Rumpole Misbehaves Read Free Page B

On the date in question he telephoned the address in Flyte Street where Ludmilla Ravenskaya, a Russian immigrant, carried on her profession. His call was answered by Anna McKinnan, who acted as Miss Ravenskaya’s maid and was the main witness for the prosecution. My client left his work at lunchtime and just before one he was admitted to the house in Flyte Street for a brief, expensive and, as things turned out, totally disastrous tryst.
    The entry phone at the front door invited him up to a room on the second floor. Once there he dealt with Anna McKinnan, the maid, and paid over to her the £110 he had saved up for a brief moment of passion.
    From then on McKinnan’s evidence was clear. She told Graham Wetherby that he could go into the small sitting room and wait, and Ludmilla, the ‘young lady’, would come out to him. If she didn’t come in a reasonable time he could knock on the bedroom door to announce his presence, because her mistress was alone and had no one else in with her. Accordingly, he went into the sitting room. Some twenty minutes later, McKinnan heard her ‘young lady’ screaming. She hurried into the sitting room and described what she saw.
    The bedroom door was open and Wetherby was standing by the bed, on which the ‘young lady’ lay partially dressed. She could see red marks round her neck and she was lying across the bed in an attitude the maid called ‘unnaturally still’.
    Wetherby said nothing, but Anna McKinnan, according to her evidence, acted quickly. She went and locked the sitting-room door, making my client a prisoner. While he was shouting and hammering at the door, she telephoned the police from a phone in the kitchen.
    A detective inspector, a woman officer and a police doctor arrived at the flat surprisingly quickly, no more than an hour later. McKinnan was able to tell them that she had seen Ludmilla alive and laughing over a cup of tea after her previous customer had departed.
    She then let the officers into the sitting room, where a distracted Graham Wetherby told them he had found Ludmilla dead when, having knocked on the door and got no reply, he went into the bedroom.
    On the face of it this seemed an unanswerable case, but I hoped that, when I got the chance of talking to Wetherby, some sort of defence might emerge. My pessimism was increased, however, the following morning, when I rang Bonny Bernard to thank him for the brief.
    â€˜I thought you’d like to know,’ the misguided solicitor told me, ‘that I’ve briefed a leader for you, your Head of Chambers, Mr Samuel Ballard, QC. It’s a terrible business, isn’t it?’
    â€˜Absolutely ghastly,’ I agreed, deliberately misunderstanding his point, ‘getting Soapy Sam Ballard to lead me. After all we’ve gone through together. How could you do it?’
    â€˜The client wanted a QC. He said in all the big murder trials they have QCs.’
    â€˜So you suggested Soapy Sam?’
    â€˜He’s your Head of Chambers.’
    â€˜So you’re determined to lose this case?’
    â€˜Is it–entirely hopeless?’
    â€˜No case is entirely hopeless unless you bring Mr Ballard in to conduct it.’
    There was a silence, then Bernard said, ‘I’m sorry. The client insisted on Queen’s Counsel. You’re not Queen’s Counsel, are you, Mr Rumpole?’
    â€˜Not yet,’ I warned him. ‘But who knows what may happen in the fullness of time?’
    â€˜Who knows? You’re right there, Mr Rumpole.’ My solicitor sounded encouraging. ‘Meanwhile, I’ll meet you and Mr Ballard in Brixton Prison. Looking forward to it.’
    But I was no longer looking forward to our first meeting with our client, an occasion on which I would occupy a secondary and subordinate position. If, by any chance, there was some sort of defence available to Graham Wetherby, my not particularly learned leader could be