‘Mr Rumpole!’ The man sounded shocked by my call. ‘Don’t you ever take a day off? It’s Christmas Eve!’
‘I know it’s Christmas Eve. I know that perfectly well,’ I told him. ‘And my wife has gone fishing with our sepulchral judge, whom she calls “Gerald”. Meanwhile, have you got any close friends or associates working at Hawkin’s, the solicitor?’
‘Barry Tuck used to be our legal executive – moved there about three years ago.’
‘A cooperative sort of character is he, Tuck?’
‘We got on very well. Yes.’
‘Then get him to find out why Honoria Glossop went to see Tony Hawkin the afternoon before she was shot. It must have been something fairly urgent. She missed a seminar in order to go.’
‘Is it important?’
‘Probably not, but it just might be something we ought to know.’
‘I hope you’re enjoying your Christmas break, Mr Rumpole.’
‘Quite enjoying it. I’d like it better without a certain member of the judiciary. Oh, and I’ve got a hard time ahead.’
‘Working?’
‘No,’ I told my patient solicitor gloomily. ‘Dancing,’
‘Quick, quick, slow, Rumpole. That’s better. Now chassé. Don’t you remember, Rumpole? This is where you chassé.’
The truth was that I remembered little about it. It had been so long ago. How many years could it have been since Hilda and I had trod across a dance floor? Yet here I was in a dinner jacket, which was now uncomfortably tight round the waist, doing my best to walk round this small area of polished parquet in time to the music with one arm round Hilda’s satin-covered waist and my other hand gripping one of hers. Although for much of the time she was walking backwards, she was undoubtedly the one in command of the enterprise. I heard a voice singing, seemingly from far off, above the music of the five-piece band laid on for the hotel’s dinner dance. It was a strange sound and one that I hadn’t heard for what seemed many years – She Who Must be Obeyed was singing. I looked towards my table, rather as someone lost at sea might look towards a distant shore, and I saw Mr Justice Gravestone smiling at us with approval.
‘Well done, Hilda! And you came through that quite creditably I thought, Rumpole. I mean, at least you managed to remain upright, although there were a few dodgy moments coming round that far corner.’
‘That was when I told him chassé. Rumpole couldn’t quite manage it.’
As they were both enjoying a laugh I realised that, during a long day by the river which had, it seemed, produced nothing more than two fish so small that they had had to be returned to their natural environment, Mrs Rumpole had become ‘Hilda’ to the judge, who had become ‘Gerald’.
‘You know, when you retire, Rumpole,’ the judge was sounding sympathetic in the most irritating kind of way, ‘you could take dancing lessons.’
‘There’s so much Rumpole could do if he retired. I keep telling him,’ was Hilda’s contribution. ‘He could have wonderful days like we had, Gerald. Outdoors, close to nature and fishing.’
‘Catching two small grayling you had to put back in the water?’ I was bold enough to ask. ‘It would’ve been easier to pay a quick visit to the fishmongers.’
‘Catching fish is not the point of fishing,’ Hilda told me. Before I could ask her what the point of it was, the judge came up with a suggestion.
‘When you retire, I could teach you fishing, Rumpole. We could have a few days out together.’
‘Now then. Isn’t that kind of Gerald, Rumpole?’ Hilda beamed and I had to mutter, ‘Very kind,’ although the judge’s offer had made me more determined than ever to die with my wig on.
It was at this point that Lorraine the manageress came to the judge with a message. He read it quickly and then said, ‘Poor old Leslie Mulliner. You know him, don’t you, Rumpole? He sits in the chancery division.’
I had to confess I didn’t know anyone who sat in the chancery division.
‘He was going to join us here tomorrow but his wife’s not well.’
‘He said on the phone that you’d do the job for him tomorrow.’ Lorraine seemed anxious.
‘Yes, of course,’ Graves hurried to reassure her. ‘I’ll stand in for him.’
Before I could get any further explanation of the ‘job’, the music had struck up a more contemporary note. Foxtrots were out, and with a cry of ‘Come along Hilda,’ Graves was strutting the dance floor, making curious rhythmic movements with his hands. And Hilda, walking free and unfastened from her partner, was also strutting and waving her arms, smiling with pleasure. It wasn’t, I’m sure, the most up-to-date form of dancing, but it was, I suppose, a gesture from two sedate citizens who were doing their best to become, for a wine-filled moment on Christmas Eve, a couple of teenagers.
Christmas Day at Cherry Picker’s Hall was uneventful. The judge suggested church, and I stood while he and Hilda bellowed out ‘Come, all ye Faithful’. Then we sat among the faithful under the Norman arches, beside the plaques and monuments to so many vanished rectors and country squires, looking out upon the holly round the pulpit and the flowers on the altar. I tried to understand, not for the first time, how a religious belief could become so perverted as to lead to death threats, terror, and a harmless professor shot through the head.
We had lunch in a pub and then the judge announced he had work to do and left us.
After a long and satisfactory sleep, Hilda and I woke around teatime and went to the residents’ lounge. Long before we got to the door, we could hear the excited cries of children, and when we went in we saw them crowded round the Christmas tree. And there, stooping among the presents, was the expected figure in a red dressing gown (trimmed with white fur), Wellington boots, a white beard, and a long red hat. As he picked up a present and turned towards us, I felt that fate had played the greatest practical joke it could have thought up to enliven the festive season.
Standing in for his friend Mulliner from the chancery division, the sepulchral, unforgiving, prosecution-minded Mr Justice Gravestone, my old enemy, had become Father Christmas.
On Boxing Day, I rang a persistent, dogged, ever useful private eye detective who, sickened by divorce, now specialised in the cleaner world of crime – Ferdinand Ian Gilmour Newton, known in legal circles as ‘Fig Newton’. I told him that, as was the truth, my wife Hilda was planning a long country walk and lunch in a distant village with a judge whom I had spent a lifetime trying to avoid. And I asked him, if he had no previous engagements, if he’d like to sample the table d’hôte at Cherry Picker’s Hall.
Fig Newton is a lugubrious character of indeterminate age, usually dressed in an old mackintosh and an even older hat, with a drip at the end of his nose caused by a seemingly perpetual cold -most likely caught while keeping observation in all weathers. But today he had shed his outer garments, his nose was dry, and he was tucking in to the lamb cutlets with something approaching enthusiasm. ‘Bit of a step up from your usual pub lunch, this, isn’t it Mr Rumpole?’
‘It certainly is, Fig. We’re splashing out this Christmas. Now this case I’m doing down the Bailey…’
‘The terrorist?’
‘Yes, the terrorist.’
‘You’re on to a loser with that one, Mr Rumpole.’ Fig was gloomily relishing the fact.
‘Most probably. All the same, there are a few stones I don’t want to leave unturned.’
‘Such as what?’
‘Find out what you can about the Glossops.’
‘The dead woman’s family?’
‘That’s right. See what’s known about their lives, hobbies, interests. That sort of thing, I need to get more of a picture of their lives together. Oh, and see if the senior tutor knows more about the Glossops. Pick up any gossip going round the university. I’ll let you know if Bonny Bernard has found out why Honoria had a date with her solicitor.’