Pascoe gave up, surfeited with worthiness. Where did these sods get the time? His own corresponding entry would read something like: he worked so hard he hardly had time to neglect his family. Shying back from the tempting darkness of introspection, he flipped through the pages till he hit the chapter on the events at Mickledore Hall. It made interesting if florid reading. Somehow the impression was given that with a nobility outwith the job description of one not yet elevated to the Lords, Partridge had chosen to sacrifice his own reputation rather than obstruct justice by providing Mickledore with a false alibi. His description of the whole weekend was coated in the same golden varnish. The theme was the fall of innocence, the breaking up of the Round Table, and it was played through all its variations.
The Hall itself became a symbol of that Merrie England so beloved of Tory elegiasts, where everyone was happy in that estate, whether council or country, ordered for them by God and a benevolent government. The description of the shooting party that first afternoon was pure pastoral, though with the 'Glorious Twelfth' still more than a week away, there hadn't been much to destroy but a few pigeons, crows and rabbits. Yet Partridge cast an autumnal glow over the proceedings, with the bronze harvest rippling through the fields, the sighing trees heavy with fruit, the shot birds tumbling through the air in balletic slow motion. And beneath it all, like thunder distantly heard on a clear day, rolled the note of approaching doom.
Dinner that first night came across as a Golden Age Last Supper, ’I felt,' wrote Partridge, 'as if around this table we had everything necessary to take us forward from the high plateau we had reached after the trauma of war to that still distant but clearly visible peak of socio-economic harmony we had all been struggling for. There was Stamper, the rising industrialist, representing the ordinary people and showing them how far they could go. There was Westropp, the diplomat, a member of that marvellous family which is the jewel in our constitutional crown, yet free from any taint of living off the public purse. There was Scott Rampling, young, forceful, an embodiment of all that wonderful energy with which John F. Kennedy was revitalizing American society. There was Mickledore himself, our host, a man with all the talents, a man who showed by his universal popularity that far from being the divisive thing the Left would claim, our British class system is harmonious and unifying so long as each man accepts his place unself-consciously and with dignity. And there was myself. I too was sure in those days that I had something to offer, more than I had yet been called upon to display. No more of that. 'And, of course, there were the ladies. How readily there came into my mind as I glanced around that room the old saw, that behind the rise of every great man you will usually find a woman. How little I then recalled the second part of the saying – and behind the fall of most great men you will usually find another woman!' I wonder if Ellie has read this, thought Pascoe. He tried to recall any recent screams of outrage and loud thumps as heavy volumes hit the wall and decided she probably hadn't. There'd been a review in the Guardian, however, which had made her laugh. She'd showed it to him (hadn't it been by William Stamper?) and he'd laughed too. The piece had been headed A NOTHER L OST L EADER? and it had gone on to suggest that if all the lost leaders of post-war politics were put in Trafalgar Square they probably couldn't find their way to Nelson's Column. He went on to read how Partridge, before he went to bed that first night, smoked a cigar on the terrace overlooking the park and the lake, in the company of Rampling and Mickledore. 'I said, "This is what it's all about, the struggle, the labour and the wounds, isn't it? Men of goodwill, at one with nature, while over there, where those cottage lights are twinkling, ordinary decent families can go to sleep, safe in the knowledge that their future is in good hands." I believed it then. I believe it now. But as events were soon to remind me, life isn't a two-handed game. There are snipers lurking in the dedans eager to interrupt the play and careless whether they hit the players in their rackets or in their balls.' Pascoe laughed out loud. Stamper (it had been Stamper) had qualified his mockery by saying that beneath the old buffery, lurked a sharp mind and a certain tongue- in-cheek humour.
The door burst open and in strode the noble author himself, looking older, greyer and a great deal more irritated than his dust-jacket facsimile. Pascoe, keen to gain the kudos which seemed implicit in being discovered plunged in the man's book, rose and held the volume before him like a talisman. It certainly caused a change in Partridge's expression as irritation darkened into wrath. 'What the hell's that you're waving at me?' he snarled. Perhaps after all it was the silver threads of granny's head that were the true writer's golden bough. 'It's your book, sir. I was hoping perhaps you'd sign it…'
'Sign something for the police? Oh yes, you're very good at getting people to sign things, aren't you? That's your blasted forte, I'd say.' So it was moral indignation on behalf of Cissy Kohler that was dulling the sunset glow of his lordship's features to a cyclonic luridness. Pascoe could admire that. He said soothingly, 'Yes, sir, it's a tragic business, and naturally we're all very keen to see that justice is properly done now and all due reparation made…'
'Reparation? What possible reparation can you people make? God, you can't even be consistent in your errors! That's twice you've buggered me about. Not satisfied with ruining my career, now you wait till I've published my memoirs so you can make a silly arse of me all over again! Thank God I was able to hold back the paperback when I first got wind of this farce. I'm going to have to rewrite a whole chapter, do you realize that?' And Pascoe recalled that whatever order being a lord and a writer and a human being came in, Thomas Partridge was a politician first, foremost and forever. And a disappointed one, the most dangerous sport of the species. You don't feed hungry lions with organic yogurt. Confucius? Or Dalziel? He said insinuatingly, 'If I were you, sir, I'd maybe hold back on the re-write a bit longer.' The wrath cleared from Partridge's face like an April squall. 'Now why do you say that?' he wondered. 'Fellow who came yesterday seemed to think it was all cut and dried. Police cock-up, bad apple, mea culpa, won't happen again sort of thing. Odd dried-up kind of fellow. Me, I prefer bad apples to wizened prunes, I must say. What're you doing in this morgue? This is where we put the bailiffs and local party officials.
Come through here.' He led the way into a light, airy and infinitely more comfortable room. There was a tray on a small table bearing a jug, a couple of mugs and a bottle of rum. 'Sit down. Have some cocoa.
Mustn't have coffee any more, it fouls up the system or so the quack says. Rum?' Pascoe shook his head. 'Suit yourself,' said Partridge, lacing his own mug liberally. 'Now tell me, young man, what exactly are you doing here?' It was time for a drop of honesty, but not too much. Even rum-pickled politicians had been known to choke on that heady brew. 'In fact, as you may have guessed,' said Pascoe flatteringly, 'I'm only sort of semi-official. It's just that when a Force comes under investigation, we like to protect our backs, if you follow me.' 'I can understand that,' said Partridge. 'But this is old news. You'd be a mere boy, there's no way your back needs protecting.'
'It's, I don't know, a matter of honour, I suppose,' tried Pascoe.
Partridge smiled and said, 'Honour, eh?' He took a crested spoon out of the sugar bowl, studied it carefully, then said, 'One; and counting.' Pascoe said, 'All right. Friendship then. Superintendent Tallantire had friends. If, as has been alleged, there has already been one fitting-up, they don't want to see it compounded by another.' ‘If? The Kohler girl's roaming free, isn't she?' 'Yes.' 'So are you suggesting that perhaps she is really guilty after all?' 'No, I mean, look, to be quite honest, sir, as you so rightly point out, it was all well before my time. I'm merely trying to help out…' He put on his boyish appealing face, the one Ellie said set old ladies reaching for the biscuit barrel. 'Help a friend who's one of these friends who're bothered about Tallantire, is that it? I suppose it does you credit. Tallantire's dead, isn't he?' 'His widow isn't,' said Pascoe sternly. 'Spare me the indignation, young man. All I meant was, he can't sue. Mickledore neither. So the ideal solution would be to find that Mickledore was in fact guilty as charged, and that Superintendent Tallantire in his eagerness to make the charge stick interrogated Kohler overzealously and browbeat an admission of complicity out of her.' 'Ideal for the Home Office, perhaps.' 'Whereas if Mickledore were innocent also, and Tallantire was misled rather than a misleader, then that means there was a frame-up perpetrated presumably by the real killer. So tell me, Mr Pascoe, is it as a witness or a suspect you now want to talk to me?' He sat back in his chair and sipped his rummy cocoa and smiled benignly. Stamper had been right in detecting the sharp mind beneath the flummery. 'From my reading of the case, you had a fairly… substantial… alibi.' Partridge laughed. 'Young Elsbeth, you mean? Yes, she was certainly substantial. But as Tallantire pointed out at the time, not without a hint of satire, her estimate of my performance time and my own didn't quite gell. Curious thing, sex. At the age when you want to spin it out forever, often you can't control it. Then later when you'd love a bit of the old explosiveness, it takes so long you sometimes fall asleep. Hello, my dear. Come in and meet another of our wonderful bobbies.' A woman had entered the room. She was dressed for riding and if, as Pascoe guessed, she was Lady Jessica, clearly the pursuit of foxes was less ageing than the pursuit of fame. Her face flushed and her eyes bright from her exercise, she looked twenty years younger than her husband though in truth she was sixty-three to his seventy. Behind her, Pascoe could see a man of about forty, also wearing riding gear. Pascoe recognized him from the papers. This was Tommy Partridge, MP, Minister of State in the Home Office, and a coming man. He was also a going man. Deterred either by the prospect of being nice to a copper or by the glance his mother shot at him, he turned and clattered away.