“I know it’s Christmas Eve. I know that perfectly well,” I told him. “And my wife has gone fishing with our sepulchral judge, whom she calls ‘Gerald’. Meanwhile, have you got any close friends or associates working at Hawkin’s, the solicitor?”
“Barry Tuck used to be our legal executive – moved there about three years ago.”
“A cooperative sort of character is he, Tuck?”
“We got on very well. Yes.”
“Then get him to find out why Honoria Glossop went to see Tony Hawkin the afternoon before she was shot. It must have been something fairly urgent. She missed a seminar in order to go.”
“Is it important?”
“Probably not, but it just might be something we ought to know.”
“I hope you’re enjoying your Christmas break, Mr Rumpole.”
“Quite enjoying it. I’d like it better without a certain member of the judiciary. Oh, and I’ve got a hard time ahead.”
“Working?”
“No,” I told my patient solicitor gloomily. “Dancing.”
“Quick, quick, slow, Rumpole. That’s better. Now chassé. Don’t you remember, Rumpole? This is where you chassé.”
The truth was that I remembered little about it. It had been so long ago. How many years could it have been since Hilda and I had trod across a dance floor? Yet here I was in a dinner jacket, which was now uncomfortably tight round the waist, doing my best to walk round this small area of polished parquet in time to the music with one arm round Hilda’s satin-covered waist and my other hand gripping one of hers. Although for much of the time she was walking backwards, she was undoubtedly the one in command of the enterprise. I heard a voice singing, seemingly from far off, above the music of the five-piece band laid on for the hotel’s dinner dance. It was a strange sound and one that I hadn’t heard for what seemed many years – She Who Must be Obeyed was singing. I looked towards my table, rather as someone lost at sea might look towards a distant shore, and I saw Mr Justice Gravestone smiling at us with approval.
“Well done, Hilda! And you came through that quite creditably I thought, Rumpole. I mean, at least you managed to remain upright, although there were a few dodgy moments coming round that far corner.”
“That was when I told him chassé. Rumpole couldn’t quite manage it.”
As they were both enjoying a laugh I realized that, during a long day by the river which had, it seemed, produced nothing more than two fish so small that they had had to be returned to their natural environment, Mrs Rumpole had become “Hilda” to the judge, who had become “Gerald”.
“You know, when you retire, Rumpole,” the judge was sounding sympathetic in the most irritating kind of way, “you could take dancing lessons.”
“There’s so much Rumpole could do if he retired. I keep telling him,” was Hilda’s contribution. “He could have wonderful days like we had, Gerald. Outdoors, close to nature and fishing.”
“Catching two small grayling you had to put back in the water?” I was bold enough to ask. “It would’ve been easier to pay a quick visit to the fishmongers.”
“Catching fish is not the point of fishing,” Hilda told me. Before I could ask her what the point of it was, the judge came up with a suggestion.
“When you retire, I could teach you fishing, Rumpole. We could have a few days out together.”
“Now then. Isn’t that kind of Gerald, Rumpole?” Hilda beamed and I had to mutter, “Very kind,” although the judge’s offer had made me more determined than ever to die with my wig on.
It was at this point that Lorraine the manageress came to the judge with a message. He read it quickly and then said, “Poor old Leslie Mulliner. You know him, don’t you, Rumpole? He sits in the chancery division.”
I had to confess I didn’t know anyone who sat in the chancery division.
“He was going to join us here tomorrow but his wife’s not well.”
“He said on the phone that you’d do the job for him tomorrow.” Lorraine seemed anxious.
“Yes, of course,” Graves hurried to reassure her. “I’ll stand in for him.”
Before I could get any further explanation of the “job”, the music had struck up a more contemporary note. Foxtrots were out, and with a cry of “Come along Hilda,” Graves was strutting the dance floor, making curious rhythmic movements with his hands. And Hilda, walking free and unfastened from her partner, was also strutting and waving her arms, smiling with pleasure. It wasn’t, I’m sure, the most up-to-date form of dancing, but it was, I suppose, a gesture from two sedate citizens who were doing their best to become, for a wine-filled moment on Christmas Eve, a couple of teenagers.
Christmas Day at Cherry Picker’s Hall was uneventful. The judge suggested church, and I stood while he and Hilda bellowed out “Come, all ye Faithful”. Then we sat among the faithful under the Norman arches, beside the plaques and monuments to so many vanished rectors and country squires, looking out upon the holly round the pulpit and the flowers on the altar. I tried to understand, not for the first time, how a religious belief could become so perverted as to lead to death threats, terror, and a harmless professor shot through the head.
We had lunch in a pub and then the judge announced he had work to do and left us.
After a long and satisfactory sleep, Hilda and I woke around teatime and went to the residents’ lounge. Long before we got to the door, we could hear the excited cries of children, and when we went in we saw them crowded round the Christmas tree. And there, stooping among the presents, was the expected figure in a red dressing gown (trimmed with white fur), Wellington boots, a white beard, and a long red hat. As he picked up a present and turned towards us, I felt that fate had played the greatest practical joke it could have thought up to enliven the festive season.
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 specialized 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.
III
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 organization. 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 alright. 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?”
“Not quite the end,” I told him. “I don’t think it’s quite the end of the matter yet.”
This remark did nothing to improve my relations with his Lordship, who gave me a look from which all traces of the Christmas spirit had been drained.
The jury may have had a moment of doubt during the receptionist’s evidence, but when Ricky Glossop was put in the witness box, their sympathy and concern for the good-looking, appealingly modest, and stricken husband was obvious. Graves supported him with enthusiasm.
“This is clearly going to be a terrible ordeal for you, Mr Glossop,” the judge said, looking at the witness with serious concern. “Wouldn’t you like to sit down?”
“No, thank you, my Lord. I prefer to stand,” Ricky said bravely. The judge gave him the sort of look a commanding officer might give to a young subaltern who’d volunteered to attack the enemy position single-handed. “Just let me know,” Graves insisted, “if you feel exhausted or overcome by any part of your evidence, and you shall sit down immediately.”
“Thank you very much, my Lord. That is very kind of your Lordship.”
So with formalities of mutual admiration over, Ricky Glossop began to tell his story.
He had met Honoria some ten years before when they were both cruising round the Greek Islands. “She knew all the classical legends and the history of every place. I thought she’d never be bothered with an under-educated slob like me.” Here he smiled modestly, and the judge smiled back as a sign of disagreement. “But luckily she put up with me. And, of course, I fell in love with her.”
“Of course?” Soapy Sam seemed to feel that this sentence called for some further explanation.
“She was extremely beautiful.”
“And she found you attractive?”
“She seemed to. God knows why.” This answer earned him smiles for his modesty.
“So you were married for ten years,” Ballard said. “And you had no children.”
“No. Honoria couldn’t have children. It was a great sadness to both of us.”
“And how would you describe your marriage up to the time your wife got this terrible letter?” Ballard was holding the letter out, at a distance, as though the paper itself might carry a fatal infection.
“We were very happy.”
“When she got the letter, how did she react to it?”
“She was very brave, my Lord,” Ricky told the judge. “She said it had obviously been written by some nutcase and that she intended to ignore it.”
“She was extremely brave.” The judge spoke the words with admiration as he wrote them down.
So Ricky Glossop told his story. And when I, the r
epresentative, so it appeared, of his wife’s murderer, rose to cross-examine, I felt a chill wind blowing through Number One Court.
“Mr Glossop, you said your marriage to your wife Honoria was a happy one?”
“As far as I was concerned it was very happy.” Here he smiled at the jury and some of them nodded back approvingly.
“Did you know that on the afternoon before she was murdered, your wife had consulted a solicitor, Mr Anthony Hawkin of Henshaw and Hawkin?”
“I didn’t know that, no.”
“Can you guess why?”
“I’m afraid not. My wife had considerable financial interests under her father’s will. It might have been about that.”
“You mean it might have been about the money?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know that Anthony Hawkin is well known as an expert on divorce and family law?”
“I didn’t know that either.”
“And you didn’t know that your wife was considering proceedings for divorce?”
“I certainly didn’t.”
I looked at the jury. They were now, I thought, at least interested. I remembered the frightened blonde girl I had seen outside the court and the hand he had put on her as he had tried to comfort her.
“Was there any trouble between your wife and yourself because of her secretary, Sue Blackmore?”
“So far as I know, none whatever.”
“Mr Rumpole, I’m wondering, and I expect the jury may be wondering as well, what on earth these questions have to do with your client’s trial for murder.”
“Then wonder on.” I might have quoted Shakespeare to Graves: “Till truth makes all things plain.” But I did not do that. I merely said, “I’m putting these questions to test the credibility of this witness, my Lord.”
“And why, Mr Rumpole, are you attacking his credibility? Which part of this gentleman’s evidence are you disputing?”
“If I may be allowed to cross-examine in the usual way, I hope it may become clear,” I said, and then I’m afraid I also said, “even to your Lordship.”
At this, Gravestone gave me the look that meant “you just wait until we come to the summing up, and I’ll tell the jury what I think of your attack on this charming husband”, but for the moment he remained as silent as a block of ice, so I soldiered on.
The Mammoth Book Best International Crime Page 8