Jasper Fforde - The Constant Rabbit

I was handed over to the custody sergeant, who confirmed with me that I was Peter Knox; that I wasn’t drunk or deranged; that I could be reasonably believed to be wanted in questioning with a crime; that I understood what was being said to me; that the crime required me to be held in custody; that I was unlikely to harm myself.

Pictures, fingerprints, details, then all my clothes were placed in a large evidence bag, signed and sealed. I was given some freshly laundered clothes to wear – a pair of jogging trousers, a T-shirt and a sweat top. On the whole, the officers were considerate and polite, but then I wasn’t causing any trouble and I was human, like them. They even offered me something to eat, but I declined. I wasn’t hungry. I thought I wouldn’t be able to sleep, but I did, and quite well.

After a breakfast of cereal and tea, I was taken upstairs to meet the lawyer who had been allocated to my case.

‘You’re in luck,’ the custody sergeant told me, ‘Spenlow & Jorkins have agreed to supply counsel.’

‘Oh?’ I said, as the law firm were well known, not just in Hereford, but Shropshire and Gloucestershire, too. On numerous occasions they had defended defendants who had clearly been guilty, and while not always getting their clients acquitted, they had certainly managed to achieve a reduction in sentence.

It was a surprise when I met my lawyer, but thinking about it afterwards, I should not have been surprised at the surprise. A small Petstock rabbit dressed in a suit and tie was waiting for me, nervously clutching a briefcase and peering at me owlishly through round, steel-rimmed spectacles. He was white and brown, and his left ear was missing the top third.

‘Hello!’ he said cheerfully, clasping my hand in his two. ‘Lance deBlackberry of Spenlow & Jorkins.’

‘Hello,’ I said, noting that his missing ear ended in the sort of pattern perforations make once torn. ‘What happened to your ear?’

‘Oh,’ he said in a friendly tone, ‘that’s easily explained: never duel with automatic weapons. Now: Mr Jorkins specifically allocated me to your case as he thought I might be able to offer a unique insight.’

‘Ah,’ I said, ‘and can you?’

‘Can I what?’

‘Offer a unique insight into my case?’

‘Frankly, no,’ he admitted, ‘this is my first case.’

‘First murder case?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘I mean my first criminal case. I graduated only last week from Stanford Law School.’

‘Stanford? That’s impressive,’ I said, feeling relieved despite his lack of experience. ‘How did you get to travel to the States to attend?’

‘You misunderstand me,’ he said apologetically, ‘not the Stanford Law School, but an online law school based out of Stanford, a small village in Bedfordshire. The course was easier than I expected. It didn’t really require much study at all.’

‘How long and how much?’

‘Two weeks and two hundred pounds. Look.’

And from his briefcase he withdrew a framed certificate that seemed quite badly spelled.

‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ I said, ‘but I think I might need a more experienced lawyer.’

‘Not possible. The Attorney General herself asked for a rabbit lawyer to defend you. Said it would be fitting and just given the circumstances and would also give rabbits in the legal profession a “chance to shine”.’

I sighed inwardly. The establishment was taking no chances on ensuring I was banged up for this, and as a bonus feature would be able to discredit rabbit lawyers at the same time.

‘OK, then,’ I said, ‘where do we go from here?’

‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I was hoping you might be able to give me a few pointers. Have you ever been arrested in connection with murder before?’

‘No.’

‘That’s a shame,’ he said, somewhat crestfallen, ‘as it might have helped us figure out procedure. But never mind,’ he added, ‘this is only the interview process, and I’ve seen a couple of episodes of 24hrs in Police Custody and Banged Up Abroad , so I think you should be saying “no comment” a lot and figuring out who to bribe.’

‘I’m not handing out bribes, Mr deBlackberry.’

‘It’s Lancelot,’ he said, ‘but you can call me Lance.’

I was interviewed by a non-Taskforce officer, a friendly detective inspector named Stanton, and, ignoring Lance’s advice, I denied nothing, and admitted everything. Yes, I had been having an affair with Mrs Rabbit, whom I had known for many years, yes, I did know there was a gun in the house, yes, Doc had earlier shown me where he kept the powder and ball and percussion caps, and yes, I pulled the trigger when Mr Ffoxe threatened to kill Constance.

‘So you admit to killing Mr Ffoxe?’ said DI Stanton.

‘Since I was defending Constance Rabbit against Mr Ffoxe when I shot him,’ I explained, ‘it should be classed as self-defence.’

‘Brilliant,’ said Lance out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Well done.’

But DI Stanton put me right on that point.

‘A fox is legally permitted to kill a rabbit, so the self-defence plea doesn’t work unless you felt that Mr Ffoxe was going to attack you .’

He asked me whether I had felt my life was in danger, and I had to admit that I hadn’t.

‘If Mrs Rabbit was your property,’ said Lance, looking up from a book entitled Your Rights and the Law , ‘then your actions could be seen as using force to “protect your property”.’

‘But your response would have to be proportionate ,’ said DI Stanton, ‘and I’m not sure the courts would see murder as a proportionate response to someone who threatened to kill your pet rabbit.’

‘Constance wasn’t anyone’s property,’ I said.

I dictated a confession, signed it and was charged with murder three hours later.

The news about Much Hemlock and Doc and Connie came to me on the morning of the second day, via a newspaper brought to me by Lance. The conflagration that gutted Hemlock Towers was reportedly the ‘tragic outcome of a series of misunderstandings’, and most papers took the angle of it being ‘a spectacular loss for the architectural preservation lobby’, who, it seemed, had belatedly regarded Hemlock Towers as an unspoiled rarity.

The ‘peaceful and well-intended’ rally began quietly, it was reported, when a pro-fox group arrived at the house to hold a candlelit vigil for a much-respected member of the Vulpes vulpes community, who had done so much to find a workable solution to the rabbit issue. It was likely, their spokesperson said, that the sight of all those candles must have frightened the Rabbits, who responded with ‘many hostile acts’ which caused those on the vigil to withdraw to safety, after which an ‘unfortunate set of circumstances’ took place in which the house was accidentally set on fire. ‘We have credible information that the source of ignition could be attributed to the Rabbits themselves,’ an unnamed source within TwoLegsGood reported. ‘They may have been filling Molotov cocktails and had an accident with the matches. It’s impossible to say.’

Despite no evidence to corroborate this and quite a lot to refute it, the news was not strenuously challenged. Reports of people in plastic pig masks were also furiously denied, and it seemed that a series of unfortunate car breakdowns had blocked all access to the house, which meant that the fire brigade were late to the scene, and could only control a fire that was so fully ablaze that it even set fire to the house next door, despite there being a gap of forty yards. Corroboration from villagers as to the circumstances of the fire was limited as most people, it seemed, had been watching the season finale of Holby City and either didn’t know the fire had happened, or had seen it from a distance, or thought it was kids ‘mucking around with a bonfire’.