‘Then there is the evidence of the caravan. You might say to yourselves, either individually or collectively, did the elephant really scratch itself against the caravan, or was this an unprovoked attack? The fact that the witness who was in the caravan at the time suffered no damage should in no way influence you. She may indeed have been the victim of an unprovoked attack which she did not recognise or, as has been suggested by the defence, the elephant was merely scratching itself. Now you, gentlemen of the jury, have a solemn duty ahead of you. You have heard both the case for the prosecution and for the defence and it is up to you to gather up all the details that have been vouchsafed to you and weave them into a whole. My job is merely to clarify things for you. So I will now ask you to go away and quietly consider all the facts of the case and if you bring in a verdict of guilty, who is to blame you? On the other hand, if you decide in your wisdom, and being in possession of the full facts, to bring in a verdict of not guilty, no finger of condemnation can be pointed at you. In closing I can only say that I hope I have been of some help to you in forming the right decision. You may now retire to consider your verdict.’
The foreman of the jury got to his feet.
‘We have decided not to retire, your lordship,’ he said.
‘Most irregular,’ said the judge. ‘You should have time for consultation and consideration.’
‘We have considered, my lord,’ said the foreman.
‘Well,’ said the judge reluctantly, ‘what is your verdict?’
‘Well sir, we would like to get one thing quite clear in our minds before announcing our verdict. Is the elephant in question definitely the one that has been playing with my kids on the beach?’
‘I think, Sir Magnus,’ said the judge, ‘that you are best qualified to answer that question.’
‘Yes,’ said Sir Magnus. ‘If you possess children who have been playing on the beach recently, then assuredly they will have been playing with the elephant in question.’
‘In that case,’ said the foreman of the jury, ‘our verdict is not guilty.’
There was an outburst of clapping in the court in which the judge joined absent-mindedly. When the noise had died down, the judge cleared his throat and peered at Adrian.
‘Adrian Rookwhistle,’ he said. ‘You have been found guilty of the charges brought against you.’
‘Beg pardon, my lord,’ said the foreman of the jury, ‘but we have found him not guilty.’
‘Oh,’ said the judge, ‘did you? Well you have been found not guilty of the charges brought against you and so I find it my bounden duty to sentence you,’ he paused and collected his thoughts, ‘so I find it my bounden duty to discharge you without a stain on your character.’
The judge peered at the jury.
‘You have been an honest and upright jury,’ he said, ‘and have carried out your duties extremely well. I therefore discharge you and absolve you from jury duties for the next year.’
He shuffled his papers in an abstracted sort of way and then leant forward to the clerk of the court.
‘Are there any more cases on the list?’ he asked in a hoarse whisper.
‘No, my lord,’ said the clerk of the court. ‘This is the last of them.’
‘Good,’ said the judge. He sat up and peered at Adrian. ‘There is just one more thing,’ he said. ‘I wonder if you could see your way to accede me a minor request?’
‘Certainly, my lord,’ said Adrian.
‘I would very much like to see the elephant in question,’ said the judge, adding shyly, ‘you see I have never seen an elephant.’
‘Certainly, my lord,’ said Adrian. ‘I am going to go and tell her the good news now, if your lordship would like to join me.’
‘Splendid,’ squeaked the judge. ‘I will meet you outside in a few minutes, Mr Rookwhistle.’
He leapt out of his chair as the court rose, and scuttled out of his door.
21. The Verdict
Adrian stepped out of the dock feeling slightly dazed and was ushered out of the court on a wave of goodwill, Sir Magnus holding him by one arm and Lord Fenneltree holding him by the other, while Mr Filigree and Ethelbert danced about getting in everybody’s way. They all ended up on the pavement outside the court and there was Samantha. She smiled at Adrian.
‘I’m delighted you got off,’ she said.
‘Are you really?’ said Adrian.
‘Yes,’ she said.
Adrian stood staring at her great, green, gold-flecked eyes and felt himself going red to the roots of his hair.
‘I . . . I’m very glad that you’re glad,’ he said inanely. For some reason Samantha was blushing too.
‘Yes, I’m very glad,’ she said.
‘When you have driven that point home sufficiently,’ said Sir Magnus, ‘I would suggest that we all repair to my place to have a celebratory drink.’
‘Sir Magnus,’ said Samantha, ‘we are really most grateful to you for having got Adrian and Rosy off like that.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Sir Magnus. ‘A mere bagatelle.’
‘You know,’ said Lord Fenneltree, ‘I cannot help feeling that I didn’t contribute very much to your defence.’ Ethelbert was convulsed with laughter to such an extent that he had to be held up by Honoria.
‘I think, dear boy,’ said Lord Fenneltree, ‘I think, if you don’t mind, I will come along with you for a few days, wherever you are going. It will give my wife a little time to collect her thoughts.’
‘Well, I know where I’m going,’ said Adrian suddenly, with decision, ‘I am going back to the Unicorn and Harp if the owners will have me.’
‘And Rosy?’ said Mr Filigree anxiously. ‘You will bring Rosy, won’t you?’
‘If I may,’ said Adrian, looking at Samantha.
‘I think we can find room for you,’ said Samantha.
‘I suppose it isn’t possible that you would have a small inglenook that I could occupy for a brief period?’ said Lord Fenneltree, staring at Samantha earnestly through his monocle.
‘I tell you what,’ said Mr Filigree, squeaking with excitement at the thought. ‘Why don’t we all go back there?’
‘There’s plenty of room for everyone and we could have a party.’
‘What a very excellent idea,’ said Sir Magnus.
‘The Sploshport Queen is leaving soon,’ said Lord Fenneltree. ‘We’ll cross on her and then I will take the ladies in my landau while you all go by train.’
‘I don’t think a train’s going to carry Rosy,’ said Adrian. ‘No, you all go on ahead and I’ll walk Rosy there.’
‘Rubbish, my boy,’ said Sir Magnus waving his cane. ‘I am on intimate terms with the station master. I’m quite sure we can get Rosy fitted up, if not in a first-class carriage, at least in some portion of the train.’
At this point the judge, wearing to Adrian’s amazement a loud check suit and looking as though he had got into it by mistake, joined them. Adrian explained what the plan was and the judge blinked wistfully at Samantha.
‘I suppose, Lord Turvey,’ said Samantha tactfully, ‘you wouldn’t like to come to the Unicorn and Harp as well?’
‘My dear child,’ said the judge, ‘I would be absolutely enchanted. It so happens that I have not got to dispense justice for several days and a little rest in the country would do me a world of good.’
‘Excellent,’ said Sir Magnus. ‘It will give me an opportunity to discuss the next case with you.’
‘I don’t know whether that would be very ethical,’ said the judge.
‘Well, there’s scarcely any point in your coming unless you are going to discuss the case with me,’ said Sir Magnus.
‘Well, in that case,’ said the judge, ‘I suppose it will be all right.’
Reluctantly leaving Honoria, Black Nell and Samantha with Lord Fenneltree, Adrian, accompanied by Sir Magnus, Lord Turvey, Mr Pucklehammer, Ethelbert and Mr Filigree, went back to Sir Magnus’s house.
As soon as they arrived Adrian rushed to the
stable and was greeted by a delighted squeal from Rosy.
‘Well, you miserable, destructive, drunken creature,’ he shouted affectionately, throwing his arms around her trunk and giving her a hug, ‘we’ve got off scot free.’
Rosy, who had not been particularly worried about the outcome of the case, nevertheless realised that Adrian was in good spirits and so she flapped her ears and squeaked again.
‘Fascinating,’ said the judge, who had followed Adrian into the stable and was standing at Rosy’s rear end gazing up at her. ‘Sir Magnus was quite right about that trunk never being able to reach the chandelier.’
‘That’s the tail,’ said Adrian. ‘The trunk’s this end.’
‘Oh,’ said the judge. He fumbled in his pocket and produced a pair of lorgnettes which he put up to his eyes and peered through them with considerable interest at Rosy’s backside.
‘You’re absolutely right,’ he said. ‘It’s got hairs on the end.’
He walked round to the front and peered at Rosy through his lorgnettes.
‘Fascinating,’ he said. ‘Absolutely fascinating.’
‘Well, come along,’ said Sir Magnus impatiently bustling into the stable. ‘If we don’t get going we’ll miss the boat.’
So Adrian grasped Rosy’s ear and, followed by his retinue, led Rosy down to the docks. The voyage was uneventful except for sea shanties sung by Sir Magnus and the judge. When they landed at the other side the ladies were left with Lord Fenneltree and the others made haste to the station.
Here, by dint of much roaring and cajoling on the part of Sir Magnus, they eventunny hitched an open wagon to the three forty-five to Monkspepper. Rosy entered it without any fuss whatsoever.
‘Now,’ said Sir Magnus, looking at the station master, ‘Chairs, Bert, chairs?’
‘Chairs, Sir Magnus?’ said the station master, bewildered. ‘What sort of chairs?’
‘Chairs, man. Out of the waiting-room,’ said Sir Magnus. ‘Something to sit on.’
‘But aren’t you travelling in a compartment, Sir Magnus?’ asked the station master.
‘Of course not,’ said Sir Magnus. ‘If this truck is good enough for Rosy, it’s good enough for me. All I want is a chair to sit on.’
The flurried station master procured a bench and two chairs from the waiting-room and these were installed alongside Rosy in the truck. Then Ethelbert, Mr Pucklehammer and Adrian sat themselves down on the bench and Sir Magnus perched scowling on one chair and the judge on the other. Sir Magnus took a gigantic pinch of snuff, sneezed and said to the station master, ‘All right, Bert, you can let her go now.’
The fact that the train was already twenty minutes overdue and most of the passengers exceedingly restive had apparently escaped his attention. The station master, mopping his brow, blew a tremulous blast on his whistle, waved his green flag and the train shuffled and clanked and swayed its way out into the countryside.
It was a beautiful hot summer’s day and everywhere was green and gold and the sky was as blue as a Siamese cat’s eye. It amazed Adrian that they could, in the short space of a couple of hours, whisk themselves across the many tedious miles of countryside that he had tramped with Rosy. They got out at the little country station for the village of Parson’s Farthing, and walked a mile and a half down the dusty road to the Unicorn and Harp.
‘Darling boy,’ said Ethelbert, round-eyed, ‘I had never realised the countryside was so big, and simply hundreds of leaves.’
‘The leaves are much bigger in Papua,’ said Mr Filigree. ‘Very much bigger.’ He stretched out his fat little arms in order to show how enormous the leaves had been.
‘I don’t know about you,’ said Sir Magnus to Mr Pucklehammer, ‘but I feel a flagon of ale would come in very handy.’
‘It always does,’ said Mr Pucklehammer. ‘It has been my experience in life that some things are handy and some aren’t, but you can’t go wrong with a flagon of ale.’
‘Do you know,’ said the judge, peering at Rosy, ‘without my glasses I still have difficulty in telling which end I’m looking at.’
‘Which end of what?’ asked Sir Magnus.
‘Rosy,’ said the judge.
‘I do hope,’ fluted Mr Filigree, dancing up the road, pigeon-toed, ‘that Samantha’s got something to eat. I know we have plenty to drink.’
‘Well, as long as we’ve got plenty to drink,’ said Sir Magnus, ‘I don’t see that it really matters. You don’t by any chance keep cherry brandy, do you?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Mr Filigree. ‘As a matter of fact we have got rather a lot of it. I ordered three barrels once, but unfortunately nobody seemed to like it.’
‘Just shows,’ said Sir Magnus, taking snuff and sneezing, ‘people nowadays are lacking in good taste.’
At last they rounded the final corner and there was the Unicorn and Harp, like a friendly black and white cat squatting under its golden hat of thatch.
‘Hurrah!’ yelled Ethelbert exuberantly, the country air obviously having gone to his head. ‘We’ve arrived.’
At the sound of Ethelbert’s shrill cry, the door of the Unicorn and Harp opened and Lord Fenneltree and Samantha appeared.
‘Have a good journey?’ shouted his lordship.
‘Splendid,’ bellowed Sir Magnus waving his stick in greeting. ‘I have decided that it is more comfortable to travel in an open truck with an elephant than in a first-class carriage with a lot of bores.’
‘Or sows, for that matter,’ said the judge, and was convulsed with laughter.
‘Sam, dear,’ panted Mr Filigree anxiously, ‘what about food?’
‘Oh, you don’t have to worry about that,’ said Samantha. ‘Lord Fenneltree has been exceptionally kind. We stopped on the way and he insisted on buying a lot of things for us to eat.’
She led the way round to the meadow at the back of the house and there they saw a long trestle-table that had been set up and covered with a snow-white cloth. It was groaning under the weight of food. There was a small platoon of cold roast pheasants, a dish full of plovers’ eggs, piles of scaly oysters, a gigantic sugar-cured ham, whose flesh was as delicately tender and pink as a sunset cloud, and a great saddle of cold roast beef which must have come from the biggest bullock in the country.
‘This is extremely kind of you, Lord Fenneltree,’ said Adrian. ‘Considering that I won the case.’
‘Dear boy,’ said his lordship earnestly. ‘I wouldn’t have provided it if you had lost the case, but I thought a light snack would help us all to recover from the journey.’
‘My joy would be complete,’ said Sir Magnus indistinctly through a mouthful of oysters and plover eggs, ‘if I could have a tiny splash of the cherry brandy which Mr Filigree told us about.’
‘Certainly, certainly,’ said Mr Filigree, wiping pie crumbs from his mouth, and he danced into the house and reappeared with a small barrel. This was soon set up and Sir Magnus took up sentry duty beside it.
The shadows were lengthening across the emerald green grass and a sense of peace and goodwill settled over the whole company. Mr Pucklehammer, waving a large tankard of ale in time, was humming softly to himself, Black Nell, who had just recovered from an acute attack of hiccups, was reading Honoria’s palm and predicting a future career for her that even Sarah Bernhardt would have envied. Lord Fenneltree was lying on the grass apparently in a trance, staring up at the sky and listening to a long and complicated lecture on the law by the judge. Adrian sat opposite Samantha and watched the sunlight scattering itself through the leaves of the tree and dappling her copper-coloured hair. Presently the sight of her beauty was too much for him and he got up under the pretext of seeing how Rosy was doing, and went down to the barn.
Rosy had joined the party for a brief period, but when she found that the delicacies on the table did not appeal to her palate and that Adrian would not allow her to have more than three pints of beer, she had wandered down to the barn to console herself with a pile of carrots and mangolds. Adrian marched i
nto the barn and stood staring at his great, grey protégée. She flashed him a quick look, from her tiny twinkling eyes, flapped her ears and gave a small squeak of greeting.
‘It’s all very well for you,’ said Adrian bitterly, and started to pace up and down the barn feverishly. ‘You’re all right as long as you get enough to eat and all the booze you want. You are quite happy. But what about me? Have you ever considered me?’
He paused dramatically and looked at Rosy. Rosy’s stomach rumbled in a musical fashion and she put out her trunk and delicately touched Adrian’s hair.
‘There she is, out there,’ said Adrian, ‘as callous as anything. She gives me no encouragement at all. I really don’t think that we can stay here after all.’
Rosy gave a long sigh. Adrian resumed his pacing.
‘Well, perhaps we could stay here for a day or so,’ he said, the thought of being apart from Samantha again making him feel slightly sick. ‘What I cannot understand is what is the matter with her? One would think I had got you into all this trouble, instead of the other way round; and anyway, we are free now, so what’s all the fuss about?’
Rosy had placed a large mangold on the floor and was delicately rolling it to and fro with her forefoot, but she gave a small squeak just to show Adrian that she was paying attention.
‘No,’ said Adrian, firmly, ‘if we stay here, there must be a clear understanding. I am not going to be hounded by that ungrateful creature.’
Rosy sensed Adrian’s annoyance, but she realised that it was not directed at her, so she was quite content.
‘I shall be firm with her,’ continued Adrian, drawing himself up and sticking his chin out commandingly. ‘I shall tell her that she is behaving like a child. That’s what I’ll do.’ He glared at Rosy triumphantly and Rosy gave another small squeak by way of applause.
‘You have to be firm with women,’ said Adrian. ‘Look at Lady Fenneltree. That was the way to deal with her. They get above themselves.’ Even in his distraught condition, Adrian could not see a single point of resemblance between Lady Fenneltree and Samantha.
‘I shall go now, Rosy,’ he said, wagging his finger at her, ‘and get our position quite clear. Otherwise I don’t intend to spend another night under this roof.’