"Mortimer, John Clifford - Rumpole 01 - Rumpole of the Bailey" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mortimer John)

' We're just doing the Grilled Platter, sir.' I detected, in the man's voice, a certain gloomy satisfaction.

'Grilled-what?' ' Fried egg and brunch-burger, served with chips and a nice tomato.' 'A nice tomato! Oh, very well.' Perhaps with a suitable anaesthetic the brunch-burger could be taken. 'And to drink. A reasonable railway claret?' 'No wines on this journey, sir. We got gin in miniatures.' 'I don't care for gin, at lunchtime, especially in miniatures.' Regretfully I came to the conclusion that circuit life had deteriorated and wondered what the devil they had done with all the Brown Windsor soup.

At Coldsands Station a middle-aged man in a neat suit and rimless glasses was there to meet me. He spoke with a distinct and reassuring west-country accent.

'Air Horace Rumpole? I'm Friendly.' ' Thank God someone is!' 'I was warned you liked your little joke, Mr Rumpole, by London agents. They recommended you as a learned counsel who has had some success with drugs.' 'Oh, I have had considerable success with drugs. And a bit of luck with murder, rape and other offences against the person.' 'I'm afraid we don't do much crime at Friendly, Sanderson and Friendly. We're mainly conveyancing. By the way, I think there's a couple of typing errors in the instructions to counsel.' Mr Friendly looked deeply apologetic.

I hastened to reassure him.' Fear not, Friendly. I never read the instructions to counsel. I find they blur the judgtment and confuse the mind.' We were outside the Station now, and a battered taxi rattled into view.

' You'll want to see the client?' Friendly sounded resigned.

' She might expect it.' 'You're going to "Nirvana"?' 'Eventually. Aren't we all? No, Friendly. I shall steer clear of the lotus eaters of No. 34 Balaclava Road. A land, I rather imagine, in which it seems always afternoon. Bring the client for a con at my hotel. After dinner. Nine o'clock suit you?' ' You'll be at the George ? That's where the Bar put up.' 'Then if it's where the Bar put up, I shall avoid it. I'm staying with old mates, from my days in the R.A.F. They run a stately pleasure-dome known as the Crooked Billet.' 'The little pub place out on the bay?' I noticed Friendly smiled when he spoke of the Dogherty's delight, a place, I had no doubt, of a high reputation. The taxi had stopped now, and I was wrestling with the door. When I had it open, I was in a high and holiday mood.

' Out on the bay indeed! With no sound but the sea sighing and the muted love call of the lobster. Know what I say. Friendly? When you get a bit of decent crime at the seaside ... Relax and enjoy it!' Friendly was staring after me, perhaps understandably bewildered, as I drove away.

The taxi took me out to the Crooked Billet and back about twenty-five years. The pub was on the top of some cliffs, above a sandy beach and a leaden sea. From the outside it seemed an ordinary enough building, off-white, battered, with a neglected patch of garden; but inside it was almost a museum to the great days of World War Two. Behind the bar were Sam's trophies, a Nazi helmet, a plaster Mr Churchill which could actually puff a cigar, a model Spitfire dangled from the ceiling, there were framed photographs of ex-Pilot Officer Dogherty in his flying jacket, standing by his beloved Lancaster and a signed portrait of Vera Lynn at the height of her career. Even the pin-table appeared to be an antique, looted from some NAAFI. There was also an old piano, a string of fairy lights round the bottles and a comforting smell of stale booze. Someone was clanking bottles behind the bar, but I could see no more than a comfortable bottom in old blue slacks. I put out a red alert.

' Calling all air crew! Calling all air crew! Parade immediately.' At which Bobby Dogherty turned, straightened up and smiled.

Age had not actually withered her, but it had added to the generosity of her curves. Her blonde hair looked more metallic than of old, and the lines of laughter round her mouth and eyes had settled into permanent scars. She had a tipped cigarette in her mouth and her head was tilted to keep the smoke out of her eyes. She looked, as always, irrepressibly cheerful, as if middle age, like the War, was a sort of joke, and there to be enjoyed.

'Rumpole. You old devil!' 'You look beautiful,' I said, as I had often done in the past, and meant it just as much.

' Liar! Drop of rum ?' I didn't see why not and perched myself on a bar stool while she milked the rum bottle. Soon Rumpole was in reminiscent mood.

'Takes me right back to the NAAFI hop. New Year's Eve, 1943. Sam was out bombing something and I had you entirely to myself, for a couple of hours of the Boomps-a-Daisy ... Not to mention the Lambeth Walk.' I raised my glass and gave our old salutation,' Here's to the good old duke!' 'The good old duke.' Bobby was on her second gin and tonic, and she remembered. 'You never took advantage.' I lit a small cigar. It caught me in the back of the throat. ' Something I shall regret till the day I cough myself into extinction. How's old Sam ? How's ex-Pilot Officer' Three-Fingers' Dogherty?' 'Bloody doctor!' For the first time, Bobby looked less than contented.

'Doctor?' 'Doctor Mackay. Came here with a face like an undertaker.' She gave a passable imitation of a gloomy Scottish medico.' "Mrs Dogherty, your husband's got to get out of the licensing trade or I'll not give him more than another year. Get him into a small bungalow and on to soft drinks." Can you imagine Sam in a bungalow?' ' Or on soft drinks! The mind boggles!' ' He'll find lime juice and soda has a pleasant little kick to it. That's what the doctor told me.' 'The kick of a mouse, I should imagine. In carpet slippers.' ' I told the quack, Sam's not scared. Sam used to go out every night to kill himself. He misses the war dreadfully.' ' I expect he does.' ' Saturday night in the Crooked Billet and a bloody good piss-up. It's the nearest he gets to the old days in the R.A.F.' 'You want to be careful ... he doesn't rush out and bomb Torquay,' I warned her, and was delighted to see her laugh.

' You're not joking! The point is... should I tell Sam?' 'Won't your Doctor Mackay tell him?' 'You know how Sam is. He won't see hide nor hair of the doctor. So what should I do?' ' Why ask me ?' I looked at her, having no advice to give.

'You're the bloody lawyer, darling. You're meant to know everything!' At which point I was aware that, behind us, a man had come into the bar. I turned and saw him scowling at us. He was wearing a blazer, an R.A.F. scarf in an open shirt and scuffed suede shoes. I saw a good-looking face, grey hair and a grey moustache, all gone slightly to seed. It was none other than ex-Pilot Officer Sam' Three-Fingers' Dogherty.

'We're not open yet!' He seemed to have not yet completely awakened from a deep afternoon kip, as he advanced on us, blinking at the lights round the bar.

' Sam! Can't you see who it is ?' Bobby said, and her husband, who had at last identified the invasion, roared at me.

'My God, it's old grounded Rumpole! Rumpole of the ops room!' He moved rapidly to behind the bar and treated himself to a large Teachers which he downed rapidly. 'What the hell brings you to this neck of the woods?' 'He wrote us a letter.' 'Never read letters. Here's to the good old duke!' He was on his second whisky, and considerably more relaxed.

'What brings me? A lady ... you might say, a damsel in bloody great distress.' 'You're not still after Bobby, are you?' Sam was only pretending to be suspicious.

' Of course. Till the day I die. But your wife's not in distress exactly.' 'Aren't I?' Bobby looked down into the depths of her gin and tonic, and I filled them in on the nature of my mission.

'The lady in question is a certain Miss Kathy Trelawny. One of the lotus eaters of "Nirvana", 34 Balaclava Road. Done for the possession of a suitcase full of cannabis resin.' I had put up, as we used to say in the old days, a Black. If I had asked the Reverend Ian Paisley to pray for the Pope, I couldn't have invited an icier gaze of disapproval than Sam gave me as he said,' You're defending her ?' 'Against your crafty constabulary. Come in here, does she?' 'Not bloody likely! That crowd from Balaclava Road wouldn't get past the door. Anyway, they don't drink.' The glass of Teachers was recharged to banish the vision of the lotus eaters invading the Crooked Billet.

'Dear me. Is there no end to their decadence? But you know my client?' 'Never clapped eyes on her, thank God! No doubt she's about as glamorous as an unmade bed.' 'Oh, no doubt at all.' Gloomily, I thought he was almost certainly right, something peering through glasses, I thought, out of a mop of unwashed hair. Sam came out from behind the bar and started to bang about, straightening chairs and tables, switching on more lights.

' How can you defend that creature?' 'Easy! Prop myself to my feet in Court and do my best.' ' But you know damn well she's guilty!' It's the one great error everyone makes about my learned profession; they think we defend people who have told us they did the deed. This legend doesn't add to the esteem in which barristers are held, and I sighed a little as I exploded the myth for the thousandth time.