Political Suicide Read Free

machine behind you.”
    â€œGranted. But you don’t have to take on a private member’s bill if you don’t want to. I’ll just have to dig a bit deeper if I’m to come up with something that will satisfy the inquest.”
    â€œCareful. It could be a hot potato. Keep the Old Man informed.”
    â€œOh, I will, naturally. Powerful Interests, as they call them, will be having their say. One thing about a political thing like this: I’ll have to get it right, or I’ll certainly be shot at from one side or the other. On the other hand, the worst thing you can do with something political is to try and sweep all the dirt under the carpet.”
    He was quite wrong, of course. Before long it was being made clear to him from all sides that the one thing they wished more than any other was that he had swept all the dirt under the carpet. But by then it was too late.

Chapter 2
Private Member
    Penelope Partridge was tall and elegant—no trace of disarray on this her second morning of widowhood. Her face was long and handsome, and all suggestion of the horse was kept at bay by skilful make-up. The eyes were dry but slightly reddened, almost (thought Sutcliffe, but kicking himself at the same time for the inbred cynicism of policemen) as if she had deliberately rubbed them before his visit, but not too much. Was she a good MP’s wife? he wondered. He couldn’t see her going down well in Bootham—not with that cool, reserved, condescending manner. Already he was being given the idea that being interviewed by a policeman, whatever his rank and whatever the circumstances, was something very much beneath her dignity. She was trying to make him feel like an upper servant.
    â€œOf course, looking back ,” she was saying, with an upper-class drawl that emphasized unlikely words, “one can see that his problem was that he was too conscientious—helet things prey on him, took them too much to heart.”
    â€œPersonal things, you mean?”
    Sutcliffe was surprised to see a flicker of apprehension flash through her eyes, but it was not allowed to change the expression on her face, and she retrieved herself immediately.
    â€œOh no— no-o-o ,” She glanced around the drawing-room of their elegant Chelsea house, as if to say: who, having this, could have personal problems? “I meant political problems, of course. Governmental problems. He was a junior health minister, you know, for three years—dropped in the reshuffle after the last election. Dropped, just like that.” A trace of bitterness invaded her tone, but again she shook it off immediately. “I have a feeling the PM likes people who can take things a bit more in their stride ; don’t go around with the burdens of the world on their shoulders the whole time. That was James’s problem: he worried, couldn’t leave a thing alone if it was on his mind. I remember when he was having some troubles in the Department—you know, nurses’ pay and suchlike—” she waved a long-fingernailed hand—“and he went to open some hospital or other, and there was a big demonstration—you know the kind of show they put on. They heckled him, and threw things—quite nasty, but of course if you’re a minister these days, with current standards of behaviour, you have to get used to that sort of thing. But you know, for a week afterwards he could talk about nothing else—their case, pay guidelines, violence—until I could have screamed! Really, in politics these days one has got to be a bit more— insouciant .Happy-go-lucky,” she added, for Sutcliffe’s benefit.
    â€œI see. So you think that that was why his career never really . . . took off?”
    â€œI’m sure of it. He never got his priorities right—never worked out even what they were. I used to say to him, either you go all out for office, high office—because otherwise