Rumpole and the Angel of Death (20 page)

The rest, of course, is history, and I'm sure you read about it in the papers. I don't know whether they gave you Rumpole's final speech or the bit which began so quietly that the Jury had to strain their ears to hear it: ‘A young man is walking in the woods, making up poetry and reciting it to some modern-day gypsies when one of Rudyard's Cars drives up to Long Acre. Out of it gets the man who had hired it, Mr Ivan Skelton from Sydney, Australia. Why has he come there? Because he has heard of the love affair between Dimitri Skelton and Elizabeth Ashton whom Ivan was to marry, the girl who came over to work for his cousin and wait for him to join her.

‘Nobody heard the quarrel, Members of the Jury. The Beazleys were too busy listening to ancient warfare and the house was empty. Overcome with rage and jealousy did Ivan lift this fatal weapon' – by now Rumpole had the golf club high above his head – ‘and strike! And strike! And strike again in the terrible and fatal fight that followed. No one saw Ivan after that fight or gave evidence as to the bloodstains on
him.
But when young Michael came home and found his father dead, and was stained by his father's blood as he knelt beside the body, was it not natural that he should be suspected?

‘And how very convenient for Ivan that he was. Because if Michael was convicted, Ivan would inherit a fortune. And remember, he was here with us the other day, Members of the Jury, the man you might think is possibly, quite, quite possibly, even probably, guilty. That man was in the public gallery making sure his inheritance was safe. And then, when he had been warned by my solicitor, did he not slink away, as he had on the night of the murder, in one of Mr Rudyard's hired cars to await the news of that young poet's wrongful conviction?

‘If you think that's what
may
have happened, Members of the Jury, let us deny Ivan Skelton his final satisfaction and his undeserved wealth. Let us find young Michael Skelton not guilty of the terrible crime of murdering his father. And, remember, it is
your
decision' – here Rumpole glared at the Judge who, sitting motionless, had closed his eyes as though in pain – ‘and not the decision of anyone else in the Court.'

And so the next day we were home again and sitting on either side of the gas fire at Froxbury Mansions in the evening. I'm glad to say there had been no further requests for salad.

Rumpole had done full justice to the shepherd's pie and cabbage I had cooked for him, taken with a great deal of mustard and tomato sauce. Now he said, ‘Thank you, Hilda. Thank you for the work you put in to
R.
v.
Skelton.
Some of your ideas were surprisingly helpful.'

‘Only some of them?' And, when he didn't answer, I said, ‘I have to say you didn't seem able to follow up some fairly obvious clues. At least not until I got on the case.'

‘I was distracted,' Rumpole had to admit. ‘I was suffering from certain anxieties.'

‘What sort of anxieties, Rumpole?'

‘Matters of a domestic nature.'

‘You mean, you thought it was about time we had the kitchen redecorated? I've been thinking that too.'

‘No. I was concerned . . . Well, damn it all, Hilda. I thought you might have grown tired of life here . . . with me.'

‘Life with you in Froxbury Mansions? Good heavens, how could anyone be tired of that?'

‘You said . . . Well, anyway, you told me . . .' It was the first time in my entire life I had seen Rumpole stumped for words. ‘What was all that about Newcombe having taken a shine to you?'

‘No, I was wrong about that. He hadn't taken a shine to me. He wanted to win me over so I could be his spy.'

‘His
what?
' I had surprised Rumpole.

‘So I could spy on you. Tell him if you were getting too near the truth in
R.
v.
Skelton.
And there was something else I didn't like him for.'

‘What was that?'

‘Well, he called me a girl, which I thought was very patronizing. And I know why he gave you the brief.'

‘Well, I do have a certain reputation . . . Ever since that little problem at the Penge Bungalow.'

‘He thought because you aren't a Q.C. you wouldn't do the job properly.'

‘That's ridiculous!'

‘Of course it is.' There was silence for a while. Rumpole considered my extraordinary suggestion and rejected it. Then he said, ‘I shan't include
R.
v.
Skelton
in my memoirs.'

‘Whyever not? It was one of your greatest triumphs.'

‘No, Hilda.' He picked up his brief in a little receiving job at Acton. ‘The triumph was yours.'

This is the story that Rumpole will never write. So I'm writing it for you, Dodo, and for you only. It's the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

‘Whoever did that,' Dot Clapton said, ‘deserves burning at the stake!'

‘I'm afraid they abolished that a few years ago.' I took the
Daily Trumpet
Dot was offering me across her typewriter. ‘Although, given the reforming zeal of the appalling Ken Fry' – I winced as I invariably do when I mention the name of the current Home Secretary – ‘we might get it back in the next Criminal Justice Act.'

What I saw was a big photograph, almost the whole tabloid front page. A young woman, wearing a T-shirt and jeans, was looking into the camera, trying to smile; a husband only a few years older, puzzled and frowning, had his arm protectively round her shoulder. Behind them was the blur of an ordinary semi-detached and a small, ordinary car, but they were the victims of an extraordinary crime. Their child had been snatched away from them, hidden among strangers and perhaps ... It was the awful perhaps which made Steve Constant put his arm round his wife and why her smile might turn so easily into a scream,
SHEENA CONSTANT TALKS EXCLUSIVELY TO THE TRUMPET
, the front page told the world,
SEE CENTRE STORY.

‘If they catch the old witch who did it, you wouldn't speak up for her in Court, would you? I mean you'd let her hang herself out of her own mouth, wouldn't you, Mr Rumpole?'

I had turned over to the central spread, entirely devoted to the little boy lost. There was an enlarged picture of little Tommy in the strangely metallic washed-out colours in which photographs appear in newspapers: an ordinary, carrot-haired three-year-old with a wide grin, no doubt a singular miracle to the Constants whose first and only child he was. There were snaps of the family at the seaside, by a swing in the garden of the semi and a picture of the huge South London hospital, gaunt and unfriendly as a nuclear power station, from which Tommy Constant had unaccountably disappeared. As I glanced over these apparently harmless records of a tragedy, I was trying to remind Dot of an Old Bailey hack's credo. ‘I'm a black taxi, Dot,' I told her, ‘plying for hire. I'm bound to accept anyone, however repulsive, who waves me down and asks for a lift. I do my best to take them to their destination, although the choice of route, of course, is entirely mine.'

‘The destination of her who nicked that child' – Dot was unshakeable in her demand for a conviction, she was not the sort you'd want called up for jury duty – ‘would be burning at the stake. If you want my honest opinion.'

I have to confess that I wasn't giving Dot my full attention. There wasn't a long story between the pictures, but what there was had been written in the simple, energetic style of the
Daily Trumpet
which, I thought, might be appreciated by a jury.

Twenty-four-year-old Sheena Constant spoke through her tears: ‘After he was seen by the doctor, I put him on the kiddies' mechanical donkey in the out-patients assembly. He's been on it before, so I left him with Steve while I went to the toilet. Steve just crossed over to buy a packet of Marlboro. He was in sight of Tommy and only turned away for about a minute. It was during that minute our little son was stolen off us. He sort of vanished clutching a little yellow flop-eared rabbit which was his favourite toy!'

Police investigations continue. Who was the pale-faced woman in a black beret and black plastic mac carrying a toddler away from out-patients? Police Superintendent Greengross hadn't yet found her. Where were the social workers? Drinking carrot juice and knitting pullovers? Where were the hospital managers? Upstairs with their noses in the trough? Where was hospital security? Out to lunch? These are the questions the
Trumpet
will be asking during the coming week.

Tomorrow:
WHY MY DAUGHTER'S HEART IS BROKEN.
Tommy's gran talks exclusively to the
Trumpet.

‘We've got her!' Claude Erskine-Brown had entered the clerk's room in a state of high excitement. ‘Got her, at last.'

‘The woman who stole little Tommy?' I was still absorbing the
Trumpet's
simple story. I had supped full of horrors at Equity Court, but there seemed to be something peculiarly tragic about this young couple's loss.

‘Of course not. She didn't steal anything. Can't you get your mind off crime for a single moment? Does the wonderful world of art mean nothing to you? We've got Katerina Regen to sing to us in the Outer Temple Hall.'

‘Have you, by God?' I folded the
Daily Trumpet
neatly and put it back on Dot's typewriter. I thought I might have to forget Steve and Sheena Constant and fill my mind with other people's troubles. ‘I doubt whether I shall be among those present.'

‘She will give us Schubert.'

‘So far as I'm concerned, she can keep him.'

‘And the Bar Musical Society, of which by a strange quirk of fate I seem to have become president' – here I can only say that Erskine-Brown gave a modest simper – ‘will be hosting a small champagne reception afterwards. The eighteenth of this month. Put it in your diary, Horace.'

For a moment my strong resolution wavered. Any invitation to take me to your
lieder
is one which, as a general rule, I have no difficulty in declining. But I have no such fears of a champagne reception. However, the preliminary trills seemed a highish price to pay for a glass or two of bubbles, so I sent an apology. ‘I'm sorry but Hilda and I will be entertaining.'

‘Entertaining who?'

‘Each other. To a couple of chops in Froxbury Mansions. Awfully sorry, old darling, previous engagement.'

That night we were settled in front of the television in the mansion flat when Hilda said, ‘I hope you've got the eighteenth marked down in your diary, Rumpole?'

‘Yes, I have. I'm staying at home.'

‘Oh no, you're not.'

Sometimes the dialogue of She Who Must Be Obeyed becomes strongly reminiscent of the pantomimes my old father used to take me to in my extreme youth. Don't I remember some such witty line having been used by the Widow Twankey?

‘Hilda,' I reassured her, ‘you don't want to spend a couple of hours on a hard chair in the Outer Temple Hall listening to some overweight diva trilling about departed love.'

‘You know nothing, Rumpole,' she told me. (Had she forgotten my encyclopaedic knowledge of bloodstains?) ‘Katerina Regen is not only Covent Garden's new Mimi but she's as slender as a bluebell.'

‘Who told you that?'

‘Claude Erskine-Brown, when he rang up. I told him to put us down for two tickets.'

‘How much is he paying us to go?'

‘Nothing, Rumpole.
We
are paying. It will be extremely good for you. You have so little art in your life.'

‘I have poetry.'

‘
Some
poetry. And it's like your jokes, always the same.'

‘How much?'

‘How much the same? Exactly.'

‘No, how much are the tickets, Hilda! Erskine-Brown didn't con you out of a tenner?'

‘The tickets were fifty pounds each and that includes two glasses of a really good Méthode Champenoise, which I think's a bargain considering how much you'd pay to listen to Regen at the Garden.'

And considering the happy evenings I might have had at Pommeroy's with the Méthode Fleet Streetoise for half that enormous expenditure. I might have said that but thought better of it. And then my attention was grabbed by the television on which an astonishingly young superintendent was holding a press conference. He sat between Sheena and Steve Constant – he in an ornate pullover, she in what must have been her best outfit, trying not to weep.

‘I just want to say . . .' The superintendent had longish fair hair and protruding eyes. He looked as though he'd be much happier sharing jokes with his mates in the pub. However, he managed to sound both serious and sincere. ‘. . . to whoever's
got
Tommy, we can understand your problems. Maybe you're longing for a little boy of your own and can't have one. Perhaps you even lost a little boy in tragic circumstances. We understand and we're all sympathetic. We think you may need help and we'll see to it that you get it. So will you ring us at the number we'll put up on the screen in a minute and tell us where Tommy is? We're sure he's alive and well. (Here Sheena looked down, a hand to her forehead, covering her eyes.) We're sure you've been looking after him really well. But just tell us where he is, that's all. Give Tommy what he
really
needs: his mum and dad.'

As he talked I remembered some of the old poetry She Who Must Be Obeyed was tired of.

‘Father! father! where are you going?

‘O do not walk so fast.

‘Speak father, speak to your little boy,

‘Or else I shall be lost.'

The light was dark, no father was there;

The child was wet with dew;

The mire was deep, & the child did weep, . . .

Sheena lowered her hand and shook her head bravely, like a diver shaking the water out of her eyes as she emerges from beneath the sea. Steve's teeth were clenched, his jaw set, his face a mask of misery.