Rumpole and the Angel of Death Read online

  ‘Gone round, had you?’ Jamie MacBain, about to make a note, looked confused.

  ‘Quite a lot of barbed wire about. I don’t think you’d have fancied jumping that, my Lord,’ Johnny Logan added with a certain amount of mock servility.

  ‘Never mind what I’d’ve fancied. Just answer the questions you get asked. That’s all you’re required to do.’ It was clear that the Judge and the witness had struck up an immediate lack of rapport.

  ‘Did you see anyone else leave the hunt?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Well, you mean at any time?’

  ‘At any time when you were out hunting, yes.’

  ‘Well, I think Tricia Fothergill left. But that was at the very end, just before the police arrived and told us that Mrs Eyles had been – well, had met with an accident.’

  ‘So that must have been after Mrs Eyles’s death?’ The Judge made the deduction.

  ‘You’ve got it, my Lord,’ Johnny Logan congratulated him in such a patronizing fashion that I almost felt sorry for the astute Scot.

  ‘Why did she leave then, do you remember?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Her horse was wrong in some way, I think.’

  ‘Just one more thing, Mr Logan.’

  ‘Oh, anything you like.’ Johnny showed his contempt for us all.

  ‘It would be right to say, wouldn’t it, that Mr Rollo Eyles was devoted to his wife?’

  ‘He would certainly never have left her. Is that what you mean?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I mean. Thank you very much.’

  As I was about to sit down, the Judge said, ‘And what were the Jury meant to make of that last question and answer?’

  ‘They may make of it what they will, my Lord, when they are in full possession of the facts of this interesting but tragic case.’ At which point I lowered my head in an ornate eighteenth-century bow and sat down with as much dignity as I could muster.

  ‘Work at the Bar!’ little Marcus said. ‘Sometimes I think I’d rather be digging roads.’

  ‘Only one thing to be said for work at the Bar,’ I tended to agree, ‘is that it’s better than no work at the Bar.’

  It was the lunch adjournment and the three of us – Marcus, Bernadette and I – were in a dark corner of the Carpenters Arms, not far from the Court. There they did a perfectly reasonable bangers and mash. Marcus and I had big glasses of Guinness and Bernadette took hers from a bowl on the floor. The little prosecutor said he was looking forward to going for a holiday with a Chancery barrister called Clarissa Clavering on the Isle of Elba. ‘I’d been living for the day, but now it seems likely I’ll have to cancel.’

  ‘Why on earth?’

  ‘I can’t find anyone to leave Bernadette with. Clarissa only likes cats. And I do love her, Rumpole! Love Clarissa, I mean. She has a lot of sheer animal magnetism for a girl in the Chancery Division.’

  ‘Couldn’t you put her in a kennel? Bernadette, I mean.’

  ‘I couldn’t do that.’ Marcus looked as though I’d invited him to murder his mother. ‘Much as I fancy Clarissa, I couldn’t possibly do that.’

  ‘Then, there’s nothing else for it. . .’

  ‘Nothing else for it.’ His little mouselike face was creased with lines of sorrow. My heart went out to the fellow. ‘Except cancel the holiday. I won’t blame Bernadette, of course. It’s not her fault. But . . .’

  ‘It’s a pity to miss so much animal magnetism?’

  ‘You’ve said it, Rumpole. You’ve said it exactly.’

  When we arrived back at the Court, there was a certain amount of confusion among the demonstrators. They started with the clear intention of cheering me and Bernadette, who, even if she was part of the prosecution team, was, after all, an animal. They knew they should boo and revile young Marcus, the disappointed lover. Finally, when they saw that I, as well as Bernadette, was on friendly terms with the forces of evil and the prosecutors of sabs, they decided to boo us all.

  In the entrance hall the prospective witnesses sat waiting. I saw Tricia Fothergill as smartly turned out as a pony at a show, with gleaming hair, shiny shoes and glistening legs. She was prepared for Court in a black suit and her hands were folded in her lap. On the other side of the hall sat the prospective witnesses for the Defence: purple-haired Angela Ridgeway, Sebastian and Judy from the bookshop, and shaven-headed Roy Netherborn. Janet, the schoolteather, sat next to Roy, but I noticed that they didn’t speak to each other but sat gazing, as though hypnotized, silently into space. Then, as I was wigged and gowned by now, I crossed the entrance hall towards the Court. Roy got up and walked towards me slowly, heavily and with something very like menace. ‘What the hell’s the idea,’ he muttered in a low voice, full of hate, ‘of you getting into bed with the prosecution barrister?’

  ‘Little Marcus and I are learned friends,’ I told him, ‘against each other one day and on the same side the next. We went out to lunch because his dog Bernadette felt in need of a drink. And I didn’t get into bed with him. I left that to his girlfriend Clarissa of the Chancery Division. Any more questions?’

  ‘Yes. Haven’t you got any genuine beliefs?’

  ‘As few as possible. Genuine beliefs seem to end up in death threats and stopping other people living as they choose. I do have one genuine belief, however.’

  ‘Oh, do you? And what’s that when it’s at home?’

  ‘Preventing the conviction of the innocent. So, if you will allow me to get on with my job . . .’ I moved away from him then, and he stood watching me go, his fists clenched and his knuckles whitening.

  Tricia had given her evidence-in-chief clearly, with a nice mixture of sadness, brightness and an eagerness to help. The Jury had taken to her and Jamie MacBain seemed no less smitten than little Marcus was with Clarissa, although there was a great gulf fixed between them and she called him my Lord, and he called her Miss Fothergill in a voice which can best be described as a caressing, although still judicial, purr. She looked, as she stood in the witness-box and answered vivaciously, prettier than I had remembered. Her nose was a little turned up, her front teeth a little protruding, but her eyes were bright and her smile beguiling.

  ‘Tricia Fothergill, you say your name is?’ I rose, after Marcus had finished with her, doing my best to break the spell woven by the most damaging prosecution witness. ‘Why not Patricia?’

  ‘Because I couldn’t say Patricia when I was a little girl. So I stayed Tricia, even when I went away to school.’

  ‘Which, I’m sure, wasn’t long ago. Don’t you agree, Members of the Jury?’ the judge purred and a few weaker spirits in the jury box gave a mild giggle. Tricia Fothergill, in Jamie’s view, it seemed, had been born yesterday.

  ‘I’ll call you Miss Fothergill, if I may, if that’s your grownup name. Or is it? Were you once married?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And your husband’s name is . . .?’

  ‘Charing.’

  ‘Cheering, did you say?’

  ‘No, Charing.’

  ‘Are you going deaf, Mr Rumpole?’ the Judge raised his voice to me as though at the severely afflicted.

  ‘Not quite yet, my Lord.’ I turned to this witness. ‘Are you divorced from this Mr Charing?’

  ‘Not quite yet, Mr Rumpole,’ the witness answered with a smile and won a laugh from the Jury. The Judge’s pursed lips were stretched into a smile, and the inert beanbag was shaken up and repositioned in his chair. ‘The divorce hasn’t gone through,’ Tricia explained when order was restored.

  ‘Yet you call yourself Miss Fothergill?’

  ‘It was such an unhappy relationship. I wanted to make a clean break.’

  ‘Surely you can understand that, Mr Rumpole?’ Jamie was giving the witness his full and unqualified support.

  ‘And have you now found a new and happier relationship?’ Little Marcus, the mouse that roared, rose to object, but the learned Judge needed no persuading. ‘That was an entirely irrelevant and embarrassing question, Mr Rumpole. Please be more
careful in the future.’

  ‘I hope we shall all be careful,’ I said, ‘in our efforts to discover the truth. So I understand you live alone, Miss Fothergill, in Cherry Trees in the village of Wayleave?’

  ‘That is another entirely improper question. What does it matter whether this young lady lives alone or not?’ This time the Judge was doing Marcus’s objections for him. ‘We’d be greatly obliged, Mr Rumpole, if you’d move on to something relevant.’

  ‘I’ll move on to something very relevant. Do you say you saw a man coming out of Fallows Wood carrying wire on the day before the hunt?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘What time was it?’

  ‘One o’clock.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I’d just looked at my watch. I was out for a hack and had to be home before two because my lawyer was ringing me. I saw it was only one and I decided to do the long round through Plashy Bottom. Then I saw the man coming out of the wood, with the coil of wire.’

  ‘When you saw the man with the wire, you were alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No one else saw him at that time?’

  ‘Not so far as I know.’

  ‘You say you thought he might have been working for Telecom or the electricity company? Did you see a van from any of those companies?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or the van the saboteurs came in?’

  ‘I didn’t see the van then, no. Of course it might have been parked on the road.’

  ‘Or it might still have been parked in the village. As far as you know.’

  ‘As far as I know.’

  ‘You saw a man the next day, shouting at Mrs Eyles?’

  ‘That was the same man. Yes.’

  ‘Why didn’t you warn everyone in the hunt that you’d seen that man coming out of the wood, carrying wire?’

  ‘I suppose I just didn’t put two and two together at the time. It was only when I heard Dorothea had been killed by a wire . . .’

  ‘You put two and two together then?’ The Judge was ever helpful to his favourite witness.

  ‘Yes, my Lord. And I was going to say that, in all the excitement of starting out with the hunt, I may have forgotten what I saw, just for a little while.’

  ‘I don’t suppose Mr Rumpole knows much about the excitement of the hunt.’ Jamie MacBain was wreathed in smiles and seemed almost on the point of laying a finger alongside his nose.

  I didn’t join in the obedient titters from the Jury, or the shocked intake of breath from the faces in the public gallery. I started the long and unrewarding task of chipping away at Tricia’s identification. How far had she been away from the wood? Was the sun in her eyes? How fast was her horse moving at the time? As is the way with such questioning, the more the witness was attacked the more positive she became.

  ‘On your way back to your house in Wayleave, on the day before the hunt, did you pass Janet Freebody’s cottage?’

  ‘Yes, I had to pass that way.’ Tricia made it clear that she wouldn’t go near anything of Janet Freebody’s unless it were absolutely necessary.

  ‘Did you see the sabs’ van parked outside Miss Freebody’s cottage?’

  ‘I think I did. I can’t honestly remember.’

  ‘Was it locked?’

  ‘How would she know that, Mr Rumpole?’ Jamie put his oar in.

  ‘Perhaps you tried the door.’

  ‘I certainly didn’t! I was just riding past.’

  ‘Let me ask you something else. Mr Logan has told us that you left the hunt shortly before the police arrived with the news of Mrs Eyles’s death. There was something wrong with your horse. What was it?’

  ‘Oh, Trumpeter had lost a shoe,’ Tricia said as casually as possible. ‘It must have happened earlier, but I hadn’t noticed it. I noticed it then and I had to take him home.’

  It was a moment when I felt a tingle of excitement, as though, after a long search in deep and muddy waters, we had struck some hard edge of the truth. ‘Miss Fothergill,’ I asked her, ‘were you riding with Mrs Eyles in Fallows Wood on the day she met her death?’

  The Jury were looking at Tricia, suddenly interested. Even Jamie MacBain didn’t rush to her assistance.

  ‘No, of course I wasn’t.’ She turned to the Judge with a small, incredulous giggle which meant ‘What a silly question’.

  ‘My Lord. I call on my learned friend to admit that a horseshoe was found by Inspector Palmer near to the stile in Fallows Wood.’

  ‘Perfectly true, my Lord,’ Marcus admitted. ‘It was found some weeks after Mrs Eyles died.’

  ‘So it might have been dropped by one of any number of horses at any unknown time?’ Jamie was delighted to point out. ‘Isn’t that so, Miss Fothergill?’ Tricia was pleased to agree and repeated that she had never ridden through Fallows Wood that day. I was coming to the end of my questions.

  ‘When your divorce proceedings are over, Miss Fothergill, are you going to embark on another marriage?’ I asked and waited for the protest. It came. Little Marcus drew himself up to his full height and objected. Jamie agreed entirely and said that he wouldn’t allow any question about the witness’s private life. So my conversation with Tricia ended, finally silenced by the Judge’s ruling.

  At the end of the afternoon I came out of Court frustrated, despondent, seeing nothing in front of me but a pathetic guilty plea. Gavin hurried away to see Den in the cells and I heard an urgent voice saying, ‘Mr Rumpole! I’ve got to talk to you.’ I looked around and there was Janet Freebody, showing every sign of desperation. I saw Roy and a representative group of the sabs watching us, as well as the hunters who were leaving the Court. I said I’d meet her in the Carpenters Arms round the corner in half an hour.

  ‘It’s kind of you to see me. So kind.’ I realized I had never looked closely at Janet Freebody before, but just filed her away in my mind as a grey-haired schoolmistress in a tweed skirt. It was true that her hair was grey and her skirt was tweed but her eyes were blue, her eyelids finely moulded and her long, serious face beautiful as the faces on grave madonnas or serious angels in old paintings. At that moment her cheeks were pink and her hands, caressing her glass of gin-and-tonic, were long-fingered and elegant.

  ‘What is it you want to tell me?’

  She didn’t answer directly, but asked me a question. ‘Wasn’t it at one o’clock that Dennis was meant to be coming out of that wood, carrying wire?’

  ‘That’s what Tricia said.’

  ‘Well, he wasn’t. I know where he was.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In bed with me.’

  I looked at her and said, ‘Thank you for telling me.’

  ‘I know I’ve got to tell that in Court. Den’s going to be furious.’ And then it all came out, shyly at first, nervously, and then with increasing confidence. She’d had an affair with shaven-headed Roy, who was jealous of Den and now in a perpetually bad temper. She and Dennis had waited until the others went out to the pub to go upstairs, where, it seemed, the solemn Den forgot his duty to the animals in his love for the schoolmistress. Meanwhile, the saboteurs’ van was unlocked and unattended outside Janet’s front gate.

  ‘You can’t go on pretending.’

  ‘Pretending what?’

  ‘Pretending you’re guilty, just to help animals. I doubt very much whether the animals are going to be grateful to you. In fact they’ll hardly notice. Like Launce’s dog, Crab. Do you know The Two Gentlemen of Verona?’

  ‘How do they come into the case?’

  ‘They don’t. They’re in a play. So is Launce. And so is his dog, Crab. When Crab farts at the Duke’s dinner party, Launce takes the blame for it and is whipped out of the room. Launce also sat in the stocks for puddings Crab stole and stood in the pillory for geese Crab killed. How did Crab reward him? Simply by lifting his leg and peeing against Madam Silvia’s skirt. That’s how much Crab appreciated Launce’s extraordinary sacrifice.’

  There was a silence and then Dennis
said, ‘Mr Rumpole.’

  ‘Yes, Den.’

  ‘I am not quite following the drift of your argument.’

  ‘It’s just that Launce led an unrewarding life trying to take the blame for other people’s crimes. Don’t be a martyr! And don’t pretend to be a murderer.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Of course you are. And what do you think it’s going to get you? A vote of thanks from all the foxes in Gloucestershire?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re saying, Mr Rumpole.’

  ‘I’m saying, come out of some fairy-story world full of kind little furry animals and horrible humans and tell the truth for a change.’

  ‘What’s the truth?’

  ‘That you didn’t kill anyone. All right, you can shout bloodthirsty threats and work yourself into a fury against toffs on horses. But I don’t believe you’d really hurt a fly. Particularly not a fly.’

  It was early in the morning, before Jamie MacBain had disposed of bacon and eggs in his lodgings, and I was alone with my client in the cells. I hadn’t bothered to tell Gavin about this dawn meeting, and he would have been distressed, I’m sure, at Dennis’s look of pain.

  ‘I’m thinking of the cause.’

  ‘The cause that can’t accept that we’re all hunters, more or less?’

  ‘And I told you I was guilty.’

  ‘You told me a lie. That was always obvious.’

  ‘Why? Why was it obvious?’

  ‘Because you had no way of knowing that Dorothea Eyles was going to leave the hunt and gallop between the trees in Fallows Wood.’

  ‘You can’t prove it.’ For a moment Den was lit up with the light of battle.

  ‘Prove what?’

  ‘That I’m innocent.’

  ‘Really! Of all the cockeyed clients. I’ve had some dotty ones but never one that didn’t want to be proved innocent before.’ It was early in the morning and the hotel had only been serving the continental breakfast. I’m afraid that my temper was short and I didn’t mince my words. ‘I can prove you didn’t carry wire out of the wood at one o’clock on the day before the murder.’