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

'Oh, yes, Chief Superintendent. And so was Pinhead Morgan. Did my client, Mr Gannon, come to you and say he thought Pertwee might have been framed?' 'I don't remember that.' 'And was that why you had to get rid of Gannon also? And was that why you had to make it look as though he'd forged a confession?' 'So far as I was concerned, he had forged a confession.' 'So far as you were concerned? It may interest the Jury to know just how far that was. Just look at that document, will you?' By now the usher had reached Chief Superintendent Belmont with my trump card and prize exhibit. He glanced at it with an apparent lack of interest. 'Is that a photostat copy of page two of Morgan's confession?' I asked.

'His alleged confession.' 'We won't argue about that for the moment. The handwriting is Mr Gannon's?' 'It would seem to be.' 'Peel it with your finger. Chief Superintendent. Look at it very closely. Has someone gone over every letter with a pencil, pressing down hard?' Belmont went through the operation half-heartedly and then, in a silent courtroom, he said, 'I can't tell.' 'Oh, yes, you can! I suggest someone did that so the impression of the letters would appear on the blank pages under it.

Then it would look to the machine as if that page had been written later. You're not suggesting that Mr Gannon manufactured this evidence against himself, are you?' At last the witness was at a loss for words, but his Lordship asked me where the document in question had come from.

'From the Chief Superintendent's office,' I was able to tell him.

I suppose I hadn't totally obliterated the once entirely confident Belmont. He hadn't fainted, or burst into tears, or begged the Judge to release my client without a stain on his character, or confessed to perverting the course of justice.

But, as cross-examinations go, I felt it rated at least nine out of ten and I went down to the cells, with the attendant Bernard, expecting a word or two of gratitude. What I got was something entirely different. I might have been an uncooperative murder suspect Gannon had to interview as he greeted me with, 'What the hell are you doing, Mr Rumpole?' 'Defending you, and rather well, though I say it myself.' 'All that you put to the Chief Superintendent. What's the public going to think?' 'What's the Jury going to think? That's what interests me.' But Roy Gannon was thinking of wider issues, and they clearly worried him. 'If that's going on at Chief Superintendent level, who've they going to trust?' 'Come on, Mr Gannon', I tried to bring him back to the business in hand, 'you had your suspicions about Pertwee's conviction. That was why Belmont was out to get you.' 'You can't prove that.' 'We've got a witness, Roy,' Bernard told him.

'Who?' 'Chesney Lane. We weren't certain he'd come out with it in the witness-box. They've been trying to shut him up, apparently.'

'I don't blame them,' Roy Gannon nodded, understanding his enemies. 'Let young Chesney blow the whole division, the Chief Superintendent and Geoff Farraday? That's really going to take the tin lid off it!' 'I imagine he's going to tell the truth.' I had never had a less self-interested client.

'Do you think that's going to make it any better?' The Detective Superintendent looked doubtful.

'Better for you. We might even get you off.' 'I mean, better for the police?' It was time, I realized, to make my position clear, so I gave him half a minute of the Rumpole creed. 'Listen to me, Mr Gannon. Listen. The police, the Judges, the public interest, the interests of justice, all those big words, those big ideas they're too much for me, altogether too much. I've got a job to do. Maybe it's a small job, but to me it seems important.

I'm here to see that no one gets banged up for a crime they probably didn't do. That's quite likely to happen to you, unless you help me.' But Gannon still looked doubtful and shook his head. 'I don't want young Chesney saying all that out in public.' 'Think about it, Roy,' Mr Bernard told him. 'You've got until tomorrow to think about it.' The next morning Miles Crudgington was in a particularly confident mood. He no doubt thought that I'd shot my bolt with Belmont and had no evidence to support the attack. So he told the Judge that Detective Sergeant Lane could corroborate D.I. Farraday's evidence. He would therefore tender him as a witness in case Mr Rumpole had any questions.

Mr Rumpole had plenty of questions but would his client let them be asked? I turned to take instructions and saw Mr Bernard standing by the dock muttering to our client.

'Have I any questions?' I asked in a resonant whisper. To my relief it seemed that good sense and Bernard had prevailed so I turned, in the friendliest manner, towards the witness.

'Detective Sergeant Lane, since you made your original statement, have you thought further about the matter?' 'Yes, I have.' 109 'And now?' 'Now I want to tell the truth.' The answer riveted the attention of the Jury and took the Judge by surprise. My opponent seemed about to rise and object but then thought better of it. So I ploughed on steadily.

'When you and Detective Inspector Farraday were alone with Pinhead, did Mr Farraday say something to him?' 'He said he'd get Ted Yeomans's mate to do him over.' 'Did Mr Gannon know anything about that threat?' 'Not that I know of.' 'But the next day Pinhead Morgan made a confession to the Superintendent?' 'Yes, he did. He said, "I'm sorry I cut the copper. I was all excited, what with the car racing and that."' 'You heard Pinhead say that?' 'Yes, I did.' 'Can you tell whether he said it because D. I. Farraday had threatened him or because it was true?' 'How can he possibly answer that?' My opponent could no longer keep still.

'Thank you, Mr Crudgington. I'm grateful to my learned friend for giving the answer I wanted.' Having disposed of the interruption I turned back to the witness. 'Mr Lane, is that a photostat of page two of the confession Mr Gannon wrote out?' Once again the usher took the trump card back to the witness-box.

'Yes, it is.' 'What can you tell us about it?' Chesney Lane picked up the page and felt it with his finger, and discovered the secret of the case like a blind man reading Braille. 'Someone's gone over every letter with a pencil pressed hard down on the paper. I imagine that was done to show indentations on the sheets under it.' 'Don't let's have what he imagines!' The radical lawyer was up again.

I quite agree. Let's only have what he knows to be true.

Where did you find that document?' And then Detective Sergeant Lane told us. 'It was in a file I brought from Chief Superintendent Belmont's office. It no looked as though someone was trying to frame Roy Gannon.

So I decided to keep hold of it.' 1 'Thank you very much, Mr Chesney Lane.' And I was, in fact, exceedingly grateful. 'Just wait there, will you? In case my learned friend can now think of something to ask you.' After this evidence, despite Miles Crudgington's heroic efforts to discredit another copper, the Jury's verdict was a foregone conclusion. When it had been delivered, I parted with my client, who still looked saddened by the way I'd won his case, at the Old Bailey entrance. 'It's a funny thing,' he said. 'When Pinhead was found innocent, there was cameras and crowds and cheering supporters. It's very quiet now, isn't it?' I thought, on the whole, this was how he wanted it.

In spite of my client's doubts and reservations I had had what I thought of modestly as a bit of a triumph in court, and before I got back to my Chambers in Equity Court I was able to solve another mystery. Coming up Fleet Street I saw our new secretary, Miss Dot Clapton, coming out of the Take-aBreak sandwich bar with her lunch in a paper bag. She was clearly hungry as she withdrew a sandwich, took a furtive bite and then popped it back into the bag as she heard me call, 'Dot! Just a word, if you'd be so kind. Been buying your sandwiches, have you?' 'Is that what you wanted to ask me?' 'No, not exactly. Been dancing with any more judges lately?' 'You heard about that?' Dot smiled engagingly. 'Poor old chap, he was looking that miserable. And he danced so funny!

The way my dad used to.' 'So you danced. Well, I can understand that. Even judges may feel the need to dance occasionally. But Dot, ' And then I tried to frame a question as difficult as any I'd had to ask in even the most delicate case. 'You'll have to help me. After the ball was over. Was there anything? Any sort of-?' Dot was quick to come to my assistance. 'Did we knock it off? Is that what you mean?' in 'Yes. Well, it probably is.' 'Do me a favour, Mr Rumpole. You have to be joking!' 'Yes. Well, yes. I probably am.' Dot Clapton was still laughing as I left her to her sandwiches. She was, if anyone ever was, a reliable witness.

I don't often play bridge, but when I heard that Hilda was going to sit down to cards with Marigold Featherstone and a woman called Josephine Tasker, who 'couldn't count her points', I decided, in the absence of any more serious crime, to join them. I partnered Hilda and, at the end of one game, She Who Must Be Obeyed and I were six down. When She accused me of overbidding in the most ridiculous manner, I had to agree. 'I was boasting,' I told them, and when Josephine Tasker left the table to order tea, I repeated, 'Boasting.

Without a word of truth. Just like poor old Guthrie.' 'Guthrie?' Marigold Featherstone pricked up her ears.

'Why do you say "like poor old Guthrie"?' 'He had no points but he bid high. He'd only gone for a drink with our clerk and the amateur actors, but he boasted of some great amorous conquest. Of course, no one could ever be foolish enough to believe him.' 'You mean, nothing happened?' Marigold seemed never to have considered the possibility.