Death in the House

by Anthony Berkeley

  Lord Arthur hesitated.

  ‘And you, sir?’ he ventured. ‘Do you still intend to go on with it?’

  ‘I do, Arthur,’ the Prime Minister replied quietly. The second reading will be resumed tomorrow afternoon.’

  ‘Then let me take charge of it,’ Lord Arthur pleaded. ‘I doubt if you’ll get another volunteer from the Cabinet, sir. Well, perhaps it isn’t fair to say that. But it ought to be my job.’

  ‘No,’ said the Prime Minister, with more energy than he had yet spoken. ‘In the circumstances there’s only one person whose obvious job it is, and that person is myself.’

  chapter eight

  Assassination Is Not So Dull

  The Government of Britain is not a dictatorship. A Prime Minister may have his own ideas about what should be done and he may be thoroughly determined to put them into action; but besides being responsible ultimately to Parliament, he must first convince his Cabinet that his ideas are right. Since, in the normal run of things, a Prime Minister’s beliefs are fully shared by his colleagues, and he is to be regarded as little more than the executive of a concerted body of opinion, conflict rarely arises; or, when it does, is concerned with methods rather than principles.

  Occasionally, however, on grave matters of policy, Ministers may disagree with their leader; and then, rather than be committed to a course of action which they cannot approve, they resign. In the present case this simple way of maintaining integrity, and incidentally of informing the country that integrity had been maintained, was virtually denied. To resign from a Cabinet threatened with piecemeal disintegration would (it was felt) only place the resigner in the position of those notorious and possibly maligned rats when confronted with a sinking ship: an invidious position, out of which no possible credit could be snatched.

  It may have been due to this reflection that the Prime Minister, at his hastily-summoned Cabinet meeting on the evening of Middleton’s death, found himself confronted with a determined opposition even more formidable than he had feared; for obviously, if a rat is inhibited for reasons of honour from deserting a leaking ship, the next best thing is to stop the leak. And the leak in this instance very plainly was the Prime Minister’s determination to push ahead with the fatal Bill.

  The First Lord of the Admiralty even went so far as to put the personal aspect of the situation in plain words.

  ‘It’s no good those of us who’ve been against the Bill resigning,’ he told the Prime Minister. The public would only say we’d got cold feet. No good trying to explain we don’t believe in coercive methods. They’d just call us funks. And that kind of thing sticks, you know, however little it’s deserved. So we’ve got to stick together. But we can drop the Bill altogether, even if we can’t drop out one by one. No question of cold feet, of course,’ added the First Lord hastily. ‘Just that, as I’ve said from the very beginning, I don’t care about coercive methods.’

  ‘It surely can’t have escaped your notice that these persons, whoever they are, are employing coercive methods on us,’ the Foreign Secretary remarked acidly. ‘Is it your honest belief that we ought to allow such methods to be successful?’

  Mr Comstock was stung. ‘What’s the difference? You want the coercive methods provided for in this Bill to be successful.’

  ‘Exactly,’ the Minister of Labour chimed in. ‘And that’s a big point. Don’t you realise that force defeats its own ends? Persecution strengthens, not weakens the persecuted. Draws ‘em together. Makes ‘em feel they’ll stick anything rather than give in. Puts backbone into ‘em. Look at the bombing in China. If Japan hadn’t bombed the civilian population to blazes, China would have collapsed within six months. And that’s just what we’ll get if we do the same kind of thing in India. I’ve said so all along.’ It is true that the Minister of Labour had said so all along. He had also said all along that it was absolutely essential to protect the majority of peaceable Indian citizens against the terroristic methods of a militant minority. In this way he had been able happily to combine, as a member of a National Government with a strong Conservative majority, his Liberal principles with the practical needs of the moment.

  ‘Then are we to take it that you are opposed to our continuing with the Bill?’ pursued the Foreign Secretary.

  ‘I am,’ said the Minister of Labour, committing himself at last.

  ‘I quite agree,’ put in the President of the Board of Education.

  ‘I strongly oppose,’ said the Secretary of State for War.

  ‘You oppose what?’ asked the Lord Chancellor, with every appearance of polite interest. ‘Continuing with the Bill?’

  ‘No, no, no. Abandoning it. We can’t possibly give in to terrorism. It’s unthinkable.’

  ‘I quite agree with you,’ said the Lord Chancellor. ‘It would be most unorthodox.’

  ‘Exactly,’ assented the Home Secretary. ‘Most unorthodox. Besides creating a – hum! – singularly unfortunate precedent.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ muttered the Secretary of State for Air.

  ‘Well, the law and the Services appear to be united,’ commented the First Commissioner of Works, in a marked Scottish accent. ‘Perhaps one of you gentlemen would volunteer to be the next to follow Wellacombe and Middleton?’

  ‘There’s no need to be personal, Fraser,’ observed the Home Secretary in hurt tones.

  ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ the Prime Minister put in at last, in a tired voice. ‘We have now been discussing this matter for over an hour, and unanimity on either side appears impossible. I think, seeing the divergence of opinion, that one of us had better sum up the case against continuing with the Bill – perhaps Mr Robinson will do so; and then the Chancellor of the Exchequer can put the arguments in favour. After that we will take a vote. I agree that the course is unusual, but so are the circumstances.’

  ‘Lloyd-Evans would vote against the Bill in any case, Prime Minister,’ remarked the First Lord of the Admiralty, with a glance towards the vacant chair of the President of the Board of Trade. ‘Will that be taken into account?’

  ‘His vote will be added to those in opposition,’ promised the Prime Minister. ‘If you please, Robinson…’

  ‘H’rrrhm! Ch’rrrhm! – I take it, Mr Prime Minister,’ said the Minister of Labour with importance, ‘that the five minutes’ rule doesn’t apply?’

  ‘Oh, take as long as you like,’ said the Prime Minister, wearily.

  Mr Robinson took seventeen minutes.

  Mr Pelham, in reply, took eight.

  The speeches altered the opinion of no one.

  The subsequent voting, the Prime Minister abstaining, showed eight in favour of continuing with the Bill and seven against.

  ‘I take it,’ said the Prime Minister, ‘that the minority will loyally uphold the unity of the Cabinet outside this room. If any person is not prepared to do this, I am ready to accept his resignation here and now.’

  There was a confused, and possibly somewhat reluctant, murmur of protestation.

  ‘But I say,’ remarked the Minister of Labour suddenly. ‘Who’s going to read Wellacombe’s speech in the House?’

  The Prime Minister looked at him.

  ‘In view of the unfortunate leakage yesterday,’ he said, in a tone unwontedly severe, ‘I think it would be better if nothing is said about that. Let it suffice for me to tell you now that the speech undoubtedly will be made, and on Monday.’

  It was a concession really to Lord Arthur.

  So horrified had Lord Arthur been at the Prime Minister’s decision to introduce the Second Reading himself, and so earnestly had he argued against the idea, that in the end the Prime Minister had undertaken to keep his intention secret even from the Cabinet itself by way of soothing the perturbed young man; and with this small crumb Lord Arthur had had to be content.

  There was, in fact, another crumb of comfort for the Under-Secretary for India. It was a measure of the Prime Minister’s own distress that he had mistaken the day. There was in any case no question of pr
oceeding with the Bill on the morrow, for the day was Friday and the House would not meet again until Monday. This at least gave Sir Hubert and his men at Scotland Yard more than forty-eight hours to get their hands on the murderer.

  ‘Or rather, on the assassin,’ as Lord Arthur, waiting in case he might be needed in the drawing-room at No. 10 while the Cabinet meeting was in progress, remarked to Isabel Franklin. ‘Our word “murderer” is far too wide. It covers everything from manslaughter to political assassination.’

  ‘I used to think, when I read detective stories, that political assassination was dull,’ Isabel said with feeling. ‘It isn’t. Oh, Arthur, do sit down.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Lord Arthur, who had been pacing moodily up and down the room, threw himself into a chair. ‘This business is making me nervy.’ In accordance with his compact with the Prime Minister, not even Isabel was to know of her father’s intention to follow in Middleton’s tragic wake. The secret was to be confined to Lord Arthur himself and the Commissioner of Police.

  ‘It’s terrible,’ said the girl. ‘You’re not nervy as a rule, Arthur,’ she added suddenly and with apparent irrelevance.

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. I don’t like nervy people, that’s all. Arthur…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I think I’d like to tell you… after all, you’re one of my oldest friends… I’m going to break off my engagement to Eric.’

  ‘To Comstock? I’m delighted to hear it.’

  ‘Oh! Are you? Well, I’m glad you approve.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Isabel,’ Lord Arthur apologised. ‘I spoke without thinking. But since I said it, I’ll stick to it. I am delighted. He was never the man for you.’

  ‘No,’ Isabel said reflectively. ‘I believe I knew that all the time, but – oh, well, women do silly things.’

  ‘Anyhow,’ Lord Arthur said a little awkwardly, ‘I’m very glad indeed that you’ve realised it.’

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t that. At least, not altogether. It was really over this Bill. I feel so strongly that father’s right in refusing to be intimidated – or rather, to allow the Government to be intimidated. But Eric…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, he was trying as hard as he could before the meeting to get me to persuade father to back down. And – well, I don’t like being treated as a political cat’s paw, that’s all.’

  Lord Arthur looked grave. ‘If you’re no longer engaged to him, I can speak of him freely?’

  ‘Oh, certainly. Technically I suppose I am engaged still, but I shan’t be in another hour or two and we needn’t stand on the letter. What’s in your mind, Arthur?’

  ‘Only this. It’s been Comstock and Lloyd-Evans who have made themselves the backbone of the opposition in the Cabinet to this Bill. Without them people like Robinson and Jevons might have registered a mild protest that it offended their principles, but they wouldn’t have pushed their opposition far. As it is, those two have worked on all the waverers so hard that really I’m quite doubtful whether your father will be able to keep the Cabinet behind him. And if he doesn’t…’

  ‘Yes, I know that. Eric’s talked of hardly anything else for the last week. But what do you mean, particularly?’

  ‘Well, why have they taken up this attitude? They’ve never been Liberals, or even Socialists. Dyed in the wool Conservatives, both of them. There’s no question of restrictive methods being against their principles. Why have they suddenly come out as vehement as the Labour people against just the sort of Bill that one would expect them to approve?’

  ‘It’s only since the threatening letters began to appear that Eric veered round,’ Isabel said, quietly. ‘I don’t know anything about Mr Lloyd-Evans, but Eric…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, Eric’s frightened out of his life. I think he believes that if the Bill goes on the whole Cabinet are marked for assassination. In fact, to put it frankly,’ Isabel said, not without defiance, ‘I’m afraid Eric’s an arrant coward. And if you want to know, that’s why I’m breaking my engagement to him. I can stand this and that, but a coward I can’t and won’t stand.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Lord Arthur, a little blankly. He wondered if this unexpected repercussion had occurred to the mind behind the Brown Hand.

  There was a somewhat constrained silence, broken by the entrance of Dean with the final editions of the evening papers.

  The staring headlines screamed the news of Middleton’s death to any, if such still remained, who had not already seen the news in an earlier edition. But beyond the bare announcement, and the special correspondent’s story of the dramatic scene in the House (for once this overtired adjective could be legitimately employed), there was nothing to hint at the real importance of the event. As in the case of Lord Wellacombe the word ‘poison’ was strictly avoided, and it was inferred that Middleton’s death, too, had been the result of a sudden stroke. As a news story, the accounts were disappointing.

  It was still more disappointing to the news-editors of the respective journals.

  In point of fact, at the precise time while the Cabinet meeting was in progress another conference, scarcely less important, was being held in the offices (by common consent) of The Thunderer. It was a conference unique in the annals of journalism. The owners of all the leading newspapers in the country, eight in number, attended by their managing editors, were met to decide whether the actual facts of the situation should be revealed in the next morning’s editions, or whether in deference to the Government’s repeated request, the truth should continue to be hidden. The question was a thorny one. On the one side was their wish not to fall foul of the Home Office, and in no fewer than two cases a genuine desire not to embarrass the Government, though this was exactly counter-balanced by two cases of a genuine desire to embarrass it; on the other side was the knowledge, which recent history had taught them, that to preserve silence beyond a certain point merely makes a newspaper look foolish.

  The conference lasted three hours, and became at times distinctly stormy. In the end, however, agreement was reached. Unless the police succeeded in catching the murderer, no mention of murder was to be made at any rate until after the weekend. It was, of course, taken for granted that the lesser fry of owners would loyally observe the decision of the Big Eight.

  This decision was not reached without some heart-searching. In particular the Opposition owners considered themselves to have done a noble thing. For the Opposition newspapers had been very, very bitter against the Bill. It had indeed presented them with a simply first-class stick wherewith to beat the Government: better even than the bombing of the empty huts of unruly native villages – always so curiously truncated by the Opposition newspapers into the bombing of unruly native villagers.

  Obviously, any Government which could apply force to anyone or anything or upon any excuse (except, of course, the persons or things against which the Opposition newspapers themselves wished to employ force, that is to say, any foreigner who did not happen to hold their own political opinions) must deserve the dread label Fascist. Forcibly to restrain certain misguided citizens of India from murdering, pillaging and burning the persons and property of other citizens of India was, the Opposition newspapers said (and they said it very loudly), about as Fascist a thing to do as ever Hitler or Mussolini could have conceived. The Opposition newspapers had in fact been very angry indeed, and they wanted now to be allowed to say that it would only serve such a wicked Cabinet right if it got itself murdered off man by man – and probably the whole thing was due to our policy of non-intervention in Spain.

  The pro-Government newspapers, on the other hand, wanted to tell the public of the brave stand being made by their chosen rulers against the forces of anarchy and disruption. They knew that the public would love and admire such courage. They knew too that the British public, whom few things outside Association football, the University Boat Race, and the result of the 3.30 can really rouse, would get quite warm under the collar at the idea of certain perso
ns trying to filch a piece of their Empire away from them by force (though there are certain portions of that same Empire which many would willingly give away with or without a pound of tea); and that they would in consequence insist wholeheartedly upon the Cabinet continuing to annihilate itself in the House of Commons piece by piece. This, thought the pro-Government newspaper proprietors, who of course strongly approved of the Bill, might provide a useful stiffener to those members of the Cabinet who viewed annihilation with no enthusiastic eye; for, after all, if you are hailed as a hero the least you can do in return is to behave heroically. Hence the fact that the last European war lasted four years instead of four weeks.

  The Thunderer and The Daily Telegram took a slightly different line. In masterly leaders each had pronounced it on the whole a pity to apply force in the Government of the Empire, and at the same time a pity not to apply it when force was needed. Whatever the outcome, therefore, both The Thunderer and The Daily Telegram could point with pride to the fact that they had already prophesied that it would be (a) a pity, (b) not a pity, whichever might suit them better.

  In the evening papers, however, which Lord Arthur and Isabel were scanning with somewhat abstracted eyes, there was nothing to suggest these master-wheels within the wheels open to public inspection; and Lord Arthur, who knew all that he wished and rather more about the former, threw the copy of The Evening Wire, through which he had been glancing, down on a table with a mild expletive.

  ‘Isabel,’ he exclaimed, suddenly, ‘you may be right about Comstock, or you may not; but of one thing I’m certain. One of those two knows something – and I’m going to make it my business to find out what.’

  chapter nine

  A Conscience in Labour

  Before going home to his flat in Whitehall Court, Lord Arthur turned, rather aimlessly, towards Westminster.

  Although it was now several hours since the Speaker had adjourned the House, few members seemed to have left. Everywhere, in the lobbies and smoking-room, excited little groups were still discussing the crisis. There is no place for gossip like the lobbies of the House of Commons, and never before had such opportunity for gossip been provided. A hundred different stories, alike only in their remoteness from the truth, were born that evening, and few of them died the premature death they deserved. The lightest word of a Cabinet Minister at any time during the previous six months was a good enough peg to hang a new canard on, and the wilder the canard the better it hung.