'But don't you check your own proofs?'
'Young man,' said Miss Goldring, 'my proofs don't need checking. Correct me if I'm wrong, Mr Shortstead.'
But Mr Shortstead, while he was beginning to hold a different point of view, held his tongue.
Then we are to plead innocent libel?' asked Mr Arbutus. 'I see no reason to plead libel at all,' protested Miss Goldring. 'For all we know this man Flawse does tie his wife to the bed and whip her and with a name like Jessica she thoroughly deserves it. After all it's up to him to prove he doesn't.'
Mr Arbutus pointed out that truth was no defence unless in the public interest.
'I should think a bank robber and pervert was of very considerable public interest. It will probably increase the sales of my novels.'
Counsel thought otherwise. 'We haven't a leg to stand on,' said Mr Widdershins, QC. 'I advise settlement. We can't hope to win in court.'
'But won't the publicity do us good even if we pay?' asked Mr Shortstead, pushed into adopting this line by Miss Goldring who was always complaining that her novels were never sufficiently advertised. Mr Widdershins doubted it but, since he was being paid to conduct the defence, he saw no good reason to deprive himself of the financial remuneration a prolonged case was bound to bring him. 'I leave the decision to you,' he said, 'I have given my opinion and that opinion is that we will lose.'
'But they are demanding four hundred thousand pounds in settlement out of court,' said Mr Shortstead, 'and surely no court is going to award damages to that amount. It's outrageous.' It was.
The trial was held in The High Court of Justice, Queen's Bench Division, before Mr Justice Plummery. Mr Widdershins acted for the defendants and Mr Fescue had been instructed by Mr Gibling and Mr Gibling. The latter were in raptures. Mr Justice Plummery had a reputation for barbarous impartiality and a loathing for quibbling barristers. There was no recourse open to Mr Widdershins but to quibble, and to add to the difficulties of the defence there was Miss Goldring who, if she couldn't win the case, was determined to lose it as flamboyantly as possible.
Mr Shortstead sat beside her shivering in the shade of her crimson hat. One look at the plaintiff, Lockhart Flawse, had been enough to tell him that here was a clean upstanding young man of a type he had forgotten existed; who more probably owned banks than robbed them and who, if he was married, treated his wife with a tenderness that was positively chivalrous. Mr Short-stead was a good judge of character.
Mr Fescue rose to present the plaintiff's case. It was an impeccable one. Mr Lockhart Flawse of 12 Sandicott Crescent, East Pursley – and here Mr Widdershins was seen to cover his eyes with his hands and Miss Goldring's hat to quiver – was a close neighbour of the defendant, so close that he was known to her and had on one occasion been invited to tea by her. A note passed to Mr Widdershins from Miss Goldring simply said, 'Liar, bloody liar. I've never seen the little shit in my life,' at which Mr Widdershins' hopes rose a little. They were lowered by Mr Fescue's continued description of Lockhart Flawse's virtue and tribulations subsequent to the publication of Song of the Heart. Among these tribulations the most important had been his sacking from the firm of Sandicott & Partner, Chartered Accountants, where he had been previously employed. Evidence would be produced that his forced retirement from the lucrative profession had been the direct result of Miss Goldring's infamous attack on his private life and his wholly fictitious propensity for robbing banks and murdering cashiers. Mr Fescue, lacking the knowledge, did not mention that Mr Treyer's readiness to provide such evidence had been obtained in a private interview in which Lockhart had explained that unless Mr Treyer was evidentially co-operative he, Lockhart, would be forced by his conscience into revealing the true facts about Mr Gypsum's tax evasion and VAT avoidance to the appropriate authorities, a threat which had been made the stronger by his production of copies of all Mr Gypsum's files, both dummy and real.
Furthermore, said Mr Fescue, the plaintiff had been shunned by his neighbours to the extent that eleven houses adjacent to his address or in the same street had been left by their occupants to avoid any connection between them and a supposed murderer. And finally there was Mrs Flawse, correctly named in the novel as Jessica, who would testify that she had never once tied her husband or been tied by him to their marital bed and that there wasn't a whip in the house. Mrs Flawse's distress was of so great an order of magnitude that she had recently taken to wearing a veil to avoid being accosted (in the street) by men with a taste for bondage and flagellation, or alternately insulted by women she had formerly been able to invite to her house but who now refused her entry to their own. By the time Mr Fescue had finished he had portrayed an accurate picture of the young couple's social isolation for quite the wrong reasons, and an inaccurate one of their future financial prospects as a result of the publication of Song of the Heart for the right reasons, namely that the damages to be paid would be enormous.
When Mr Fescue sat down Mr Justice Plummery "and the jury were clearly impressed and Mr Widdershins rose for the defence extremely handicapped. It was all very well for Miss Goldring to claim that Lockhart Flawse was a liar. It was going to be another matter to prove it. Mr Flawse did not look a liar. If anything he looked the opposite while, even behind her veil, Mrs Jessica Flawse radiated an innocence that was in marked contrast to the raddled flamboyance of his client. Booze, books and bed had all left their marks on Miss Goldring. Mr Widdershins did his best. The libel, he claimed, was entirely innocent. The defendant had no knowledge of the plaintiff's existence and had never so much as set eyes on him. The imputation that she had once invited him to tea was utterly without foundation and the fact that Miss Goldring lived in West Pursley while the plaintiff occupied a house in East was purely coincidental. However in the light of the statements made by his learned friend, Mr Fescue, the defence were prepared to apologize and make financial reparation for the damage done to the plaintiff and his wife and for the scorn, ridicule and consequential loss of his profession… Here Miss Goldring broke away from the restraining hand of Mr Shortstead and rose to say that never, never, never would she pay one penny, one single penny to a man she had never written about in her life and that if anyone thought she would they were mistaken. Mr Justice Plummery regarded her with an immense distaste that would have withered the Sphinx at fifty yards and rendered it articulate at a hundred.
'Kindly sit down, madam,' he snarled with blood and iron in his voice. 'What you will or will not do it is up to the Court to decide. But one thing I do assure you, a second interruption and I shall have you held for contempt. Proceed with what there is of your case, Mr Widdershins.'
Mr Widdershins' Adam's apple bobbed like a ping-pong ball on a waterspout in a fairground shooting-gallery as he tried to find words. He had no case.
'My clients plead innocent libel, m'lud,' he squeaked in direct contradiction to his instructions. Mr Justice Plummery looked at him dubiously.
'That is not what I understood,' he said. Mr Widdershins asked for an adjournment to consult with his clients. It was granted and was spent in exultation by Mr Fescue and Mr Gibling and Lockhart, and in acrimonious arguments by Mr Widdershins and Miss Goldring. Mr Shortstead was ready in the face of the plaintiff's case to settle out of court. Miss Goldring in the face of his pusillanimity and the judge's distaste was not.
'It's all a damned lie,' she shouted, 'I never had that little shit to tea and I never used the name Lockhart fucking Flawse in any of my books.'