Flashpoint

by Michael Gilbert

  15

  When I got to the Law Society on Friday morning there was a note on my desk from Laurence Fairbrass asking me to look in on him. When I got there his office was empty. As I was wondering what to do he came in, with a letter in his hand.

  “I’ve been having a word with Tom,” he said. “It’s Killey again. Have a look at this.”

  The letter was handwritten, on Club notepaper, and covered two pages. It was signed A R Stukely. I read it through twice before I handed it back.

  “According to this it wasn’t Killey who drew the cheque,” I said. “It was his partner.”

  “Willoughby’s a salaried partner. In fact, an employee. Killey’s responsible for anything he does. You know that perfectly well.”

  I knew it perfectly well.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “We shall have to look into it. You’ve got the file. You’d better start the ball rolling.”

  When a complaint is made against a solicitor, the Professional Purposes Section of the Law Society has to make a preliminary investigation. If it seems to be a prima facie case, it makes a report to the Council, who have to decide whether to prosecute or not. They don’t try the case themselves. It comes before the Disciplinary Committee, which is a separate statutory body, set up by the Lord Chancellor. Most cases are fairly cut and dried and don’t attract a lot of attention. The offender is reprimanded, or fined, or struck off and there is a note in the Gazette and that’s the end of the matter.

  “Write him the usual letter,” said Laurence. “And it mightn’t be a bad idea if you went down to see him. You know him better than most. He’s more likely to talk to you than to a stranger.”

  “If I’m any judge of Jonas’ character,” I said, “he won’t talk to me, or anyone. He’ll sulk in his tent and defy us to do our worst.”

  At this point one of the porters appeared. He said, “There’s a Mr Killey asking for you, sir.” Laurence grinned and said, “I’ll leave him to you.”

  The first thing I noticed about Jonas was the bruise on his face. It was more than a mere black eye. It had highlighted the whole of the left-hand side of his face in shades of blue-black, purple and yellow.

  “Have you been in a fight?” I said.

  “I was assaulted by a pack of louts,” said Jonas. “But that’s not what I’ve come to talk about. Or not directly.” He spotted the letter on my desk. “Is that from that man who calls himself Stukely?” Before I could stop him he had picked it up and started reading it.

  “I don’t think you’re meant to see that actually,” I said. “It’s a privileged communication.”

  “It’s a pack of lies,” said Jonas, when he had finished reading it.

  “You mean it didn’t happen?”

  “The sequence of events it describes did actually occur.”

  “Then how can it be a pack of lies?”

  “If you would be good enough to allow me to state the case, without adopting an attitude of officialdom simply because you happen to be sitting behind an official desk, I’ll do my humble best to give you the facts.”

  “Carry on,” I said. I had known Jonas too long to allow him to nettle me. At the end, I said, “So you’re telling me it was a put-up job.”

  “If you were listening, that will be the impression you will have obtained, I should imagine.”

  “There are one or two coincidences,” I agreed. “But coincidences do happen in real life. If the thing was planned, how do you suppose they did it? Weren’t they a bit lucky in their timing?”

  “There was no luck about it. My office telephone had been tapped. They knew I had left to look after my mother.”

  “But how were they to know it was going to happen at all? Or was that a put-up job too?”

  “Of course. It was probably the same two men. They had plenty of time to get down to Wimbledon.”

  “But,” I said, “why–”

  “Why what?”

  “Why should anyone go to all that trouble to rig up a case against you? Trouble and expense. You say Mr Stukely actually deposited twenty thousand pounds in your client account. It’s a lot of money.”

  “I imagine the Government can find twenty thousand, if it wants to.”

  I stared at him.

  “Are you serious?” I said at last.

  “I have not come here to make jokes. Or to have my word doubted. The Law Society exists to protect the interests of solicitors. You agree with that, I imagine.”

  “It’s one of its functions.”

  “It’s what I pay my subscription for. A subscription, incidentally, which helps to pay your salary. Let us be clear about this. I am not asking for a favour. I have the right to be helped, and I propose to see that I get it.”

  I was still trying to grapple with the preposterous idea. I said, “I simply don’t believe that governments behave like that.”

  “What you are prepared to believe is a matter of little interest to me,” said Jonas. “If you don’t wish to help, perhaps you will arrange for me to see someone who will.”

  “What exactly do you want us to do?”

  “This man Stukely must be investigated. He’s clearly a professional agent provocateur.”

  “I don’t think we’re geared for that sort of job. And anyway, we’re meant to be investigating your conduct. Not his.”

  “I can see that it’s useless talking to you.”

  “When a solicitor’s accused of professional misconduct he usually gets another firm to represent him. Why don’t you do that? Lambard would be glad to help.”

  “I have already approached Mr Lambard, and he made it quite clear that he was not interested.”

  “Already?”

  “Not on this precise point, no. On a connected matter.”

  “Try him again,” I said. “This is different. You were a member of his staff. He’ll certainly do it.”

  “Of all the solicitors in London,” said Jonas, “I can think of few less suitable. What we are up against here is the Establishment, of which he is himself a member. Now, if you’ve quite finished evading the issue, perhaps you’ll answer my question. Are you prepared to help, or not?”

  “I’ll have a word with my boss,” I said.

  Laurence Fairbrass said, “Get the file up and prepare a preliminary report. It’ll have to go up to Tom. I didn’t want to bother him, because he’s up to the neck with this Law Revision Committee, but we’ll have to let him know what’s happening.”

  “You don’t really believe,” I said, “that there’s anything in this – in this theory of Killey’s.”

  “I don’t believe anything until it’s proved,” said Laurence.

  I went to look for old Reiss. I think I mentioned him before. He’s one of the characters of the Society. No one knew how old he was. By an oversight the authorities had forgotten to put the usual clause in his service contract about retirement at sixty-five, and he had simply refused to go. He said that as long as he did his job, his age was a matter for him alone. Anyway, he’d organized his filing system so that no one else could understand it.

  He lived in a hutch down in the rambling basement of strong-rooms and cellars which stretch from Bell Yard to Chancery Lane. When I told him what I wanted he consulted a tattered exercise book, which was filled with entries in his own illegible handwriting, and led the way along the passage, jingling a bunch of keys like a warder in the Chateau d’If. He paused outside one of the doors. “You know what I’ve got in there? Forty-five years of professional misconduct. Six hundred and sixty-two cases. This one will be six hundred and sixty-three.”

  “Not yet,” I said. “It isn’t proved yet.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Reiss. He had found the folder he wanted in a large cupboard further along the passage.

  When we got back to his den I gave him the outline of the case. Reiss liked to be kept in the picture. He listened, nodding his head, with his spectacles on the end of his nose.

  “This man St
ukely. He’d only been a client for a couple of weeks?”

  “Less than that.”

  “And he left twenty thousand pounds with the firm. After just one visit.”

  “That’s right. Why?”

  “Funny sort of way to carry on,” said Reiss.

  It was after tea when he appeared in my office. This was an event in itself. You usually had to send for him or go down and see him.

  He had a yellowing dog-eared folder in his hand and a smug expression on his face.

  He said, “Like I was saying, it was funny.”

  “What was funny, Reiss?”

  “Him being a new client. The one you were talking about.”

  I knew what he meant by that. Causes of dissatisfaction between solicitor and client are usually of slower growth.

  “So I got out this one. I thought you might like to have a look at it.”

  The file was twenty-five years old, and dealt with a period not long after the war. A solicitor called Palmer had got it into his head that the Minister of War Production had promised his father half a million pounds for an invention which looked, from the sparse details in the file, to be remarkably like Radar. Now my recollections of Radar were imprecise. I seemed to remember that it had been invented in the first years of the war. Mr Palmer, however, claimed that his father had already invented it in the Twenties. He had not patented it, but there were family documents to prove it.

  When the Minister rejected his claim, Mr Palmer had embarked on a campaign of persecution. He had written articles and letters to the papers which must have put him, and them, in some danger of actions for libel. Then he had turned to the courts and instituted three separate actions against the Ministers personally. One for breach of contract, one for conversion, and a third, for good measure, for slander.

  At this point, before any of the actions could be heard, he had assaulted a client. There was a statement by the client, a Mr Sempill, in the file. He was a new client, and it was on the occasion of his first visit that he had incautiously made some favourable comment about the Minister concerned, whereupon, according to him, Mr Palmer had got up and hit him repeatedly in the face, causing severe lacerations. Mr Sempill had taken out a summons for assault.

  In Court Mr Palmer had given his version of the matter. He said that Mr Sempill had come into his office and simply started to insult him. He had used vile and offensive language about Mr Palmer, Mr Palmer’s wife and Mr Palmer’s family. When Mr Palmer could stand no more of this he had tried to push him from the room and a struggle had ensued in which, he admitted, blows had been struck.

  When the magistrate enquired why Mr Sempill, a complete stranger, should have behaved in such an incredible way, Mr Palmer could only suggest that he was a minion of the Minister of War Production, about whom he had added a few slanderous comments. This had not gone down well with the magistrate. Result: a sharp dressing-down and bound over to keep the peace.

  Unfortunately this was something Mr Palmer seemed unable to do. Two months later, encountering Mr Sempill again, he had again struck him. The details of this second assault were obscure because before it came to court Mr Palmer had been found in his own garage, lying behind his car, with the engine churning out carbon monoxide. Verdict: suicide while the balance of his mind was disturbed.

  I closed the file and said to Reiss, who had been sitting there watching me read it, “It’s an odd story and Sempill was certainly a new client. But apart from that there isn’t a particle of similarity between the two cases.”

  “That’s right,” said Reiss. “Just him being a new client. But it wasn’t this one I was thinking about. Not really. I got it out to show you, because I knew where I could lay my hands on it. The other one’s very similar. Very similar indeed as I recollect it. And not so long ago, either.”

  “Then let’s have a look at it.”

  “We can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’ve forgotten the name. I know about when it was. Say ten years ago, give or take a year either side.”

  “So?”

  “What I thought was, why don’t we have a look for it, you and me? It won’t take more than a day. We could do it tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow’s Saturday. The place will be shut.”

  “I’ve got a key.”

  I thought about it. Chiefly I thought about what Mutt would say. What she did say, when I put it to her, was that if there was any chance it might help Jonas, I ought to do it. So up I came.

  It was an odd sort of day, which sticks in my memory for a lot of reasons. The great building, empty and unnaturally silent as we walked through it from the entrance in Bell Yard. The long shelf of files which confronted us. The exhilarating feeling, which must grip all treasure hunters, that we were probably making fools of ourselves but might, just possibly, be on the eve of some momentous discovery. Finally, the contents of the files themselves.

  I had never realized before in what curious ways solicitors could misbehave. It wasn’t just a matter of embezzling their clients’ money. Cases of this sort were rare. Surprisingly so, when you consider the trusting way in which clients hand over large sums of money to them. Most of the financial cases were examples of reasonably honest muddle. The Solicitors’ Account and Audit Rules are complex, and while big firms with specialist staff can cope with them, an overworked one-man solicitor must find them full of traps.

  There were cases of overcharging, and of the equally serious offence of undercharging. There were solicitors who had practised without the formality of obtaining a practicing certificate. There were others who had conducted lucrative businesses without being qualified at all; usually by attaching themselves to an elderly and incompetent solicitor and using him as a front; a device, I seemed to remember, which had been favoured by Uriah Heep.

  There were a number of ingenious cases of unprofessional advertising. One man, not content with having a nameplate beside his entrance which was almost as big as the door itself had put a further notice at the corner of the street with a painted hand pointing down it and the name of his firm inscribed in gold letters on the index finger. Another had adopted the simpler course of leaving his professional card tucked into the corner of the mirror in first-class railway carriages.

  When we broke for lunch at one o’clock, Reiss grumbled, “If you read “em all right through, we’ll never get done. Just keep your eyes open for a new client who makes a complaint about money coming out of the wrong account.”

  “But they’re so interesting,” I said. “Did you know that one man inserted more than fifty advertisements in the papers for fictitious missing persons. A lot of the people who turned up were so impressed by him they became his clients on the spot.”

  “That’s nothing,” said Reiss. “There was a man just after the war who put his receptionist behind a plate-glass window in the Strand. Smashing girl, too. You’d be surprised the clients he got.”

  It was late in the afternoon when Reiss gave a grunt of satisfaction. “Got it,” he said. “It was longer ago than I thought. Nearly twelve years. Let’s take it back to my room, then we can both look at it.”

  It wasn’t a nice case, and I’m going to leave all the names out. The plaintiff was a captain in the RASC who was claiming a large sum of money from a prominent Government backbencher. Even I, who take very little interest in politics, recognized the name at once. He was not only an MP. He was a man of great wealth who was known to have contributed very heavily to party funds, and a considerable public figure; a man who opened boys’ clubs, attended first nights, sponsored good causes, and employed a first-class press agent to ensure that the public noticed him doing it. On paper the claim by the RASC captain was ridiculous. It was so flimsy that it seemed surprising that he should have troubled to bring the action at all. The solicitor he employed had apparently thought otherwise. He was confident that the case would be settled before it came to court, and the reason for his confidence was that he had got hold of a number of
letters written by a young soldier in the captain’s own company to the backbencher and had so organized the pleadings that these letters would be produced and referred to at the hearing. There were copies of the letters in the file.

  “Wouldn’t want them read out in court,” said Reiss.

  I agreed. Whether they would have led to a criminal charge, at the date when they were written, I don’t know. They would certainly have meant the end of public life for the backbencher. It was at this point that a Mr Herman had called on the solicitor. And, before my fascinated and incredulous eyes, the Stukely story unrolled, alike in all essential particulars. The projected trust, the deposit of money, the arrival of the debt collectors, the despatch of a messenger to the bank, the fortuitous arrival of Mr Herman. The only variation in this case was that it was the solicitor himself, and not his junior, who was led into the trap.

  The story had ended with the solicitor being struck off the Rolls and the captain, for reasons which were not clear, dropping the case altogether. I read it through twice, conscious of old Reiss’ bright and enquiring eye on me.

  “Odd sort of business, don’t you think?” he said.

  “It’s more than odd.”

  “Could be a coincidence, of course.”

  “It could be,” I agreed. “I’ll keep the file out. And I don’t think you’d better say much about this, just for the moment.”

  “Lucky you mentioned it,” said Reiss with a grin. “I had thought of walking down the street and selling it to the News of the World.”

  As soon as I got home I disregarded the good advice I’d given Reiss and told Mutt the whole story. She listened, with her head on one side and, for once, without interrupting. At the end she said, “So that means that Jonas was framed.”

  “It could have been a coincidence.”

  “Nonsense. Of course it isn’t a coincidence. And you don’t think it is either.”

  “But who–?”

  “What you’re boggling at,” said my wife calmly, “is the thought that the people in power could behave like a bunch of crooks. That’s because you’re a man. Men always tend to support the Establishment. I don’t boggle at it at all. I think that governments are just as crooked as ordinary crooks. The difference is, they’re not as clever at it. They’re amateurs.”