Political Death (17 page)

"How dared she do that? With decent people and little children in the house?" The angry flush deepened. "So that's why everything locked up and sealed off. No one allowed in the cellars, some talk about damp, flooding, all lies of course. And the smell of paint! The smell of paint everywhere! It made me feel quite ill, and my poor little girls too. Why was there so much paint? She had the whole hall and dining-room repainted after one year, after all the trouble she'd taken with the previous colour, endless coats and varnishes. Now we had all the pots all over again, the smell of paint everywhere, and she never made a fuss, she, Lady Imogen, who was always so fastidious about smell, about anything like that."

Jemima Shore thought about those baffling open tins of paint, the old dried paint sloshed about in the outer cellar. She could imagine no better mask for some more sinister odour than the smell of fresh paint... nor apparently could Lady Imogen Swain. She must have done that herself if Burgo Smyth never visited the house again. His idea, her idea? Since Smyth had not mentioned it, possibly her idea, the brilliant notion of a woman whose great interest in life in those days, judging from her Diary, had been interior decoration apart from parties and of course sex.

Glenys Forrester was now in full flood: "And when I started to ask questions well, naturally I did, I had my little girls to look after -just like that, three months' pay instead of notice. And off I was asked to go. The girls were heartbroken." Miss Forrester stared at Olga as though daring her to contradict her. "I knew it was all wrong. But of course I thought it was all about ... other things, never mind."

"It's a long time ago,"Jemima said gently. "What other things?"

"If Olga doesn't mind no, why should you? As Jemima says, it's all a long time ago. Lady Imogen's behaviour, I should call it. A married man too! With such a nice wife. I sometimes saw poor Mrs. Smyth at children's parties. Naturally, I never said anything, I was just specially nice to the twins. And how well they've turned out, haven't they? Archie Smyth, a proper young Englishman, not enough people like that now in the Conservative Party'

"So you knew all about it? Lady Imogen's affair. And that was why you thought she asked you to leave." It was the persistently gentle but relentless voice of Jemima Shore Investigator.

"Of course I knew all about it," Miss Forrester retorted. She added witheringly, "You can't keep things like that from a Nanny, you know. "Jemima Shore had absolutely no difficulty in believing that. "Even though I was on my nursery floor," Glenys Forrester continued, 'and never let my little ladies go where they weren't wanted."

"I understand." Jemima's response was deliberately warm. "But a death in the house I take it you wouldn't have known anything about that at the time? Beyond being surprised at the fresh paint."

"No, no, not a death, God save us!" Miss Forrester gave an artistic shudder. "But I knew there was something fishy, very fishy in that house. The way I was asked to leave so suddenly. It was all wrong. My instinct told me that. A Nanny's instinct is never wrong."

"Now, do you remember someone called Franklyn Faber coming to the house?"

Miss Forrester frowned. "The name is familiar. Why is it familiar?"Jemima did not enlighten her. "But no, I don't remember him, and I should say that we didn't have people like journalists coming to the house. Lords and ladies were more likely. And you may say where Lady Imogen was concerned, more lords than ladies." The prurient note was back.

Jemima drove Olga Carter-Fox away from the depressing red brick house, built at the turn of the century, where Miss Forrester had her flat. She put on a tape of Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle singing a negro spiritual to eliminate the need for conversation.

Olga was silent, staring ahead. As they approached Shepherd's Avenue, Olga said, "Stop the car. I've something to tell you. I can't say it in front of Elfi. It's way after four o'clock. The au pair will have fetched her from school."

Jemima switched off the glorious voices.

"I've learned something from visiting that ghastly woman. To think she was put in "sole charge" of us, as they used to call it, dreadful phrase but accurate where my mother was concerned. Be that as it may... this is something about that night. The night he must have died. Something I knew all along but didn't know I knew it."

Olga looked at Jemima for the first time. She appeared to be extraordinarily tense and her dark eyes had that fierce expression which Jemima had noticed on their first meeting in the Irving Theatre. "Jemima, my sister Millie went downstairs that evening. I think it must have been that evening. She saw something. It's nonsense what Nanny Forrester said about our never going downstairs. That's what brought it back to me. Everyone tells lies. Including Nanny Forrester. She used to go to bed, in her own room, with the door open, and snore like an elephant. A sherry or two probably helped. She slept like a log; you could hear her a mile off. And then we used to go downstairs, something we were strictly forbidden to do. Which made it an adventure."

Olga sighed, "How pathetic! When I think of Elfi, downstairs every night and we love to see her. Well, mostly we love to see her." Olga smiled. "But for us, Millie and me, to go downstairs and spy on our mother was a great adventure."

"What did Millie see? And how did you know?"

"Millie saw something: Madre and a man. I suppose it must have been Burgo. Millie adored Burgo. Several times Millie and I saw Burgo and Madre kissing. We thought it was horrid sucking noises we had to try not to giggle. Once he put his hand well, you can imagine. We thought that was rude. At the same time Millie still loved Burgo. But that night it was different. I don't quite know what Millie saw. "The man fell down. And Madre was angry." I remember that Millie was very frightened."

"But the next day Madre said it was all a horrid dream. Something that Millie had made up, because Millie was always telling lies in those days. And Millie must forget all about it. And if she didn't, she would be sent away to a school for bad girls, and never see Madre or me again.

"And we had to forget about Burgo too. Burgo coming to the house. Because he was never coming back." Olga's voice became extremely quiet. "And I suppose he never did. I never saw him again until I was married to Harry. And then he just said, "Little Olga! I can't believe it. Little Olga grown up into a fine lady!" As though there had never been anything else between us, not my mother, not my childhood, not our ruined childhood." Olga gave a little sob and covered her eyes.

"I'll be in touch," said Olga hurriedly. Then she opened the car door and jumped out before Jemima could say anything. Jemima watched her tall, slightly heavy figure scurrying down Shepherd's Avenue towards her home. She wanted to call after her, "Do you realise what you've just said? That your mother killed Franklyn Faber, and Millie watched her?" Everyone tells lies... If this was the truth, it made Burgo Smyth an accomplice to murder or manslaughter, in terms of the law. But it also made him a chivalrous man who had acted to protect his mistress, in part at least.

Out of habit, Jemima bought the late edition of the Evening Standard in Holland Park Avenue before turning in towards her own flat. The election still dominated the news but, wrestling with this latest twist in the Faber Mystery, she barely glanced at the headline. In any case, she was dispirited by the way the Tories were once more drawing ahead. Then she saw the name of the Foreign Secretary: he was getting a particularly high rating for his handling of the inflammatory East European situation. Burgo Smyth was praised for such qualities as unflappability, security, stability'. Horace Granville on the other hand was widely seen as 'lightweight' and 'uncommitted' (to politics). Stable, secure! If only they knew. But she, Jemima Shore was not about to tell the world: which is when Jemima realised she sounded as sanctimonious as Nanny Forrester.

What Jemima did not notice until she was inside Holland Park Mansions was an item on the back page of the paper in the STOP PRESS. The word 'theatre' caught her eye. It read, in smudgy type: THEATRE DEATH FALL: Stagehand Henrietta Ann Vickers, 23, fell to death in Henry Irving West End theatre.

There was the item in all its sickening brevity. Jemima felt a horrible lurch in her stomach as if a physical blow had been dealt her. There were no further details she combed the rest of the paper and those that were given were not necessarily accurate. Stagehand indeed! Poor Hattie Vickers. But the actual death must be true enough. The cause of death, a fall, was also most probably accurate and the name of the theatre was correct.

Poor Hattie Vickers indeed: an image of her, with her cloud of honey-brown hair and her pretty honey-coloured skin, came before Jemima's eyes. Along with the image there returned a memory of Hattie's distressed chatter, her terrible day and so forth, on the evening Jemima had gone to the Irving.

Another death. Imogen Swain in Hippodrome Square and now Hattie Vickers at the Irving. Actually there were three deaths if you counted the death of Franklyn Faber, so recently revealed. Death three times over: what was the nature of the web which wove them together? Was there such a web? And if so, where and who was the spider?

Right at the centre of the web there had to be Imogen Swain; that was incontrovertible. Franklyn Faber had died in her house, either accidentally or as a result of some action on her part. Jemima decided to list some of the many questions which remained unanswered about all this.

First question: what is Faber doing in Hippodrome Square in the first place? The short answer is, keeping the appointment he mentioned to Laurel Cameron. Faber is not a friend of Lady Imogen's, if Nanny Forrester is to be believed, and the nanny undoubtedly keeps a beady eye on the comings and goings in the house. Even more to the point, Lady Imogen's name never features in Jemima's media researches on the subject. But Franklyn Faber is a friend of Burgo Smyth, a close friend since Oxford days. And Imogen Swain, according to her diary, knows that Franklyn Faber can ruin Burgo.

You might think that Faber has gone far enough already, abstracting documents from Burgo's briefcase, involving him in a secrets trial but there has to be so meting else. Back to the lawyer Laurel Cameron and her interview with Jemima: quoting Faber's own words that last night, when he seems to have an appointment, They're trying to make me a fall guy, Laurel'... "Not prison, if it's a question of prison', and "I've been betrayed, I never thought it would end with a betrayal." Laurel Cameron simply assumes that it is a general betrayal by 'the Establishment' and goodness knows that is a plausible scenario, and not because Laurel Cameron generally does discern these betrayals in her cases. But the discovery of Franklyn Faber's body at Hippodrome Square alters the scenario. The appointment must be with Imogen Swain. And the betrayal has to be much more specific.

Logically, the person who has 'betrayed' Franklyn Faber (in Faber's opinion) has to be his old friend Burgo Smyth. What then was the true deal between them? Jemima recalled Laurel Cameron's vituperative remarks to her (which for reasons of libel, had fallen on the cutting-room floor); Burgo Smyth talking in court about trust betrayed that word again and so forth, yet leaving unexplained the question of how Faber got hold of the document so easily. Supposing, just supposing, that Laurel Cameron is in this second instance perfectly right. Supposing Burgo Smyth has been in cahoots with Franklyn Faber, for some reason unknown, but then betrays him and allows him to take all the blame?

A phrase in Imogen Swain's Diary floated into Jemima's mind. She had of course not been able to destroy it, as ordered by Imogen's heirs. Or rather Jemima had destroyed it technically, shredding the little volume in her office. But she had copied it on the photocopier, that silent late twentieth century spy. Jemima unlocked her safe and searched for the entry.. She found it:

February 3:... He's never loved anyone like me, not Tee. That's just because he thought an MP should be married. I'm the first woman he's ever really loved. He never understood about loving women before he loved me. His shady past, we call it!"

Burgo Smyth and Faber: an early romantic connection? was it possible? a masculine love affair? well, why not? Burgo Smyth then marries the decent Teresa to keep himself on the conventional straight and narrow path, only to find himself swept away by passion for Imogen Swain. So, pursuing this train of thought, does Burgo Smyth tacitly connive at Franklyn Faber's snitching of the documents? As for Franklyn Faber's need for ten thousand pounds, which puzzles so many people who know him, including his lawyer Laurel Cameron, you have to remember that before the 1967 Act, closet homosexuals with a public position (Faber is a leading campaigning journalist) are hopelessly vulnerable to blackmail. This fits with Imogen Swain's Diary once again. Faber knew something which could really ruin Burgo and bring about his 'political death'.

So, however approximately, Jemima felt she might have the answer to the first question: Franklyn Faber is in Hippodrome Square at the request of Imogen Swain. An appeal? a deliberate trap? In the absence of the other Diaries, difficult to know. And there Faber dies, no question about that, not to be discovered for thirty years.

The second question is of course: how did Franklyn Faber die? Jemima decided to leave that aside for the time being. At least the concealment of his corpse was not an issue; Burgo Smyth had admitted to doing it, with the connivance of Imogen Swain.

So fast forward thirty years. Imogen Swain begins to lose her memory, or, to be more accurate, reverts to her embarrassing memories of the past, hitherto well buried. And she has letters, Diaries... then she dies. Apparently accidentally.

Yes, that is the third big question: how and why did Imogen Swain die? You might begin by asking cut bond?" one of the few things Jemima remembered from frustrating Latin lessons at school. Who benefited? One obvious answer was Burgo Smyth, whose guilty secrets sexual secrets of one sort and perhaps also another she was beginning to spill. Yet Jemima could not help doubting whether Burgo Smyth himself had the opportunity to carry out such a deed let alone the inclination, which was another matter altogether. For one thing, given the Special Branch who had to guard him, even to arrive at Hippodrome Square unrecorded would have presented considerable logistic problems.