Brothers In Law

by Henry Cecil

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Roger. ‘I didn’t mean it that way. But it’s jolly lucky for me. I’m so glad you can take it. Will I be a nuisance? I know nothing about bankruptcy.’

  ‘You’ll learn,’ said Henry. ‘Particularly if you fail at the Bar. I wonder when it’s for. Hope it doesn’t clash with Ascot.’

  ‘Are you a racing man, then?’

  ‘Oh, gracious no, but there are such lovely things to be seen at Ascot, some with two legs and some with four, and the whole atmosphere appeals to me. It’s the only meeting I go to. Like to come? If you’ve got any sense, you’ll say “no.” You stick to your work. You’ve a hell of a lot to learn. But I’ll take you if you want – and Sally too, if you’d like.’

  ‘I think that’s most unfair,’ said Roger. ‘Why did you have to ask me – and Sally? You know I’d love it. I hope the bankruptcy case prevents it. Anyway, what would Grimes say?’

  ‘Grimes? He’d say, “Dear, dear, dear, going to Ascot are we? Going to the races instead of getting on with our work, are we? Dear, dear, dear. Have a good time, my dear fellow, have a good time. Goodbye, bye, bye.”’

  ‘Well, I shall consult Sally on the subject,’ said Roger. As he said that, the junior clerk came into the room and said that Roger was wanted on the telephone by a Miss Burnett. He went to the telephone.

  ‘Hullo, Joy,’ said Roger.

  ‘Oh, Roger, Uncle Alfred told me he was sending you another brief – and I just wondered if you’d got it.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Joy. I don’t know if it’s come yet, but I’ve just this moment heard about it.’

  Joy was in her uncle’s office at the time and it had all been arranged in her presence so that it was not exactly a coincidence that she telephoned when she did. She believed in striking while the iron was hot and she thought that Roger had a conscience.

  ‘I’m so pleased for you,’ said Joy. ‘You are doing well. It seems ages since I saw you. I was wondering–’ and she paused to give Roger an opportunity to do what any decent man, who’d had a brief from a girl, would do.

  ‘So was I,’ said Roger, with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. ‘I’d love to take you out one night soon if you’re free.’

  ‘Any night, Roger. I’d put anything else off if it clashed.’ At that moment there was a knock on the clerks’ door. The junior opened the door and in came Sally. Roger was just saying: ‘Well, let me see, how would tomorrow do?’ when he noticed her.

  Sally had a brief in her hand.

  ‘That would be lovely, Roger. Where and when?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Roger most uncomfortably. ‘Anywhere at all.’

  ‘Will you call for me, then?’

  ‘Yes, certainly.’

  ‘About seven?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You sound awfully distrait all of a sudden. Is it another client?’

  ‘I’d like to think so,’ said Roger.

  ‘How lovely,’ said Joy, ‘if it is.’

  A remark which embarrassed Roger very much indeed. He managed to finish the conversation with Joy and then turned to find Sally talking to the clerk.

  ‘I’ve brought these papers down for Mr Blagrove,’ she was saying. ‘Mr Sharpe would be glad if he could have them back quickly. Hullo, Roger.’

  ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

  ‘My people have just sent a brief down to Mr Blagrove. No one else was available, so they asked me to bring it. Funny, isn’t it?’

  ‘I didn’t know you did any litigation.’

  ‘Oh, the firm does, but not the partner I work for. But this is from him. It’s an opinion about a landlord and tenant matter. Mr Sharpe thought he’d like to try your Mr Blagrove. Have you had any more briefs lately?’

  ‘I have, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘From the same source?’

  Roger blushed. He could not help it. ‘Yes, if you want to know, but we oughtn’t to chat here. It’ll disturb the clerks. Come in and meet Henry.’

  ‘Won’t I be taking up too much of your time? Briefs and telephone conversations and things,’ she added.

  ‘Henry would love to meet you. Do come in.’

  He took her to Henry’s room and introduced them. ‘I’ve heard so much about you,’ said Sally, ‘though you’re not quite what I expected. That isn’t meant to be rude. On the contrary, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Well, you’re exactly what I expected, and knowing the source of my information, you couldn’t ask for more than that, could you?’ said Henry.

  ‘I should like to think that,’ said Sally. ‘So this is where you decide how not to ask leading questions and whether to put the prisoner in the box and if the judge is likely to be prejudiced if you plead the Statute of Limitations?’

  ‘You seem to know an awful lot about it,’ said Henry.

  ‘I’ve been with solicitors for three months. I’ve brought you a brief.’

  ‘Me – you mean Roger.’

  ‘I don’t, my firm’s pretty careful who it briefs. I hope I shan’t have my neck wrung for suggesting you. It’ll be Roger’s fault. But he thinks you’ve the wisdom of a Lord Chief Justice and the power of advocacy of a Carson and he’s managed to put it across to me. He doesn’t always succeed.’

  ‘Well, I hope it’s something I can do. Your neck would be very much on my conscience. I’ll certainly give it more than usual attention. Dispatch will oblige, I suppose!’

  ‘Expedition specially requested,’ said Sally ‘is the form we use in our office when the papers have been overlooked for a week and the client is howling for that opinion we promised him.’

  ‘Well – I’ve nothing to do – so – oh, yes, I have, though. Roger’s getting me all my work.’

  ‘I see,’ said Sally. ‘How nice. Does he get a commission? Or give one perhaps? Now I must go or I’ll be shot. We’ve a lot to do in my office. Goodbye, so glad to have met you at last. Goodbye, Roger. We must meet some time out of working hours – if you have a spare moment.’

  The truth of the matter was that for quite a little time Roger had been neglecting both Joy and Sally. He had been devoting himself almost entirely to work. Now he found it a little disconcerting to be subjected to this two-pronged attack. He saw Sally out and went back to Henry.

  ‘Roger,’ said Henry, ‘if at any time you should commit yourself irrevocably to Uncle Alfred’s niece, would you consider it a breach of good faith if I asked your friend Sally out to dinner?’

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Old Bailey

  In due course the conspiracy case came on for trial at the Old Bailey. It was likely to take a fortnight or three weeks and in consequence to interfere a good deal with Mr Grimes’ other work. Roger had considerable qualms. He felt sure he would be left to do part of it. Peter, on the other hand, would have been delighted to be left with it. It was his ambition to stand up at the Old Bailey and say something, and he had the doubtful advantage that he would never realize how badly he had said it. He said to Roger that, if Grimeyboy went away in the middle, he thought that, as he was senior to Roger, he ought to have the chance of taking over before him.

  ‘Of course,’ said Roger and hoped that was how it would be.

  ‘Since you came here,’ said Peter, ‘he hardly ever seems to use me. I don’t think he likes me somehow.’

  I wonder if that is it, thought Roger, or if I really am better. It was an interesting day for Roger when he went for the first time to the Old Bailey. He was surprised at the smallness of the Courts. But the solemnity was there all right. He tried to visualize the murderers and other criminals who had stood in the dock. This was the Court in which, Henry had told him, five blackmailers had once stood to receive their sentences from the then Lord Chief Justice. The Lord Chief Justice awarded the first man he sentenced eight years penal servitude (as it was then called), the second ten years, the third twelve. It must have been obvious to the fifth man, the ringleader, what the judge was working up to, and slowly and methodically he worked up to i
t.

  ‘And as this is the worst case of its kind I have ever tried,’ he began in sentencing the ringleader, ‘the sentence of the Court is that you be kept in penal servitude for life.’

  ‘I’m told,’ Henry had said, ‘that it was an artistic, though not a pleasant performance.’

  This, too, was the Court where the man who was said to have been a sort of Jekyll and Hyde had stood to receive his sentence.

  ‘Counsel has argued eloquently on your behalf,’ said the judge, ‘that you are really two people, one very good and the other very bad. As to that, all I can say is that both of you must go to prison.’

  Roger would have been spared some unnecessary worry if he had known that Mr Grimes had given his personal undertaking to be present the whole time throughout the case, and Alec had charged a fee to compensate for the results of complying with such an undertaking. Mr Grimes was there all the time, and Roger had the advantage of seeing him hold innumerable conferences on other matters with solicitors and managing clerks in the corridors of the Old Bailey. In the middle of a case involving theft of machinery, he discussed among other things a libel action brought by a politician, a claim for damages for being caught up in a sausage machine, an action by a householder against his next-door neighbour for nuisance by barking dogs, a claim for breach of contract on the sale of fertilizers, an action for breach of promise, some bankruptcy proceedings, an appeal to the Privy Council and a host of other things. A temperamental recording machine which decided not to record from time to time would have produced some surprising results if it had been placed by the side of Mr Grimes eating a sandwich on a bench in the Old Bailey, while client after client came and told his tale of woe, received expert advice and went away rejoicing. And Mr Grimes never put a foot wrong. A lesser man might have confused one case with another. But not he. Mr Grimes treated each client as though he were his only client and as though his case were his only case.

  ‘Yes, my dear fellow. Don’t ye worry, my dear fellow, that’s quite all right. Just write and tell them the tale, my dear fellow. Goodbye, bye, bye.’

  ‘Dear, dear, dear. You don’t say, my dear fellow, dear, dear, dear, you don’t say. Well, we’ll soon put a stop to those goings on. Ye wait, my dear fellow, ye’ll see. It’ll be quite all right, quite all right. Goodbye, bye, bye.’ And so on and so on, punctuated by bites of sandwich. Do this, don’t do that, try for this but take that if necessary, apply to the judge, go to the Master, issue a writ, pay into Court, appeal, don’t appeal, it’s a toss up, my dear fellow, we can but try; dear, dear, dear, they will do these things, my dear fellow, they will do these things.

  And so back into Court, stomach full of ill-bitten, undigested sandwich, head, Roger would have thought, full of dogs, sausages and fertilizers – but not at all. Mr Grimes examined a difficult witness as though he had been doing nothing else but think about his evidence. Roger was astonished at the number of watertight compartments there must be in a busy barrister’s mind. But then, I suppose, he said to himself, it’s exactly the same with everyone’s job. I don’t imagine a surgeon often takes out the wrong part because he’s confused two cases or that a doctor, visiting a case of measles, enquires about the big toe, which belongs next door.

  The case went on day after day. Roger took voluminous notes, Peter took a few, and from time to time when he found that his services were not going to be required, wandered into the other Courts where something more interesting might be happening. Once while Peter was away, the judge said: ‘Excuse me a moment, Mr Grimes. A prisoner wants a dock defence.’

  ‘Put up Arthur Green,’ said the clerk and Mr Green was brought up into the dock.

  ‘You may choose whom you wish,’ said the judge.

  ‘That one, please, my Lord,’ said Mr Green, and pointed to Mr Grimes.

  ‘I’m afraid Mr Grimes is engaged on a case,’ said the judge.

  ‘I thought you said I could choose whom I wish, my Lord,’ said Mr Green. ‘I want him.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the judge. ‘Mr Grimes can’t be in two Courts at once.’

  ‘I don’t want him in two Courts at once, my Lord,’ said Mr Green. ‘Just in mine.’

  ‘Now, don’t waste time,’ said the judge. ‘You can’t have him, though no doubt Mr Grimes is suitably flattered. Now, choose someone else.’

  ‘Oh, well, I’ll have him,’ and Mr Green pointed to counsel defending the chief conspirator.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the judge. ‘He’s engaged too.’

  ‘I thought you said–’ began the man.

  ‘I know, I know,’ said the judge. ‘But you can’t have someone who’s engaged on a case.’

  ‘How am I to know who’s engaged on a case and who isn’t, my Lord? Perhaps you could ask the gentlemen who aren’t for hire to cover up their flags, my Lord.’

  ‘Now, don’t be impertinent,’ said the judge quite genially. ‘I’m sorry about this. Perhaps those members of the Bar who are not engaged in the case would be good enough to stand up.’

  Three old, three middle-aged and three young men sprang to their feet with alacrity. This was a race in which youth had no advantage over age. Indeed a middle-aged man was first, though he ricked his back in the process. Roger remained seated.

  ‘Get up, my dear fellow,’ said Mr Grimes. ‘Ye never know. Good experience for ye.’

  So Roger got up a little time after the others, just as Mr Green had come to much the same conclusion as the old lag in Henry’s story. The apparent reluctance which Roger had to join the race appealed to Mr Green.

  ‘Him, my Lord, please,’ said Mr Green, pointing to Roger.

  ‘Mr – Mr–’ began the judge, and then made a noise, half grunt, half swallow, three consonants and a couple of vowels. It was a work of art and had been cultivated by him over the years. It really sounded like a name and though no one could say what it was, no one could say what it was not. Whether a name began with a vowel or a consonant or a diphthong, the sound made by the judge was not unlike it, and, as he looked hard at its owner during the process, it never failed.

  ‘Will you undertake this defence, please?’ said the judge.

  ‘If your Lordship pleases.’

  Roger wondered what was the next move.

  ‘Go and see him,’ volunteered his next-door neighbour.

  ‘Now?’ asked Roger.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Where do I see him?’

  ‘In the cells. Bow to the judge and go into the dock and down the stairs. Quick. The old boy’s waiting for you.’

  Roger looked up and saw that his informant was right. ‘Don’t disturb yourself unduly,’ said the judge. ‘This case is going to last for weeks, anyway. What difference does an extra half hour make?’

  Roger blushed. ‘I’m so sorry, my Lord,’ he said.

  The judge gave him a friendly smile.

  Roger walked into the dock rather self-consciously and went down the stairs which led from inside it to the cells below. He was shown to a room in which he could interview Mr Green who was promptly brought to him.

  ‘Afternoon, sir,’ said Mr Green.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ said Roger.

  ‘Funny weather for the time of year,’ said Mr Green. ‘Felt like thunder this morning.’

  ‘Yes, it did,’ said Roger.

  ‘But there,’ said Mr Green, ‘they will do these things.’

  ‘What!’ said Roger.

  ‘He defended me twenty years ago,’ said Mr Green. ‘I haven’t forgotten. Nearly got me off too. If it hadn’t been for the old judge he would have too. Dear, dear, dear. Now we’re starting to look back. And that won’t do. We must look forward, mustn’t we? This your first case?’

  ‘Not quite,’ said Roger.

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Mr Green. ‘I’ll tell you what to do. It’s easy, dead easy. I’d have done it myself but it looks better to have a mouthpiece. Can you sing?’ he added.

  ‘I don’t know quite what that’s got to d
o with it,’ said Roger.

  ‘Ah!’ said Mr Green knowingly, ‘but you haven’t been at it as long as I have. There’s a lot of things you don’t understand now, aren’t there?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Roger. ‘I’m afraid there are.’

  ‘Well, now that’s agreed – can you sing?’

  ‘No, I can’t, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Mr Green. ‘As long as I know one way or the other. Can’t take any chances. Forewarned is forearmed. Many a mickle makes a muckle. It’s an ill wind and so on and so forth. I’m not keeping you, I hope?’

  ‘I’m here to defend you,’ said Roger. ‘My time’s your time. My services, such as they are, are at your disposal.’

  ‘That’s a pretty speech,’ said Mr Green. ‘Can you make lots of those?’

  Roger did not answer.

  ‘All right,’ said Mr Green. ‘You win. Cut the cackle and come to the hosses. Now, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. I’ve got it all laid on.’

  ‘But what are you charged with?’ asked Roger.

  ‘Oh, that!’ said Mr Green scornfully. ‘It’s almost an insult. But I suppose it’s like everything else these days. Going down. You’ve only got to deration butter and all the places serve margarine.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Roger.

  ‘Now, look,’ said Mr Green. ‘Have you ever seen an indictment before?’

  Roger had not and said so. He would have admitted it anyway, but he made the admission a second before he realized that it was a pretty odd system under which a young man who had never seen an indictment could be employed to defend somebody who was charged upon one. Roger had read the charges in Mr Grimes’ conspiracy case, but for some reason he had never actually seen the indictment or a copy of it.

  ‘Well, now, look – this is an indictment – or it’s supposed to be.’

  He produced a typewritten foolscap document. All over it were pencil remarks made by himself.

  ‘I call it an impertinence,’ went on Mr Green. ‘Do you know that I was once charged on an indictment containing thirty-three counts? Thirty-three. Now that’s not bad, eh?’