“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 something 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 had “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 cui bono?, one of the few things Jemima remembered from frustrating Latin lessons at school. Who benefited? One obvious ans
wer 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.
The younger generation was another matter. Sarah Smyth had paid visits to Hippodrome Square on her father’s behalf. As for Archie Smyth, he was definitely not a character of whom one could safely say that he wouldn’t harm a fly. Had they been out to protect their father? Politics was one of the worlds where the bubble reputation, that evanescent thing “a good name” was all important.
At this point Jemima stopped. She had an inkling that her thoughts had taken her down an important path. But she was brought right back to the subject of the Diaries. Where were they now? Millie Swain had entrusted them to Hattie Vickers at the theatre; there was general agreement about that. How had they disappeared? Who had access to the cupboard or safe apart from Hattie herself? Who had stolen them and why? Had they been destroyed by now? Above all, how had Hattie Vickers come to die: another very convenient demise? It was time—not before time—to make a call she had been meditating ever since the death of Imogen Swain. She had to talk to Chief Detective Superintendent John Portsmouth.
Jemima reached for the telephone. “Pompey,” she began, “do you fancy a drink? two drinks?”
“I’ve heard it said that drink loosens the tongue,” Pompey responded cautiously.
“My point exactly. And two drinks will loosen two tongues, mine as well as yours. Remember the Faber Case? You gave me some help with my research, we had a jar or two then. Now, I want to put a scenario to you. So you’ll have to do some more homework, legwork rather, for me, get the police to help you, that is me, with my enquiries. Two deaths, Pompey, one quite recent, one very recent, an old woman and a young woman, see what you can sniff out …”
CHAPTER 15
ONE OF US
There were tears at the Irving Theatre that evening. A company meeting was called to announce the death of Hattie Vickers. There were of course no drinks, given the nature of the occasion and the performance ahead—no public drinking anyway.
Jemima Shore’s meeting with Pompey of the Yard took place at the Groucho Club a little later. The venue was Pompey’s choice. He had a fondness for spotting literary celebrities, to report back to Mrs. Portsmouth, discerning the most unlikely faces—Salinger? Surely not—in the smoke-filled ground-floor bar. At this Groucho meeting there were drinks but no tears.
At the Irving, Charley Baines was choking back sobs and Millie Swain cried openly. Roz, the company manager, was ill (and had been ill before Hattie’s death with the same flu which had stricken Mike at the Stage Door). But in any case Randall, as director, star and founder of the company, would always have dominated proceedings. The meeting was held onstage and that lent a certain gruesome element to the proceedings. The Safety Curtain was down, but that did not prevent the feeling pervading the cast that Hattie had lain dying in the stalls not far in front of them. The cheerful inner set showing the Illyrian court, and including a good deal of unspecified blossom of a vaguely psychedelic nature, did not help either. Nor for that matter did the vivid outer curtain in front of which Millie would shortly play the first scene with her Sea Captain: “What country, friends, is this?”
To denote a stormy scene far removed from the harmony of Illyria, a mediaeval map had been adapted in a pop-art style, showing a tempestuous wave-ridden sea where various huge and threatening monsters were visible. In one corner the legend “Here be dragons” could be seen. In another, the designer had the happy conceit of putting a large erect naked Cupid with his arrow, and the legend, “Love Conquers All,” in case people had difficulty understanding what this production of Twelfth Night was all about.
On the fringe, at the Addison, the legend had been in Latin: “Amour Vincit Omnia,” or what was thought to be Latin. But on the transfer to the West End, the producer’s beautiful Japanese wife, never normally known to speak, had objected. Nobody grasped what her point was but everyone hastened to agree with her in case they were committing some unspeakable offence by Japanese standards. (Only Charley Baines had the cynicism to whisper to Hattie Vickers as it happened, “Besides, she’s the producer’s wife.”)
Only later was it discovered that the objection by the producer’s wife had been to the incorrect spelling of Love in the French manner instead of the Latin “Amor.” By this time the curtain legend had been changed to English at considerable expense. But, English or no English, the painted monsters of the deep seemed to point more clearly to Hattie’s fate than the priapic Cupid.
Randall Birley did not show a great deal of emotion when he addressed the company, but his voice was uncharacteristically flat as if he were making an enormous effort to show leadership by not breaking down. Only when Randall alluded to the police was the full extent of the horror understood by the company.
“The police!” burst out Kath Lowestoft, who played Maria and, like Charley Baines, had counted herself a friend of Hattie’s. Kath had huge surprised blue eyes which gave the impression of being quite circular. She dabbed at her tears with a piece of Kleenex and focused this alarmingly intense gaze on Randall once more. “Not the police! Oh poor, poor Hattie. She hated the police and things like that, authorities.”
“For God’s sake, Kath, don’t you understand? It’s not to do with her. It’s to do with us.” The acerbity beneath Randall Birley’s measured tone was evident. “We all have to talk to the police. Anyone who knows anything about this ghastly—,” he hesitated, “this ghastly tragedy, has to tell the police anything they know.”
“But it was an accident,” persisted Kath, eyes watering again. “Wasn’t it?”
“Randall,” said Millie Swain softly but clearly, “poor Mike at the door is terribly upset. I think you should talk to him. He keeps saying it’s all his fault, he should have done the locking up on Saturday night, not left it to that poor little girl. His words. I kept telling him no one can help having flu.” Charley Baines noticed that Millie was not standing close to Randall, nor did her body language indicate any particular closeness between them (compared to meetings in the past). He guessed that the incident of Randall’s arrival with Helen Troy the night before had not been forgiven.
“He was sitting there crying, big Mike crying, when I came in. Just staring at his bloody television and howling.” This was Alice Martinez, a sparkling (if possibly too mature) Olivia; the den mother of the company. Alice Martinez had acted a great deal with Randall in the past and there were those (including Millie Swain) who assumed there had once been a romance between them, despite the age gap. Whether the rumour was true or not, Alice Martinez had a sweet nature which made her universally popular, even with Millie.
“What’s he so upset about? Will someone tell me?” Kath again, whose particular grief seemed to express itself in persistent questioning. “He was always foul to poor little Hattie. Pretended not to recognise her, thought she was a visitor, asked who she wanted to see, stupid tricks like that.”
“It’s called guilt, Kath.” Charley Baines put an arm around her shoulders. “He feels he should have been the one to cop it, not her. Or rather he feels he could have taken care of himself better than Hattie could—let the bugger have it, words to that effect.”
“You see, Kath, I’m afraid the police don’t think it was an accident,” Randall explained. “ ‘Cannot rule out foul play,’ that’s the message. That’s why we all have to talk to them, tell them anything we know.”
“Including where we all were on Saturday night?” Millie Swain’s voice was carefully expressionless but it was clear to several of the cast, including Charley Baines, that her main interrogation was directed at Randall Birley. “Apart, that is, from all being in the theatre.”
“Are they thinking that she surprised someone—some homeless person?” suggested Kath, sounding more tentative. Then her blue eyes welled up again. “Oh how ghastly! Mike’s absolutely right to be upset. Hattie was so little and Mike’s a hulk to put it mildly. He really could have seen the bugger off.”
“How did this lethal homeless person get in?” asked Charley Baines abruptly. “Has anyone thought about that?”
“I suppose the police have,” murmured Alice Martinez.
Suella Martin, one of Olivia’s ladies-in-waiting, who was black, muttered something to the tall dark-haired man standing next to her who was playing Sebastian (he did bear quite a decent resemblance to his stage twin, Millie Swain).
“Did you say something, Suella?” asked Randall sharply; his charming matinée idol manner was singularly lacking today. Suella Martin stared back at him but said nothing.
“Well, I’ve got a comment on all this,” went on Charley Baines as if no one had spoken. “I can buy Hattie leaving the outer pass door open when she went to the front of the house, although she wasn’t supposed to do that. But I know that she did it at least once, told me that she didn’t want to cut off her retreat. Her retreat!” He laughed mirthlessly. “But supposing, just supposing this wasn’t a violent member of the homeless community—”
“The homeless what?” asked someone, possibly Suella again, sotto voce. Someone else laughed.
“Don’t laugh,” said Millie Swain. “It’s not funny. Charley is quoting our present Prime Minister. He actually used that phrase on telly on Sunday morning. Christ! The homeless community. Vote Labour on Thursday or you’re all insane.”
Political Death Page 17