Best Kept Secret

complete circuit, it was clear to both
of them that neither had. Giles appeared to be comfortably ahead if you looked at the pile of slips from the boxes collected from the Woodbine estate, but Fisher was a clear winner if you checked
the ballot boxes from the Arcadia Avenue wards. Another circuit of the hall, and they were none the wiser. The only thing they could predict with any certainty was that the Liberals would end up in
third place.
    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