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The Dock Brief

by John Mortimer

Scene One

A cell. The walls are grey and fade upwards into the shadows, so that the ceiling is not seen, and it might even be possible to escape upwards. The door is right. Back stage is a high, barred window through which the sky looks very blue. Under the window is a stool. Against the left wall is a bench with a wooden cupboard next to it. On the cupboard a wash basin, a towel and a Bible.

A small fat prisoner is standing on the stool on tip toes, his hands in his pockets. His eyes are on the sky.

Bolts shoot back. The door opens. MORGENHALL strides in. He is dressed in a black gown and bands, an aged barrister with the appearance of a dusty vulture. He speaks off stage, to the warder.

MORGENHALL:	(to an unseen warder). Is this where . . . you keep Mr Fowle? Good, excellent. Then leave us alone like a kind fellow. Would you mind closing the door? These old places are so draughty. The door closes. The bolts shoot back. Mr Fowle . . . Where are you, Mr Fowle? Not escaped, I pray. Good Heavens man, come down. Come down, Mr Fowle. He darts at him and there is a struggle as he pulls down the bewildered FOWLE. I haven’t hurt you? FOWLE: negative sounding noise I was suddenly anxious. A man in your unfortunate position. Desperate measures. And I couldn’t bear to lose you . . . No, don’t stand up. It’s difficult for you without braces, or a belt, I can see. And no tie, no shoe-laces. I’m so glad they’re looking after you. You must forgive me if I frightened you just a little, Mr Fowle. It was when I saw you up by that window . . .
FOWLE:	(a hoarse and sad voice). Epping Forest.
MORGENHALL:	What did your say?
FOWLE:	I think you can see Epping Forest.
MORGENHALL:	No doubt you can. But why, my dear chap, why should you want to?
FOWLE:	It’s the home stretch.
MORGENHALL:	Very well.
FOWLE:	I thought I could get a glimpse of the green. Between the chimneys and that shed . . . FOWLE starts to climb up again. A brief renewed struggle.
MORGENHALL:	No, get down. It’s not wise to be up there, forever trying to look out. There’s a draughty, sneeping wind. Treacherous.
FOWLE:	Treacherous?
MORGENHALL:	I’m afraid so. You never know what a mean, sneeping wind can do. Catch you by the throat, start a sneeze, then a dry tickle on the chest. I don’t want anything to catch you like that before . . .
FOWLE:	Before what?
MORGENHALL:	You’re much better silting quietly down there in the warm. Just sit quietly and I’ll introduce myself.
FOWLE:	I am tired.
MORGENHALL:	I’m Wilfred Morgenhall.
FOWLE:	Wilfred?
MORGENHALL:	Morgenhall. The barrister.
FOWLE:	The barrister?
MORGENHALL:	Perfectly so . . .
FOWLE:	I’m sorry.
MORGENHALL:	Why?
FOWLE:	A barrister. That’s very bad.
MORGENHALL:	I don’t know. Why’s it so bad?
FOWLE:	When a gentleman of your stamp goes wrong. A long fall.
MORGENHALL:	What can you mean?
FOWLE:	Different for an individual like me. I only kept a small seed shop.
MORGENHALL:	Seed shop? My poor fellow. We mustn’t let this unfortunate little case confuse us. We’re going to remain very calm, very lucid. We’re going to come to important decisions. Now, do me a favour, Mr Fowle, no more seed shops.
FOWLE:	Birdseed, of course. Individuals down our way kept birds mostly. Canaries and budgies. The budgies talked. Lot of lonely people down our way. They kept them for the talk.
MORGENHALL:	Mr Fowle. I’m a barrister.
FOWLE:	Tragic.
MORGENHALL:	I know the law.
FOWLE:	It’s trapped you.
MORGENHALL:	I’m here to help you.
FOWLE:	We’ll help each other. Pause.
MORGENHALL:	(laughs uncontrollably). I see. Mr Fowle. I see where you’ve been bewildered. You think I’m in trouble as well. Then I’ve got good news for you at last. I’m free. Oh yes. I can leave here when I like.
FOWLE:	You can?
MORGENHALL:	The police are my friends.
FOWLE:	They are?
MORGENHALL:	And I’ve never felt better in my life. There now. That’s relieved you, hasn’t it? I’m not in any trouble.
FOWLE:	Family all well?
MORGENHALL:	I never married.
FOWLE:	Rent paid up?
MORGENHALL:	A week or two owing perhaps. Temporary lull in business. This case will end all that.
FOWLE:	Which case?
MORGENHALL:	Your case.
FOWLE:	My . . . ?
MORGENHALL:	Case.
FOWLE:	Oh that—it’s not important.
MORGENHALL:	Not?
FOWLE:	I don’t care about it to any large extent. Not as at present advised.
MORGENHALL:	Mr Fowle. How could you say that?
FOWLE:	The flavour’s gone out of it.
MORGENHALL:	But we’re only at the beginning.
FOWLE:	I can’t believe it’s me concerned . . .
MORGENHALL:	But it is you, Mr Fowle. You mustn’t let yourself forget that. You see, that’s why you’re here . . .
FOWLE:	I can’t seem to bother with it.
MORGENHALL:	Can you be so busy?
FOWLE:	Slopping in, slopping out. Peering at the old forest. It fills in the day.
MORGENHALL:	You seem, if I may say so, to have adopted an unpleasantly selfish attitude.
FOWLE:	Selfish?
MORGENHALL:	Dog in the manger.
FOWLE:	In the?
MORGENHALL:	Unenthusiastic.
FOWLE:	You’re speaking quite frankly, I well appreciate . . .
MORGENHALL:	I’m sorry, Fowle. You made me say it. There’s so much of this about nowadays. There’s so much ready made entertainment. Free billiards, National Health. Television. There’s not the spirit abroad there used to be.
FOWLE:	You feel that?
MORGENHALL:	Whatever I’ve done I’ve always been mustard keen on my work. I’ve never lost the vision, Fowle. In all my disappointments I’ve never lost the love of the job.
FOWLE:	The position in life you’ve obtained to.
MORGENHALL:	Years of study I had to put in. It didn’t just drop in my lap.
FOWLE:	I’ve never studied . . .
MORGENHALL:	Year after year, Fowle, my window at college was alight until two a.m. There I sat among my books. I fed mainly on herrings . . .
FOWLE:	Lean years?
MORGENHALL:	And black tea. No subsidized biscuits then, Fowle, no County Council tobacco, just work . . .
FOWLE:	Book work, almost entirely? I’m only assuming that, of course.
MORGENHALL:	Want to hear some Latin?
FOWLE:	Only if you have time.
MORGENHALL:	Actus non sit reus nisi mens sit rea. Filius nullius. In flagrante delicto. Understand it?
FOWLE:	I’m no scholar.
MORGENHALL:	You most certainly are not. But I had to be, we all had to be in my day. Then we’d sit for the examinations, Mods, Smalls, Greats, Tripos, Little Goes, week after week, rowing men fainting, Indian students vomiting with fear, and no creeping out for a peep at the book under the pretext of a pump ship or getting a glance at the other fellow’s celluloid cuff . . .
FOWLE:	That would be unheard of?
MORGENHALL:	Then weeks, months of waiting. Nerve racking. Go up to the Lake District. Pace the mountains, play draughts, forget to huff. Then comes the fatal postcard.
FOWLE:	What’s it say?
MORGENHALL:	Satisfied the examiners.
FOWLE:	At last!
MORGENHALL:	Don’t rejoice so soon. True enough I felt I’d turned a corner, got a fur hood, bumped on the head with a Bible. Bachelor of Law sounded sweet in my ears. I thought of celebrating, a few kindred spirits round for a light ale. Told the only lady in my life that in five years’ time perhaps . . .
FOWLE:	You’d arrived!
MORGENHALL:	That’s what I thought when they painted my name up on my London chambers. I sat down to fill in the time until they sent my first brief in a real case. I sat down to do the crossword puzzle while I waited. Five years later, Fowle, what was I doing . . . ?
FOWLE:	A little charge of High Treason?
MORGENHALL:	I was still doing the crossword puzzle.
FOWLE:	But better at it?
MORGENHALL:	Not much. Not very much. As the years pass there come to be clues you no longer understand.
FOWLE:	So all that training?
MORGENHALL:	Wasted. The talents rust.
FOWLE:	And the lady?
MORGENHALL:	Drove an ambulance in the 1914. A stray piece of shrapnel took her. I don’t care to talk of it.
FOWLE:	Tragic
MORGENHALL:	What was?
FOWLE:	Tragic my wife was never called up.
MORGENHALL:	You mustn’t talk like that, Fowle, your poor wife.
FOWLE:	Don’t let’s carry on about me.
MORGENHALL:	But we must carry on about you. That’s what I’m here for.
FOWLE:	You’re here to?
MORGENHALL:	Defend you.
FOWLE:	Can’t be done.
MORGENHALL:	Why ever not?
FOWLE:	I know who killed her.
MORGENHALL:	Who?
FOWLE:	Me. Pause
MORGENHALL:	(considerable thought before he says). Mr Fowle, I have all the respect in the world for your opinions, but we must face this. You’re a man of very little education . . .
FOWLE:	That’s true.
MORGENHALL:	One has only to glance at you. At those curious lobes to your ears. At the line of your hair. At the strange way your eyebrows connect in the middle, to see that you’re a person of very limited intelligence.
FOWLE:	Agreed, quite frankly.
MORGENHALL:	You think you killed your wife.
FOWLE:	Seems to me.
MORGENHALL:	Mr Fowle. Look at yourself objectively. On questions of birdseed I have no doubt you may be infallible—but on a vital point like this might you not be mistaken . . . Don’t answer . . .
FOWLE:	Why not, sir?
MORGENHALL:	Before you drop the bomb of a reply, consider who will be wounded. Are the innocent to suffer?
FOWLE:	I only want to be honest.
MORGENHALL:	But you’re a criminal, Mr Fowle. You’ve broken through the narrow fabric of honesty. You are free to be kind, human, to do good.
FOWLE:	But what I did to her . . .
MORGENHALL:	She’s passed, you know, out of your life. You’ve set up new relationships. You’ve picked out me.
FOWLE:	Picked out?
MORGENHALL:	Selected.
FOWLE:	But I didn’t know. . . .
MORGENHALL:	No, Mr Fowle. That’s the whole beauty of it. You didn’t know me. You came to me under a system of chance invented, like the football pools, to even out the harsh inequality of a world where you have to deserve success. You, Mr Fowle, are my first Dock Brief.
FOWLE:	Your Dock?
MORGENHALL:	Brief.
FOWLE:	You couldn’t explain?
MORGENHALL:	Of course. Prisoners with no money and no friends exist. Luckily, you’re one of them. They’re entitled to choose any barrister sitting in Court to defend them. The barrister, however old, gets a brief, and is remunerated on a modest scale. Busy lawyers, wealthy lawyers, men with other interests, creep out of Court bent double when the Dock Brief is chosen. We regulars who are not busy sit on. I’ve been a regular for years. It’s not etiquette, you see, even if you want the work, to wave at the prisoner, or whistle, or try to catch his eye by hoisting any sort of little flag.
FOWLE:	Didn’t know.
MORGENHALL:	But you can choose the most advantageous seat. The seat any criminal would naturally point at. It’s the seat under the window and for ten years my old friend Tuppy Morgan, bagged it each day at ten. He sat there, reading Horace, and writing to his innumerable aunts, and almost once a year a criminal pointed him out. Oh, Mr Fowle, Tuppy was a limpet on that seat. But this morning, something, possibly a cold, perhaps death, kept him indoors. So I had his place. And you spotted me, no doubt.
FOWLE:	Spotted you?
MORGENHALL:	My glass polished. My profile drawn and learned in front of the great window.
FOWLE:	I never noticed.
MORGENHALL:	But when they asked you to choose a lawyer?
FOWLE:	I shut my eyes and pointed—I’ve picked horses that way, and football teams. Never did me any good, though, by any stretch of the imagination.
MORGENHALL:	So even you, Mr Fowle, didn’t choose me?
FOWLE:	Not altogether.
MORGENHALL:	The law’s a haphazard business.
FOWLE:	It does seem chancy.
MORGENHALL:	Years of training, and then to be picked out like a football pool.
FOWLE:	Don’t take it badly sir.
MORGENHALL:	Of course, you’ve been fortunate.
FOWLE:	So unusual. I was never one to draw the free bird at Christmas, or guess the weight of the cake. Now I’m sorry I told you.
MORGENHALL:	Never mind. You hurt me temporarily, Fowle, I must confess. It might have been kinder to have kept me in ignorance. But now it’s done. Let’s get down to business. And, Fowle—
FOWLE:	Yes, sir.
MORGENHALL:	Remember you’re dealing with fellow man. A man no longer young. Remember the hopes I’ve pinned on you and try . . .
FOWLE:	Try?
MORGENHALL:	Try to spare me more pain.
FOWLE:	I will, sir. Of course I will.
MORGENHALL:	Now. Let’s get our minds in order.
FOWLE:	Sort things out?
MORGENHALL:	Exactly. Now, this wife of yours,
FOWLE:	Doris?
MORGENHALL:	Doris. A bitter, unsympathetic woman?
FOWLE:	She was always cheerful. She loved jokes.
MORGENHALL:	Oh, Fowle. Do be very careful.
FOWLE:	I will, sir. But if you’d known Doris . . . She laughed harder than she worked. “Thank God,” she’d say, “for my old English sense of fun.”
MORGENHALL:	What sort of jokes, Fowle, did this Doris appreciate?
FOWLE:	All sorts. Pictures in the paper. Jokes on the wireless set. Laughs out of crackers, she’d keep them from Christmas to Christmas and trot them out in August.
MORGENHALL:	You couldn’t share it?
FOWLE:	Not to that extent. I often missed the funny point.
MORGENHALL:	Then you’d quarrel?
FOWLE:	“Don’t look so miserable, it may never happen.” She said that every night when I came home. “Where’d you get that miserable expression from?”
MORGENHALL:	I can see it now. There is a kind of Sunday evening appearance to you.
FOWLE:	I was quite happy. But it was always “Cat got your tongue?” “Where’s the funeral?” “Play us a tune on that old fiddle face of yours. Lucky there’s one of us here that can see the funny side.” Then we had to have our tea with the wireless on, so that she’d pick up the phrases.
MORGENHALL:	You’re not a wireless lover?
FOWLE:	I couldn’t always laugh. And she’d be doubled up across the table, gasping as if her lungs were full of water. “Laugh,” she’d call, “Laugh, damn you. What’ve you got to be so miserable about?” Then she’d go under, bubbling like a drowning woman.
MORGENHALL:	Made meals difficult?
FOWLE:	Indigestible. I would have laughed, but the jokes never tickled me.
MORGENHALL:	They tickled her?
FOWLE:	Anything did. Anything a little comic. Our names were misfortunate.
MORGENHALL:	Your names?
FOWLE:	Fowle. Going down the aisle she said: “Now we’re cock and hen, aren’t we, old bird?” Coming away, it was “Now I’m Mrs Fowle, you’ll have to play fair with me.” She laughed so hard we couldn’t get her straightened up for the photograph.
MORGENHALL:	Fond of puns, I gather you’re trying to say.
FOWLE:	Of any sort of joke. I had a little aviary at the bottom of my garden. As she got funnier so I spent more time with my birds. Budgerigars are small parrots. Circles round their eyes give them a sad, tired look.
MORGENHALL:	You found them sympathetic?
FOWLE:	Restful. Until one of them spoke out at me.
MORGENHALL:	Spoke—what words?
FOWLE:	“Don’t look so miserable, it may never happen.”
MORGENHALL:	The bird said that?
FOWLE:	She taught it during the day when I was out at work. It didn’t mean to irritate.
MORGENHALL:	It was wrong of her of course. To lead on your bird like that.
FOWLE:	But it wasn’t him that brought me to it. It was Bateson, the lodger.
MORGENHALL:	Another man?
FOWLE:	At long last.
MORGENHALL:	I can see it now. A crime of passion. An unfaithful wife. In flagrante . . . Of course, you don’t know what that means. We’ll reduce it to manslaughter right away. A wronged husband and there’s never a dry eye in the jury-box. You came in and caught them.
FOWLE:	Always laughing together.
MORGENHALL:	Maddening!
FOWLE:	He knew more jokes than she did.
MORGENHALL:	Stealing her before your eyes?
FOWLE:	That’s what I thought. He was a big man. Ex-police. Said he’d been the scream of the station. I picked him for her specially. In the chitty I put up in the local sweet shop, I wrote: “Humorous type of lodger wanted.”
MORGENHALL:	But wasn’t that a risk?
FOWLE:	Slight, perhaps. But it went all right. Two days after he came he poised a bag of flour to fall on her in the kitchen. Then she sewed up the legs of his pyjamas. They had to hold on to each other so as not to fall over laughing. “Look at old misery standing there,” she said. “He can never see anything subtle.”
MORGENHALL:	Galling for you. Terribly galling.
FOWLE:	I thought all was well. I spent more time with the birds. I’d come home late and always be careful to scrunch the gravel at the front door. I went to bed early and left them with the Light Programme. On Sunday mornings I fed the budgies and suggested he took her tea in bed. “Laughter,” she read out from her horoscope, “leads to love, even for those born under the sign of the Virgin.”
MORGENHALL:	You trusted them. They deceived you.
FOWLE:	They deceived me all right. And I trusted them. Especially after I’d seen her on his knee and them both looking at the cartoons from one wrapping of chips.
MORGENHALL:	Mr Fowle. I’m not quite getting the drift of your evidence. My hope is—your thought may not prove a shade too involved for our literal-minded judge. Old Tommy Banter was a Rugger blue in ’98. He never rose to chess and his draughts had a brutal, unintelligent quality.
FOWLE:	When he’d first put his knee under her I thought he’d do the decent thing. I thought I’d have peace in my little house at last. The wireless set dead silent. The end of all the happy laughter. No sound but the twitter from the end of the garden and the squeak of my own foot on the linoleum.
MORGENHALL:	You wanted . . .
FOWLE:	I heard them whispering together and my hopes raised high. Then I came back and he was gone.
MORGENHALL:	She’d . . .
FOWLE:	Turned him out. Because he was getting over familiar. “I couldn’t have that.” she said. “I may like my laugh, but thank God, I’m still respectable. No thank you, there’s safety in marriage. So I’m stuck with you, fiddle face. Let’s play a tune on it, shall we?” She’d sent him away, my last hope.
MORGENHALL:	So you . . .
FOWLE:	I realize I did wrong.
MORGENHALL:	You could have left.
FOWLE:	Who’d have fed the birds? That thought was uppermost.
MORGENHALL:	So it’s not a crime of passion?
FOWLE:	Not if you put it like that.
MORGENHALL:	Mr Fowle. I’ve worked and waited for you. Now, you’re the only case I’ve got, and the most difficult.
FOWLE:	I’m sorry.
MORGENHALL:	A man could crack his head against a case like you and still be far from a solution. Can’t you see how twelve honest hearts will snap like steel when they learn you ended up your wife because she wouldn’t leave you?
FOWLE:	If she had left, there wouldn’t have been the need.
MORGENHALL:	There’s no doubt about it. As I look at you now, I see you’re an unsympathetic figure.
FOWLE:	There it is.
MORGENHALL:	It’ll need a brilliant stroke to save you. An unexpected move—something pulled out of a hat—I’ve got it. Something really exciting. The surprise witness.
FOWLE:	Witness?
MORGENHALL:	Picture the scene, Mr Fowle. The Court room silent. The jury about to sink you. The prosecution flushed with victory. And then I rise, my voice a hoarse whisper, exhausted by that long trial. “My Lord. If your Lordship pleases.”
FOWLE:	What are you saying?
MORGENHALL:	Do you expect me to do this off the cuff, Fowle, with no sort of rehearsal?
FOWLE:	No . . .
MORGENHALL:	Take the stool and co-operate, man. Now, that towel over your head, please, to simulate the dirty grey wig—already you appear anonymous and vaguely alarming. MORGENHALL arranges FOWLE on the stool. Drapes the towel over his head. Now, my dear Fowle, forget your personality. You’re Sir Tommy Banter, living with a widowed sister in a draughty great morgue on Wimbledon Common. Digestion, bad. Politics, an Independent Moral Conservative. Favourite author, doesn’t read. Diversions, snooker in the basement of the morgue, peeping at the lovers on the Common and money being given away on the television. In love with capital punishment, corporal punishment, and a younger brother who is accomplished at embroidery. A small, alarmed man, frightened of the great dog he lives with to give him the air of a country squire. Served with distinction in the Great War at sentencing soldiers to long terms of imprisonment. A man without friends, unexpectedly adored by a great-niece, three years old.
FOWLE:	I am?
MORGENHALL:	Him.
FOWLE:	It feels strange.
MORGENHALL:	Now, my Lord. I ask your Lordship’s leave to call the surprise witness.
FOWLE:	Certainly.
MORGENHALL:	What?
FOWLE:	Certainly.
MORGENHALL:	For Heaven’s sake, Fowle, this is like practising bull-fights with a kitten. Here’s an irregular application by the defence, something that might twist the trial in the prisoner’s favour and prevent you catching the connection at Charing Cross. Your breakfast’s like a lead weight on your chest. Your sister, plunging at Spot last night, ripped the cloth. The dog bit your ankle on the way downstairs. No, blind yourself with rage and terrible justice.
FOWLE:	No. You can’t call the surprise witness.
MORGENHALL:	That’s better. Oh, my Lord. If your Lordship would listen to me.
FOWLE:	Certainly not. You’ve had your chance. Let’s get on with it.
MORGENHALL:	My Lord. Justice must not only be done, but must clearly be seen to be done. No one knows, as yet, what my surprise witness will say. Perhaps he’ll say the prisoner is guilty in his black heart as your Lordship thinks. But perhaps, gentlemen of the jury, we have trapped an innocent. If so, shall we deny him the one door through which he might walk to freedom? The public outcry would never die down.
FOWLE:	(snatching off the towel and rising angrily to his feet). Hear, hear!
MORGENHALL:	What’s that?
FOWLE:	The public outcry.
MORGENHALL:	Excellent. Now, towel back on. You’re the judge.
FOWLE:	(as the Judge). Silence! I’ll have all those noisy people put out. Very well. Call the witness. But keep it short.
MORGENHALL:	Wonderful. Very good. Now. Deathly silence as the witness walks through the breathless crowds. Let’s see the surprise witness. Take the towel off.
FOWLE:	(moves from the stool and, standing very straight says): I swear to tell the truth . . .
MORGENHALL:	You’ve got a real feeling for the Law. A pity you came to it so late in life.
FOWLE:	The whole truth.
MORGENHALL:	Now, what’s your name?
FOWLE:	(absent minded). Herbert Fowle.
MORGENHALL:	No, no. You’re the witness.
FOWLE:	Martin Jones.
MORGENHALL:	Excellent. Now, you know Herbert Fowle?
FOWLE:	All my life.
MORGENHALL:	Always found him respectable?
FOWLE:	Very quiet spoken man, and clean living.
MORGENHALL:	Where was he when this crime took place?
FOWLE:	He was . . .
MORGENHALL:	Just a moment. My Lord, will you sharpen a pencil and note this down?
FOWLE:	You’d dare to say that? To him?
MORGENHALL:	Fearlessness, Mr Fowle. The first essential in an advocate. Is your Lordship’s pencil poised?
FOWLE:	(as Judge). Yes, yes. Get on with it.
MORGENHALL:	Where was he?
FOWLE:	(as Witness). In my house.
MORGENHALL:	All the evening?
FOWLE:	Playing whist. I went to collect him and we left Mrs Fowle well and happy. I returned with him and she’d been removed to the Country and General.
MORGENHALL:	Panic stirs the prosecution benches. The prosecutor tries a few fumbling questions. But you stand your ground, don’t you?
FOWLE:	Certainly.
MORGENHALL:	My Lord. I demand the prisoner be released.
FOWLE:	(as Judge). Certainly. Can’t think what all this fuss has been about. Release the prisoner, and reduce all police officers in Court to the rank of P.C. Pause.
MORGENHALL:	Fowle.
FOWLE:	Yes, sir.
MORGENHALL:	Aren’t you going to thank me?
FOWLE:	I don’t know what I can say.
MORGENHALL:	Words don’t come easily to you, do they?
FOWLE:	Very hard.
MORGENHALL:	You could just stand and stammer in a touching way and offer me that old gold watch of your father’s.
FOWLE:	But . . .
MORGENHALL:	Well, I think we’ve pulled your chestnuts out of the fire. We’ll just have to make sure of this fellow Jones.
FOWLE:	But . . .
MORGENHALL:	Fowle, you’re a good simple chap, but there’s no need to interrupt my thinking.
FOWLE:	I was only reminding you . . .
MORGENHALL:	Well, what?
FOWLE:	We have no Jones.
MORGENHALL:	Carried off in a cold spell? Then we can get his statement in under the Evidence Act.
FOWLE:	He never lived. We made him up. Pause.
MORGENHALL:	Fowle.
FOWLE:	Yes, sir.
MORGENHALL:	It’s remarkable a thing, but with no legal training, I think you’ve put your finger on a fatal weakness in our defence.
FOWLE:	I was afraid it might be so.
MORGENHALL:	It is so.
FOWLE:	Then we’d better just give in.
MORGENHALL:	Give in? We do not give in. When my life depends on this case.
FOWLE:	I forgot. Then, we must try.
MORGENHALL:	Yes. Brain! Brain! Go to work. It’ll come to me, you know, in an illuminating flash. Hard relentless brain work. This is the way I go at the crosswords and I never give up. I have it. Bateson!
FOWLE:	The lodger?
MORGENHALL:	Bateson, the lodger. I never liked him. Under a ruthless cross-examination, you know, he might confess that it was he. Do you see a flash?
FOWLE:	You look much happier.
MORGENHALL:	I am much happier. And when I begin my ruthless cross-examination . . .
FOWLE:	Would you care to try it?
MORGENHALL:	Mr Fowle. You and I are learning to muck in splendidly together over this. Mr Bateson.
FOWLE:	(as Bateson, lounging in an imaginary witness box with his hands in his pockets). Yes. Sir?
MORGENHALL:	Perhaps, when you address the Court you’d be good enough to take your hands out of your pockets. Not you Mr Fowle, of course. You became on very friendly terms with the prisoner’s wife?
FOWLE:	We had one or two good old laughs together.
MORGENHALL:	Was the association entirely innocent?
FOWLE:	Innocent laughs. Jokes without offence. The cracker or Christmas card variety. No jokes that would have shamed a postcard.
MORGENHALL:	And to tell those innocent jokes, did you have to sit very close to Mrs Fowle?
FOWLE:	How do you mean?
MORGENHALL:	Did you have to sit beneath her?
FOWLE:	I don’t understand.
MORGENHALL:	Did she perch upon your knee?
FOWLE:	(horrified intake of breath).
MORGENHALL:	What was that?
FOWLE:	Shocked breathing from the jury, sir.
MORGENHALL:	Having its effect, eh? Now, Mr Bateson. Will you kindly answer my question.
FOWLE:	You’re trying to trap me.
MORGENHALL:	Not trying, Bateson, succeeding.
FOWLE:	Well, she may have rested on my knee. Once or twice.
MORGENHALL:	And you loved her, guiltily?
FOWLE:	I may have done.
MORGENHALL:	And planned to take her away with you?
FOWLE:	I did ask her.
MORGENHALL:	And when she refused . . .
FOWLE:	(as Judge). Just a moment. Where’s all this leading?
MORGENHALL:	Your Lordship asks me! My Lord, it is our case that it was this man, Bateson, enraged by the refusal of the prisoner’s wife to follow him, who struck . . . You see where we’ve got to?
FOWLE:	I do.
MORGENHALL:	Masterly. I think you’ll have to agree with me?
FOWLE:	Of course.
MORGENHALL:	No flaws in this one?
FOWLE:	Not really a flaw, sir. Perhaps a little hitch.
MORGENHALL:	A hitch. Go on. Break it down.
FOWLE:	No, sir, really. Not after you’ve been so kind.
MORGENHALL:	Never mind. All my life I’ve stood against the winds of criticism and neglect. My gown may be a little tattered, my cuffs frayed. There may be a hole in my sock for the draughts to get at me. Quite often, on my way to Court, I notice that my left shoe lets in water. I am used to hardship. Speak on, Mr Fowle.
FOWLE:	Soon as he left my house, Bateson was stopped by an officer. He’d lifted an alarm clock off me, and the remains of a bottle of port. They booked him straight away.
MORGENHALL:	You mean, there wasn’t time?
FOWLE:	Hardly. Two hours later the next door observed Mrs Fowle at the washing. Then I came home.
MORGENHALL:	Fowle. Do you want to help me?
FOWLE:	Of course. Haven’t I shown it?
MORGENHALL:	But you will go on putting all these difficulties in my way.
FOWLE:	I knew you’d be upset.
MORGENHALL:	Not really. After all, I’m a grown up, even an old, man. At my age one expects little gratitude. There’s a cat I feed each day at my lodgings, a waitress in the lunch room here who always gets that sixpence under my plate. In ten, twenty years’ time, will they remember me? Oh, I’m not bitter. But a little help, just a very little encouragement . . .
FOWLE:	But you’ll win this case. A brilliant mind like yours.
MORGENHALL:	Yes. Thank God. It’s very brilliant.
FOWLE:	And all that training.
MORGENHALL:	Years of it. Hard, hard training.
FOWLE:	You’ll solve it, sir. Pause.
MORGENHALL:	Fowle. Do you know what I’ve heard Tuppy Morgan say? After all, he’s sat here, year in, year out, as long as anyone can remember, in Court, waiting for the Dock Brief himself. Wilfred, he’s frequently told me, if they ever give you a brief, old fellow, attack the medical evidence. Remember, the jury’s full of rheumatism and arthritis and shocking gastric troubles. They love to see a medical man put through it. Always go for a doctor.
FOWLE:	(eagerly). You’d like to try?
MORGENHALL:	Shall we?
FOWLE:	I’d enjoy it.
MORGENHALL:	Doctor. Did you say the lady died of heart failure?
FOWLE:	(as Doctor). No.
MORGENHALL:	Come, Doctor. Don’t fence with me. Her heart wasn’t normal when you examined her, was it?
FOWLE:	She was dead.
MORGENHALL:	So it had stopped.
FOWLE:	Yes.
MORGENHALL:	Then her heart had failed?
FOWLE:	Well . . .
MORGENHALL:	So she died of heart failure?
FOWLE:	But . . .
MORGENHALL:	And heart failure might have been brought on by a fit, I say a fit of laughter, at a curiously rich joke on the wireless?
FOWLE:	Whew! FOWLE claps softly. Pause.
MORGENHALL:	Thank you, Fowle. It was kind but, I thought, hollow. I don’t believe my attack on the doctor was convincing.
FOWLE:	Perhaps a bit unlikely. But clever . . .
MORGENHALL:	Too clever. No. We’re not going to win this on science, Fowle. Science must be thrown away. As I asked those questions, I saw I wasn’t even convincing you of your own innocence. But you respond to emotion, Fowle, as I do, the magic of oratory, the wonderful power of words.
FOWLE:	Now you’re talking.
MORGENHALL:	I’m going to talk.
FOWLE:	I wish I could hear some of it. Words as grand as print.
MORGENHALL:	A golden tongue. A voice like a lyre to charm you out of hell.
FOWLE:	Now you’ve commenced to wander away from all I’ve understood.
MORGENHALL:	I was drawing on the riches of my classical education which comforts me on buses, waiting at surgeries, or in prison cells. But I shall speak to the jury simply, without classical allusions. I shall say . . .
FOWLE:	Yes.
MORGENHALL:	I shall say . . .
FOWLE:	What?
MORGENHALL:	I had it on the tip of my tongue.
FOWLE:	Oh.
MORGENHALL:	I shan’t disappoint you. I shall speak for a day, perhaps two days. At the end I shall say . . .
FOWLE:	Yes? Just the closing words.
MORGENHALL:	The closing words.
FOWLE:	To clinch the argument.
MORGENHALL:	Yes. The final, irrefutable argument.
FOWLE:	If I could only hear.
MORGENHALL:	You shall, Fowle. You shall hear it. In Court. It’ll come out in Court, and when I sink back in my seat, trembling, and wipe the real tears off my glasses . . .
FOWLE:	The judge’s summing up.
MORGENHALL:	What will Tommy say?
FOWLE:	(as Judge) Members of the jury . . .
MORGENHALL:	Struggling with emotions as well.
FOWLE:	I can’t add anything to the words of the barrister. Go out and consider your verdict.
MORGENHALL:	Have they left the box?
FOWLE:	Only a formality.
MORGENHALL:	I see. I wonder how long they’ll be out. Pause. They’re out a long time.
FOWLE:	Of course, it must seem long to you. The suspense.
MORGENHALL:	I hope they won’t disagree.
FOWLE:	I don’t see how they can. Pause.
MORGENHALL:	Fowle.
FOWLE:	Yes, sir.
MORGENHALL:	Shall we just take a peep into the jury room.
FOWLE:	I wish we could.
MORGENHALL:	Let’s. Let me see, you’re the foreman?
FOWLE:	I take it we’re all agreed, chaps. So let’s sit here and have a short smoke. They sit on the bench together.
MORGENHALL:	An excellent idea. The barrister saved him.
FOWLE:	That wonderful speech. I had a bit of doubt before I heard the speech.
MORGENHALL:	No doubt now, have you?
FOWLE:	Certainly not. They light imaginary pipes. Care for a fill of mine?
MORGENHALL:	Thank you so much. Match?
FOWLE:	Here you are.
MORGENHALL:	I say, you don’t think the poor fellow’s in any doubt, do you?
FOWLE:	No. He must know he’ll get off. After the speech I mean.
MORGENHALL:	I mean, I wouldn’t like him to be on pins . . .
FOWLE:	Think we ought to go back and reassure him? They move off the bench.
MORGENHALL:	As you wish. Careful that pipe doesn’t start a fire in your pocket. (As Clerk of Court). Gentlemen of the jury. Have you considered your verdict?
FOWLE:	We have.
MORGENHALL:	And do you find the prisoner guilty or not guilty?
FOWLE:	Not guilty, my Lord.
MORGENHALL:	Hooray!
FOWLE:	(as Judge). Now, if there’s any sort of Mafeking around, I’ll have the Court closed.
MORGENHALL:	So I’m surrounded, mobbed. Tuppy Morgan wrings my hand and says it was lucky he left the seat. The judge sends me a letter of congratulation. The journalists dart off to their little telephones. And what now: “Of course they’d make you a judge but you’re probably too busy . . .” There’s a queue of solicitors on the stairs . . . My old clerk writes on my next brief, a thousand guineas to divorce a duchess. There are questions of new clothes, laying down the port. Oh, Mr Fowle, the change in life you’ve brought me.
FOWLE:	It will be your greatest day.
MORGENHALL:	Yes, Mr Fowle. My greatest day. The bolts shoot back, the door opens slowly. What’s that? I said we weren’t to be interrupted. It’s draughty in here with that door open. Close it, there’s a good chap, do.
FOWLE:	I think, you know, they must want us for the trial. FOWLE goes through the door. MORGENHALL follows with a dramatic sweep of his gown.

The Curtain Falls

Scene Two

When the curtain rises again the sky through the windows shows that it is late afternoon. The door is unlocked and MORGENHALL enters. He is without his wig and gown, more agitated than ever, he speaks to the WARDER, offstage.

MORGENHALL:	He’s not here at the moment—he’s not . . . ? Oh, I’m so glad. Just out temporarily? With the governor? Then, I’ll wait for him. Poor soul. How’s he taking it? You’re not allowed to answer questions? The regulations, I suppose. Well, you must obey the regulations. I’ll just sit down here and wait for Mr Fowle. The door closes. (He whistles. Whistling stops.) May it please you, my Lord, members of the jury. I should have said, may it please you, my Lord, members of the jury. I should have said . . . He begins to walk up and down. Members of the jury. Is there one of you who doesn’t crave for peace . . . crave for peace. The silence of an undisturbed life, the dignity of an existence without dependants . . . without jokes. Have you never been tempted? I should have said . . . Members of the jury. You and I are men of the world. If your Lordship would kindly not interrupt my speech to the jury. I’m obliged. Members of the jury, before I was so rudely interrupted. I might have said . . . Look at the prisoner, members of the jury. Has he hurt you, done you the slightest harm? Is he not the mildest of men? He merely took it upon himself to regulate his domestic affairs. An Englishman’s home is his castle. Do any of you feel a primitive urge, members of the jury, to be revenged on this gentle bird fancier . . . Members of the jury, I see I’m affecting your emotions but let us consider the weight of the evidence . . . I might have said that! I might have said . . . (with distress) I might have said something . . . The door opens. FOWLE enters. He is smiling to himself, but as soon as he sees MORGENHALL he looks serious and solicitous.
FOWLE:	I was hoping you’d find time to drop in, sir. I’m afraid you’re upset.
MORGENHALL:	No, no, my dear chap. Not at all upset.
FOWLE:	The result of the trial’s upset you.
MORGENHALL:	I feel a little dashed. A little out of sorts.
FOWLE:	It was disappointing for you.
MORGENHALL:	A touch of disappointment. But there’ll be other cases. There may be other cases.
FOWLE:	But you’d built such high hopes on this particular one.
MORGENHALL:	Well, there it is, Fowle.
FOWLE:	It doesn’t do to expect too much of a particular thing.
MORGENHALL:	You’re right, of course.
FOWLE:	Year after year I used to look forward keenly to the Feathered Friends Fanciers’ Annual Do. Invariably it took the form of a dinner.
MORGENHALL:	Your yearly treat?
FOWLE:	Exactly. All I had in the enjoyment line. Each year I built high hopes on it. June 13th, I’d say, now there’s an evening to look forward to.
MORGENHALL:	Something to live for?
FOWLE:	In a way. But when it came, you know, it was never up to it. Your collar was always too tight, or the food was inadequate, or someone had a nasty scene with the fancier in the chair. So, on June 14th, I always said to myself: Thank God for a night at home.
MORGENHALL:	It came and went and your life didn’t change?
FOWLE:	No, quite frankly.
MORGENHALL:	And this case has left me just as I was before.
FOWLE:	Don’t say that.
MORGENHALL:	Tuppy Morgan’s back in his old seat under the window. The judge never congratulated me. No one’s rung up to offer me a brief. I thought my old clerk looked coldly at me, and there was a titter in the luncheon room when I ordered my usual roll and tomato soup.
FOWLE:	But I . . .
MORGENHALL:	And you’re not left in a very favourable position.
FOWLE:	Don’t say that, sir. It’s not so bad for me. After all, I had no education.
MORGENHALL:	So many years before I could master the Roman Law relating to the ownership of chariots . . .
FOWLE:	Wasted, you think?
MORGENHALL:	I feel so.
FOWLE:	But without that rich background, would an individual have been able to sway the Court as you did?
MORGENHALL:	Sway?
FOWLE:	The Court.
MORGENHALL:	Did I do that?
FOWLE:	It struck me you did.
MORGENHALL:	Indeed . . .
FOWLE:	It’s turned out masterly.
MORGENHALL:	Mr Fowle, you’re trying to be kind. When I was a child I played French cricket with an uncle who deliberately allowed the ball to strike his legs. At the age of seven that irked me. At sixty-three I can face the difficulties of accurate batting . . .
FOWLE:	But no, sir. I really mean it. I owe it all to you. Where I am.
MORGENHALL:	I’m afraid near the end.
FOWLE:	Just commencing.
MORGENHALL:	I lost, Mr Fowle. You may not be aware of it. It may not have been hammered home to you yet. But your case is lost.
FOWLE:	But there are ways and ways of losing.
MORGENHALL:	That’s true, of course.
FOWLE:	I noticed your artfulness right at the start, when the policeman gave evidence. You pulled out that red handkerchief, slowly and deliberately, like a conjuring trick.
MORGENHALL:	And blew?
FOWLE:	A sad, terrible trumpet.
MORGENHALL:	Unnerved him, I thought.
FOWLE:	He never recovered. There was no call to ask questions after that.
MORGENHALL:	And then they called that doctor.
FOWLE:	You were right not to bother with him.
MORGENHALL:	Tactics, you see. We’d decided not to trouble with science.
FOWLE:	So we had. And with Bateson . . .
MORGENHALL:	No, Fowle. I must beware of your flattery, I think I might have asked Bateson . . .
FOWLE:	It wouldn’t have made a farthing’s difference. A glance told them he was a demon.
MORGENHALL:	He stood there, so big and red, with his no tie and dirty collar. I rose up to question him and suddenly it seemed as if there were no reason for us to converse. I remembered what you said about his jokes, his familiarity with your wife. What had he and I in common? I turned from him in disgust. I think that jury guessed the reason for my silence with friend Bateson.
FOWLE:	I think they did!
MORGENHALL:	But when it came to the speech . . .
FOWLE:	The best stroke of all.
MORGENHALL:	I can’t agree. You no longer carry me with you.
FOWLE:	Said from the heart.
MORGENHALL:	I’m sure of it. But not, dare I say, altogether justified? We can’t pretend, can we, Mr Fowle, that the speech was a success?
FOWLE:	It won the day.
MORGENHALL:	I beg you not to be under any illusions. They found you guilty.
FOWLE:	I was forgetting. But that masterly speech . . .
MORGENHALL:	I can’t be hoodwinked.
FOWLE:	But you don’t know . . .
MORGENHALL:	I stood up, Mr Fowle, and it was the moment I’d waited for. Ambition had driven me to it, the moment when I was alone with what I wanted. Everyone turned to me, twelve blank faces in the jury box, eager to have the grumpy looks wiped off them. The judge was silent. The prosecutor courteously pretended to be asleep. I only had to open my mouth and pour words out. What stopped me?
FOWLE:	What?
MORGENHALL:	Fear. That’s what’s suggested. That’s what the clerks tittered to the waitress in Friday’s luncheon room. Old Wilf Morgenhall was in a funk.
FOWLE:	More shame on them . . .
MORGENHALL:	But it wasn’t so. Nor did my mind go blank. When I rose I knew exactly what I was going to say.
FOWLE:	Then, why?
MORGENHALL:	Not say it—you were going to say?
FOWLE:	It had struck me—
MORGENHALL:	It must have, Fowle. It must have struck many people. You’ll forgive a reminiscence . . .
FOWLE:	Glad of one.
MORGENHALL:	The lady I happened to mention yesterday. I don’t of course, often speak of her. . . .
FOWLE:	She, who, in the 1914 . . . ?
MORGENHALL:	Exactly. But I lost her long before that. For years, you know, Mr Fowle, this particular lady and I met at tea parties, tennis, and so on. Then, one evening, I walked home with her. We stood on Vauxhall Bridge, a warm Summer night, and silence fell. It was the moment when I should have spoken, the obvious moment. Then, something overcame me, it wasn’t shyness or fear then, but a tremendous exhaustion. I was tired out by the long wait, and when the opportunity came—all I could think of was sleep.
FOWLE:	It’s a relief. . . .
MORGENHALL:	To go home alone. To undress, clean your teeth, knock out your pipe, not to bother with failure or success.
FOWLE:	So yesterday . . .
MORGENHALL:	I had lived through that moment so many times. It happened every day in my mind, daydreaming on buses, or in the doctor’s surgery. When it came, I was tired of it. The exhaustion came over me. I wanted it to be all over. I wanted to be alone in my room, in the darkness, with a soft pillow round my ears . . . So I failed.
FOWLE:	Don’t say it.
MORGENHALL:	Being too tired to make my daydream public. It’s a nice day. Summer’s coming.
FOWLE:	No, don’t sir. Not too near the window.
MORGENHALL:	Why not, Mr Fowle?
FOWLE:	I was concerned. A man in your position might be desperate . . .
MORGENHALL:	You say you can see the forest?
FOWLE:	Just a glimpse of it.
MORGENHALL:	I think I shall retire from the bar.
FOWLE:	Don’t say it, sir. After that rigorous training.
MORGENHALL:	Well, there it is. I think I shall retire.
FOWLE:	But cheer up, sir. As you said, other cases, other days. Let’s take this calmly, sir. Let’s be very lucid, as you put it in your own statement.
MORGENHALL:	Other cases? I’m getting on, you know. Tuppy Morgan’s back in his place. I doubt if the Dock Brief will come round again.
FOWLE:	But there’ll be something.
MORGENHALL:	What can there be? Unless?
FOWLE:	Yes, sir?
MORGENHALL:	There would be another brief if . . .
FOWLE:	Yes?
MORGENHALL:	I advised you to appeal . . .
FOWLE:	Ah, now that, misfortunately . . .
MORGENHALL:	There’s a different atmosphere there, up in the Appeal Court, Fowle. It’s far from the rough and tumble, question and answer, swear on the Bible and lie your way out of it. It’s quiet up there. Pure Law, of course. Yes. I believe I’m cut out for the Court of Appeal . . .
FOWLE:	But you see . . .
MORGENHALL:	A big, quiet Court in the early Summer afternoon. Piles of books, and when you put one down the dust and powdered leather rises and makes the ushers sneeze. The clock ticks. Three old judges in scarlet take snuff with trembling hands. You’ll sit in the dock and not follow a legal word. And I’ll give them all my Law and get you off on a technicality.
FOWLE:	But today . . .
MORGENHALL:	Now, if I may remind your Lordships of Prickle against the Haverfordwest Justice ex parte Anger, reported in 96 Moor’s Ecclesiastical at page a thousand and three. Have your Lordships the report? Lord Bradwell, C. J., says, at the foot of the page: “The guilty intention is a deep foundation stone in the wall of our jurisprudence. So if it be that Prickle did run the bailiff through with his poignard taking him for a stray dog or cat, it seems there would be well raised the plea of autrefois mistake. But, contra, if he thought him to be his neighbour’s cat, then, as my Brother Breadwinkle has well said in Lord Roche and Anderson, there might fall out a constructive larceny and felo in rem.” Oh, Mr Fowle, I have some of these fine cases by heart.
FOWLE:	Above me, I’m afraid, you’re going now.
MORGENHALL:	Of course I am. These cases always bore the prisoner until they’re upheld or overruled and he comes out dead or alive at the end of it all.
FOWLE:	I’d like to hear you reading them, though . . .
MORGENHALL:	You will. I’ll be followed to Court by my clerk, an old tortoise burdened by the weight of authorities. Then he’ll lay them out in a fine buff and half calf row, a letter from a clergyman I correspond with in Wales torn to mark each place. A glass of water, a dry cough and the “My respectful submission”.
FOWLE:	And that, of course, is . . .
MORGENHALL:	That the judge misdirected himself. He forgot the rule in Rimmer’s case, he confused his mens sana, he displaced the burden of proof, he played fast and loose with all reasonable doubt, he kicked the presumption of innocence round like a football.
FOWLE:	Strong words.
MORGENHALL:	I shan’t let Tommy Banter off lightly.
FOWLE:	The judge?
MORGENHALL:	Thoroughly unscholarly. Not a word of Latin in the whole summing up.
FOWLE:	Not up to you, of course.
MORGENHALL:	Thank God, I kept my books. There have been times, Fowle, when I was tempted, pricked and harried for rent perhaps, to have my clerk barter the whole lot away for the few pounds they offer for centuries of entombed law. But I stuck to them. I still have my Swabey and Tristram, my Pod’s Privy Council, my Spinks’ Prize Cases. I shall open them up and say . . . I shall say . . .
FOWLE:	It’s no good.
MORGENHALL:	What’s no good?
FOWLE:	It’s no good appealing.
MORGENHALL:	No good?
FOWLE:	No good at all.
MORGENHALL:	Mr Fowle. I’ve worked hard for you.
FOWLE:	True enough.
MORGENHALL:	And I mean to go on working.
FOWLE:	It’s a great comfort . . .
MORGENHALL:	In the course of our close, and may I say it? yes, our happy collaboration on this little crime of yours, I’ve become almost fond of you.
FOWLE:	Thank you, sir.
MORGENHALL:	At first, I have to admit it, I was put off by your somewhat furtive and repulsive appearance. I saw, I quite agree, only the outer husk, and what I saw was a small man marked by all the physical signs of confirmed criminality.
FOWLE:	No oil painting?
MORGENHALL:	Let’s agree on that at once.
FOWLE:	The wife thought so, too.
MORGENHALL:	Enough of her, poor woman.
FOWLE:	Oh, agreed.
MORGENHALL:	My first solicitude for your well-being, let’s face up to this as well, had a selfish element. You were my very own case, and I didn’t want to lose you.
FOWLE:	Natural feelings. But still . . .
MORGENHALL:	I haven’t wounded you?
FOWLE:	Nothing fatal.
MORGENHALL:	I’m glad. Because, you know, as we worked on this case together, an affection sprang up . . .
FOWLE:	Mutual.
MORGENHALL:	You seemed to have a real desire to help, and, if I may say so, an instinctive taste for the law.
FOWLE:	A man can’t go through this sort of thing without getting legal interests.
MORGENHALL:	Quite so. And of course, as a self-made man, that’s to your credit. But I did notice, just at the start, some flaws in you as a client.
FOWLE:	Flaws?
MORGENHALL:	You may not care to admit it. But let’s be honest. After all, we don’t want to look on the dreary side; but you may not be with us for very long. . .
FOWLE:	That’s what I was trying to say . . .
MORGENHALL:	Please, Mr Fowle, no interruptions until we’ve cleared this out of the way. Now didn’t you, just at the beginning, put unnecessary difficulties before us?
FOWLE:	Did I?
MORGENHALL:	I well remember, before I got a bit of keenness into you, that you seemed about to admit your guilt.
FOWLE:	Oh . . .
MORGENHALL:	Just a little obstinate, wasn’t it?
FOWLE:	I dare say . . .
MORGENHALL:	And now, when I’ve worked for fifty years to get the Law at my finger-tips, I hear you mutter, ”No appeal”.
FOWLE:	No appeal!
MORGENHALL:	Mr Fowle . . .
FOWLE:	Yesterday you asked me to spare you pain, sir. This is going to be very hard for me.
MORGENHALL:	What?
FOWLE:	As you say, we’ve worked together, and I’ve had the pleasure of watching the ticking over of a legal mind. If you’d call any afternoon I’d be pleased to repay the compliment by showing you my birds. . . .
MORGENHALL:	Not in this world you must realize, unless we appeal.
FOWLE:	You see, this morning I saw the Governor.
MORGENHALL:	You had some complaint?
FOWLE:	I don’t want to boast, but the truth is . . . he sent for me.
MORGENHALL:	You went in fear . . .
FOWLE:	And trembling. But he turned out a very gentlemanly sort of individual. Ex-Army, I should imagine. All the ornaments of a gentleman. Wife and children in a tinted photo framed on the desk, handsome oil painting of a prize pig over the mantelpiece. Healthy red face. Strong smell of scented soap . . .
MORGENHALL:	But grow to the point . . .
FOWLE:	I’m telling you. “Well, Fowle” he says, “Sit down do. I’m just finishing this letter.” So I sat and looked out of his windows. Big wide windows in the Governor’s office, and the view . . .
MORGENHALL:	Fowle. If this anecdote has any point, be a good little chap, reach it.
FOWLE:	Of course it has, where was I?
MORGENHALL:	Admiring the view as usual.
FOWLE:	Panoramic it was. Well, this Governor individual, finishing his letter, lit up one of those flat type of Egyptian cigarettes. “Well, Fowle,” he said . . .
MORGENHALL:	Yes, yes. It’s not necessary, Fowle, to reproduce every word of this conversation. Give us the gist, just the meat, you understand. Leave out the trimmings.
FOWLE:	Trimmings there weren’t. He put it quite bluntly.
MORGENHALL:	What did he put?
FOWLE:	“Well, Fowle, this may surprise you. But the Home Office was on the telephone about you this morning.” Isn’t that a Government department?
MORGENHALL:	Yes, yes, and well . . .
FOWLE:	It seems they do, in his words, come through from time to time, and just on business, of course, on that blower. And quite frankly, he admitted he was as shocked as I was. But the drill is, as he phrased it, a reprieve.
MORGENHALL:	A . . . ?
FOWLE:	It’s all over. I’m free. It seems that trial was no good at all . . .
MORGENHALL:	No good. But why?
FOWLE:	Oh, no particular reason.
MORGENHALL:	There must be a reason. Nothing passes in the Law without a reason.
FOWLE:	You won’t care to know.
MORGENHALL:	Tell me.
FOWLE:	You’re too busy to wait . . .
MORGENHALL:	Tell me, Mr Fowle. I beg of you. Tell me directly why this Governor, who knows nothing of the Law, should have called our one and only trial together “No good”.
FOWLE:	You yourself taught me not to scatter information like bombs.
MORGENHALL:	Mr Fowle. You must answer my question. My legal career may depend on it. If I’m not to have wasted my life on useless trials.
FOWLE:	You want to hear?
MORGENHALL:	Certainly.
FOWLE:	He may not have been serious. There was a twinkle, most likely, in his eye.
MORGENHALL:	But he said . . .
FOWLE:	That the barrister they chose for me was no good. An old crock, in his words. No good at all. That he never said a word in my defence. So my case never got to the jury. He said the whole business was ever so null and void, but I’d better be careful in the future . . . MORGENHALL runs across the cell, mounts the stool, begins to undo his tie. No! Mr Morgenhall! Come down from there! No, sir! Don’t do it. They struggle. FOWLE brings Morgenhall to earth. Don’t you see? If I’d had a barrister who asked questions, and made clever speeches I’d be as dead as mutton. Your artfulness saved me . . .
MORGENHALL:	My . . .
FOWLE:	The artful way you handled it. The dumb tactics. They paid off! I’m alive!
MORGENHALL:	There is that . . .
FOWLE:	And so are you.
MORGENHALL:	We both are?
FOWLE:	I’m free.
MORGENHALL:	To go back to your birds. I suppose . . .
FOWLE:	Yes, Mr Morgenhall?
MORGENHALL:	It’s unlikely you’ll marry again?
FOWLE:	Unlikely. Long pause.
MORGENHALL:	But you have the clear appearance of a criminal. I suppose it’s not impossible that you might commit some rather more trivial offence.
FOWLE:	A man can’t live, Mr Morgenhall, without committing some trivial offences. Almost daily.
MORGENHALL:	Then we may meet again. You may need my services . . .
FOWLE:	Constantly.
MORGENHALL:	The future may not be so black . . .
FOWLE:	The sun’s shining.
MORGENHALL:	Can we go?
FOWLE:	I think the door’s been open some time. (He tries it. It is unbolted and swings open.) After you, Mr Morgenhall, please.
MORGENHALL:	No, no.
FOWLE:	A man of your education should go first.
MORGENHALL:	I think you should lead the way, Mr Fowle, and as your legal adviser I will follow at a discreet distance, to straighten out such little tangles as you may hope to leave in your wake. Let’s go. MORGENHALL: whistles his fragment of tune. FOWLE: his whistle joins MORGENHALL’s. Whistling they leave the cell, MORGENHALL executing, as he leaves, the steps of a small delighted dance.

Slow Curtain
The Dock Brief