Cynthia Manson (ed) (2 page)

“Ah, Rumpole,” he said, lifting his
eyes from the police verbals as though they were his breviary. “Are you
defending
as usual?”

“Yes, Wrigglesworth. And you’re
prosecuting
as usual?”
It wasn’t much of a riposte but it was all I
could think of at the time.

“Of course, I don’t defend. One
doesn’t like to call witnesses who may not be telling the truth.”

“You must have a few unhappy moments
then, calling certain members of the Constabulary.”

“I can honestly tell you, Rumpole—”
his curiously innocent blue eyes looked at me with a sort of pain, as though I
had questioned the doctrine of the immaculate conception “—I have never called
a dishonest policeman.”

“Yours must be a singularly simple
faith. Wrigglesworth.”

“As for the Detective Inspector in
this case,” counsel for the prosecution went on, “I’ve known Wainwright for
years. In fact, this is his last trial before he retires. He could no more
invent a verbal against a defendant than fly.”

Any more on that tack. I thought,
and we should soon be debating how many angels could dance on the point of a
pin.

“Look here, Wrigglesworth. That
evidence about my client having a sword: it’s quite irrelevant. I’m sure you’d
agree.”

“Why is it irrelevant?”
Wrigglesworth frowned.

“Because the murder clearly wasn’t
done with an antique cavalry saber. It was done with a small, thin blade.”

“If he’s a man who carries weapons,
why isn’t that relevant?”

“A man? Why do you call him a man?
He’s a child. A boy of seventeen!”

“Man enough to commit a serious
crime.”

“
If
he did.”

“If he didn’t, he’d hardly be in the
dock.”

“That’s the difference between us.
Wrigglesworth.” I told him. “I believe in the presumption of innocence. You
believe in original sin. Look here, old darling.” I tried to give the Mad Monk a
smile of friendship and became conscious of the fact that it looked, no doubt,
like an ingratiating sneer. “Give us a chance. You won’t introduce the evidence
of the sword, will you?”

“Why ever not?”

“Well,” I told him. “the Timsons are
an industrious family of criminals. They work hard, they never go on strike. If
it weren’t for people like the Timsons, you and I would be out of a job.”

“They sound in great need of
prosecution and punishment. Why shouldn’t I tell the jury about your client’s
sword? Can you give me one good reason?”

“Yes,” I said, as convincingly as
possible.

“What is it?” He peered at me. I
thought, unfairly.

“Well, after all,” I said, doing my
best, “it is Christmas.”

It would be idle to pretend that the
first day in Court went well, although Wrigglesworth restrained himself from
mentioning the sword in his opening speech, and told me that he was considering
whether or not to call evidence about it the next day. I cross-examined a few
members of the clan O’Dowd on the presence of lethal articles in the hands of
the attacking force. The evidence about this varied, and weapons came and went
in the hands of the inhabitants of Number Twelve as the witnesses were blown
hither and thither in the winds of Rumpole’s cross-examination. An interested
observer from one of the other flats spoke of having seen a machete.

“Could that terrible weapon have
been in the hands of Mr. Kevin O’Dowd, the deceased in this case?”

“I don’t think so.”

“But can you rule out the
possibility?”

“No, I can’t rule it out,” the
witness admitted, to my temporary delight.

“You can never rule out the
possibility of anything in this world, Mr. Rumpole. But he doesn’t think so.
You have your answer.”

Mr. Justice Vosper, in a voice like
a splintering iceberg, gave me this unwelcome Christmas present. The case
wasn’t going well, but at least, by the end of the first day, the Mad Monk had
kept out all mention of the sword. The next day he was to call young Bridget
O’Dowd, fresh from her triumph in the Nativity play.

“I say, Rumpole, I’d be so grateful
for a little help.”

I was in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar.
drowning the sorrows of the day in my usual bottle of the cheapest Chateau
Fleet Street (made from grapes which, judging from the bouquet, might have been
not so much trodden as kicked to death by sturdy peasants in gum boots) when I
looked up to see Wrigglesworth, dressed in an old mackintosh, doing business
with Jack Pommeroy at the sales counter. When I crossed to him, he was not
buying the jumbo-sized bottle of ginger beer which I imagined might be his
celebratory Christmas tipple, but a tempting and respectably aged bottle of
Chateau Pichon Longueville.

“What can I do for you.
Wrigglesworth?”

“Well, as you know, Rumpole, I live
in Croydon.”

“Happiness is given to few of us on
this earth,” I said piously.

“And the Anglican Sisters of St.
Agnes, Croydon, are anxious to buy a present for their Bishop,” Wrigglesworth
explained. “A dozen bottles for Christmas. They’ve asked my advice, Rumpole. I
know so little about wine. You wouldn’t care to try this for me? I mean, if
you’re not especially busy.”

“I should be hurrying home to
dinner.” My wife, Hilda (She Who Must Be Obeyed), was laying on rissoles and
frozen peas, washed down by my last bottle of Pommeroy’s extremely ordinary.
“However, as it’s Christmas, I don’t mind helping you out, Wrigglesworth.”

The Mad Monk was clearly quite
unused to wine. As we sampled the claret together, I saw the chance of getting
him to commit himself on the vital question of the evidence of the sword, as
well as absorbing an unusually decent bottle. After the Pichon Longueville I
was kind enough to help him by sampling a Boyd-Cantenac and then I said,
“Excellent, this. But of course the Bishop might be a burgundy man. The nuns
might care to invest in a decent Macon.”

“Shall we try a bottle?”
Wrigglesworth suggested. “I’d be grateful for your advice.”

“I’ll do my best to help you, my old
darling. And while we’re on the subject, that ridiculous bit of evidence about
young Timson and the sword—”

“I remember you saying I shouldn’t
bring that out because it’s Christmas.”

“Exactly.” Jack Pommeroy had
uncorked the Macon and it was mingling with the claret to produce a feeling of
peace and goodwill towards men. Wrigglesworth frowned, as though trying to
absorb an obscure point of theology.

“I don’t quite see the relevance of
Christmas to the question of your man Timson threatening his neighbors with a
sword.”

“Surely. Wrigglesworth—” I knew my
prosecutor well”—you’re of a religious disposition?” The Mad Monk was the product
of some bleak northern Catholic boarding school. He lived alone, and no doubt
wore a hair shirt under his black waistcoat and was vowed to celibacy. The fact
that he had his nose deep into a glass of burgundy at the moment was due to the
benign influence of Rumpole.

“I’m a Christian, yes.”

“Then practice a little Christian
tolerance.”

“Tolerance towards evil?”

“Evil?” I asked. “What do you mean,
evil?

“Couldn’t that be your trouble.
Rumpole? That you really don’t recognize evil when you see it.”

“I suppose,” I said, “evil might be
locking up a seventeen-year-old during Her Majesty’s pleasure, when Her Majesty
may very probably forget all about him. banging him up with a couple of hard
and violent cases and their own chamber-pots for twenty-two hours a day, so he
won’t come out till he’s a real, genuine, middle-aged murderer.”

“I did hear the Reverend Mother
say—” Wrigglesworth was gazing vacantly at the empty Macon bottle “—that the
Bishop likes his glass of port.”

“Then in the spirit of Christmas tolerance
I’ll help you to sample some of Pommeroy’s Light and Tawny.”

A little later, Wrigglesworth held
up his port glass in a reverent sort of fashion.

“You’re suggesting, are you, that I
should make some special concession in this case because it’s Christmastime?”

“Look here, old darling.” I absorbed
half my glass, relishing the gentle fruitiness and the slight tang of wood. “If
you spent your whole life in that highrise hell-hole called Keir Hardie Court,
if you had no fat prosecutions to occupy your attention and no prospect of any
job at all, if you had no sort of occupation except war with the O’Dowds—”

“My own flat isn’t particularly
comfortable. I don’t know a great deal about
your
home life, Rumpole.
but you don’t seem to be in a tearing hurry to experience it.”

“Touché, Wrigglesworth, my old
darling.” I ordered us a couple of refills of Pommeroy’s port to further
postpone the encounter with She Who Must Be Obeyed and her rissoles.

“But we don’t have to fight to the
death on the staircase,” Wrigglesworth pointed out.

“We don’t have to fight at all,
Wrigglesworth.”

“As your client did.”

“As my client
may
have done.
Remember the presumption of innocence.”

“This is rather funny, this is.” The
prosecutor pulled back his lips to reveal strong, yellowish teeth and laughed
appreciatively. “You know why your man Timson is called ‘Turpin’ ?”

“No.” I drank port uneasily, fearing
an unwelcome revelation.

“Because he’s always fighting with
that sword of his. He’s called after Dick Turpin, you see, who’s always dueling
on television. Do you watch television, Rumpole?”

“Hardly at all.”

“I watch a great deal of television,
as I’m alone rather a lot.” Wrigglesworth referred to the box as though it were
a sort of penance, like fasting or flagellation. “Detective Inspector
Wainwright told me about your client. Rather amusing, I thought it was. He’s
retiring this Christmas.”

“My client?”

“No. D. I. Wainwright. Do you think
we should settle on this port for the Bishop? Or would you like to try a glass
of something else?”

“Christmas,” I told Wrigglesworth
severely as we sampled the Cockburn, “is not just a material, pagan
celebration. It’s not just an occasion for absorbing superior vintages, old
darling. It must be a time when you try to do good, spiritual good to our enemies.”

“To your client, you mean?”

“And to me.”

“To you, Rumpole?”

“For God’s sake, Wrigglesworth!” I
was conscious of the fact that my appeal was growing desperate. “I’ve had six
losers in a row down the Old Bailey. Can’t I be included in any Christmas
spirit that’s going around?”

“You mean, at Christmas especially
it is more blessed to give than to receive?”

“I mean exactly that.” I was glad
that he seemed, at last, to be following my drift.

“And you think I might give this
case to someone, like a Christmas present?”

“If you care to put it that way,
yes.”

“I do not care to put it in
exactly
that way.” He turned his pale-blue eyes on me with what I thought was genuine
sympathy. “But I shall try and do the case of R.
v
. Timson in the way
most appropriate to the greatest feast of the Christian year. It is a time, I
quite agree, for the giving of presents.”

When they finally threw us out of
Pommeroy’s, and after we had considered the possibility of buying the Bishop
brandy in the Cock Tavern, and even beer in the Devereux, I let my instinct,
like an aged horse, carry me on to the Underground and home to Gloucester Road,
and there discovered the rissoles, like some traces of a vanished civilization,
fossilized in the oven. She Who Must Be Obeyed was already in bed. feigning
sleep. When I climbed in beside her, she opened a hostile eye.

“You’re drunk, Rumpole!” she said.
“What on earth have you been doing?”

“I’ve been having a legal
discussion,” I told her, “on the subject of the admissibility of certain
evidence. Vital, from my client’s point of view. And, just for a change, Hilda,
I think I’ve won.”

“Well, you’d better try and get some
sleep.” And she added with a sort of satisfaction, “I’m sure you’ll be feeling
quite terrible in the morning.”

As with all the grimmer predictions
of She Who Must Be Obeyed, this one turned out to be true. I sat in the Court
the next day with the wig feeling like a lead weight on the brain and the stiff
collar sawing the neck like a blunt execution. My mouth tasted of matured
birdcage and from a long way off I heard Wrigglesworth say to Bridget O’Dowd,
who stood looking particularly saintly and virginal in the witness box, “About
a week before this, did you see the defendant, Edward Timson, on your staircase
flourishing any sort of weapon?”

It is no exaggeration to say that I
felt deeply shocked and considerably betrayed. After his promise to me,
Wrigglesworth had turned his back on the spirit of the great Christmas
festival. He came not to bring peace but a sword.

I clambered with some difficulty to
my feet. After my forensic efforts of the evening before, I was scarcely in the
mood for a legal argument. Mr. Justice Vosper looked up in surprise and greeted
me in his usual chilly fashion.