Maxim Jakubowski - The Best British Mysteries III

‘I don’t really think so. We haven’t got any children and I don’t want to dance at Christmas. So shall we say no to the Cherry Picker’s?’

‘Whether you dance or not is entirely up to you, Rumpole. But you can’t say no because I’ve already booked it and paid the deposit. And I’ve collected your old dinner jacket from the cleaners.’

So I was unusually silent. Not for nothing is my wife entitled ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed’.

I was unusually silent on the way to the Cotswolds too, but as we approached this country house hotel, I felt that perhaps, after all, She Who Must Be Obeyed had made a wise decision and that the considerable financial outlay on the ‘Budget Christmas Offer’ might turn out, in spite of all my apprehension, to be justified. We took a taxi from the station. As we made our way down deep into the countryside, the sun was shining and the trees were throwing a dark pattern against a clear sky. We passed green fields where cows were munching and a stream trickling over the rocks. A stray dog crossed the road in front of us and a single kite (at least Hilda said it was a kite) wheeled across the sky. We had, it seemed, entered a better, more peaceful world far from the problem of terrorists, the bloodstained letter containing a sentence of death, the impossible client, and the no less difficult judge I struggled with down at the Old Bailey. In spite of all my troubles, I felt a kind of contentment stealing over me. Happily, the contentment only deepened as our taxi scrunched the gravel by the entrance of Cherry Picker’s Hall. The old grey stones of the one-time manor house were gilded by the last of the winter sun. We were greeted warmly by a friendly manageress and our things were taken up to a comfortable room overlooking a wintry garden. Then, in no time at all, I was sitting by a blazing log fire in the residents’ lounge, eating anchovy paste sandwiches with the prospect of a dark and alcoholic fruitcake to follow. Even my appalling client, Hussein Khan, might, I thought, if brought into such an environment, forget his calling as a messenger of terror and relax after dinner.

‘It’s wonderful to be away from the Old Bailey. I just had the most terrible quarrel with a particularly unlearned judge,’ I told Hilda, who was reading a back number of Country Life.

‘You keep quarrelling with judges, don’t you? Why don’t you take up fishing, Rumpole? Lazy days by a trout stream might help you forget all those squalid cases you do.’ She had clearly got to the country sports section of the magazine.

‘This quarrel went a bit further than usual. He threatened to report me for professional misconduct. I didn’t like the way he kept telling the jury my client was guilty.’

‘Well isn’t he guilty, Rumpole?’ In all innocence, Hilda had asked the awkward question.

‘Well. Quite possibly. But that’s for the jury of twelve honest citizens to decide. Not Mr Justice Gravestone.’

‘Gravestone? Is that his name?’

‘No. His name’s Graves. I call him Gravestone.’

‘You would, wouldn’t you, Rumpole?’

‘He speaks like a voice from the tomb. It’s my personal belief that he urinates iced water!’

‘Really, Rumpole. Do try not to be vulgar. So what did you say to Mr Justice Graves? You might as well tell me the truth.’

She was right, of course. The only way of appeasing She Who Must was to plead guilty and throw oneself on the mercy of the court. ‘I told him to come down off the bench and join Soapy Sam Ballard on the prosecution team.’

‘Rumpole, that was terribly rude of you.’

‘Yes,’ I said, with considerable satisfaction. ‘It really was.’

‘So no wonder he’s cross with you.’

‘Very cross indeed.’ Once again I couldn’t keep the note of triumph out of my voice.

‘I should think he probably hates you, Rumpole.’

‘I should think he probably does.’

‘Well, you’re safe here anyway. You can forget all about your precious Mr Justice Gravestone and just enjoy Christmas.’

She was, as usual, right. I stretched my legs towards the fire and took a gulp of Earl Grey and a large bite of rich, dark cake.

And then I heard a voice call out, a voice from the tomb.

‘Rumpole!’ it said. ‘What an extraordinary coincidence. Are you here for Christmas? You and your good lady?’

I turned my head. I had not, alas, been mistaken. There he was, in person – Mr Justice Gravestone. He was wearing a tweed suit and some type of regimental or old school tie. His usually lugubrious features wore the sort of smile only previously stimulated by a long succession of guilty verdicts. And the next thing he said came as such a surprise that I almost choked on my slice of fruitcake.

‘I say,’ he said, and I promise you these were Gravestone’s exact words, ‘this is fun, isn’t it?’

‘I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be married to Rumpole.’

It was a lie, of course. I dare swear that The Honourable Gravestone never spent one minute of his time wondering what it would be like to be Mrs Rumpole. But there he was, having pulled up a chair, tucking in to our anchovy paste sandwiches and smiling at She Who Must Be Obeyed (my wife Hilda) with as much joy as if she had just returned twenty guilty verdicts – one of them being in the case of The Judge versus Rumpole.

‘He can be a bit difficult at times, of course,’ Hilda weighed in for the prosecution.

‘A little difficult! That’s putting it mildly, Mrs Rumpole. You can’t imagine the trouble we have with him in court.’

To my considerable irritation, my wife and the judge were smiling together as though they were discussing, with tolerant amusement, the irrational behaviour of a difficult child.

‘Of course we mustn’t discuss the case before me at the moment,’ Graves said.

‘That ghastly terrorist.’ Hilda had already reached a verdict.

‘Exactly! We won’t say a word about him.’

‘Just as well,’ Hilda agreed. ‘We get far too much discussion of Rumpole’s cases.’

‘Really? Poor Mrs Rumpole.’ The judge gave her a look of what I found to be quite sickening sympathy. ‘Brings his work home with him, does he?’

‘Oh, absolutely! He’ll do anything in the world for some ghastly murder or other, but can I get him to help me redecorate the bathroom?’

‘You redecorate bathrooms?’ The judge looked at Hilda with admiration as though she had just admitted to sailing round the world in a hot air balloon. Then he turned to me.

‘You’re a lucky man, Rumpole!’

‘He won’t tell you that.’ Hilda was clearly enjoying our Christmas break even more than she had expected. ‘By the way I hope he wasn’t too rude to you in court.’

‘I thought we weren’t meant to discuss the case.’ I tried to make an objection, which was entirely disregarded by my wife and the unlearned judge.

‘Oh, that wasn’t only Rumpole being rude. It was Rumpole trying to impress his client by showing him how fearlessly he can stand up to judges. We’re quite used to that.’

‘He says,’ Hilda still seemed to find the situation amusing, ‘that you threatened to report him for professional misconduct. You really ought to be more careful, shouldn’t you Rumpole?’

‘Oh, I said that,’ Graves had the audacity to admit, ‘just to give your husband a bit of a shock. He did go a little green, I thought, when I made the suggestion.’

‘I did not go green!’ By now I was losing patience with the judge Hilda was treating like a long-lost friend. ‘I made a perfectly reasonable protest against a flagrant act of premature adjudication! You had obviously decided that my client is guilty and you were going to let the jury know it.’