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

'No, Auntie Hilda. Let Uncle Horace have what he wants.

We're going to spoil him. Do sit down. Uncle Horace. You must be exhausted after all those absolutely splendid court cases you do.' Rosemary put her hand on my arm and guided me to a chair.

'Splendid cases?' And Hilda said, with some contempt, 'Like Walter The Wally Wilkinson!' But Rosemary continued to look at me with admiration. 'My dad,' she said, 'saw you in action in some case at the Old Bailey. He said you were absolutely super! Had the Jury eating out of your hand. I remember what he told us: "In the courtroom nobody dares say boo to Rumpole."' 'Well,' I told her modestly, 'I can be rather magnificent at times.' 'And didn't you do one hugely famous case? Oh, yonks and yonks ago. Something about a bungalow?' 'You might possibly be thinking of the Penge Bungalow Murders.' 'That's right! I say, you must tell us all about it. It sounds riveting. I know Richard can't wait to meet you.' A melancholy-looking manservant did bring us tea, and I had a bottle of Chateau Chateau, but Rosemary's husband had not returned by the time we went upstairs to change. 'Of course,' Hilda had told me, 'they'll dress for dinner at the castle.' So she had brought a long ball gown, and encased in a heavy silver breastplate she looked armoured and ready to take on allcomers. I managed to button up a dinner jacket which seemed to have shrunk over the years as Hilda told me that Rosemary had said that old Lord 'Plunger' Plumstead was expected for dinner.

'Why Plunger. Does he dive?' 'He used to gamble terribly. Really, Rumpole, you ought to keep up with Debby's Diary.' So we went down to our first castle dinner and found that all our guests and the Sackbuts had this in common, none of them were in evening-dress. The men were without ties, in sweaters, or tweed jackets worn with cord trousers. Plunger Plumstead, whose head was sunk, like that of an aged tortoise, into a collar several sizes too large for him, sported an ancient black velvet jacket and a silk scarf. The women were dressed casually, but no one commented on what now seemed our eccentric attire. Richard Sackbut had finally appeared and turned out to be a man, perhaps in his late forties, whose long chin, gingery hair and blue eyes were echoed in all the family portraits we had seen. For some reason, which I could not fathom, he seemed extremely glad to see me and kept saying it was 'jolly sporting of you to come all the way to North Yorkshire for a weekend'. This was an opinion with which I had to agree as I looked round the dinner table that night.

There was Plunger's wife, Mercia, a stately woman who looked embalmed and, so far as I can remember, never spoke.

There was a young couple called the Yarrowbys, Tarquin and Helen, who talked in very loud voices about people I didn't know, and sports and pastimes of which I had no experience.

Pippa and Gavin Bastion were older, I suppose in their early fifties, and more sophisticated. Gavin made cynical remarks in quiet, amused tones and Pippa, a collapsing beauty, drank a good deal and smoked between courses.

Towards the end of dinner they began to discuss Dr Hugh Swabey, the local coroner. He clearly wasn't a favourite with the upper crust. 'Of course, he's enjoying every minute of your business, Richard,' Gavin Bastion said. 'Best thing that's happened to him since he had coach lamps put round his poolside area.' 'Where's all the money come from?' Helen Yarrowby asked.

'Expensive nose jobs in Leeds, and other sorts of jobs, no doubt,' Pippa Bastion suggested.

'You've seen him out hunting, haven't you, Plunger?' Helen asked the Lord, who turned to me and said, 'Absolutely everything wrong about the chap, Rumbold. He comes out like a dog's dinner.' 'That should give him a deep understanding of foxes,' I said, but nobody laughed.

'Don't expect Swabey's ever got near enough to see a fox.

He comes out with a string on his top hat!' Pippa said it as though the unfortunate coroner had committed rape on the hunting field.

'And a red coat when no one's asked him to wear such a thing,' Gavin added to the indictment.

'No, darling. That's not the point. The point is, a red coat with flat buttons' And Pippa turned to Hilda for support.

'Imagine that, Mrs Rumpole!' 'Oh, dear. Of course. Flat buttons! How very extraordinary.' My wife did her best to sound appalled, while I asked in all innocence, 'You mean you'd prefer them round?' 'Flat, shiny buttons without a hunt crest on them,' Gavin explained. 'Means he just got the thing off the peg at Moss Bros.' 'Is that a serious offence?' 'I suppose it depends on what you think is serious in this world.' Plunger looked as though I were prepared to excuse any crime, however heinous.

'Oh, I'm only used to murder and robbery,' I told him.

'Suchlike trivialities. I'd never heard of the crime of flat buttons before.' There was a silence then, broken by Richard Sackbut. 'We had rather a nasty accident here, Rumpole. Some old tramp woman managed to drown herself in the castle lake.' 'Is Swabey going to be a pain in the neck about it, Richard?' Gavin Bastion asked.

'Oh, you know what he is. He wants to get his name in the papers, make a sensational trial of it. He thinks he's going to discover all sorts of things that aren't there to be discovered.

It's just a bore, quite honestly.' 'Well, I don't see that you're responsible for anything,' Plunger assured our host. 'Most people have got a lake of some sort, haven't they, Rumbold?' 'Well, we have to make do with rather a small one, in the Gloucester Road.' This was another joke which went down like a lead balloon, but Rosemary came to my rescue. 'Talking of sensational trials, darling. Uncle Horace was telling me about that one he did yonks ago. In a bungalow, wasn't it, Uncle Horace?' Then I lent back and prepared to enjoy myself for the first time since we arrived in the castle. 'It was an extraordinary case. I was a young man then, a white wig really, and I won it alone and without a leader. It raised some most interesting questions about bruising and the time of death. I mean, it should be relatively simple to discover if a bruise were pre, or post-mortem, of course, A careless pathologist could cause bruising when removing the tongue during an autopsy. That's what happened in the Penge Bungalow Murders.' There was a somewhat embarrassed pause, and I felt that neither my jokes nor my tales from the morgue were greatly appreciated.

Pippa said, 'Where is Penge, actually?' 'Isn't it somewhere near Bognor?' Tarquin Yarrowby guessed. But Richard gave a signal to his wife at the other end of the table, at which she rose, saying, 'Oh, yes. Well. Shall we leave the men to their...' 'Post-mortems, apparently,' Gavin finished her sentence for her gloomily.

After the ladies had left us the masculine conversation flowed like cement. Nobody told improper jokes, and, after a while, Plunger Plumstead, who had been staring at me balefully, growled, 'I say, Rumbold. Can you get your gamekeepers to eat rook?' 'Well, now you mention it. I've never really tried.' 'When I was a boy, gamekeepers pretty well lived on rook.

Their wives used to make it up into pies. You won't find a woman who'll do that now.' 'Tell the truth, I don't have any gamekeepers, or rooks either, come to that.' 'Odd! I thought you said you had a place in Gloucester.' I was saved further embarrassment as Richard moved from his place at the head of the table to sit next to me. Then, as Gavin Bastion started a long story about some local adultery, our host said, confidentially, 'Mr Rumpole, Rosemary was telling me you've had a great deal of success in your cases.' 'I suppose I have acquired a certain reputation round the Brixton cells,' I told him. 'I never knew I was famous in castles.' 'And a good many of your cases,' he went on, 'have concerned, well, dead people.' 'Dead people? Yes. I've always found, contrary to popular belief, that they can tell you a lot.' 'I wonder if you'd have time for a bit of a chat tomorrow?' he asked tentatively.

'I'm yours for the weekend.' 'You're still available for business?' 'Always. Always available.' 'Good! That's very good.' He seemed relieved and, for the first time, I saw him smile. 'Well, now. Shall we join the ladies?' 'Why not? Let's join them', I tried a final joke, 'and make one huge, enormous lady!' Lord Sackbut was still smiling politely, but he didn't laugh. He was a man, I was later to discover, who sometimes missed the point.

As I was tearing off the stiff collar in a large and drafty bedroom, I told Hilda that I need never have gone through that blunt execution. 'I thought they were slackly dressed for a castle,' she said. 'Never mind. We looked smart, Rumpole.' 'We wore the wrong things, but they never referred to it.

You noticed that? They never said a word.' 'It was sweet of them to ask us, wasn't it?' 'Why do you suppose they did?' 'Well, we're family, aren't we?' 'Not because we're family and not even because they never asked us to the wedding. My Lord Richard Sackbut's in trouble, Hilda. At least he's got that in common with Walter The Wally Wilkinson. He needs a good brief.' The next morning there didn't seem to be very much to do but look around the house. At the end of the row of family portraits I saw a man who looked so like our host that he could only have been Richard's father, a long-chinned, blueeyed, gingery-haired man in army uniform. Under the picture the legend was captain the lord sackbut m.p., D.s.o. born 1912, died 1972. By the drawing-room fireplace Rosemary was taking Hilda through a number of volumes of family photographs leading up to an extensive record of the wedding which we had unfortunately missed. As I couldn't gasp at the length of the bride's train, or the good looks of the bridegroom, I returned down the passage to the part of the castle thrown open to the public, with whom I had decided to mingle.