Free Murder Most Merry by ed. Abigail Browining Page B

hung on the wall of the cells under the Old Bailey.
    I pulled out a new box of small cigars and found its opening obstructed by a tinseled band on which a scarlet-faced Santa was seen hurrying a sleigh full of carcinoma-packed goodies to the Rejoicing World. I lit one as the lethargic screw, with a complexion the color of faded Bronco, regretfully left his doorstep sandwich and mug of sweet tea to unlock the gate.
    “Good morning. Mr. Rumpole. Come to visit a customer?”
    “Happy Christmas, officer,” I said as cheerfully as possible. “Is Mr. Timson at home?”
    “Well, I don’t believe he’s slipped down to his little place in the country.”
    Such were the pleasantries that were exchanged between us legal hacks and discontented screws; jokes that no doubt have changed little since the turnkeys unlocked the door at Newgate to let in a pessimistic advocate, or the cells under the Coliseum were opened to admit the unwelcome news of the Imperial thumbs-down.
    “My mum wants me home for Christmas.”
    Which Christmas? It would have been an unreasonable remark and I refrained from it. Instead, I said, “All things are possible.”
    As I sat in the interviewing room, an Old Bailey hack of some considerable experience, looking through my brief and inadvertently using my waistcoat as an ashtray, I hoped I wasn’t on another loser. I had had a run of bad luck during that autumn season, and young Edward Timson was part of that huge south London family whose criminal activities provided such welcome grist to the Rumpole mill. The charge in the seventeen-year-old Eddie’s case was nothing less than wilful murder.
    “We’re in with a chance, though, Mr. Rumpole. ain’t we?”
    Like all his family, young Timson was a confirmed optimist. And yet, of course, the merest outsider in the Grand National, the hundred-to-one shot, is in with a chance, and nothing is more like going round the course at Aintree than living through a murder trial. In this particular case, a fanatical prosecutor named Wrigglesworth, known to me as the Mad Monk, was to represent Beechers, and Mr. Justice Vosper. a bright but wintry-hearted judge who always felt it his duty to lead for the prosecution, was to play the part of a particularly menacing fence at the Canal Turn.
    “A chance. Well, yes, of course you’ve got a chance, if they can’t establish common purpose, and no one knows which of you bright lads had the weapon.”
    No doubt the time had come for a brief glance at the prosecution case, not an entirely cheering prospect. Eddie, also known as “Turpin” Timson, lived in a kind of decaying barracks, a sort of highrise Lubianka, known as Keir Hardie Court, somewhere in south London, together with his parents, his various brothers, and his thirteen-year-old sister, Noreen. This particular branch of the Timson family lived on the thirteenth floor. Below them, on the twelfth, lived the large clan of the O’Dowds. The war between the Timsons and the O’Dowds began, it seems, with the casting of the Nativity play at the local comprehensive school.
    Christmas comes earlier each year and the school show was planned about September. When Bridget O’Dowd was chosen to play the lead in the face of strong competition from Noreen Timson. an incident occurred comparable in historical importance to the assassination of an obscure Austrian archduke at Sarejevo. Noreen Timson announced in the playground that Bridget O’Dowd was a spotty little tart unsuited to play any role of which the most notable characteristic was virginity.
    Hearing this, Bridget O’Dowd kicked Noreen Timson behind the anthracite bunkers. Within a few days, war was declared between the Timson and O’Dowd children, and a present of lit fireworks was posted through the O’Dowd front door. On what is known as the “night in question,” reinforcements of O’Dowds and Timsons arrived in old bangers from a number of south London addresses and battle was joined on the stone