A Rumpole Christmas

by John Mortimer

  “Mr X,” I stood up to cross-examine Maureen’s alleged victim, a thin-faced, anxious-looking individual with a bald patch and a habit of dabbing a slightly sweaty top lip with a folded handkerchief, “how long had your love affair with Maureen O’Keefe lasted?”

  “We had known each other for four years.”

  “You could scarcely call it a love affair!” The voice of Mr Justice Graves blew down like a cold wind from the bench. “More a business arrangement.”

  “Whatever you call it, how much money did you give her over that period?”

  “He has already told us, Mr Rumpole. Just under £4,000.”

  There were times when I would have loved to plant a heavy tombstone on old Graves to stop him interrupting.

  “Four thousand?” I concentrated on the witness. “Under a thousand a year? Hardly enough to set her up with a yacht and a Jaguar, or even a small boutique.”

  “It was a little more than I could afford.”

  “But not more than any man might give as presents to his mistress?”

  “Were they presents?” Graves made the word sound as though everything gift-wrapped and handed over at Christmas was the result of some kind of criminal conspiracy.

  “I suppose you could call them that,” Mr X conceded, to the obvious annoyance of the old Graveyard.

  “And Maureen might have thought of them as presents?”

  “I suppose she might.”

  “The sort of presents any man might give his girlfriend?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “And, as we already know, you gave her this money in cheques. Wasn’t that a little risky? I suppose your wife might see your bank statements?”

  “She did. She rang the bank.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I told her Miss O’Keefe was someone who did my part-time typing. She made further inquiries . . .

  “And found out you’d lied?”

  “Yes.”

  “And was it your wife who suggested you must have been blackmailed and you should go to the police, hoping she’d get your money back?”

  “It was my wife’s idea, yes.”

  “You didn’t want to bring this case, did you, Mr X?”

  “No. It’s been embarrassing.”

  “Embarrassing for you, certainly. And perhaps ruinous for the lady I have the honour to represent.” I said this proudly, raising my arm in a salute towards Maureen and smiling for the benefit of the jury. “And tell me, Mr X,” I turned the full power of the Rumpole searching look on the man. “Did Maureen ever mention your wife to you?”

  “She said it would be a pity if my wife found out.”

  “Isn’t that just the sort of thing any mistress might say to her lover? Without any idea of blackmail being involved at all?”

  “I suppose that’s possible.”

  “I suppose it is. And tell me this, Mr X, since you can shelter behind an anonymity denied to the lady put up in the dock for all the tabloids to scorn.” (In fact there had been disappointingly little reference to R. v. O’Keefe in the papers.) “Were you truly grateful for what she did for you?”

  “I suppose I was.”

  “And don’t you suppose that she accepted this less than £1,000 per annum for always being ready and available whenever you happened to ring her up on the telephone?”

  “I suppose that’s possible, yes.”

  “And she never had blackmail in her mind at all?”

  There was a pause. Mr X looked up to heaven, trying to avoid the disapproving gaze of Mrs X, large and fur-coated, who sat beside his solicitor.

  Finally he dabbed his upper lip and said, “That’s possible.”

  “Thank you, Mr X. That word ‘possible’ is all that is required of you!”

  So I folded my gown about me and sat down. Mr Justice Graves gave me a stony look, as though I were the sole instigator of a blackmail plot and I should be immediately placed beside my client in the dock.

  “Edmund wants to be like you, Mr Rumpole. He’s got ambitions to be a brief.” Maureen had told me that when the jury was sent out and before she was taken down to the cells to await their decision. “Poor little chap. He must have got tired of waiting. Would you see he gets a cup of something hot?”

  So there I was, enduring the worst part of any trial, the long wait when there’s nothing else to do, nothing else you can say to affect the result, and your client’s fate is in the hands of the honest, attentive, or not so attentive, twelve. I was in the Old Bailey canteen with a solemn child for whom I had bought sweet tea and chocolate biscuits and whom I thought I had seen, at moments during his mother’s trial, peep round the door of the court before an usher hustled him back to his seat outside.

  As he kindly allowed me to light up a small cigar, Edmund said, “Mum says you did brilliantly for her in court, Mr Rumpole. You been at the job a long time, have you?”

  “Sometimes it seems since the dawn of time.”

  “I bet you could have got that Dr Crippen off if you’d’ve been his brief. The one what chopped his wife up and buried her in the cellar.”

  “Dr Crippen was, I’m afraid, before my time.”

  “What would you have said, Mr Rumpole, if you had to stand up for that old doctor, like?” There was an eager glint behind Edmund’s glasses.

  “He didn’t mean to kill her,” I suggested. “He just gave her Hyoscine to keep her quiet at night. She was a great chatterer, you know. Drove him out of his mind. Well, she took too many sleeping pills and pegged out.”

  “Mr Rumpole! That’s brilliant!” Edmund’s admiration seemed genuine.

  “Not my idea. Marshall Hall’s. The greatest criminal barrister of all time.”

  “How’d you explain him cutting her up, like?”

  “Panic, I suppose. But that’s the most difficult part of the case.”

  “You’d get over it, Mr Rumpole. I bet you would. Mum said you handled the bloke what charged her just perfect. In your cross-examination.”

  “You know that expression?”

  “Of course. It comes in my Sensational Trials book. As it does in Sir Edward Marshall Hall.”

  “Cross-examining,” I explained to Edmund, “is not the art of examining crossly. I was polite to Mr X. I treated him like a friend. I led him gently by the hand up the garden path and dropped him in the compost heap. I’m sorry you missed it.”

  “I heard a bit. I got the door open a little.”

  This Edmund, I thought, was a lad who might go far in the law, whether in or out of the dock. But I thought I should direct his thoughts back to childhood.

  “Christmas is coming, Edmund,” I reminded him. “What’re you hoping for?”

  “Pterodactyl!” The boy had no doubt about it. “Extinct flying reptile of the Jurassic period. They got them electronically powered, so they’re ever so realistic. I know that’s what Mum’s going to get me for Christmas.”

  I was by no means certain that his mum would be at liberty to go shopping, but I didn’t tell Edmund that.

  The jury were either unable to make up their minds or had sent for tea. I wondered what would happen to Edmund if the news were to be bad and, in one insane moment, I tried to imagine the reaction of She Who Must Be Obeyed if I brought Edmund home to Froxbury Mansions for her to look after during a four-year sentence.

  Happily this scene of high tragedy and matrimonial mayhem was avoided. Ten minutes later we were called back into court, the jury found Maureen O’Keefe “not guilty” and that was the verdict of them all.

  She gave me a kiss and said, “Thanks for that, Mr Rumpole, darling.”

  Edmund said, “Brilliant! Better than Sir Edward Marshall Hall!” And they walked off together into the early sunset.

  Christmas was coming nearer and, as the threat of the festive season approached, there was a nasty slump in business. Where had all the villains got to? Were they taking winter breaks in Florida or on the Costa del Crime? Had they gone into retirement and taken to buyin
g their Christmas presents instead of nicking them in the usual manner? Had the season of goodwill come down on us with such a thump that pawnbrokers were leaving their doors unlocked and finding no takers?

  Whatever the reason, my diary, apart from the odd indecency in Snaresbrook, was sadly empty and my mantelpiece held very few briefs indeed. I was even stumped by the crossword puzzle when there was a knock at my door and Henry, our clerk, put his head round and told me I had a visitor.

  “Someone in trouble?” I asked hopefully.

  “If he is, it’s a matter for the juvenile court. Not much of a brief fee on that. I should imagine.”

  And with that he introduced young Edmund O’Keefe into my presence. He made himself comfortable in my client’s armchair and said, “Thanks for letting me come and see you, Mr Rumpole. Mum said you’d probably be terribly busy, but the clerk said you was in, so she thought you might be so kind as to keep an eye on me while she goes out after the you-know-what.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what.”

  “What we was talking about down at the Old Bailey. While the jury was out. We was talking about this extinct flying reptile.”

  “Edmund!” I was mildly reproving. “I may have expressed some criticism of our learned trial judge, but I’m sure I didn’t go so far as to call him an extinct flying reptile!”

  “No. You know what I mean, Mr Rumpole. The pterodactyl!”

  “Oh, you’re talking about our prosecuting counsel?”

  “What I want for Christmas! I’m sure Mum’s gone out to buy it for me. But she thinks I can’t guess what she’s up to. She asked me to meet her in three-quarters of an hour at Oxford Circus station. I’ll be going to the Tube soon, but if I could just sit here quietly, in the warm?”

  “Yes, Edmund. Of course you can.” So I took up my pen and tried the anagrams in the crossword and hoped that it looked as though I was working hard.

  After a while Edmund offered me a curiously strong mint, which I accepted, and then he said, “Mum told me that quite often, during her trial I mean, you were really rude to the old judge. Is that a good idea? I mean, I want to know for when I’m a brief.”

  He was talking about the work which I had been dealing with, man and boy, for almost half a century, so I gave him the full benefit of my experience.

  “Well, you see, Edmund. It’s like this. If the judge is obviously on your side you flatter him, butter him up, say fawning things like ‘as your Lordship, with his vast experience of these matters, knows so much better than I . . .’ and it’s in the bag. On the other hand,” I warned young Edmund, “if the judge is completely fair and sums up straight down the line the jury are quite likely to convict. But if the judge is a real prosecution-minded bastard who’s dead set on potting you . . .”

  “What’s ‘potting,’ Mr Rumpole?”

  “Knocking your client into the pocket with a long cue. Dropping him into chokey.”

  “Like Mr Justice Graves?”

  “You’re absolutely right. Just like old Graveyard. Then you taunt him, irritate him, play him like a matador plays a bull. Get him to behave so that the jury takes against him and your client gets off.”

  “Is that how you got my mum off?” Edmund asked.

  “Not altogether. I got her off by my brilliant cross-examination of Mr X. After that, the jury couldn’t be sure of anything.” There was a silence, during which Edmund absorbed this wisdom and gave me another mint. Then he said, “What was the real truth about the bloodstains in the Penge Bungalow case, Mr Rumpole?”

  “The Penge Bungalow! How on earth do you know about that?”

  “It’s in my book of sensational trials.”

  “Is it really?” My dark afternoon was lit up by the golden glow of an old triumph. “I did that case when I was a young white-wig. Alone and without a leader. I won it by my extensive knowledge of bloodstains. Might I have a look at that book of yours?”

  “I’ll lend it to you, Mr Rumpole. I’ll give you Sensational Trials as soon as I’ve finished with it. But while we’re talking about these famous murders . . . did Alma Rattenbury know her boyfriend was planning to do her husband in with a croquet mallet, do you think?”

  I gave him my view, which was that Mrs Rattenbury was entirely innocent of any crime worse than adultery with a boy scout, and we went on to other cases. We considered whether the Brides in the Bath murderer would ever have been convicted if he hadn’t gone into the witness box and made a bad impression on the jury.

  What had been an achingly boring afternoon became quite pleasant, until Edmund looked at the clock on my naked mantelpiece and discovered he had only ten minutes to be at Oxford Circus Tube to meet his mother. He asked the way to Temple Station, but I told the lad, who seemed likely to have a successful career in murder opening before him, that I would take him in a taxi and then go on to the so-called “Mansion Flat” in the Gloucester Road. It seemed a small price to pay for learning that I was in a Sensational Trial.

  When we got to Oxford Circus Tube it was, of course, crowded, but we saw neither hide nor hair of Maureen O’Keefe. We stood, first on one side, then on another in the way of passing crowds of busy men with briefcases and girls with bright shopping bags, but that blonde head, darker at the roots, never bobbed on the surface of humanity.

  My encouraging phrases—“She’ll be here in a minute”; “Let’s just wait and she’s bound to see us”; “No, Edmund, I’m sure she hasn’t forgotten you”—began to lack conviction.

  In vain I tried to interest him in more sensational murders. I went through the Supermarket Strangulation, the Hampstead Cinema Stabbing, the Death at The Circus and the mysterious affair of the body found in the deep freezer of a Thai restaurant, but I could see that the boy’s attention was wandering. He had got to that desperate stage of human anxiety when even the juiciest murder can’t take your mind off your troubles.

  Edmund was beginning, I felt, to fear that his mother was never coming and had run out on him, and the same thought was occurring to me. Had Maureen upped sticks and returned to Ireland? Had she been arrested for some other offence and detained without bail? Had she planned to leave her offspring with me, where he would be sure of a good home and a training in the finer points of the criminal law? I felt the cold hand of fear grip me as I thought, once more, of explaining to Hilda that our little family had been suddenly enlarged.

  And then Claude Erskine-Brown, the opera-loving wine buff and hopeless advocate from our chambers, arose from the murky depths, no doubt in search of Mrs Justice Erskine-Brown.

  “No, Erskine-Brown. It is not my grandson.”

  “Your nephew, then?”

  “Not my nephew either.”

  “Well, who is it?”

  “A young friend of mine.”

  “A friend?” Erskine-Brown looked at me with deep suspicion. “What sort of friend?”

  “The sort that knows a bit about murder. Which is more than can be said of you, Claude. I’d like you to meet . . .”

  Before I could effect the introduction, a sudden thought had struck Edmund and cheered him up considerably. He gave a loud cry of “I know what’s happened to my mum! She must have gone off to buy the pterodactyl!” and he vanished into the milling, moving surge of shoppers and was carried away by them, out of my sight, like a toy boat disappearing on a choppy sea. Now I feared that Maureen hadn’t ditched him, and that I would eventually have to explain to a weeping mother that I had lost her child in Oxford Street. I set off, no doubt foolishly, in hot pursuit.

  It was a nightmare. I was being pushed and shoved bat tling against bodies carrying shopping bags and huge parcels or pushing baskets on wheels. I was outstared by pale, obsessed, rebuking faces, shouted at to “Mind where you’re going!” or blankly ignored by those who had been taken over by shopping as though it were some hallucinatory drug.

  Above us the lights, the illuminated patterns, lit-up toys, hung like phantom bridges under which we scurried. Pop music, blaring from record s
hops, battered my ears. Men in anoraks, sidling up, tried to sell me video games at give-away prices. Old women, bundled into doorways, stretched their arms out towards me and begged for “change.” I passed an “Erotic Gear” store, with a window of black leather and chains, from which the strains of “Silent Night” were emerging. I called out for “Edmund!” once or twice, but it was like shouting into a hurricane.

  And then I saw him. He was walking fast, trying to keep up with a man in a dark suit who had a possessive arm around his shoulder. Sadly, we live in an age when we’re afraid that no twelve-year-old can walk through a crowd unattended without risk of kidnapping, sexual assault or even death. With this in mind I decided to give chase.

  In my imagination there was something sinister about the dark-suited figure with his protective arm about Edmund’s shoulder. Might he not be a prowling paedophile who’d made a catch? I panted. I broke, at moments, into a sort of shambling trot. Unfit for such exercise by reason of fried slices and small cigars, I ended up coughing. My quarry was sometimes visible, sometimes hidden by the crowd. They crossed roads just as the traffic lights were changing, and then I had to put on another turn of speed. For a good five minutes I seemed to have lost them.

  And then I saw them turn away from the crowds, off Oxford Street and up Rathbone Place into northern Soho. I trotted shambolically after them. They were fifty yards ahead of me, going past the lit restaurants in Charlotte Street. Then they went into Fitzroy Street and the lights changed. I was prevented from crossing by a swerving motorbike and hooting taxis. But I saw them in the doorway of a pale house with peeling stucco. The sinister man put a finger to the bell and before I had crossed the road I saw the door open and he and Edmund had vanished inside.

  When I got to the door it was locked again. There was a vertical line of bell pushes with names like “Trixie,” “Yo-Yo,” “Georgie” and “Lalique.” There was no “Maureen.” I pressed “Yo-Yo” for luck and an old, tired voice said, “Come on up, dear.” The door clicked and let me in.

  I went up a dirty stairway and smelled face powder and disinfectant and take-away food. Then I heard the voice of a young boy. “Thank you very much! It’s exactly what I wanted!”