Rumpole and the Angel of Death (34 page)

‘Perhaps she didn't.'

‘Of course, Dick and I don't want anything terrible to happen to her.'

‘Neither do I.'

‘We know you'll do your very best for her. Chippy always said you were quite brilliant with a jury on a good day, when you didn't go over the top and start spouting bits of poetry at them.'

‘That was very civil of him.'

‘And, of course, Dr Betty and Chippy became best friends. Towards the end, that was.'

‘I suppose you know that she was against . . . Well, prolonging life?' Or in favour of killing people, I suppose I would have said, if I were appearing for the Prosecution.

‘Of course. But I never dreamt she'd do anything . . . Well, without discussing it with the family. She seemed so utterly trustworthy! Of course we hadn't known her all that long. She only came to us when Chippy took against poor Dr Eames.'

‘When was that exactly?'

‘There are certain rules, Mr Rumpole. Certain traditions of the Bar which you might find it convenient to remember.' Chippy had said that to me in Court when I asked a witness who happened to work in advertising if that didn't mean he'd taken up lying as a career. In his room afterwards he'd said, ‘Horace, sometimes I wish you'd stop being such an
original
barrister.'

‘Is trying to squeeze information out of a prosecution witness while consuming her champagne at a family wake in the best traditions of the Bar?' he would have asked. ‘Probably not, my Lord,' I would have told Chippy, ‘but aren't you curious to know exactly how you met your death?'

‘Only about six months ago.' Ursula answered my question willingly. ‘Eames is a bit politically correct, as a matter of fact. He kept telling Chippy that at least his illness meant that his place on the Bench was available to a member of an ethnic minority.'

‘Not much of a bedside manner, this quack Eames?'

‘Oh, I don't think Chippy minded that so much. It was when Eames said, “No more claret and no more whisky to help you to go to sleep, for the rest of your life”, that the poor chap had to go.'

‘Understandable.'

‘Dick thought so too.'

‘And how did you happen to hear of Dr Betty Ireton?'

‘Some friends of mine in Cambridge Terrace said she was an absolute angel. Oh, there you are, Pargey! This is Nurse Pargeter, Mr Rumpole. Pargey was an angel to Chippy too.' The nurse who was wandering by had reddish hair, a long equine face and suddenly startled eyes. She wasn't in uniform, but was solemnly dressed in a plain black frock and white collar. I had already seen her, standing alone, taking care not to look at the other guests in case they turned and noticed her loneliness.

Ursula Chippenham drifted off to greet some late arrivals. ‘Are you family?' the nurse asked in a surprisingly deep and unyielding voice, with a trace of a Scottish accent.

‘No, I'm a barrister. An old friend of Chippy's . . . '

‘Mr Rumpole? I think I've heard him mention you.'

‘I'm glad. And then, of course, I have the unenviable task of defending Dr Betty Ireton. Mrs Chippenham says she got on rather well with the old boy.'

‘Defend her?' Nurse Pargeter suddenly looked as relentless as John Knox about to denounce the monstrous regiment of women. ‘She cannot be defended. I warned the Chippenhams against her. They can't say I didn't warn them. I told them all about that dreadful Lethe.'

‘Everyone
can
be defended,' I corrected her as gently as possible. ‘Of course whether the Defence is successful is entirely another matter.'

‘I prefer to remember the Ten Commandments on the subject. ' Pargey was clearly of a religious persuasion.

Those nicknames, I thought – Pargey and Chippy – you might as well be in a school dormitory or at a gathering of very old actors.

‘Oh, the Ten Commandments.' I tried not to sound dismissive of this ancient code of desert law. ‘Not too closely observed nowadays, are they? I mean adultery's about the only subject that seems to interest the newspapers, and coveting other people's oxen and asses is called leaving everything to market forces. And, as for worshipping graven images, think of the prices some of them fetch at Sotheby's. As for Thou shalt not kill – well, some people think that the terminally ill should be helped out of their misery.'

‘And some people happen to believe in the sanctity of life.

And now, if you'll excuse me, Mr Rumpole, I have an important meeting to go to.'

As I watched her leave, I thought that I hadn't been a conspicuous success with Nurse Pargeter. Then a small boy piped up at my elbow, ‘Would you like one of these, sir? I don't know what they are actually.' It was young Andrew Chippenham, with a plate of small brown envelope arrangements made of brittle pastry. I took one, bit into it and found, hardly to my delight, goat's cheese and some green, seaweedlike substance.

‘You must be Andrew,' I said. The only genuine schoolboy around wasn't called Andy or Drew, or even Chippy, but kept his whole name, uncorrupted. ‘And you go to Boling- broke House?' I recognized the purple blazer with brass buttons. Bolingbroke was an expensive prep school in Kensington, which I thought must be so over-subscribed that the classrooms were used in a rota system and the unaccommodated pupils were sent out for walks in a crocodile formation, under the care of some bothered and junior teacher, round the streets of London. I had seen regiments of purple blazers marching dolefully as far as Gloucester Road; the exit from Bolingbroke House had a distinct look of the retreat from Moscow.

‘How do you like being a waiter?' I asked Andrew, thinking it must be better than the daily urban trudge.

‘Not much. I'd like to get back to my painting.'

‘You're an artist?'

‘Of course not.' He looked extremely serious. ‘I mean painting my model aeroplanes.'

‘How fascinating.' And then I lied as manfully as any unreliable witness. ‘I was absolutely crazy about model aeroplanes when I was your age. Of course, that was a bit before Concorde.'

‘Did you ever go in a Spitfire?' Andrew looked at me as though I had taken part in the Charge of the Light Brigade or was some old warrior from the dawn of time.

‘Spitfires? I know all about Spitfires from my time in the R.A.F.' I forgot to tell him I was ground staff only. And then I said, ‘I say, Andrew, I'd love to see your collection.' So he put down his plate of goat's cheese envelopes and we escaped from the party.

Andrew's room was on the third floor, at the back of the house. In the front, a door was open and I got a glimpse of a big, airy room with a bed stripped and the windows open. When I asked who slept there, he answered casually and without any particular emotion, ‘That was Great-uncle Chippy's room. He's the one who died, you know.'

‘I know. I suppose your parents' bedroom's on the floor below?' It wasn't the subtlest way of getting information.

‘Oh, yes. I'm all alone up here now.' Andrew opened the door of his room which smelled strongly of glue and, I thought for a moment, was full of brightly coloured birds which, as I focused on them, became model aeroplanes swinging in the breeze from an open window. From what seemed to be every inch of the ceiling, a thread had been tied or tacked to hold up a fighter or an old-fashioned seaplane in full flight.

‘That's the sort of Spitfire you piloted,' Andrew said, to my silent embarrassment. ‘And that's a Wellington bomber like you had in the war.' I did remember the planes returning, when they were lucky, with a rear-gunner dead or wounded and the stink of blood and fear when the doors were opened. I had been young then, unbearably young, and I banished the memory for more immediate concerns.

‘Are these all the models you've made?' I asked Andrew. ‘Or have you got lots more packed away in black bin bags?'

‘Bin bags?' He was fiddling with a half-painted Concorde on his desk. ‘Why do you say that?'

‘You know, the plastic bags the dustmen leave after they've taken away the rubbish. Don't you collect them? A lot of boys do.'

‘Collect plastic bags? What a funny thing to do.' Andrew had his head down and was still fiddling with his model. ‘That wouldn't interest me, I'm afraid. I haven't got any plastic bags at all.'

Back in Chambers that afternoon I found Dot Clapton alone in front of her typewriter, frowning as she looked over a brightly coloured brochure, on the cover of which a bikinied blonde was to be seen playing leapfrog with a younger, fitter version of Vincent Blewitt on a stretch of golden sand.

‘I'm afraid Henry's just slipped out, Mr Rumpole. I don't know what it is. His heart doesn't seem to be in his work nowadays.' She looked up at me in genuine distress and I saw the perfectly oval face, sculptured eyelids and blonde curls that might have been painted by some such artistic old darling as Sandro Botticelli, and heard the accent which might have been learnt from the Timson family somewhere south of Brixton. I didn't tell her that not only Henry's heart, but our learned clerk himself, might not be in his work very soon. Instead I asked, ‘Thinking of going on holiday, Dot?'

She handed me the brochure in silence. On the front of it was emblazoned
THE FIVE S HOLIDAYS: SEA, SUN, SAND, SINGLES AND SEX ON THE COSTA DEL SOL. WHY NOT GO FOR IT?
‘Quite honestly, is that your idea of a holiday, Mr Rumpole?'

‘It sounds,' I had to tell her, ‘like my idea of hell.'

‘I've got to agree with you. I mean, if I want burger and chips with a pint of lager, I might as well stay in Streatham.'

‘Very sensible.'

‘If I'm going to be on holiday, I want something a bit romantic.'

‘I understand. Sand and sex are as unappealing as sand in the sandwiches?'

‘My boyfriend's planning to take me to the castles down the Rhine. Of course, I don't want to upset him.'

‘Upset your boyfriend?'

‘No. Upset Mr Blewitt.'

‘Upsetting Mr Blewitt – I have to say this, Dot – is my idea of a perfect summer holiday.'

‘Oh, don't say that, Mr Rumpole.' Dot Clapton looked nervously round the room as though the blot might be concealed behind the arras. ‘He is my boss now, isn't he?'

‘Not
my
boss, Dot. No one's my boss, and particularly not Blewitt.'

‘He's mine then. And he told me these singles holidays are a whole lot of fun.'

‘Did he now?' I felt that there was something in this fragment of information which might be of great value.

‘I don't know, though. Vince . . . Well, he asked me to call him Vince.'

‘And you agreed?'

‘I didn't have much choice. Does he honestly think I haven't got a boyfriend?'

‘If he thinks that, Dot, he can't be capable of organizing a piss-up in a brewery, let alone a barristers' Chambers.'

‘Piss-up in a brewery!' Dot covered her mouth with her hand and giggled. ‘How do you think of these things, Mr Rumpole?'

I didn't tell her that they'd been thought of and forgotten long before she was born, but took my leave of her, saying I was on my way to see Mr Ballard.

‘Oh, he's busy.' Dot emerged from behind her hand. ‘He said he wasn't to be disturbed.'

‘Then it will be my pleasure and privilege to disturb him.'

‘Have you “eaten on the insane root”,' I asked the egregious Ballard, with what I hoped sounded like genuine concern,

‘ “That takes the reason prisoner?” '

‘What
do
you mean, Rumpole?'

‘I mean no one who has retained one single marble would dream of introducing the blight Blewitt into Equity Court.'

‘I thought you'd come to me about that eventually.'

‘Then you thought right.'

‘If you had bothered to attend the Chambers' meeting you might have been privy to the selection of Vincent Blewitt.'

‘I have only a few years of active life left to me,' I told the man with some dignity. ‘And they are too precious to be wasted on Chambers' meetings. If I'd been there, I'd certainly have banned Blewitt.'

‘Then you'd have been outvoted.'

‘You mean those learned but idiotic friends decided to put their affairs in the hands of this second-rate, second-hand car salesman.'

‘Catering.' Ballard smiled tolerantly.

‘What?'

‘Vincent Blewitt was in catering, not cars.'

‘Then I wouldn't buy a second-hand cake off him.'

‘Horace' – Soapy Sam Ballard rose and placed a considerate and totally unwelcome hand on my shoulder – ‘we all know that you're a great old warhorse and that you've had a long, long career at the Bar. But you have to face it, my dear old Horace, you don't understand the modem world.'

‘I understand it well enough to be able to tell a decent, honest, efficient, if rather over-amorous, clerk from the dubious flogger of suspect and probably mouldy canteen dinners.' I shrugged the unwelcome hand off my shoulder.

‘The clerking system,' Ballard told me then, with a look of intolerable condescension, ‘is out of date, Horace. We are moving towards the millennium.'

‘You move towards it if you like. I prefer to stay where I am.'

‘Why should we pay Henry a percentage when we can get an experienced businessman for a salary?'

‘What sort of salary?'

‘Vincent Blewitt was good enough to agree to a hundred, to be reviewed at the end of one year. The contract will be signed when the month's trial period is over.'

‘A hundred pounds? Far too much!'

‘A hundred thousand, Rumpole. It's far less than he would expect to earn in the private sector of industry.'

‘Let him go back to the private sector then. If you want to be robbed, I could lend you one of the Timsons. They only deal in petty theft.'