"Mortimer, John - Rumpole on Trial" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mortimer John)

I remember my first conference with Tracy's parents, because on that morning Hilda and I had a slight difference of opinion on the subject of the Scales of Justice Ball. This somewhat grizzly occasion is announced annually on a heavily embossed card which arrived, with the gas bill and various invitations to insure my life and go on Mediterranean cruises, on the Rumpole breakfast table.

I had launched this invitation towards the tidy bin to join the tea leaves and the eggshells when Hilda, whose eagle eye misses nothing, immediately retrieved it, shook various particles of food off it and challenged me with, 'And why are you throwing this away, Rumpole?' 'You don't want to go, Hilda.' I did my best to persuade her. 'Disgusting sight. Her Majesty's judges, creaking round in the fox trot at the Savoy Hotel. You wouldn't enjoy it.' 'I suppose not, Rumpole. Not in the circumstances.' 'Not in what circumstances?' 'It's too humiliating.' 'I quite agree.' I saw her point at once. 'When Mr Justice Graves breaks into the valeta I hang my head in shame.' 'It's humiliating for me, Rumpole, when other chaps in Chambers lead their wives out on to the floor.' 'Not a pretty sight, I have to agree, the waltzing Bollards, the pirouetting Erskine-Browns.' 'Why do you never lead me out on to the dance floor nowadays, Rumpole?' She asked me the question direct. 'I sometimes dream about it. We're at the Scales of Justice Ball.

At the Savoy Hotel. And you lead me out on to the floor, as the first lady in Chambers.' 'You are, Hilda,' I hastened to agree with her, 'you're quite definitely the senior...' 'But you never lead me out, Rumpole! We have to sit there, staring at each other across the table, while all around us couples are dancing the night away.' 'Hilda', I decided to disclose my defence, 'I have, as you know, many talents, but I'm not Nijinsky. Anyway, we don't get much practice at dancing down the Old Bailey.' 'Oh, it doesn't matter. When is the ball? Marigold Featherstone told me but I can't quite remember.' I saw, with a sort of dread, that she was checking the food-stained invitation to answer her question. 'November the i8th! It just happens to be my birthday. Well, we'll stay at home, as usual.

At least I won't have to sit and watch other happy people dancing together.' And now she applied the corner of a handkerchief to her eye. 'Please, Hilda,' I begged, 'not the waterworks!' At which she sniffed bravely and dismissed me from her presence, 'No, of course not. Go along now. You've got to get to work. Work's the only thing that matters to you.

You'd rather defend a murderer than dance with your wife.' 'Well, yes. Perhaps,' I had to admit. 'Look, do cheer up, old thing. Please.' She gave me her last lament as I moved towards the door.

'Old, yes, I suppose. We're both too old for a party. And I'll just have to get used to the fact that I didn't marry a dancer.' 'Sorry, Hilda.' So I left She Who Must Be Obeyed, sitting alone in the kitchen and looking, as I thought, genuinely unhappy. I had seen her miffed before. I had seen her outraged. I had seen her, all too frequently, intensely displeased at some item of Rumpole's behaviour which fell short of perfection. But I was unprepared for the sadness which seemed to have engulfed her. Had she spent her life imagining she was Ginger Rogers, and was she at last reconciled to the fact that I had neither the figure nor the top hat to play whatever his name was, Astaire?

For a moment a sensation to which I am quite unused came over me. I felt inadequate. However, I pulled myself together and pointed myself in the direction of my Chambers in the Temple, where I knew I had a conference with a couple of Timsons in what I imagined would be no more than a routine case of petty thievery.

I had acted for Cary before in a little matter of lead removed from the roof of Crockthorpe Methodist Church. He was tall and thin, and usually spoke in a slow, mocking way as though he found the whole of life slightly amusing. He didn't look amused now. His wife, Roz, was a solid girl in her late twenties with broad cheek-bones and capable hands. In attendance was the faithful Mr Bernard, who, from time immemorial, has acted as the Solicitor-General to the Timson family.

'They wouldn't let Tracy take even a doll. Not one of her Barbies. How do you think people could do that to a child?' Roz asked me when Mr Bernard had outlined the facts of the case. Her eyes were red and swollen and, as she sat in my client's chair, nervously twisting her wedding ring, she looked not much older than a child herself.

'Nicking your kid. That's what it's come to. Well, I'll allow us Timsons may have done a fair bit of mischief in our time.

But no one in the family's ever stooped to that, Mr Rumpole.' And Cary Timson added for greater emphasis, 'People what nick kids get boiling cocoa poured on their heads, when they're inside like.' 'Cary worships that girl, Mr Rumpole,' Roz told me. 'No matter what they say.' 'Take a look at these', her husband was already pulling out his wallet, 'and you'll see the reason why.' So the brightly coloured snaps were laid proudly on my desk and I saw the three of them on a Spanish beach, at a theme park or on days out in the country. The mother and father held their child aloft, in the manner of successful athletes with a golden prize, triumphantly and with unmistakable delight.

'Bloody marvellous, isn't it?' Gary's gentle mocking hadturned to genuine anger. 'Eight years old and our Trace needs a brief.' 'You'll get Tracy back for us, won't you, Mr Rumpole?' I thought Roz must have given birth to this much-loved daughter when she was about seventeen. 'She'll be that unhappy.' 'You seen the photos, Mr Rumpole.' And Cary asked, 'Does she have the look of a villain?' 'I'd say not a hardened criminal,' I had to admit.

'What's her crime, Mr Rumpole? That's what Roz and I wants to know. It's not as though she nicked things ever.' 'Well, not really, ' And Roz admitted, 'She'll take a Jaffa cake when I'm not looking, or a few sweets occasionally.' 'Our Tracy's too young for any serious nicking.' Her father was sure of it. 'What you reckon she done, Mr Rumpole?

What they got on her charge-sheet?' 'Childhood itself seems a crime to some people.' It's a point that has often struck me.

'Bloody marvellous, isn't it?' Gary's gentle mocking hadturned to genuine anger. 'Eight years old and our Trace needs a brief.' 'You'll get Tracy back for us, won't you, Mr Rumpole?' I thought Roz must have given birth to this much-loved daughter when she was about seventeen. 'She'll be that unhappy.' 'You seen the photos, Mr Rumpole.' And Cary asked, 'Does she have the look of a villain?' 'I'd say not a hardened criminal,' I had to admit.

'What's her crime, Mr Rumpole? That's what Roz and I wants to know. It's not as though she nicked things ever.' 'Well, not really, ' And Roz admitted, 'She'll take a Jaffa cake when I'm not looking, or a few sweets occasionally.' 'Our Tracy's too young for any serious nicking.' Her father was sure of it. 'What you reckon she done, Mr Rumpole?

What they got on her charge-sheet?' 'Childhood itself seems a crime to some people.' It's a point that has often struck me.

'We can't seem to get any sense out of that Miss Jones.' Roz looked helpless.

'Jones?' 'Officer in charge of case. Tracy's social worker.' 'One of the "caring" community.' I was sure of it.

'All she'll say is that she's making further inquiries,' Mr Bernard told me.

'I never discovered what I'd done when they banged me up in a draughty great boarding-school at the age of eight.' I looked back down the long corridor of years and began to reminisce.

'Hear that, Roz?' Cary turned to his wife. 'They banged up Mr Rumpole when he was a kid.' 'Did they, Mr Rumpole? Did they really?' But before I could give them further and better particulars of the bird I had done at Linklaters, that downmarket public school I attended on the Norfolk coast, Mr Bernard brought us back to the fantastic facts of the case and the nature of the charges against Tracy. 'I've been talking to the solicitor for the Local Authority,' he reported, 'and their case is that the Juvenile Timson has been indulging in devil worship, hellish rituals and satanic rights.' It might be convenient if I were to give you an account of that filmed interview with Dominic Molloy which, as I have told you, we finally saw at the trial. Before that, Mr Bernard had acquired a transcript of this dramatic scene, so we were, by bits and pieces, made aware of the bizarre charges against young Tracy, a case which began to look as though it should be transferred from Crockthorpe Juvenile Court to Seville to be decided by hooded inquisitors in the darkest days of the Spanish Inquisition.

The scene was set in the Headmistress's office in Stafford Cripps Junior. Mirabelle Jones, at her most reassuring, sat smiling on one side of the desk, while young Dominic Molloy, beaming with self-importance, played the starring role on the other.

'You remember the children wearing those horrid masks at school, do you, Dominic?' Mirabelle kicked off the proceedings.

'They scared me!' Dominic gave a realistic shudder.