Rumpole and the Primrose Path Read Online Free Page B

‘Rumpole has friends?’
    ‘Some friends, surely. From all sections of society.’
    ‘You mean you’re going to invite that terrible tribe of South London criminals?’ I thought this ungrateful of Hilda. The Timsons’ addiction to ordinary decent crime had kept us in groceries, including huge quantities of furniture polish, washing-up liquid and scouring pads, and had frequently paid the bill at the butcher’s and several times redecorated the bathroom over the long years of our married life.
    ‘I hardly think,’ Claude hastened to reassure her, ‘that the Timsons would fit in with the congregation at the Temple Church.’
    ‘I’m sure there will be many people,’ Ballard was smiling at She Who Must, ‘who aren’t members of the criminal fraternity and who’ll want to give Rumpole a really good send-off.’
    It was at this point that I entered the room, carrying a bottle of Château Thames Embankment and glasses. ‘Thank you for that kind thought, Ballard,’ I greeted him. ‘And now you’re both here, perhaps we will all drink to Rumpole revived.’
    Hamlet, happening to bump into his father’s ghost on the battlements, couldn’t have looked more surprised than my learned friends.
     
    The return to life was slow and, in many ways, painful. At first there was a mere trickle of briefs. Bonny Bernard, my favourite solicitor, had given up hope of my return and sent a common theft charge against two members of the Timson clan to Hoskins in our Chambers. I’m only too well aware of the fact that Hoskins has innumerable daughters to support, but I had to make sure that the Timsons knew I was no longer dead, and had to finance a wife with a passion for cleaning materials, as well as the life-giving properties of Pommeroy’s Very Ordinary Claret.
    I was sitting in my room in Chambers, wondering if I would ever work again, when our clerk, Henry, put through a phone call and I heard, to my delight, the cheerful voice of Sister Dotty, although on this memorable occasion the cheerfulness seemed forced and with an undertone of deep anxiety. After the usual enquiries about whether or not I was still alive, and the news that she was doing freelance and temporary nursing and had taken a small flat in Kilburn, she said, with a small and unconvincing laugh, ‘I had a visit from the police.’
    ‘You had a burglary?’
    ‘No. They wanted me to help them with their enquiries.’
    I felt a chill wind blowing. People who help the police with their enquiries often end up in serious trouble.
    ‘Enquiries about what?’
    ‘Poor old Freddy Fairweather’s death. They suggest I call in at the station and bring my solicitor. And I haven’t really got a solicitor.’
    ‘Then I’ll get you one. Where are you? I’ll ring you back.’
    This was clearly a job for my old friend Bonny Bernard. 1 called him to remind him that I was, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, up for work, and put him in touch with Dotty. A few days later, they called in at my Chambers to report the result of an extraordinary conversation which had taken place with Detective Inspector Maundy and Detective Sergeant Thorndike in a nick not too far from the Primrose Path Home.
    ‘They were a decent enough couple of officers,’ Bernard told me. ‘But they soon made their suspicions clear to me and the client.’
    ‘Suspicions of what?’
    ‘Murder.’
    I looked at Dotty, all her smiles gone to be replaced with a bewildered, incredulous terror. I did my best to make light of the moment. ‘You haven’t done in Sister Sheila?’
    ‘They’re investigating the death of one of the patients,’ Bernard said. ‘A Mr Frederick Fairweather.’
    ‘Freddy! As though I’d do anything to hurt him. We were friends. You know that. Just as we were, Mr Rumpole.’
    ‘And what’s she supposed to have done to Fairweather?’
    ‘Digitalis.’ Bernard looked at his notes.
    ‘Foxgloves?’ I remembered Dotty’s collection of herbal remedies.
    ‘It’s