Rumpole and the Angel of Death (26 page)

‘Not bad money for sending young Tommy to stay at his Great-aunt Brenda's.'

‘What on earth are you talking about?'

‘What on earth? Dear old Brenda doesn't want to be on earth very much, does she? She wants to be up in the stars, in the spirit world, or on the other side of the wall of death. But she is of the earth, earthy. I wonder what her cut was for a week's baby minding.'

‘Do you mind telling me what you're talking about?' Young Jonathan looked, for once, out of his depth.

‘I don't mind in the least. I'm talking about fraud, rather an ingenious one to fool sentimental old folks like me and con your hardboiled tabloid out of a considerable amount of cash. Poor old darling, what a soft touch you brilliant journalists are!'

‘You mean . . .?'

‘I mean Aunt Brenda was hired to put on a black mac with a dashing beret and remove the little boy from the mechanical donkey. Did you ever wonder why he went so quietly? Why he didn't cry or yell out? Because he knew he was safe with his dad's old auntie. She looked after him for a week, sometimes at her house, at least once or twice at her fortune shop. Then she dumped him in the squatters' garden as planned and made the call from a phone box in Swansdown Avenue.'

‘But Sheena recognized your client's voice.'

‘No, she didn't. That was all part of the plot to frame Thelma. Someone who is far easier to frame than a reproduction of “The Stag at Bay”.'

‘Why Thelma?'

‘Sheena hates her. She'd been rude about Steve, called him a boring little company man and a dreary middle manager. That's why they chose Brenda, because she's got rust-coloured hair like Thelma's. And that's why they tricked Brenda out in Thelma's customary suit of solemn black.'

There was a pause while Jonathan Argent digested the information. Then he asked me if I could prove it.

‘We'll see after I've finished cross-examining Sheena. What I
can
prove is that Thelma's innocent.'

‘How?'

‘She spent that week at a residential business course at a country house near Tunbridge Wells. She had lessons in salesmanship and competitive marketing. She went to school with a lot of ambitious reps and wore her name on a plastic label.'

‘Did she tell you that?'

‘Of course not. But we found it out, and we've got witnesses to prove it. Thelma's going to be furious when she hears the evidence.'

‘Why?'

‘Because it'll prove one thing. That she wants to become a boring little middle manager just like Steve Constant. She's terribly ashamed of that. She'd rather be suspected of kidnapping than admit it. She even took the course under an assumed name. Luckily, one of the tutors recognized her photograph.'

‘What did she call herself?'

‘Tina Jones. Not Santos. Just the Christian name. It's odd that they all seem to have been jealous of Tina.'

The talkative journalist broke all records for a long and thoughtful silence. At last he said, ‘If you tell that story in Court, it's going to make the
Trumpet
look rather foolish.'

‘You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.'

‘And you can't expect us to pay you for holding us up to general ridicule.'

‘That's why I advised you to save on the Dom Perignon. By the way, did you bring me the diva's leaving photograph?'

He said he had, but it seemed as though Claude's troubles no longer interested him greatly. Suddenly he was a very anxious young journalist.

‘Of course,' I said, ‘I could go and beard Lenny the Lion in his den and see if he'll drop the case.'

‘Could you?' He couldn't help sounding eager.

‘I could try.'

He thought it over and then said, ‘Why do you call him Lenny the Lion?'

‘Because he's such a fearsome prosecutor. Carnivorous, I'd call him. Still, I'm prepared to ask if he'll go quietly, and keep your name out of the papers. I imagine the
Sun
would rather make mincemeat of you.'

‘Yes . . .' The thought clearly gave him no pleasure. ‘Will you try to settle it?'

‘On one condition.'

‘You want money?'

‘Strangely enough, I don't. But I want you to drop the story about Claude Erskine-Brown.'

‘I think we can do that.'

‘Anyway, it seems you've got the wrong chap.' I looked down at the photograph. It showed Katerina leaving the Galaxy with her appointment for the afternoon, the man she had no doubt embraced after her lunch with Claude. It was none other than the huge, booming barrister who had organized her concert in the Outer Temple, Barrington McTear, Q.C., known to me only as Cut Above.

‘We've checked your client's alibi, Rumpole. I had a word with the officer in charge of the case.'

‘That was extremely brave of you. And . . .?'

‘It appears to stand up.'

‘That's right. It's not a baby any more. It's a big, strong grown-up alibi.'

We were having coffee in the Old Bailey canteen before Mr Justice Pick started work for the day. Around us, solicitors and learned friends, plain-clothes officers of the law and accused persons trying to look optimistic, were preparing to meet the challenge of a day in Court. Lenny lowered his voice almost to a whisper. ‘I don't suppose the
Trumpet
wants to look foolish in public.'

‘No, Lenny. I don't believe it does.'

‘The paper wouldn't welcome a prolonged investigation.'

‘You might get rather a bad press if you go on.'

‘Do you know, Rumpole, I've been thinking I might ask to see the Judge.'

‘You always were a brave prosecutor.'

‘Tell him that, all things considered, the Prosecution aren't offering any further evidence against your client.'

‘I've always said you were a complete carnivore.'

‘No need to subject the Constants and the paper to universal derision.'

‘No need at all.'

‘It would serve no useful purpose.'

‘None.'

‘So I'll tell Pick I'm throwing in my hand.'

‘It takes courage to do that.'

‘Will that suit you, Rumpole?'

‘It will suit me very well indeed.'

‘So that's sorted then.'

‘Yes.'

‘Sorry we couldn't have had a fight.'

‘So am I. In a way.'

‘Never mind, Rumpole. There'll be other occasions.' He looked at me, I thought, quite gloomily.

‘Yes, Lenny. I'm sure there will.'

That didn't seem to cheer him up at all.

It was all over. Thelma sniffed when she was discharged and told me that the whole thing had been a complete waste of her time. I got a little parcel from Jonathan Argent and took it to Claude Erskine-Brown in his room.

‘Here's your picture back. And the negative.'

‘They're not going to use it in the paper?'

‘Don't worry. There'll be no scandal. And Soapy Sam Bollard won't throw you out of Chambers.'

‘I might keep this photograph.' Claude took the record of his encounter out of its envelope and looked at it lovingly.

‘I strongly advise you not to.'

‘In my drawer? Here in Chambers?'

‘Wherever you keep it, our Portia's going to find it some time.'

‘Perhaps you're right.' He sighed heavily. ‘But a memento of what might have been . . .'

‘It's all in your mind, Claude. Keep it there.'

‘I might have been famous as Katerina Regen's lover.' His voice was full of regret.

‘You want me to take that picture round to the
Sun?
'

‘Perhaps not. Let it go.' He handed me the package. ‘Dispose of it how you will. But I shall think of her, Rumpole. I shall think of her quite often. When I'm alone.'

I took the package from him and looked at Claude with pity. Poor fool! He'd really wanted to get his name in the papers.

‘A toast to Mr Rumpole, our fellow European.' The faces around me were pink and smiling encouragingly. Glasses of a colourless fluid were raised, which rushed down the throat like a hot wind, took your breath away and left you gasping and more than a little confused. Was I European? I supposed so, although I had never thought of it before.

If I think about it at all, I suppose I'm English. Not British. The Scots, the Irish and in particular the Welsh, although full of charm and excellent qualities, are undoubtedly foreign. I never talk about the U.K., an expression much favoured by politicians and management consultants who have retired to live on the Costa del Crime. Had I been mistaken all this time, I wondered, as the cold beer joined the eau de vie? Was I not just an Englishman abroad but a European who had stayed at home? I looked down at the huge plate of sour cabbage and boiled sausage (in England, I had been tempted to say, we don't boil sausages). The restaurant was in a street of huge, medieval, half-timbered houses, now sheltering boutiques and souvenir shops. We were in France but near that part of Germany where, so my hosts told me, the Rhine maidens and the dwarf and the giants lived through those endless operas Claude Erskine-Brown was so keen on, characters I found so much less interesting than the clients down the Old Bailey, or even my latest quarry, his Honour Judge Billy Bloxham, a new and unwelcome addition to the Judges entitled to try cases of alleged murder.

‘And also to you, Mr Rumpole!' The toastmaster, a somewhat rimless man with rimless glasses perched on a long, narrow nose, who spoke with the pursed lips and squeezed vowels of a Nord, raised his glass to me: ‘The defender of human rights'.

‘Well,' I had to tell them, ‘I'm not exactly that. I mean, I spend most of my time defending people.'

‘Defending their rights.' Peter Fishlock, my instructing solicitor, who had travelled with me from England, was a great one for rights and for the Society for a Written Constitution, of which he was, as he kept telling me, ‘chair'. During our long hours together, in English courts and on the bumpy ride across the sky to Strasburg, I realized how much I missed Bonny Bernard, who was less interested in human rights than in trying to find a decent bit of alibi evidence.

‘I'm not so sure about that either.' We had gone through a good many toasts that evening, to the Community of Nations and the Irrelevance of Gender, Freedom from Torture combined with a Common Currency, and so much eau de vie had slipped down the red lane that my courage had become extremely Dutch. ‘I'm defending their wrongs quite often. Their errors and foolish ways. I suppose I look on the law as a sort of disease, and I'm the doctor who tries to cure his patient of it as quickly as possible.'

‘That is only your English modesty speaking there, Mr Rumpole.' A reassuring female voice sounded somewhere above my head. Betsi Hoprecht, tall and blonde, with a face as smooth and delicately brown as a new-laid egg, a young German lawyer with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the ways of the European Court, had appointed herself my helper, guardian, nurse and general protector for the purposes of the present proceedings. ‘We all know how you English wish to conceal your finer feelings under all those layers of clothing you wear. But I think we know where Mr Rumpole's heart is, and I think it's in the right place.' Betsi's speech was in perfect English, although no one English would have made it.

‘I propose a toast then.' Govan Welamson, the rimless Swede and Professor of International Law, had his slender glass refilled. ‘To Mr Rumpole's heart.'

‘Please,' I begged, ‘couldn't we drink to something a little less embarrassing. Like the Common Agricultural Policy?'

‘Come on, Rumpole. We all know you spend your time defending the underdog.' This came from Jeremy Jameson, Member of the European Parliament, who had a surprisingly young face stuck on the body of a sedentary and spreading politician. He had come with a half-smiling and mostly silent woman with a thin nose and a short upper lip. With her tight curls she had the appearance of an intelligent and attractive sheep. She wore a neat black suit with a few gold ornaments and smelled of the most expensive perfume in the duty free. The Euro M.P. had introduced her simply as Poppy.

Jameson stood, I seemed to remember, in the Liberal interest and had a huge constituency in the West of England, where no one was able to remember his name. He spoke, even when he was at his most polite, with a kind of contemptuous amusement: ‘Defending the underdog brought you to Strasburg,' he said. ‘To all these perfectly marvellous restaurants, with a side salad of human rights?'

‘The great thing about underdogs,' I reminded him, ‘is that they're usually on legal aid.'

‘But you defend them,' Betsi told me firmly, ‘for the sake of your principles.'

‘I defend them,' I corrected her, ‘for the sake of the rent of the mansion flat and my wife's effort to boost consumer spending every Saturday at Safeway's.'

‘Don't know why we wanted to go into Europe anyway,' a deep-voiced woman, her grey hair tousled, her cheeks flushed, who had been chain-smoking over the choucroute, boomed at us. ‘All a lot of bloody nonsense. They want us to grow square strawberries! They must be potty.' She had been introduced as Lady Mary Parsloe, the wife of Eddie Parsloe, the neat, pretty-faced man from the consular service who wore, whenever his wife was speaking, a smile of agonized patience. ‘Mary,' he told us, ‘is more of a gardener than a diplomat.'

‘If you'd lost five great-uncles at Passchendaele and a father shot a week before V.E. Day, I don't think you'd be diplomatic, would you, Mr Rumpole?'

‘And Mary's direct ancestor lost his leg at Waterloo, didn't he, dear?'

‘That was a mere trifle.' She brushed her husband off as though he were a cloud of gnats bothering her weeding. ‘Come on, Mr Rumpole, speak up. Don't you think it's potty?'