Political Suicide

by Robert Barnard

“Oh no, I don’t think so. Well—few, perhaps, but he did have close friends, unlike Antony. There was Terry Stopford, for example: one was always seeing Jim and Terry together in the Commons restaurant, or the bar.”

  “I’ve heard the name. He’s an MP, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. MP for East Molesworth. I’m sure he’ll talk to you if you give him a ring. Very cut up about Jim’s death, Terry was.”

  And in that, at least, Derek Manders was telling the truth.

  • • •

  When Sutcliffe spoke to Stopford in a little room in the Palace of Westminster, he had a decided impression that he was opening old wounds. Stopford was a slightly grey individual, in hair and in personality, but he made it very clear that he spoke (as far as a politician can) from the heart when he said how much he admired Jim Partridge.

  “He was almost the only politician I’ve ever known who was in the game for entirely selfless reasons. There wasn’t an ounce of personal push. That’s why his career in government never got anywhere. That’s why his marriage broke down.”

  “Yes, I gathered that his wife thought that, without high office, the game wasn’t worth the candle.”

  “Right—that’s Penelope all over. Mind you, I said that’s why his marriage broke down, but really there were enormous personality differences between them, as Jim found out quite soon after they were married. How she managed to hide her real nature long enough for Jim to propose to her and marry her I can’t imagine. Concealment doesn’t come easily to Penny. Her boredom, distaste or contempt are usually all too apparent. Which was a terrible disadvantage in her constituency work.”

  “You were his confidant over the marriage breakdown?”

  “To a degree. To the degree to which Jim was ever likely to confide personal things to anyone. It was a simple case of incompatible personalities and aims. We used to have a lot of heart-to-hearts about it—and then later about the children. We had the last on the evening that he died.”

  “Did you, now?”

  “Yes. In the House of Commons bar. Oh—not putting it away, or anything. Jim wasn’t a great drinker. He was talking about his children’s upbringing, and about getting them away from their mother as much as possible. He’d become convinced that she was the last person who ought to have the bringing up of young children.”

  “Was he depressed about this?”

  “You mean, was he suicidal? I would have said decidedly no. On the contrary: he was being practical. Trying to find ways of taking over much of their upbringing himself (which would have suited Penelope down to the ground, of course). On the other hand, Jim was not an outgoing personality. Even to me—and I knew him as well as any—he kept many private things hidden, or at least veiled. That was why, when I heard of his death, my first thought was to come along to the Yard and say: look, I must have been one of the last people to speak with him, and it can’t have been suicide. Then, on thinking it over, I thought I couldn’t do that, because I didn’t really know—never really knew—how Jim was thinking.”

  “When was this last talk?”

  “On the evening of the Thursday he died. It was a Dead Thursday—that is, there was very little business, and it petered out early. If he was still in London, and not in Bootham, Thursdays and Fridays were good days for heart-to-hearts. Nobody much around at the House. We parted around ten and he said he was going to walk back to Battersea. It was something I’d often done myself. He took over the flat after me.”

  “Yes, of course. I knew I’d heard your name before. Tell me, did you talk much, in the last few months, about this Animals’ Charter?”

  “A fair bit. Naturally.”

  “I gather he’d been working up to this bill for some time.”

  “Yes, quite a while. Even while he was still in government he was very distressed about conditions in a factory farm in his constituency. Oh—you know about that?”

  “Yes. What did he actually do about it—from the beginning?”

  “Well, first he tried to lobby various people in relevant ministries to get some action: tighten up regulations, improve inspection procedures, and so on. Nothing doing. Nothing in it for them. By the time he’d finished he’d put a lot of backs up, and no doubt that’s why he landed back on the back benches.”

  “Ah—you think that was the reason?”

  “That would be my guess.”

  “Any particular person responsible?”

  Terence Stopford hesitated.

  “Well . . . I suppose I owe it to Jim’s memory . . . I think that he’d begun to be convinced, before he died, that the person who put the PM against him was Evelyn St John Relph.”

  “Christ! Who’s he, or she?”

  “One of the juniors in Agriculture. Tipped for stardom, and a very sleazy individual. Personally, I mean, but Jim became convinced he was sleazy morally as well.”

  “Why was that?”

  “Relph was one of the key men he talked to, right from the time he was first worried about factory farming and experiments on animals. He got nowhere with him—fair words and bugger all otherwise. Jim began to get reports from this farm he was interested in, and one of the things he heard was that the place got a tip-off every time an inspection was in the offing. As he began voicing his disquiet he got one or two similar reports from other similar places. He became convinced that the inspection system had become a farce, because so many of the establishments always knew in advance. He was about to put feelers out to people working in laboratories where experiments on animals took place, to see if the same were true there.”

  “Why did he think this Relph character was involved?”

  “Initially because his is the responsibility for the inspection of farming premises, and because he has a lush lifestyle without any known means of supporting it beyond his ministerial salary, which wouldn’t. I think he got some rather harder evidence after that.”

  “So you think that as soon as Partridge started meddling in this, Relph got him sacked?”

  “That’s what Jim thought. Relph has the PM’s ear.”

  “So many people seem to have the Prime Minister’s ear.”

  “It’s a much sought-after ear.”

  It was not an ear, Sutcliffe suspected, that was ever going to incline in his direction. He would have to do without it, which was the easier because he was quite sure that the Prime Minister would be quite unaware of the more dubious goings-on of members of the government: however promiscuous the ear, it would be fed only expurgated versions of the truth. He would have to go about things in his own way—and it was a way made broader and easier by his approaching retirement. If that had not been in the offing, for example, he would never have made his peace with the shade of Jim Partridge by ringing up as he did the Labour MP who had co-sponsored the Animals’ Charter.

  “Mr Tidmarsh? Sorry to bother you. My name is Sutcliffe. If you remember I spoke to you earlier about James Partridge’s death.”

  “Of course. I remember. Rumour has it you’re still burrowing. Getting anywhere?”

  “Very slowly, if at all, sir. I gather the Animals’ Charter has been dropped?”

  “ ’Fraid so. Never any chance of getting a bill with any bite in it through the present House. And to be perfectly frank—” (Oh, the frankness of politicians!)—“there was nothing in it for us. Not as a party. Still, it leaves me at a bit of a loose end.”

  “Ah! Now, what I wanted to know, sir, was whether Partridge confided to you any suspicions he had about the inspection of intensive farming establishments?”

  “Suspicions? I seem to remember once he said these inspections were a bit of a farce—nothing more than that.”

  “Oh—that’s disappointing. Still, I rather imagined he wouldn’t . . .”

  “Wouldn’t? Why wouldn’t he?”

  “I mean, your being of the opposition party . . .”

  Sutcliffe could almost hear the sound of ears being pricked up.

  “What? You mean someone in the government?
Someone was making sure . . . making sure that all the standards and safeguards were just a farce, like he said.”

  “You realize I haven’t said anything, sir, that would suggest—”

  “No, no. Of course not. Your name wouldn’t be mentioned. Now, who would it be? Ministry of Agriculture . . . Ministry of Agriculture . . . Of course! That frightful burk Relph! Jim hated his guts, in his quiet way. That’s who it would be. Responsible for inspection and standards. There’s the making of a real political stink about this. One resignation at the very least. Now, how do I go about nailing him . . .”

  Sutcliffe, having reiterated that he himself had said nothing to give Tidmarsh the ideas he seemed to be toying with, rang off, reflecting that policemen all too often had to make use of dubious human material to get a sort of justice done. His dubious material happened to be political. It was now late in the evening, and Sutcliffe had had a hard day: much of it had been spent checking the movements of Antony Craybourne-Fisk, of Walter Abbot, of Oliver Worthing, and of Evelyn St John Relph on the evening of December 12th—tiresome, unrewarding work, since he had no certain knowledge when James Partridge was killed. On an impulse, before he went home, he took up the last volume of the London telephone directory and looked up Snaithe: there it was, entered as “Snaithe, J. G.,” with an address in Claverford Road, Pimlico. Sutcliffe rang the number.

  “Mrs Snaithe? I hope you remember me: we spoke in a pub in Bootham a few nights ago.”

  “I thought I knew the voice.”

  “I just wanted to tell you that I went along to the meeting, and I enjoyed your piece.”

  Sue laughed.

  “Did you? Funnily enough, quite a lot of people did. It was very comic, watching them come up and tell Jerry so afterwards.”

  “He, then, didn’t?”

  “He did not, and neither did his WRA Mafia. In fact, it provoked a fist fight between one of his London henchmen and one of the locals, but I gather the situation was so tense that it only needed a spark to set it off.”

  “What did your husband actually say afterwards?”

  “Well, it was rather difficult for him to say much. After all those protestations about my independence. Finally he said that he’d always maintained that my views were my own, of course they were, absolutely my own affair, but did I have to broadcast such controversial opinions in so public a manner? Controversial! As if he hasn’t always loved controversy! I said he should have made it clear that as his wife I was in a position rather like the Queen’s: I could have what opinions I liked provided I kept them entirely to myself. We had rather a jolly row. It doesn’t matter greatly now . . .”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m leaving him as soon as it’s decent after the election. Do you think I ought to stay with him longer if he wins, or if he loses? Anyway, apart from the fact of not liking him any more—just finding him rather exciting now and then—this business really crystallized my feelings about the hypocrisy of the man. I really couldn’t go on living with such a two-faced bastard. It made me wonder—”

  “Yes?”

  “How Mrs Pecksniff felt, all the time she was living with Seth.”

  Chapter 16

  Declaration

  On the morning of February 27th—a dismal, dank morning it started—the polling booths opened promptly at seven o’clock, and for the next hour or two the electoral officials sat around staring at the walls, as a mere trickle of voters came in on their way to work, or, more frequently, to get early to the Job Centres or the Social Security offices. By nine, however, the loud-hailers of all three main parties were out urging people to vote, and the thin trickle was swelling to a stream.

  By ten the candidates were busy, out around the town, being cheery or hortatory; but in reality this was not their day, or not their day until counting actually started. More important were the people with cars whom all the main parties sent out to ferry to the polls any of their voters who might have difficulty getting there. The Conservatives could call on a whole fleet of rather splendid cars, but the owners thereof were otherwise occupied or reluctant to act as chauffeurs, so the cars were driven very often by young helpers from elsewhere, who drove the voters a merry dance around Bootham’s maze of no-thoroughfares and one-way streets (“Come along, young man, it’s my morning coffee-time!”) and put hundreds of pounds into the local garage owners’ pockets after minor traffic accidents. The Labour Party solved this, in their fleet of less grand cars, by having a local driver paired with a London helper who would fetch from their houses the ailing or crippled voters. This apparently worked better, but the bitter silence between the two in the front seats was all too obvious to those sitting in the back, and the London helpers’ cheery cries of “Come on, Ma” to elderly ladies caused at least five of them, in the secrecy of the polling booth, to put their crosses against the Social Democratic candidate, with villainous expressions on their faces. The Social Democrats ran a much more rackety taxi service, partly because their organization was mere middle-class improvisation. Voters were ringing up, aggrieved, right up to ten o’clock in the evening, inquiring for transport that had been promised them; and one old gentleman set out, despairing, for the polling station at a quarter to ten, being picked up exhausted in a doorway by a friendly policeman at ten past, saying he hadn’t missed voting in an election since the khaki election of 1918, and by gum! he hadn’t missed this one either.

  Voting suited Bootham. In the main square Yelping Lord Crotch had teamed up with the John Lennon Lives candidate and a group of supporting musicians, and they were creating quite a carnival atmosphere in the dank February chill; and in another corner of the square, on a dais, the Transcendental Meditation candidate was meditating transcendentally. Sutcliffe observed them both when he arrived back in Bootham around lunch-time. By then there were thick knots of voters converging on the Old Grammar School, the most central polling station in the town, and outside the school’s gates he saw scattered media men waiting to interview voters when they came out. Being the centre of attention suited that sense of self-importance which is a Yorkshireman’s birthright, and several people even buttonholed television reporters to explain to them in depth their reasons for not voting at all.

  The declaration of poll was expected about midnight, and, popping his head into one of the central hotels, Sutcliffe found that several of the media persons intended driving south as soon as their stories were filed, apparently their way of showing their opinion of Bootham. He therefore managed to engage a room for the night, though still at a quite exorbitant rate. He spent the rest of the day sampling the sights and sounds and smells of the by-election, and glimpsed all the main candidates at one time or another, in loud-speaker vans, or hail-fellowing in the streets: Antony Craybourne-Fisk was being driven around by Walter Abbot, which could not have done him much good in most people’s eyes; Oliver Worthing was wandering distractedly in the vicinity of the Town Hall, having lost his entourage; Jerry Snaithe was being driven around on the back of a lorry, exuberant, shouting slogans, but somehow managing to resemble some aspirant Führer, still in the preliminary, beer-cellar-putsch phase of his career.

  It was quite by chance, later, that Sutcliffe came upon Jerry again, just as polling ended. Jerry had kept it up all day: personal appearance at a polling station here, impromptu speech there, driven here there and everywhere by one or other of his “team,” and talking most of the time. The end of polling was bound to be a bit of a let-down for Jerry, the time when his fix began to wear off. Normally he wasn’t a great fraternizer, unless there was something to be gained from it. Others went off from meetings to a pub, but Jerry went off on his own to plan the next meeting. Now, however, in the last minutes of polling and before going to the Town Hall with the other candidates for the count, Jerry let himself be pulled into a pub by a little group of his London young men. Several of these were teetotal, refusing above all to drink beer, on account of the fortunes that flowed into Tory Party funds from the major breweries. Some, how
ever, had managed to square it with their principles to drink Real Ale, and it was that that Sutcliffe found them supping when, having observed their progress from Labour Party Headquarters to the Ironmaster’s Arms, he followed them in at a discreet distance and bought himself a pint of the normal commercial brew. He stood by the bar for a moment and watched the group: in among them was Jerry’s pet Machiavel whom he had met before, and he was raising his mug in a toast: “All power to the workers! To the great swing to the Left!” They all let out a good-humoured roar at this, but Jerry was responding with his mouth; he was not responding with his eyes.

  For Jerry—and this explains what was to follow—was an experienced political animal who, still better than Oliver Worthing, could read signs and do calculations. And, whatever the more naive expectations of his henchmen might be, Jerry did not believe that he had won. Nothing, of course, was certain with the blessed British electoral system, and the blessed British voter, but Jerry was pretty sure that he had not made it. So, in fact, was Fred Long, Jerry’s electoral agent. There had been enough Labour supporters who had said they would not be voting for him—because he was too left-wing, because he was not a solid Union man, because he was an interloper from London, however much he might think to fool them by putting on a fancy Yorkshire voice—to convince them both that he could not have made it to the top of the poll. For a left-wing candidate will always find it hard to bring over significant numbers of floating voters, and if he has alienated some part of his own people, that was what he imperatively would have to do. It was a bitter pill for Jerry, but he now realized that tomorrow morning he would be just one more member of the doomed Greater London Council—no more, no less.

  It was partly the bitterness of this feeling, partly the vacuum at the heart of his emotional being as his fix ended, partly his flair for the theatrical, his kamikaze instinct, that moulded his response when Sutcliffe came over to the red-rosetted little group.

  “Mr Snaithe? I don’t want to spoil your party, but my name is Sutcliffe. You may have heard I’m looking into James Partridge’s death. You’re the only one of the major candidates I haven’t had a word with so far, but I wonder if some time I might? If you can’t manage tomorrow, perhaps I could ring you up and arrange a time when you get back to London?”