The Collected Short Stories - Jeffrey Archer [38]
The train came to a halt at Sevenoaks. A triumphant Septimus, having struck his blow for the silent majority, retrieved his umbrella and briefcase from the rack above him and turned to leave.
As he picked up his briefcase it knocked against the armrest in front of him, and the lid sprang open. Everyone in the carriage stared at its contents. For there, on top of his Prudential documents, was a neatly folded copy of the Evening Standard and an unopened pack of ten Benson & Hedges cigarettes.
AN EYE FOR AN EYE
Sir Matthew Roberts, QC, closed the file and placed it on the desk in front of him. He was not a happy man. He was quite willing to defend Mary Banks, but he was not at all confident about her plea of not guilty.
Sir Matthew leaned back in his deep leather chair to consider the case while he awaited the arrival of the instructing solicitor, who had briefed him, and the junior counsel he had selected for the case. As he gazed out over the Middle Temple courtyard, he only hoped he had made the right decision.
On the face of it, the case of Regina v. Banks was a simple one of murder; but after what Bruce Banks had subjected his wife to during the eleven years of their marriage, Sir Matthew was confident not only that he could get the charge reduced to manslaughter, but that if the jury was packed with women, he might even secure an acquittal. There was, however, a complication.
He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, something his wife had always chided him for. He looked at Victoria’s photograph on the desk in front of him. It reminded him of his youth: But then, Victoria would always be young—death had ensured that.
Reluctantly he forced his mind back to his client and her plea of mitigation. He reopened the file. Mary Banks was claiming that she couldn’t possibly have chopped her husband up with an ax and buried him under the pigsty, because at the time of his death she was not only a patient in the local hospital, but was also blind. As Sir Matthew inhaled deeply once again, there was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” he bellowed—not because he liked the sound of his own voice, but because the doors of his chambers were so thick that if he didn’t holler, no one would ever hear him.
Sir Matthew’s clerk opened the door and announced Mr. Bernard Casson and Mr. Hugh Witherington. Two very different men, thought Sir Matthew as they entered the room, but each would serve the purpose he had planned for them in this particular case.
Bernard Casson was a solicitor of the old school—formal, punctilious, and always painstakingly correct. His conservatively tailored herringbone suit never seemed to change from one year to the next; Matthew often wondered if he had purchased half a dozen such suits in a closing-down sale and wore a different one every day of the week. He peered up at Casson over his half-moon spectacles. The solicitor’s thin mustache and neatly parted hair gave him an old-fashioned look that had fooled many an opponent into thinking he had a second-class mind. Sir Matthew regularly gave thanks that his friend was no orator, because if Bernard had been a barrister, Matthew would not have relished the prospect of opposing him in court.
A pace behind Casson stood his junior counsel for this brief, Hugh Witherington. The Lord must have been feeling particularly ungenerous on the day Witherington entered the world, as he had given him neither looks nor brains. If he had bestowed any other talents on him, they were yet to be revealed. After several attempts Witherington had finally been called to the bar, but for the number of briefs he was