The Brief: Crime and corruption in 1960s London (Charles Holborne Legal Thrillers)

by Simon Michael

  Kellett-Brown lives in a single room in Lincoln’s Inn with a dozen budgerigars whom he permits to fly free within its walls. Droppings and feathers cover every surface, and the floor crunches underfoot with decades of dried filth. Kellett-Brown himself invariably wears the same threadbare striped trousers, the seat of which is so shiny that the pupils in his room once all wore dark glasses to protect their eyes from the supposed glare. The joke was utterly lost on the wearer of the trousers. He appears to own only one jacket, the cuffs of which he trims regularly, and over that he wears, like an overcoat, the evidence, visual and odiferous, of his domestic companions.

  To add to this prepossessing appearance, Kellett-Brown has an “unfortunate manner” as some of the more charitable members of Chambers term it. As far as Stanley, the senior clerk, is concerned, he’s an argumentative old fool who should’ve been kicked out years ago. He frequently appears in Chambers in the late afternoon, plainly the worse for the subsidised sherry served in Hall at luncheon, when Stanley is trying to sort out the diary for the next day. He makes a nuisance of himself by looking over the clerk’s shoulder, a tipsy, disgruntled vulture, repeatedly reminding Stanley that he’s available for anything that might be going spare.

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

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

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

  ‘I said sorry, Ivor. For bumping into you,’ explains Charles. He watches as Kellett-Brown sways slightly. ‘Forget it,’ he says impatiently, and brushes past.

  Charles unlocks the far door and walks down to his room. He throws the new papers onto his desk, reaches across to the desk lamp and settles down to read.

  He is unaware of the passing of time but, about a hundred pages in, he hears a faint tap on his door. It’s so quiet that at first he ignores it but then it’s repeated, slightly harder.

  ‘Come in,’ he calls. The door opens very slowly and Sally’s head appears timidly round the door. ‘Sally? What’re you doing still here?’ He looks at his watch. It’s almost eight o’clock. ‘You’ve not been stood up, have you?’

  Sally looks 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 says in a strange voice.

  She steps back into the corridor and begins to close the door behind her. Charles pushes his chair back and follows her. She looks back at him like a frightened rabbit. Charles leads her gently by the arm back to the circle of light around his desk and turns her round. Her eyes are red and puffy, her eyeliner, which is usually applied — albeit in large quantities — very carefully, is smeared, and her hair is awry.

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

  Sally is usually so competent and brisk that he’s quite startled to see her upset. She takes a deep breath as if to start speaking but her voice breaks and all that emerges is a deep sob. Charles leads her to the one comfortable chair in his room, an old leather armchair in the corner, and sits her down. He returns to his desk, searches his drawer, comes up with some battered but clean tissues and hands her one.

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

  ‘He didn’t come —’ she starts.

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

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

  ‘And?’ asks Charles, crouching beside her.

  ‘Oh, Mr Holborne sir, I don’t know ... what’s best... I’d better not...’ Her voice rises sharply with each phrase. She’s 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 lifts her chin with his hand and looks into her smudged eyes. ‘If something’s happened, you must tell me.’

  She stares straight at him, and nods. ‘Mr K-B came in. I was waiting for Johnny. He ... Mr K-B ... he asks 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 is now calmer but she speaks very quickly, as if worried that pausing would render her unable to continue. ‘Stanley told me about downstairs being burgled, so I thought perhaps I should. Johnny’d always knock anyway. 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, and he weren’t at his desk. I turns round, and he was behind the door...’ She laughs, a peculiar high-pitched giggle that turns into a cry. ‘He had his ... thing ... you know? Sticking out his trousers. He kept saying he wouldn’t hurt me ... just wanted me to ... to...’ She stops again.

  Charles stands and moves swiftly towards the door. Sally grabs his arm. ‘Please don’t go! Don’t go, sir!’ she cries.

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

  ‘He ain’t. He left after ... after...’

  ‘After what?’ asks Charles, pausing. ‘Are you saying he … did something to you?’

  She shakes her head violently. ‘No, he never, but he grabbed at me...’ She opens her jacket, to show Charles her blouse. Two of the buttons in the middle of her chest are torn off. Charles averts 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,’ says Charles gently. ‘Let me get you a drink. I keep a bottle in the desk for —’

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

  ‘Stay here,’ he orders. ‘I’ll be a minute at most. Lock the door after me if you’re worried.’ He crosses swiftly to the other side of the building and pushes open the door to the clerks’ room. The place is empty. He sees Sally’s coat hanging on the back of the door and her handbag by her desk, and takes them with him.

  ‘He’s gone,’ he reports. Sally’s where he left her, looking forlorn. Charles draws up another chair facing hers. ‘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’re quite entitled to call the police and have him charged with indecent assault. Or maybe even attempted rape.’

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

  ‘I’d come with you,’ offers Charles. ‘Or maybe you’d like your mum to be there. Shall we give her a call?’

  ‘It’s not that,’ she replies. She takes several deep breaths to calm herself. ‘He’s a horrible old man ... a dirty old — no —’ she says, half-smiling. ‘I mean he don’t wash and he smells. 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 or grabbing at you!’

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

  ‘It might not be prison.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ she says, adamantly.

  ‘Think about it, Sally. Don’t make any snap decisions. You could easily have been raped.’

  ‘No, I couldn’t. I could punch his lights out any time, if it came to it,’ she says vehemently, again half-laughing. Charles regards her with surprise and some admiration; he believes her, too. ‘I was just a bit frightened,’ she continues. ‘That�
�s all.’

  ‘So, you’re happy just to forget it? Smile and say “Good morning” to him tomorrow? Pretend it never happened?’

  Sally looks at him with wide eyes; she hasn’t thought about that.

  ‘I ... now I don’t know! I think I do need to talk to me mum.’ She pauses, her brow contracting in thought. ‘Ooh, I’m gonna have to give up the job, ain’t I?’ And now the tears begin to fall in earnest, thick and fast. ‘I could never face him again. And they’re never gonna throw him out are they?’ She lifts her eyes to Charles’s face, eyes streaming rivulets of black mascara down her cheeks.

  ‘I don’t know about that. My guess is, 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 or anyone else, 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.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that; it can come out of petty cash. It’s the least Chambers can do.’

  Charles helps her into her coat, hands her bag to her and, leaving his papers where they lie, escorts her out of Chambers.

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

  She nods again and sniffs. ‘Tell him it’s me throat. I’ve been coughing all day anyway.’

  ‘Fine.’

  Charles locks the doors behind them and they set off. He feels Sally’s hand reaching for his as they walk down the stairs.

  ‘Thanks, Charlie,’ she says, her voice now calm, looking up at him with a smile. She squeezes his great big paw in her delicate hand. This is the first time she’s ever used Charles’s first name and it is, according to the protocol of the Bar, quite improper. She could never have done it with any other member of Chambers, and they both know it. Charles is flattered and he smiles back at her. ‘I don’t know what I’d have done, if you wasn’t in,’ she continues. He squeezes her hand in reply.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Charles leaves home the next morning at 6.30 a.m. Relations with Henrietta over the past few days have been less tense, but she has spent the last three nights in her own bedroom and Charles decided not to wake her before leaving.

  From Paddington he takes the Tube to Chancery Lane, rather than Temple, and walks down towards the Thames. It’s a bright, clear morning, and at 7:45 a.m. the streets are deserted and seem fresh and clean. The leaves on the plane trees are beginning to emerge. Charles can smell spring around the corner.

  The part of Lincoln’s Inn where Kellett-Brown lives was built in the 16th century, and has barely changed since. The building containing his room is occupied on the ground floor by barristers’ chambers, and Charles pauses by the board listing the names of the barristers practising inside, noting that he doesn’t recognise a single one. He has little to do with Chancery practitioners; their working lives are so different from his that they might have been in different professions altogether.

  He climbs the staircase to the upper floors. The staircase is 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 houses a book-binding business and the third a firm of solicitors of whom Charles has never heard. The staircase leading to Kellett-Brown’s room on the top floor is particularly ill-lit and Charles has to feel his way up step by step. He finally arrives at a door at the head of the staircase. There appears to be no bell or knocker, so Charles raps on the oak door with his knuckles. There’s no sound from within. He repeats his knock, much harder this time and, after a few seconds, he hears movement.

  ‘What do you want? Do you know what time it is?’ comes Kellett-Brown’s querulous voice.

  ‘It’s Charles Holborne, from Chambers.’

  There’s a pause. Then: ‘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 hears Kellett-Brown’s footsteps retreating from the front door.

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

  The footfalls cease. Charles imagines 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 perhaps fear — gets the better of him, and the footsteps approach again. Charles hears a chain being withdrawn and a bolt sliding out of its place. The door opens. Kellett-Brown faces him wearing an old blue dressing gown, skinny pyjamaed legs sticking out of the bottom.

  ‘You’d better come in.’

  Charles walks past him into a smelly darkened lounge, overcrowded with heavy furniture. There are a number of small birds on perches dotted about the room, apparently asleep. Kellett-Brown closes the door and turns to Charles.

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

  ‘I’ll come straight to the point,’ replies 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 shakes his head. ‘Very well,’ he replies. ‘You may expect a call from the police.’ He takes a step towards the door but Kellett-Brown doesn’t move. ‘Do you want to reconsider? I’ve told no one about this 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 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!’ replies Kellett-Brown.

  Charles pushes past him and opens 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 Sir Geoffrey. What he does then is up to him. Likewise, it’ll 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 leaves the stinking apartment, slams the front door behind him — causing considerable fluttering and squawking — and descends the staircase.

  Once at 2 Chancery Court, he continues reading his new papers until 9 a.m., hastily jotting some notes for the typists to decipher. He leaves a note on Stanley’s desk saying that Sally became ill the night before while in Chambers, and that she wouldn’t be in that day. He then departs for the Old Bailey.

  In the Bar Mess he orders an enormous fried breakfast and settles down with a cup of coffee to read the newspaper.

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

&nbs
p; Charles returns directly to the Temple. As he enters the clerks’ room, Stanley beams at him in a most unusual way.

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

  ‘Not a drop, thank you, sir, although a celebratory glass would be a very good idea. Mr Kellett-Brown has resigned from Chambers. Came in at lunchtime, paid a quarter’s rent, and departed. Ill-health, he said.’

  ‘Well I never,’ replies Charles. ‘He always looked perfectly healthy to me.’

  Charles goes to his room and closes the door. He consults his Rolodex, picks up the telephone and dials the phone number for Sally’s home in Romford.

  ‘You can come back tomorrow,’ he tells her. ‘Kellett-Brown has resigned, and he’s not coming back.’

  ‘Have you said anything, sir?’ Sally answers, reverting to formality.

  ‘Not a word,’ he assures her. ‘It’s between you and me, and not another soul.’

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

  ‘Fine. Goodbye.’

  ‘Bye, sir.’

  Henrietta is in the garden when Charles arrives home that evening, wearing trousers and a sun hat, a pair of pruning shears in her gloved hands. She doesn’t often wear trousers, considering them too American and too modern, but Charles approves when she does. He finds it difficult to take his eyes off her swaying hips as she moves, and on this occasion he watches from the kitchen door for some minutes before she senses his presence. She removes her hat as she turns towards the house, brushing the hair out of her eyes with her upper arm, and Charles’s heart quickens. She is so beautiful.