Rumpole and the Angel of Death Page 8

  ‘I suppose someone has to.’

  ‘Well! It’s no wonder you haven’t got any friends, Rumpole.’ Was it true? Hadn’t I any friends? Enemies, yes. Acquaintances. Opponents down the Bailey. Fellow Members of Chambers. But friends? Bonny Bernard? Fred Timson? Well, I suppose we only met for work. Who was my real friend? I could only think of one. ‘I got on fairly well with the dog Lancelot. Of course he’s no longer with us.’

  ‘Just as well. If you defend people who kill your friends’ wives, you’re hardly fit company for a decent dog.’ You have to admit that when Hilda comes to a view she doesn’t mince words on the matter.

  ‘We don’t know if he killed her. He’s only accused of killing her.’

  ‘No hair and earrings? You only had to take a look at him to know he was capable of anything!’

  ‘They didn’t arrest the one with no hair,’ I told her. ‘I’m defending another one.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I expect they’re all much of a muchness. Can you imagine what Rollo’s going to say when he finds out what you’re doing?’

  ‘I know what he thinks.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That it’s in the best tradition of the Bar to defend anyone, however revolting.’

  ‘How do you know that’s what he thinks?’

  ‘Because that’s what he said when I told him.’

  ‘You told him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I must say, Rumpole, you’ve got a nerve!’

  ‘Courage is the essential quality of an advocate.’

  ‘And I suppose it’s the essential quality of an advocate to be on the side of the lowest, most contemptible of human beings?’

  ‘To put their case for them? Yes.’

  ‘Even if they’re guilty?’

  ‘That hasn’t been proved.’

  ‘But you don’t know he’s not.’

  ‘I think I do.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because of what he told me.’

  ‘He told you he wasn’t guilty?’

  ‘No, he told me he was. But, you see, I didn’t believe him.’

  ‘He told you he was guilty and you’re still defending him? Is that in the best traditions of the Bar?’

  ‘Only just,’ I had to admit.

  ‘Rumpole!’ She Who Must Be Obeyed gave me one of her unbending looks and delivered judgement. ‘I suppose that, if someone murdered me, you would defend them?’

  There was no answer to that so I looked at my watch. ‘Must go. Urgent conference in Chambers. I won’t be late home. Is it one of your bridge evenings?’ I asked the question, but answer came there none. I knew that for that day, and for many days to come, as far as She Who Must Be Obeyed was concerned, the mansion flat in Froxbury Mansions would be locked in the icy silence of the tomb.

  During the last weeks before the trial Hilda was true to her vow of silence and the mansion flat offered all the light-hearted badinage of life in a Trappist order. Luckily I was busy and even welcomed the chance of a chat with Gavin Garfield whom, although I had excluded him from my visit to the Cotswolds, I now set to work. I told him his first job was to get statements from the other saboteurs in the van, and when he protested that we’d never get so far as calling evidence in view of what Den had told us, I said we must be prepared for all eventualities. So Gavin took statements, not hurriedly, but with a surprising thoroughness, and in time certain hard facts emerged.

  What surprised me was the age and respectability of the saboteurs. Shaven-headed Roy Netherborn was forty and worked in the accounts department of a paper cup factory. He had toyed with the idea of being a schoolmaster and had met Janet Freebody, who was a couple of years older, at a teacher training college. Janet owned the cottage in Wayleave where the platoon of fearless saboteurs had put up for the night. She taught at a comprehensive school in the nearby town where we had fled from the dreaded hotel. Angela Ridgeway, the girl with the purple lock, was a researcher for BBC Wales. Sebastian Fells and Judy Caspar were live-in partners and worked together in a Kensington bookshop, and Dennis Pearson, thirty-five, taught sociology at a university which had risen from the ashes of a polytechnic. They all, except Janet, lived in London and were on the committee of a society of animal rights activists.

  Janet had kept Roy informed about the meet at Rollo Eyles’s house, and they had taken days off during her half-term when the meet was at Wayleave. The sabbing was to be made the occasion of a holiday outing and a night spent in the country. When they had got their rucksacks and sleeping-bags out of the van, Roy, Angela, Sebastian and Judy retired to the pub in Wayleave where real ale was obtainable and they used it to wash down vegetable pasties and salads until closing-time at three. Janet Freebody had things to do in the cottage, exercise books to correct and dinner to think about, so she didn’t join the party in the pub. Neither did Den. He said he wanted to go for a walk and so set off, according to Roy, apparently to commune, in a solitary fashion, with nature. This meant that he was alone and unaccounted for at one o’clock when Tricia was going to swear on her oath that she saw him coming out of Fallows Wood with a coil of wire.

  Other facts of interest: Fallows Wood was only about ten minutes from Wayleave. Roy couldn’t remember there being any wire in the van when they set out from London; it was true that they had discussed using wire to trip up horses, but he had never bought any and was surprised when the police searched the van and found the coil there. It was also true that the van was always in a mess, and probably the hammer found in it was his. Den had brought a kitbag with his stuff in it and Roy couldn’t swear it didn’t contain wire. Den was usually a quiet sort of bloke, Roy said, but he did go mad when he saw people out to kill animals: ‘Dennis always said that the movement was too milk and watery towards hunting, and that what was needed was some great gesture which would really bring us into the news and prove our sincerity – like when the girl fell under a lorry that was taking sheep to the airport.’ I made a mental note not to ask any sort of question likely to produce that last piece of evidence and came to the conclusion that Roy, despite his willingness to give Gavin a statement, wasn’t entirely friendly to my client, Dennis Pearson.

  The placards, a small plantation at the meet, had become a forest outside the Court in Gloucester. Buses, bicycles, vans, cars in varying degrees of disrepair, had brought them, held up now by a crowd which burst, as I elbowed my way towards the courthouse door, into a resounding cheer for Rumpole. I didn’t remember any such ovation when I entered the Old Bailey on other occasions. In the robing-room I found Bernadette asleep in a chair and little Marcus Pitcher tying a pair of white bands around his neck in front of a mirror. ‘See you’ve got your friends from rent-a-crowd here this morning, Rumpole.’ He was not in the best of tempers, our demonstrators having apparently booed Bernadette for having thrown in her lot with a barrister who prosecuted the friends of animals.

  I wondered how long their cheers for me would last when I went into Court, only to put my hands up and plead guilty. My client, however, remained singularly determined: ‘When we plead guilty, they’ll cheer. It’ll be a triumph for the movement. Can’t you understand that, Mr Rumpole? We shall be seen to have condemned a murderer to death!’

  The approach of life imprisonment seemed to have concentrated Den’s mind wonderfully. He was no longer the silent and enigmatic sufferer. His eyes were lit up and he was as excited as when he’d shouted his threats at the faded beauty on the horse. ‘I want you to tell them I’m guilty, first thing. As soon as we get in there. I want you to tell them that I punished her.’

  ‘No, you don’t want that. Does he, Mr Garfield?’ Gavin, sitting beside me in the cell under the Court, looked like a man who had entirely lost control of the situation. ‘I suppose if that’s what Den has decided . . .’ His voice, never strong, died away and he shrugged hopelessly.

  ‘I have decided finally’ – Den was standing, elated by his decision – ‘in the interests of our movement.’ For a moment he reminded me
of an actor I had seen in an old film, appearing as Sydney Carton on his way to the guillotine, saying, ‘It’s a far, far better thing I do, than I have ever done.’

  ‘You’re not going to do the movement much good by pleading guilty straight away,’ I told him.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘A guilty plea at the outset? The whole thing’ll be over in twenty minutes. The animal murderers, as you call them, won’t even have to go into the witness-box, let alone face cross-examination by Rumpole. Will anyone know the details of the hunt? Certainly not. Do you want publicity for your cause? Plead guilty now and you will be lucky to get a single paragraph on page two. At least, let’s get the front page for a day or so.’ I wasn’t being entirely frank with my client. The murder was serious and horrible enough to get the front pages in a world hungry for bad news at breakfast, even if we were to plead guilty without delay. But I needed time. In time, I still hoped, I would get Den to tell me the truth.

  ‘I don’t know.’ My client sat down then as though suddenly tired. ‘What would you do, Gavin?’

  ‘I think’ – Gavin shrugged off all responsibility – ‘you should be guided by Mr Rumpole.’

  ‘All right’ – Den was prepared to compromise – ‘we’ll go for the publicity.’

  ‘Dennis Pearson, you are accused in this indictment of the murder of Dorothea Eyles on the sixteenth of March at Fallows

  Wood, Wayleave, in the county of Gloucester. Do you plead guilty or not guilty?’

  ‘My Lord, Members of the Jury’ – Den, as I had feared, was about to orate. ‘This woman, Dorothea Eyles, was guilty of the murder of countless living creatures, not for her gain but simply for sadistic pleasure and idle enjoyment. My Lord, if anything killed her, it was natural justice!’

  ‘Now then, Mr-’ Mr Justice James MacBain consulted his papers to make sure who he was trying. ‘Mr Pearson. You’ve got a gentleman in a wig sitting there, a Mr Rumpole, who’s paid to make the speeches for you. It’s not your business to make speeches now or at any time during this case. Now, you’ve been asked a simple question: Are you guilty or not guilty?’

  ‘She is the guilty one, my Lord. This woman who revelled in the death of innocent creatures.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole, are you not astute enough to control your client?’

  ‘It’s not an easy task, my Lord.’ I staggered to my feet.

  ‘Your first job is to control your client. That’s what I learnt as a pupil. Make the client keep it short.’

  ‘Well, if you don’t want a long speech from the dock, my Lord, I suggest you enter a plea of not guilty and then my learned friend, Mr Marcus Pitcher, can get on with opening his case.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole, I was not born yesterday!’ Jamie MacBain was stating the obvious. It was many years since he had first seen the light in some remote corner of the Highlands. He was a large man whose hair, once ginger, had turned to grey, and who sat slumped in his chair like one of those colourless beanbags people use to sit on in their Hampstead homes. He had small, pursed lips and a perpetually discontented expression. ‘And when I want your advice on how to conduct these proceedings, I shall ask you for it. Mr Moberly!’ This was a whispered summons to the clerk of the court, who rose obediently and, after a brief sotto voce conversation, sat down again as the Judge turned to the Jury.

  ‘Members of the Jury, you and I weren’t born yesterday and I think we’re astute enough to get over this little technical difficulty. Now we don’t want Mr Pearson, the accused man here, to start giving us a lecture, do we? So what we’re going to do is to take it he’s pleading not guilty and then ask Mr Marcus Pitcher to get on with it and open the prosecution case. You see, there’s no great mystery about the law. We can solve most of the problems if we apply a wee bit of worldly wisdom.’

  I suppose I could have got up on my hind legs and said, ‘Delighted to have been of service to your Lordship,’ or, ‘If you’re ever in a hole, send for me.’ But I didn’t want to start a quarrel so early in the case. I sat quietly while little Marcus went through most of the facts. The Jury of twelve honest Gloucestershire citizens looked stolid, middle-aged and not particularly friendly to the animal rights protesters who filled the public gallery to overflowing. I imagined they had grown up with the hunt and felt no particular hostility to the Boxing Day meet and horses streaming across the frosty countryside. They had looked embarrassed by Dennis’s speech from the dock, and flattered when Jamie MacBain shared his lifetime’s experience with them. Like him, they hadn’t been born yesterday, and worldly wisdom, together with their dogs and their rose gardens, was no doubt among their proudest possessions. As I listened to my little learned friend’s opening, I thought he was talking to a jury which, whatever plea had been entered, was beginning to feel sure that Den was as guilty as he was anxious to appear.

  The first witness was the rambler, a cashier from a local bank who, out for a walk with his wife and daughter, had been met with the ghastly spectacle of an elderly woman almost decapitated and fallen among the brambles of Fallows Wood.

  ‘Where was the horse?’ was all I asked him in cross- examination.

  ‘The horse?’

  ‘Yes. Did you see her horse by any chance?’

  ‘I think there was a horse there, some distance away, and all saddled up. I think it was just eating grass or something. I didn’t stay long. I wanted to get my wife and Sandra away and phone the police.’

  ‘Of course. I understand. Thank you very much, Mr Ovington.’

  ‘Is that all you want to ask, Mr Rumpole?’ Jamie MacBain looked at me in an unfriendly fashion.

  ‘Yes, my Lord.’

  ‘I don’t think that question and answer has added much to our understanding of this case, Members of the Jury. I’d be glad if the Defence would not waste the time of the Court. Yes. Who is your next witness, Mr Marcus Pitcher?’

  I restrained myself and sat down in silence ‘like patience on a monument’. But my question had added something: Dorothea’s riderless horse hadn’t galloped on and jumped the stile. We learnt more from Bob Andrews, a hunt servant who, when the hunt was stopped, went back to the wood to recover Dorothea’s horse which had been detained by the police. I risked Jamie’s displeasure by questioning Andrews for a little longer.

  ‘When you got to the wood, had Mrs Eyles’s body been removed?’

  ‘It was covered. I think it was just being taken away on a stretcher. I knew the ambulance was in the road. The police were taking photographs.’

  ‘The police were taking photographs – and where was Mrs Eyles’s horse?’

  ‘I think a police officer was holding her.’

  ‘Can you remember, had Mrs Eyles’s horse lost a shoe?’

  ‘Not that I noticed. I looked her over when I took her from the policeman. He seemed a bit scared, holding her.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. Horses can be a little alarming.’

  ‘Can be. If you’re not used to them.’

  There were a few smiles from the Jury at this; not because it was funny but as a relief from the agony of hearing the details of Dorothea Eyles’s injuries. The Jury, I thought, rather liked Bob Andrews, while the animal rights enthusiasts in the public gallery looked down on him with unmitigated hatred and contempt.

  ‘Mr Andrews,’ I went on, while Mr Justice MacPain (as I had come to think of him) gave a somewhat exaggerated performance of a long-suffering judge, bravely enduring terminal boredom, ‘tell me a little about the hunt that day. You were riding near to Mr Eyles?’

  ‘Up with the master. Yes.’

  ‘Did your hunt go near Fallows Wood?’

  ‘Not really. No.’

  ‘What was the nearest you got to that wood?’

  ‘Well, they found in Plashy Bottom. Down there they got a scent. Then we were off in the other direction entirely.’

  ‘How far is Plashy Bottom from Fallows Wood?’

  ‘About half a mile . . . I’d think about that.’

  ‘Did you see Mrs
Eyles leave the hunt and ride up towards the wood?’

  ‘Well, they’d got going then. I wouldn’t have looked round to see the riders behind me.’

  ‘Did you see anyone else – Miss Tricia Fothergill, for instance – leave the hunt and ride up towards Fallows Wood?’

  ‘I didn’t, no.’

  ‘He’s told us he wasn’t looking at the riders behind him, Mr Rumpole.’ Jamie managed to sound like a saint holding on to his patience by the skin of his teeth.

  ‘Then let me ask you a question you can answer. It’s clear, isn’t it, that the hunt never went through Fallows Wood that day?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So, it follows that in order to come into collision with that wire, Mrs Eyles had to make a considerable detour?’

  ‘That’s surely a matter for argument, Mr Rumpole.’ Jamie MacBain did his best to scupper the question so I asked another one, very quickly.

  ‘Do you know why she should make such a detour?’

  ‘I haven’t got any idea, no.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Andrews.’ And I sat down before the Judge could recover his breath.

  Johnny Logan replaced the whipper-in. He was wearing a dark suit and some sort of regimental tie; his creased and brown walnut face grinned over a collar which seemed several sizes too large for him. He treated the Judge with a mixture of amusement and contempt, as though Jamie were some alien being who could never understand the hunting community of the Cotswolds. Logan said he had heard most of the dialogue between the sabs and the hunters in the driveway of Wayleave Manor. He also told the Jury that he had seen the saboteurs’ van at various points during the day, and heard similar abuse from them as he rode by.

  ‘You never saw the saboteurs’ van near Fallows Wood?’ I asked when it was my turn.

  ‘We never went near Fallows Wood as far as I can remember.’

  ‘Then let you and I agree about that. Now, will you tell me this? Did you ever see Mrs Eyles leave the hunt and ride off in a different direction?’

  ‘No, I never saw that. I’m not saying she didn’t do it. We were pretty spread out. I’d seen a couple of jumps I didn’t like the look of, so I’d gone round and I was behind quite a lot of the others.’