Rumpole and the Angel of Death Read Online Free Page B

tongue.’
    â€˜You mean he shouldn’t have told me about Kate Inglefield?’
    â€˜What’s he told you about Mizz Inglefield? You mean that rather bright young solicitor from Damiens? She’s quite skinny, as far as I can remember.’
    â€˜Rumpole, why do you keep harping on people’s personal appearances?’
    â€˜Well, didn’t Claude say . . .?’
    â€˜Claude told me that Kate Inglefield had decided never to brief him again. And she’s taken his VAT fraud away from him. And Christine Dewsbury, who’s meant to be his junior in a long robbery, has said she’ll never work with him again, and Mr Ballard . . .’
    â€˜The whited sepulchre who is Head of our Chambers?’
    â€˜Mr Ballard has been giving him some quite poisonous looks.’
    â€˜Those aren’t poisonous looks. That’s Soapy Sam’s usual happy expression.’
    â€˜He’s hinted that Erskine-Brown may have to look for other Chambers. He’s such a wonderful advocate, Rumpole!’
    â€˜Well now, let’s say he’s an advocate of sorts.’
    â€˜And a fine man! A man with very high principles.’ I listened in some surprise. Was this the Claude I had seen stumbling into trouble and lying his way out of it over the last twenty years? ‘And he has absolutely no idea why he is being victimized.’
    â€˜Has he not?’
    â€˜None whatever.’
    â€˜But you know?’
    â€˜No, really. I have no idea.’
    â€˜Well’ – I breathed a sigh of relief – ‘that’s all right then.’
    â€˜No, it’s not all right.’ She stood up, her cheeks flushed, her voice clear and determined. Mizz Crump might be no oil painting, but I thought I saw in her the makings of a fighter. ‘We’ve got to find out why all this is happening. And we’ve got to save him. Will you help me get him out of trouble? Whatever it is.’
    â€˜Helping people in trouble,’ I assured her, ‘has been my job for almost half a century.’
    â€˜So you’re with me, Rumpole?’ She was, I was glad to see, a determined young woman who might go far in the law.
    â€˜Of course I am. We fat people should stick together.’ Naturally, I regretted it the moment I had said it.
    â€˜The Governor says you’re a model prisoner.’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Well, that’s a kind of tribute.’
    â€˜Not exactly what I wanted to be when I was at university. I’d just done my first Twelfth Night. I suppose I wanted to be a great director. I saw myself at the National or the R.S.C. If I couldn’t do that, I wanted to be an unforgettable teacher of English and open the eyes of generations to Shakespeare. I never thought I’d end up as a model prisoner.’
    â€˜Life is full of surprises.’ That didn’t seem too much of a comfort to Matthew Gribble as we sat together, back in the prison interview room. Spring sunshine was fighting its way through windows that needed cleaning. I had sat in the train, trees with leaves just turning green, sunlight on the grass. A good time to think of freedom, starting a new life and forgetting the past. ‘If we can get you off this little bit of trouble, you should be out of here by the end of the month.’
    â€˜Out. To do what?’ He was smiling gently, but I thought quite without amusement, as he stared into the future. ‘I shouldn’t think they’ll ever ask me to direct a play for the Cowshott amateurs. “You’d better watch out for this one, darling,” I can just hear them whispering at the read through. “He stabbed his wife to death with a kitchen knife.” ’
    â€˜There may be other drama groups.’
    â€˜Not for me. Do you think they’d have me back at the poly? Not a hope.’
    â€˜Anyway’ – I tried to cheer him up – ‘you did a pretty good job with A Midsummer Night’s