The Brief

by Simon Michael

  He lived in a single room in Lincoln’s Inn with a dozen budgerigars whom he permitted to fly free within the confines of the room. Droppings and feathers covered every available surface, and the floor crunched underfoot with decades of dried filth. Kellett-Brown himself invariably wore threadbare striped trousers, the seat of which was so shiny that the pupils in his room on one occasion all wore dark glasses to protect their eyes from the glare. The joke had been utterly lost on the wearer of the trousers. He owned one jacket, the cuffs of which he trimmed regularly, and over that he wore, like an overcoat, the evidence, visual and odiferous, of his domestic companions.

  To add to this prepossessing appearance, Kellett-Brown had an “unfortunate manner” as some of the more charitable members of Chambers termed it. As far as Stanley, the senior clerk, was concerned, he was an argumentative old fool who should have been kicked out years ago. He frequently appeared in Chambers in the late afternoon, plainly the worse for the subsidised sherry served in Hall at luncheon, when Stanley was sorting out the diary for the next day. He would peer over the clerk’s shoulder, a tipsy, disgruntled vulture, and remind Stanley repeatedly that he was available for anything that might be going spare.

  Charles wrinkled his nose with distaste. Kellett-Brown bore his usual pungent air of sherry and decrepitude.

  ‘Sorry, Ivor,’ said Charles, attempting to circumvent Kellett-Brown and get to his room.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said the other with very great dignity, turning slowly to face Charles after he had spoken, and peering at Charles from under heavy lids.

  ‘I said sorry, Ivor. For bumping into you,’ explained Charles. He watched as Ivor swayed slightly. ‘Forget it,’ said Charles with impatience, as he continued on his way across the landing.

  Charles unlocked the far door and walked down to his room. He threw the papers onto his desk, reached across to the desk lamp, and settled himself down to read his new brief.

  Charles was unaware of the passing of time, but he had read about a hundred pages when there was a faint tap on his door. It was so quiet that he ignored it at first, but then it was repeated, slightly harder.

  ‘Come in,’ he said, putting down his pen. The door opened very slowly, and Sally’s head appeared timidly round the door. ‘Yes, Sally? What are you doing still here?’ He looked at his watch. It was almost 8 o’clock. ‘You’ve not been stood up, have you?’

  Sally looked down at the mass of papers spread about Charles’s desk and the pile of law books on the floor.

  ‘Oh…no… it really doesn’t matter if you’re busy, sir…’ she said in a strange voice.

  She stepped back and began to close the door behind her. Charles pushed his chair back and followed her. She looked back at him like a frightened rabbit. Charles led her gently by the arm back to the circle of light around his desk and turned her round. Her eyes were red and she had been crying. Her eyeliner, which, was usually applied – albeit in large quantities – very carefully, was smeared, and her hair was awry.

  ‘What on earth’s the matter?’ asked Charles gently.

  Sally was usually so competent and brisk that he was quite startled to see her upset. She took a deep breath as if to start speaking but her voice broke and all that emerged was a deep sob. Charles led her to the one comfortable chair in his room, an old leather armchair in the corner, and sat her down. He returned to his desk, searched his drawer, and came up with some tissues and handed one to her.

  ‘Now. Take a deep breath and tell me what’s happened. Is it your boyfriend?’

  ‘He didn’t come…’ she started.

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. Well, more fool – ’

  She waved her hand to stop him. ‘That ain’t it.’ Charles waited for her to take another deep breath and let her start again. ‘I was waiting for him over there,’ she said between gulps of air, pointing to the clerks’ room, ‘when Mr K…K…Kellett-Brown came in…’

  ‘Yes?’ asked Charles, crouching beside her.

  ‘Oh, Mr Holborne sir, I don’t know…what’s best…I’d better not…’ Her voice rose sharply with each phrase. She was on the verge of hysteria.

  ‘Just take it slowly. One word at a time.’

  ‘I…can’t… I’ll get into trouble, Mr Holborne.’

  ‘No you won’t, I promise you.’ He lifted her chin with his hand and looked up into her smudged eyes. ‘If something’s happened, you must tell me.’

  She looked straight at him, and nodded. ‘Mr K-B came in. I was waiting for Johnny. He…Mr K-B…he asked me if I didn’t think it would be better if I shut the outer door, so no one could come wandering in.’ Her voice was calmer but she spoke very quickly, as if afraid that if she paused she would be unable to continue. ‘Stanley told me about downstairs being burgled, so I thought perhaps I should. Johnny’d always knock anyway.’

  Now she had started talking the words tumbled out in a cascade. ‘So I did, I shut it, and went back to my desk. I was typing a letter, for Mr Smith, when Mr Kellett-Brown called on the ‘phone. Wanted me to bring him in some paper. So I went in there, and he wasn’t at his desk. I turns round, and there he is…behind the door…’ She laughed, a peculiar high-pitched giggle that turned into a cry. ‘He had his…thing…you know? Sticking out his trousers. He kept saying he wouldn’t hurt me…wouldn’t hurt me… just wanted me to…to…’ She had to stop again.

  Charles stood up, and moved towards the door. Sally grabbed at him. ‘Please don’t go! Don’t go Mr Holborne!’ she cried.

  ‘I’m not going. I just want to see if he’s still there.’

  ‘He ain’t. He left after…after…’

  ‘After what?’ asked Charles, turning back to her. ‘Are you saying he… did something to you?’ he asked gently.

  She shook her head violently. ‘No, he never, but he grabbed at me…’ She opened her jacket, and showed Charles her blouse. Two of the buttons in the middle of her chest were torn off. Charles averted his eyes from her breasts.

  ‘I pushed him away, and he fell over. I ran to the loo and locked meself in. I’ve been there nearly ’alf an hour. I heard the door go, but I was too scared to come out till now.’

  ‘My God, you poor thing,’ said Charles. ‘Let me get you a drink. I keep a bottle in the desk for – ’

  ‘No,’ she replied firmly. ‘I don’t want nothing. I just want to go home.’

  ‘Stay here a minute,’ he ordered. ‘I shall be a minute at most. Lock the door after me if you’re worried.’ He crossed swiftly to the other side of the building and pushed the door to the clerks’ room open. The place was empty. Charles picked up Sally’s coat from the back of the door and returned to her.

  ‘He’s gone,’ he reported. Sally was sitting where he had left her, looking forlorn. Charles drew up another chair alongside her.

  ‘Now, what do you want to do?’

  ‘Like I said, I want to go home.’

  ‘No, I mean so far as Kellett-Brown is concerned. You are quite entitled to call the police and have him charged with indecent assault. Or maybe even attempted – ’

  ‘No!’ she replied very firmly. ‘No,’ she repeated, ‘I couldn’t do that.’

  ‘I’d come with you,’ Charles offered. ‘Maybe we should give your mother a call?’

  ‘It’s not that,’ she said. She took several deep breaths to calm herself. ‘He’s a horrible old man…a dirty old – no –’ she said, seeing Charles’s half-smile, ‘I mean he don’t wash. And he smells, too. But…I know what you’re going to say, Mr Holborne… but I feel sorry for him. He’s lonely – ’

  ‘Doesn’t matter how lonely he is! That doesn’t give him the right to go flashing, and grabbing at you like that!’

  ‘I know. But I couldn’t get him sent to prison – ’

  ‘It might not be prison, you know – ’

  ‘I don’t care,’ she said adamantly.

  ‘I think you ought to think about it, Sally. Don’t make any snap decisions. You could easily have been raped.’<
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  ‘No I couldn’t. I could punch his lights out any time, if it came to it,’ she said vehemently. Charles looked at her with surprise and some admiration. He believed it too. ‘I was just a bit frightened,’ she went on. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘So you’re happy just to forget it? Smile and say “Good morning” to him tomorrow? Pretend it didn’t happen?’

  Sally looked at him with wide eyes. She hadn’t thought about that.

  ‘I…don’t know. I’ll have to talk to me Mum.’ She paused, her brow contracting in thought. ‘Ooh, I’m gonna have to give up the job, ain’t I?’ And this time the tears began to fall in earnest, thick and fast. ‘I could never face him again,’ she said between sobs. ‘And they’re never gonna throw him out are they?’ She looked up at Charles, eyes streaming rivulets of black mascara down her cheeks.

  ‘I don’t know. My guess is that, if Sir Geoffrey finds out about this, even if you don’t report it to the police, it’ll be the final straw. But if you’re absolutely sure you don’t want me to call the police, I agree you should go home. I’ll walk you up to Fleet Street, and you can get a cab.’

  ‘I ain’t got enough for a cab from here to Romford.’

  ‘That’s alright. It can come out of petty cash. It’s the least Chambers can do.’

  Charles helped her into her coat, handed her her bag, and leaving his papers where they lay, escorted her out of Chambers.

  ‘It might be a good idea not to come in tomorrow, eh?’ he said. She nodded in reply. ‘I’ll tell Stanley you weren’t well tonight, and that I sent you home. Okay?’

  She nodded again, and sniffed. ‘Tell him it’s me throat. I’ve been coughing all day anyway.’

  ‘Fine.’

  Charles locked the doors behind him and they set off. Sally felt for his hand as they walked down the stairs.

  ‘Thanks Charlie,’ she said, looking up at him with a smile, and squeezing his hand. It was the first time she had ever used his first name, and it was, according to the protocol of the Bar, quite wrong. She could never have done it with any other member of Chambers, and they both knew it. Charles was flattered. He smiled back at her. ‘I don’t know what I’d have done, if you wasn’t in,’ she continued. He squeezed her hand in reply.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Charles left home the next morning at 6.30 am. He had to complete the work he had left unfinished before he went to the Old Bailey. He also had business in Lincoln’s Inn.

  Relations with Henrietta over the past few days had been less tense, but she had spent the last three nights in her own bedroom. Charles didn’t wake her before he left.

  From Paddington he took the Tube to Chancery Lane rather than Temple and walked down towards the Thames. It was a bright, clear morning, and at 7:15 am the streets were deserted and seemed fresh and clean. The leaves on the plane trees were beginning to emerge, and Charles could smell spring round the corner.

  The part of Lincoln’s Inn where Kellett-Brown lived had been built in the 16th century, and had barely changed since. The building in which he had his room was occupied on the ground floor by barristers’ chambers, and Charles paused as he passed the board that announced the names of the barristers practising inside, noting that he didn’t recognise a single name. He had little to do with Chancery practitioners. Their working lives were so different from his that they might have been in different professions altogether.

  He climbed the staircase to the upper floors. The staircase was oak, blackened with time and hundreds of years of footfalls, unchanged except for a lick of paint since the time of Dickens.

  The second floor housed a book-binding business and the third a firm of solicitors of whom Charles had never heard. The staircase leading to Kellett-Brown’s room on the top floor was particularly ill-lit and Charles had to feel his way up step by step. He finally came to a door at the head of the staircase. There appeared to be no bell or knocker, so Charles rapped on the oak door with his knuckles. There was no sound from within. He repeated his knock, much harder this time, and, after a few seconds he heard movement.

  ‘What do you want? Do you know what time it is?’

  ‘It’s Charles Holborne, from Chambers.’

  There was a pause. ‘What the bloody hell do you want?’

  ‘Will you open the door, Ivor? This is very important.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Holborne, go away. I’ll be in Chambers this afternoon if you want me.’

  Charles could hear Kellett-Brown’s footsteps retreating from the front door.

  ‘I suggest you open up now Ivor. I doubt you’ll want me to shout through the door, but if you give me no alternative, I shall. It’s about Sally.’

  The footfalls ceased. Charles could imagine the old man, motionless, only a few feet away from him on the other side of the door, debating whether to open up or not. Eventually, curiosity – or fear – got the better of him, and the footsteps approached again. Charles heard a chain being withdrawn, and a bolt sliding out of its place. The door opened. Kellett-Brown faced him, wearing an old blue dressing gown, skinny pyjamaed legs sticking out of the bottom.

  ‘You’d better come in,’ he said.

  Charles walked past him into a smelly darkened room, overcrowded with heavy furniture. There were a number of small birds on perches dotted about the room, apparently asleep. Kellett-Brown closed the door and turned to Charles.

  ‘Well?’ he whispered, apparently so as not to disturb his pets.

  ‘I’ll come straight to the point,’ replied Charles. ‘I was in Chambers last night when you assaulted Sally.’

  ‘Assaulted Sally? What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘You can pretend not to know if you like Ivor, but if you take that line, you’ll have to continue it with the police. I’m not here to mess about. I know what sort of state Sally was in last night after you finished with her, and if necessary I’ll give evidence of exactly what I saw.’

  ‘The girl’s raving!’

  Charles shook his head. ‘Very well,’ he said quietly. ‘You may expect a call from the police.’ He took a step towards the door but Kellett-Brown didn’t move. ‘Do you want to reconsider?’ asked Charles. ‘I have told no one about it as yet, and if you choose, that’s the way it can remain.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I mean that I’m sure Sally won’t press charges, and last night’s events will be forgotten.’

  ‘And what am I supposed to do to prevent these false charges being brought against me? You do realise that this is blackmail? You could be prosecuted yourself for this!’

  ‘I am trying, Ivor, to save your reputation, such as it is, and prevent this whole thing being dragged through the courts. I am also trying to save a young girl’s job.’

  ‘I repeat, what’s the price?’

  ‘Your resignation from Chambers, effective as from today.’

  ‘Preposterous!’ replied Kellett-Brown.

  Charles pushed past him and opened the door. ‘It’s entirely up to you. If, by the time I return to Chambers this afternoon, I’ve heard nothing, I shall report the matter to the head of Chambers. What he does then is up to him. Likewise, it will be up to Sally to decide whether or not she wishes to prosecute. In my view, there’s absolutely no doubt but that she should. Good morning.’

  Charles left the stinking apartment, slammed the front door behind him turned and descended the staircase. There was a considerable fluttering and squawking behind him.

  Once at Chancery Court, Charles continued reading his new brief until 9.00 am, hastily jotted some notes for the typists to decipher, and walked down to the Old Bailey. Before leaving he left a note on Stanley’s desk saying that Sally had become ill the night before while still at Chambers and that she’d not be in for the day.

  In the Old Bailey’s Bar Mess he ordered an enormous fried breakfast and settled down with a cup of coffee to read the newspaper.

  At 10.20 it was announced that His Honour Judge Galbraith was dealing with a bail
application and that all parties in the case of The Queen versus Plumber were released until 11.00 am. That was in due course extended to 11.30 am, and then midday. The case finally resumed at 12.15 pm. By 4.20 pm the evidence for the Crown was completed apart from the evidence of Sands. His Honour adjourned until the morning. It had been a frustrating day for the Defence, and the team was on edge.

  Charles walked directly back to the Temple. As he entered the clerks’ room, Stanley beamed at him in a most unusual way.

  ‘Have you been drinking, Stanley?’ asked Charles with a smile.

  ‘Not a drop, thank you sir. Mr Kellett-Brown has resigned from Chambers. Came in at lunchtime, paid a quarter’s rent, took his desk, and departed. Ill-health, he said.’

  ‘Well I never,’ said Charles. ‘He always looked perfectly well to me.’

  Charles went into his room, and closed the door. He picked up the telephone and called Sally.

  ‘You can come back tomorrow,’ he told her. ‘Mr Kellett-Brown has resigned, and he has already gone.’

  ‘Have you said anything, sir?’ she answered, reverting to formality. Charles was surprised to find that he was disappointed. His short moment of intimacy with the bright nineteen year-old was over, and would never be referred to again.

  ‘I had a word with Kellett-Brown, that’s all. Otherwise it’s between us and no-one else,’ he assured her.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow then, Mr Holborne. I’ll phone Stanley now and tell him I’m feeling better.’

  ‘Fine. Goodbye.’

  ‘‘Bye sir.’

  •