"Mortimer, John - Rumpole A La Carte" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mortimer John)
'It's perfectly simple, Hilda,' I told her, 'I shall abandon ship!' When I got up on the deck, there was, fortunately, no further sign of Graves, but a ship's officer, whom I later discovered to be the Purser, was standing by the rail and I approached him, doing my best to control my panic.
'I've just discovered,' I told him, 'I'm allergic to graves. I mean, I'm allergic to boats. It would be quite unsafe for me to travel. A dose of sea-sickness could prove fatal!' 'But, sir,' the purser protested. 'We're only just out of port.' 'I know. So you could let me off, couldn't you? I've just had terrible news.' 'You're welcome to telephone, sir.' 'No, I'm afraid that wouldn't help.' 'And if it's really serious we could fly you back from our next stop.' And he added the terrible words, 'We'll be at Gibraltar in three days.' Gibraltar in three days! Three days banged up on shipboard with the most unappetizing High Court judge since Jeffreys hung up his wig! I lay on my bed in our cabin as the land slid away from us and Hilda read out the treats on offer: '"Daily sweepstake on the ship's position. Constant video entertainment and films twice nightly. Steam-bath, massage and beauty treatment. Exercise rooms and fully equipped gymnasium", I think I'll have a steam-bath, Rumpole, "First fancy-dress ball immediately before landfall at Gib. Live it up in an evening of ocean fantasy. Lecture by Howard Swainton, world-famous, best-selling mystery novelist, on 'How I Think Up My Plots'.'"
Could he think up one on how to drown a judge?' Oh, do cheer up, Rumpole. Don't be so morbid. At five Ainy this evening it's Captain Orde's Welcome Aboard Folks rocktail party, followed by a dinner dance at eight forty-five. I can wear my little black dress.' 127 'The Captain's cocktail party?' I was by no means cheered up. 'To exchange small talk and Twiglets with Mr Justice Deathshead. No, thank you very much. I shall lie doggo in the cabin until Gibraltar.' 'You can't possibly do that,' She told me. 'What am I going to tell everyone?' 'Tell them I've gone down with a nasty infection. No, the Judge might take it into his head to visit the sick. He might want to come and gloat over me with grapes. Tell them I'm dead. Or say a last-minute case kept me in England.' 'Rumpole, aren't you being just the tiniest bit silly about this?' But I stuck desperately to my guns. 'Remember, Hilda,' I begged her, 'if anyone asks, say you're here entirely on your own.' I had not forgotten that Graves and She had met at the Sam Ballard-Marguerite Plumstead wedding, and if the Judge caught sight of her, he might suspect that where Hilda was could Rumpole be far behind? I was prepared to take every precaution against discovery.
During many of the ensuing events I was, as I have said, lying doggo. I therefore have to rely on Mrs Rumpole's account of many of the matters that transpired on board the good ship Boadicea, and I have reconstructed the following pages from her evidence which was, as always, completely reliable. (I wish, sometimes, that She Who Must Be Obeyed would indulge in something as friendly as a lie. As, for instance, 'I do think you're marvellous, Rumpole,' or 'Please don't lose any weight, I like you so much as you are!') Proceedings opened at the Captain's cocktail party when Hilda found herself part of a group consisting of the world-famed mystery writer, Howard Swainton, whom she described vividly as 'a rather bouncy and yappy little Yorkshire terrier of a man', a willowy American named Linda Milsom, whom he modestly referred to as his secretary, a tall, balding, fresh-complexioned, owlish-looking a cleric wearing gold-rimmed glasses, a dog-collar and an old tweed suit, who introduced himself as Bill Britwell, and his wife. Mavis, a rotund grey-haired lady with a face which 128 might once have been pretty and was now friendly and cheerful.
These people were in the act of getting to know each other when the Reverend Bill made the serious mistake of asking Howard Swainton what he did for a living.
'You mean you don't know what Howard does?' Linda, the secretary, said, as her boss was recovering from shock. 'You ought to walk into the gift shop. The shelves are just groaning with his best-sellers. Rows and rows of them, aren't there, Howard?' 'They seem to know what goes with the public,' Swainton agreed. 'My motto is keep 'em guessing and give 'em a bit of sex and a spot of mayhem every half-dozen pages. I'm here to research a new story about a mysterious disappearance on a cruise. I call it Absence of Body. Rather a neat title that, don't you think?' ? 'Howard's won two Golden Daggers,' Linda explained. 'And Time magazine called him "The Genius of Evil".' 'Let's say, I'm a writer with a taste for a mystery.' Swainton was ostentatiously modest.
'I suppose', Bill Britwell beamed round at the company 'that since I've been concerned with the greatest mystery of all, I've lost interest in detective stories. I do apologize.' 'Oh, really?' Swainton asked. 'And what's the greatest mystery?' 'I think Bill means,' his wife explained, 'since he's gone into the Church.' 'What I've always wanted,' the Reverend Bill told them, 'after a lifetime in insurance.' 'So you've joined the awkward squad, have you?' Swainton was a fervent supporter of the Conservative Party on television chat shows, and as such regarded the Church of England as a kind of Communist cell.
'I'm sorry?' Bill blinked, looking genuinely puzzled.
'The Archbishop's army of Reverend Pinkos', Swainton warmed to his subject, 'always preaching morality to the Government. I can't think why you chaps can't mind your own business.' Morality is my business now, isn't it?' Bill was still looking 129 irrepressibly cheerful. 'Of course, it used to be insurance. I came to all the best things late in life. The Church and Mavis.' At which he put an arm round his wife's comfortable shoulder.
'We're on our honeymoon.' Hilda told me that the elderly Mrs Britwell sounded quite girlish as she said this.
'Pleasure combined with business,' her husband explained.
'We're only going as far as Malta, where I've landed a job as padre to the Anglican community.' And then Hilda, intoxicated by a glass of champagne and the prospect of foreign travel, confessed that she was also on a honeymoon, although it was a second one in her case.
'Oh, really?' Swainton asked with a smile which Hilda found patronizing. 'And which is your husband, Mrs,? 'Rumpole. Hilda Rumpole. My husband is an extremely well-known barrister. You may have read his name in the papers?' 'I don't spend much time reading,' Swainton told her. 'I'm really too busy writing. And where is your Mr Rumbold?' 'Oh, well,' Hilda had to confess, 'he's not here.' 'You mean?', Swainton was smiling and inviting the group to enjoy the joke, 'you're having a second honeymoon with a husband who isn't here?' 'No. Well. You see something rather unexpected came up.' 'So, now', and Swainton could barely conceal his mirth 'you're having a second honeymoon on your own?' But Hilda had to excuse herself and hurry away, as she had seen, through the window of the saloon in which the Captain's cocktail party was taking place, stationed on a small patch of windy and rain-beaten deck, Rumpole signalling urgently for supplies.
What had happened was that, being greatly in need of sustenance and a nerve-cooling drink in my Ducal Class dugout (second only to the real luxury of Sovereign Class), I had rung repeatedly for a steward with absolutely no result. When I telephoned, I was told there would be a considerable delay as the staff were very busy with the Captain's cocktail party.
'The Captain's cock up, you mean,' I said harshly, and made my way to the outskirts of the port (or perhaps the starboard) 130 deck, where it took me considerable time to attract Hilda's attention through the window. 'Make your mind up, Rumpole,' She said when she came out. 'Are you in hiding or aren't you?' and 'Why don't you come in and meet a famous author?' 'Are you mad? He's in there.' I could see the skeletal figure of Graves in the privileged party around Captain Order. He was no doubt entertaining them with an account of the Rumpole clientele he had kept under lock and key.
'Really,' Hilda protested, 'this is no way to spend a honeymoon.
Mr Swainton looked as though he thought I'd done you in or something. Apparently he's doing research on a new book called Absence of Body. He says it's all about someone who disappears during a cruise.' 'Hilda,' I said, 'couldn't you do a bit of research on a glass or two of champagne? And on what they've got on those little bits of toast?' So She Who Must Be Obeyed, who has her tender moments, went off in search of provisions. I watched her go back into the saloon and make for the table where the guzzle and sluice were laid out. As she did so, she passed Mr Justice Graves. I saw him turn his head to look at her in a stricken fashion, then he muttered some apology to the Captain and was off out of the room with the sudden energy of a young gazelle.
It was then I realized that not only was Rumpole fleeing the Judge, the Judge was fleeing Rumpole.
Back in the cabin, Hilda put on her dress for the dinner dance and added the finishing touches to her maquillage, whilst I, wearing bedroom slippers and smoking a small cigar, paced my confinement like a caged tiger. 'And you'll really like the Britwells,' she was saying. 'He's going to be a parson in Malta. They're quite elderly, but so much in love. Do come up to dinner, Rumpole. Then we could dance together.' 'We did that on our first honeymoon!' I reminded her. 'And lt sn't an astonishing success, so far as I can remember.
Anyway, do you think I want Gravestone to catch me dancing?' don't know why you're so frightened of him, quite 131 honestly. You don't exactly cower in front of him in Court from all you tell me.' 'Of course I don't cower!' I explained. 'I can treat the old Deathshead with lofty disdain in front of a jury! I can thunder my disapproval at him on a bail application. I have no fear of the man in the exercise of my profession. It's his friendship I dread.' 'His friendship?' 'Oh, yes. That is why, Hilda, I have fled Judge Graves down the nights and down the days.' And here I gave my wife a heady draught of Francis Thompson: 'I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind, and in the mist of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter.' 'Well, there's not much running laughter for me', Hilda was displeased, 'going on a second honeymoon without a husband.' When Hilda was made-up, powdered and surrounded with an appropriate fragrance, she left me just as the Britwells were emerging from the cabin opposite. They were also in eveningdress and were apparently so delighted to see my wife that they cordially invited her to inspect the amenities which they enjoyed. As the Britwell berth seemed in every way a carbon copy of that provided for the Rumpoles, Hilda found it a little difficult to keep up an interesting commentary or show any genuine surprise at the beauty and convenience of their quarters.
At a loss for conversation she looked at their dressingtable where, she told me, two large photographs in heavy silver frames had been set up. The first was a recent wedding portrait of the Reverend and Mrs Britwell standing proudly together, arm-in-arm, outside a village church. The bride was not in white, which would have been surprising at her age, but she wore what Hilda called a 'rather ordinary little suit and a hat with a veil'. The other was a studio portrait of a pretty, smiling young girl in a sequined evening-gown. She asked if that were Bill's daughter, to which he laughed and said, 'Not 132 I;,., exactly.' Before she could inquire further I whistled to Hilda from our door across the corridor as I had an urgent piece of advice for her.
'For God's sake, if you see the Judge,' I warned her through a chink in our doorway, 'don't encourage the blighter. Please, don't dream of dancing with him!' I was not in the least reassured when She answered, 'You never know what I might dream of, Rumpole.' Hilda didn't dance with the Judge that night. Indeed Mr Injustice Graves didn't even put in an appearance at the function and was busily engaged in lying as low as Rumpole himself.
Most of the dancing was done by the Britwells, who whirled and twirled and chasseed around the place with the expertise of a couple of ballroom champions. 'Aren't they good?' Hilda was playing an enthusiastic gooseberry to Swainton and his secretary, Linda. 'Don't you think he dances rather too well?' Swainton sat with his head on one side and looked suspiciously at the glittering scene.
'I don't know exactly what you mean.' Hilda was puzzled, but Linda told her, 'Howard looks below the surface of life.
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