"Mortimer, John - Rumpole A La Carte" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mortimer John)

Sorry, I'll save that for the Jury. You can still keep your mouth shut, if that's what we think you ought to do. Silence can't be evidence of guilt.' 'Audrey Wystan says you've won a lot of cases,' Clympton began doubtfully.

'I've won more murders than you've had degrees, Professor.' 'And you've got people off who refused to answer questions?' he asked, anxiously.

'When I thought it was right for them to do so. Yes.' 'It's right now.' His mouth closed firmly, his beard jutted.

He seemed to have made up his mind.

'I'll consider that,' I told him, 'when I know a little more about your case.' 'I've decided already.' In the ensuing quiet I pulled out my watch, lit a small cigar and told him that he had an hour of my time and if he wouldn't discuss the case perhaps he'd rather we talked about Wordsworth.

'If you like.' He shrugged his broad shoulders and looked sullen. I wondered why young Audrey, and perhaps Mrs Charles, found him so attractive, but men never know that about other men. Then I had second thoughts about the topic for the day. 'No, we shan't agree about Wordsworth. Let's discuss your Vice-Chancellor, Hay den Charles. A slightly built man who crashed through some worm-eaten banisters to his death on a marble floor. Pushed, no doubt, by a stronger opponent. You didn't like him?' 'I didn't like his money-mad politics, or his way of running the University.' 'And Mrs Charles?' 'She was a good friend.' The Professor sounded cautious.

H, 'As a matter of fact, she reads a lot of poetry.' 'Read it together, do you?' I made so bold as to ask.

'Sometimes. Mercy's very bright, for an ex-model.' 90'And I'm very bright for an Old Bailey hack. I can see a motive rearing its ugly head.' 'I don't understand.' I think he understood perfectly well, but I spelled it out all the same. 'Husband finds out about his beautiful wife's infidelity. Has it out with the lover in his study on the first floor of his house. A row develops and continues on the stairs. It becomes violent. The lover's bigger than the husband. He takes him by the throat, that's where there were bruises, finger marks but no finger-prints. The lover pushes the husband into the banisters. They're not built of reinforced concrete like the rest of Gunster University and they collapse.

End of outraged husband. The lover runs out into the night.

And that, my Lord, is the case of the Prosecution.' I ground out the remains of my small cigar in the top of the cocoa tin provided as an ashtray.

'The Prosecution can believe that if they want to,' the Professor said at last, with an unconvincing sort of defiance.

'And if the Jury believes it?' 'They won't have any evidence!' He was making the mistake of quarrelling with his defender, so I decided to confront him with the reality of the matter. 'I'll ask my learned junior to read us the statement of Mrs O'Leary, the housekeeper,' I said. Mizz Probert was quick to find the document in her bundle of papers and recited, 'Statement of Mrs Kathleen O'Leary. "I have been housekeeper at the Vice-Chancellor's house for ten years, and before that I worked for Mr and Mrs Charles in Oxford." Blah, blah, blah. "I have observed an intimate friendship develop between Mrs Charles and Professor Clympton." Blah, blah. "I heard quarrelling on the stairs shortly before 10 p.m. I heard Mr Charles's voice and another man's. All I heard the other man say clearly was something about 'licking the Chancellor's boots'.

I am quite sure I recognized Professor Clympton's voice."' 'DojyoM think I said that, then?' the Professor challenged me snd again I let him have the uncomfortable truth. 'It seems probable. That's exactly what I heard you say in the hearing of half a dozen other people that afternoon over tea and sandwiches.

Don't worry, old darling. I'm not going to give evidence for the Prosecution. Someone else might, though.' 9i 'Who?' 'Young Audrey Wystan, for one.' 'She won't.' 'You're very sure of her.' 'Oh, yes. Quite sure.' The Professor, I decided, was behind the door when modesty was handed out.

'The Professor of Classics?' 'Martin Wayfield's an old friend...' he began but I interrupted him.

'You were seen earlier by a young man called, What was his name? Peters?' Terkins. He'd just got a degree, ' Mizz Probert found the statement with her customary efficiency and Clympton told us, with a good deal of contempt ', in business studies. He was one of Hay den Charles's favourites.' 'Christopher Perkins saw Professor Clympton at about 9.15 p.m. He seemed to be in a hurry,' Liz reminded us and I reminded the Professor, 'Mrs O'Leary heard the front-door bell ring at twenty to ten. Charles called out that he was going to answer it, so she didn't see whoever arrived. Was it you?' 'No,' Clympton said after a long silence.

'Then you have to tell us exactly where you went and what you did between nine thirty and just after ten, when Mrs O'Leary found the Vice-Chancellor dead.' But there was no answer. 'Say something to us. Professor,' I begged him. 'Even if it's only goodbye.' After another long silence the Professor took refuge in literature.

'The sentimental approach to nature in Wordsworth's early poetry,' he told me, 'is his excuse for ignoring the conditions of the urban poor.' 'Say something sensible,' I warned him. 'Because if you don't, the Jury are going to find their own reasons for your silence, however much the Judge warns them not to.' 'Compare and contrast the deeper social message in George Eliot,' was all that Clympton had to say. " 'Where were you that night. Professor?' I tried for the last time, and as he still didn't answer, I stood up to go. 'All right, then. Keep quiet. You're entitled to. But there's one line of 92 :SSWordsworth it might pay you to remember, "All silent and all damn'd!'"

I can't help experiencing a strong feeling of relief when I walk out of the gates of Brixton prison. It's a case of 'There, but for the Grace of God, stay I.' As we emerged that morning Mizz Probert said, 'What's he got to hide, do you reckon?

Guilt?' 'Or he was tucked up somewhere with that ex-model girl you were talking about and he doesn't want to give her away,' Mr Beazley suggested.

'You soliciting gentlemen have got incurably romantic natures,' I told him. 'But there is one thing I can't understand about this case.' 'The silence of the Professor?' 'Not just that. The crime, if it were a crime, occurred up in Gunster, in the wilds of the North, your neck of the woods, Mr Beazley. All the witnesses are up there. But the Prosecution get him committed here in London and sent for trial at the Old Bailey. What's their exquisite reason for that?' 'Search me, Mr Rumpole.' My instructing solicitor was of no assistance.

'Shall we ever know, my Bonny Beazley?' I wondered. 'Shall we ever know?' It was a time when everyone in Chambers seemed to be coming to me for advice, so that I felt I ought to start charging them for it. I was busily engaged in trying to think out some reasonable line of defence in the Gunster murder when my learned friend, 1 Claude Erskine-Brown, put his head round the door to announce that his wife, Phillida, the Portia of our Chambers, was back from doing a corrupt policeman in Hong Kong..

'Then she can buy us a bottle of Pommeroy's bubbly on the ( oriental constabulary,' I suggested. 'We can celebrate!' 'Absolutely nothing to celebrate. In view of what she found when she got back.' Claude sat disconsolately in my client's chair and told me his troubles, as a non-fee-paying client. 'I'm "raid I had carelessly left two programmes for Tristan and Isolde at Covent Garden on the kitchen table.' 93 'Pretty scurrilous reading.' I understood the problem at once. 'Was our Portia shocked?' 'She asked whom I'd taken to the Opera.' 'Your wife can always get to the heart of a case, however complicated. She can put her finger on the nub!' 'Of course, I'd been with Liz Probert, as you remember,' Erskine-Brown confessed. 'We had a talk about the future of Chambers in the crush bar at Co vent Garden.' 'And I'm sure that when your wife heard that, Claude, she decided not to press charges.' 'That's exactly the trouble, Rumpole. She didn't hear that.

In fact, to be perfectly honest with you, I didn't tell her that. I told her I'd taken Uncle Tom.' 'You what?' 'I said I took Uncle Tom with me to the Opera.' 'Uncle Tom?' I couldn't believe my ears.

'Exactly.' 'To five hours of unmitigated Wagner?' It was incredible.