Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders by John Mortimer Page B

talk to me about Reggie Proudfoot! He’s not a gent, that Reggie Proudfoot, definitely not a gent.’
    As this was the view I took of my fellow barrister, I looked more favourably on Daisy.
    â€˜You know what?’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜He took me out to dinner. The Regent Palace Hotel. And at the end of quite a top-class meal with wine, he just fumbled. That’s all he did!’
    â€˜Fumbled?’
    â€˜Pretended he’d forgotten his wallet. So I had to pay every penny. And do you think he ever paid me back?’
    â€˜I doubt it.’
    â€˜Your doubts, Rumpole, are fully justified. You’d never treat a girl like that, would you?’
    â€˜I’m sure I wouldn’t.’ I looked at her inviting red lips drawn back from the teeth that had never suffered restraint, the small heart-shaped face and the eyes full of mischief. I made a quick calculation of the fees I’d already received from small jobs plus what I was likely to gain from losing the Timson case, and thought of how much might be saved by more evenings boiling eggs on the gas ring. I decided to make a desperate bid for Daisy. ‘Perhaps you’d like to have dinner with me?’ I put down my stake.
    â€˜Perhaps I’d love it. The Regent Palace?’
    â€˜I was thinking more in terms of the Hibernian Hostelry.’
    â€˜Suits me.’ Now she looked thoughtful. ‘I’ve never seen where you live.’
    â€˜Off Southampton Row. I’ve got a bedsit.’
    â€˜What’s it like?’
    â€˜Not too bad. It’s got a gas ring and, well, of course, the bed’s in the sitting room.’
    â€˜That sounds convenient.’ She continued to smile.
    â€˜And my landlady,’ I was doing my best to keep her entertained, ‘owns a shop that sells trusses, wooden legs, sex manuals and rubber johnnies.’
    â€˜That sounds very convenient!’ Daisy said, and by now she was laughing.
    On which happy note, we settled on a date for dinner.
    Â 
    After an hour of a hearing, our matrimonial was adjourned for another month, during which the couple could live in silent loathing, communicating with little notes left on the cooker or stuck to the parrot’s cage, such as ‘Get her down your office to cook your dinner. She seems to do everything else for you’ or ‘This bird is far better at conversation than you, you dumb person! I wish I’d married it!’
    I was recovering from this weary day in court in Uncle Tom’s room, going through, with considerable interest I have to say, the information that can be derived from the direction of bullet wounds. I was lifting a cup of instant coffee, run up for me in the clerk’s room, when the door was flung open and Hilda Wystan came bounding in and sank down in a chair used by clients, when we had clients to visit us. She was, of course, the Hilda that was, and not the one introduced by me at the beginning of this chapter. That is to say, she took no exception to my having my feet firmly on the ground and didn’t ask me to elevate either of my legs; instead she plumped herself down in our client’s chair, blew out her cheeks so that her face assumed the proportions of a rather flushed balloon and said, ‘Aren’t you excited, Rumpole?’
    Why should I be? Was she suggesting in the blowing out of her cheeks some sort of sensual intent. It was a question I was determined to duck.
    â€˜The Jerold murder business has just been fixed for three weeks’ time. I called in at the clerk’s room and Albert told me.’
    â€˜Well, he hasn’t told me yet.’
    â€˜He likes to keep the good news to himself. I had quite a job squeezing it out of him.’
    â€˜I’m afraid it won’t be particularly good news for Simon.’
    â€˜Of course not. Good news for me, though. I’ll be there watching you.’
    â€˜And your father.’
    â€˜And watching Daddy, yes, of