Maxim Jakubowski - The Best British Mysteries III

Standing in for his friend Mulliner from the chancery division, the sepulchral, unforgiving, prosecution-minded Mr Justice Gravestone, my old enemy, had become Father Christmas.

On Boxing Day, I rang a persistent, dogged, ever useful private eye detective who, sickened by divorce, now specialised in the cleaner world of crime – Ferdinand Ian Gilmour Newton, known in legal circles as ‘Fig Newton’. I told him that, as was the truth, my wife Hilda was planning a long country walk and lunch in a distant village with a judge whom I had spent a lifetime trying to avoid. And I asked him, if he had no previous engagements, if he’d like to sample the table d’hôte at Cherry Picker’s Hall.

Fig Newton is a lugubrious character of indeterminate age, usually dressed in an old mackintosh and an even older hat, with a drip at the end of his nose caused by a seemingly perpetual cold -most likely caught while keeping observation in all weathers. But today he had shed his outer garments, his nose was dry, and he was tucking in to the lamb cutlets with something approaching enthusiasm. ‘Bit of a step up from your usual pub lunch, this, isn’t it Mr Rumpole?’

‘It certainly is, Fig. We’re splashing out this Christmas. Now this case I’m doing down the Bailey…’

‘The terrorist?’

‘Yes, the terrorist.’

‘You’re on to a loser with that one, Mr Rumpole.’ Fig was gloomily relishing the fact.

‘Most probably. All the same, there are a few stones I don’t want to leave unturned.’

‘Such as what?’

‘Find out what you can about the Glossops.’

‘The dead woman’s family?’

‘That’s right. See what’s known about their lives, hobbies, interests. That sort of thing, I need to get more of a picture of their lives together. Oh, and see if the senior tutor knows more about the Glossops. Pick up any gossip going round the university. I’ll let you know if Bonny Bernard has found out why Honoria had a date with her solicitor.’

‘So when do you want all this done by, Mr Rumpole?’ Fig picked up a cutlet bone and chewed gloomily. ‘Tomorrow morning, I suppose?’

‘Oh, sooner than that if possible,’ I told him.

It was not that I felt that the appalling Hussein Khan had a defence – in fact he might well turn out to have no defence at all. But something at the children’s Christmas party had suggested a possibility to my mind.

That something was the sight of Mr Justice Graves standing in for someone else.

Christmas was over, and I wondered if the season of goodwill was over with it. The Christmas cards had left the mantelpiece, the holly and the mistletoe had been tidied away, we had exchanged green fields for Gloucester Road, and Cherry Picker’s Hall was nothing but a memory. The judge was back on the bench to steer the case of R v Khan towards its inevitable guilty verdict.

The Christmas decorations were not all that had gone. Gerald the cheerful dinner guest, Gerald the energetic dancing partner of She Who Must be Obeyed, Gerald the fisherman, and, in particular, Gerald as Santa Claus had all gone as well, leaving behind only the old thin-lipped, unsmiling Mr Justice Gravestone with the voice of doom, determined to make a difficult case harder than ever.

All the same there was something of a spring in the Rumpole step. This was not only the result of the Christmas break but also due to a suspicion that the case R v Khan might not be quite as horrifyingly simple as it had appeared at first.

As I crossed the hall on my way to Court Number One, I saw Ricky Glossop – the dashingly handsome husband of the murdered professor – with a pretty blonde girl whom I took to be Sue Blackmore, Honoria’s secretary, who was due to give evidence about her employer’s reception of the fatal letter. She seemed, so far as I could tell from a passing examination, to be a girl on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She lit a cigarette with trembling fingers, then almost immediately stamped it out. She kept looking, with a kind of description, towards the door of the court, and then turning with a sob to Ricky Glossop and choking out what I took to be some sort of complaint. He had laid a consoling hand on hers and was talking in the sort of low, exaggeratedly calm tone that a dentist uses when he says, ‘This isn’t going to hurt’.

The medical and police evidence had been disposed of before Christmas and now, in the rather strange order adopted by Soapy Sam Ballard for the prosecution, the only witnesses left were Arthur Luttrell, who manned the reception desk, Ricky Glossop, and the nervous secretary.

Luttrell, the receptionist, was a smart, precise, self-important man with a sharp nose and a sandy moustache who clearly regarded his position as being at the centre of the university organisation. He remembered Hussein Khan coming at nine thirty that evening, saying he had an appointment with the senior tutor, and going up to the library. At quarter to ten the Glossops had arrived. Ricky had gone with his wife to her office, but had left about fifteen minutes later. ‘He stopped to speak to me on the way,’ Luttrell the receptionist told Soapy Sam, ‘which is why I remembered it well.’

After that, the evening at William Morris University followed its horrible course. Around eleven o’clock, Hussein Khan left, complaining that he had wasted well over an hour, no senior tutor had come to him, and that he was going back to his parents’ restaurant in Golders Green. After that Ricky telephoned the reception desk saying that he couldn’t get any reply from his wife’s office and would Mr Luttrell please go and make sure she was all right. As we all know, Mr Luttrell went to the office, knocked, opened the door, and was met by the ghastly spectacle which was to bring us all together in Court Number One at the Old Bailey.

‘Mr Rumpole.’ The judge’s tone in calling my name was as aloofly disapproving as though Christmas had never happened. ‘All this evidence is agreed, isn’t it? I don’t suppose you’ll find it necessary to trouble Mr Luttrell with any questions.’

‘Just one or two, my Lord.’

‘Oh very well.’ The judge sounded displeased. ‘Just remember, we’re under a public duty not to waste time.’

‘I hope your Lordship isn’t suggesting that an attempt to get to the truth is a waste of time.’ And before the old Gravestone could launch a counterattack, I asked Mr Luttrell the first question.

‘You say Mr Glossop spoke to you on the way out. Can you remember what he said?’

‘I remember perfectly.’ The receptionist looked personally insulted as though I doubted his word. ‘He asked me if Hussein Khan was in the building.’

‘He asked you that?’

‘Yes, he did.’

‘And what did you tell him?’

‘I told him “yes”. I said Khan was in the library where he had an appointment with the senior tutor.’

I allowed a pause for this curious piece of evidence to sink into the minds of the jury. Graves, of course, filled in the gap by asking if that was my only question.

‘Just one more, my Lord.’

Here the judge sighed heavily, but I ignored that.

‘Are you telling this jury, Mr Luttrell, that Glossop discovered that the man who had threatened his wife with death was in the building, then left without speaking to her again?’

I looked at the jury as I asked this and saw, for the first time in the trial, a few faces looking puzzled.

Mr Luttrell, however, sounded unfazed.

‘I’ve told you what he said. I can’t tell you anything more.’

‘He can’t tell us any more,’ the judge repeated. ‘So that would seem to be the end of the matter, wouldn’t it, Mr Rumpole?’