If ever I saw a composed and confident witness, that witness was Amelia Nettleship. Her hair was perfectly done, her black suit was perfectly discreet, her white blouse shone, as did her spectacles. Her features, delicately cut as an intaglio, were attractive, but her beauty was by no means louche or abundant. So spotless did she seem that she might well have preserved her virginity until what must have been, in spite of appearances to the contrary, middle age. When she had finished her evidence-in-chief the Judge thanked her and urged her to go on writing her ‘rattling good yarns’. Peppiatt then rose to his feet to ask her a few questions designed to show that her books were still selling in spite of the Beacon article. This she denied, saying that sales had dropped off. The thankless task of attacking the fair name of Amelia was left to Rumpole.
‘Miss Nettleship,’ I started off with my guns blazing, ‘are you a truthful woman?’
‘I try to be.’ She smiled at his Lordship, who nodded encouragement.
‘And you call yourself an historical novelist?’
‘I try to write books which uphold certain standards of morality.’
‘Forget the morality for a moment. Let’s concentrate on the history.’
‘Very well.’
One of the hardest tasks in preparing for my first libel action was reading through the works of Amelia Nettleship. Now I had to quote from Hilda’s favourite. ‘May I read you a short passage from an alleged historical novel of yours entitled Lord Stingo’s Fancy?’ I asked as I picked up the book.
‘Ah, yes.’ The Judge looked as though he were about to enjoy a treat. ‘Isn’t that the one which ends happily?’
‘Happily, all Miss Nettleship’s books end, my Lord,’ I told him. ‘Eventually.’ There was a little laughter in Court, and I heard Landseer whisper to his junior, ‘This criminal chap’s going to bump up the damages enormously.’
Meanwhile I started quoting from Lord Stingo’s Fancy. ‘ “Sophia had first set eyes on Lord Stingo when she was a dewy eighteen-year-old and he had clattered up to her father’s castle, exhausted from the Battle of Nazeby,” ’ I read. ‘ “Now at the ball to triumphantly celebrate the gorgeous, enthroning coronation of the Merry Monarch King Charles II they were to meet again. Sophia was now in her twenties but, in ways too numerous to completely describe, still an unspoilt girl at heart.” You call that an historical novel?’
‘Certainly,’ the witness answered unashamed.
‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’ I put it to her.
‘I don’t think so. What?’
‘Oliver Cromwell.’
‘I really don’t know what you mean.’
‘Clearly, if this Sophia … this girl … How do you describe her?’
‘ “Dewy”, Mr Rumpole.’ The Judge repeated the word with relish.
‘Ah, yes. “Dewy”. I’m grateful to your Lordship. I had forgotten the full horror of the passage. If this dew-bespattered Sophia had been eighteen at the time of the Battle of Naseby in the reign of Charles I, she would have been thirty-three in the year of Charles II’s coronation. Oliver Cromwell came in between.’
‘I am an artist, Mr Rumpole.’ Miss Nettleship smiled at my pettifogging objections.
‘What kind of an artist?’ I ventured to ask.
‘I think Miss Nettleship means an artist in words,’ was how the Judge explained it.
‘Are you, Miss Nettleship?’ I asked. ‘Then you must have noticed that the short passage I have read to the jury contains two split infinitives and a tautology.’
‘A what, Mr Rumpole?’ The Judge looked displeased.
‘Using two words that mean the same thing, as in “the enthroning coronation”. My Lord, t–a–u …’ I tried to be helpful.
‘I can spell, Mr Rumpole.’ Teasdale was now testy.
‘Then your Lordship has the advantage of the witness. I notice she spells Naseby with a “z”.’
‘My Lord. I hesitate to interrupt.’ At least I was doing well enough to bring Landseer languidly to his feet. ‘Perhaps this sort of cross-examination is common enough in the criminal courts, but I cannot see how it can possibly be relevant in an action for libel.’
‘Neither can I, Mr Landseer, I must confess.’ Of course the Judge agreed.
I did my best to put him right. ‘These questions, my Lord, go to the heart of this lady’s credibility.’ I turned to give the witness my full attention. ‘I have to suggest, Miss Nettleship, that as an historical novelist you are a complete fake.’
‘My Lord. I have made my point.’ Landseer sat down then, looking well pleased, and immediately whispered to his junior, ‘We’ll let him go on with that line and they’ll give us four hundred thousand.’
‘You have no respect for history and very little for the English language.’ I continued to chip away at the spotless novelist.
‘I try to tell a story, Mr Rumpole.’
‘And your evidence to this Court has been, to use my Lord’s vivid expression, “a rattling good yarn”?’ Teasdale looked displeased at my question.
‘I have sworn to tell the truth.’
‘Remember that. Now let us see how much of this article is correct.’ I picked up Stella January’s offending contribution. ‘You do live at Hollyhock Cottage, near Godalming, in the county of Surrey?’
‘That is so.’
‘You have a jacuzzi?’
‘She has what, Mr Rumpole?’ I had entered a world unknown to a Judge addicted to cold showers.
‘A sort of bath, my Lord, with a whirlpool attached.’
‘I installed one in my converted barn,’ Miss Nettleship admitted. ‘I find it relaxes me, after a long day’s work.’
‘You don’t twiddle round in there with a close personal friend occasionally?’
‘That’s worth another ten thousand to us,’ Landseer told his junior, growing happier by the minute. In fact the jury members were looking at me with some disapproval.
‘Certainly not. I do not believe in sex before marriage.’
‘And have no experience of it?’
‘I was engaged once, Mr Rumpole.’
‘Just once?’
‘Oh, yes. My fiancé was killed in an air crash ten years ago. I think about him every day, and every day I’m thankful we didn’t—’ she looked down modestly – ‘do anything before we were married. We were tempted, I’m afraid, the night before he died. But we resisted the temptation.’
‘Some people would say that’s a very moving story,’ Judge Teasdale told the jury after a reverent hush.
‘Others might say it’s the story of Sally on the Somme, only there the fiancé was killed in the war.’ I picked up another example of the Nettleship œuvre.
‘That, Mr Rumpole,’ Amelia looked pained, ‘is a book that’s particularly close to my heart. At least I don’t do anything my heroines wouldn’t do.’
‘He’s getting worse all the time,’ Robin Peppiatt, the Beacon barrister, whispered despairingly to his junior, Dick Garsington, who came back with ‘The damages are going to hit the roof!’
‘Miss Nettleship, may I come to the last matter raised in the article?’
‘I’m sure the jury will be grateful that you’re reaching the end, Mr Rumpole,’ the Judge couldn’t resist saying, so I smiled charmingly and told him that I should finish a great deal sooner if I were allowed to proceed without further interruption. Then I began to read Stella January’s words aloud to the witness. ‘ “Her latest Casanova, so far unnamed, is said to be a married man who’s been seen leaving in the wee small hours.” ’
‘I read that,’ Miss Nettleship remembered.
‘You had company last night, didn’t you? Until what I suppose might be revoltingly referred to as “the wee small hours”?’
‘What are you suggesting?’
‘That someone was with you. And when he left at about 5.30 in the morning you stood in your nightdress waving goodbye and blowing kisses. Who was it, Miss Nettleship?’
‘That is an absolutely un
called-for suggestion.’
‘You called for it when you issued a writ for libel.’
‘Do I have to answer?’ She turned to the Judge for help. He gave her his most encouraging smile and said that it might save time in the end if she were to answer Mr Rumpole’s question.
‘That is absolutely untrue!’ For the first time Amelia’s look of serenity vanished and I got, from the witness-box, a cold stare of hatred. ‘Absolutely untrue.’ The Judge made a grateful note of her answer. ‘Thank you, Miss Nettleship. I think we might continue with this tomorrow morning, if you have any further questions, Mr Rumpole?’
‘I have indeed, my Lord.’ Of course I had more questions and by the morning I hoped also to have some evidence to back them up.
I was in no hurry to return to the alleged ‘mansion’ flat that night. I rightly suspected that our self-invited guest, Claude Erskine-Brown, would be playing his way through Die Meistersinger and giving Hilda a synopsis of the plot as it unfolded. As I reach the last of a man’s Seven Ages I am more than ever persuaded that life is too short for Wagner, a man who was never in a hurry when it came to composing an opera. I paid a solitary visit to Pommeroy’s well-known watering-hole after Court in the hope of finding the representatives of the Beacon; but the only one I found was Connie Coughlin, the features editor, moodily surveying a large gin and tonic. ‘No champagne tonight?’ I asked as I wandered over to her table, glass in hand.
‘I don’t think we’ve got much to celebrate.’
‘I wanted to ask you’ – I took a seat beside the redoubtable Connie – ‘about Miss Stella January. Our girl on the spot. Bright, attractive kind of reporter, was she?’
‘I don’t know,’ Connie confessed.
‘But surely you’re the features editor?’
‘I never met her.’ She said it with the resentment of a woman whose editor had been interfering with her page.
‘Any idea how old she was, for instance?’
‘Oh, young, I should think.’ It was the voice of middle age speaking. ‘Morry said she was young. Just starting in the business.’
‘And I was going to ask you …’
‘You’re very inquisitive.’
‘It’s my trade.’ I downed what was left of my claret. ‘… About the love life of Mr Morry Machin.’
‘Good God. Whose side are you on, Mr Rumpole?’
‘At the moment, on the side of the truth. Did Morry have some sort of a romantic interest in Miss Stella January?’
‘Short-lived, I’d say.’ Connie clearly had no pity for the girl if she’d been enjoyed and then sacked.
‘He’s married?’
‘Oh, two or three times.’ It occurred to me that at some time, during one or other of these marriages, Morry and La Coughlin might have been more than fellow hacks on the Beacon. ‘Now he seems to have got some sort of steady girlfriend.’ She said it with some resentment.
‘You know her?’
‘Not at all. He keeps her under wraps.’
I looked at her for a moment. A woman, I thought, with a lonely evening in an empty flat before her. Then I thanked her for her help and stood up.
‘Who are you going to grill next?’ she asked me over the rim of her gin and tonic.
‘As a matter of fact,’ I told her, ‘I’ve got a date with Miss Stella January.’
Quarter of an hour later I was walking across the huge floor, filled with desks, telephones and word processors, where the Beacon was produced, towards the glass-walled office in the corner, where Morry sat with his deputy Ted Spratling, seeing that all the scandal that was fit to print, and a good deal of it that wasn’t, got safely between the covers of the Beacon. I arrived at his office, pulled open the door and was greeted by Morry, in his shirtsleeves, his feet up on the desk. ‘Working late, Mr Rumpole? I hope you can do better for us tomorrow,’ he greeted me with amused disapproval.
‘I hope so too. I’m looking for Miss Stella January.’
‘I told you, she’s not here any more. I think she went overseas.’
‘I think she’s here,’ I assured him. He was silent for a moment and then he looked at his deputy. ‘Ted, perhaps you’d better leave me to have a word with my learned Counsel.’
‘I’ll be on the back bench.’ Spratling left for the desk on the floor which the editors occupied.
When he had gone, Morry looked up at me and said quietly, ‘Now then, Mr Rumpole, sir. How can I help you?’
‘Stella certainly wasn’t a young woman, was she?’ I was sure about that.
‘She was only with us a short time. But she was young, yes,’ he said vaguely.
‘A quotation from her article that Amelia Nettleship “makes Mae West sound like Florence Nightingale”. No young woman today’s going to have heard of Mae West. Mae West’s as remote in history as Messalina and Helen of Troy. That article, I would hazard a guess, was written by a man well into his middle age.’
‘Who?’
‘You.’
There was another long silence and the editor did his best to smile. ‘Have you been drinking at all this evening?’
I took a seat then on the edge of his desk and lit a small cigar. ‘Of course I’ve been drinking at all. You don’t imagine I have these brilliant flashes of deduction when I’m perfectly sober, do you?’
‘Then hadn’t you better go home to bed?’
‘So you wrote the article. No argument about that. It’s been found in the system with your word processor number on it. Careless, Mr Machin. You clearly have very little talent for crime. The puzzling thing is, why you should attack Miss Nettleship when she’s such a good friend of yours.’
‘Good friend?’ He did his best to laugh. ‘I told you. I’ve never even met the woman.’
‘It was a lie, like the rest of this pantomime lawsuit. Last night you were with her until past five in the morning. And she said goodbye to you with every sign of affection.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Were you in a hurry? Anyway, this was dropped by the side of your car.’ Then I pulled out the present Fig Newton had given me outside Court that day and put it on the desk.
‘Anyone can buy the Beacon.’ Morry glanced at the mud-stained exhibit.
‘Not everyone gets the first edition, the one that fell on the editor’s desk at ten o’clock that evening. I would say that’s a bit of a rarity around Godalming.’
‘Is that all?’
‘No. You were watched.’
‘Who by?’
‘Someone I asked to find out the truth about Miss Nettleship. Now he’s turned up the truth about both of you.’
Morry got up then and walked to the door which Ted Spratling had left half open. He shut it carefully and then turned to me. ‘I went down to ask her to drop the case.’
‘To use a legal expression, pull the other one, it’s got bells on it.’
‘I don’t know what you’re suggesting.’
And then, as he stood looking at me, I moved round and sat in the editor’s chair. ‘Let me enlighten you.’ I was as patient as I could manage. ‘I’m suggesting a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘I told you I’m an old taxi, waiting on the rank, but I’m not prepared to be the getaway driver for a criminal conspiracy.’
‘You haven’t said anything? To anyone?’ He looked older and very frightened.
‘Not yet.’
‘And you won’t.’ He tried to sound confident. ‘You’re my lawyer.’
‘Not any longer, Mr Machin. I don’t belong to you any more. I’m an ordinary citizen, about to report an attempted crime.’ It was then I reached for the telephone. ‘I don’t think there’s any limit on the sentence for conspiracy.’
‘What do you mean, “conspiracy”?’
‘You’re getting sacked by the Beacon; perhaps your handshake is a bit less than golden. Sales are down on historical virgins. So your steady girlfriend and you get together to m
ake half a tax-free million.’
‘I wish I knew how.’ He was doing his best to smile.
‘Perfectly simple. You turn yourself into Stella January, the unknown girl reporter, for half an hour and libelled Amelia. She sues the paper and collects. Then you both sail into the sunset and share the proceeds. There’s one thing I shan’t forgive you for.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The plan called for an Old Bailey Hack, a stranger to the civilized world of libel who wouldn’t settle, an old warhorse who’d attack La Nettleship and inflame the damages. So you used me, Mr Morry Machin!’
‘I thought you’d be accustomed to that.’ He stood over me, suddenly looking older. ‘Anyway, they told me in Pommeroy’s that you never prosecute.’
‘No, I don’t, do I? But on this occasion, I must say, I’m sorely tempted.’ I thought about it and finally pushed away the telephone. ‘Since it’s a libel action I’ll offer you terms of settlement.’
‘What sort of terms?’
‘The fair Amelia to drop her case. You pay the costs, including the fees of Fig Newton, who’s caught a bad cold in the course of these proceedings. Oh, and in the matter of my learned friend, Claude Erskine-Brown …’
‘What’s he got to do with it?’
‘… Print a full and grovelling apology on the front page of the Beacon. And get them to pay him a substantial sum by way of damages. And that’s my last word on the subject.’ I stood up then and moved to the door.
‘What’s it going to cost me?’ was all he could think of saying.
‘I have no idea, but I know what it’s going to cost me. Two weeks at five hundred a day. A provision for my old age.’ I opened the glass door and let in the hum and clatter which were the birth pangs of the Daily Beacon. ‘Goodnight, Stella,’ I said to Mr Morry Machin. And then I left him.
So it came about that next morning’s Beacon printed a grovelling apology to ‘the distinguished barrister Mr Claude Erskine-Brown’ which accepted that he went to the Kitten-A-Go-Go Club purely in the interests of legal research and announced that my learned friend’s hurt feelings would be soothed by the application of substantial, and tax-free, damages. As a consequence of this, Mrs Phillida Erskine-Brown rang Chambers, spoke words of forgiveness and love to her husband, and he arranged, in his new-found wealth, to take her to dinner at Le Gavroche. The cuckoo flew from our nest, Hilda and I were left alone in the Gloucester Road, and we never found out how Die Meistersinger ended.
The Collected Stories of Rumpole Page 52
