Murder Most Merry by ed. Abigail Browining Page B

Christmas tipple, but a tempting and respectably aged bottle of Chateau Pichon Longueville.
    “What can I do for you. Wrigglesworth?”
    “Well, as you know, Rumpole, I live in Croydon.”
    “Happiness is given to few of us on this earth,” I said piously.
    “And the Anglican Sisters of St. Agnes, Croydon, are anxious to buy a present for their Bishop,” Wrigglesworth explained. “A dozen bottles for Christmas. They’ve asked my advice, Rumpole. I know so little about wine. You wouldn’t care to try this for me? I mean, if you’re not especially busy.”
    “I should be hurrying home to dinner.” My wife, Hilda (She Who Must Be Obeyed), was laying on rissoles and frozen peas, washed down by my last bottle of Pommeroy’s extremely ordinary. “However, as it’s Christmas, I don’t mind helping you out, Wrigglesworth.”
    The Mad Monk was clearly quite unused to wine. As we sampled the claret together, I saw the chance of getting him to commit himself on the vital question of the evidence of the sword, as well as absorbing an unusually decent bottle. After the Pichon Longueville I was kind enough to help him by sampling a Boyd-Cantenac and then I said, “Excellent, this. But of course the Bishop might be a burgundy man. The nuns might care to invest in a decent Macon.”
    “Shall we try a bottle?” Wrigglesworth suggested. “I’d be grateful for your advice.”
    “I’ll do my best to help you, my old darling. And while we’re on the subject, that ridiculous bit of evidence about young Timson and the sword—”
    “I remember you saying I shouldn’t bring that out because it’s Christmas.”
    “Exactly.” Jack Pommeroy had uncorked the Macon and it was mingling with the claret to produce a feeling of peace and goodwill towards men. Wrigglesworth frowned, as though trying to absorb an obscure point of theology.
    “I don’t quite see the relevance of Christmas to the question of your man Timson threatening his neighbors with a sword.”
    “Surely. Wrigglesworth—” I knew my prosecutor well”—you’re of a religious disposition?” The Mad Monk was the product of some bleak northern Catholic boarding school. He lived alone, and no doubt wore a hair shirt under his black waistcoat and was vowed to celibacy. The fact that he had his nose deep into a glass of burgundy at the moment was due to the benign influence of Rumpole.
    “I’m a Christian, yes.”
    “Then practice a little Christian tolerance.”
    “Tolerance towards evil?”
    “Evil?” I asked. “What do you mean, evil?
    “Couldn’t that be your trouble. Rumpole? That you really don’t recognize evil when you see it.”
    “I suppose,” I said, “evil might be locking up a seventeen-year-old during Her Majesty’s pleasure, when Her Majesty may very probably forget all about him. banging him up with a couple of hard and violent cases and their own chamber-pots for twenty-two hours a day, so he won’t come out till he’s a real, genuine, middle-aged murderer.”
    “I did hear the Reverend Mother say—” Wrigglesworth was gazing vacantly at the empty Macon bottle “—that the Bishop likes his glass of port.”
    “Then in the spirit of Christmas tolerance I’ll help you to sample some of Pommeroy’s Light and Tawny.”
    A little later, Wrigglesworth held up his port glass in a reverent sort of fashion.
    “You’re suggesting, are you, that I should make some special concession in this case because it’s Christmastime?”
    “Look here, old darling.” I absorbed half my glass, relishing the gentle fruitiness and the slight tang of wood. “If you spent your whole life in that highrise hell-hole called Keir Hardie Court, if you had no fat prosecutions to occupy your attention and no prospect of any job at all, if you had no sort of occupation except war with the O’Dowds—”
    “My own flat isn’t particularly comfortable. I don’t know a great deal about your home life, Rumpole. but you don’t seem to be in a tearing