"Mortimer, John - Rumpole on Trial" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mortimer John)
58 the first, and then she walked quickly to her car' g°t in and started the engine. She didn't drive away at once, however. I saw her lift the car phone. She was still talking to it when I walked away towards the Old Bailey and a Isss sensational trial with no beautiful witnesses.
It was not only the ghastly case of harassment reported by Erskine-Brown that persuaded Soapy Sam Ballai'd that moral standards were breaking down all over (he world and * particularly in 3 Equity Court. Liz and her co-mortgagee managed to produce another sensational scandal. Young David Inchcape was off doing a long arson in Birmingham and Liz wanted to talk to him urgently about a divorce case in which he was for the husband and she for the wife. The matter was called Singleton v. Singleton, and I iz's client was an ex Miss Broadstairs who was dissatisfied With the payoff of twenty thousand smackers offered to her by the filthy rich garage proprietor who she was now divorcing, So Liz put a call through to Dave in the Birmingham robing room. As they discussed the case, as barristers often do, they identified so closely with their clients that they adopted their characters as their own.
'Well, you know perfectly well I'm having baby, Dave,' Liz was saying as Ballard entered her room in search of his missing Archbold on Criminal Law, which he suspected everyone in Chambers of half-inching.
Our Head of Chambers stood in amazement as Liz, ignoring him completely, continued her call. Reconstructing it as best I can from her recollection of it, it must have gone something like this: 'Of course, the baby's yours! There's not a scrap of evidence it's not yours. The Chairman of the Council? I've never even been out with the Chairman of the Council. He boasted about it in the golf club? All men boast, don't they? An right, if that's your case I'll demand a blood test and take you for every penny. Of course you can afford it. I know exactly how much you're drawing in cash out of that garage b inc ' Ballard was, I have no doubt, even more shocked at the talk 59 of a commercial garage than he had been at the news of the expected child. He was to hear little more because Liz was nearing the end of her diatribe.
'Right, I know you've got to go. But think about it, Dave.
We've got to get this settled once and for all. Of course, I miss you.' So she put down the phone and left the room, saying, ThenI They're totally irresponsible,' as she passed our Head of Chambers. And he was so astonished that he even forgot to ask about his Archbold.
As he always took a long time to make up his mind on any subject, Ballard took no action on the Liz-Inchcape scandal for a while. However, when Dave got back from the Midlands and met our Head coming out as he was going into Chambers a curious conversation took place. Ballard opened with, 'Oh, Inchcape. A quick word with you of a preliminary nature.
There may be more to come at a later stage, much more. But as your Head of Chambers I'm bound to advise you to get rid of your garage.' 'But we haven't got a garage in Islington.' Young Dave was totally mystified. 'We have to keep the Deux Chevaux in the street. That's why we can never get it to start on cold mornings.' 'I'm not talking of Islington, Inchcape. Forget Islington.
Remember, a barrister does not engage in trade. Get rid of the business.' 'But Ballard, what business?' Inchcape asked helplessly.
'You've got to choose.' Soapy Sam was remorseless. 'I tell you that quite frankly. It's either the petrol pumps and video tapes, and bunches of flowers and all that sort of thing. Or Chambers. We'll go into the other side of it later, but at the moment forget all about garages. Do I make myself clear?' So Ballard went about his business and Dave Inchcape was left, saying after him, 'Not in the least!5 A? always Mr Bernard played his part with admirable ef, tx ficiency and I soon found myself briefed and in the interview room at Brixton with Desmond Casterini, who looked, as he had done at the piano, as though he were wandering vaguely 60 in a twilight world and would only return to ours with considerable reluctance. It was with difficulty that I persuaded him to give factual answers to simple questions, but at last I led him to deal with the message on the answering machine in the flat he shared with his wife, Elizabeth. It was from the dead man and no doubt left on the day of the murder, for the police had found it there when they took Desmond home and made a search of his premises.
'The message was from Tom Randall,' I reminded him.
'He wanted to meet you and said it was to discuss your lives since Dreams of Youth. Did you know what that meant?' 'I suppose from the time we three started together.' 'And you made a note on the pad by the machine: tom at the room six o'clock. Did you think he might be going to tell you that he and your wife were lovers?' 'Dear God, Mr Rumpole! It didn't cross my mind.' Casterini shivered as though the thought chilled him to the marrow. 'I never had a single moment of doubt or suspicion about Elizabeth. Not a shadow, I can assure you.' 'Did you not? The Prosecution are going to suggest that you shot Tom Randall in a fit of jealous rage.' 'I gave you my oath, Mr Rumpole, by the great musicians I hold most dear: Mozart, Haydn, Schubert...' He started on a litany which I thought would strike few notes down the Old Bailey.
'Just a simple "no" will do. We might hit a judge who thinks those chaps are runners in the 3.30 at Kempton Park.
This rehearsal room, did you rent it permanently?' 'We did, yes. We liked to use it whenever we pleased.' 'Wasn't that rather expensive?' 'Oh, Elizabeth has money, you know. Comfortably off. She started to make it at college. She opened a boutique to sell wonderful clothes second-hand, vintage model dresses. She was able to help Tom out when we started, so he didn't have to take so many other jobs. We're lucky in that respect. Very fortunate.' I felt that among all this information there was a nugget of great importance. I sat in silence for a while, trying to identify 61 it. Then I asked about something that had been on my mind for a long time. 'Apparently there was a trial when your wife was at college.' 'She told me about that,' Casterini answered without hesitation.
'They'd got to know a man called Hoffman. He'd left the college and become a musicians' agent. It seems he was also an agent for hard drugs. There was a boy in college called Billy Munn accused of being in the ring, he was a friend of Elizabeth's. Hoffman went down for ten years but Elizabeth's friend Billy was acquitted.' 'Must have had a brilliant barrister.' I didn't want to boast.
'Of course I didn't know her in those days.' 'You weren't at college together?' I don't know why that fact surprised me.
'No, I went to Guildhall. I met the other two later and we started playing together. Then we formed the Casterini Trio.
Elizabeth's money helped.' 'I bet it did.' And then I turned to a more dangerous subject. 'Now. The Colt revolver. You kept it, and ammunition?' 'My old father, bless him, always slept with it loaded under his pillow. In our house in Lissmaglen.' Casterini seemed quite prepared to talk about the murder weapon. 'He was a poet by profession, but some of the bad boys were after his blood.' 'Have you any idea how that old family heirloom got behind the piano?' 'No idea in the world. I swear to you, sir, by...' 'Never mind about all that. You got the message around midday. Did you stay at home after you got it?' 'No, I went to lunch with my sister, Siobhan. She doesn't come over from Dublin often. We went to a film together and had tea.' ". 'You arrived at the building just after six?' 'The news had started on the car radio. That's exactly right.' (, 'What happened then?' 'Well, the lift was stuck, it's always stuck. It's a kind of prehistoric conveyance, Mr Rumpole.' 62 'And then?' 'I started to walk up the stairs.' 'Did you see anyone on your way up?' 'Not a solitary soul, I swear it. The place is usually empty at that time. People are away at concerts and so on.' 'When you got up to your room, was the door open?' 'It was closed. Not locked, of course.' His recollection seemed surprisingly clear.
'And then you found Mr Randall?' 'He was lying on the floor. I knelt down and felt his heart.
That's how I got blood...' 'Yes, of course. That will be our defence.' Our defence, our whole defence and nothing but our defence. I was silent again and then I said, as I felt I had to, 'Mr Casterini, in a matter as serious as this some people might want a Q.C. to defend them.' 'A what?' The pianist was clearly a child as far as the law was concerned.
'A Q.C. Queen's Counsel. Queer Customer. I'm not saying he'd do it any better. Probably worse. But I'm sure you realize it's a difficult case.' 'I'll rely on you, Mr Rumpole.' He was quite sure about it.
'Elizabeth told me you were a wonderful man.' 'Did she really?' It was ridiculous how pleased I was. 'Did she say that?' As we were leaving Brixton, where prisoners not yet convicted are now kept in conditions that are considerably worse than those enjoyed there a hundred years ago, when we were out in the free world, away from the stench of chamberpots and the jangle of warders' keys, I asked my instructing solicitor what I had come to think of as the thousand-dollar question. 'In all your long experience, Mr Bernard, have you ever known a villain leave his weapon at the scene of the crime?' 'Casterini might have thought he'd hidden it and he'd come back for it later. I mean, he couldn't walk out of the building with it then, could he? Seeing as he met the trumpet blower on the stairs.' 63 'What colourful lives these musicians lead'.' And then I said, 'I want you to find out everything you can about the Hoffman drug case. It was on at the Old Bailey about ten years ago. Newspaper reports, everything.' 'How's all that going to help us?' 'I don't know yet. I don't honestly know at all. But we're acting for Mr Casterini. And remember, he's liable to get potted, unless we can think of some alternative explanation.
So, Bonny Bernard, let us get to work!' We set about to prepare our defence. We visited Butterworth Buildings and found the porter who, cowering behind a closed door and over a gas-fire, was unlikely to keep any check on the arrivals and departures. As apparently was often the case, the lift was stuck on the sixth floor, so we slogged up a dusty and ill-lit staircase. On the fourth floor we heard the horns of elfland faintly blowing and I assumed that Mr Peter Matheson was in residence and at work. On the fifth we went into the Casterini rehearsal room and saw only a few chairs, music stands, an upright piano, shelves for music, a table with paraphernalia to make coffee and a scrubbed patch of floor which had once been blood-stained. On the sixth floor we found the lift had stuck because the gate hadn't been shut properly. I saw a passage and a door marked fire exit.
Something made me push the bar which opened it and we found a platform which led to a rusty iron fire-escape with stairs down to the street, a long way below.
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