Read Online Rumpole and the Primrose Path by John Mortimer - Free Book Online

had been denied bail because of the number of his previous convictions.
    ‘It’s no good, Trevor,’ Bonny Bernard said. ‘We’ve got to chuck in our hand. The prosecution’s got a cast-iron witness.’
    To me, the phrase ‘cast-iron witness’ represented a challenge - particularly when the name on that witness statement was Marcia Endersley.
    ‘This wonderful witness who says she saw you take the money,’ I asked Trevor. ‘Alone, was she? Or was someone with her?’
    ‘Lots of kids.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘She had a party of kids with her. They were all excited and chattering. Like she was taking them out for a school treat.’
    I sat in the interview room and I saw it again. The smiling woman, hanging on to a strap, and the boy looking up at her, offering her a present in gratitude for being taken out. A bar of chocolate, was it? Or sweets? It didn’t look like sweets.
    ‘So it’s got to be a plea, Trevor.’ Bernard was prepared to throw in the towel as cheerfully as possible, but I ventured to disagree.
    ‘No, it’s not. Never plead guilty. Let that be your New Year’s resolution, Bonny Bernard.’
    As we walked away across the prison yard, Bernard seemed pained at my brisk dismissal of his order to run up the white flag of surrender.
    ‘I didn’t want to argue the case, Mr Rumpole, not in front of the client. You say fight it. But what the devil do you imagine we’re going to fight it with?’
    ‘The wallet,’ I said.
    ‘The wallet? We can hardly call a wallet to give evidence.’
    ‘Oh yes we can. Talk to your friends in the Crown Prosecution Service. See if it’s been kept carefully, as an exhibit. Then persuade them to send it to forensic for a fingerprint test. We’ll need to know about all the prints, and whether they come from known offenders.’
    ‘Our client’s a known offender.’
    ‘So he is, Bonny Bernard, and that’s why we must be particularly careful to see he doesn’t get sent down for a crime he didn’t do.’
    ‘I still think we ought to plead guilty and throw ourselves on the mercy of the Court.’
    ‘Would you say that,’ I asked him, ‘if we had to throw ourselves on the mercy of Judge Bullingham?’
    And that seemed to shut the man up for the moment.
     
    I would very much like you to undress for me completely. I long to pour custard over you, and after the custard, tomato ketchup. I imagine this and lots of other things and I hope you don’t mind. I have no intention of forcing the custard on you. The whole incident would have to be entirely voluntary on your part. But if you feel as I do, I think we might have some really enjoyable times together.
     
    The document on which this extraordinary message was written was, as I understand it, the ‘print-out’ of an e-mail Luci with an ‘i’ had received. She had shown it to me unasked and uninvited, explaining that, as we had become ‘close’ since the Primrose Path case, she valued my advice and wanted to know how she should take the message. ‘Seeing who it comes from.’
    When she told me, the news was like a sudden revelation that Her Majesty the Queen was joining a travelling circus.
    ‘You don’t really mean that Soapy Sam Ballard sent you this?’
    ‘Chair sent it!’
    ‘You’re absolutely sure?’
    ‘It was attached to an e-mail which said, “Perhaps you’d like to have a look at this and give me your reaction. S.B.” ’
    ‘And have you given him your reaction?’
    ‘That was what I wanted to ask your advice about. You’ve heard it all and done so many cases, and well, you’ve lived so long, Horace.’
    ‘I never thought I’d live so long as to read Soapy Sam Ballard on the subject of custard.’
    ‘Don’t you like it, Horace?’
    ‘Don’t I like custard? In the right place, which is on a nice portion of baked jam roll, yes, I do. But not what is suggested here!’
    ‘I think I told you, Horace,’ Luci sounded almost shy, ‘I do find our Chair hugely attractive.’
    ‘I know. You