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

I tell you, Hilda. People have been lying here since the Wars of the Roses. Lying and locking up their wives or tearing their wives' photographs out of family albums. Behaving like that', and, as I said it, I felt I had reached close to the heart of the case, 'because their fathers did it.' The next day Lord Sackbut went into the witness-box at the coroner's request and Dr Swabey examined him in the manner of one who'd never been invited into the private apartments and wasn't going to let his Lordship forget it. To the thousand-dollar question Richard answered, 'The first time I saw the old lady was when her body was found in our lake. I had never set eyes on her before that.' 'My Lord. I remember you told me that at the time, and no doubt others heard you. But you have heard Mr Saggers's evidence. Is he lying?' 'I'm not saying that. I'm saying Mr Saggers is mistaken. I didn't speak to the old lady that afternoon.' 'Very well, the Jury will have to make up their minds who's telling the truth.' Swabey gave the Jury a trusting look and then turned to another subject. 'Lord Sackbut, when you were a boy, your mother left your father.' 'I fail to see what that's got to do with this case.' 'Bear with me, my Lord. I think it may have a great deal to do with it. At that time, did your father tell you that your mother was dead?' 'She was dead, yes.' 'But how did you know that?' 'Because my father said so.' Richard was clearly keeping his temper with difficulty. 'He told my school.' 'And you believed him?' 'Of course.' 'Did it ever occur to you that your father was so angry with your mother that he pretended she had died. He didn't want you to try to see her again?' 'It never occurred to me that my father would tell a lie, Dr Swabey. To me or anyone.' 'Do you not know that there have been many rumours, in your family and in the town, that your mother didn't die as your father said but was alive many years later and living in Italy?' 'I never heard such rumours. Anyway, they would have been untrue.' 'This is becoming intolerable.' I gave another exhibition of the Rumpole wrath. 'Lord Sackbut's here to give evidence, not to deal with tittle-tattle.' 'Please, Mr Rumpole, don't excite yourself. You have reached an age when that might be injurious to your health. Mr Pringle, the photograph, please. Now, I pass to another matter.' Pringle was handing the photograph of Richard's father in uniform, sitting on the castle terrace with a woman and a baby. As Richard looked at it, Swabey went purring on, 'We have heard evidence that that photograph was found in the old lady's possession.

Let's look at it, shall we? Is that the terrace of Sackbut Castle?' 'Yes.' 'And is the man in it your father, as he was at the end of the last war?' 'It is my father, yes.' 'Oh, I am so very much obliged. Now there is also a woman with a baby. Is that woman your mother?' 'I... really can't say,' Richard hesitated.

'You mean you can't remember what your own mother looked like?' Swabey spoke more in sorrow than in anger, but the Jury looked at Richard with distinct disapproval.

'Not altogether clearly.' 'I suggest to you that it is a family group. Your father, your mother and yourself as a very young child.' 'I suppose that's a possibility,' the witness had to admit.

'Or a probability? Now. Can you tell the Jury why this old lady had that photograph in her possession when she came visiting Sackbut Castle?' 'How on earth can my client know that?' I was up and fuming again.

'Then let me suggest an answer to assist Lord Sackbut.' And Swabey made a suggestion which was no help at all to Richard. 'Could it be because she was the lady your father, in a fit of wounded pride, had given out as dead?' 'I object to that!' I furled on, 'Is this an inquest or a lesson in writing pulp fiction? There is not a scrap of evidence...' 'Oh, yes, there is, Mr Rumpole. There is a photograph.

Now,'you shall have your opportunity to ask questions later.

Let me just put this final point to you, my Lord.' So I sat down reluctantly and th coroner concluded. 'If this old lady was the Dowager Lady Sackbut, fallen on evil days, she'd hardly be a welcome visitor at the castle, would she? After all that time she'd come, no doubt, with a claim for money.

Didn't it occur to you, m Lord, that she might be better dead, as your father had wished, so many, many years ago?' His Lordship rejected the suggestion entirely and I took him through it all again ?nd he denied it again. But during the rest of the day I had the strong feeling that the Jury didn't like Lord Sackbut, the mafl who couldn't remember what his mother looked like. In the middle of the afternoon, however, Mr Cursitor, who had been out "f court, came back and whispered in my ear. bs had a piece of news that gave us a hope of restoring the Sackbut name, and putting Dr Swabey in his place for ever. As soon as I heard it, I asked Swabey to adjourn the case until the next morning. He was about to make some trouble over this, until I reminded him that there was a writ of mandamus almost as old as Coroners Courts, by which I could haul him up to the Lord Chief Justice. I might even have been right about the w; anyway we took an early bath and returned the next morning to further good news from Mr Cursitor. I thought it t ght to keep the latest developments from the Sackbut family and' when we were back in court, I passed a note of my further application up to the coroner.

'Mr Rumpole,' he s? in his most official voice, 'you've asked me to take the evidence of this witness. Mrs...' (v 'Petronelli, sir.' 'Mrs Petronelli. And I have no idea what light she can throw on this dark subjet 'Then let me help you out. She's here now, sir. Let her come in and be sworn.' The door of the courtroom opened and Mr Cursitor appeared.

Standing aside, he let in a woman, dressed in black.

She must have been almost seventy but she was still elegant, smiling, with fair hair touched with grey. Mr Pringle led her to the witness-box, where she took the oath quietly. I started my questions before the coroner quite understood what was happening.

'What was your name, Madam?' I asked, 'before you married Signer Petronelli?' 'It was Lady Sackbut.' 'And your son is?' She looked at my client for the first time and said, 'Richard.' He had lowered his eyes and sat with his arms folded.

'Mr Rumpole, do I understand that this lady is your client's...?' 'His mother, sir.' 'I still don't know what evidence she can give.' 'Then perhaps it would be better if I carried on. I think the story will become quite clear to everyone.' 'Very well, Mr Rumpole. Carry on for the moment. If you please.' The coroner was suffering from a sudden lack of energy as he saw his carefully built-up case of doubt and suspicion collapsing.

'It's many years since you saw your son?' I asked the witness.

'I'm afraid it's a great many years.' 'When Signer Petronelli was alive, I think you lived in Como?' 'Yes. My husband had a hotel there. When he died I decided to sell it and come back to England.' 'To where in England?' 'To London. I live in Southwark.' Then I summoned Pringle, who took the witness the photograph of the dead bag lady.

'Look at that photograph, will you? Since you have lived there, have you become interested in a charity dealing with homeless people?' i47 'There seem to be so many sleeping in the street in London.

We give them meals. Try to find them beds. Even invite them home sometimes.' She looked at the photograph of the dead woman. 'That's Bertha.' 'Bertha?' 'When I first met her she was sleeping at the back of Waterloo station. I let her stay with me one night, when we couldn't find her a bed anywhere else. We began to talk. She told me about her husband, who'd been a builder and gone bankrupt and been sent to prison for some reason. And, I don't know why, I told her about Sackbut Castle and my son.

I never talked much about it to anyone else. But with Bertha it seemed it wouldn't matter.' 'So she stayed the night in your house. Did she leave the next morning?' 'Yes. I never saw her again.' 'Was anything missing when she left?' 'Well, yes. A photograph I'd shown her when we were talking. I kept it in a desk. Not on display or anything. And when Bertha went, that went with her. I was very angry with her for stealing it.' Pringle handed the witness another photograph, the group on the castle terrace.

'Is that the photograph you lost?' 'Yes, it is.' 'Who are the people in that group?' 'My first husband, myself and Richard when he was a baby.' 'One final question. Did your son Richard ever hit you over the head with a blunt instrument and push you into a lake?' 'No. No, he never did that to me. Even if he thought I deserved it.' And now the witness was looking at her son, half smiling. He looked up at her.

After that, even Dr Swabey, for all his ingenuity, couldn't think of much to ask Signora Petronelli. The inquest was virtually over and the verdict inevitable. As soon as it was given, the court rose, the room emptied and Lord Sackbut was left alone in it with the woman who had been dead to him so long. I knew we should get away early and we had packed our bags and taken them to the court. Mr Cursitor's clerk found us a taxi and we drove straight to the station.

"The Jury in the Sackbut Castle Inquest returned a verdict of accidental death", blah, blah.' We were at breakfast again in the kitchen at home and I was reading The Times and Hilda had her Daily Telegraph.

'Rumpole,' she sounded worried, 'you said Richard was lying in Court.' 'Oh, yes. Bertha waylaid him in the garden. Told him she had some news for him. Probably asked for money. He sent her away and wouldn't listen. She hung around Welldyke until the evening and then went back to the castle, full of gin and unsteady on her pins. It really was an accident. I don't know, Hilda. Perhaps he had a secret fear that Bertha was his mother. He hadn't seen the real one for thirty years. But recognizing his mother would mean his father was a liar, the father who could do no wrong. So he pretended that he didn't have the faintest idea who she was.' 'That wasn't very nice of him.' 'People aren't always nice, especially if they're Lords. Luckily his real mother reads the Daily Telegraph.' 'Why luckily?' 'Oh, didn't I tell you? I got old Mr Dry-as-Dust Cursitor to put an advertisement in the personal column: riccardino WANTS TO SEE HIS MOTHER. VERY URGENT. PHONE THE solicitors. And the Sackbuts read The Times' The phone on the wall was ringing. I went to answer it as Hilda was saying, 'Poor woman. Poor, poor woman.' The call was from Mizz Liz Probert. She was off to court early and wanted to let me know that the Prosecution was offering no evidence against Walter The Wally Wilkinson.

The man who really did it, apparently, was the social worker's lover and he had made a confession and there was enough forensic evidence to make it stick. Apparently they were all in a rather complicated emotional situation. That seemed a considerable understatement to me. Before she rang off I offered to buy Mizz Liz a drink in Pommeroy's that evening.

When I returned to my cooling tea and toast, I told Hilda another tale of social distinctions. 'You know why The Wally confessed to that triple murder?' I said. 'Snobbery, Hilda.