Below the Clock Read online

  Watson smiled tolerantly. He had faced Curtis in many a wordy war in the Law Courts, knew his gift for banter, his flair for argument. Curtis had a full, round voice, and a tonal range that embraced most varieties of expression. Some air of prosperity was conveyed by the figure which indicated the commencement of a senatorial roundness. His next words showed that his banter covered a judicial brain:

  ‘Reardon’s got one great thing in his favour, Watson. The City isn’t frightened of him. I know the Account that’s closed resembled business in a deserted village, but there was some brisk buying on the Stock Exchange before that. From your pestilential point of view that’s not a bad sign.’

  ‘Reardon is pleased about that,’ whispered Watson. ‘I know he wants to carry the City with him.’ He spoke as though he had rendered more than a little assistance to his chief in the bearing of the burden.

  ‘He doesn’t seem in any hurry to arrive,’ said Curtis. ‘Wife with him?’

  Watson nodded a wordless affirmative.

  ‘I thought so,’ remarked Curtis dryly. ‘She’ll be keeping him.’

  The Parliamentary Private Secretary seemed disinclined to discuss women in general, or his chief’s wife in particular. He changed the subject with surprising abruptness:

  ‘Tranter is jumping your seat, Curtis. Turf him out of it.’

  Curtis looked lazily. A silk hat threw the light back from his seat like a reflecting glass. His eyes gleamed with humorous brightness.

  ‘Tranter will soon learn wisdom after I’ve—’

  A rising cheer drowned the remainder of the sentence. Mr Chancellor Reardon had arrived in the House.

  ‘I’ll have to go,’ whispered Watson, hurrying away to return a couple of minutes later with a long glass, filled with claret and seltzer water for Reardon’s use during his speech. The Chancellor interrupted his talk with the Prime Minister to place the glass on the table. As he turned Curtis sat on the hat Tranter had left on his seat. There was a muffled sound of constrained mirth, followed by a peal of loud laughter. The noise increased when Curtis withdrew the hat from beneath him, appeared astonished to find it in his hand, and then held it aloft for all to see. He seemed to have some difficulty in recognising it as a hat.

  Tranter snatched the ruin from Curtis’ hand and ran with it up the steps of the gangway. The overhanging gallery offered shelter from derision. The Speaker had to delay his departure from the Chair to restore a sense of responsibility to the House. Even the removal of the mace was attended with the backwash of earlier laughter.

  The speech for which the stage had been set, for which the nation waited with apprehension, started in an atmosphere of levity.

  As Edgar Reardon stood in the beam of the sun’s spotlight he was revealed to the observant and discerning as a mass of contradictions. The forehead, by its width, depth and sweep, showed intellect, almost patrician nobility; the eyes were vague, flickering and wavering with uncertain darts; his nose was finely chiselled; the mouth was set too low, and the sagging lips might well have fitted a voluptuary; his jaw had the firm, sweeping outline of a determined man; the pale, thin hands moved unceasingly, long fingers wriggling like worms.

  The Chancellor had a gift of persuasive speech, and during the customary review of national finance, with which he prefaced the important business, he used the gift to advantage. He reached the end of his preamble at quarter to five. Operators had grown tired of waiting to see the new taxes flashed over the tape machines. But so far Reardon had given no hint of which milch cow he would grasp, of where his money was to come from.

  Members leaned forward and there was a perceptible flutter among the financiers and industrialists in the gallery. Relaxed figures became taut.

  Mr Chancellor Reardon prolonged the moment of suspense until it became irritating. The way in which the man wasted time was more than exasperating; it was astonishing. He fingered his notes as though he had never seen them before, damping a thin finger on his lips as he turned page after page. He drank from his glass of claret and seltzer, and flicked through his notes again. Perplexity and disquiet increased. Everyone knew that Reardon had worked on the notes for a full week, preparing and arranging them. It seemed that his delay was deliberately insulting, that the Chancellor was verifying unnecessarily that which he must have memorised.

  A low murmur rose round the House. The Chancellor was carrying his taunt too far, was playing like a cat with a mouse, refusing to open Pandora’s box until nerves were on edge.

  The murmurs grew until individual voices were clear. The impatient were begging him to proceed, Opposition members sneeringly suggested that he had every cause to hesitate, and the members of the Cabinet urged him to hurry, admonished him against delay.

  At last Edgar Reardon turned away from his notes and resumed his position in the spotlight, leaning his elbow on the Despatch Box. His gaze wandered round the House before settling upon the face of Joe Manning. The leader of the Opposition moved a little uneasily. The Chancellor stared at him as though the first announcement was to be a direct, personal challenge.

  But Reardon hesitated unaccountably on the brink of that announcement. Joe Manning’s face flushed and he started to rise to his feet. Even as he moved he spoke, his voice burdened with temper:

  ‘Why this farce, Mr Chancellor? Are you so ashamed of the Budget you have to produce that your nerves have failed you?’

  The questions provoked cheers from the Opposition members. Ingram, the Prime Minister, rose with a retort, hoping that the Chancellor would save the situation by speaking first.

  Reardon frowned. Then his mouth twitched. His left hand groped until it found a corner of the Despatch Box.

  For the first time Members began to suspect that something had gone wrong, that all was not well. Within a few seconds suspicion grew to a certainty. Reardon’s eyes were strange. They ceased to wander, were fixed in a persistent stare. The pupils shone strangely, and the man’s body stiffened until it seemed unnaturally tense.

  His appearance changed with each fleeting second. He seemed numbed, almost paralysed. Even the golden light from the sun could not disguise the pallidity of his face. Reardon looked distressingly like a man who stands in a daze after concussion.

  A colleague decided that it was time to act. He rose and caught the Chancellor by the tails of his coat from behind.

  It seemed that the action was the only thing wanting to upset the Chancellor’s balance. He fell headlong to the floor with a crash!

  The moment that followed was one of those in which the whole being is concentrated in the eye. The hush that fell over the House was poignantly dramatic. It was an uncomfortable silence.

  Tranter broke the spell by claiming right of passage, and dashing forward to the side of the Chancellor. Members who had sat with the muteness and stiffness of statues found their tongues. Ingram cast the secrets of the Budget all over the table in a frenzied search for water. Abruptly he seized the remains of the claret and seltzer, flung it into the face of the Chancellor. Reardon did not move.

  Watson, the P.P.S., recovered sufficiently to run for water. As he hurried the Hon. John Ferguson, President of the Board of Trade, worked with trembling fingers and whipped off the man’s collar. Sam Morgan, anxious to help, but uncertain of the procedure, stood wishing that he were a doctor instead of a Home Secretary.

  In the general confusion everyone succeeded in getting in everyone else’s way.

  At last Tranter produced some sort of order out of the chaos. As he knelt down by Reardon’s side he gave short, sharp directions to those around him. He was definitely a better doctor than he was an economist. The whispering ceased. There was a silence ladened pause. Then Tranter raised his voice again:

  ‘Carry him outside at once.’

  The prostrate form was seized by half a dozen willing, but clumsy, hands. Reardon’s flaccid muscles writhed under the pull and thrust of the shuffling figures, the trunk bowing as they lifted him. The helpers bustled him into a positi
on they fondly hoped was comfortable. It was a grotesque parody of a chairing. The Chancellor’s head wobbled hideously, the body sank into itself telescopically, looking invertebrate and horribly unhuman, swaying and jolting to each step of the bearers as they staggered with their burden out of the House.

  The Members watched the procession with bewilderment. This was something that the Chancellor had not budgeted for! They need have felt no sympathy for the sagging figure.

  Edgar Reardon was dead!

  CHAPTER II

  BEHIND THE SPEAKER’S CHAIR

  ‘I SUPPOSE it was apoplexy,’ whispered the Prime Minister.

  ‘I can’t tell definitely what it was,’ said Tranter. His brows were knitted, and there was a tone in his voice that the other misjudged. The group stood in the long hall behind the Speaker’s Chair. The body of Edgar Reardon lay on a couch against the wall. The figure was dishevelled, the head was supported on the rolled-up jacket of the dead man, one of the legs had slipped off the side of the couch.

  ‘If there’s any room for doubt,’ said Ingram after a pause, ‘we’d better have him taken across to Westminster Hospital’

  The doctor waved his hands impatiently and commented sourly:

  ‘Oh, I know death when I see it. He was dead when we carried him out of the House. I’m not troubled about that. What’s worrying me is that I can’t figure out how it happened.’

  ‘But, man, you saw it all yourself,’ protested the Prime Minister.

  Tranter’s nerves were ruffled and his temper ebbed. He flung his hands helplessly into the air.

  ‘Of course, I saw all that you saw,’ he snapped. ‘But I’m a doctor. This, Ingram, is a case for the Coroner of the Household. I don’t want to say much more. An autopsy may show that death was due to natural causes. His heart may have given out; a hundred and one things may have happened. But I’m going to say this now: It didn’t look to me like natural death at the time when it happened and I don’t think it was even now. Just look at him. Does it look right to you?’

  The Prime Minister gazed at the corpse and shuddered. Reardon certainly did not look as though his heart had failed him. There was something odd about the expression of the face, an atmosphere of violence about the distorted limbs. For years Ingram had boasted that he was able to cope with any emergency. That faculty, and his solid sense, had won him the Premiership. But now he felt as though his brain were addled as he groped feebly after an idea.

  The Cabinet Ministers who had assisted in carrying the Chancellor out of the House stood in a group like frozen images, staring with awed fascination at the corpse, and not trusting themselves to speak.

  A little farther away the widow stood against the wall, her body twitching, her startled eyes, distended but dry, turning from Tranter to Ingram, and from Ingram to the remains of her husband. Her face was tragically pathetic. The skin was marble white and her make-up turned her pallor into a shrieking incongruity. The mascara on her eyelids and lashes showed midnight black against a surround of ghastly white; rouge, high on the cheek-bones, was almost silhouetted against the pale flesh, and the lips swerved in a carmine spread. Her green eyes were overshadowed by grief and mascara. Tufts of golden hair caught the rays of the sun as they waved in curls from the side of a black cloche hat.

  Watson flitted in the background like a hovering moth, straying from Tranter’s side to whisper condolences to the widow, moving again to stare at the corpse as though he still disbelieved that Reardon was dead. As seconds passed Ingram’s brain began to function again.

  ‘Tranter,’ he said, ‘this is absolutely absurd. I can’t understand what on earth you’re talking about. Edgar Reardon was a man without a care in the world. Why should a man with position, money, good health, and a devoted wife commit suicide? And you suggest that he didn’t die a natural death! The idea is preposterous.’

  ‘You’ve been thinking instead of listening,’ remarked the doctor caustically. ‘I did not say that he committed suicide at the time of his death, and I don’t say so now. I haven’t mentioned suicide.’

  ‘But … but …’ Ingram paused, bewildered. He did not complete the sentence. Before he could collect his scattered thoughts a shrill laugh interrupted him, a peal that broke abruptly at the end of a high trill. If the roof of the House had fallen through it would not have created a greater sensation than the unexpected sound. On the overwrought nerves of the men in the hall the effect was hair-raising. They wheeled round together.

  Mrs Reardon stood with her head tilted back, the face entirely mirthless, the mouth twisting with spasmodic jerks, the eyes wild and distended. Here, at least, was a case which Tranter could treat with confidence. Before he reached her side Mrs Reardon had ceased to laugh and her body was convulsed by sobs. Watson handed the doctor a glass of water. Tranter threw it into the face of the hysterical woman. As she quietened down he tried to speak to her persuasively. The effort was useless. She was quarrelsome and querulous. Watson stood by her side, gripping her trembling hands.

  While Tranter was attempting to coerce the woman a newcomer arrived, walked across the hall towards them. He was tall, and a trifle too elegant, his clothes immaculately tailored, his features sharply defined. The grave, dark eyes were luminously brown. He stopped before the widow and bowed. Mrs Reardon moved Tranter to one side and stared at the newcomer ungraciously, almost venemously.

  ‘How on earth do you come to be here, Mr Paling?’ she snapped.

  The man accepted her insulting tone without change of expression.

  ‘Your husband,’ he said, ‘was kind enough to procure my admission to the public gallery, and I saw what happened. I have taken the liberty of ordering your car. It is now waiting. That is what I came to tell you.’

  ‘Oh, did you?’ Her voice was tart, her manner definitely rude.

  ‘It was my desire to be of assistance,’ said the man easily.

  ‘Thanks.’ Mrs Reardon sniffed, dabbed at her eyes with a frail lace handkerchief. In an instant her grief changed to anger again. ‘I prefer to walk home. Give that message to my chauffeur.’

  The men in the hall watched the fast-moving scene with amazement. It seemed odd that a man of such appearance, of such apparent self-confidence, should make no retort. He smiled gently, a chiding smile such as a mother might bestow upon a much loved but unruly child. Then he bowed slightly and retired from the hall.

  Tranter led her to a chair, comforted her for a short time and then walked away, leaving Watson by her side. Farther away in the hall an informal meeting of the Cabinet was already in progress. The Prime Minister was urging an immediate adjournment of the House.

  ‘I’m not going to make a Budget speech myself,’ he said, ‘and I’m not going to listen to one from anyone else. You couldn’t expect the House to sit through a speech after what has happened.’

  John Ferguson, the President of the Board of Trade, added more weighty reasons to support Ingram’s argument:

  ‘Adjourn the House. None of the taxes has been announced so you haven’t got to do anything with the Budget resolutions tonight. There isn’t any danger of premature disclosure. We’re just where we were this morning.’

  Ingram nodded. The question was settled. While the Ministers talked Curtis joined Mrs Reardon and Watson in the hall. Between them they persuaded the widow to leave the House, and both gripped her arms as she walked falteringly to the door. Curtis hailed his own chauffeur and they escorted Mrs Reardon to 11 Downing Street.

  The Prime Minister said little to the occupants of the House. In two sentences he informed them that Mr Chancellor Reardon had met an unexpectedly sudden death and that the House, as a tribute to the memory of the deceased, would adjourn immediately.

  Shortly afterwards the last loiterer departed. The House was empty, except for what had been the Right Honourable Edgar Reardon and the attendants in evening dress, their shirt fronts decorated by the large gilt House of Commons badge. They watched over his bier …

  For two or three h
ours Watson and Curtis made inquiries here and there, striving ineffectively to straighten out the mystery for the sake of the distressed widow. They found more difficulties in their way than either had anticipated. A sudden death in the House of Commons, apart from the fact that death has occurred, is unlike that which takes place anywhere else. Rules and laws which have been embedded in the dust for centuries hamper inquiries, tradition erects formidable barriers. The two men were unable to report any progress when they arrived at 11 Downing Street.

  They found Mrs Reardon alone in the drawing-room. A black velvet evening gown accentuated her pallor. She swayed to and fro as she spoke to them. Watson avoided her eyes as she looked at him. At other times he looked at nothing else. But once she became conscious of his glance, and searched for it in return, his eyes coasted round the room. It was an uncomfortable and depressing hide-and-seek. Curtis coughed informatively and stroked his hair. Watson blushed. The widow still seemed dazed. An awkward silence arose. The woman broke it:

  ‘But you must have discovered something. What happened? Edgar had never been ill as far as I know. How did he—what killed him?’

  ‘Had he been to see a doctor recently?’ asked Curtis.

  ‘No, not since I’ve known him. Edgar was always terribly fit.’

  ‘Would you mind if I telephoned to his doctor, Mrs Reardon?’

  ‘Of course I wouldn’t. I’m only too grateful to you for helping me. It’s Dr Cyril Clyde, of Welbeck Street.’

  The widow and Watson sat miserably silent while Curtis was out of the room. Fleeting glances passed between them. The woman’s fingers were jerking nervously. Again and again a shudder caused her body to move with the agitation of a marionette. They were both relieved when Curtis returned.

  ‘Only makes things worse,’ he announced. ‘I told him what had happened, and he says that your husband, Mrs Reardon, was a singularly healthy man, that his heart was perfectly sound, that he was not known to suffer from any ailments, and that he was the last man in the world who would die with such suddenness from natural causes.’