Читать книгу Tragedy at Law - Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark - Страница 4

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“Marshal!” said the Judge in a hoarse whisper. It was his Court whisper, something quite different from any tone normally used by him—or indeed by anyone else.

Derek, in his seat on the Judge’s left hand, started somewhat guiltily. Despite his enthusiasm for the law, he had found a succession of the small cases taken first on the calendar intolerably dull. Casting about for some occupation, he had seized on the only literature immediately available—the Testaments provided for witnesses taking the oath. Markshire not being a county much inhabited by Jews, except for those too wealthy to be often encountered in the criminal courts, the Pentateuch was little in demand for this purpose; and Derek was deep in the Book of Exodus when the imperious summons reached him. With an effort he dragged his mind away from the court of Pharaoh to the far less interesting court in which Barber was dispensing justice, and bent his head to catch the great man’s orders.

“Marshal,” the whisper went on, “ask Pettigrew to lunch.”

It was the second day of the assize. The hour was 12.30 p.m. and Pettigrew was just tying the red tape round his second and last brief before leaving the court. Barber, if he had so desired, could have sent his invitation at any time after the sitting of the court that morning. By delaying it to the last moment he must have known that he was combining the pleasures of dispensing hospitality with the maximum of inconvenience to his guest. Such, at least, was Pettigrew’s first reflection when, having bowed himself out of court, he finally received the message in the dank and cheerless cell that served as counsel’s robing-room at the Shire Hall. He had planned to catch the only fast train of the afternoon to London, which left at one o’clock, and lunch on the way. If he accepted he could hardly avoid spending another night in Markhampton. Moreover, the Judge had expressed his intention of dining with the mess. Two meals in Barber’s company was more than enough for one day. On the other hand, there was nothing to make his presence in London necessary. Barber, who was quite alive to the state of Pettigrew’s practice, knew this also and would be certain to take a refusal as an affront. And that, Pettigrew reflected, would mean that he would have his knife into him for the rest of the circuit. He pondered the alternatives, wrinkling his nose in a characteristic fashion, as he tenderly folded his wig into its battered tin box.

“Lunch with his Lordship, eh?” he said at last. “Who else is coming?”

“The High Sheriff and the Chaplain, and Mrs. Habberton.”

“Which is she? The rather pretty, silly-looking woman who sat behind him? She looked as if she might be quite good value. . . . All right, I’ll come.”

Derek, a little upset at the cavalier treatment of a quasi-royal command, was about to leave, when another member of the Bar, a contemporary of Pettigrew’s, came in.

“I’m just off,” said the newcomer. “Will you share a taxi down to the station?”

“Sorry, I can’t. I’m staying to lunch.”

“Oh! Father William’s invited you, I suppose?”

“Yes.”

“Sooner you than me, brother. So long!”

Derek, greatly mystified, made bold to ask, “Excuse me, sir, why did he call him Father William?”

Pettigrew regarded him quizzically.

“Have you met Lady Barber?” he asked.

“No.”

“You will shortly, no doubt. Do you know Alice in Wonderland?”

“Of course.”

”In my youth, said his Father, I studied the law,

And argued each case with my wife;

And the muscular strength——

Look here, you’d better be getting back to court, or the Judge will be rising on you unawares. He must be pretty nearly through his list. See you at lunch, then.”

After the young man had gone, Pettigrew remained for a few moments alone in the dingy robing-room, his lean face puckered in thought.

“Silly of me to talk to the boy like that,” he murmured. “After all, he may like Barber. And he’s certain to like Hilda. . . . Oh well!”

He fought down a twinge of remorse. At this time of day, it wasn’t as if he need have any fine feelings so far as she was concerned!

Pettigrew, who had walked up from the Shire Hall, arrived at the Lodgings just after the other guests. He entered the drawing-room just in time to hear Barber repeating, “Marshall by name and Marshal by occupation,” and the burst of girlish laughter that signified Mrs. Habberton’s appreciation of the jest. Her laughter was not the only girlish thing about her, Pettigrew observed, as introductions were effected. Her manner, her clothes, her complexion, were all designed to foster the illusion that although she could not have been less than forty by the calendar, she remained essentially no more than nineteen—and a somewhat callow nineteen at that. And yet, he reflected, “designed” was hardly the right word. Nobody quite so obviously brainless could be properly said to have designed anything. The truth seemed to be that it had never entered Mrs. Habberton’s fluffy, still pretty head that she was in any way different from the fluffy, pretty girl who had married from the schoolroom twenty odd years before. And one had only to glance at her husband to see that he did not notice any difference either. In a few years time she would probably be a rather pathetic spectacle. Meanwhile she retained a certain kittenish charm which Pettigrew acknowledged to be not without its attractions. Barber appeared to share his opinion.

Marshall, still rather pink about the gills from the echo of Mrs. Habberton’s laughter, dispensed sherry with an unsteady hand, and a moment or two later Savage flung open the door and announced, with a deep curvature of the spine, “Luncheon is served, my Lord!”

Mrs. Habberton moved towards the door, but the Judge was there before her.

“Forgive me,” he grated, “but on circuit it is customary for the Judge to take precedence of everybody—even of ladies.”

“Oh, of course! How silly of me, I forgot!” tinkled Mrs. Habberton. “You are the King, aren’t you? How very naughty of me! And I suppose I ought to have curtsied when I came into the room?”

Barber’s voice floated back through the doorway.

“Personally, I don’t care for all this sort of thing, but some of my colleagues. . . .”

It was a very substantial lunch. Rationing was then still in the future and Mrs. Square, the cook, had been nurtured in a tradition which was not to be disturbed by such minor matters as a war. Mrs. Habberton, to whom housekeeping was a perpetual nightmare, twittered with envy and excitement as she surveyed the menu. She saw, disguised in Mrs. Square’s idiosyncratic French, fillets of sole, lamb cutlets, pancakes and an untranslatable savoury. Her eyes sparkled with childish delight.

“Four courses for lunch!” she exclaimed. “In wartime! It’s a revelation!”

As usual, she was conscious, too late, that she had said the wrong thing. Her husband reddened, the Chaplain coughed awkwardly. The Judge raised his eyebrows abruptly, as abruptly lowered them again, and took breath to speak.

“Now he’s going to talk about his colleagues again,” thought Pettigrew, and plunged desperately in to the rescue. As usual, he said the first thing that came into his head.

“The four courses of the Apocalypse, in fact,” he remarked.

In the silence that followed he had time to reflect that he could hardly have said anything worse. There was, it was true, a brief splutter of laughter from the Marshal, but this subsided instantly under the Judge’s stare of disapproval. Mrs. Habberton, for whose sake the sally had been made, showed an expression of blank incomprehension. The Chaplain looked professionally pained. The High Sheriff seemed to find his collar tighter than ever.

His Lordship, in the exercise of his royal prerogative, helped himself first to fish, still in ponderous silence. Then he said pointedly:

“Let me see, Pettigrew, are you prosecuting in the murder trial this afternoon?”

(“He knows damn well I’m not,” thought Pettigrew. It was some time since an Attorney-General’s nomination on circuit had come his way, and privately he considered that Barber had not a little to do with this.) Aloud he said suavely, “No, Judge, Frodsham is leading for the prosecution. Flack is the junior, I think. Perhaps you are thinking of the Eastbury murder, where I am to defend.”

“Ah yes!” replied Barber. “That is a Poor Person’s Defence, is it not?”

“That is so, Judge.”

“It is a wonderful system,” the Judge went on, turning to Mrs. Habberton, “by which nowadays the poor can obtain the assistance of even experienced counsel at the expense of the State. Though I fear”, he added, “the fees allowed are sadly inadequate. I think it shows great unselfishness on your part, Pettigrew, to undertake such a case. It can hardly be worth your while to come so far for such small reward, when you might, no doubt, be earning far more substantial sums elsewhere.”

Pettigrew bowed and smiled politely, but his eyes were glassy with anger. All this heavy-handed irony at the expense of his poor, shrinking practice by way of revenge for one feeble joke! It was typical of the man. The Eastbury murder was a case of considerable difficulty and likely to attract fairly wide attention even in the middle of a war. Pettigrew had looked forward to its giving him some welcome publicity, which might extend beyond the confines of the Southern Circuit. Now he realized with a sinking heart, that if Barber could so arrange matters it would prove to be merely another flash in the pan. He found time, too, to wonder whether his client would be hanged merely because the Judge had a down on his counsel.

Meanwhile Barber continued to pontificate.

“Undoubtedly the system is an improvement on the old days,” he pronounced. “But I’m sure I don’t know what some of my predecessors on the Bench would have thought of it. They would have seen something very illogical in an arrangement by which the State, having decided that a man should be charged with an offence, should go to the expense of paying somebody to endeavour to persuade a jury that he was innocent. I think they would have considered it part and parcel of that sentimentality which in many directions is becoming far too common nowadays.”

Colonel Habberton murmured sympathetically. Like many another honest man, he lived by catchwords. “Sentimentality” was linked with “Bolshevism” in his mind as the root of all evil, and there were few reforms, social or political, that did not come under one heading or the other.

“This outcry against capital punishment, for instance,” said the Judge, and the conversation which had been in danger of becoming a monologue instantly became general. Everybody had something to say about capital punishment. Everybody always has. Even the Marshal produced some ill-digested recollections of what he had once heard someone say in a college debating society upon the subject. Pettigrew alone remained silent, for very good reasons of his own. He knew quite well that his turn was coming, and he had not long to wait.

“Sentimentality is a disease that particularly affects the young,” the Judge remarked. “Pettigrew, for instance, used to be a most violent opponent of hanging. Isn’t that so, Pettigrew?”

“I still am, Judge.”

“Dear, dear!” Barber clicked his tongue sympathetically. “The illusions of youth die hard with some of us. Personally, so far from abolishing the death penalty, I should be in favour of extending it.”

“Stretching the stretching, in fact,” Pettigrew murmured to Derek, who sat next to him.

“What did you say, Pettigrew?” said Barber, who was not nearly so deaf as all judges are popularly supposed to be. “Oh! Ah! yes! Well, you will have your joke, but some of us consider the subject a serious one. I should be strongly in favour of the execution of far more criminals to-day. The habitual thief, for example, or the reckless motorist. I should hang them all. They are better out of this world.”

“And in the next,” said the Chaplain unexpectedly, “they may be sure to find Justice.”

Of all the solecisms at this unhappy lunch party, this was undoubtedly the most devastating. A man of God had actually presumed to make a public profession of his beliefs—beliefs, moreover which hinted at the existence of a justice superior to that dispensed in the High Court! It put a summary end to a discussion which, if never very profound, had at least been lively, and cast a complete pall over the rest of the proceedings. Thereafter conversation languished and died in spite of intermittent efforts to revive it. Mrs. Habberton, in an attempt to make the party “go”, put her foot into it once more by asking the Judge whether he thought the prisoner in the case for trial that afternoon had really “done it”, but apart from this nothing was said worthy of record. Savage, reinforced for the occasion by Greene, bustled to and fro with the admirable dishes. Behind the door a mysterious individual known as the house-butler was occasionally to be seen handling bottles and plates. But the best of food, drink and service could not disguise the fact that the lunch, as an entertainment, was a failure. Everybody was relieved when Savage announced that the cars were at the door and Barber retired to assume his wig before returning to Court.

His expression still sullen and morose, the Judge was walking through the hall of the lodgings on his way to the door when Beamish handed him a letter.

“Excuse me, my Lord,” he murmured, “but I found this just now. It must have arrived while your Lordship was at luncheon.”

Barber looked at the envelope, raised his eyebrows and opened it. The message inside was quite short, and he read it through in a moment. As he did so, his face cleared, and for the first time that afternoon he looked positively cheerful. Then he handed it to Derek.

“This will amuse you, Marshal,” he said. “You’d better give it to the Chief Constable when you get to Court.”

Derek took the flimsy, typewritten sheet, and Pettigrew, standing behind him, read it over his shoulder. It ran as follows:

To Justice Barber, alias Shaver:

Justice will be done, even to judges. Be sure your sins will find you out. You are warned.

There was no signature.

“Now that is the kind of thing that cheers up an assize,” said Barber genially. “Good-bye, Mrs. Habberton, it has been a great pleasure to meet you. So long, Pettigrew. I shall see you in mess this evening. Are you ready, Mr. Sheriff?” And he drove off in high good humour.

Pettigrew, looking after him, had to admit to a certain feeling of admiration.

“Damn it all, the old brute has guts!” he murmured.

None the less, he did not greatly look forward to his dinner in mess that evening.