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

I'm afraid I rarely lunch out nowadays. In fact I do nothing except work.', ""

'All work and no play makes Mr Rumpole a dull boy. he 174slapped my wrist lightly. 'And I'm sure you're not that, are you? Be seeing you!' And with that she was gone, with a whiff of Deadly Sins, a carillon ░f costume jewellery and the relentless beat of her high heels on the entrance hall of the Uxbridge Magistrates Court. Three evenings later the telephone rang in Froxbury Mansions. Hilda answered it, frowned with extreme displeasure and handed me the instrument with a grim 'There's a woman asking for you who rejoices in the name of Bambi Etheridge.' 'Oh,' I said weakly, 'what does she want?' 'God knows what she wants with you, Rumpole. You'd better ask her.' 'Yes!' I barked into the instrument in a way which I hoped would put an end once and for all to the hideous notion that I am in the least cuddly. 'Rumpole speaking.' 'Oh, dear.' The Etheridge menace appeared to coo down the line. 'Is it a bad moment? Are you with your wife? Ought I to have pretended to be the Water Board or something?' 'No,' I said firmly, 'I don't think you can.' 'Can what, Mr Rumpole? What are you suggesting? I only rang to invite you to lunch.' 'I don't think you can get costs against the police. Yes. I know you won. But you did hit a lamp-post. It was quite a reasonable prosecution to bring. I'm sorry. That's my final legal opinion.' 'Oh, of course,' Bambi purred understandingly. 'Yo11 can't talk now, can you? I'll ring again.' 'Don't do it,' I said. 'You'll be throwing good money after bad by appealing.' 'What a thing to say! You're not bad money are you, Mr Rumpole? I said I'll ring again when you're not in the bosom of your family. By-ee.' 'Stupid woman!' I said when I put the phone down. 'She ants to appeal on costs.' 'Oh, yes?' Hilda looked at me with profound disbelief. 'Is at why she called you my lovely husband?' ░he didn't?' i75 RifSpole a la Carte 'She did to me. I said, "Hilda Rumpole speaking," and she sail, "Oh, yes. And is your lovely husband about by any ctoce?'"

'Look', I felt called on to defend myself on a most serious charge of which I was undoubtedly innocent, having been put in Ae frame by the appalling Bambi, 'she's only a customer.' Veil, that poor girl was only a customer of Dr Rahmat's, waa't she? And look what happened to her!' And She Who Mist Be Obeyed adjourned for supper, clearly having made uplier mind without the need for further argument.

I did get taken out for an expensive lunch not long after that fatil phone call, and I was invited by a lady whose brains and beauty far exceeded the modest attainments in either of those detriments by Bambi Etheridge. Mrs Phillida ErskineBrcivn, Q.c., our Portia, knocked at my door in Chambers late ondTiorning and said, 'Come on, you old devil. I'm taking you out to lunch.' Expecting a couple of sandwiches at Pomme'oy's, I was surprised when she said, 'Savoy Grill suit you, would it?' Veil,' I admitted, 'if we're really roughing it. But what's cone over you, Portia? Are they putting you on the High Court Bench?' 'They're not putting me anywhere. The question is, where ami putting myself? I'm just about fed up, Rumpole. I've had it up to here. So we're going out to spend what's left of Claude's money and I hope he finds that boring!' With which enigmatic statement she set off along the Strand at a pace so brisk that I had to break into a trot to keep up with her.

]t was not until we were seated on the plush and had our hards round a couple of cocktails that Phillida started to unlurden herself. 'Rumpole,' she said, 'tell me honestly. Am I boihg?' 'Whatever gave you that idea?' '.to I a rut?' v 'Scarcely.' 'Humdrum? Would you call me humdrum?' I looked at our Portia. Her hair was reddish, inclined to 176eold. Her face, that of one of the most intelligent PreRaphaelite models, had grown, I thought, finer in the years since I had known her. The formal white blouse and dark suit, combined with the horn rims she used to read the menu, merely added to that charm which had, in the past, completely turned the heads of such connoisseurs of feminine beauty as the Hon. Mr Justice Featherstone. As I looked at her, the only wonder was how, all those years ago, she had been put in the club and then married by a character as un-exotic as my learned friend, Claude Erskine-Brown.

'Run of the mill. Am I run of the mill?' 'You are certainly not.' Apart from her beauty, Mrs Erskine-Brown has brains. Not for nothing had I named her Portia. When she spoke up for the Defence the general opinion in the jury-box was that if a nice girl like that was on his side, the villain in the dock couldn't be nearly as black as he was painted. When prosecuting, she could pot the prisoner with all the aplomb of the Avenging Angel on a good day.

Then,' she now said, 'are all the same!' 'Are we? I'm not sure I'm exactly like Claude.' 'Perhaps not you, Rumpole. You're not really interested, are you?' 'Not interested in what?' 'In what everyone else who happens to be male seems to spend their time thinking about, sex.' 'Oh, that,' I said, and gave a small shudder of fear at the thought of returning home to be cooed at over the telephone by Bambi.

'They're all the same. Take that wretched doctor of yours.' 'DrRahmat?' A woman only has to wander into his surgery with a sore throat and he's trying to get into her knickers. Just like Claude.' Claude looks after people with sore throats?' I wasn't follow" her drift.

'H get him, though. I'll cross-examine the life out of him. e U be struck off for ten years.' 'Claude?' 'No. Dr Rahmat.' 'What's Dr Rahmat got to do with it?' 'I'm prosecuting him before the General Medical Council.' 'First rate!' I tried to sound enthusiastic, but I saw the unhappy doctor's hopes fading rapidly. 'I'll have a foeman worthy of my steel. Foe-woman, I'm sorry. You have to be so careful when you talk to lady barristers nowadays.' 'I don't know how you could defend a person like that.' 'You know I have to defend a person like anyone.' 'But you couldn't defend a real snake.' 'Dr Rahmat?' 'No!' And she added in such a tone that I came to the conclusion that hell hath absolutely no fury like a Mrs Phillida Erskine-Brown, Q.c. scorned, 'Claude!' 'All right,' I said. 'What's Claude done now?' As the waiter had set smoked salmon and Sancerre before us, it seemed a suitable moment to get on with putting the indictment. By way of answer, Mrs Erskine-Brown opened the slender black brief-case she had brought with her and produced a copy of a somewhat lurid magazine called Casanova. On the cover of this publication a bikini-clad young woman disported herself with a medicine ball, both articles looking as though they had been inflated with a bicycle pump.

'Let me read you this.' Phillida flicked through what were, no doubt, distressing pages of photographs and came to rest among the advertisements which, when I got a chance to examine them at my leisure, were mostly of the lonely hearts variety.

' "Barrister. Good-looking and young at heart,"' Phillida read in tones of such disgust that they almost put me off my lunch.

' "In a rut. Bored with the humdrum of married life. Seeks a new partner for the occasional fling. Country walks, operagoing, three-star restaurant treats and all the other pleasures of life. Tall and slender preferred. Write with a photograph, 'f possible, to..." And there's a box number. There you ardjr Read it for yourself if you want to.' She almost threw the(tm) exhibit at me, drained her wine glass at a gulp and ordered us 178both a refill from the waiter. I glanced at it as I asked, 'So how do you connect this with Claude?' 'It's obvious, isn't it? He's a barrister and "opera-going".' 'There are about four thousand barristers and some of them must go to the Opera. I don't think, Mrs Erskine-Brown, that your evidence is absolutely conclusive.' 'I found this in his room in Chambers, Rumpole,' Phillida said between gritted teeth. 'Now. What further proof do you want?' 'I see.' This last piece of testimony did seem to have landed the unfortunate Claude in the manure. 'Well,' I admitted, 'things are beginning to look rather black for the accused.' As I said this, I was glancing further down the page of Casanova and found boxes announcing the service of 'escorts' and ladies equipped to give massage treatment 'in the hotel or home'.

These announcements were embellished with photographs and one struck me as familiar. It was under the heading naughty MARIETTA WILL KEEP YOU COMPANY AT DINNERS OUT OR business functions. There was a snap of this companionable girl. Her hair had been done over more elaborately than when she appeared in the Daily Beacon, but there was no mistaking the wide eyes and small, even features and slightly protruding teeth of Miss Liptrott, the girl who was about to bring about the downfall of Doctor Rahmat.

During the beef and Beaujolais, our Portia rattled on about her husband's character defects and his pathetic failure even to be unfaithful without advertising for it in the public prints.

Then, perhaps, feeling she had confided too much, she remembered a conference in Chambers, paid the bill and left me.

She went so hurriedly, in fact, that I found myself still in possession of the copy of Casanova, and I finished the Brouilly, which would never have been seen dead in Pommeroy's, and again contemplated the features of the undoubted Miss Liptrott.

Dr Rahmat's case seemed to follow me around that day, ░r, glancing across die restaurant, I spotted the large, muscular d jovial figure of Dr Tim Cogger, lunching profusely with someone I recognized as the fellow with the brief-case, who ad apparently been trying to flog his pills and potions around i79 the quackery. I raised what remained in my glass in salutations but Dr Rahmat's senior partner, although he glanced in my direction, seemed not to have noticed me at all.

When I got back to my room in Chambers, I propped Casanova up on my desk, got a line from Henry and started to dial. I heard a ringing tone and, as I was saying, 'Is that the Naughty Marietta escort service?', I was aware of the door opening and our Head of Chambers sidled into the room and stood agape as I heard the whispered reply, 'Yes. This is Marietta speaking.' 'Marietta Liptrott, I presume?' 'Who are you? Are you the newspapers?' 'No, I promise you. Just someone in need of an escort. I heard from a friend that you were a very companionable young lady.' 'Oh, well. Yes. I suppose that's all right.' There was a pause but no denial of the name. 'When's the function?' 'It's not for me, actually.' I raised my voice slightly and turned to smile at the intruder. 'It's for a friend of mine. He wants to take you along to add a little colour to a ladies' night at the Lawyers As Christians Society. Call you back with the details.

Nice to talk to you. Miss Liptrott.' I put down the telephone.

'Rumpole! Is that your idea of a joke?' 'Well, you shouldn't have been standing there listening to a private conversation.' 'I couldn't help hearing that you were using Chambers telephone facilities to call up an escort agency.' 'Of course, you could help it. You could have beaten a hasty retreat.' 'Rumpole. You're a married man.' 'That has not escaped my attention.' 'I don't ask why you should feel the need to do that sort of thing...' 'Good. Nice to chat to you. Bollard. Now, if you don't mind '' closing the door on your way out...' He moved towards the exit and then paused. 'Rumpole,' he said solemnly, 'don't you think you ought to make a clean breast of it to Hilda?' 180'A clean br&ast of what?' 'The fact that you're troubled by those sort of, well, needs.' 'Ballard', I looked at tie man with pity, 'when you next feel the need to talk absolute balderdash, why don't you make a clean breast (of it to Mate;'?' He went then but was lack in a twinkling, his head round the door. 'I forgot why I dropped in,' he confessed.

'On the chamce of earwigging a salacious phone call?' I suggested.

'No, it wasn't that. Novl remember. I've had a word with Mrs Whittaker. It seems you've asked her to take a note for you in that G.M.C. caseofymrs. Are you sure it's not distasteful in any way?' 'I promise. She can res"rt to ear-plugs for the more sensational parts 'of the evidence.' When I was finally relieved of Bollard's comipany, I cortinued a close study of infectious mononucleosis in the Pnniples and Practice of Medicine I had got out of the llibrary. Thea I called on Mrs Erskine-Brown to return the incriminating magazine she had left with me in the restaurant.

'There you are,' I said, when I entered the comfortably appointed Q.C.'s room Ptiillida inhabited apart from her husband.

I dropped the distasteful magazine on her desk. 'You left the vital evidence intlie restaurant. What are you going to do to the unfoa-tunate Claude? Confront him with it?' 'No good att all.' She cane to a quick legal decision. 'He'd only say it wasn't him 01 something equally devious. No. I shall trap him with it. Leare him absolutely no way of escape.' Traps were being set all around by Phillida, not only for Claude but for the unfortunate Dr Rahmat as well.

There are some exquisite echoes in India; there is the whisper round the dome at Bijapui; there are the long, solid sentences that voyage through the air at Mandu, and return unbroken to their creator.' So wrote oil E. M. Forster, whose work I had turneto? together withtb Principles and Practice of Medicine, y way of preparation forthe struggle ahead. The old literary arling might well have had something to say about the echoes that the accusation against Dr Rahmat sent reverberating round the small world of Rumpole, to be half heard, mainly misunderstood and set up fresh rumours. One evening as we sat over our chops in Froxbury Mansions, Hilda, who had apparently caught one such echo said, 'I've arranged for you to see Dr Cogger.' 'Why on earth?' 'Well, you certainly can't see Dr Rahmat. I don't know why on earth you're defending him.' 'I'm defending him because he's in trouble.' 'Anyway, that Marguerite Ballard rang up and said Sam was worried about you and that you'd seemed rather strange lately.