Rumpole and the Angel of Death Read Online Free PDF

be taken very much amiss, Rumpole. If made to a woman.’
    â€˜But it’s not made to a woman, it’s made to you, Ballard. Are you going to stand for this religious persecution of the unfortunate Claude?’
    â€˜What he said about Wendy Crump was extremely wounding.’
    â€˜Nonsense! She wasn’t wounded in the least. None of these avenging angels has bothered to tell her what her pupil master said.’
    â€˜Did you tell her?’
    â€˜Well, no, I didn’t, actually.’
    â€˜Did you tell Wendy Crump that Erskine-Brown had called her fat?’ For about the first time in his life Soapy Sam had asked a good question in cross-examination. I was reduced, for a moment at least, to silence. ‘Why didn’t you repeat those highly offensive words to her?’
    I knew the answer, but I wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of hearing it from me.
    â€˜It was because you didn’t want to hurt her feelings, did you, Rumpole? And you knew how much it would wound her.’ Ballard was triumphant. ‘You showed a rare flash of gender awareness and I congratulate you for it!’
    Although a potential outcast from the gender-aware society, Claude hadn’t been entirely deprived of his practice. New briefs were slow in arriving, but he still had some of his old cases to finish off. One of these was a complex and not particularly fascinating fraud on a bookmaker in which Claude and I were briefed for two of the alleged fraudsters. I needn’t go into the details of the case except to say that the Prosecution was in the hands of the dashing and handsome Nick Davenant who had a large and shapely nose, brown hair billowing from under his wig, and knowing and melting eyes. It was Nick’s slimline pupil, Jenny Attienzer, whom Claude had hopelessly coveted. This fragile beauty was not in Court on the day in question; whether she thought the place out of bounds because of the gender-unaware Claude, I’m unable to say. But Claude was being assisted by the able but comfortably furnished (slenderly challenged) Wendy Crump and I was on my own.
    The case -was being tried by her Honour Judge Emma MacNaught, Q.C., sitting as an Old Bailey judge, who had treated Claude, from the start of the case, to a number of withering looks and, when addressing him in person became inevitable, to a tone of icy contempt. This circus judge turned out to have been the author of a slender handbook entitled ‘Sexual Harassment in the Legal Profession’. (Wendy Crump told me, some time later, that she would challenge anyone to know whether they had been sexually harassed or not unless they’d read the book.)
    Nick Davenant called the alleged victim of our clients’ fraud – a panting and sweating bookmaker whose physical attributes I am too gender aware to refer to – and his last question was,
    â€˜Mr Aldworth, have you ever been in trouble with the police?’
    â€˜No. Certainly not. Not with the police.’ On which note of honesty Nick sat down and Claude rose to cross-examine. Before he could open his mouth, however, Wendy was half standing, pulling at his gown and commanding, in a penetrating whisper, that he ask Aldworth if he’d ever been in trouble with anyone else.
    â€˜Are you intending to ask any question, Mr Erskine-Brown?’ Judge MacNaught had closed her eyes to avoid the pain of looking at the learned chauvinist pig.
    â€˜Have you been in trouble with anyone else?’ Claude plunged in, clay in the hands of the gown-tugger behind him.
    â€˜Only with my wife. On Derby night.’ For this, Mr Aldworth was rewarded by a laugh from the Jury, and Claude by a look of contempt from the Judge.
    â€˜Ask him if he’s ever been reported to Tattersall’s.’ The insistent pupil behind Claude gave another helping tug. Claude clearly didn’t think things could get any worse.
    â€˜Have you ever been reported to