The Body Politic

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The Body Politic

A C. D. Sloan Mystery

Catherine Aird

For Arnie
et al
.

donum memoriae causa

The chapter headings are taken from
Dominus Illuminatio Mea
by R. D. Blackmore

ONE

In the Hour of Death

“Why don't you drop dead?”

The question came from somewhere over on Peter Corbishley's right and he wasn't quite sure at first whether he had actually heard it at all or whether it had just been a figment of his imagination. The current Parliamentary session had, after all, been an unusually hard and tiring one.

This last doubt, at least, was resolved almost immediately.

“I said,” repeated the voice with unmistakable clarity, “why don't you drop dead?”

This time there was no possibility that Peter Corbishley had been dreaming: he had heard the voice all right. And there was no confusion about whence the voice had come either: its owner was a man standing near the back of his audience and slightly to the right of the assembled company. Peter Corbishley picked him out of the crowd without difficulty as soon as he spoke for the second time. When he had pinpointed the man's position in the crowd, Corbishley felt a little happier. He was a great believer in the old aphorism “know thine enemy,” and at least he knew now from where the man was standing that he was dealing with an experienced heckler.

The interrupter's location in this particular quarter of the group came as no great surprise to the Member of Parliament for the East Berebury division of the County of Calleshire. Practised hecklers were traditionally to be found on the fringes of a politician's audience. Even a Sunday morning orator from Speakers' Corner in London's Hyde Park knew that. It was the inexperienced troublemakers who made the elementary mistake of sitting in the front row where they were much more easily contained by stewards and, more importantly, placed where almost no one in the audience could hear them or see what they were up to.

Since on his part Peter Corbishley was an experienced speaker too, he did not even turn his head in the man's direction but, instead, carried on with his prepared oration. This did not mean, though, that he didn't go on thinking about the interrupter.

It wasn't that he was at all put out by the heckler—Peter Corbishley had been the sitting Member for the East Berebury constituency of Calleshire for nearly twenty years now and was therefore pretty well inured to interruption by both political friend and political foe, to say nothing of Mr. Speaker—only that he was faintly surprised by the actual occasion at which the man had chosen to voice his feelings. The annual summer garden party at Mellamby—for that was what it really was—had been traditionally always more of a social event than a political one.

“Why don't you drop dead?” The voice came again in just the same tone.

The meeting at the village of Mellamby had never been exactly a fireworks party. Political platitudes followed by strawberries and cream summed up the afternoon quite well as a rule.

Never raspberries, so to speak.

Until now, that is.

Peter Corbishley ignored both the heckler's remarks and his invitation to drop dead. Instead he tightened his grip on the notes in his hand and continued to deliver himself of his traditional end-of-the-summer session speech to the assembled members of the Mellamby and District Branch of the Berebury Conservative Association.

It was usually one of the quietest meetings in his constituency calendar, coming as it did when the school holidays were in sight and interest in affairs of state was yielding to anxieties about the harvest and the condition of the pound sterling on the foreign exchange. Medieval conflicts had seldom begun until the crops had been safely gathered in—Corbishley was something of an historian
manqué
and had made some studies of the causes of war and the timing of battles—and armchair economists, he had realised long ago, tended to take an instant stance on international fiscal policy only after they had bought their holiday travel currency.

What had led to the good turn-out of members at Mellamby this afternoon and therefore ensured the Member a worthwhile audience was not an interest in politics at all but the venue of the meeting. The annual summer meeting of the Branch of the Association was always held—by special invitation—at Mellamby Place, which was by far the grandest house in the neighbourhood. It was this, he knew perfectly well, rather than the presence of the Member of Parliament, which accounted for the floral dresses of the ladies and the tidy attire of their farmer husbands. It wasn't every day of the week by any means that the inhabitants of the village of Mellamby and its environs took afternoon tea on the terrace of Mellamby Place at the invitation of its owner.

Thus reminded, Peter Corbishley cast a covert glance at their host to see how he was taking the heckler's interruption.

Throughout the history of Calleshire the Raulys of Mellamby had been celebrated as men of action, and the present—and last—of that ilk, Bertram Millington Hervé Rauly, was no exception. Moreover, he belonged to that exalted class of persons who saw no need whatsoever to consult with anyone else at all before embarking on the course of action of his choice. And certainly not before holding a political meeting in his own grounds. The family motto,
Amicis quaelibert hora,
emblazoned above the splendidly embellished chimneypiece in the Great Hall of Mellamby Place meant that any hour was all right for friends. “And everyone else can go to hell,” its owner was wont to add, when pointing it out.

So far, Peter Corbishley was happy to see, Bertram Rauly was sitting quietly on the little platform that had been improvised on the terrace on the south-facing aspect of the house. He was on the other side of the Branch Chairman, Major Derrick Puiver. Not, Peter Corbishley would have been the first to admit, that Bertram Rauly's apparent quietness meant that he wasn't contemplating action. Throughout history great landed proprietors have been notoriously sensitive to intruders of any nature, and Rauly might just be taking the man's measure or, rather less happily, measuring his distance.

The Chairman of the Branch Association was, the Member of Parliament knew, unlikely to be taking such a relaxed view. The Major was a born worrier and, as such, admirably suited to have been in full command of a Supplies Depot in the Korean War. In his mind's eye Peter Corbishley could imagine the Major now running through a mental list of increasingly unfortunate scenarios. Like having a real nutter on their hands. Or worse. A zealot.

At least, thought the Member philosophically, it made a change from having barracking undergraduates from the University of Calleshire around. Cohorts of these were apt to turn up at his meetings; and not bent on the pursuit of pure learning either.

Actually, now he came to think about it, the heckler did look a little out of the ordinary. Assured the Bertram Rauly was at least sitting quietly for the time being—and only then—Peter Corbishley had allowed his gaze to drift in the direction of the man without its appearing to do so. The dissident member of the audience—he certainly wasn't a member of the Association if he behaved as he was doing—was thin and rather wild-looking and a little bit younger than Corbishley had expected. His hair was almost as long as a woman's and his voice shook with feeling as he shouted for the fourth time at Peter Corbishley.

“Why don't you drop dead?”

The Member of Parliament carried on with his speech with practised smoothness. The moment at which a public speaker acknowledged the existence of a heckler—if, indeed, he ever did—was a matter of fine political judgement, and the politician in Corbishley wanted to know what this particular heckler had in mind—beyond his, Peter Corbishley's, own immediate demise, that is—before he entered into any sort of dialogue with him.

“You heard me!” declared the heckler in tones designed to carry.

Since everyone present on the lawn in front of Mellamby Place, to say nothing of those attending to the preparation of the strawberry tea on neat little tables under the immemorial elm trees beyond, must also have heard what had been said, Peter Corbishley did not attempt to deny it. Instead he continued to expound his views on the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Community. The Member of Parliament automatically corrected his own train of thought as he did so.

It was only his views on the Common Agricultural Policy and its interventionist and set-aside practices which were fit to print that he was expounding. And by the well-known phrase “fit to print” he really meant that which he was prepared to see attributed to him in the local newspaper.

For a working politician Peter Corbishley was a fundamentally honest man.

A slight stirring to his left indicated to the Member that while Bertram Rauly might not be worried by sundry interruptions the Chairman of the Branch Association certainly was. Major Puiver liked everything cut and dried: it was this very characteristic that had made his operation in the field of supplies such a success. In those far-off days when the Major had gone to war there had been no such thing as a computer to help with the knotty classification of such essential items of modern warfare as “Bottles, water, rubber, hot, officers for the use of.” Any capacity that the little Major might ever have had for dealing with the unexpected—a sudden run on winter battledress for instance—had withered and died long before he first drew his pension.

Peter Corbishley shot a quick glance at Major Puiver now and took in the fact that he had already started to perspire just a little along his hair line. The Member knew that it wasn't just the heat of a lovely summer's day that had caused the beads of sweat to appear. It was the lurking fear that a public pronouncement might become necessary which did that. The Major's gallantry was specific to the military and did not extend to public speaking. Like Demosthenes, he suffered from stage-fright.