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

Pure snobbery. He thought he'd done in an old dosser called Bronco Billington but he didn't want to be potted for anything so down-market. So he put his hands up to a smart triple murder. That way he'd join the upper crust in chokey and be treated like a Lord by all the screws.' 'Rumpole,' She said thoughtfully, 'I don't think we'll go to Sackbut Castle again.' 'I don't think we'll be asked,' I told her.

That evening, at a corner table in Pommeroy's, and over a couple of glasses of Chateau Fleet Street, I broached a delicate subject with Mizz Probert. 'Liz, I wanted to tell you that I know all about the Honourable David Luxter, otherwise known as Inchcape.' 'The Hon. David!' Liz spat out the title. 'It's disgusting.' 'Instead of a decent upbringing in a one-parent family in Camden, he was cursed with ex-Lord Chancellor Luxter as a grandad. He was a deprived child.' 'A what Liz sounded puzzled.

'They all are, Mizz Liz. The lot of them. The Lords and Ladies and Marquises of whatnot that figure in Debby's Diary in Coronet magazine. They turn their sons out of the home at a tender age. They put them into the care of some sort of young offenders' secure home like Eton. They lie to them and tell them that their mothers are dead. The dice are loaded against the young of the upper crust.' Then we drank in silence. When she had thought it over, Liz said, 'I suppose they are.' 'What Dave needs is counselling. He needs a supportive figure in a secure one-on-one situation. He needs the confidence-building skills that you alone can bring him.' 'Does he? I suppose he has been discriminated against, really...' 'One of society's outcasts. I'd saw 'I shouldn't have withdrawn my support.' 'Replace it, Liz! Prop the poor fellow up.' She took another gulp of the Ordinary red and came to a sensible conclusion. 'It's a bloody unjust world, Rumpole,' she said.

'You've been all these years in the law, Liz. And you've only just found that out?' Rumpole own Trial considerable understatement to me. Before she rang off I offered to b buy Mizz Liz a drink in Pommeroy's that evening.

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

Pure snobbbery. He thought he'd done in an old dosser called Bronco Bil'.llington but he didn't want to be potted for anything so down-rrmarket. So he put his hands up to a smart triple murder. TThat way he'd join the upper crust in chokey and be treated like;e a Lord by all the screws.' 'Rumpoble,' She said thoughtfully, 'I don't think we'll go to Sackbut C astle again.' 'I don't i think we'll be asked,' I told her.

That ewening, at a corner table in Pommeroy's, and over a couple ofgglasses of Chateau Fleet Street, I broached a delicate subject wirith Mizz Probert. 'Liz, I wanted to tell you that I know all about the Honourable David Luxter, otherwise known as I Inchcape.' 'The Hoon. David!' Liz spat out the title. 'It's disgusting.' 'Instead 1 of a decent upbringing in a one-parent family in Camden, hhe was cursed with ex-Lord Chancellor Luxter as a grandad. I~He was a deprived child.' 'A whaf y Liz sounded puzzled.

'They abll are, Mizz Liz. The lot of them. The Lords and Ladies andd Marquises of whatnot that figure in Debby's Diary in Coronet t magazine. They turn their sons out of the home at a tender aage. They put them into the care of some sort of young offeenders' secure home like Eton. They lie to them and tell them that their mothers are dead. The dice are loaded against thee young of the upper crust.' Then wve drank in silence. When she had thought it over, Liz said, 'II suppose they are.' 'What IPave needs is counselling. He needs a supportive figure in a secure one-on-one situation. He needs the confidencee-building skills that you alone can bring him.' 'Does hhe? I suppose he has been discriminated against, really...' ' 'One of society's outcasts, I'd say.' 150 Rumpole and the Family Pride 'I shouldn't have withdrawn my support.' 'Replace it, Liz! Prop the poor fellow up.' She took another gulp of the Ordinary red and came to a sensible conclusion. 'It's a bloody unjust world, Rumpole,' she said.

'You've been all these years in the law, Liz. And you've only just found that out?' i5i However forward-looking we may all pretend to be, humanity is far more interested in its past than the future. Tell a man like Claude Erskine-Brown that the planet earth will be burnt to a cinder around a hundred years after his death and his eyes will glaze over and he'll change the subject to his past triumphs in motoring cases at Acton. Tell him that Mizz Liz Probert, our young radical lawyer, was seen in Pommeroy's Wine Bar a month ago holding hands with someone other than Dave Inchcape, her regular co-habitee, and the fellow will prick up his ears, his nostrils will flare and he will show an endless appetite for further and better particulars. Down at the Bailey we spend days and weeks delving into the past, trying to discover exactly who it was who was seen loitering outside the Eldorado Building Society in Surbiton on the day the Molloys did it over, or what precise form of words Tony Timson used in the police car to indicate he was prepared to accept responsibility for the Streatham Video Centre break-in.

But when it comes to the future it's usually dismissed in a brief sentence like, 'You will go to prison for five years.' By and large, as I say, the future is a closed book which few people care to open. The exception to this rule was a client of mine, a somewhat odd bird called Roderick ArengoSmythe, whose eyes were firmly fixed on the time ahead. The future was a subject on which he claimed to have a good deal of inside information, derived from his acquaintances among dead people.

Arengo-Smythe didn't burst into my life in the way some clients do, as the result of a robbery or sudden death. His approach was more circumspect, as, I suppose, might be expected of a man who spent such a lot of time whispering to the defunct. I got my first whiff of Arengo-Smythe in an oblique manner when I went into the clerk's room and discovered Soapy Sam Ballard, Q.c., the man who, by the workings of blind fate, became the Head of our Chambers, cancelling the arrangements for some much-needed repairs and refurbishments to our downstairs loo set for 14 December of that year.

'We've had all this trouble arranging the builders, sir. Why does it have to be put off?' Henry, our clerk, protested.

Considering the downstairs loo now resembles nothing so much as the black hole of Calcutta in a poor state of repair, I supported Henry's objection, 'Why not get on with it?' 'Not', Soapy Sam Ballard was adamant, 'on the i4th of December. I can't take the responsibility for that.' 'What on earth's wrong with the i4th of December? Is it the Ides of March or something?' 'Many a true word, Rumpole, is spoken in jest.' 'Please, Ballard. Don't babble. Just give us some idea of what you're talking about.' 'No time to explain. I've got a V.A.T. fraud starting before Mr Justice Graves. 'And,' he added darkly as he departed, 'Why don't you ask your wife?' After the fleeting thought, by no means new, that our Head of Chambers no longer had control of his marbles, I forgot our strange conversation. That evening Hilda and I sat on either side of the glowing gas-fire in Gloucester Road. I was defending Ronnie 'Rabbits' Timson at the time (so called because of his vegetarian diet and his addiction to green salad) on matters arising out of the affray in the Needle Arms, Stockwell. We were half-way through the trial, I had got a number of witnesses to contradict themselves on the question of identity and earned a few good laughs at the expense of the police officers' notebooks. Should I rest my case, or should I put Rabbits into the witness-box the next day to deny the charges?

'What's the matter, Rumpole? Wool-gathering?' She Who Must Be Obeyed demanded my attention.

'No. No, of course not. The problem is, if I call Rabbits Timson to give evidence tomorrow he'll probably convict himself out of his own mouth, and if I don't the Jury'11 think he's guilty anyway.' 'Don't you know what sort of a witness the Rabbits person is going to make?' 'Not exactly. I can't see into the future.' 'Well then, you should ring Marguerite Ballard.' 'Mrs Soapy Sam', the Head of our Chambers has taken it into his head to marry the ex-Matron down at the Bailey 'has she got some sort of crystal ball?' 'Not that. She's got a little man who can tell her about the future.' She said it as though Mrs Ballard had rather a clever dressmaker round the corner. 'He's a fellow called ArengoSmythe.

It seems she goes to him for readings.' 'The works of Dickens?' 'No. The future. And she's taken Sam to him once or twice.' 'Why? Is Ballard particularly interested in the future?' 'Of course. Since old Tubby Mathias dropped off the twig' , Hilda always called Her Majesty's judges by their more or less affectionate nicknames, 'Sam's been hoping for a job on the High Court Bench.' 'So he's been going to a soothsayer to discover if the Lord Chancellor's going to reward his complete lack of forensic skill with a scarlet and ermine dressing-gown?' 'Something like that.' Hilda looked disapproving, as well she might.

'And does Arengo-Smythe tell him when he's going to get his bottom on the High Court Bench?' 'Marguerite didn't tell me that. But she did tell me that Sam was terribly worried about something else he said.' 'What was that?' 'That there was a great black cloud over the i4th of December.' And, as she said that, a small part of the future jigsaw fell into place. 'One of the best-known facts about the world is that it is exceedingly small. So it came as no particular surprise to me to be told by Henry that my old friend Mr Bernard, the faithful solicitor who goes out into the highways and byways and brings me back criminal work to enrich our lives in Gloucester Road, was coming with a new client, a certain Roderick Arengo-Smythe, who was about to face trial at the Old Bailey. So I was to be privileged to meet Sam Ballard's soothsayer.

Arengo-Smythe turned out to be a large man, but his bulk, as he sat in my client's chair, was curiously ill-defined and he seemed blurred at the edges. He looked ageless and his plump features were drained of colour, as if he had already, as Hilda would say, dropped off the twig. His hands were large, damp and looked soft, as though his fingers were made of putty. He spoke in a high, piercing North Country accent, as though he were playing the Dame in a principal pantomime, standing with his hands clasped over his stomach and calling, 'Where's that naughty boy Aladdin now?' This was the customer to whom it was my clear duty to put the indictment. When he had heard the charge against him, his voice rose to a raucous protest.

'Fraud and false deception, Mr Rumpole. Do you honestly think my spirit people would descend to that?' 'Well. Some of them might, I suppose. I mean, they're not all saints, are they? There must be quite a few villains among dead people. Con men, forgers, three-card tricksters. There's no reason to suppose that they're not all kicking about the other side, as you call it.' 'They may be there, Mr Rumpole. But White Owl would spot them a mile away. He can separate the wheat from the chaff can White Owl. He would never allow three-card tricksters in my front room.' 'Even dead ones?' 'Particularly dead ones.' 'Just remind me...' I searched through the open brief on my desk. 'Who is White Owl?' 'An ancient chief of the Sioux Indians, Mr Rumpole.' Mr Bernard, my instructing solicitor, was used to repeating impossible defences in a dead-pan manner. 'He copped it, apparently, at the battle of Little Big Horn.' 'Not copped it, Mr Bernard, if you don't mind. The spirit people do not cop it. They pass over.' 'What is alleged is a perfectly simple con trick.' I brought the meeting back to reality. 'You charged your customers no less than 50 pounds a session.' 'Summoning up the spirit people can be very draining.' 'You persuaded the punters that they were hearing the voice of this fellow White Fowl.' 'White Owl, please, Mr Rumpole. The Sioux people are extremely sensitive.' 'I beg his pardon. White Owl, you said, could foretell the future?' 'All the spirit people can, Mr Rumpole. You'll be able to as well, when you've passed over.' 'Really? I can't wait. It's further suggested', I refreshed my memory from the Prosecution statements, 'that Woman Police Constable Battley, who attended a seance, pretending to be a member of the public...' 'I could tell her sort at once, Mr Rumpole. Blood red, that was the colour of her aura.' 'All the same you took her fifty quid and allowed her a punt at the passed over. White Owl apparently came through, after a good deal of delay.' 'White Owl can be a naughty boy on occasions, Mr Rumpole. He doesn't always want to come when he's sent for.' 'Later she left the room under the protest of needing the lavatory.' 'Lying bitch! You'll trip her up on that one, won't you?

When it comes to my day in court?' 'She went into the door of the next room and discovered your sister Harriet crouched over a microphone.' 'Harriet's hobby is electricity, Mr Rumpole. It always has been, ever since we were nippers together.' 'The W.P.C. immediately summoned the help of Detective-Sergeant Webster, who was waiting outside the front door, armed with a search-warrant. On entering your flat he found the microphone connected to a small and unobtrusive speaker taped under the table where your seance was going on.' 'Are they suggesting that my sister and I were cheating, Mr Rumpole? Be quiet now, White Owl.' He said this to some unseen presence, apparently hovering near his left shoulder, and flapped at it with a large, white hand in the manner of a man trying to deter a mosquito. 'Don't interrupt when I'm trying to talk to Mr Rumpole. White Owl is getting a bit aerated, sir. He feels this case is a personal insult to him, quite honestly.' 'Don't worry about White Owl. He's safely outside the jurisdiction. It's you, Mr Arengo-Smith, they might put in the slammer.' 'Arengo-Smythe.' My client looked pained.

'Whichever. Was your sister Harriet connected to your living-room?' 'Yes, of course. She rigged that up so we could chat when we were working in different rooms. We're working on a history of the occult. We carry on a great tradition, Mr Rumpole, which goes back to Merlin, and he was By Appointment at the Court of King Arthur.' 'A fellow who ended up entangled in a thorn bush, from what I can remember. Well now, what's your defence, Mr ArengoSmythe?' Understandably my client was at a loss for an answer. Then he said, 'You know Mr Samuel Ballard, don't you? He will vouch for me.' 'That may not, of itself, be enough to establish your innocence.' And then I looked at him, filled with curiosity.

'What exactly did you tell my not-so-learned Head of Chambers?' 'I told him what White Owl had seen when he came for a sitting with his wife.' 'And what was that?' 'A terrible black cloud hanging over the i4th of December.

A day of extraordinary danger. What will you be doing on that precise date yourself, Mr Rumpole?' 'Defending you down the Old Bailey!' I tried to say it as cheerfully as possible. 'By the way, when you're next chatting to White Owl, ask him to have a few words with the late Sir Edward Marshall-Hall. It will need a brilliant stroke of advocacy to save you, old darling.' As I walked down Fleet Street to Ludgate Circus to start, with no especial enthusiasm or hope of success, the case of R. v. Arengo-Smythe, I happened to catch up with Soapy Sam on his way to one of the lengthy tax prosecutions in which he is used to lulling the Jury to sleep. I hailed the man and told him I was defending his soothsayer.

'I know you are, Rumpole. I recommended you to him. By the way, I was very impressed by Arengo-Smythe and so was Marguerite. He seemed to have an uncanny power of seeing into the future. You'll get him off, won't you?' 'Perhaps. If the Judge and the Jury have all passed over.

He gets on extremely well with the dead.' Ballard digested this and then asked what I thought was a somewhat naive question.