The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 6

RUMPOLE’S SLIMMED-DOWN CHRISTMAS by John Mortimer

Christmas comes but once a year, and it is usually preceded by Christmas cards kept in the prison officers’ cubby holes round the Old Bailey and “Away In A Manger” bleating through Boots, where I purchase for my wife Hilda (known to me as She Who Must Be Obeyed) her ritual bottle of lavender water, which she puts away for later use, while she gives me another tie which I add to my collection of seldom worn articles of clothing. After the turkey, plum pudding and a bottle or two of Pommeroy’s Chateau Thames Embankment, I struggle to keep my eyes open during the Queen’s Speech.

Nothing like this happened over the Christmas I am about to describe.

Hilda broke the news to me halfway through December. “I have booked us in for four days over Christmas, Rumpole, at Minchingham Hall.”

What, I wondered, was she talking about? Did She Who Must have relatives at this impressive sounding address? I said, “I thought we’d spend this Christmas at home, as usual.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Rumpole. Don’t you ever think about your health?”

“Not really. I seem to function quite satisfactorily.”

“You really think so?”

“Certainly. I can get up on my hind legs in court when the occasion demands. I can stand and cross-examine, or make a speech lasting an hour or two. I’ve never been too ill to do a good murder trial. Of course, I keep myself fortified by a wedge of veal and ham pie and a glass or two of Pommeroy’s Very Ordinary during the lunch time adjournment.”

“Slices of pie and red wine, Rumpole. How do you think that makes you feel?”

“Completely satisfied. Until tea time, of course.”

“Tea time?”

“I might slip in to the Tastee-Bite on Fleet Street for a cup of tea and a slice of Dundee cake.”

“All that does is make you fat, Rumpole.”

“You’re telling me I’m fat?” The thought hadn’t really occurred to me, but on the whole it was a fair enough description.

“You’re on the way to becoming obese.” She added.

“Is that a more serious way of saying I’m fat?”

“It’s a very serious way of saying it. Why, the buttons fly off your waistcoat like bullets. And I don’t believe you could run to catch a bus.”

“Not necessary. I go by Tube to the Temple Station.”

“Let’s face it, Rumpole, you’re fat and you’re going to do something about it. Minchingham Hall is the place for you.” She said, sounding more and more like an advert. “So restful, you’ll leave feeling marvellous. And now that you’ve finished the long fraud case…”

“You mean,” I thought I was beginning to see the light, “this Minchingham place is a hotel?”

“A sort of hotel, yes.”

Again I should have asked for further particulars, but it was time for the news so I merely said, “Well, I suppose it means you won’t have to cook at Christmas.”

“No, I certainly won’t have to do that!” Here She Who Must gave a small laugh, that I can only describe as merciless, and added, “Minchingham Hall is a health farm, Rumpole. They’ll make sure there’s less of you by the time you leave. I’ve still got a little of the money Auntie Dot left me in her will and I’m going to give you the best and the healthiest Christmas you’ve ever had.”

“But I don’t need a healthy Christmas. I don’t feel ill.”

“It’s not only your health, Rumpole. I was reading about it in a magazine at the hairdresser’s. Minchingham Hall specializes in spiritual healing. It can put you in touch with yourself.”

“But I’ve met myself already.”

“Your true self, Rumpole. That’s who you might find in ‘the restful tranquillity of Minchingham Hall’,” She quoted from the magazine.

I wondered about my true self. Had I ever met him? What would he turn out to be like? An ageing barrister who bored on about his old cases? I hoped not, and if that was all he was I’d rather not meet him. And as for going to the health farm, “I’ll think it over,” I told Hilda.

“Don’t bother yourself, Rumpole,” She said. “I’ve already thought.”

“Tell me quite honestly, Mizz Probert,” I said in the corridor in front of Number 6 court at the Old Bailey, “would you call me fat?”

Mizz Liz, a young barrister and my pupil, was defending Colin Timson who, in a pub fight with a rival gang, the Molloys, was alleged to have broken a bottle and wounded Brian Molloy in the arm.

“No, I wouldn’t call you that.”

“Wouldn’t you?” I gave her a grateful smile.

“Not to your face, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t be so rude,” Mizz Liz Probert replied.

“But behind my back?”

“Oh, I might say it then.”

“That I’m fat?”

“Well, yes.”

“But you’ve nothing against fat men?”

“Well, nothing much, I suppose. But I wouldn’t want a fat boyfriend.”

“You know what Julius Caesar said?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“Let me have men about me that are fat;/ sleek headed men and such that sleep o’nights.”

Mizz Probert looked slightly mystified, and as the prosecuting counsel, “Soapy” Sam Ballard QC, the head of our chambers approached, I went on paraphrasing Julius Caesar. “Yond Ballard has a lean and hungry look; he thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.”

As Ballard came up I approached him. “Look here, Bollard, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about the Timson case” I said. “We all know the bottle broke and Brian Molloy fell on to it by accident. If we plead guilty to affray will you drop the grievous bodily harm?”

“Certainly not.”

“But surely, Bollard, you could be generous. In the spirit of Christmas?”

“The spirit of Christmas has got nothing to do with your client fighting with a broken bottle.”

“Good will and mercy to all men except Colin Timson. Is that it?”

“I’m afraid it is.”

“You should go away somewhere to have your spiritual aura cleansed, Bollard. Spend Christmas somewhere like a health farm.”

The result of all this was that the young Timson went to prison and I went to the health farm.

On Christmas Eve we took a train to Norwich and then a taxi across flat and draughty countryside (the wind, I thought, blew directly from the Russian Steppes, unbroken by any intervening mountains).

Minchingham, when we got there, appeared to be a village scattered round a grey walled building that reminded me, irresistibly, of Reading Gaol. This was Minchingham Hall, the scene of this year’s upcoming Christmas jubilations.

The woman at the reception desk was all grey – grey hair, grey face and a grey cardigan pulled down over her knuckles to keep her hands warm.

She told us that Oriana was giving someone a “treatment” and would be down soon to give us a formal welcome and to hug us.

“Did you say ‘hug’…?” I couldn’t believe my ears.

“Certainly, Mr Rumpole. People travel here from all over England to be hugged by Oriana Mandeville. She’ll suffuse you with ‘good energy’. It’s all part of the healing process. Do take a seat and make yourselves comfortable.”

We made ourselves uncomfortable on a hard bench beside the cavernous fireplace and, in a probably far too loud whisper, I asked Hilda if she knew the time of the next train back to London.

“Please, Rumpole!” she whispered urgently. “You promised to go through with this. You’ll see how much good it’s going to do you. I’m sure Oriana will be with us in a minute.”

Oriana was with us in about half an hour. A tall woman with a pale beautiful face and a mass of curling dark hair, she was dressed in a scarlet shirt and trousers. This gave her a military appearance – like a female member of some revolutionary army. On her way towards us she glanced at our entry in the visitors’ book on the desk and then swooped on us with her arms outstretched.

“The dear Rumbelows!” Her voice was high and enthusiastically shrill. “Helena and Humphrey. Welcome to the companionship of Minchingham Hall! I can sense that you’re both going to respond well to the treatments we have on offer. Let me hug you both. You first, Helena.”

“Actually it’s Hilda.” Her face was now forcibly buried in the scarlet shirt of the taller Oriana. Having released my wife her gaze now focused on me.

“And now you, Humphrey…”

“My first name’s Horace,” I corrected her. “You can call me Rumpole.”

“I’m sorry. We’re so busy here that we sometimes miss the details. Why are you so stiff and tense, Horace?” Oriana threw her arms around me in a grip which caused me to stiffen in something like panic. For a moment my nose seemed to be in her hair, but then she threw back her head, looked me straight in the eye and said, “Now we’ve got you here we’re really going to teach you to relax, Horace.”

We unpacked in a bedroom suite as luxurious as that in any other country hotel. In due course, Oriana rang us to invite us on a tour of the other, less comfortable attractions of Minchingham Hall.

There were a number of changing rooms where the visitors, or patients, stripped down to their underpants or knickers and, equipped with regulation dressing gowns and slippers, set out for their massages or other treatments. Each of these rooms, so Oriana told us, was inhabited by a “trained and experienced therapist” who did the pummelling.

The old building was centred round the Great Hall where, below the soaring arches, there was no sign of mediaeval revelry. There was a “spa bath” – a sort of interior whirlpool, and many mechanical exercise machines. Soft music played perpetually and the lights changed from cold blue to warm purple. A helpful blonde girl in white trousers and a string of beads came up to us.

“This is Shelagh,” Oriana told us. “She was a conventional nurse before she came over to us and she’ll be giving you most of your treatments. Look after Mr and Mrs Rumbelow, Shelagh. Show them our steam room. I’ve got to greet some new arrivals.”

So Oriana went off, presumably to hug other customers, and Shelagh introduced us to a contraption that looked like a small moving walkway which you could stride down but which travelled in the opposite direction, and a bicycle that you could exhaust yourself on without getting anywhere.

These delights, Hilda told me, would while away the rest of my afternoon whilst she was going to opt for the relaxing massage and sun-ray therapy. I began to wonder, without much hope, if there were anywhere in Minchingham Hall where I could find something that would be thoroughly bad for me.

The steam room turned out to be a building – almost a small house – constructed in a corner of the Great Hall. Beside the door were various dials and switches, which, Shelagh told us, regulated the steam inside the room.

“I’ll give you a glimpse inside,” Shelagh said, and she swung the door open. We were immediately enveloped in a surge of heat which might have sprung from an equatorial jungle. Through the cloud we could see the back of a tall, perspiring man wearing nothing but a towel round his waist.

“Mr Airlie!” Shelagh called into the jungle. “This is Mr and Mrs Rumpole. They’ll be beginning their treatments tomorrow.”

“Mr Rumpole. Hi!” The man turned and lifted a hand. “Join me in here tomorrow. You’ll find it’s heaven. Absolute heaven! Shut the door, Shelagh, it’s getting draughty.”

Shelagh shut the door on the equatorial rain forest and returned us to a grey Norfolk afternoon. I went back to my room and read Wordsworth before dinner. There may have been a lot wrong with the English countryside he loved so much – there was no wireless, no telephone, no central heating and no reliable bus service. But at least at that time they had managed to live without health farms.

Before dinner all the guests were asked to assemble in the Great Hall for Oriana to give us a greeting. If I had met myself at Minchingham Hall I also met the other visitors. The majority of them were middle aged and spreading, as middle aged people do, but there were also some younger, more beautiful women who seemed particularly excited by the strange environment and a few younger men.

Oriana stood, looking, I thought, even more beautiful than ever as she addressed us. “Welcome to you all on this Eve of Christmas and welcome especially to our new friends. When you leave you are going, I hope, to be more healthy than when you arrived. But there is something even more important than physical health. There is the purification of our selves so that we can look inward and find peace and tranquility. Here at Minchingham we call that ‘bliss’. Let us now enjoy a short period of meditation and then hug our neighbours.”

I meditated for what seemed an eternity on the strange surroundings, the state of my bank balance and whether there was a chance of a decent criminal defence brief in the New Year. My reverie was broken by Oriana’s command to hug. The middle aged, fairly thin, balding man next to me took me in his arms.

“Welcome to Minchingham, Rumpole. Graham Banks. You may remember I instructed you long ago in a dangerous driving case.”

It was the first time in my life that I’d been hugged by a solicitor. As it was happening, Oriana started to hum and the whole company joined in, making a noise like a swarm of bees. There may have been some sort of signal, but I didn’t see it, and we processed as one in what I hoped was the direction of the dining room. I was relieved to find that I was right. Perhaps things were looking up.

The dining room at Minchingham Hall was nowhere near the size of the Great Hall but it was still imposing. There was a minstrels’ gallery where portraits hung of male and female members of the Minchingham family, who had inhabited the Hall, it seemed, for generations before the place had been given over to the treatment industry.

Before the meal I was introduced to the present Lord Minchingham, a tall, softly spoken man in a tweed suit who might have been in his late fifties. His long nose, heavy eyelids and cynical expression were echoed in the portraits on the walls.

“All my ancestors – the past inhabitants of Minchingham Hall,” he explained and seemed to be dismissing them with a wave of his hand. Then he pointed to a bronze angel with its wings spread over a map of the world as it was known in the seventeenth century. “This is a small item that might amuse you, Mr Rumpole. You see, my ancestors were great travellers and they used this to plan in which direction they would take their next journey,” and he showed me how the angel could be swivelled round over the map. “At the moment I’ve got her pointing upwards as they may well be in heaven. At least some of them.”

When we sat down to dinner Hilda and I found ourselves at a table with Graham Banks (the solicitor who had taken me in his arms earlier) and his wife. Banks told us that he was Oriana’s solicitor and he was at pains to let me know that he now had little to do with the criminal law.

“Don’t you find it very sordid, Rumpole?” he asked me.

“As sordid and sometimes as surprising as life itself,” I told him, but he didn’t seem impressed.

Lord Minchingham also came to sit at our table, together with the corpulent man I had last seen sweating in the steam room, who gave us his name as Fred Airlie.

Dinner was hardly a gastronomic treat. The aperitif consisted of a strange, pale yellowish drink, known as “yak’s milk”. We were told it is very popular with the mountain tribes of Tibet. It may have tasted fine there, but it didn’t, as they say of some of the finest wines, travel well. In fact it tasted so horrible that as I drank it I closed my eyes and dreamt of Pommeroy’s Very Ordinary.

The main course, indeed the only course, was a small portion of steamed spinach and a little diced carrot, enough, perhaps, to satisfy a small rodent but quite inadequate for a human.

It was while I was trying to turn this dish, in my imagination, into a decent helping of steak and kidney pie with all the trimmings that I was hailed by a hearty voice from across the table.

“How are you getting on, Rumpole? Your first time here I take it?” Fred Airlie asked me.

I wanted to say “the first and I hope the last” but I restrained myself. “I’m not quite sure I need treatments,” was what I said.

“The treatments are what we all come here for,” Airlie boomed at me. “As I always say to Oriana, your treatments are our treats!”

“But fortunately I’m not ill.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Well, I mean it’s bad enough being treated when you’re ill. But to be treated when you’re not ill…”

“It’s fun, Rumpole. This place’ll give you the greatest time in the world. Anyway, you look as though you could lose half a stone. I’ve lost almost that much.”

“Ah! Is that so?” I tried to feign interest.

“You’ve come at a fortuitous moment,” Airlie said. “Oriana is going to give us a special Christmas dinner.”

“You mean turkey?”

“Turkey meat is quite low in calories,” Airlie assured me.

“And bread sauce? Sprouts? Roast potatoes?”

“I think she’d allow a sprout. So cheer up, Rumpole.”

“And Christmas pud?”

“She’s found a special low calorie one. She’s very pleased about that.”

“Wine?” I sipped my glass of water hopefully.

“Of course not. You can’t get low calorie wine.”

“So the traditional Christmas cheer is ‘Bah Humbug’.”

“Excuse me?” Airlie looked puzzled.

“A touch of the Scrooge about the health farm manageress, is there?” It was no doubt rude of me to say it, and I wouldn’t, probably, have uttered such a sacrilegious thought in those sanctified precincts if Oriana had been near.

For a moment or two Airlie sat back in his chair, regarding me with something like horror, but another voice came to my support.

“Looking round at my ancestors on these walls,” Lord Minchingham murmured, as though he was talking to himself, “it occurs to me that they won several wars, indulged in complicated love affairs and ruled distant territories without ever counting the calories they consumed.”

“But that was long ago,” Airlie protested.

“It was indeed. Very, very long ago.”

“You can’t say Oriana lacks the Christmas spirit. She’s decorated the dining room.”

There were indeed, both in the dining room and the Great Hall, odd streamers placed here and there and some sprigs of holly under some of the pictures. These signs had given me some hopes for a Christmas dinner, hopes that had been somewhat dashed by my talk with Airlie.

“In my great-grandfather’s day,” Minchingham’s voice was quiet but persistent, “a whole ox was roasted on a spit in the Great Hall. The whole village was invited.”

“I think we’ve rather grown out of the spit-roasting period, haven’t we?” Airlie was smiling tolerantly. “And we take a more enlightened view of what we put in our mouths. Whatever you say about it, I think Oriana’s done a wonderful job here. Quite honestly, I look on this place as my home. I haven’t had much of a family life, not since I parted company with the third Mrs Airlie. This has become my home and Oriana and all her helpers are my family. So, Mr Rumpole, you’re welcome to join us.” Airlie raised his glass and took a swig of yak’s milk, which seemed to give him the same good cheer and feeling of being at one with the world as I got from a bottle of Chateau Thames Embankment.

“And let me tell you this.” He leant forward and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “When I go all I’ve got will go to Oriana, so she can build the Remedial Wing she’s so keen on. I’ve told her that.”

“That’s very good of you.” Minchingham seemed genuinely impressed. “My old father was very impressed with Oriana when he did the deal with her. But he wasn’t as generous as you.”

“I’m not generous at all. It’s just a fair reward for all the good this place has done me.”

He sat back with an extremely satisfied smile. I’ve always found people who talk about their wills in public deeply embarrassing, as though they were admitting to inappropriate love affairs or strange sexual behaviour. And then I thought of his lost half stone and decided it must have had enormous value to bring such a rich reward to the health farm.

Thomas Minchingham left us early. When he had gone, Airlie told us, “Tom Minchingham rates Oriana as highly as we all do. And, as he told us, his father did before him.”

Whether it was hunger or being in a strange and, to me, curiously alien environment, I felt tired and went to bed early. My wife Hilda opted for a discussion in the Great Hall on the “art of repose”, led by two young men who had become Buddhist monks. I had fallen asleep some hours before she got back and, as a consequence, I woke up early.

I lay awake for a while as a dim morning light seeped through the curtains. My need for food became imperative and I thought I might venture downstairs to see if breakfast was still a custom at Minchingham Hall.

When I turned on the lights the dining room had been cleared and was empty. I thought I could hear sounds from the kitchen but I was stopped by a single cry, a cry of panic or a call for help. I couldn’t tell which. I only knew that it was coming from the Great Hall.

When I got there, I saw the nurse Shelagh, already dressed, standing by the door to the steam room. The door was open and hot steam was billowing around. Looking into the room I saw Fred Airlie lying face down; a pool of blood had formed under his forehead.

Shelagh came towards me out of the mist. “Is he hurt badly?” I asked her.

“Is he hurt?” she repeated. “I’m afraid he’s dead. He couldn’t get out, you see.”

“Why couldn’t he? The door opens…”

Shelagh bent down and picked up a piece of wood, about a foot long; it could have been part of a sawn-off chair leg. As she held it out to me she said, “Someone jammed the door handle with this on the outside. That’s how I found it when I came down.”

She showed me how the wood had been jammed into the oval circle of the door handle. Fred Airlie had been effectively locked into a steam filled tomb and left there to die.

“I think you’d better call someone, don’t you?” I asked Shelagh. She agreed and went at once to the small closet that held the telephone. I waited for her to come back and, once she arrived, told her that I was going to my room and would make myself available if needed.

It was Christmas morning. The bells of the village church rang out the usual peals of celebration. The sun rose cheerfully, flecking the empty branches of the trees with an unusually golden light. In our bedroom Hilda and I exchanged presents. I received my tie and socks with appropriate gasps of surprise and delight and she greeted her lavender water in the same way. It was difficult to remember that, in the apparently peaceful health farm, a man had been done horribly to death while we were asleep.

“I don’t know what it is about you, Rumpole,” She Who Must Be Obeyed told me, “but you do seem to attract crime wherever you go. You often say you’re waiting for some good murder case to come along.”

“Do I say that?” I felt ashamed.

“Very often.”

“I suppose that’s different,” I tried to excuse myself. “I get my work long after the event. Served up cold in a brief. There are names, photographs of people you’ve never met. It’s all laid out for a legal argument. But we had dinner with Fred Airlie. He seemed so happy,” I remembered.

“Full of himself.” He had clearly failed to charm She Who Must Be Obeyed. “When you go downstairs, Rumpole, just you try to keep out of it. We’re on holiday, remember, and it’s got absolutely nothing to do with you.”

When I got downstairs again there was a strange and unusual quietness about the Great Hall and the dining room. The steam room door was closed and there was a note pinned to it that said it was out of order. A doctor had been sent for and had gone away after pronouncing Airlie dead. An ambulance had called and removed the body.

Oriana was going round her patients and visitors, doing her best to spread calm. As I sat down to breakfast (fruit, which I ate, and special low calorie muesli, which I avoided) Graham Banks, the solicitor, came and sat down beside me. He seemed, I thought, curiously enlivened by the night’s events. However he began by accusing me of a personal interest.

“I suppose this is just up your street, isn’t it, Rumpole?”

“Not really. I wouldn’t want that to happen to anyone.” I told him.

Banks thought this over and poured himself a cup of herbal tea (the only beverage on offer). “You know that they’re saying someone jammed the door so Airlie couldn’t escape?”

“Shelagh told me that.”

“They must have done it after midnight when everyone else was asleep.”

“I imagine so.”

“Airlie often couldn’t sleep so he took a late night steam bath. He told me that, so he must have told someone else. Who, I wonder?”

“Yes. I wonder too.”

“So someone must have been about, very early in the morning.’’

“That would seem to follow.”

There was a pause then, whilst Banks seemed to think all this over. Then he said, “Rumpole, if they find anyone they think is to blame for this…”

“By ‘they’ you mean the police?”

“They’ll have to be informed, won’t they?” Banks seemed to be filled with gloom at the prospect.

“Certainly they will. And as the company’s solicitor, I think you’re the man to do it,” I told him.

“If they suspect someone, will you defend them, whoever it is?”

“If I’m asked to, yes.”

“Even if they’re guilty?”

“They won’t be guilty until twelve honest citizens come back from the jury room and pronounce them so. In this country we’re still hanging on to the presumption of innocence, if only by the skin of our teeth.”

There was a silence for a while as Banks got on with his breakfast. Then he asked me, “Will I have to tell them what Airlie said about leaving his money to Oriana?”

“If you think it might be relevant.”

The solicitor thought this over quietly whilst he chewed his spoonful of low calorie cereal. Then he said, “The truth of the matter is that Minchingham Hall’s been going through a bit of a bad patch. We’ve spent out on a lot of new equipment and the amount of business has been, well, all I can say is disappointing. We’re not really full up this Christmas. Of course, Oriana’s a wonderful leader, but not enough people seem to really care about their health.”

“You mean they cling to their old habits, like indulging in turkey with bread sauce and a few glasses of wine?” I couldn’t resist the jab.

He ignored me. “The fact is, this organization is in desperate need of money.”

I let this information hang in the air and we sat in silence for a minute or two, until Graham Banks said, “I was hungry during the night.”

“I know exactly what you mean.” I began to feel a certain sympathy for the solicitor.

“My wife was fast asleep so I thought I’d go down to the kitchen and see if they’d left anything out. A slice of cheese or something. What are you smiling at?”

“Nothing much. It’s just so strange that well-off citizens like you will pay good money to be reduced to the hardships of the poor.”

“I don’t know about that. I only know I fancied a decent slice of cheese. I found some in the kitchen, and a bit of cake.”

“Did you really? Does that mean that the kitchen staff are allowed to become obese?”

“I only know that when I started back up the stairs I met Oriana coming down.” He was silent then, as if he was already afraid that he’d said too much.

“What sort of time was that?” I asked him.

“I suppose it was around one in the morning.”

“Had she been to bed?”

“I think so. She was in a dressing gown.”

“Did she say anything?”

“She said she’d heard some sort of a noise and was going down to see if everything was all right.”

“Did you help her look?”

“I’m afraid not. I went straight on up to bed. I suddenly felt tired.”

“It must have been the unexpected calories.”

“I suppose so.”

Banks fell silent again. I waited to see if there was going to be more. “Is that it?” I asked.

“What?”

“Is that all you want to tell me?”

“Isn’t it enough?” He looked up at me, I thought pleadingly. “I need your advice, Rumpole. Should I tell the police all that? After all, I’m a friend of Oriana. I’ve known her and been her friend for years. I suppose I’ll have to tell them?”

I thought that with friends like that Oriana hardly needed enemies. I knew that the solicitor wouldn’t be able to keep his story to himself. So I told him to tell the police what he thought was relevant and see what they would make of it. I was afraid I knew what their answer would be.

Someone, I wasn’t sure who at the time, had been in touch with the police and two officers were to come at two thirty to interview all the guests. Meanwhile two constables were sent to guard us. Hilda and I wanted to get out of what had now become a Hall of Doom and I asked for, and got permission to walk down to the village. The young officer in charge seemed to be under the mistaken impression that barristers don’t commit murder.

Minchingham village was only half a mile away but it seemed light years from the starvation, the mechanical exercises and the sudden deathtrap at the Hall. The windows of the cottages were filled with Christmas decorations and children were running out of doors to display their presents. We went into the Lamb and Flag and made our way past a Christmas tree, into the bar. There was something here that had been totally absent at Minchingham Hall – the smell of cooking.

Hilda seemed pleased to be bought a large gin and tonic. Knowing that the wine on offer might be even worse than Pommeroy’s, I treated myself to a pint of stout.

“We don’t have to be back there till two thirty,” I told her.

“I wish we never had to be back.”

I felt for She Who Must in her disappointment. The visit to Minchingham Hall, designed to produce a new slim and slender Rumpole, had ended in disaster. I saw one positive advantage to the situation.

“While we’re here anyway,” I said, “we might as well have lunch.”

“All right,” Hilda sighed in a resigned sort of way. “If you don’t mind being fat, Rumpole.”

“I suppose I could put up with it,” I hoped she realized I was facing the prospect heroically, “for another few years. Now, looking at what’s chalked up on the blackboard, I see that they’re offering steak pie, but you might go for the pizza.”

It was while we were finishing our lunch that Thomas Minchingham came into the pub. He had some business with the landlord and then he came over to our table, clearly shaken by the turn of events.

“Terrible business,” he said. “It seems that the police are going to take statements from us.”

“Quite right,” I told him. “We’re on our way back now.”

“You know, I never really took to Airlie, but poor fellow, what a ghastly way to die. Shelagh rang and told me the door was jammed from the outside.”

“That’s right. Somebody did it.”

“I suppose it might be done quite easily. There’s all that wood lying around in the workshop. Anyone could find a bit of old chair leg… I say, would you mind if I joined you? It’s all come as the most appalling shock.”

“Of course not.”

So his lordship sat and consumed the large brandy he’d ordered. Then he asked, “Have they any idea who did it?”

“Not yet. They haven’t started to take statements. But when they find who will benefit from Airlie’s will they might have their suspicions.”

“You don’t mean Oriana?” he asked.

“They may think that.”

“But Oriana? No! That’s impossible.”

“Nothing’s impossible,” I said. “It seems she was up in the night. About the time Airlie took his late night steaming. Her solicitor, Graham Banks, was very keen to point out all the evidence against her.”

Minchingham looked shocked, thought it over and said “But you don’t believe it, do you, Mr Rumpole?”

“I don’t really believe anything until twelve honest citizens come back from the jury room and tell me that it’s true.” I gave him my usual answer.

The Metropolitan Police call their country comrades “turnips”, on the assumption that they are not very bright and so incapable of the occasional acts of corruption that are said to demonstrate the superior ingenuity of the “townees”.

I suppose they might have called Detective Inspector Britwell a turnip. He was large and stolid with a trace of that country accent that had almost disappeared in the area round Minchingham. He took down statements slowly and methodically, licking his thumb as he turned the pages in his notebook. I imagined he came from a long line of Britwells who were more used to the plough and the axe than the notebook and pencil. His side-kick, Detective Sergeant Watkins, was altogether more lively, the product, I imagined, of a local sixth form college and perhaps a university. He would comment on his superior’s interviews with small sighs and tolerant smiles and he occasionally contributed useful questions.

They set up their headquarters in the Great Hall, far from the treatment area, and we waited outside for our turns.

Graham Banks was called first and I wondered if he would volunteer to be the principal accuser. When he came out he avoided Oriana, who was waiting with the rest of us, and went upstairs to join his wife.

Thomas Minchingham was called in briefly and I imagined that he was treated with considerable respect by the turnips. Then Shelagh went in to give the full account of her discovery of Airlie and the steam room door.

Whilst we were waiting Oriana came up to me. She seemed, in the circumstances, almost unnaturally calm, as though Airlie’s murder was nothing but a minor hitch in the smooth running of Minchingham Hall. “Mr Rumpole,” she began. “I’m sorry I got your name wrong. Graham has told me you are a famous barrister. He says you are something of a legend round the courts of justice.”

“I’m glad to say that I have acquired that distinction,” I told her modestly, “since the day, many years ago, when I won the Penge Bungalow murder case alone and without a leader.”

There was a moment’s pause as she thought it over. I looked at her, a tall, rather beautiful woman, dedicated to the healing life, who was, perhaps, a murderess.

“I’m entitled to have a lawyer present, when I’m answering their questions?”

“Certainly.”

“Can I ask you to be my lawyer, Mr Rumpole?”

“I would have to be instructed by a solicitor.”

“I’ve already spoken to Graham. He has no objections.”

“Very well then. You’re sure you don’t want Graham to be present as well?”

“Would you, Mr Rumpole,” she gave a small, I thought rather bitter, smile, “in all the circumstances?”

“Very well,” I agreed. “But in any trial I might be a possible witness. After all, I did hear what Airlie said. I might have to ask the judge’s permission…”

“Don’t let’s talk about any trial yet.” She put a slim hand on mine and her smile became sweeter. “I would like to think you were on my side.”

I was called next into the dining room and the turnip in charge looked hard at me and said, without a smile, “I suppose you’ll be ready to defend whoever did this horrible crime, Mr Rumpole.”

“In any trial,” I told him, “I try to see that justice is done.” I’m afraid I sounded rather pompous and my remark didn’t go down too well with the Detective Inspector.

“You barristers are there to get a lot of murderers off. That’s been our experience down here in what you’d call ‘the sticks’.”

“We are there to make an adversarial system work,” I told him, “and as for Minchingham, I certainly wouldn’t call it the sticks. A most delightful village, with a decent pub to its credit.”

When I had gone through what I remembered of the dinner time conversation, the DI said they would see Oriana next.

“She has asked me to stay here with her,” I told the DI, “as her legal representative.”

There was a silence as he looked at me, and he finally said, “We thought as much.”

Oriana gave her statement clearly and well. The trouble was that it did little to diminish or contradict the evidence against her. Yes, the Minchingham Hall health farm was in financial difficulties. Yes, Airlie had told her he was leaving her all his money, and she didn’t improve matters by adding that he had told her that his estate, after many years as a successful stockbroker, amounted to a considerable fortune. Yes, she got up at about one in the morning because she thought she heard a noise downstairs, but, no, she didn’t find anything wrong or see anybody. She passed the steam room and didn’t think it odd that it was in use as Airlie would often go into it when he couldn’t sleep at night. No, she saw nothing jamming the door and she herself did nothing to prevent the door being opened from the inside.

At this point the Detective Sergeant produced the chair leg, which was now carefully wrapped in cellophane to preserve it as the prosecution’s Exhibit A. The DI asked the question.

“This was found stuck through the handle of the door to the steam room. As you know, the door opens inwards so this chair leg would have jammed the door and Mr Airlie could not have got out. And the steam dial was pushed up as far as it would go. Did you do that?”

Oriana’s answer was a simple “No.”

“Do you have any idea who did?”

“No idea at all.”

It was at that point that she was asked if she would agree to have her fingerprints taken. I was prepared to make an objection, but Oriana insisted that she was quite happy to do so. The deed was done. I told the officers that I had seen the chair leg for a moment when the nurse showed it to me, but I hadn’t held it in my hand, so as not to leave my own prints on it.

At this DI Britwell made what I suppose he thought was a joke. “That shows what a cunning criminal you’d make, Mr Rumpole,” he said, “if you ever decided to go on to the wrong side of the law.”

The DI and the DS laughed at this and once more Oriana gave a faintly amused smile. The turnips told us that they planned to be back again at six p.m. and that until then the witnesses would be carefully guarded and would not be allowed to leave the Hall.

“And that includes you this time, Mr Rumpole,” Detective Inspector Britwell was pleased to tell me.

Oriana made a request. A school choir with their music master were coming to sing carols at four o’clock. Would they be allowed in? Rather to my surprise DI Britwell agreed, no doubt infected by the spirit of Christmas.

As I left the dining room I noticed that the little baroque angel had been swivelled round. She was no longer pointing vaguely upward, and her direction now was England, perhaps somewhere in the area of Minchingham Hall.

The spirit of Christmas seemed to descend on Minchingham more clearly during that afternoon than at any other time during our visit. The Great Hall was softly lit, the Christmas decorations appeared brighter, the objects of exercise were pushed into the shadows, the choir had filed in and the children’s voices rose appealingly.

“Silent Night,” they sang, “Holy Night, All is calm, All is bright. Round yon Virgin, Mother and Child, Holy Infant so tender and mild, Sleep in heavenly peace.”

I sat next to Shelagh the nurse, who was recording the children’s voices on a small machine. “Just for the record,” she said. “I like to keep a record of all that goes on in the Hall.”

A wonderful improvement, I thought, on her last recorded event. And then, because the children were there, we were served Christmas tea, and a cake and sandwiches were produced. It was a golden moment when Minchingham Hall forgot the calories!

When it was nearly six o’clock Detective Inspector Britwell arrived. He asked me to bring Oriana into the dining hall and I went with her to hear the result of any further action he might have taken. It came, shortly and quickly.

“Oriana Mandeville,” he said. “I am arresting you for the willful murder of Frederick Alexander Airlie. Anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence at your trial.”

I awoke very early on Boxing Day, when only the palest light was seeping through a gap in the curtains. The silent night and Holy night was over. It was time for people all over the country to clear up the wrapping paper, put away the presents, finish up the cold turkey and put out tips for the postman. Boxing Day is a time to face up to our responsibilities.

My wife, in the other twin bed, lay sleeping peacefully. Hilda’s responsibilities didn’t include the impossible defence of a client charged with murder when all the relevant evidence seemed to be dead against her. I remember her despairing, appealing look as Detective Inspector Britwell made her public arrest. “You’ll get me out of this, won’t you?” was what the look was saying, and at that moment I felt I couldn’t make any promises.

I bathed, shaved and dressed quietly. By the time I went downstairs it had become a subdued, dank morning, with black, leafless trees standing against a grey and unsympathetic sky.

There seemed to be no one about. It was as if all the guests, overawed by the tragedy that had taken place, were keeping to their rooms in order to avoid anything else that might occur.

I went into the echoing Great Hall and mounted a stationary bike and I started pedaling on my journey to nowhere at all. I was trying to think of any possible way of helping Oriana at her trial. Would I have to listen to the prosecution witnesses and then plead guilty in the faint hope of getting the judge to give my client the least possible number of years before she might be a candidate for parole? Was that all either she or I could look forward to?

I had just decided that it was when I heard again in that empty hall, the sound of the children’s voices singing “Once In Royal David’s City”. I got off the bike and went to one of the treatment rooms. Nurse Shelagh was alone there, sitting on a bed and listening to her small tape recorder.

When she saw me she looked up and wiped the tears from her eyes with the knuckles of her hands. She said, “Forgive me, Mr Rumpole. I’m being silly.” And she switched off the music.

“Not at all,” I told her. “You’ve got plenty to cry about.”

“She told me you’re a famous defender. You’ll do all you can for her, won’t you, Mr Rumpole?”

“All I can. But it might not be very much.”

“Oriana wouldn’t hurt anyone. I’m sure of that.”

“She’s a powerful woman. People like her are continually surprising.”

“But you will do your best, won’t you?”

I looked at Shelagh, sadly unable to say much to cheer her up. “Could you turn me into a slim, slender barrister in a couple of days?” I asked her.

“Probably not.”

“There, you see. We’re both playing against impossible odds. Is that what you used to record the children?” I picked up the small recording machine. It was about as thick as a cigarette packet but a few inches longer.

“Yes. Isn’t it ridiculous? It’s the dictaphone we use in the office. It’s high time we got some decent equipment.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, as I gave it back to her. “Everything that can be done for Oriana will be done.”

The dining hall was almost empty at breakfast time, but I heard a call of “Rumpole! Come and join us.” So I reluctantly went to sit down with Graham Banks, the solicitor, and his wife. I abolished all thoughts of bacon and eggs and tucked into a low-calorie papaya biscuit. I rejected the yak’s milk on this occasion in favour of a pale and milkless tea.

“She wants you to represent her,” Banks began.

“That’s what she told me.”

“So I’ll be sending you a brief, Rumpole. But of course she’s in a hopeless situation.”

I might have said, “She wouldn’t be in such a hopeless situation if you hadn’t handed over quite so much evidence to help the police in their conviction of your client’s guilt,” but I restrained myself and only said, “You feel sure that’s what she did?”

“Of course. She was due to inherit all Airlie’s money. Who else had a motive?”

“I can’t think of anyone at the moment.”

“If she’s found guilty of murdering Airlie she won’t be able to inherit the money anyway. That’s the law, isn’t it?”

“Certainly.”

“I’ll have to tell her that. Then there’d be no hope of the health farm getting the money either. Tom Minchingham’s father made the contract with her personally.”

“Then you’ve got a bundle of good news for her.” I dug into what was left of my papaya biscuit.

“There is another matter.” Banks looked stern. “I’ll also have to tell her that the prosecution will probably oppose bail because of the seriousness of the offence.”

“More good news,” I said, but this time the solicitor ignored me and continued to look determinedly grave and hopeless. At this point Mrs Banks announced that they were going straight back to London. “This place is now too horrible to stay in for a moment longer.”

“Are you going back to London this morning, Rumpole?” Banks asked me.

“Not this morning. I might stay a little while longer. I might have a chat with some of the other people who were with us at the table with Airlie.”

“Whatever for?”

“Oh, they might have heard something helpful.”

“Can you imagine what?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Anyway.” Graham Banks gave me a look of the utmost severity. “It’s the solicitor’s job to go round collecting the evidence. You won’t find any other barrister doing it!”

“Oh yes, I know.” I did my best to say this politely. “But then I’m not any other barrister, am I?”

It turned out that She Who Must Be Obeyed was of one mind with Mrs Banks. “I want to get out of here as quickly as possible,” she said. “The whole Christmas has been a complete disaster. I shall never forget the way that horrible woman killed that poor man.”

“So you’re giving up on health farms?”

“As soon as possible.”

“So I can keep on being fat?”

“You may be fat, Rumpole, but you’re alive! At least that can be said for you.”

I asked Hilda for her recollection of the dinner table conversation, which differed only slightly from my own memory and that of Banks and his wife. There was another, slim, young couple at our table, Jeremy and Anna, who were so engrossed in each other that they had little recall of what else had been going on. The only other person present was Tom Minchingham.

I obtained his number from Shelagh and I rang him. I told him what I wanted and suggested we discuss it over a bottle of wine in the dining hall.

“Wine? Where do you think you’re going to find that at the health farm?”

“I took the precaution of placing a bottle in my hand luggage. It’s vintage Chateau Thames Embankment. I feel sure you’d like it.”

He told me that it would have to be in the afternoon, so I said that would suit me well.

After lunch was over and the table had been cleared I set out the bottle and two glasses. I also moved a large and well covered potted plant nearer to where we were going to sit.

Then I made a brief call to Shelagh and received a satisfactory answer to the question I should have asked earlier. I felt a strange buzz of excitement at the almost too late understanding of a piece of the evidence in Oriana’s case which should have been obvious to me. Then I uncorked the bottle and waited as calmly as I could for the arrival of the present Lord Minchingham.

He arrived, not more than twenty minutes late, in a politely smiling mood. “I’m delighted to have a farewell drink, with you, Rumpole,” he said. “But I’m afraid I can’t help you with this ghastly affair.”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s very ghastly.”

“It’s terrible to think of such a beautiful woman facing trial for murder.”

“It’s terrible to think of anyone facing a trial for murder.”

“You know, something about Oriana has the distinct look of my ancestor Henrietta Ballantyne, as she was before she became Countess Minchingham. There she is, over the fireplace.”

I turned to see the portrait of a tall, beautiful woman dressed in grey silk, with a small spaniel at her feet. She had none of Oriana’s features except for a look of undisputed authority.

“She married the fourth Earl in the reign of James the Second. It was well known that she took lovers, and they all died in mysterious circumstances. One poisoned, another stabbed in the dark on his way home from a ball. Another drowned in a mill stream.”

“What was the evidence against her?”

“Everyone was sure she was guilty.”

“Perhaps her husband did it.”

“He was certainly capable of it. He is said to have strangled a stable lad with his bare hands because his favourite mare went lame. But the Countess certainly planned the deaths of her lovers. You’re not going to defend her as well, are you, Rumpole? It’s a little late in the day to prove my dangerous ancestor innocent?”

“What happened to her?”

“She lived to the age of eighty. An extraordinary attainment in those days. Her last three years were spent as a nun.”

“As you say, a considerable attainment,” I agreed. “Shall we drink to her memory?”

I filled our glasses with the Chateau Thames Embankment that I had thoughtfully included in my packing. His Lordship drank and pulled a face. “I say, this is a pretty poor vintage, isn’t it?”

“Terrible,” I told him. “There is some impoverished area of France, a vineyard perhaps, situated between the pissoir and the barren mountain slopes, where the Chateau Thames Embankment grape struggles for existence. Its advantages are that it is cheap and it can reconcile you to the troubles of life and even, in desperate times, make you moderately drunk. Can I give you a refill?”

In spite of his denigration of the vintage Lord Minchingham took another glass. “Are you well known for taking on hopeless cases, Rumpole?” he asked me, when his glass was empty.

“Some people might say that of me.”

“And I should think they may be damned right. First of all you want to defend my ancestor, who’s dead, and now I hear you’ve taken on the beautiful Oriana, who is clearly guilty.”

“You think that, do you?”

“Well, isn’t it obvious?”

I poured myself another glass and changed the subject. “You’re devoted to this house, aren’t you?”

“Well, it does mean a lot to me. It’s the home of my ancestors. Their portraits are on the walls around us. If they could speak to us, God knows what they would say about the present occupants.”

“You don’t think that the health farm should be here?”

“You want me to be honest, Rumpole?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’d like you to be that.”

“This house has been in my family since Queen Elizabeth made one of her young courtiers the first Earl of Minchingham, probably because she rather fancied him. I don’t say that my ancestors had any particular virtues, Rumpole, but they have been part of British history. We fought for the King in the Civil War. We led a regiment at Waterloo. We went out and ruled bits of the British Empire. One was a young Brigadier killed on the Somme. I suppose most of them would have fancied Oriana, but not as a marriage proposition. But as for the rest of the people here, I don’t think there’s a chance that any one of them would have received an invitation to dinner.”

“Do you think they would have invited me to dinner?”

There was a pause and then he said, “If you want me to be completely honest, Rumpole, no.”

“Didn’t they need lawyers?”

“Oh yes. They needed them in the way they needed gamekeepers and carpenters and butlers and cooks. But they didn’t invite them to dinner.”

I considered this and refilled our glasses. “I suppose you think your old father did the wrong thing, then?”

“Of course he did. I suppose he became obsessed with Oriana.”

“Did you argue with him about it?”

“I was away in the Army at the time. He sent me a letter, after the event. I just couldn’t believe what he’d done.”

“How did he meet Oriana?”

“Oh, she had some sort of health club in London. A friend recommended it to him. I think she cured his arthritis. It couldn’t have been very bad arthritis, could it?”

I couldn’t help him about his father’s arthritis, so I said nothing.

“I imagine he fell in love with her. So he gave her this – all our history.”

“But she must have been paying for it. In rent.”

“Peanuts. He must have been too besotted when he signed the contract.”

We had got to a stage in the conversation where I wanted to light a small cigar, Lord Minchingham told me that I was breaking all the rules.

“I feel the heart has been taken out of the health farm,” I told him.

“Good for you. I hope it has.”

“I can understand how you must feel. Where do you live now?”

“My father also sold the Dower House. He did that years ago, when my grandmother died. I live in one of the cottages in the village. It’s perfectly all right but it’s not Minchingham Hall.”

“I can see what you mean.”

“Can you? Can you really, Rumpole?” He seemed grateful for my understanding. “I’m afraid I haven’t been much help to you.”

“Don’t worry. You’ve been an enormous help.”

“We all heard what Airlie said at dinner. That he was leaving his fortune to Oriana.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “We all heard that.”

“So I suppose that’s why she did it.”

“That’s the generally held opinion,” I told him. “The only problem is, of course, that she didn’t do it.”

“Is that what she’s going to say in court?”

“Yes.”

“No one will believe her.”

“On the contrary. Everyone will believe she didn’t do it.”

“Why?” Lord Minchingham laughed, a small, mirthless laugh, mocking me.

“Shelagh told me what she found. The steam turned up from the outside and a chair leg stuck through the door handle to stop it opening from the inside.”

“So that’s how Oriana did the murder.”

“Do you really think that if she’d been the murderer she’d have left the chair leg stuck in the handle? Do you think she’d have left the steam turned up? Oriana may have her faults but she’s not stupid. If she’d done it she’d have removed the chair leg and turned down the steam. That would have made it look like an accident. The person who did it wanted it to look like a murder.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“What am I forgetting?”

“No one else would want to kill Airlie.”

“Oh, Airlie wasn’t considered important by whoever did this. Airlie was just a tool, like the chair leg in the door handle and the steam switch on the outside. If you want to know which victim this murderer was after, it wasn’t Airlie, it was Oriana.”

“Then who could it possibly be?”

“Someone who wanted Oriana to be arrested, and tried for murder. Someone who would be delighted if she got a life sentence. Someone who thought the health farm wouldn’t exist without her. I haven’t seen the contract she signed with your father. Did his lawyer put in some clause forbidding indecent or illegal conduct on the premises? In fact, Lord Minchingham, someone who desperately wanted his family home back.”

The effect of this was extraordinary. As he sat at the table in front of me Tom Minchingham was no longer a cheerful, half-amused aristocrat. His hand gripped his glass and his face was contorted with rage. He seemed to have turned, before my eyes, into his ancestor who had strangled a stable lad with his bare hands.

“She deserved it,” he said. “She had it coming! She cheated my father and stole my house from me!”

“I knew it was you,” I told him, “when we met in the pub. You talked about the chair leg in the door handle. When Shelagh rang you she never said anything about a chair leg. She told me that. I suppose you’ve still got a key to the house. Anyway, you got in after everyone had gone to bed. Airlie told us at dinner about his late night steam baths. You found him in there, enjoying the steam. Then you jammed the door and left him to die. Now Oriana’s in an overnight police cell, I suppose you think your plan has been an uncommon success.”

In the silence that followed Tom Minchingham relaxed. The murderous ancestor disappeared, the smiling aristocrat returned. “You can’t prove any of it,” he said.

“Don’t be so sure.”

“You can invent all the most ridiculous defences in the world, Mr Rumpole. I’m sure you’re very good at that. But they won’t save Oriana because you won’t be able to prove anything. You’re wasting my time and yours. I have to go now. I won’t thank you for the indifferent claret and I don’t suppose we will ever meet again.”

He left then. When he had gone I retrieved, from the foliage of the potted plant on the table, the small dictaphone I had borrowed from Shelagh. I felt as I always did when I sat down after a successful cross-examination.

Going home on the train Hilda said, “You look remarkably pleased with yourself, Rumpole.”

“I am,” I said, a little cheered.

“And yet you haven’t lost an ounce.”

“I may not have lost an ounce but I’ve gained a defence brief. I think, in the case of the Queen versus Oriana, we might be able to defeat the dear old Queen.”