‘What did you call each other?’ I asked.
‘It was always “Matron” and “Colonel Ollard”.’
‘But you were friends?’
‘It was always on a proper basis, Mr Rumpole. I don’t know what you’re suggesting.’ Miss Beasley gave me an ‘old-fashioned’ look, whereat Featherstone, seeing a rift in our ranks, levered himself to his hind legs and addressed a sympathetic Judge.
‘I hope my learned friend isn’t suggesting anything, by way of a leading question…?’
‘Certainly not, my Lord!’ And I went on before His Lordship had time to answer. ‘Miss Beasley, during the years that Colonel Ollard was with you, did Mr Percival Ollard visit him at all?’
‘I think he came over once or twice in the first couple of weeks. Once he took the Colonel for a run on the Downs, I think, and a tea out.’
Featherstone had the grace to subside, and my questioning continued.
‘But after that?’
‘No. He never came at all.’
‘And his family, his wife Marcia, and the young Nijinsky?’
‘The what, Mr Rumpole?’ Mr Justice Venables was not amused.
‘Master Peter Ollard, my Lord. A lad with terpsichorean tastes.’
‘Oh no. I never saw them at all.’
‘Yes. Thank you. Just wait there a moment, will you, Miss Beasley?’ I subsided and Guthrie Featherstone rose. I had no particular worries. The middle-of-the-road M.P. was merely a middle-of-the-road cross-examiner.
‘Miss Beasley. You say that Colonel Ollard had his little ways,’ Guthrie began in a voice like hair oil poured on velvet.
‘He did, yes.’ Matron faced the old darling with confidence.
‘Is Miss Mary Waterhouse one of your nurses?’
‘She was one of my nurses. Yes.’ The name brought a small sign of disapproval from the generalissimo of Sunnyside.
‘Did the Colonel take boiled eggs for breakfast?’ Featherstone asked what I thought at the time was not much of a question.
‘On some days. Otherwise he had bacon and sausage.’
‘And did the Colonel once fling his boiled eggs at Nurse Waterhouse and instruct her, and I quote, “To sit on the bloody things and hatch them out”?’
I let out a small guffaw, in which the Judge didn’t join. I even began to warm to the memory of Colonel Ollard.
‘He… may have done,’ Matron conceded.
‘The Colonel disliked hard-boiled eggs.’ Featherstone, bless his timid old heart, seemed to be making a fair deduction.
‘He disliked a lot of things, Mr Featherstone. Including young boys who indulged in ballet lessons.’ Matron tried to snick a crafty one through the slips, and, of course, fell foul of the Judge immediately.
‘Just answer the questions, Miss Beasley. Try not to score points off the other side,’ Venables, J., warned her. Again, I got the strong impression that his Lordship hadn’t exactly warmed to Matey.
‘Did he also dislike slices of toast which were more than exactly four inches long?’
‘The Colonel liked things just so, yes,’ Miss Beasley admitted.
‘And did he measure his toast with a slide-rule each morning to make sure it was the correct length?’
‘Seems a perfectly reasonable thing to do,’ I said to Mr Pontefract, in what I hoped was an audible mutter.
‘Did you say something, Mr Rumpole?’ The Judge inquired coldly. I heaved myself to my feet.
‘I just wondered, my Lord, does the fact that a man measures his toast mean that he’s not entitled to dispose of his property exactly as he likes?’
At this, the old sweetheart on the bench decided to do his best to polish up my manners.
‘Mr Rumpole,’ he said. ‘Your turn will come later. Mr Guthrie Featherstone is cross-examining. In the Chancery Division we consider it improper to interrupt a cross-examination, unless there’s a good reason to do so.’
Of course I bowed low, and said, ‘If your Lordship pleases. As a rank outsider I am, of course, delighted to get your Lordship’s instructions on the mysteries of the Chancery Division.’ I supposed old Venables thought that down the Old Bailey we interrupted opponents by winking at the jury and singing sea shanties. It was then my turn to subside and let Featherstone continue.
‘Let me ask you something else, Matron. Colonel Ollard had fought, had he not, at the battle of Anzio?’
‘That was where he won his Military Cross,’ said Miss Beasley, with some understandable pride in the distinction of her late patient.
‘Yes, of course. Very commendable.’
That was a tribute, of course, coming from Featherstone. I seemed to remember that he did his military service in the Soldiers’ Divorce Division.
Then Featherstone asked another question. ‘Matron,’ he purred with his usual charm, ‘did Colonel Ollard tell you that he had frequently discussed the battle of Anzio with the Prime Minister, the late Sir Winston Churchill?’
‘I know that Sir Winston was always interested in Colonel Ollard’s view of the war, yes.’ Miss Beasley sounded proud, and even the Judge looked impressed.
‘And that he had also discussed it with Field-Marshal Lord Montgomery of Alamein?’
‘Colonel Ollard called him “Bernard”.’
‘And with the then Soviet leader, Mr Stalin. Did Colonel Ollard call him “Josef”?’ Oh dear, I sighed to myself, things were becoming grim when Featherstone tried to make a funny.
‘No. He always called him “Mr Stalin”.’ Miss Beasley answered primly.
‘Very respectful. If I may say so.’ Featherstone gave the Judge a chummy little smile and then turned back straight-faced to the witness.
‘You know he told Nurse Waterhouse, one morning last October, that he had been talking to Sir Winston, Lord Montgomery and Mr Stalin the evening before. Does that surprise you?’ I had the awful feeling that Featherstone had struck gold. There was a sudden silence in Court as Pontefract and I held our breath, waiting for Matron’s answer.
When it came, it was a simple, ‘No.’
‘You say it doesn’t surprise you, Miss Beasley?’ Venables j. leant forward, frowning unpleasantly.
‘Not in the least, my Lord.’ The answer was positively serene. I wanted to tell the Judge not to interrupt the cross-examination, after all, we didn’t do that sort of thing in the Chancery Division. But Featherstone, as he went on, was doing quite well, even without a little help from the Judge.
‘Nurse Waterhouse will also say that Colonel Ollard told her that he had been chatting to Alexander the Great, the Emperor Napoleon and the late Duke of Marlborough,’ my opponent suggested.
‘Well, of course he would, you know.’ Miss Beasley smiled back at him.
‘He would say that because he was suffering from mental instability?’
‘Of course not!’ The witness was outraged. ‘The Colonel had as much mental stability as you or I, Mr Featherstone.’
‘Speak for yourself, Miss Beasley.’ Oh, very funny, Featherstone, I thought. What a talent! He ought to go on the Halls.
‘Why did you say that the Colonel would speak to those gentlemen?’ Featherstone asked for clarification.
‘Because they were all keenly interested in his subject,’ Miss Beasley explained, as though to a rather backward two-year-old.
‘Which was?’
‘Military matters.’
‘Oh, military matters. Yes. Of course.’ Featherstone paused, and then asked politely, ‘But all the names I have mentioned, Churchill and Montgomery, Marlborough and Napoleon, Stalin and Alexander the Great. They’re all dead, aren’t they, Matron?’
‘Yes, indeed. But that wouldn’t have worried the Colonel.’ She gave the Opposition Leader a patient smile. ‘Colonel Ollard was most sympathetic to people who were ill. Being dead wouldn’t have put him off at all.’
‘But did the Colonel think he could talk to those deceased gentlemen?’
‘Oh yes. Of course he could.’ As Pontefract and I began to see the last will
of Colonel Ollard going up in smoke, the Judge said, ‘You really believe that, Miss Beasley?’
I must say the answer that Matron gave was not particularly helpful. She merely looked at the Judge with some pity and said, ‘You could talk to the Emperor Napoleon, my Lord. If you were a believer.’
‘A believer, Miss Beasley?’ No doubt a churchwarden and Chairman of the Parish Council, the Judge looked more than a little irked by her reply.
‘A believer in communication with the other side.’ At least she had the grace to explain.
‘And both you and Colonel Ollard were believers?’ Featherstone led her gently on, down the primrose path to disaster.
‘Oh yes. We had that much in common.’
‘Can you communicate with the late Josef Stalin, Miss Beasley?’ It was a shot in the dark by Featherstone, but it scored a bull’s eye.
‘Of course I could,’ Miss Beasley said modestly. ‘But let’s just say I wouldn’t care to.’
‘Perhaps not. But can you communicate, for instance, with the late Colonel Ollard?’
‘Yes indeed.’ She had no doubt about that.
‘When did you last do so, Miss Beasley?’ said the Judge, following his leader, Featherstone, like a bloodhound.
‘Yesterday evening, my Lord.’
‘Oh dear! Oh, my ears and whiskers!’ I groaned to myself as the psychic Matron blundered on, addressing her remarks to the learned Judge.
‘And I may say that the Colonel is very distressed about this case, my Lord. Very distressed indeed. In fact, he thinks it’s a disgraceful thing to argue about it when he’d made his will perfectly clear and left it in his uniform box. I wouldn’t like to tell you, my Lord, the things that the Colonel had to say about his brother Percy.’
‘I think you had better not, Miss Beasley.’ Featherstone brought her smoothly to a halt. ‘That would be hearsay evidence. We shall have to wait and see whether my learned friend Mr Rumpole calls the deceased gentleman as a witness.’
Oh hilarious, I told myself bitterly. Guthrie Featherstone is being most hilarious. My God, he’s working well today!
We, that is, Matron, Mr Pontefract and self, had luncheon in the crypt under the Law Courts, a sepulchral hall, where, it seemed, very old plaice and chips come to die. Miss Beasley’s legal team were not in an optimistic mood.
‘The Judge doesn’t like you all that much I’m afraid, Miss Beasley.’ I thought it best to break the news to her gently.
‘Never mind, Mr Rumpole. The feeling is entirely mutual.’ She looked, all things considered, ridiculously cheerful.
‘If you take my advice, Miss Beasley, you should go for a settlement.’ Pontefract was trying to talk some sense into her. ‘Save what you can from the wreckage. You see, once you had to admit that the late Colonel used to talk to the Emperor Napoleon…’
‘What’s wrong with talking to the Emperor Napoleon?’ Miss Beasley frowned. ‘He can be quite charming when he puts his mind to it.’
‘I don’t think the Judge is likely to accept that,’ I warned her.
‘You’d talk to the Emperor Napoleon, I’m sure, if he came across to you.’ Miss Beasley didn’t seem to be getting the drift of my argument. I put it more bluntly.
‘Mr Pontefract is right. The time has come to chuck in the towel. On the best terms we can manage.’
‘You mean, surrender?’ She looked at us both, displeased.
‘Well, on terms, Miss Beasley.’ Mr Pontefract tried to soften the blow, but her answer came like the bugle call which set off the Charge of the Light Brigade.
‘Colonel Ollard will never surrender!’ she trumpeted. ‘Anyway, you haven’t cross-examined that wretched Percy Ollard yet. The Colonel says Mr Rumpole’s a great cross-examiner!’
‘That’s very kind of him.’ I tried to sound modest.
‘He says he’ll never forget reading your cross-examination about the bloodstains in the Penge Bungalow Murders. He read every word of it, in the Sunday paper.’
‘My dear lady. That was thirty-five years ago. Anyway, I had a jury to play on in that case. I’m at my best with a jury. This is a cold-blooded trial in the Chancery Division, by Judge alone, and that Judge is distinctly unfriendly.’
‘The Colonel says, “Mr Rumpole will hit my brother Percy for six.” ’ She repeated the words as if they were Holy Writ.
‘Tell the Colonel,’ I asked her, ‘that Mr Rumpole isn’t at his best, without a jury.’
A trial without a jury is like an operation without anaesthetic, or a luncheon without a glass of wine. ‘Shall we drown this old fish, Pontefract, my old darling,’ I suggested, ‘in a sea of cooking claret?’
What I can’t accept about spiritualism is the idea of millions of dead people (there must be standing room only in the Other Side) kept hanging about just waiting to be sent for by some old girl with a Ouija board in a Brighton boarding house, or a couple of table-tappers in Tring, for the sake of some inane conversation about the Blueness of the Infinite. I mean at least when you’re dead you’ll surely be spared such tedious social occasions. Nevertheless, there was Colonel Ollard apparently at Matey’s beck and call, ready and willing to cross the Great Divide and drop in on her at the turn of a card or the shiver of a wine glass. I was expressing some of these thoughts to Hilda in a feverish sort of way that evening as I hugged my dressing-gown round me and downed medicinal claret by the electric fire in Froxbury Court.
‘Really, Rumpole,’ said She, ‘don’t be so morbid.’
‘I can smell corruption.’ I sneezed loudly. ‘The angel of death is brushing me with his wings.’
‘Rumpole, Dr MacClintock has told you it’s only a cold.’
‘Dr MacClintock gave me a warning, on the subject of death.’ At which there was a ring at the door, and Hilda said, ‘Oh good heavens. That’s never the front door bell!’
With a good deal of clucking and tutting, Hilda went out to the hall and eventually ushered Miss Rosemary Beasley, who appeared to be carrying some kind of plastic holdall, into the presence of the sick. When she asked me how I was, I told her I was dying.
‘Well, don’t die yet, Mr Rumpole. You’ve got our case to win.’
‘Don’t you think I could conduct it perfectly well from beyond the grave?’ I asked Matron.
‘Now you’re teasing me! Your husband is the most terrible tease,’ she told a puzzled Hilda. ‘Listen to this, Mr Rumpole. The Colonel says that he has an urgent message for you. He’ll deliver it here tonight. So I’ve brought the board.’
‘The what?’
‘The planchette, of course.’
To my dismay, Matron then produced, from her black plastic holdall, a small heart-shaped board on castors, which she plonked on to our dining table. There was paper fixed on the board, and Miss Beasley held a pencil poised over it and the board then moved in a curious fashion, causing writing to appear on the paper. It looked illegible to me, but Miss Beasley deciphered some rather cheeky communications from a late and no doubt unlamented Red Indian Chief who finally agreed to fetch Colonel Ollard to the planchette. Tearing himself away from the Emperor Napoleon, the Colonel issued his orders for the day, emerging in Miss Beasley’s already somewhat masculine voice as she read the scribbles on the board. ‘The Colonel says, “Hullo there, Rumpole,” ’ Miss Beasley informed us.
‘Well, answer him, Rumpole. Be polite!’ Hilda appeared enchanted with the whole ludicrous performance.
‘Oh, hullo there, Colonel.’ I felt an idiot as I said it.
‘It’s very blue here, Rumpole. And I am very happy,’ Miss Beasley came through as the late holder of the Military Cross.
‘Oh good.’ What else could I say?
‘Tomorrow you will cross-examine my brother Percival.’
‘Well, I hope to. I’m not feeling…’ here I sneezed again, ‘quite up to snuff.’
‘Brace up, Rumpole! No malingering. Tomorrow you will cross-examine my brother in Court.’ Miss Beasley relayed Colonel Ollard’s instructions.
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‘Yes, Colonel. Aye, aye, sir.’
‘Ask him what we said to each other when he visited me in the nursing home, and he drove me up to the Downs. Ask him what the conversation was when we had cream tea together at the Bide-A-Wee tea-rooms. Go on, Rumpole. Ask Percy that!’ Colonel Ollard may have been a very gallant officer and an inspired leader of men. I doubted if he was a real expert in the art of cross-examination.
‘Is it a good question?’ I asked the deceased, doubtfully.
‘Percy won’t like it. Just as Jerry didn’t like cold steel. Percy will run a mile from that question,’ Miss Beasley croaked.
‘Colonel, I make it a rule to decide on my own cross-examination.’ I wanted to make the position clear, but the answer came back almost in a parade-ground bellow.
‘Ask that question, Rumpole. It’s an order!’
‘I’ll… I’ll consider it.’ I suppose it doesn’t do to hurt the feelings of the dead.
‘Do so! Oh, and see you over here some time.’ At which, it seemed, the consultation was over and Colonel Ollard returned to some celestial bowling-green to while away eternity. It was perfectly ridiculous, of course. I knew quite well that the deceased Colonel wasn’t manipulating the planchette. But, as for asking his question, I could tell by the Judge’s attitude next morning that we had absolutely nothing to lose.
Percival Ollard was not, I thought, a particularly attractive-looking customer. The successful manufacturer of kitchen utensils had run to fat, he had a bristling little ginger moustache and small flickering eyes that seemed to be looking round the Court for ways of escape. Featherstone led him smoothly through his evidence in chief and then I rose to cross-examine. The learned Judge put a damper on my first question.
‘I’m really wondering,’ he said, ‘how much longer this estate is going to be put to the expense of this apparently hopeless litigation.’
‘Not long, my Lord,’ I said with a confidence I didn’t feel, ‘after I have cross-examined this witness.’ And I turned to the witness-box.
‘Mr Percival Ollard. Were you on good terms with your brother, before he went into the nursing home?’
‘Extremely good terms. We saw each other regularly, and he always sent my boy, Peter, a postal order for Christmas and birthdays.’
The Second Rumpole Omnibus Page 10
