Rumpole and the Angel of Death by John Mortimer

you imagine what Rollo’s going to say when he finds out what you’re doing?’
    â€˜I know what he thinks.’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜That it’s in the best tradition of the Bar to defend anyone, however revolting.’
    â€˜How do you know that’s what he thinks?’
    â€˜Because that’s what he said when I told him.’
    â€˜You told him?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜I must say, Rumpole, you’ve got a nerve!’
    â€˜Courage is the essential quality of an advocate.’
    â€˜And I suppose it’s the essential quality of an advocate to be on the side of the lowest, most contemptible of human beings?’
    â€˜To put their case for them? Yes.’
    â€˜Even if they’re guilty?’
    â€˜That hasn’t been proved.’
    â€˜But you don’t know he’s not.’
    â€˜I think I do.’
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜Because of what he told me.’
    â€˜He told you he wasn’t guilty?’
    â€˜No, he told me he was. But, you see, I didn’t believe him.’
    â€˜He told you he was guilty and you’re still defending him? Is that in the best traditions of the Bar?’
    â€˜Only just,’ I had to admit.
    â€˜Rumpole!’ She Who Must Be Obeyed gave me one of her unbending looks and delivered judgement. ‘I suppose that, if someone murdered me, you would defend them?’
    There was no answer to that so I looked at my watch. ‘Must go. Urgent conference in Chambers. I won’t be late home. Is it one of your bridge evenings?’ I asked the question, but answer came there none. I knew that for that day, and for many days to come, as far as She Who Must Be Obeyed was concerned, the mansion flat in Froxbury Mansions would be locked in the icy silence of the tomb.
    During the last weeks before the trial Hilda was true to her vow of silence and the mansion flat offered all the light-hearted badinage of life in a Trappist order. Luckily I was busy and even welcomed the chance of a chat with Gavin Garfield whom, although I had excluded him from my visit to the Cotswolds, I now set to work. I told him his first job was to get statements from the other saboteurs in the van, and when he protested that we’d never get so far as calling evidence in view of what Den had told us, I said we must be prepared for all eventualities. So Gavin took statements, not hurriedly, but with a surprising thoroughness, and in time certain hard facts emerged.
    What surprised me was the age and respectability of the saboteurs. Shaven-headed Roy Netherborn was forty and worked in the accounts department of a paper cup factory. He had toyed with the idea of being a schoolmaster and had met Janet Freebody, who was a couple of years older, at a teacher training college. Janet owned the cottage in Wayleave where the platoon of fearless saboteurs had put up for the night. She taught at a comprehensive school in the nearby town where we had fled from the dreaded hotel. Angela Ridgeway, the girl with the purple lock, was a researcher for BBC Wales. Sebastian Fells and Judy Caspar were live-in partners and worked together in a Kensington bookshop, and Dennis Pearson, thirty-five, taught sociology at a university which had risen from the ashes of a polytechnic. They all, except Janet, lived in London and were on the committee of a society of animal rights activists.
    Janet had kept Roy informed about the meet at Rollo Eyles’s house, and they had taken days off during her half-term when the meet was at Wayleave. The sabbing was to be made the occasion of a holiday outing and a night spent in the country. When they had got their rucksacks and sleeping-bags out of the van, Roy, Angela, Sebastian and Judy retired to the pub in Wayleave where real ale was obtainable and they used it to wash down vegetable pasties and salads until closing-time at three. Janet Freebody had things to do in the cottage, exercise books to correct and dinner to think