Political Death Read online

The doorbell rang. Sarah Smyth, who had not spoken for some time, looked at her father. “That’s her,” she said, “Jemima Shore. I hear you, Dad. Whatever happens, you won’t be involved. Trust me. Trust us.”

  “It’s too bloody dangerous. I forbid either of you to do that.” Burgo Smyth was briefly ferocious once more; but by the time Jemima Shore was admitted no trace of anger or fierceness was visible.

  “Now this really is a treat for me,” said the Foreign Secretary tenderly, grasping Jemima Shore’s hand as if she and she alone were responsible for voting in the next government. “In the midst of this horrible election, to meet my heroine—or should one say hero nowadays?”

  Without committing herself, Jemima flashed him one of her television smiles, the sort that made television viewers think she really was a sweet person. She just had time to wonder which if any of her programmes he’d watched, when Burgo Smyth pressed on: “That series about Asian women and their varying legal rights in different countries opened my eyes to so much, things I should have known about long before …”

  Out of sight, behind louvred doors in her plant-filled kitchen, Sarah Smyth was opening a bottle of champagne.

  “Doctor’s orders,” she called out cheerfully. “For Dad. They made him give up whisky, too many late at night in the corridors of foreign powers, definitely not good for you.” Sarah turned to Archie, who was lounging beside her; out of family habit he did not offer to help his sister since long experience told him that Sarah did everything, including opening a bottle of champagne, more competently than he did.

  “We go ahead. Right?” said Sarah in a low voice. “Dad’s just covering his tracks. No one knows except Randall of course and I’ve sworn him to secrecy. He can be ruthless in a good cause. A Jacobean conspiracy, he called it.”

  Archie looked blank.

  “Forget it. He’s all for solidarity. Family values if you like. Thank God for Randall.”

  “Bloody dangerous indeed!” snorted Archie. His fair face was flushed, something that most unfairly never happened to Sarah. “The whole situation is bloody dangerous. And it’s all going to get worse. Someone on the Sunday Times has seen the Sunday Op story—”

  “I know,” said Sarah curtly. “I’ve heard what it’s going to say.” The pop of the cork meant that she made another cheerful call to the drawing-room where Jemima Shore, with Burgo Smyth’s eyes bent upon her, was finding herself, at once reluctantly and enjoyably, succumbing to something about him. The seduction was not, she hoped, entirely his deep knowledge of her work …

  “Sorry to be such ages!” Sarah cried. Then to Archie again in a lower voice, “I rang Mrs. Dibdin in the country. Told her to cancel the papers, pretend there’s a strike. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Mum never reads them,” said Archie morosely.

  “She may not but others do. Someone always tells you. Haven’t you noticed that? Someone told her about you and your little Neo-Nazi friends.” Then before Archie could comment, Sarah triumphantly bore bottle and glasses away.

  In the living-room of the Carter-Foxes, in Shepherd’s Bush, not far away in mileage from Sarah Smyth’s bijou house but far away in the sense that its decoration showed no signs of money at all, the Carter-Fox parents were at long last alone. Elfi, visited twice by Harry and once by Olga, had fallen into that deep untroubled sleep of the victorious, since she was installed in her parents’ bed. Olga poured Harry a whisky without asking, and a glass of rather sour red wine for herself, which for some reason or other had got parked in the fridge. Harry stretched out his legs and, after sipping the whisky, closed his eyes. Olga saw with love and anxiety that his normally florid face was quite grey with exhaustion.

  “I think I’m going to lose the seat,” he said after a moment, without opening his eyes.

  “Darling, you’re tired. Anyway there’s another life, other than politics, I mean, especially for someone like you with all your interests. I’ve always said that. I believe that.”

  “I don’t want another life. Don’t you understand? I want this life. I have things to say, things I must say, about this country—” He stopped. Olga thought her husband had fallen asleep and delicately picked up her book, a new biography of Marie Antoinette which she was finding strangely consoling whenever she got the time to read it. But Harry was not asleep.

  “Olga, did you go out? Did you go out again that night after the babysitter went?” he asked after a while, still without opening his eyes. Olga, her head bent industriously over details of the Diamond Necklace affair, did not answer.

  “You’d never leave Elfi alone,” said Harry after a further pause. It was a statement rather than a question.

  Olga looked up. “Has it occurred to you that our au pair often comes back early? When her lovelife doesn’t work out?”

  Olga bent her eyes back to the book. “I’d do anything for you, Harry, you know that. Poor Marie Antoinette, what a price she paid …” Olga read on.

  “Like tonight,” she said, some time later. “Tessa is back early tonight because her lovelife has gone wrong. So I could go out even though it’s Saturday night and we have no babysitter. Or we could go out. In theory, that is.” Olga turned once more to her book.

  CHAPTER 9

  IN A DARK PLACE

  It was surprisingly easy, thought the stalker, to follow someone in an empty theatre late at night: the semi-darkness was full of noises. It was easy and even in a way—if the matter had not been so urgent—rather fun. Unexpected creaks, the shifting of swinging doors, distant sounds which might or might not come from the street. All these masked the progress of the stalker.

  There were occasions when the stalker and Hattie Vickers were both standing still; and yet somewhere far below them in the stalls of the Irving there was a distant sound. The second time this happened the stalker wondered if there was actually a third person in the theatre joining in the chase. Since the stalker had Hattie in full view as she stood motionless at the back of the Upper Circle, the extra sound below was quite menacing. Being a stalker did not free you from fear.

  Another alarming experience had been their shared passage through the front of the house to the foyer; the stalker did not know that Hattie herself was by no means as confident as she appeared. First the pass door had to be negotiated. As Hattie unlocked it by punching in the code and pushed it open, the faint ripple of air caused other doors far away to swing in reaction. Whenever this happened, Hattie tried to tell herself that she was well used to this knock-on effect. Although when she had first locked up for Mike, she had found it the spookiest moment of all. There was the stage, invisible and sealed off behind its substantial Safety Curtain. In the half-light it had been only too easy for Hattie to imagine that someone was down there below her in the stalls.

  “What would I do if someone was there, sitting there?” Hattie had thought the first time she took Mike’s keys. “Reason with them? Talk to them? Or rush out of the theatre screaming?” Hattie had upwards of forty keys on the metal key-ring and she tried to tell herself that the whole bunch would make a lethal weapon. She repeated to herself the words of Hermia in A Midsummer Might’s Dream: “How low am I? I am not yet so low But that my nails can reach unto thine eyes.” For nails, read keys, decided Hattie. It was her performance as Hermia in a student performance given a prize by Randall Birley which had brought her within his orbit; her job at the fringe Addison Theatre and now the Irving had followed.

  Given Hattie’s undeniable lack of inches, everyone agreed that Hermia was absolutely her part. Her motto, she determined, should be Helena’s dismayed description of Hermia, “And though she be but little, she is fierce.” But Hattie was not really fierce. Inside her bravado was a frightened creature who secretly found the Irving Theatre as daunting tonight as she had ever done. Only she did not want to admit it to herself. For example, she still did not close the pass door behind her because once, in an excess of fright, she had forgotten the extremely simple three-figure code.

  The stalke
r now began to experience something else besides dread. There was also—let’s face it—a growing horrible excitement at the idea of what was to come. It was like playing a sinister game of Grandmother’s Footsteps. The stalker followed Hattie along the side of the Dress Circle, willing her not to turn around. Then the stalker let Hattie push aside the heavy dark red curtains which divided the Dress Circle (on street level) from the foyer. Hattie passed quickly through them. It was easy to watch her from the shadow of the half-drawn curtain, really an ideal observation post.

  It was late Saturday night, after the sell-out second performance of Twelfth Night, even the five o’clock matinée had been heavily booked. The heavy glass doors beyond the Box Office looked directly on to the street, but they were padlocked. Two passers-by on the opposite pavement were like people in another world. If you screamed, they would hardly have heard. If you rattled the door, you could not get out (Hattie did rattle the door conscientiously to check that the lock was in place). Despite its being Saturday night, there was little noise of any sort audible in the foyer. Gino’s, the Italian café, was around the corner and out of sight. The sound of the Haymarket traffic did not penetrate.

  Hattie dreaded the mirrors most of all. The stalker did not know about this phenomenon of the darkened staircase; it was not something you would notice in the ordinary course of events. In theory Hattie was prepared. She had once involuntarily jumped backwards, losing her footing badly, on seeing a black figure looming at her on the corner of the first flight to the Upper Circle. It took her some time to realise that she had leapt away from her own reflection. In spite of being prepared, even tonight her heart began to pound in anticipation as she began the ascent. Fortunately for the stalker—unfortunately for Hattie Vickers—the stalker had decided to let her get well ahead on the staircase, not fancying the idea of a confrontation there, with Hattie for once having the advantage of height. So the telltale mirror did not trap the image of the stalker in pursuit as it might have done, whatever that might have meant for Hattie’s future, for better or for worse.

  As it was, Hattie wondered briefly whether her general fear of mirrors (she had nothing but a pocket mirror in her Earl’s Court bed-sitting-room) meant quite simply a dislike of her own appearance. Or was it something more interesting: a primitive apprehension that her soul would be stolen away? And that would reach into the circumstances of her childhood … Making a mental note to talk through this newest manifestation of her insecurity some time soon, and rather cheered by the discovery, Hattie bounded up the second flight of stairs. She did not even gaze in the second large mirror as she reached the Upper Circle of the Irving Theatre. The stalker waited patiently in the shadows at the bottom of this last staircase and watched her.

  Standing at the back of the Upper Circle itself, at the top of the steep rake which led down to the balcony, Hattie conscientiously surveyed the entire auditorium spread out before her. She never had any idea what she was supposed to be looking for—Mike had gazed at her testily when she asked the question—but it had occurred to her that the boxes would be the ideal place for an intruder to hide. And Hattie, frankly, found these pools of blackness, like the mirrors, quite disquieting from above. Of course, when you were actually in a box, the little red room could be utterly private, your own paradise. That brought her thoughts around to Randall: that magic secret night he had made love to her in the so-called Royal Box.

  Secret, yes. Hattie was confident that no one knew about what had happened. But in retrospect, was it magic, truly magic? To be honest, Hattie was no longer quite sure about the whole thing. At first she had been filled with such rapture … It had after all come about quite naturally; she, unlike Hermia, had not needed to make fierce pursuit of her lover. One evening in Randall’s dressing-room—somewhere she had a perfect right to be, and anyway he had invited her to have a drink—she had found herself telling him about her late-night vigils. And then she told him about the bet. One of the other actors, Charley Baines, an old friend of hers from Bristol playing a rather young Sir Toby Belch in a ridiculous white suit, had bet Hattie she would not dare to spend a night in the Irving Theatre. She remembered Randall looking at her speculatively, and she had not even realised that he fancied her.

  Then he said, “Does it have to be a night alone?”

  Those were the words that had led to—what had it been? An episode was how she put it to herself. Strangely enough, afterwards she had felt robbed of something precious to her: not her virginity, hardly that, Hattie was a thoroughly modern girl in that respect. Nor did she complain that Randall readily produced a condom without asking her. That was good, not only modern but necessary, with no questions about who was protecting whom and from what.

  No, something about the whole episode had made little Hattie Vickers feel like a trophy of war, a maiden being enjoyed by a hero as of right. She remembered the old theatrical chestnut about the famous classical actor who on being asked, “Did Hamlet have Ophelia?” answered, “I don’t know about Hamlet, but I always did on tour.” For Randall, was she the local Ophelia? Her unease was nothing to do with the sex itself. Randall had made love to her, not only with passion but with care for her pleasure just as, in her fantasies, she had always known he would.

  Randall Birley had been her hero, but paradoxically the whole episode had robbed her of hero-worship. Be honest, Hattie, was it because you knew Randall had finally left you to go to join Millie Swain? Hattie Vickers prided herself on modernity in this respect too: sex to her did not necessarily mean immediate commitment. Nevertheless no one could be quite that modern, to think of a lover going straight back … she recalled the plot of Fatal Attraction. She did not intend Randall to pay the penalty for a one-night stand not likely to be repeated (was it?) but she admitted that for the first time she saw the point of view of the Glenn Close character.

  Of course, Randall did not tell her that this—returning to Millie—was going to happen. But in her capacity as ASM Hattie knew many things which she should not perhaps have known. She certainly knew things about Randall that she was sure Millie Swain, for example, did not know. A locked dressing-room door, a message to be given to Millie which did not square with the facts. Why not face it? There was a compulsion in Randall Birley: with all his talent, his looks, his charm, his popularity, he seemed unable to rest happily in the company of any woman over the age of consent and not yet in her dotage unless he had established some kind of sexual supremacy over her. Hattie recognised the type: her adoptive father, with a good deal less charm (or talent), had been just the same, and rather wearily she recognised her attraction to the type.

  In her mood of disillusionment Hattie was not even sure that Randall felt love for anyone, let alone Millie Swain, for all their public togetherness. They made a fine, a fascinating couple, playing in Twelfth Night, but Hattie did not give much for Millie’s chances once the run was over. (Of course there was talk of a film; that might prolong things a bit.) Randall certainly did not love her, Hattie Vickers; she had no illusions about that. Millie Swain did have illusions, that was the difference between them.

  Millie Swain: now that was a worrying situation, a really rather horrible situation in its own right. Those wretched letters and Diaries: if only she had not agreed to take them, not told Randall something about them. If only she had not read them … everything, everything terrible had started from that. Millie Swain had trusted her, thought she was a nice, trustworthy person (well, in most ways she was). Or to put it another way, Millie Swain had thought she was a dumb idiot. But in some respects Hattie was not at all dumb …

  Hattie hovered between blaming herself for what had happened next and blaming Millie Swain. Her last therapist had emphasised over and over again, “Don’t blame yourself for everything, Hattie.” All the same it was difficult not to blame herself just a little. Something about the circumstances of her upbringing, an unhappily adopted single child, had made Hattie insatiably curious about other people’s family relationships, that was t
he truth. She was a natural snooper. But it could be dangerous being a snooper. You could get more than you bargained for. How was she to know who that smart-arsed cousin of his was?

  Hattie hated all politicians and would not dream of voting in the election even if she had a vote (she didn’t, due to frequent changes of room and, it had to be said, to a dislike—a principled dislike, naturally—of paying Poll Tax in the past). But Tories were worse than Labour and women Tories the worst of all because as women they should have known better. Thus Sarah Smyth, so sure of herself, so cool in her expensive clothes, represented something Hattie Vickers would have found distasteful even without her possessive behaviour towards Randall. (Here Hattie Vickers was in total agreement with Millie Swain.) Back to the situation and the burglary: suspicions, the most surprising suspicions were beginning to form in Hattie’s mind. She might be insecure but she was not stupid.

  Hattie gazed down the steepness into the pool of blackness. With these thoughts, none of them pleasant, not even the erotic memories of Randall’s possessive touch on her body, she lingered longer than she generally did at the top of the Dress Circle. The stalker watched and waited for the moment when she would go down the steps and peer over the balcony. The stalker would then act extremely fast to terminate the danger Hattie Vickers had become. Hattie began to descend. She went quite fast and with determination. The edge of the balcony loomed in front of her. The stalker, no longer careful, ran down lightly after her. Hattie turned her head. Her last sight was of the stalker silhouetted against the single light behind them both. Her eyes opened in horror and disbelief as the stalker stretched out gloved hands.

  The deed itself was easy, as the stalker had expected. Surprise was the best weapon of attack. Even so, after the deed was done, just as easily as the stalker had worked out, Hattie’s final scream came as an unpleasant shock. Somehow the stalker had imagined that Hattie could just be extinguished, snuffed out; instead she had gone screaming to her death, a blood-curdling scream which would have been heard by anyone in the theatre, or even backstage, had they two not been utterly alone there. Even the feel of Hattie’s soft springy hair as the stalker gathered her into a last lethal embrace was shocking. The thump of her body, a surprisingly loud thump for such a small person, was also quite horrifying.