Maxim Jakubowski - The Best British Mysteries III

‘Would you say it probably happened?’

‘Probably. Yes.’

When I got this answer from the witness, I stood awhile in silence, looking at the motionless judge.

‘Is that all you have to ask, Mr Rumpole?’

‘No, my Lord. I’m waiting so your Lordship has time to make note of the evidence. I see your Lordship’s pencil is taking a rest!’

‘I’m sure the jury has heard your questions, Mr Rumpole. And the answers.’

‘I’m sure they have and you will no doubt remind them of that during your summing up. So I’m sure your Lordship will wish to make a note.’

Gravestone, with an ill grace, picked up his pencil and made the shortest possible note. Then I asked Ackerman my last question.

‘And I take it you know that the clothes my client wore that evening were minutely examined and no traces of any bloodstains were found?’

‘My Lord, how can this witness know what was on Khan’s clothing?’ Soapy Sam objected.

‘Quite right, Mr Ballard,’ the judge was quick to agree. ‘That was an outrageous question, Mr Rumpole. The jury will disregard it.’

It got no better. I rose, at the end of a long day in court, to cross-examine Superintendent Gregory, the perfectly decent officer in charge of the case.

‘My client, Mr Khan, made no secret of the fact that he had written this threatening letter, did he, Superintendent Gregory?’

‘He did not, my Lord,’ Gregory answered with obvious satisfaction.

‘In fact,’ said Mr Justice Graves, searching among his notes, ‘the witness Sadiq told us that your client boasted to him of the fact in the university canteen?’

There, at last, The Gravestone had overstepped the mark.

‘He didn’t say “boasted”.’

Soapy Sam Ballard QC, the alleged Head of our Chambers, got up with his notebook at the ready.

‘Sadiq said that Khan told him he had written the letter and, in answer to your Lordship, that “he seemed to feel no sort of guilt about it”.’

‘There you are Mr Rumpole.’ Graves also seemed to feel no sort of guilt. ‘Doesn’t that come to exactly the same thing?’

‘Certainly not, my Lord. The word “boasted” was never used.’

‘The jury may come to the conclusion that it amounted to boasting.’

‘They may indeed, my Lord. But that’s for them to decide, without directions from your Lordship.’

‘Mr Rumpole,’ here the judge adopted an expression of lofty pity, ‘I realise you have many difficulties in this case. But perhaps we may proceed without further argument. Have you any more questions for this officer?’

‘Just one, my Lord.’ I turned to the superintendent. ‘This letter was traced to one of the university word processors.’

‘That is so, yes.’

‘You would agree that my client took no steps at all to cover up the fact that he was the author of this outrageous threat.’

‘He seems to have been quite open about it, yes.’

‘That’s hardly consistent with the behaviour of someone about to commit a brutal murder is it?’

‘I suppose it was a little surprising, yes,’ Jack Gregory was fair enough to admit.

‘Very surprising, isn’t it? And of course by the time this murder took place, everyone knew he had written the letter. He’d been sent down for doing so.’

‘That’s right.’

The Gravestone intervened. ‘Did it not occur to you, Superintendent Gregory, that being sent down might have provided an additional motive for the murder?’ The judge clearly thought he was onto something, and was deeply gratified when the superintendent answered. ‘That might have been so, my Lord.’

‘That might have been so,’ Graves dictated to himself as he wrote the answer down. Then he thought of another point that might be of use to the hardly struggling prosecution.

‘Of course, if a man thinks he’s justified, for religious or moral reasons, in killing someone, he might have no inhibitions about boasting of the fact?’

I knew it. Soapy Sam must have known it, and the jury had better be told it. The judge had gone too far. I rose to my feet, as quickly as my weight and the passage of the years would allow, and uttered a sharp protest.

‘My Lord, the prosecution is in the able hands of Samuel Ballard QC. I’m sure he can manage to present the case against my client without your Lordship’s continued help and encouragement.’

This was followed by a terrible silence, the sort of stillness that precedes a storm.

‘Mr Rumpole.’ His Lordship’s words were as warm as hailstones. ‘That was a most outrageous remark.’

‘It was a point I felt I should make,’ I told him, ‘in fairness to my client.’

‘As I have said, I realise you have an extremely difficult case to argue, Mr Rumpole.’ Once more Graves was reminding the jury that I was on a certain loser. ‘But I cannot overlook your inappropriate and disrespectful behaviour towards the court. I shall have to consider whether your conduct should be reported to the proper authority.’

After these dire remarks and a few more unimportant questions to the superintendent, Graves turned to the jury and reminded them that this no doubt painful and shocking case would be resumed after the Christmas break. He said this in the solemn and sympathetic tones of someone announcing the death of a dear friend or relative, then he wished them a ‘Happy Christmas’.

The tube train for home was packed and I stood, swaying uneasily, sandwiched between an eighteen-stone man in a donkey jacket with a heavy cold, and an elderly woman with a pair of the sharpest elbows I have encountered on the Circle line.

No doubt all of the other passengers had hard, perhaps unrewarding lives, but they didn’t have to spend their days acting as a sort of buffer between a possibly fatal fanatic and a hostile judge who certainly wanted to end the career of the inconveniently argumentative Rumpole. The train, apparently as exhausted as I felt, ground to a halt between Charing Cross and the Embankment and as the lights went out I’d almost decided to give up the bar. Then the lights glowed again faintly and the train jerked on. I supposed I would have to go on as well, wouldn’t I, not being the sort of character who could retire to the country and plant strawberries.

When I reached the so-called ‘Mansion Flat’ in the Gloucester Road I was, I have to say, not a little surprised by the warmth of the reception I received. My formidable wife Hilda, known to me only as ‘She Who Must be Obeyed’ said, ‘Sit down, Rumpole. You look tired out.’ And she lit the gas fire. A few minutes later, she brought me a glass of my usual refreshment – the very ordinary claret available from Pommeroy’s Wine Bar in Fleet Street, a vintage known to me as ‘Chateau Thames Embankment’. I suspected that all this attention meant that she had some uncomfortable news to break and I was right.

‘This year,’ she told me, with the firmness of Old Gravestone pronouncing judgement, ‘I’m not going to do Christmas. It’s getting too much for me.’

Christmas was not usually much of a ‘do’ in the Rumpole household. There is the usual exchange of presents; I get a tie and Hilda receives the statutory bottle of lavender water, which seems to be for laying down rather than immediate use. She cooks the turkey and I open the Chateau Thames Embankment, and so our Saviour’s birth is celebrated.

‘I have booked us this year,’ Hilda announced, ‘into Cherry Picker’s Hall. You look in need of a rest, Rumpole.’

What was this place she spoke of? A retirement home? Sheltered accommodation? ‘I’m in the middle of an important murder case, I can’t pack up and go into a home.’

‘It’s not a home, Rumpole. It’s a country house hotel. In the Cotswolds. They’re doing a special offer – four nights with full board. A children’s party. Christmas lunch with crackers and a dance on Christmas Eve. It’ll be something to look forward to.’