The Woman in the Picture [antikvár]

On the afternoon of the day my grandmother died, I dealt with the case of a burnt letter. Blown into the foyer of Great Marlborough Street Magistrates' Court on a gust of drizzly wind, I was confronted by the usual smeU of cigarettes and wet wool. A scattering of defendants, hunched in damp clothes, eyed each other surreptitiously or peered through the glass panel in a courtroom door.My cHent, Miss Gertrude Wright, was weeping on a bench under a noticeboard but as I headed towards her across the muddy terrazzo floor I was obstructed by a man wearing an aged suit and with a military polish to his shoes.'You Miss Gifford?' he demanded.'I am.''I come to teU you, don't you be letting my girl down.' His index finger jabbed to within inches of my nose and he had the strut of a lady's man with his pale gold hair and staring eyes of forget-me-not blue.'You must be Mr Wright,' I said.'Yeah. And I was expecting a proper lawyer. A gentleman. Then Trudy goes and teUs me she's got some woman.''I shall do my best for your daughter, Mr Wright.' A worm of antagonism twitched in my breast but I had learned not to be so easily provoked. After aU, I had met his type time and again both in the dock and on the bench: cocky, misogynistic and self-righteous.'Yeah, you do your best, litde lady. And I might as well tell you here and now, we ain't got no money to pay ''I shall be representing your daughter pro bono, Mr Wright, as I expect she has told you. It wiU cost you nothing.'