Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 100, Nos. 4 & 5. Whole Nos. 603 & 604, October 1992

“Rumpole, Dr. MacClintock has told you it’s only a cold.”

“Dr. MacClintock gave me a warning, on the subject of death.” At which there was a ring at the door, and Hilda said, “Oh good heavens. That’s never the front doorbell!”

With a good deal of clucking and tutting, Hilda went out to the hall and eventually ushered Miss Rosemary Beasley, who appeared to be carrying some kind of plastic holdall, into the presence of the sick. When she asked me how I was, I told her I was dying.

“Well, don’t die yet, Mr. Rumpole. You’ve got our case to win.”

“Don’t you think I could conduct it perfectly well from beyond the grave?” I asked Matron.

“Now you’re teasing me! Your husband is the most terrible tease,” she told a puzzled Hilda. “Listen to this, Mr. Rumpole. The colonel says that he has an urgent message for you. He’ll deliver it here tonight. So I’ve brought the board.”

“The what?”

“The planchette, of course.”

To my dismay, Matron then produced, from her black plastic holdall, a small heart-shaped board on castors, which she plonked onto our dining table. There was paper fixed on the board, and Miss Beasley held a pencil poised over it and the board then moved in a curious fashion, causing writing to appear on the paper. It looked illegible to me, but Miss Beasley deciphered some rather cheeky communications from a late and no doubt unlamented Red Indian Chief who finally agreed to fetch Colonel Ollard to the planchette. Tearing himself away from the Emperor Napoleon, the colonel issued his orders for the day, emerging in Miss Beasley’s already somewhat masculine voice as she read the scribbles on the board. “The colonel says, ‘Hullo there, Rumpole,’ ” Miss Beasley informed us.

“Well, answer him, Rumpole. Be polite!” Hilda appeared enchanted with the whole ludicrous performance.

“Oh, hullo there, Colonel.” I felt an idiot as I said it.

“It’s very blue here, Rumpole. And I am very happy,” Miss Beasley came through as the late holder of the Military Cross.

“Oh good.” What else could I say?

“Tomorrow you will cross-examine my brother Percival.”

“Well, I hope to. I’m not feeling...” here I sneezed again, “quite up to snuff.”

“Brace up, Rumpole! No malingering. Tomorrow you will cross-examine my brother in Court.” Miss Beasley relayed Colonel Ollard’s instructions.

“Yes, Colonel. Aye, aye, sir.”

“Ask him what we said to each other when he visited me in the nursing home, and he drove me up to the Downs. Ask him what the conversation was when we had cream tea together at the Bide-A-Wee tearooms. Go on, Rumpole. Ask Percy that!” Colonel Ollard may have been a very gallant officer and an inspired leader of men. I doubted if he was a real expert in the art of cross-examination.

“Is it a good question?” I asked the deceased, doubtfully.

“Percy won’t like it. Just as Jerry didn’t like cold steel. Percy will run a mile from that question,” Miss Beasley croaked.

“Colonel, I make it a rule to decide on my own cross-examination.” I wanted to make the position clear, but the answer came back almost in a parade-ground bellow.

“Ask that question, Rumpole. It’s an order!”

“I’ll... I’ll consider it.” I suppose it doesn’t do to hurt the feelings of the dead.

“Do so! Oh, and see you over here some time.” At which, it seemed, the consultation was over and Colonel Ollard returned to some celestial bowling-green to wile away eternity. It was perfectly ridiculous, of course. I knew quite well that the deceased colonel wasn’t manipulating the planchette. But, as for asking his question, I could tell by the judge’s attitude next morning that we had absolutely nothing to lose.

Percival Ollard was not, I thought, a particularly attractive-looking customer. The successful manufacturer of kitchen utensils had run to fat, he had a bristling little ginger moustache and small flickering eyes that seemed to be looking round the Court for ways of escape. Featherstone led him smoothly through his evidence in chief and then I rose to cross-examine. The learned judge put a damper on my first question.

“I’m really wondering,” he said, “how much longer this estate is going to be put to the expense of this apparently hopeless litigation.”

“Not long, my Lord,” I said with a confidence I didn’t feel, “after I have cross-examined this witness.” And I turned to the witness box.

“Mr. Percival Ollard. Were you on good terms with your brother, before he went into the nursing home?”

“Extremely good terms. We saw each other regularly, and he always sent my boy, Peter, a postal order for Christmas and birthdays.”

“That was before the colonel started talking to the dead?” the judge asked in a way unfriendly to Rumpole.

“Yes, my Lord.” Percy looked gratefully at my Lord.

“Before he became, shall we say, eccentric in the extreme?” the judge went on.

“Yes, my Lord.”

“Very well.” Venables, J., now seemed to have worn himself out. “Carry on, if you must, Mr. Rumpole.”

“Two weeks after he went into the nursing home, you took him for a drive on the Downs?” Rumpole carried on.