Rumpole and the Angel of Death (25 page)

‘I think that's what he said.'

‘Why do you suppose he told you that?'

‘I imagine because he sincerely regretted his sin and wanted to throw himself on my mercy.'

‘Nonsense! He was boasting.'

‘Boasting?' Soapy Sam looked entirely confused.

‘Showing off. Bragging, wanting us all to think that he's a gay young dog, when in truth he's an entirely domesticated animal that's almost never off the lead.'

‘Are you saying that people would boast of breaking the Seventh Commandment?'

‘They do it on practically every page of the
Trumpet.
'

Ballard sat down then, as though his legs had become weak with amazement. He gasped for breath. ‘I have told Erskine-Brown that if this scandal becomes public knowledge, there will be no room for him in Chambers.'

‘I thought he'd thrown himself on your mercy.'

‘He did.'

‘And your mercy wasn't there?'

‘God may forgive Erskine-Brown. After repentance.'

‘But you won't.'

‘I have Chambers to consider.'

‘I suggest you leave Chambers alone and get on with your practice, what there is of it.' I rose and made for the door whilst the path to it was unimpeded. ‘Oh, and don't worry your pretty little head, Sam. There isn't going to be a scandal.'

‘How can you be sure of that?'

‘Because if Claude's Don Giovanni, I'm Tarzan of the Apes. No need for you to envy the poor blighter, Bollard. He didn't get around to bonking anybody.'

And I left before he could argue.

The Psychic Shop was open at three the next afternoon when I pushed open the door. What on earth did I think I was doing? When young Argent called me Sherlock Rumpole, had the title completely unhinged me? Was I trying to outdo the incomparable Fig Newton, or was this a mission of such delicacy that I didn't feel I could leave it to him? I had nothing in Court and for the day I was no longer a barrister; in fact I had put on the old tweed jacket, grey flannel bags and comforting Hush Puppies to prove it. I was an anonymous old man after information. If I was rumbled, I had my cover-story pat. I had just dropped in for a clairvoyant reading because I was seriously interested in the future.

A bell pinged faintly as I opened the door, but the shop was empty. I stood for a moment breathing in a smell which seemed to be a mixture of incense, Dettol and drains. There were some printed astrological charts pinned on the walls, otherwise the shop was dim and sparsely furnished. There was no sign of what I had noticed on the day when I had asked Bernard to park his car and stood looking in at the window. There was a bead curtain at the back of the shop. It rattled and a woman entered like a burst of sunlight. She had reddish hair, a bright yellow dress and the fixed, somewhat desperate smile of someone who is constantly in touch with those who have passed over and who has learnt to make the best of it. She was the woman I had seen in the Constants' front garden, snipping tulips, the woman whose photograph was in the window of the Psychic Shop. She was Steve's Aunt Brenda, who'd been in touch with the spirit world for news of the Little Boy Lost.

‘Welcome, stranger,' she said. ‘Have you come for a reading?'

‘If you have time.'

‘Perhaps you have an anxiety about your future.'

‘Always. An extreme anxiety.'

‘And you want your birth chart analysed?'

‘That would be extremely helpful.'

‘You have an interest in clairvoyancy?'

‘A lifetime's interest.'

‘Then, if you'll follow me, I'll see if I can fit you in.'

She led me into a sudden blaze of colour. The inner room had huge vivid green leaves on its wallpaper, and bright red, blue and yellow astrological charts. The table was covered with pink formica on which a glass ball on a bright blue stand presumably provided an entrance to a Technicolor spirit world for those with sufficient imagination to switch on to its channel. Death, I thought, in this small and lurid world was an endless soap opera in primary colours. I said, ‘You are Miss Brenda Constant, aren't you?'

She was not at all surprised. ‘I suppose I've got to get used to the fact that I've become famous.' She was middle-aged, but she giggled like a young girl. ‘I can't complain. It's brought me a lot of customers.'

‘Because of little Tommy?'

‘Because the spirit people were able to tell us who'd got the baby.'

‘And who had?'

‘Thelma Ropner, of course. She was always jealous of Sheena. Now then, do please sit down and tell me
your
name.'

‘Samuel Ballard.' I couldn't help it. It just occurred to me as I sat on a hard and shiny plastic chair and rested my elbows on the pink formica.

‘Samuel. That's a very
nice
name.' She unrolled some sort of chart of the heavens and sat opposite me, ready to voyage into the unknown. ‘There are plenty of Samuels in the spirit world.'

I told her that didn't surprise me in the least. I was looking past her at a narrow window which seemed to overlook a small, paved strip and a high wooden fence.

‘Birth sign?' She was about to fill in a form.

‘Cancer, the crab.' I thought that might be appropriate for Bollard.

‘Birthdate?'

‘The twenty-ninth of June 1940. It was a stormy night and there was a partial eclipse of the moon. Apparently a dead owl fell out of the sky and into my parents' garden in Waltham Cross.' From then on I was inventing and Auntie Brenda was taking copious notes. I didn't have to go on too long before the shop door pinged again. She put down her scarlet Biro, sighed heavily and said, ‘Everyone wants a reading since the story came out in the
Trumpet
' and exited through the bead curtain. I got up and crossed to the window. It was then I saw, on the strip of crazy paving, what I thought I had once seen in the shop, a child's pushchair with something on the seat which, I was sure, could be described as a yellow flop-eared rabbit, much clutched and frequently caressed.

I could hear Auntie Brenda's grand and busy greeting to a prospective customer in the shop. There was a long cupboard built against one wall of the astrological consulting room. I slid back the door as quietly as possible and was surprised, as I often am, by the casual way in which many people preserve evidence. Hanging uncertainly on a wire coat-hanger, I saw a shiny, black plastic mackintosh and, on the shelf above it, a dark beret.

I got the door shut as Auntie Brenda came back to peer into Samuel Ballard's future.

‘One last question, Mrs Sheena Constant. Looking back on that telephone call in which you were told to go and look in nineteen Swansdown Avenue, can you now say who you think called you?'

‘Don't let's have what she thought, my Lord.' I was up on my hind legs in no time. ‘Don't let's have pure speculation.'

‘The witness is fully entitled to say who she thinks telephoned her, Mr Rumpole. There is no need to delay this trial with unnecessary objections.' His Honour Judge Pick bore, in my opinion, a singular resemblance to a parakeet. He had a high colour, a small and beaky nose, a bright and malignant eye, and his usual reaction to my contributions to the proceedings was a flurried and resentful squawk.

‘I'm quite sure who it was now.' Sheena smiled from the witness-box. ‘It was someone I'd known from school.'

‘What was her name?'

‘Thelma Ropner.'

‘The defendant Ropner whom we now see in the dock?' The bird on the Bench rubbed it in quite unnecessarily. My learned friend, Leonard Fanner (known to us down the Bailey as Lenny the Lion because of his extreme nervousness in Court and general lack of roaring power), appearing for the Prosecution, said, ‘Thank you very much, Mrs Constant,' and sat down gratefully.

I rose to cross-examine Mrs Constant. ‘You say you were at school with my client, Thelma Ropner?'

‘Yes.'

‘And were you also at school with a girl called Tina Santos?'

‘Tina? Yes, I knew her.'

‘And did she become the secretary of a local MP called David Bangor, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Enterprise?'

‘She worked for a politician. I think that's what Tina did.'

‘You know what Tina did, don't you? She had a well-publi- cized love affair with the Honourable Member.'

‘Mr Rumpole!'

I ignored the squawk from the Bench and continued, ‘And then told the whole story to the
Trumpet
because he wouldn't leave his wife and marry her.'

Sheena frowned a little and said, ‘I think I did read something about it, yes.'

‘The whole nation read something about it.' I picked up a cutting: ‘ “I shared a shower with Minister in Commons' bathroom. Skinny-dipping during the debate on Post Office privatization.”'

‘Mr Fanner, are you not objecting to this cross-examination?' The Judge turned to my learned friend for help.

‘I'm not entirely sure where it's leading, my Lord.' Lenny the Lion stood up, magnificent in his indecision.

‘Exactly where is it leading, Mr Rumpole? Perhaps you'd be good enough to explain.' The Judge was pecking away at me, but I rose above it.

‘It's leading, my Lord, to a vital issue in this case.' I turned to give my full attention to the mother for whom I had felt such sympathy. ‘Do you know how much Tina Santos got paid for that story?'

‘Mr Rumpole!'

‘I think it was quite a lot. A ridiculous lot of money, it was.'

‘Exactly. For that parliamentary shower bath, Tina Santos earned thousands of pounds. Wasn't that common knowledge among the old girls of Cripping Comprehensive?'

‘She told us she got a lot of money, yes.'

‘Easy money, wasn't it?'

‘Much too easy, I'd say, for Tina.'

‘Mrs Constant, how much did the
Trumpet
pay you for the exclusive rights to the story of your Little Boy Lost?'

Up to then the witness had been quiet, composed, a young woman reliving a painful event with commendable courage. For a moment, I saw another Sheena, hard and angry. ‘That's no business of yours, that isn't! I don't have to tell him that, do I?' She turned, for escape, to the Judge, who offered it to her eagerly.

‘Certainly not. The question was entirely irrelevant. Members of the Jury, you will ignore Mr Rumpole's last question. I'm looking at the clock, Mr Fanner.'

‘Yes, my Lord.' Lenny the Lion confirmed that that was exactly what the old bird was doing.

‘I shall adjourn now. Mr Rumpole, by tomorrow morning, perhaps you will have thought of some relevant questions to ask this witness.'

‘Tomorrow morning, my Lord, I shall hope to demonstrate that the question I just asked was entirely relevant.'

‘I have ruled on that, Mr Rumpole. I trust that the Jury will put it completely out of their minds.'

But I knew the Jury wouldn't.

I emerged from that bout in Court panting slightly, bruised a little, but undaunted, mopping the brow and removing the wig to give the top of my head an airing. The researches of the admirable Fig Newton had allowed me to serve an alibi notice on the Prosecution, and I asked Lenny the Lionhearted if the forces of law and order had been able to check the story it contained.

‘I'm not sure, Rumpole. I'll have to speak to the officer in charge of the case.'

‘Screw up your courage, old darling, to the sticking point,' I encouraged him. ‘And do just that.'

Then, as Lenny went off on his daring mission, I heard a voice at my elbow. ‘Well, sir. You seem to know a lot about the
Trumpet's
money. Are you going to let us pay you a slice of it?'

‘I'll meet you in Pommeroy's.' I took young Argent's arm and walked him away from the assembled lawyers. ‘Six o'clock convenient?'

‘You'll let us in on your defence?'

‘It's possible. Oh, you know that picture of Katerina Regen, the Nightingale, arriving at the Galaxy Hotel?'

‘For her afternoon bonk?'

‘Did your man get a snap of her leaving by any chance?'

‘I'm sure he did. I told you, we've got that story sewn up.'

‘Probably. But bring a copy of the leaving picture, will you? I'm curious to see it.'

‘Right you are, sir.' The boy journalist seemed to be suppressing laughter, his usual problem. ‘And you'll tell me what
you've
got up your sleeve?'

‘My sleeve,' I promised him, ‘will be entirely open to you.'

So I went back to Chambers and had a brief consultation with Bonny Bernard about the events of the day, skimmed through a forthcoming matter of warehouse-breaking by a particularly inefficient member of the Timson clan, and put on my hat for Pommeroy's. On my way out of Chambers, I passed a despondent Claude, who whispered a furtive question about his exposure in the public prints. ‘I'm going to meet the journalist in question now. I have high hopes that you will emerge without a stain on your character.' As I left him I couldn't honestly tell if the fellow looked relieved or disappointed.

‘You needn't invest in Dom Perignon,' I told Jonathan Argent, when we were established in a discreet table in Pommeroy's, the one under the staircase, and the furthest from the gents, ‘until you're quite sure you like what I'm going to tell you.'

‘You mean you still haven't thought of a defence in the case of the Little Boy Lost?'

‘Not exactly. In fact, my defence is a perfectly simple one. The little boy was never lost at all.'

‘You're joking!' But that was one moment when I noticed that young Argent wasn't tempted to suppress a laugh.

‘Not really. Tell me how much
did
the
Trumpet
pay Sheena Constant?'

He mentioned a generous number of Ks.