"Mortimer, John Clifford - Rumpole 01c - Rumpole and the Honourable Member" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mortimer John)

'You're going to tell me that the door of the duplicating room was locked so you could have a good old chat about Home Rule for Wales?' 'Of course not.' 'Or that it was during a few strong words about the export figures that her clothes got torn?' ' She started to accuse me of being unfaithful.' 'To her?' I was puzzled.

'To my principles.' 'Oh. Those.' I wanted to hear his defence, not his platitudes.

'She said I'd betrayed her, and all the Party workers. I'd betrayed Socialism.' 'Well, you were used to hearing that,' I supposed. 'That must be part of the wear and tear of life in the dear old Labour Party.' 'Then she started talking about Anna.' 'She wanted Ken to leave me." Mrs Aspen was leaning forward, half smiling at me.

'It was the whole set-up she objected to. The house in Hampstead Garden Suburb. The kids' schools.' 'Where do they go exactly?' ' Sarah's at the convent and Edward's down for Westminster.' 'And the loyal voters are down for the Comprehensive.' I couldn't resist it, but it earned me a distinctly unfriendly look from Mrs Aspen.

' I think after that, she started screaming at me. All sorts of abuse. Obscenities. I can't remember. Righteous indignation 1 And then she started clawing at me. Telling me I didn't even have the courage to ..."

'The courage. To what?' 'To make love to her. That's what Ken believed,' Mrs Aspen supplied the answer. She'd have made an excellent witness, and I began to regret she wasn't on trial.

'Thank you. Is that true?' 'Of course it's true. Ken made love to her. As she wanted. On the floor.' Again Mrs Aspen provided the answer.

'You believed that was what she wanted?' At last my client spoke up for himself. 'Yes. Yes. That's what I believed.' I lit a small cigar, and began to get a sniff of a defence. The House of Lords has decided it's a man's belief that matters in a rape case; there are very few women among the judges of the House of Lords. Meanwhile the Honourable Member carried on with the good work.

'She was goading me. Shouting and screaming. And then, when I saw what she'd done to my face on the poster!' I found the election poster, scored over with a pen and torn.

'You saw that ihenY 'Yes. Yes. I think so.' 'You'd better be sure about this. You saw this poster scrawled on before anything happened?' 'Yes. I'm almost sure.' 'Not almost sure, Mr Aspen. Quite, quite sure?' 'Well. Yes.' 'She didn't do it when you were there?' 'No.' 'So she must have done it before she called you into the room?' 'That would seem to follow,' Mr Myers took his pipe out of his mouth for the first time, 'Oh yes, Mr Myers. You see the point?' I congratulated him.

'Is it important?' the Member asked innocently.

'Oh, no. A triviality. It only means she hated your guts before anyone suggests you might have raped her. You know, Mr Aspen, if you're applying the same degree of thought to the economy as you are to this case, no wonder the pound's dickie.' I have been politer to clients, but Aspen took it very well. He stood up, smiling, and said, 'You're right. The case is yours, Mr Rumpole. I'll go back to worrying about the pound.' Mrs Aspen also stood and looked at me as though I was a regrettable necessity in their important lives, like drains.

I said nothing cheering, 'Case?' I told them. 'We haven't got a case. Yet. Because at the moment, Mr Myers doesn't know a damn thing about Miss Bridget Evans.' That evening the fatted guinea-fowl was consumed. I brought home three very decent bottles of claret from Pommeroy' and we entertained Nick and his intended. It was always a treat to have Nick at home with us, even though he'd given up reading Sherlock Holmes and taken to sociology, a subject which might, for me, be entirely written in the hieroglyphics of some remote civilization. I can think of no social theory which could possibly account for such sports as Rumpole and She Who Must Be Obeyed, and I honestly don't believe we're exceptions, being surrounded by a sea of most peculiar, and unclassifiable individuals.

Dinner was over, but we still sat round the table and I was giving the company one of my blue-chip legal anecdotes, guaranteed to raise a laugh. It was the one about the retiring Chief Justice of the Seaward Isles.

'How much do you give a ponce!' I was laughing myself now, in joyful anticipation of the punch line, 'And the answer came back by very fast rickshaw, "Never more than two and six."' Nick joined me in a burst of hilarity.

Hilda said, 'Well! Thank goodness that's over,' and Erica looked totally mystified. Then she told us that Nick had been offered a vacancy in the department of social studies in the University of Baltimore, which came as something of a surprise to us as we both thought Nick had settled on the job he'd been offered at Warwick.

' So it's not decided,' Hilda said, voicing the general anxiety.

'From our point of view I suppose Warwick would have certain advantages over Baltimore,' I told Nick.

'I doubt the academic standards are any higher,' Erica was defensive.

'No. But it is a great deal nearer Gloucester Road. Another glass of water?' I rose and poured for Erica. She was a good-looking girl and seemed healthy enough, although I regretted her habit of drinking water, as I told her. ' Scientific research has conclusively proved that water causes the hair to drop out, fallen arches and ingrowing toe nails. They should pass a law against it.' At this point Erica did her best to raise the level of the conversation, by saying, 'Nicky's told me all about your work. I think it's just great the way you stand up in Court for the underprivileged!' 'I will stand up in Court for absolutely any underprivileged person in the world. Provided they've got Legal Aid!' 'What's your motivation, in taking on these sort of cases?' Erica asked me seriously, and I told her, 'My motivation is the money.' 'I think you're just rationalizing.' 'He does it because he can't resist the sound of his own voice,' Nick, who knows most about me, told her; but I would allow no illusions.

'Money! If it wasn't for the Legal Aid cheque, I tell you, Rumpole would be silent as the tomb! The Old Bailey would no longer echo with my pleas for acquittal and the voice of the Rumpole would not be heard in the Strand. But, as it is, the poor and the underprivileged can rely on me.' ' I'm sure they can,' Erica sounded consoling.

'And the Legal Aid brings us a quite drinkable claret.' I refilled my glass. 'From Jack Pommeroy's Wine Bar. As a matter of fact I get privately paid sometimes. Sometimes I get a plum!' 'Erica wants to come and hear you in Court,' Nick told me and she smiled.

'How could I miss it?' 'Well, I'm not exactly a tourist attraction.' ' If I'm going to live in England I want to know all I can about your mores,' Erica explained. Well, if she wanted to see the natives at their primitive crafts who was I to stop her?

'Come next week. Down the Bailey. Nick'll bring you for lunch. We'll have steak and kidney pud. Like the old days. Nick used to drop in at the Bailey when he came back from school. He enjoyed the occasional murder, didn't you Nick? That's settled then. We'll have a bit of fun!' 'Fun? What sort of fun?' Erica sounded doubtful, and I told her, 'Rape.' Mr Myers, of my instructing solicitors, went to the Honourable Member's constituency and discovered gold. Miss Bridget Evans was not greatly liked in the local party, being held to be a left-wing activist, and a bloody nuisance. More important than her adherence to the late Leon Trotsky was her affair with Paul Etherington, the Labour Party agent. I was gloating over this, and other and more glorious goodies provided by the industrious Myers, when there was a knock on my door in Chambers and in filtered Erskine-Brown, glowing with some mysterious triumph.

'Rumpole. One doesn't want to bother the Head of Chambers...' 'Why not bother him? He's got very little on his mind, except settling a nice fat planning case and losing at golf to the Lord Chancellor. Guthrie Featherstone, Q.c., old sweetheart, is ripe for bothering!" I turned my attention back to the past of Miss Bridget Evans.