Murder Most Merry by ed. Abigail Browining

staircase, a bleak terrain of peeling walls scrawled with graffiti, blowing empty Coca-cola tins and torn newspapers. The weapons seemed to have been articles in general domestic use, such as bread knives, carving knives, broom handles, and a heavy screwdriver. At the end of the day it appeared that the upstairs flat had repelled the invaders, and Kevin O’Dowd lay on the stairs. Having been stabbed with a slender and pointed blade, he was in a condition to become known as “the deceased” in the case of the Queen against Edward Timson. I made an application for bail for my client which was refused, but a speedy trial was ordered.
    So even as Bridget O’Dowd was giving her Virgin Mary at the comprehensive, the rest of the family was waiting to give evidence against Eddie Timson in that home of British drama, Number One Court at the Old Bailey.
    “I never had no cutter, Mr. Rumpole. Straight up, I never had one,” the defendant told me in the cells. He was an appealing-looking lad with soft brown eyes, who had already won the heart of the highly susceptible lady who wrote his social inquiry report. (“Although the charge is a serious one, this is a young man who might respond well to a period of probation.” I could imagine the steely contempt in Mr. Justice Vosper’s eye when he read that. )
    “Well, tell me. Edward. Who had?”
    “I never seen no cutters on no one. honest I didn’t. We wasn’t none of us tooled up, Mr. Rumpole.”
    “Come on, Eddie. Someone must have been. They say even young Noreen was brandishing a potato peeler.”
    “Not me, honest.”
    “What about your sword?”
    There was one part of the prosecution evidence that I found particularly distasteful. It was agreed that on the previous Sunday morning, Eddie “Turpin” Timson had appeared on the stairs of Keir Hardie Court and flourished what appeared to be an antique cavalry saber at the assembled O’Dowds, who were just popping out to Mass.
    “Me sword I bought up the Portobello? I didn’t have that there, honest.”
    “The prosecution can’t introduce evidence about the sword. It was an entirely different occasion.” Mr. Barnard, my instructing solicitor who fancied himself as an infallible lawyer, spoke with a confidence which I couldn’t feel. He, after all, wouldn’t have to stand up on his hind legs and argue the legal toss with Mr. Justice Vosper.
    “It rather depends on who’s prosecuting us. I mean, if it’s some fairly reasonable fellow—”
    “I think,” Mr. Barnard reminded me, shattering my faint optimism and ensuring that we were all in for a very rough Christmas indeed, “I think it’s Mr. Wrigglesworth. Will he try to introduce the sword?”
    I looked at “Turpin” Timson with a kind of pity. “If it is the Mad Monk, he undoubtedly will.”
    When I went into Court, Basil Wrigglesworth was standing with his shoulders hunched up round his large, red ears, his gown dropped to his elbows, his bony wrists protruding from the sleeves of his frayed jacket, his wig pushed back, and his huge hands joined on his lectern in what seemed to be an attitude of devoted prayer. A lump of cotton wool clung to his chin where he had cut himself shaving. Although well into his sixties, he preserved a look of boyish clumsiness. He appeared, as he always did when about to prosecute on a charge carrying a major punishment, radiantly happy.
    “Ah, Rumpole,” he said, lifting his eyes from the police verbals as though they were his breviary. “Are you defending as usual?”
    “Yes, Wrigglesworth. And you’re prosecuting as usual?” It wasn’t much of a riposte but it was all I could think of at the time.
    “Of course, I don’t defend. One doesn’t like to call witnesses who may not be telling the truth.”
    “You must have a few unhappy moments then, calling certain members of the Constabulary.”
    “I can honestly tell you, Rumpole—” his curiously innocent blue eyes looked at me with a sort of pain, as though I