Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 6

“You think that, do you?”

“Well, isn’t it obvious?”

I poured myself another glass and changed the subject. “You’re devoted to this house, aren’t you?”

“Well, it does mean a lot to me. It’s the home of my ancestors. Their portraits are on the walls around us. If they could speak to us, God knows what they would say about the present occupants.”

“You don’t think that the health farm should be here?”

“You want me to be honest, Rumpole?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’d like you to be that.”

“This house has been in my family since Queen Elizabeth made one of her young courtiers the first Earl of Minchingham, probably because she rather fancied him. I don’t say that my ancestors had any particular virtues, Rumpole, but they have been part of British history. We fought for the King in the Civil War. We led a regiment at Waterloo. We went out and ruled bits of the British Empire. One was a young Brigadier killed on the Somme. I suppose most of them would have fancied Oriana, but not as a marriage proposition. But as for the rest of the people here, I don’t think there’s a chance that any one of them would have received an invitation to dinner.”

“Do you think they would have invited me to dinner?”

There was a pause and then he said, “If you want me to be completely honest, Rumpole, no.”

“Didn’t they need lawyers?”

“Oh yes. They needed them in the way they needed gamekeepers and carpenters and butlers and cooks. But they didn’t invite them to dinner.”

I considered this and refilled our glasses. “I suppose you think your old father did the wrong thing, then?”

“Of course he did. I suppose he became obsessed with Oriana.”

“Did you argue with him about it?”

“I was away in the Army at the time. He sent me a letter, after the event. I just couldn’t believe what he’d done.”

“How did he meet Oriana?”

“Oh, she had some sort of health club in London. A friend recommended it to him. I think she cured his arthritis. It couldn’t have been very bad arthritis, could it?”

I couldn’t help him about his father’s arthritis, so I said nothing.

“I imagine he fell in love with her. So he gave her this – all our history.”

“But she must have been paying for it. In rent.”

“Peanuts. He must have been too besotted when he signed the contract.”

We had got to a stage in the conversation where I wanted to light a small cigar, Lord Minchingham told me that I was breaking all the rules.

“I feel the heart has been taken out of the health farm,” I told him.

“Good for you. I hope it has.”

“I can understand how you must feel. Where do you live now?”

“My father also sold the Dower House. He did that years ago, when my grandmother died. I live in one of the cottages in the village. It’s perfectly all right but it’s not Minchingham Hall.”

“I can see what you mean.”

“Can you? Can you really, Rumpole?” He seemed grateful for my understanding. “I’m afraid I haven’t been much help to you.”

“Don’t worry. You’ve been an enormous help.”

“We all heard what Airlie said at dinner. That he was leaving his fortune to Oriana.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “We all heard that.”

“So I suppose that’s why she did it.”

“That’s the generally held opinion,” I told him. “The only problem is, of course, that she didn’t do it.”

“Is that what she’s going to say in court?”

“Yes.”

“No one will believe her.”

“On the contrary. Everyone will believe she didn’t do it.”

“Why?” Lord Minchingham laughed, a small, mirthless laugh, mocking me.

“Shelagh told me what she found. The steam turned up from the outside and a chair leg stuck through the door handle to stop it opening from the inside.”

“So that’s how Oriana did the murder.”

“Do you really think that if she’d been the murderer she’d have left the chair leg stuck in the handle? Do you think she’d have left the steam turned up? Oriana may have her faults but she’s not stupid. If she’d done it she’d have removed the chair leg and turned down the steam. That would have made it look like an accident. The person who did it wanted it to look like a murder.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“What am I forgetting?”

“No one else would want to kill Airlie.”

“Oh, Airlie wasn’t considered important by whoever did this. Airlie was just a tool, like the chair leg in the door handle and the steam switch on the outside. If you want to know which victim this murderer was after, it wasn’t Airlie, it was Oriana.”

“Then who could it possibly be?”

“Someone who wanted Oriana to be arrested, and tried for murder. Someone who would be delighted if she got a life sentence. Someone who thought the health farm wouldn’t exist without her. I haven’t seen the contract she signed with your father. Did his lawyer put in some clause forbidding indecent or illegal conduct on the premises? In fact, Lord Minchingham, someone who desperately wanted his family home back.”

The effect of this was extraordinary. As he sat at the table in front of me Tom Minchingham was no longer a cheerful, half-amused aristocrat. His hand gripped his glass and his face was contorted with rage. He seemed to have turned, before my eyes, into his ancestor who had strangled a stable lad with his bare hands.

“She deserved it,” he said. “She had it coming! She cheated my father and stole my house from me!”

“I knew it was you,” I told him, “when we met in the pub. You talked about the chair leg in the door handle. When Shelagh rang you she never said anything about a chair leg. She told me that. I suppose you’ve still got a key to the house. Anyway, you got in after everyone had gone to bed. Airlie told us at dinner about his late night steam baths. You found him in there, enjoying the steam. Then you jammed the door and left him to die. Now Oriana’s in an overnight police cell, I suppose you think your plan has been an uncommon success.”

In the silence that followed Tom Minchingham relaxed. The murderous ancestor disappeared, the smiling aristocrat returned. “You can’t prove any of it,” he said.

“Don’t be so sure.”

“You can invent all the most ridiculous defences in the world, Mr Rumpole. I’m sure you’re very good at that. But they won’t save Oriana because you won’t be able to prove anything. You’re wasting my time and yours. I have to go now. I won’t thank you for the indifferent claret and I don’t suppose we will ever meet again.”

He left then. When he had gone I retrieved, from the foliage of the potted plant on the table, the small dictaphone I had borrowed from Shelagh. I felt as I always did when I sat down after a successful cross-examination.

Going home on the train Hilda said, “You look remarkably pleased with yourself, Rumpole.”

“I am,” I said, a little cheered.

“And yet you haven’t lost an ounce.”

“I may not have lost an ounce but I’ve gained a defence brief. I think, in the case of the Queen versus Oriana, we might be able to defeat the dear old Queen.”

I’d thought about it.

Jesus forgive me, but I’d actually thought about it.

Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon. Muzzle to the forehead, the temple, wedged between teeth. He’d lost his wife, same as me. Unlike Mel, though, my wife was still alive. At least I thought so. The flickering image of her on my telly kept her alive. That moan she’d make, hot breath in my ear as I beat myself into submission, the tears coming five seconds after I did.