Best Kept Secret (The Clifton Chronicles, #3)(65)

Giles looked up when he heard a burst of applause coming from the other side of the hall. Fisher had just entered the room with his agent and a few key supporters. Giles recognized some of them from the evening of the debate. He couldn’t help noticing that Fisher had changed into a fresh shirt and was wearing a smart double-breasted suit, already looking every inch a Member of Parliament. After chatting to one or two of the counters, he also began to move around the room, making quite sure he didn’t bump into Barrington.

Giles and Griff, along with Miss Parish, Harry and Emma, continued to walk slowly up and down the aisles, watching carefully as piles of ballot papers were stacked in tens, and then, once they totalled a hundred, were bound by thick red, blue or yellow bands, so they could be identified quickly. Finally they were lined up in five-hundreds, like soldiers on parade.

The scrutineers took a row each, checking that the tens were not nines or elevens, and, even more important, that the hundreds weren’t hundred-and-tens or nineties. If they thought a mistake had been made, they could ask for a pile to be re-counted in the presence of Mr Wainwright or one of his deputies. Not something to be done lightly, Miss Parish warned her team.

After two hours of counting, Griff shrugged his shoulders in answer to Giles’s whispered question as to how he thought things were going. By this time in 1951, he’d been able to tell Giles he’d won, even if it was only by a few hundred votes. Not tonight.

Once the counters had their neat, well-ordered piles of five-hundreds in place, they raised a hand to let the town clerk know that they’d completed the task and were ready to confirm their results. Finally, when the last hand was raised, Mr Wainwright once again blew a sharp blast on his whistle and said, ‘Now double check every pile one more time.’ He then added, ‘Would the candidates and their agents please join me on stage.’

Giles and Griff were the first to climb the steps, with Fisher and Ellsworthy only a stride behind. On a table in the centre of the stage, where everyone could observe exactly what was taking place, was a small pile of ballot papers. No more than a dozen of them, Giles estimated.

‘Gentlemen,’ announced the town clerk, ‘these are the spoilt ballot papers. Electoral law decrees that I, and I alone, must decide if any of them should be included in the final count. However, you have the right to disagree with any of my judgements.’

Wainwright stood over the pile of votes, adjusted his glasses and studied the top slip. It had a cross in Fisher’s box, but also scribbled across it were the words ‘God Save the Queen’.

‘That’s obviously a vote for me,’ said Fisher, before Wainwright could give his opinion.

The town clerk looked at Giles, and then at Ellsworthy, and they both nodded, so the ballot paper was placed to his right. On the next slip a tick, not a cross, had been placed in Fisher’s box.

‘They clearly intended to vote for me,’ said Fisher firmly. Once again, Giles and Ellsworthy nodded.

The town clerk placed the vote on Fisher’s pile, which caused the Conservative candidate to smile, until he saw that the next three ballot papers had ticks in Barrington’s box.

On the next paper, the names of all three candidates had been crossed out and replaced by Vote for Desperate Dan. They all agreed it was spoilt. The next had a tick by Ellsworthy’s name, and it was accepted as a vote for the Liberal candidate. The eighth declared Abolish hanging, and joined the spoilt pile without comment. The ninth had a tick in Barrington’s box, and Fisher had no choice but to allow it, giving Giles a 4–2 lead with only two papers left to consider. The next had a tick in Barrington’s box, with the word NEVER written next to Fisher’s name.

‘That must be a spoilt ballot,’ said Fisher.

‘In which case,’ said the town clerk, ‘I will have to treat “God Save the Queen” in the same way.’

‘That’s logical,’ said Ellsworthy. ‘Better take them both out.’

‘I agree with Major Fisher,’ said Giles, realizing it would increase his lead from 4–2 to 4–1. Fisher looked as if he wanted to protest, but said nothing.

They all looked at the last ballot paper. Wainwright smiled.

‘Not in my lifetime, I suspect,’ he said, placing a paper with the words Independence for Scotland scrawled across it on the spoilt pile.

Wainwright then checked each ballot paper again, before saying, ‘That’s four votes for Barrington, one for Fisher and one for Ellsworthy.’ He wrote down the numbers in his note book and said, ‘Thank you, gentlemen.’

‘Let’s hope that’s not the only vote you win tonight,’ Griff mumbled to Giles as they left the stage and joined Miss Parish and her scrutineers.

The town clerk returned to the front of the stage and once again blew his whistle. His team of deputies immediately began walking up and down the aisles writing down the final numbers from each counter, before taking them on to the stage and handing them to the town clerk.

Mr Wainwright studied each figure carefully before entering the numbers into a large adding machine, his only concession to the modern world. Once he’d pressed the add button for the last time, he wrote down the final figures against the three names, considered them for a moment, then invited the candidates to join him on the stage once again. He then told them the result and agreed to Giles’s request.

Miss Parish frowned when she saw Fisher giving his supporters a thumbs-up sign, and realized they had lost. She glanced up towards the gallery to see Sebastian waving energetically at her. She waved back, but looked down again when Mr Wainwright tapped the microphone, creating a hush of expectation in the hall.