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right, Hubert, about power and fear. I wouldn’t say it outside these walls, but life in Chambers would be a great deal easier if Venetia fell under that convenient Number II bus.” He paused, and then asked the question to which he needed an answer. “So I have your support, have I? Can I take it that I’m your choice to succeed you as Head of Chambers?”
    The question had been unwelcome. The tired eyes looked into his and Langton seemed to shrink back in his chair as if bracing himself against a physical attack. And when he spoke Laud didn’t miss that quavering note of petulance.
    “If that is the will of Chambers, of course you will have my support. But if Venetia wants it I don’t see how she can reasonably be rejected. It goes by seniority. Venetia is the senior.”
    It wasn’t enough, thought Laud bitterly. By God, it wasn’t enough.
    He stood looking down at the man he had thought was his friend and, for the first time in that long association, it was a look more judgemental than affectionate. It was as if he were seeing Langton with the critical, unclouded eyes of a stranger, noting with detached interest the first ravages of merciless time. The strong regular features were losing flesh. The nose was sharper and there were hollows under the jutting cheekbones. The deep-set eyes were less clear and beginning to hold the puzzled acceptance of old age. The mouth, once so firm-set, so uncompromising, was slackening into an occasional moist quaver. Once his had been a head formed, or so it seemed, to be topped by a judge’s wig. And that surely was what Langton had always hoped for. Despite the success, the satisfaction in succeeding his grandfather as Head of Chambers, there had always hung about him the uncomfortable whiff of hopes unrealized, of a talent which had promised more than it had achieved. And like his grandfather, he had stayed on too long.
    Both, too, had been unlucky in their only sons. Hubert’s father had returned from the First World War with lungs half destroyed by gas and a mind tormented by horrors of which he was never able to speak. He had had energy enough to father his only child, but had never effectively worked again and had died in 1925. Hubert’s only son, Matthew, as clever and ambitious as his father, sharing his father’s enthusiasm for the law, had been killed by an avalanche while skiing two years after being called to the Bar. It was after that tragedy that the final spark of ambition had seemed to flicker, then die in his father.
    Laud thought, “But it hasn’t died in me. I’ve supported him for the last ten years, covered his inadequacies, done his tedious chores for him. He may be opting out of responsibility but, by God, he’s not going to opt out of this.”
    But he knew with a sickness of the heart that this was mere posturing. There was no way in which he could win. If he forced a contest Chambers would be embroiled in an acrimonious dissent which would be publicly scandalous and could last for decades. And if he won by a narrow margin, what legitimacy would that confer? Either way, he wouldn’t easily be forgiven. And if he didn’t make a fight for it, then Venetia Aldridge would be the next Head of Chambers.
     
Chapter 3
     
    I t was never possible to estimate how long the jury would be out. Sometimes a case which had seemed so strong as to admit no possible question of the accused’s guilt resulted in a wait of hours, while one of apparent doubt and complexity produced a verdict with astonishing speed. Counsel had different ways of occupying the dead hours. The occasional sweepstake on the time the jury would take to arrive at their verdict provided at least a diversion. Some played chess or Scrabble, others went down to the cells to share the suspense with their clients, to encourage, sustain, perhaps warn, while others reviewed the evidence with their colleagues and meditated possible lines for an appeal if the case went against them. Venetia preferred