‘What are you doing here?’ she calls, surprised.
‘I live here,’ he says cheerfully, crossing the lawn and approaching her. ‘Might I be addressing the lady of the house?’ Charles kisses her on the cheek. She absently kisses the air beside his face.
‘Yes, but it’s only six-thirty. You’ve not been home this early for years. May one enquire if you are ill?’
‘One may enquire and no, thank you, I’m perfectly well. I just thought we might spend some time together, that’s all.’
‘Good God, Charles, this is all rather unexpected. After all this time, you want to play at being a husband for a night?’
Charles gazes at her, not entirely hiding the fact that the remark stung.
Henrietta is almost his height, slim, with an oval face framed with silky chestnut hair. She looks, if anything, more beautiful than she did the day he met her at Cambridge, eleven years before. On that occasion he’d been dressed as a penguin, part of some student rag, accosting passers-by, and she was late for a lecture. He had held her by her skinny arms demanding she either make a donation of at least half a crown or promise to meet him for a drink. Having no money with her, she was forced to accept the alternative.
That meeting was only two weeks after Charles decided to change his name, one week after the awful scene with his father. The full implications of his decision had yet to sink in, and he was still exploring this new identity, Charles Holborne, English gentleman. Perhaps that was why he had the courage to grab her wrists in his flippers and demand a date with her, because it wasn’t Charlie Horowitz asking, but this new, dangerous, dashing, Charles Holborne.
Everyone knew Henrietta, of course. The Hon. Henrietta Lloyd-Williams, eldest daughter of Viscount Brandreth, one of the fastest of the “fast set”, as Charles’s father used to call them, and yet with an unpretentious, easy manner and, so it was said, a good brain, too. What persuaded her to go out with this dark-eyed persistent penguin she didn’t know. His arrogance was quite unlike the self-assurance of the well-bred languid young men with whom she grew up. It was dangerous, almost bellicose; it invited challenge, so much so that, for the first few months of their relationship, part of the attraction was her anticipation that something, anything, might happen when she was with him. There were a couple of fights in Cambridge pubs in which Charles demonstrated a thrilling ability to look after himself. There was also a bitterness about him, but softened by a gentle self-deprecating humour that hinted at a profound vulnerability. It was certainly his ability to make her laugh that persuaded her to see him again, but it was the little lost boy she discovered that so endeared him to her. That so big a man, both in intellect and in size, could at times look so perplexed by the universe was oddly endearing.
For his part, Charles sensed something in Henrietta which he recognised in himself. Her relationship with her father, the Viscount, an exacting impatient man, was fraught and punctuated by long periods during which the two of them didn’t speak. Charles was unaware of it at the time, but Henrietta’s third year at Cambridge when they first met was one such period. That year was the most intense of their lives; romantic weekends away, shared books, music and ideas, and sex at all times of the day and night, and in increasingly dangerous places. They couldn’t keep their hands off one another. They inhabited their own private, intoxicated, world. And barely ten months after they first met, post-coital on a desolate Northumbrian beach, Henrietta proposed to Charles, and he accepted. A week later, still during term, they were married in Cambridge without a word to either family. Two days before the ceremony, Charles told Henrietta that he was Jewish by birth, but not practising. Charles didn’t think to mention that to be Jewish doesn’t require practice. She couldn’t actually say she’d met a Jew before, practising or otherwise, but it didn’t matter to her, she said, as long as they could continue to eat bacon and oysters.
Her parents loathed him, of course, albeit politely. Her mother had been overheard saying that there was nothing wrong with Jewish furriers from the East End of London, of course, nor indeed with their clever sons. They were just so ... unsuitable as in-laws. The Viscount took the match as a personal insult by his daughter, the most successful means she had yet devised to demonstrate her contempt for him, which in many ways it was.
For Charles’s parents it was simpler still. When they learned of the marriage, they said Kaddish, the prayer for the dead, mourned Charles for a week and never mentioned his name again. As far as they were concerned, their eldest son, the apple of their eye, had died. Henrietta’s family were grateful for this attitude. One Jew connected to the family was quite enough; an entire brood would have been intolerable.
At the end of term, Charles took Henrietta to his parents’ home in the East End to introduce her. His father refused to come to the door and David, Charles’s younger brother, apologetically barred his way at the threshold. Charles, hurt beyond description, shouted some unforgivable words from the doorway before Henrietta managed to drag him away. He still remembers some of those words with shame, but he has had no further contact with his family in the intervening years. Once, a couple of years after that event, Harry Horowitz discovered David eating breakfast while reading a court report in the Telegraph about a case where Charles’s name was mentioned. David was by then in his early twenties, but his father still beat him as efficiently as his sixty-six-year-old arms and heart condition would allow. Five years after that, when viewing a development plot in one of his rare property cases, Charles discovered by chance that his family had moved. British Street, where his childhood home had stood, had been demolished. Where his parents were, and whether they were both still alive, he neither knew nor, he told himself, cared.
‘Are you still here, Charles?’ asks Henrietta.
‘Yes. Sorry. I thought perhaps we could go out for a meal.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Henrietta replies, with sincerity, ‘but I can’t. I’ve been invited to the Robertsons’ for dinner; they have some friends over from the States, and they’re holding a small reception for them.’
‘I’m sure Helen wouldn’t mind if I came, too.’
‘She didn’t invite you because you’ve never once kept a mid-week dinner arrangement since we’ve been married,’ Henrietta says, continuing with her pruning.
‘I’ve told you a million times: don’t exaggerate.’
‘All right; maybe not “never”. But you have let them down more than once. It’s a bit unfair to her to ask at this stage, don’t you think? It’s a small party, and it’s starting in two hours. You’ll throw her into a tizzy if you ask to come now. But if you really want me to phone, I will.’
Charles considers and decides against it. ‘OK; forget it.’
Henrietta rests her forehead on his chest and Charles drinks in the smell of her hair: cut grass and sunshine. She looks up at him. ‘It was a nice idea. If you do it more often, I’ll get used to it.’
She takes his face in her muddy, gloved hands, pulls his head towards hers and kisses him on the mouth.
‘You smell nice,’ he says.
‘You smell nice, too.’
‘What of?’ he asks.
‘Just Charlie,’ she answers, hugging him.
‘I don’t suppose...’ he suggests.
‘What don’t you suppose?’ She snuggles closer to him.
‘I don’t suppose you might develop a dreadful headache at about ten o’clock tonight, which might mysteriously clear up on your arrival home?’
‘Charlie! Whatever has come over you?’
‘Nothing’s come over me.’
‘I’ll see what can be arranged.’ She grins and takes his arm and they walk slowly back towards the house.
‘Charlie?’
‘Present.’
‘Can we both make a special effort? I know I’ve been a real bitch the last few weeks. And you —’
‘I’ve been working too hard,’ he interrupts.
‘You’ve been distant, cold and thoughtless,’ she
corrects.
‘Hmm.’
‘I was adding it up this morning. I haven’t seen you for more than six hours this whole week. That’s three breakfasts, one trip to the shops and an hour on Monday night — and that was only because the power cut prevented you from working.’
He sighs. ‘It’s this murder. And there’s the fraud next month. They’re both important…’
‘I know they are, and I’m proud of you, even though I think you’re wasted doing this stuff. What does Daddy call it?’
‘“The Verbals”.’
‘Yes, that. But I sometimes wonder how high our marriage is on your list of priorities.’
‘We’ve been through this before, Etta. If you got yourself a proper job, which actually stretched you, you wouldn’t be waiting at home with nothing —’
‘“Proper job”?’ she exclaims. She takes a deep breath and looks up at him. ‘Don’t you see how such comments demean me?’ she asks. ‘Do you never wonder how someone might feel, on the receiving end? Anyway that’s not the point. I don’t want a different job. I want —’
‘I know what you want. You want a child. I know, Etta, really I do. But we’ve been through this, and we agreed to wait a year or two —’
He’s interrupted by Fiona calling from the French windows.
‘Is Charles in yet? Oh, you are. There’s a chap called Stanley on the phone. He says it’s very urgent.’
Charles looks at Henrietta. ‘I’d better take it. I’ll be right back.’
He runs up the lawn and into the house where Fiona hands him the telephone. Henrietta returns to her gardening, shaking her head.
‘Stanley?’ Charles asks.
‘Hello, sir. Sorry to trouble you at home, but I’ve just had a call from Tony, the clerk to Mr Rhodes Thomas. Mr Rhodes Thomas has had an accident. It’s not too bad, but apparently he’s broken his leg, and he’ll be out of commission, in traction, for at least six weeks.’
‘For fuck’s sake! What was he doing? Now what? Will we be adjourned? How long am I going to have to stay on remand?’ wails Plumber.
Charles, Ralph Cohen and their client sit in a conference room at HM Prison Brixton, to which Plumber was moved at the start of the trial.
Cohen replies. ‘He slipped down the stairs at the Bailey. It must have been just after I left him last night. He’s in Bart’s, right opposite the court. He says he’ll be in hospital for as much as six weeks. But we’re pretty confident we can get the case adjourned.’
‘What, for six weeks?’
‘I don’t know about that. It’ll probably be more than six weeks before he’s back at work, maybe three or four months. It’s a very bad break. I’m not sure the Court will delay for as long as that. We need to get a new silk in.’
‘You mean start the trial again?’ protests Plumber.
‘Derek, we’re going to have to do that, whatever happens,’ replies Cohen, sympathetically. ‘I understand how you feel. But a jury can only be sent away for a couple of days, certainly not for weeks. They’ll have to be discharged.’
‘And how long will it take to find another silk?’
Cohen looks at Charles for an answer. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘The case isn’t difficult in terms of what’s got to be assimilated; it’s just a question of finding someone who’s free at very short notice. Good silks get booked up early.’
‘So it means I’ve to put up with someone who’s second rate? With me life on the line? You gotta be fucking joking!’
‘Please calm down, Mr Plumber,’ answers Charles. ‘There is no question of you being represented by anyone second rate. Mr Rhodes Thomas was my first choice, but there are plenty of excellent leaders.’
‘Yeah, but I need one right away. I’ve been on remand for months. I can’t go through this again, Mr ’Olborne; I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I’m at me wits’ end. I don’t want to put the case off at all. Why can’t you do it? Don’t you feel up to it?’
‘It’s not that. You’re charged with a capital offence, and you’re entitled to leading counsel.’
‘I’m entitled to counsel of my choice, right? Well, one of ’em’s crocked but I’ve still got one left, and I’ve got confidence in ’im. I don’t want the case put off or started again.’
Charles looks at Cohen, who shrugs. ‘You are aware,’ says Charles to Plumber, ‘that I have less experience than a QC would have?’
‘Yeah. But, like I said, I have faith in you. I know you’ll do it as well as anyone.’
Charles pauses. ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence. I appreciate what you’ve said. But I need a little time to think about this. I’ve a professional duty to do the best I can for you, and if that involves getting in another silk, that’s what I have to do. Would it be OK if I give you my answer tomorrow?’
Plumber nods.
‘Well?’ asks Charles of Cohen as they step out of the prison gates onto the forecourt.
‘You’ve had express instructions from the client, Charles. He wants you to carry on. It’s a murder, yes, but this is about as straightforward a case of murder as you can get. All you have to do is discredit one witness, and I’ve seen you do that hundreds of times. I think you’d cope.’
‘But if I mess it up, our client’s going to hang.’
‘True. But that doesn’t make me any less confident that you can do it. To be honest, Charles, you’re better than half the silks I see every day. And I think the jury’ll warm to you. You can talk like them, you come from the same part of London, and there’s no front on you. It’s your decision, of course, and if you decide it’s a bit too early, I’ll accept that and we’ll find someone else.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
R. v. Plumber: Transcript of Evidence: Friday, 18 November 1960
Sands: Examination in chief
Mr Hogg: Would you please give the court your full name?
Witness: Robbie — er, that’s Robert — Reginald Sands.
Mr Hogg: Yesterday, you pleaded guilty to robbing the Express Dairies, London North Depot of £138,530.16 on 5th. February this year.
Witness: Aye, I did.
Mr Hogg: Did you commit that robbery alone or with others?
Witness: I did it wi’ him.
Judge: Let the record show that the witness pointed to the Defendant, Plumber.
Mr Hogg: Were any others involved?
Witness: No.
Mr Hogg: Were any firearms used in the robbery?
Witness: Aye. We each took an imitation, at least that’s what I thought.
Mr Hogg: Would you please show the witness Exhibits 4 and 5?
Witness: They’re the ones. I cannae say which was mine or Plumbers, ’cos they’re identical.
Mr Hogg: Who obtained these replicas?
Witness: I did.
Mr Hogg: When you obtained them, were you anxious to obtain real or imitation firearms?
Witness: I wouldnae have gone on the job at all had I known that real shooters were to be used.
Mr Hogg: What was your part in the robbery?
Witness: We both went in. I stood by the door and collared the employees as they came through; Plumber handcuffed them to the pipes. We took two cars, well, a van and a car. Plumber was the getaway driver. The van was used to block the alley after us.
Mr Hogg: There came a time when a member of one of the crews returning to the Depot was reluctant to enter, did there not?
Witness: There did.
Mr Hogg: Will you tell the jury what happened then?
Witness: The wee laddie on the door opened up, but the fella wouldnae come in. He must have been suspicious, ’cos he ran off, shouting something.
Mr Hogg: What happened then?
Witness: I rushed out to grab him. He was about ten yards ahead of me, running to his van.
Mr Hogg: Where was Plumber at this stage?
Witness: I thought he was still inside, ’cos that was his job, right? Guarding the employees. But then I heard something behind me, and the next s
econd there was this bang. The guard caught it right in the middle of the back. Blew him off the ground and down by the van.
Mr Hogg: Did you see what had caused the noise?
Witness: Not till I turned. There was Plumber wi’ that sawn off in his hand and smoke coming from it.
Judge: Let the record show that the witness indicated Exhibit 2. Have a look at it, Mr Sands, please.
Witness: That’s the one.
Mr Hogg: Show us how Plumber was holding it, please. [Witness takes exhibit.] You are holding it at waist level with your right hand on the butt and the left supporting the barrels. Where was it pointing?
Witness: Straight at the dead man, or at least, where he had been when he was upright.
Mr Hogg: What happened then?
Witness: I ran up tae Plumber. He was, eh, stunned, like. I had tae grab him, turn him round. We ran back inside, grabbed the money, and left. I’m sure he didnae mean tae do it. It was just the panic.
Judge: It’s for the jury to decide if he meant to do it or not, Mr Sands, not for you. Please refrain from comments like that. You are here to answer questions.
Mr Hogg: Wait there please, Mr Sands.
[End of examination in chief]
Sands: Cross-examination
Judge: Mr Holborne?
Mr Holborne: Thank you, my Lord. Mr Sands: who planned this robbery? [Pause.] Mr Sands?
Witness: We did it together, Plumber and me.
Mr Holborne: Mr Plumber was the driver of the getaway car, wasn’t he?
Witness: Aye.
Mr Holborne: And he planned the getaway, isn’t that right?
Witness: Aye.
Mr Holborne: But he didn’t plan anything else did he?
Witness: Eh … not as such, no.
Mr Holborne: It was you who had the idea, and you took the proposal to Mr Plumber. You recruited him, rather than he recruited you.
Witness: Aye, that’s right.
The Brief: Crime and corruption in 1960s London (Charles Holborne Legal Thrillers) Page 7