The Summer of Sir Lancelot

country.‘
    ‘Most good of you to mention it, sir,‘ returned Millichap gravely.
    ‘I certainly couldn‘t struggle to court today without your expert assistance,‘ Sir Lancelot added warmly. ‘What‘s for breakfast?‘
    ‘Mrs Jones is doing you some kidneys and a chop, sir.‘
    ‘Excellent!‘ He rubbed his hands. ‘You can‘t dispense justice on an empty stomach. “Fair round belly with good capon lin‘d”, eh, Millichap? She‘s got that jar of Chivers‘ marmalade for me, I hope?‘ he remembered suddenly.
    A couple of hours later the faithful servitor was asking, ‘May I tuck this rug round your knees, sir?‘ as he eased his master into the seats of justice at the local magistrates‘ court. ‘We must not be deceived by the sunshine from noticing quite a nip in the air this morning.‘
    Sir Lancelot drew out his half-moon glasses.
    ‘Thank you, Millichap, most considerate. You may withdraw now.‘
    ‘Very good, sir.‘
    ‘Oh, and Millichap — ‘
    ‘Sir?‘
    ‘I intend to fish Witches‘ Pool this afternoon. I expect I shall be needing some assistance to get down the bank.‘
    ‘I expect you will, sir,‘ agreed Millichap politely, bowing himself off into the wings.
    ‘Sir Lancelot has ricked his back,‘ Mr Caradoc Evans explained sombrely to their fellow magistrate, Miss Morgan-Griffiths, a woman with rimless glasses and a hat like a trifle. ‘He fell out of a window.‘
    ‘Indeed?‘ she remarked, not at all sympathetically. She knew Sir Lancelot to be an unabashed consumer of spirits while she was, of course, a total abstainer, apart from the invalid port prescribed by her doctor for after dinner.
    ‘Well, what have we today?‘ Sir Lancelot looked benignly round the little outpost of justice and rubbed his hands as though launching into a list of gastrectomies. He rather liked being a magistrate. I suppose after thirty years of crushing into place students, housemen, nurses, and even theatre sisters, it was a pity not to use his talents for the benefit of the community. ‘The usual homicidal maniacs, I suppose?‘ he added.
    Leading into the town was a straight stretch of highway, where motorists who had been winding among the mountains astern of lorries like ambling mammoths could at last clap their feet joyfully to their floorboards. Unfortunately they ignored the forbidding glance from those red-rimmed eyes marked ‘30‘, affording such a keen couple of local sportsmen as Constables Howells and Jenkins, patrolling in their little black MG, as much fun as fishing their favourite stretch of river.
    ‘Quite a good bag today, I see,‘ murmured Sir Lancelot, adjusting his glasses and glancing briefly at a list. ‘About eighteen brace, I‘d say.‘
    Mr Evans blew his nose loudly, which seemed accepted as the starting signal.
    I won‘t harrow you with the heart-rending stories behind each case conjured from the shiny black notebooks of Police Constables Howells and Jenkins. Old grandmothers were on their deathbeds, distant wives seized with sudden illness, children had rained down from trees, boilers burst, houses blazed, tremendous business deals hung in the balance. None of these reasons struck Sir Lancelot as an excuse for proceeding to the scene of the tragedy at over thirty miles an hour.
    ‘I am not in the slightest interested if your wife had gone off with a hairy great sailor,‘ he declared after some time, when his back was starting to hurt again. ‘If you wished to catch the lady in flagrante delicto at Cardiff docks you should have started earlier.‘
    ‘But I couldn‘t, Your Worship. When she left she took the alarm clock.‘
    ‘There is a perfectly good call system on the telephone designed for exactly those circumstances. It is no excuse whatever for your proceeding along the highway at a rate which threatens to make the casualty departments of our overworked hospitals resemble the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo. Your behaviour was utterly antisocial, and I only regret the treatment I am empowered to prescribe can‘t be more radical.‘
    He glanced down at the dock, as though having something in mind involving drawing and quartering.
    ‘Fined five pounds and licence endorsed,‘ he ended briefly. ‘By the way,‘ he added in an undertone to Mr Evans on his left, ‘I want another word with you later about Witches‘ Pool.‘
    ‘I fear there is nothing you can do about it.‘ The solicitor blew his nose twice, as though sounding the Last Post.