‘Miss Jessica Bergman,’ she answers, smiling down at the lawYer.
‘Miss Jessica Bergman, may I introduce yiz to Mr Richard Runche KC, a gennelman most famous around these parts.’
‘Yes, yes, don’t fuss, boy. I know quite well who I am.’ Richard Runche sighs then falls silent. ‘Bergman, eh?’ he says at last.
‘Yes, sir,’ Jessica says, her mouth growing dry.
‘Bergman ... Bergman,’ he says, turning the name over in his sore, fuzzy head. Then a glint of recognition shows in his bloodshot eyes. ‘I say, isn’t there a Bergman, young gel, appearing for the prosecution?’ Before Jessica can answer he exclaims, ‘Yes, by Jove, I believe it’s you!’
Then just as rapidly he falls into a trough of silence. His elbow rests on the table and he covers his eyes with the palm of his left hand. After a while, he looks up and mutters, shaking his head at her, ‘Quite improper, quite, quite.’
‘Please, sir, I have to see you,’ Jessica pleads.
‘I don’t see people at breakfast, my dear.’ The lawyer cups his hand to his eyes again. ‘In fact, I can barely see anything. No, no, quite impossible!’
Richard Runche picks up his table napkin in both hands and wipes his thin, bloodless lips. It’s intended as a gesture of dismissal, yet his hands shake so badly that Jessica is now more concerned for him than she is afraid. The only things on the table are a glass of caramel-coloured milk, a half-empty bottle of brandy and a battered pork-pie hat. ‘Quite improper!’ Runche repeats weakly, glancing about nervously as if hoping someone would rescue him from this determined young woman. A tall and angular man, who appears somehow to have sharp points to his knees and elbows, he brings to Jessica’s mind an illustration she’s once seen in a children’s book by Washington Irving of a long-legged bird-like character named Ichabod Crane. But at this moment he looks rather frail and crumpled.
Richard Runche KC is also clean-shaven. Jessica wonders why this should be, for if he wakes up with such a bad headache every morning, why would he take the trouble to shave? Exposing the chin to a razor may be all the fashion in the city, but nothing about Mr Runche suggests that he gives a fig for fashion, and with the terrible shake in his hands, shaving would be positively dangerous to attempt.
Sure enough, Jessica now sees that he wears shaving papers stuck to several nasty cuts on his chin, which has the colour, texture and appearance of a plucked chicken’s arse.
Nurtured by alcohol, Runche’s once-thin nose has long since blossomed and widened and in the process turned a deep rose colour. It is heavily tinctured by a network of scarlet and purple veins knitting its bulbous surface together, as if they alone keep his unnatural-looking proboscis firmly attached to his gaunt and unhappy face.
His salt and pepper eyebrows are thick and scraggly, giving his face its only feature of authority. What remains of his hair seems to have been roughly parted by hand while still wet and lies pasted across his balding skull.
The remainder of Richard Runche KC, is scarcely more prepossessing. He wears a crumpled black linen jacket with a grey worsted waistcoat across which loops a cheap silver fob chain. His soiled white shirt sports a grubby celluloid collar, with the head of a gold stud showing clearly above the greasy knot of a thin black necktie shiny with over-use and frayed at the edges.
Jessica looks down at the dishevelled lawyer and feels only pity, not fear. She is here to fight for her friend and Jack’s, Billy Simple. She takes a deep breath and says, ‘Sir, if you send me away you will take my pride from me and I shall never again have respect for the law.’
‘Pride? Whose pride? What pride? The sort that cometh before a fall, I dare say! I sense it in you, my dear. As for the law? Respect for the law? What nonsense! The law respects only two things — property and money. It will defend both at the cost of truth and justice! Rubbish and codswallop to the law!’
‘But ... but you said just now, about me being quite improper, I mean with the law an’ all?’
‘The law? No, no, not the law, be blowed to the law. Quite improper to me, I meant, to disturb a gentleman at breakfast. Worse than waylaying him in his bedchamber!’
This -outburst was more than Richard Runche has said in three days in court and he appears exhausted by the effort.
Jessica can feel her temper rising. ‘Sir, I’m sorry for interrupting you, but somebody has to take Billy Simple’s side. He done wrong and I know he must be punished, that he’s gunna be hanged.’ Jessica looks appealingly at the lawyer, who, reluctantly, appears to be listening. ‘Billy done the killings, but it wasn’t like they said in court, it wasn’t in cold blood. There was other things not told. Things that only you can tell.’ Now Jessica can’t hold back her sobs. ‘And you ain’t! You bloody ain’t gunna!’ Runche covers his face with both hands. ‘Please, please, I can’t abide tears,’ he says in a pained voice.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Jessica sobs, struggling to stop her tears. ‘But it just ain’t right.’
Runche slowly wipes his hands downwards away from his face, and stares at his open palms. ‘No, my dear, it is I who must apologise,’ he says at last, turning his bloodshot eyes to her.
Jessica looks at him, startled. ‘What do you mean, sir?’ she stammers.
The lawyer ignores her question and continues. ‘I must apologise, for I had forgotten that some people still want the truth for its own sake. Justice, not as vindication, or as revenge, or as material compensation, but as an idea in itself. Isn’t that what you’re saying, my dear?’
‘Billy’s got rights too!’ Jessica says doggedly, not sure what the lawyer’s on about but determined to keep fighting.
‘Justice for no other reason than that the scales may be seen to be evenly balanced.’ He reaches over for the glass of brandy and milk and, gripping it in both hands, he brings it to his lips and swallows the contents, not pausing until the glass is empty.
The brandy and milk seems to improve his spirits remarkably, and he gestures in Jessica’s direction, indicating an invisible chair. ‘Do join me, my dear. Would you like a cup of tea? Yes, yes, of course you would. Have you partaken of breakfast?’ When he realises no second chair exists, he looks about him and his bemused gaze alights on Jimmy Jenkins, still peeping through the fernery. ‘Who the devil are you? Where did you come from? Good God, where are your manners, boy? Fetch this young lady a chair at once,’ he demands, waving the boy away with a flick of his hand.
Jimmy brings a chair and shortly afterwards a waiter arrives with a pot of tea. With all the anxieties of the morning, Jessica feels none too well and the weak black tea seems to calm her stomach a little as she tells Richard Runche all she knows of Billy’s earlier life, the years of ridicule and humiliation he suffered at t
he hands of the three Thomas women.
Runche listens all the while, taking regular sips from his second glass of brandy and milk. When at last she completes her story, he reaches over and pats her hand. ‘My dear, I am most grateful to you. When the court commences this morning I shall ask the judge’s permission to put you on the stand for cross-examination before I address the jury with my summing-up. His Honour is a very decent chap and I feel sure he’ll agree with my opinion, though I’ll warrant not without considerable surprise. It has been some time since I have behaved like a barrister, after all!’