Brian Freemantle - A Mind to Kill

In the corridor outside John Bentley accepted with a philosophical shrug the lawyer’s refusal to allow a statement, sure he knew a way to get around it. Beside his superior, Malcolm Rodgers gestured to the policewomen re-entering the ward and said, ‘According to them all she does is talk to herself. Madder than a March hare.’

‘Or a bloody sight cleverer than one,’ challenged Bentley.

‘Meaning?’ queried Perry.

‘Voices in her head! Possessed by the first wife, seeking revenge! Come on! You ever seen a better performance for a plea of diminished responsibility?’ demanded Bentley

‘No,’ conceded the lawyer. ‘But why kill him in the first place?’

‘When I find the woman Lomax was screwing I’ll tell you,’ promised the detective. In the few hours since seeing Jennifer Lomax hunched beside the blood-soaked body of her husband Bentley had changed his mind about this being a case with no personal benefit. His intuition, which he usually followed, told him otherwise. It wasn’t intuition that convinced him Lomax had a mistress, though. That was good old hard-assed experience. All he had to do was shake the trees and he knew how to do that, too.

Back inside the tiny ward, Jane said, ‘ Just think what it’s going to he like, shut up in an asylum with genuinely mad people for the rest of your life.’

‘Stop it!’ screamed Jennifer.

‘ And that’s the way to get there. ’

The role of chamberlain was created in medieval European courts, establishing the most important functionary in any royal household. A chamberlain was the buffer, and passport, to any king or queen. With his promoting approval, eager courtiers were guaranteed title, fame and wealth. By his obstructing disapproval, anxious fortune-hunters were forever doomed to oblivion and poverty.

Today there are few European royal courts and those chamberlains that remain do so largely in power-empty office from which they emerge bewigged, gartered and plumed for ceremonial occasions, in between which they shuffle back to memories of bygone ages and absolute authority rivalling that of the monarchs their predecessors served.

England is one of those few European countries in which a monarchy and the office of chamberlain still exist, one more of doubtful ceremonial value than the other. There are, however, four other very active courts in which operate chamberlains whose sacrosanct judgement is absolute and whose unwritten laws are as unchallengeable as their interpretation of enshrined British legislation.

They are the Inns of Court and the chamberlains of their members disdain any title loftier than clerk. They need nothing higher than that, which every sensible barrister knows. Those that don’t, learn fast enough. Or leave for other professions.

Bert (as christened, not Bertram) Feltham was the chief clerk of the Temple chambers of Sir Richard Proudfoot, QC, a fiefdom he ran with a ruthlessness that had been enviously likened by lesser chief clerks in other chambers to that of the principles by which the Borgias operated and Machiavelli would have admired. He submitted briefs to his barristers before formal acceptance, as protocol required, but every one of the chamber’s eight Queen’s Counsel – including Proudfoot himself – knew Feltham had vetted the case and personally selected to whom it would be presented in advance of the first discussion. And there was never any discussion about anything whatsoever that Feltham considered unsuitable. He selected his submitting solicitors with the care with which he accepted their cases. It was a network that had developed over twenty years and worked after so long more by instinct than by legal formalities. Those honoured with Feltham’s ex-directory home telephone number knew automatically what might be ‘something for Bert’. Those that didn’t have the knack only had the office number and Feltham rarely accepted their calls.

Humphrey Perry had the home number and he rang it that night from the car phone, before leaving the hospital grounds.

‘You can’t be serious!’ protested Feltham. He had asthma and wheezed.

‘Wouldn’t you like to hear about it?’

There was a long pause. ‘You know I don’t like wasting my time. And this is wasting my time.’

Perry felt a bubble of uncertainty, despite being in what he considered an assured bargaining position. ‘You have to eat lunch somewhere.’

‘I’m on a diet.’

‘Smoked salmon and Puligny Montrachet. El Vino. Tomorrow, twelve-thirty, before it gets crowded.’

‘I’m nor going to take it.’

‘Let’s just have lunch then. It’s been a while.’

‘Don’t be late.’

Perry arrived early to secure a basement table in the corner; the wine was already open when Feltham entered precisely at half past twelve. He was a man in need of a diet: case discussion usually began over lunch. His face had the reddening of blood pressure, too. It was an inverted snobbery – some even said Feltham’s personal joke – to reject the dark-suited uniform of law in the way he dressed. Today the brass-buttoned sports jacket was brown and black striped, with fawn trousers. The shirt collar was button down. There were perfunctory handshakes. Perry poured the wine.

As he did so he said, ‘You did well with the Hallett case.’ There was a ritual that had to be performed, but today there was reason additional to the expected flattery.

‘It was predictable we’d win.’ The case of Peregrine Hallett was the most recent cause celebre: Sir Richard Proudfoot himself had defended the society financier with minor royal friends against a charge of share-rigging a company take-over, exposed a flaw in the 1987 Banking Act that now needed Parliamentary legislation to correct, and gained Hallett an acquittal with costs and a public apology from the trial judge.

‘Not to most.’ It would have been Feltham who’d judged the potential from the beginning.

‘All good for the chamber,’ wheezed Feltham, reciting the inviolable credo. He did order smoked salmon, although a double portion, with a salad he soaked in dressing and a side order of new potatoes.

‘How’s the diet going?’

‘Slowly. There was a lot of press coverage about your business in the papers this morning.’

‘Attractive woman, isn’t she?’ Although there was no need for him to diet, Perry limited himself to a single order of smoked salmon, without extras.

‘I’m not interested, Humphrey.’

‘She’s the beautiful wife of a millionaire commodity trader.’

‘Whom, according to what you told me last night and what I read this morning, she killed because she’s a menopausal paranoid schizophrenic obeying the voice of his first wife.’

‘I didn’t say she was menopausal. She isn’t.’

‘The rest is more than sufficient.’ Feltham added more dressing to what salad remained.

‘You know John Bentley?’

Feltham nodded. ‘Headline hunter.’

‘Good copper though. Best murder track record in the Met.’

‘This isn’t going to be one he’s proud of.’

‘He thinks there’s another woman. And that the voice in the head is all bullshit, a prepared-in-advance defence.’

Feltham looked disappointedly at his empty plate. ‘It doesn’t matter which way you present it, Jennifer Lomax murdered her husband in front of sixteen people. She’s guilty. I’m not into formal pleas of mitigation and you know it. I’m surprised you called me, I really am.’ He nodded to cheese and port, vintage Warre in preference to the Dow.

‘She wants the best.’

‘She wants a miracle. Why are you trying so hard?’

‘Lomax’s American parent put all their European business through our corporate division.’