The Throwback

Chapter fifteen

Nobody else could find a simple solution to the problem of what had occurred in East Pursley. The discovery by an army helicopter of the Superintendent of Police hanging to the upper branches of a monkey-puzzle tree which would have defied the efforts of any but the most insane men to climb it didn't help to clarify matters. He kept screaming about mad dogs being loose in the neighbourhood and his statement was supported by Mr Pettigrew and the Lowrys who had wounds to prove it.

'It hardly explains how six golfers and five of my own men came to be shot,' said the Commissioner of Police. 'Mad dogs and Englishmen may go out in the midday sun but the former don't carry side-arms. And what the hell do we say about that fire engine and the petrol tanker, not to mention the London to Brighton express? How many passengers went west in that inferno?'

'Ten,' said the Assistant Commissioner, 'though accurately speaking they were going south. The Southern Region

caters…'

'Shut up,' snarled the Commissioner, 'I've got to explain this to the Home Secretary and it's got to sound good.'-

'Well, I suppose we could divide the two incidents into separate areas,' suggested the Assistant Commissioner, but the Commissioner only looked at him the more lividly.

'Two? Two?' he yelled rattling the windows of his office. 'One, we have an utterly insane half-pay colonel whittling his prick with a cheese-grater in the company of a high-class whore. Two, we have a mad dog roaming the district biting everything in sight. Three, someone looses off firearms into several houses and then explodes a fucking garage with an unidentifiable woman in the inspection pit. Do I have to spell it all out for

you?'

'I take your point,' said the Assistant Commissioner, 'which according to Miss Gigi Lamont is what Colonel Finch-Potter…'

'Shut up,'said theCommissioner savagely and crossed his legs. They sat in silence and considered a convincing explanation.

'At least the TV people and the press weren't present,' said the Assistant Commissioner, and his superior nodded thankfully.

'What about blaming the IRA?'

'And give them something else to boast about? You must be out of your tiny mind.'

'Well, they did blow up Mr O'Brain's house,' said the AC.

'Nonsense. The sod blew himself up. There wasn't a trace of explosive in the house,' said the Commissioner, 'he was fiddling with the gas stove…'

'But he wasn't connected to the gas main…' the AC began.

'And I won't be connected to my job unless we come up with something before noon,' shouted the Commissioner. 'First of all we've got to stop the press going in there and asking questions. Got any ideas on the subject?'

The Assistant Commissioner considered the problem. 'I don't suppose we could say the mad dogs had rabies,' he said finally. 'I mean we could put the area in quarantine and shoot anything…'

'We've already shot half the police in that patch,' said the Commissioner, 'and while I'm inclined to agree that they were mad you still don't go round shooting people who've contracted rabies. You inoculate the brutes. Still, it would serve to keep the press and the media out. And how do you explain the six bleeding golfers? Just because some fool slices his drive you don't have a drive to slice him and five others with multiple gunshot wounds. We've got to come up with some logical explanation.' 'Sticking to the rabies theory,' said the Assistant Commissioner, 'if one of our men contracted rabies and went berserk…'

'You can't contract rabies instantaneously. It takes weeks to come out.'

'But if there were a special sort of rabies, a new variety like swine fever,' persisted the Assistant. 'The dog bites the Colonel…'

'That's out for a start. There's no evidence that anybody bit Colonel Finch-Fucking-Potter except himself and that in an anatomically impossible place unless the bastard was a contortionist as well as a pervert.' 'But he's not in a fit condition to deny the rabies theory,' said the Assistant Commissioner. 'He's clean off his rocker.'

'Not the only thing he's off,' muttered the Commissioner, 'but all right, go on.'

'We start with galloping rabies and the dog and everything follows quite logically. The armed squad go off their heads and start shooting…'

'That's going to sound great on the nine o'clock news. "Five officers of the Special Squad, organized to protect foreign diplomats, this morning went mad and shot six golfers on the East Pursley Golf Course.' I know there's no such thing as bad publicity but in this case I have my doubts.'

'But it doesn't have to be announced on the news,' said the Assistant Commissioner. 'In a case of this sort we invoke the Official Secrets Act.'

The Commissioner nodded approvingly. 'We'd need the cooperation of the War Office for that,' he said.

'Well, those helicopters could have come from Porton Down and the Biological Warfare Research Station is there.'

'They just happen to have come from somewhere else, and anyway they came after the show was over.'

'But they don't know that,' said the Assistant Commissioner, 'and you know how dim the Army Command is. The main thing is that we can threaten to put the blame on them and…'

In the end it was agreed at a Joint Meeting of the Home Secretary, the Minister of Defence and the Commissioner of Police that the happenings at Sandicott Crescent were subject to official silence and, invoking the Defence of The Realm Act together with the Official Secrets Act, the editors of all papers were ordered not to publicize the tragedy. The BBC and ITV were similarly warned and the news that night contained only the story of the petrol tanker that had exploded and set the London to Brighton express on fire in the process. Sandicott Crescent was sealed off and army marksmen went through the bird sanctuary with rifles killing anything that moved as an exercise in stopping the spread of rabies. They found only birds and from a sanctuary the wood became a mortuary. Fortunately for the bull-terrier it didn't move. It slept on and on outside the Colonel's kitchen door. It was about the only creature apart from Lockhart and Jessica who didn't move. Mr Grabble, driven from his house by the upsurge of the sewer, handed in his notice that afternoon wearing a pair of bedroom slippers over his chemically cauterized feet. Mr Rickenshaw finally managed to get his wife to hospital and the Pettigrews spent the afternoon packing. They too left before dark. The Lowrys had already left and were being given rabies inoculations in the company of several firemen, the Police Superintendent and a number of his men at the local isolation hospital. Even Mrs Simplon had gone, in a small sinister plastic bag which so upset Mrs Ogilvie that she had to be sedated.

'There's only us left,' she moaned, 'everyone else has gone. 1 want to go too. All those dead men lying out there… I'll never be able to look out at the golf course without seeing them on the dogleg ninth.'

This remark put Mr Ogilvie in mind of both dogs and legs. He too would never feel the same about Sandicott Crescent. A week later they too left and Lockhart and Jessica could look out their bedroom window at eleven empty houses, each standing (with the exception of Mr O'Brain's Bauhaus, which had slumped somewhat) in substantial and well-kept grounds in an apparently desirable neighbourhood within easy reach of London and adjoining an excellent golf club whose waiting list had been conveniently shortened by recent events. As the builders moved in to restore the houses to their pristine state, and in the case of Mr Grabble's to a sanitary one, Lockhart had time to turn his attention to other things.

There was, for instance, the little matter of Miss Genevieve Goldring's forthcoming novel. Song of the Heart, to be considered. Lockhart took to buying the Bookseller to check when it was due to be published. Since Miss Goldring managed to write five books a year under various pseudonyms, her publishers were forced by the impetus of her output to bring out two Goldring books in the same period. There was a Spring List Goldring novel and an Autumn one. Song of the Heart appeared in the Autumn List and came out in October. Lockhart and Jessica watched it climb from nine on the best-sellers list to two within three weeks and finally to Top. It was then that Lockhart struck. He travelled to London with a copy of the novel and spent part of an afternoon in the office of the younger of the two Giblings, and the rest of it in the office of the older with young Mr Gibling in attendance. By the time he left, the Giblings were in transports of legal rhapsody. Never in all their experience, and old Mr Gibling had had a great deal of experience in matters concerning libel; never had they come across a more blatant and outrageously wicked libel. Better still. Miss Genevieve Goldring's publishers were immensely rich, thanks in large part to her popularity, and now they were going to be immensely generous out of court in their settlement, thanks to Miss Goldring's wicked libel, or best of all they would be immensely stupid and fight the case in court, a prospect so eminently to be desired that Mr and Mr Gibling proceeded with a delicate hesitancy that was calculated to allure.

They wrote politely to Messrs Shortstead, Publishers, of Edg-ware Road, apprising them of an unfortunate fact that had been brought to their notice by a client, one Mr Lockhart Flawse, that his name appeared in that extremely successful novel, Song of the Heart, by Miss Genevieve Goldring and published by Messrs Shortstead, and that in consequence of this unfortunate error they were forced into the regrettable course of having to request Messrs Shortstead to make good the damage done to the private, professional and marital reputation of Mr Flawse by the aspersions cast on his character in the book by a financial payment and legal costs, at the same time withdrawing all copies unsold from circulation and destroying them. 'That should set the trap,' said Mr Gibling to Mr Gibling. 'It is to be devoutly hoped that they will employ the services of some up-and-coming young man in our profession who will advise them to contest.'

Messrs Shortstead did. The reply from the least senior member of the firm of solicitors, Coole, Poole, Stoole and Folsom and Partners, one Mr Arbutus, stated that while Messrs Shortstead and the author of Song of the Heart, hereafter termed the novel, were prepared to offer Mr Flawse their apologies and his legal costs and if necessary some small sum for his pain and injury, they were in no way obliged nor would consider much less agree to the withdrawal of all unsold copies, etc. The letter ended on the cordial note that Coole, Poole, Stoole and Folsom and Partners looked forward to hearing from Mr Gibling. Mr Gibling and Mr Gibling rather doubted it. They held the matter in abeyance for a fortnight and then struck.

'Four hundred thousand pounds damages? Do my ears deceive me?' said Mr Folsom when Mr Arbutus showed him their reply. 'I have never in all my career read anything so monstrous. Giblings have gone mad. Of course we will contest.' 'Contest?' said Mr Arbutus, 'They must have something…" 'Bluff, boy, bluff,' said Mr Folsom, 'I haven't read the book of course but such a sum is unheard-of in innocent libel. Come to that, it's unheard-of in deliberate libel. Probably a typist's error.'

But for once Mr Folsom erred. Mr Shortstead, taking his advice, instead of his own intuition which told him that Song of the Heart was somehow a little different in tone from Miss Goldring's other numerous novels, instructed Mr Arbutus to answer in kind and reversing the natural order of things to tell Mr Gibling and Mr Gibling to sue and be damned. And next day on the third floor of Blackstones House, Lincoln's Inn, London, when the mail was brought before him and opened by the senior clerk, that aged and austere gentleman discovered for the very first time in his life that Mr Gibling the Elder could do the hornpipe very creditably on his desktop; having done so he demanded the immediate production of two, no, three bottles of the best champagne to be sent for at no matter what cost.

'We have them by the nose,' he sang gleefully when Mr Gibling the younger arrived. 'O Lord that I should live to see this day. The nose, brother o' mine, the nose. Read it again. I must hear it.'

And Mr Gibling trembled in litigious ecstasy as the words 'Sue and be damned' quivered in the air.

'Sue and be damned,' he gibbered. 'Sue and be damned. I can hardly wait to hear that threat pronounced by counsel in court. Ah, the judge's face. The beauty, brother, the beauty of it all. The legal life is not without its precious moments. Let us savour the pleasure of this splendid day.'

Mr Partington, the senior clerk, brought in the champagne and Mr Gibling and Mr Gibling sent him to fetch a third glass. Only then did they solemnly toast Mr Lockhart Flawse of 12 Sandicott Crescent for stepping so simultaneously into their lives and out of the pages of Miss Genevieve Goldring's novel with its oh-so-appropriate title. That day there was little work done in Blackstones House, Lincoln's Inn, The drawing-up of writs is not an arduous job and the one issued by Gibling and Gibling between Lockhart Flawse, Plaintiff, and Genevieve Goldring and Messrs Shortstead, Defendants, was no different from other writs and merely stated that Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Our other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith; To Genevieve Goldring properly named Miss Magster c/o Messrs Shortstead… 'WE COMMAND YOU that within fourteen days after the service of this Writ on you, inclusive of the day of service, you do cause an appearance to be entered for you in an action at the suit of Lockhart Flawse and take notice that in default of you doing so the Plaintiff may proceed therein, and judgement may be given in your absence.'

It was served the following day and caused little consternation in the offices of Messrs Shortstead and a great deal in those of Coole, Poole, Stoole and Folsom and Partners where Mr Arbutus, having read Song of the Heart, had discovered the horrid nature of the libel published on the aforesaid Lockhart Flawse; namely that he made a habit of being tied by his wife to the bed and being whipped by his wife, Jessica, and vice versa, and when not whipping or being whipped, stole money from banks in the process of which he shot dead several bank cashiers.

'We can't even plead innocent libel,' he told Mr Folsom but that worthy man had reason to think otherwise.

'No authoress in her right mind would deliberately set out to write a book in which she named a person she knew and ascribed all these perversions and crimes to him. The thing's a nonsense.' It was a view shared by Genevieve Goldring. 'Never heard of the creature,' she told Mr Shortstead and Mr Arbutus, 'and besides it's an improbable name. Frankly I can't remember having written about anyone called Lockhart Flawse with a wife named Jessica.'

'But it's down there in Song of the Heart' said Mr Arbutus, 'you must have read it. After all, you wrote it.'

Genevieve Goldring snorted. 'I write five novels a year. You can't expect me to read the wretched things as well. I leave the matter in the competent hands of Mr Shortstead here.'

'But don't you check your own proofs?'

'Young man,' said Miss Goldring, 'my proofs don't need checking. Correct me if I'm wrong, Mr Shortstead.'

But Mr Shortstead, while he was beginning to hold a different point of view, held his tongue.

Then we are to plead innocent libel?' asked Mr Arbutus. 'I see no reason to plead libel at all,' protested Miss Goldring. 'For all we know this man Flawse does tie his wife to the bed and whip her and with a name like Jessica she thoroughly deserves it. After all it's up to him to prove he doesn't.'

Mr Arbutus pointed out that truth was no defence unless in the public interest.

'I should think a bank robber and pervert was of very considerable public interest. It will probably increase the sales of my novels.'

Counsel thought otherwise. 'We haven't a leg to stand on,' said Mr Widdershins, QC. 'I advise settlement. We can't hope to win in court.'

'But won't the publicity do us good even if we pay?' asked Mr Shortstead, pushed into adopting this line by Miss Goldring who was always complaining that her novels were never sufficiently advertised. Mr Widdershins doubted it but, since he was being paid to conduct the defence, he saw no good reason to deprive himself of the financial remuneration a prolonged case was bound to bring him. 'I leave the decision to you,' he said, 'I have given my opinion and that opinion is that we will lose.'

'But they are demanding four hundred thousand pounds in settlement out of court,' said Mr Shortstead, 'and surely no court is going to award damages to that amount. It's outrageous.' It was.

The trial was held in The High Court of Justice, Queen's Bench Division, before Mr Justice Plummery. Mr Widdershins acted for the defendants and Mr Fescue had been instructed by Mr Gibling and Mr Gibling. The latter were in raptures. Mr Justice Plummery had a reputation for barbarous impartiality and a loathing for quibbling barristers. There was no recourse open to Mr Widdershins but to quibble, and to add to the difficulties of the defence there was Miss Goldring who, if she couldn't win the case, was determined to lose it as flamboyantly as possible.

Mr Shortstead sat beside her shivering in the shade of her crimson hat. One look at the plaintiff, Lockhart Flawse, had been enough to tell him that here was a clean upstanding young man of a type he had forgotten existed; who more probably owned banks than robbed them and who, if he was married, treated his wife with a tenderness that was positively chivalrous. Mr Short-stead was a good judge of character.

Mr Fescue rose to present the plaintiff's case. It was an impeccable one. Mr Lockhart Flawse of 12 Sandicott Crescent, East Pursley – and here Mr Widdershins was seen to cover his eyes with his hands and Miss Goldring's hat to quiver – was a close neighbour of the defendant, so close that he was known to her and had on one occasion been invited to tea by her. A note passed to Mr Widdershins from Miss Goldring simply said, 'Liar, bloody liar. I've never seen the little shit in my life,' at which Mr Widdershins' hopes rose a little. They were lowered by Mr Fescue's continued description of Lockhart Flawse's virtue and tribulations subsequent to the publication of Song of the Heart. Among these tribulations the most important had been his sacking from the firm of Sandicott & Partner, Chartered Accountants, where he had been previously employed. Evidence would be produced that his forced retirement from the lucrative profession had been the direct result of Miss Goldring's infamous attack on his private life and his wholly fictitious propensity for robbing banks and murdering cashiers. Mr Fescue, lacking the knowledge, did not mention that Mr Treyer's readiness to provide such evidence had been obtained in a private interview in which Lockhart had explained that unless Mr Treyer was evidentially co-operative he, Lockhart, would be forced by his conscience into revealing the true facts about Mr Gypsum's tax evasion and VAT avoidance to the appropriate authorities, a threat which had been made the stronger by his production of copies of all Mr Gypsum's files, both dummy and real.

Furthermore, said Mr Fescue, the plaintiff had been shunned by his neighbours to the extent that eleven houses adjacent to his address or in the same street had been left by their occupants to avoid any connection between them and a supposed murderer. And finally there was Mrs Flawse, correctly named in the novel as Jessica, who would testify that she had never once tied her husband or been tied by him to their marital bed and that there wasn't a whip in the house. Mrs Flawse's distress was of so great an order of magnitude that she had recently taken to wearing a veil to avoid being accosted (in the street) by men with a taste for bondage and flagellation, or alternately insulted by women she had formerly been able to invite to her house but who now refused her entry to their own. By the time Mr Fescue had finished he had portrayed an accurate picture of the young couple's social isolation for quite the wrong reasons, and an inaccurate one of their future financial prospects as a result of the publication of Song of the Heart for the right reasons, namely that the damages to be paid would be enormous.

When Mr Fescue sat down Mr Justice Plummery "and the jury were clearly impressed and Mr Widdershins rose for the defence extremely handicapped. It was all very well for Miss Goldring to claim that Lockhart Flawse was a liar. It was going to be another matter to prove it. Mr Flawse did not look a liar. If anything he looked the opposite while, even behind her veil, Mrs Jessica Flawse radiated an innocence that was in marked contrast to the raddled flamboyance of his client. Booze, books and bed had all left their marks on Miss Goldring. Mr Widdershins did his best. The libel, he claimed, was entirely innocent. The defendant had no knowledge of the plaintiff's existence and had never so much as set eyes on him. The imputation that she had once invited him to tea was utterly without foundation and the fact that Miss Goldring lived in West Pursley while the plaintiff occupied a house in East was purely coincidental. However in the light of the statements made by his learned friend, Mr Fescue, the defence were prepared to apologize and make financial reparation for the damage done to the plaintiff and his wife and for the scorn, ridicule and consequential loss of his profession… Here Miss Goldring broke away from the restraining hand of Mr Shortstead and rose to say that never, never, never would she pay one penny, one single penny to a man she had never written about in her life and that if anyone thought she would they were mistaken. Mr Justice Plummery regarded her with an immense distaste that would have withered the Sphinx at fifty yards and rendered it articulate at a hundred.

'Kindly sit down, madam,' he snarled with blood and iron in his voice. 'What you will or will not do it is up to the Court to decide. But one thing I do assure you, a second interruption and I shall have you held for contempt. Proceed with what there is of your case, Mr Widdershins.'

Mr Widdershins' Adam's apple bobbed like a ping-pong ball on a waterspout in a fairground shooting-gallery as he tried to find words. He had no case.

'My clients plead innocent libel, m'lud,' he squeaked in direct contradiction to his instructions. Mr Justice Plummery looked at him dubiously.

'That is not what I understood,' he said. Mr Widdershins asked for an adjournment to consult with his clients. It was granted and was spent in exultation by Mr Fescue and Mr Gibling and Lockhart, and in acrimonious arguments by Mr Widdershins and Miss Goldring. Mr Shortstead was ready in the face of the plaintiff's case to settle out of court. Miss Goldring in the face of his pusillanimity and the judge's distaste was not.

'It's all a damned lie,' she shouted, 'I never had that little shit to tea and I never used the name Lockhart fucking Flawse in any of my books.'

'But it's there in Song of… ' Mr Shortstead began. 'Shut up,' said Miss Goldring. 'If it's there you must have put it there because it wasn't in the manuscript I sent you.'

'You're quite sure about that?' said Mr Widdershins, looking for some ray of hope in an otherwise hopeless case.

'I swear by Almighty God,' said Miss Goldring with a vehemence that was convincing, 'that I have never ever heard the name Flawse in my life, let alone used it in a book.'

'May we see a copy of the manuscript?' said Mr Widdershins, and Mr Shortstead sent for it. The name Flawse was there in bold pica type.

'What do you say to that?' said Mr Widdershins. Miss Goldring said a great deal and most of it true. Mr Shortstead said little and all of it true.

'Then we shall contest the authenticity of this document,' said Mr Widdershins. 'Are we all agreed on that?'

Miss Goldring was. Mr Shortstead wasn't. 'That is the manuscript we received,' he maintained,

'That was not, is not, nor ever will be the manuscript I dictated. It's a fucking forgery.'

'You're absolutely sure about that?' said Mr Widdershins.

'I swear by Almighty God…'

'Very well. We will contest the case on those grounds, that this document which came into the possession of Mr Shortstead was not the original manuscript you wrote.'

'Precisely,' said Miss Goldring, 'I swear by Almighty God…'

She was still swearing by Almighty God and by lesser deities when she entered the witness box the following day to be cross-examined by an ebullient Mr Fescue. Mr Gibling and Mr Gibling could hardly contain themselves. In fact Mr Gibling the Elder couldn't at all and had to leave the court hurriedly while she was still in the witness box.

'Now Miss Magster,' Mr Fescue began before being stopped by the judge.

'I understood the witness's name to be Miss Genevieve Goldring,' he said, 'now you address her as Miss Magster. Which is it?'

'Miss Genevieve Goldring is an alias,' said Mr Fescue, 'her real…' He was interrupted by a squawk from the witness box.

'Genevieve Goldring is my pen name, my nom de plume,' she said.

Mr Justice Plummery studied the feather in her hat with disgust. 'No doubt,-' he said, 'no doubt your profession requires an assortment of names. The court requires your real one.'

'Miss Magster,' said Miss Goldring, sullenly aware that this revelation would disillusion a large section of her public. 'But I am best known to my admirers as Miss Genevieve Goldring.'

'Again no doubt,' said the judge, 'but then from what I have gathered your admirers have peculiar tastes.'

Mr Fescue took his cue from the judge. 'I am prepared to call you Genevieve Goldring if you so prefer,' he said, 'it is not my intention to harm your professional reputation. Now is it or is it not true that in Song of the Heart you describe the character named Flawse as being addicted to what is known among prostitutes and their clients as bondage and flage?' 'I did not write Song of the Heart,' said Miss Goldring.

'But I thought you had already admitted writing it,' said the judge. 'Now I hear…'

What he heard was a tirade from the witness box on the iniquities of publishers and editors. When she had finished, Mr Fescue turned to Mr Justice Plummery. 'Would it not be as well to examine the original manuscript and compare it with others submitted by the defendant to her publishers, m'lud?' he asked.

'The defendants have no objections,' said Mr Widdershins, and the Court adjourned once again.

Later that afternoon two experts on graphology and typography testified that the manuscript of Song of the Heart had been written, typed and produced by precisely the same machine as King's Closet and Maid of the Moors, both books written by Miss Goldring. Mr Fescue continued his cross-examination of the defendant.

'Having established beyond all possible doubt that you wrote Song of the Heart,' he said, 'is it not also true that you were and are acquainted with the plaintiff, Mr Lockhart Flawse?'

Miss Goldring began a violent denial but Mr Fescue stopped her. 'Before you commit perjury,' he said. 'I would ask you to consider the evidence given under oath by Mr Flawse that you invited him into your house and plied him with creme de menthe?'

In the witness box Miss Goldring stared at him with starting eyes. 'How did you know that?' she asked.

Mr Fescue smiled and looked to the judge and jury. 'Because Mr Flawse told me under oath yesterday,' he said gaily.

But Miss Goldring shook her head. 'About the creme de menthe,' she said weakly.

'Because the plaintiff also told me, though in private,' said Mr Fescue. 'You do, I take it, drink creme de menthe?' Miss Goldring nodded miserably. 'Yes or no,' said Mr Fescue fiercely.

'Yes,' said Miss Goldring. Below her Mr Widdershins and Mr Shortstead both covered their eyes with their hands. Mr Fescue resumed his rout. 'Is it not also true that the carpet in your bedroom is blue flecked with gold, that your bed is heart shaped, that beside it stands a mauve pleated lampshade, that your cat's name is Pinky? Are these facts not all true?' There was no doubting their veracity. The look on Miss

Goldring's face spoke for her. But Mr Fescue had the coup de grace ready.

'And finally is it not a fact that you possess a chow named Bloggs for the sole purpose of preventing anyone you wish to keep out from entering your house without your permission and presence?' Again there was no need for an answer. Mr Fescue had his facts right: he had heard them from Lockhart who in turn had them from Jessica.

'So that,' continued Mr Fescue, 'without your permission Mr Flawse could not have been able to testify in a signed affidavit that when you invited him into the house you did so of your own free will and with the intention of seducing him and having failed of that purpose you set out deliberately and with malice aforethought to destroy his marriage, reputation and means of livelihood by portraying him in a novel as a thief, a pervert and a murderer. Is that not also true?'

'No,' shrieked Miss Goldring, 'no it isn't. I never invited him in. I never…' She hesitated catastrophically. She had invited a number of young men to share her bed

but…

'I have no more questions of this witness,' said Mr Fescue and sat down.

In his summing up Mr Justice Plummery maintained that ferocious impartiality for which he was famous. Miss Goldring's evidence and behaviour in and out of the witness box had left no doubt in his mind that she was a liar, a prostitute in both the literary and sexual meanings of the word, and that she had maliciously set out to do what Mr Fescue had maintained. The jury retired for two minutes and found the libel proved. It was left to the judge to estimate the damages both personal and financial to the plaintiff as being of the order, due consideration being given to the level of inflation which presently and for the foreseeable future stood and would continue to stand at eighteen per cent, of one million pounds sterling, and that furthermore he was sending papers of the case to the Director of Public Prosecutions with the hope that the defendant would be charged with perjury. Miss Genevieve Goldring fainted and was not helped to her feet by Mr Shortstead.

That afternoon there was jubilation in the offices of Mr Gibling and Mr Gibling,

'A million with costs. A million. The highest damages ever awarded in a libel case. And with costs. Dear God, let them appeal, please let them appeal,' said Mr Gibling the Elder.

But Miss Goldring was past appealing. Mr Shortstead's insurers had communicated with him immediately following the award and had made it clear that they intended to sue both him and Miss Goldring for every penny they were being asked to pay.

And at Number 12 Sandicott Crescent Lockhart and Jessica had no qualms.

"Beastly woman,' said Jessica, 'and to think I used to love her books. And they were all lies.'

Lockhart nodded. 'And now we can start to sell the houses too,' he said. 'After so much unfortunate publicity we can't possibly stay in this neighbourhood.'

Next day the sign boards For Sale began to go up in Sandicott Crescent and Lockhart, feeling himself financially secure, decided to open the letters Miss Deyntry had given him.