"Mortimer, John - Rumpole and the Honourable Member" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mortimer John)

'Fellow with glasses. Overcoat pockets stuffed with writs. Smokes a mixture of old bed socks?' I remember Myersy.

'That's him, Mr Rumpole. He thinks our only chance is to crucify the girl.'

'Seems a bit extreme.'

Now Albert started to reminisce, recalling my old triumphs.

'I remember you, sir. When you cross-examined the complainant in that indecent assault in the old Kilburn Alhambra. You brought out as he'd touched her up during the Movietone News.'

'And she admitted she'd sat through the whole of Rosemarie and a half-hour documentary about wild life on the River Dee before she complained to the manager!'

'As I recollect, she fainted during your questioning.'

' Got her on the wing around the tenth question.' It was true. The witness had plummeted like a partridge. Right out of the witness box!

'I told old Myersy that,' said Albert proudly. "'Will Rumpole be afraid of attacking her?" he said. I told him, "There's not a woman in the world my Mr Rumpole's afraid of.'"

I was, I suppose, a little late in returning to the mansion flat in Gloucester Road. As I hung up the coat and hat I was greeted by a great cry from the kitchen of 'Rumpole!' It was my wife Hilda, She Who Must Be Obeyed, and I moved towards the source of the shout, muttering, 'Being your slave, what should I do but tend, Upon the hours and times of your desire?'

In the kitchen, Mrs Rumpole was to be seen dimly as through a mist of feathers. She was plucking a bird.

'/ have no precious time at all to spend, Nor services to do till you require...'

'I was watching the clock,' Hilda told me, ignoring Shakespeare.

'I've been watching it since half past six!'

'Something blew up. A rape. I bought a bottle of plonk.' I put my peace-offering down on the table. Hilda told me that wouldn't be enough for the feast planned for the morrow, for which she was denuding a guinea-fowl. Our son Nick, back from his year at an American university, was bringing his intended, a Miss Erica Freyburg, to dinner with the family.

' If he's bringing Erica,' I said, ' I'll slip down to the health food centre and get a magnum of carrot juice.' I had already met my potential daughter-in-law, a young lady with strong views on dietary matters, and indeed on every other subject under the sun, whom Nick had met in Baltimore.

' Sometimes I think you're just jealous of Erica."

'Jealous? About Nicky?' I had got the bottle of plonk open and was sitting at the kitchen table, the snow of feathers settling gently.

'You want your son to be happy, don't you?'

' Of course. Of course I want him to be happy.' Then I put my problem to Hilda. 'Can you understand why an M.P., an Honourable Member, with a wife and a couple of kids should suddenly take it into his head to rape anyone?'

'An M.P.? What side's he on?'

'Labour.'

'Oh well then.' Hilda had no doubt about it. 'It doesn't surprise me in the least.'

The next day the Honourable Member, Ken Aspen, was sitting in my Chambers, flanked by his solicitor's clerk Myers and a calm, competent, handsome woman who was introduced to me as his wife, Anna. I suggested that she might find it less embarrassing to slip out while we discussed the intimate details, perhaps to buy a hat. Well, some judges still like hats on women in Court, but Mrs Aspen, Anna, told me that she intended to stay with her husband every moment that she could. A dutiful wife, you see, and the loyalty shone out of her.

Aspen spoke in a slightly modified public-school accent, and I thought the 'Ken' and the just flattened vowels were a concession to the workers, like a cloth cap on a Labour Member. Being a politician, he started off by looking for a compromise, couldn't I perhaps have a word with Miss Bridget Evans? No, I couldn't, nor could I form a coalition with the judge to defeat her on a vote of no confidence. I received 'Ken's' permission to call him 'Mr Aspen' and then I asked him to tell his story.