidity in which every Member seemed to be held now as in a vice. Hardly a whisper was to be heard, and Lor
d Arthur wondered if everyone else was finding the same difficulty as himself in breathing. On either side of the Speaker’s chair, against every rule and precedent, a little group of detectives watched the scene with worried eyes. The lobby, the galleries, and every approach to the Chamber was packed with them.
Lord Arthur tugged nervously at his small moustache and stared round. On every face he saw the reflection of his own fears.
Before the Questions were quite concluded, there was a small diversion. Lacy, looking more or less unperturbed, rose from his seat on the front Opposition bench and crossed the floor towards Lord Arthur. Leaning over the vacant seat he whispered:
‘If there’s anything our lot can do, even as late as this…? Move the adjournment or something…?’
Lord Arthur noticed that the other’s voice was not quite steady in spite of his affected calm, and in equally uncertain tones replied:
‘I don’t think so. We’ve got to go through with it.’
Lacy waited for a few seconds, as if wondering whether to say more, then went quietly back to his seat.
Lord Arthur looked up at the clock. It was already a minute over the time, and still no one came. He felt he could not bear the suspense much longer.
Resting his elbows on the back of the bench in front, he leaned over them and stared down at the blank upholstery, trying to make his mind a similar blank. He tried to force his attention to concentrate on ridiculous trifles. There was a tear in the leather exactly the shape of the letter P; one of the flat buttons was nearly an inch out of alignment; the leather had been polished by the Prime Ministerial trousers to within six inches of the back of the seat but no further…
Then suddenly there was action.
Half a dozen Ministers came tumbling into the Chamber, looking both scared and excited. The Minister for Labour stopped to have a word with the Speaker; the others hurried to their places. Comstock dropped into a vacant seat beside that of the Prime Minister, the other side being already occupied by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and then twisted round to Lord Arthur.
‘Lloyd-Evans knocked him out!’ he whispered, excitedly. ‘Knocked him clean out, in front of all of us. He’s going to make the speech himself.’
‘What?’ Lord Arthur could not make sense of this extraordinary communication.
Comstock explained, more or less incoherently. They had all pleaded with the Prime Minister, who had remained adamant. Finally Lloyd-Evans, convinced like the rest of them that it was hopeless to persevere, had stepped forward and, under the eyes of his astounded colleagues, had knocked the Prime Minister unconscious with as neat a left to the chin as ever Mr Comstock had seen. He had then announced that he was going to make the speech himself, had removed the manuscript of it from the Prime Minister’s breast pocket, and summoned the Commissioner of Police to the room. Lord Arthur gathered that Sir Hubert Lesley, with remarkable quickness of decision, had accepted the situation, called up Sir William Greene, who was already in attendance below, to make sure that the Prime Minister was not seriously hurt and, on receiving his report that it appeared to be no more than an ordinary knock-out blow and the Prime Minister when he came round in twenty minutes or so would be perfectly well except for a headache and a sore jaw, had then undertaken to escort Lloyd-Evans to the House in place of the unconscious Prime Minister.
Scarcely had Lord Arthur grasped these facts when Mr Lloyd-Evans himself appeared, attended by Sir Hubert as far as the Speaker’s chair, paused for a moment, white and breathless, to exchange a quick interrogative glance with the Speaker and receive a nod in return, and then dropped heavily into the Prime Minister’s place.
A buzz of speculation which had already broken out with the somewhat helter-skelter entrance of the Ministers, redoubled when it was seen that the President of the Board of Trade and not the Prime Minister had occupied the latter’s seat; but there was little time for discussion. Pausing only for a minute to confer hastily over the side of his chair with the Commissioner, the Speaker called in a low voice upon the President of the Board of Trade.
There was no response.
Slumped in his seat, Mr Lloyd-Evans seemed to be ignoring the summons. The Speaker called upon him again, more clearly.
And then a horrible thing happened. Mr Lloyd-Evans slumped down still lower, and then very slowly rolled off the Bench on to the floor and lay there, prone and motionless.
For a moment the House stared at him in horror. Then Sir Hubert, with a bark to his men, darted forward, Sir William Greene close on his heels. While the House sat petrified a quick examination was made. Then four detectives gently lifted the inert body and carried it out of the Chamber. Sir Hubert, as he followed, bent towards the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lord Arthur heard the one word he muttered:
‘Dead!’
Still the House sat as if turned into stone.
Lord Arthur was never conscious that he had made a decision. Acting almost without thought, he scrambled over the back of the Bench in front of him and, even as the Speaker’s trembling lips were about to pronounce the adjournment of the House, reached the Chair.
‘Don’t adjourn,’ he whispered, urgently. ‘Call on me.’
The Speaker stared down at him for a moment, then moistened his lips and complied.
Lord Arthur stumbled back to the front bench and, in a low, flat voice, began without any preamble or explanation the late Secretary of State for India’s speech.
Gradually the House unfroze, gradually Lord Arthur’s voice gained power. He stood quite rigidly, making neither gesture nor movement, his eyes fixed on vacancy as he recited the rounded periods which he knew so thoroughly by heart. The House listened in utter silence, holding its breath.
The minutes marched on. The point at which Lord Wellacombe had collapsed was reached and passed, then the point where death had overtaken Middleton. Ten minutes… twenty…half an hour…
Lord Arthur warmed up. More life came into his voice. It seemed an age now since Mr Lloyd-Evans had been carried, a sagging mass, out of the House. Behind the façade of words another part of Lord Arthur’s brain could contemplate that tragedy now almost with detachment. Poor Lloyd-Evans! It had been a gallant gesture, but the physical frame of the man could not have been equal to the strain for his heart to have given out so suddenly – pouf! like that, the very instant that strain was momentarily relaxed. Funny, no one had ever known Lloyd-Evans had a heart. He must have kept very quiet about it. And that was odd, too, for there is no one more fussy about his health than an ex-athlete. Funny, to think of Lloyd-Evans as an athletic undergraduate, with a blue for rowing as well as for boxing. People changed so much…
Lord Arthur’s hand crept towards his tie. Some men are button-conscious when they are speaking in public and fumble continually with coat or waistcoat buttons as if to make sure that everything is still in order; some are tie-conscious, and some have a different trick; but all speakers possess some favourite gesture or action which seems to make the sentences flow more freely. It was Isabel who had fastened on Lord Arthur’s habit of pulling at his tie, during the rehearsal yesterday afternoon. Lord Arthur himself had been almost unconscious of it, but recognised the propensity when Isabel pointed it out.
He was nearing the end of the speech now.
But the end was not to be reached without drama. At the exact moment that Lord Arthur’s hand was about to reach his tie a shriek rang out from the Ladies’ Gallery.
Lord Arthur, his sentence cut in half, stared up. In the shadows he could make out the figure of Isabel. She was gesticulating at him wildly.
Lord Arthur paused for a moment, swallowed once or twice, and then, with the same rigidity of pose as at the beginning, began to speak.
For eight minutes more his voice filled the high chamber. And then, with a slight bow to the Chair, the speech was finished.
Instantly pandemonium broke out. Cheers and shouts from every side echoed through the House; order papers were waved, even hats flung hysterically on to th
e floor. For the moment Lloyd-Evans was as forgotten as if he had never existed.
Lord Arthur lifted his hand, and the pandemonium was cut off as if by a chopper.
‘Before we proceed with the debate,’ he said, ‘I move that the House adjourns for half an hour, but that no Member moves from his or her place, and that the Commissioner of Police be requested to carry out such investigations here and now as may seem fit to him.’
He glanced at the Speaker.
It was no time for precedent.
‘The House is adjourned,’ said the Speaker, firmly. ‘Honourable Members will please keep their seats.’
Sir Hubert came hurrying forward. He grasped Lord Arthur’s hand and muttered a fervent word of congratulation.
‘Lloyd-Evans?’ asked Lord Arthur.
‘Dead. Apparently heart failure.’ He bustled away.
Lord Arthur turned, scrambled over the vacant seat behind him and regained his own. He sat down thankfully. His job was done, he was still alive, and.. .he felt weak at the knees.
Sir Hubert was busily instructing his men. The House buzzed with excitement and anticipation.
Lord Arthur hunched himself forward over the back of the bench in front. How was it that he was still alive? Had his fantastic idea been right after all? Did he actually at that moment carry on his person some unknown, hidden weapon of death which had missed its mark – or had his immunity been due to his sudden inspiration, unforeseen by the enemy, to take Lloyd-Evans’ place literally over that unhappy man’s dead body? He wished Sir Hubert would hurry up. He wanted to be searched, and quickly. It was a disturbing thought that even at this moment…
Death in the House Page 20
