A Rumpole Christmas

by John Mortimer

  At last I fell into a restless sleep. In my dreams I saw myself being prosecuted by Soapy Sam Ballard who was wearing a long beard and arguing for my conviction under sharia law.

  I woke early to the first faint flush of daylight as a distant cock crowed. I got up, tiptoed across the room and extracted from the bottom of my case the papers in R. v. Khan. I was looking for the answer to a problem as yet undefined, going through the prosecution statement again and finding nothing very much.

  I reminded myself that Mr Luttrell, at his reception desk, had seen Honoria and her husband arrive together and go to her office. Ricky Glossop had left not more than fifteen minutes later, and later still he had telephoned and couldn’t get an answer from his wife. He had asked Luttrell to go to Honoria’s office because she wasn’t answering her phone. The receptionist had gone to her office and found her lying across her desk, her hand close to the bloodstained letter.

  Next I read the statement from Honoria’s secretary, Sue Blackmore, describing how she had found the letter in Honoria’s university pigeonhole and taken it to Honoria at her home. Of Honoria’s reaction on receiving it, Ms Blackmore commented, “She didn’t take the note all that seriously and wouldn’t even tell the police.” Ricky Glossop had finally rung the anti-terrorist department in Scotland Yard and showed them the letter.

  None of this was new. There was only one piece of evidence which I might have overlooked.

  In the senior tutor’s statement he said he had spoken to Honoria on the morning of the day she had died. She had told him that she couldn’t be at a seminar that afternoon because she had “an urgent appointment with Tony Hawkin.” Hawkin, as the senior tutor knew, was a solicitor who acted for the university, and had also acted for Honoria Glossop in a private capacity. The senior tutor had no idea why she had wanted to see her solicitor. He never saw his colleague alive again.

  I was giving that last document some thought when Hilda stirred, opened an eye and instructed me to ring for breakfast.

  “You’ll have to look after yourself today, Rumpole,” she told me. “Gerald’s going to take me fishing for grayling.”

  “Gerald?” Was there some new man in Hilda’s life who had turned up in the Cotswolds?

  “You know. The charming judge you introduced me to last night.”

  “You can’t mean Gravestone?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I mean Gerald Graves.”

  “You’re going fishing with him?”

  “He’s very kindly going to take me to a bit of river he shares with a friend.”

  “How delightful.” I adopted the ironic tone. “If you catch anything, bring it back for supper.”

  “Oh, I’m not going to do any fishing. I’m simply going to watch Gerald from the bank. He’s going to show me how he ties his flies.”

  “How absolutely fascinating.”

  She didn’t seem to think she’d said anything at all amusing and began to lever herself briskly out of bed.

  “Do ring up about that breakfast, Rumpole!” she said. “I’ve got to get ready for Gerald.”

  He may be Gerald to you, I thought, but he will always be The Old Gravestone to me.

  After Hilda had gone to meet her newfound friend, I finished the bacon and eggs with sausage and fried slice—which I had ordered as an organic, low calorie breakfast—and put a telephone call through to my faithful solicitor Bonny Bernard. I found him at his home talking over a background of shrill and excited children eager for the next morning and the well-filled stockings.

  “Mr Rumpole!” The man sounded shocked by my call. “Don’t you ever take a day off? It’s Christmas Eve!”

  “I know it’s Christmas Eve. I know that perfectly well,” I told him. “And my wife has gone fishing with our sepulchral judge, whom she calls “Gerald.” Meanwhile, have you got any close friends or associates working at Hawkin’s, the solicitor?”

  “Barry Tuck used to be our legal executive—moved there about three years ago.”

  “A cooperative sort of character is he, Tuck?”

  “We got on very well. Yes.”

  “Then get him to find out why Honoria Glossop went to see Tony Hawkin the afternoon before she was shot. It must have been something fairly urgent. She missed a seminar in order to go.”

  “Is it important?”

  “Probably not, but it just might be something we ought to know.”

  “I hope you’re enjoying your Christmas break, Mr Rumpole.”

  “Quite enjoying it. I’d like it better without a certain member of the judiciary. Oh, and I’ve got a hard time ahead.”

  “Working?”

  “No,” I told my patient solicitor gloomily. “Dancing.”

  “Quick, quick, slow, Rumpole. That’s better. Now chassé! Don’t you remember, Rumpole? This is where you chassé.”

  The truth was that I remembered little about it. It had been so long ago. How many years could it have been since Hilda and I had trodden across a dance floor? Yet here I was in a dinner jacket, which was now uncomfortably tight around the waist, doing my best to walk round this small area of polished parquet in time to the music with one arm around Hilda’s satin-covered waist and my other hand gripping one of hers. Although for much of the time she was walking backwards, she was undoubtedly the one in command of the enterprise. I heard a voice singing, seemingly from far off, above the music of the five-piece band laid on for the hotel’s dinner dance. It was a strange sound and one that I hadn’t heard for what seemed many years—She Who Must Be Obeyed was singing. I looked towards my table, rather as someone lost at sea might look towards a distant shore, and I saw Mr Justice Gravestone smiling at us with approval.

  “Well done, Hilda! And you came through that quite creditably, I thought, Rumpole. I mean, at least you managed to remain upright, although there were a few dodgy moments coming round that far corner.”

  “That was when I told him chassé. Rumpole couldn’t quite manage it.”

  As they were both enjoying a laugh I realized that, during a long day by the river which had, it seemed, produced nothing more than two fish so small that they had had to be returned to their natural environment, Mrs Rumpole had become “Hilda” to the judge, who had already become “Gerald.”

  “You know, when you retire, Rumpole,” the judge was sounding sympathetic in the most irritating kind of way, “you could take dancing lessons.”

  “There’s so much Rumpole could do if he retired. I keep telling him,” was Hilda’s contribution. “He could have wonderful days like we had, Gerald. Outdoors, close to nature and fishing.”

  “Catching two small grayling you had to put back in the water?” I was bold enough to ask. “It would’ve been easier to pay a quick visit to the fishmonger’s.”

  “Catching fish is not the point of fishing,” Hilda told me.

  Before I could ask her what the point of it was, the judge came up with a suggestion. “When you retire, I could teach you fishing, Rumpole. We could have a few days out together.”

  “Now, then. Isn’t that kind of Gerald, Rumpole?” Hilda beamed and I had to mutter, “Very kind,” although the judge’s offer had made me more determined than ever to die with my wig on.

  It was at this point that Lorraine the manageress came to the judge with a message. He read it quickly and then said, “Poor old Leslie Mulliner. You know him, don’t you, Rumpole? He sits in the Chancery Division.”

  I had to confess I didn’t know anyone who sat in the Chancery Division.

  “He was going to join us here tomorrow but his wife’s not well.”

  “He said on the phone that you’d do the job for him tomorrow.” Lorraine seemed anxious.

  “Yes, of course,” Graves hurried to reassure her. “I’ll stand in for him.”

  Before I could get any further explanation of the “job,” the music had struck up a more contemporary note. Fox-trots were out, and with a cry of “Come along, Hilda” Graves was strutting the dance floor, making curious
rhythmic movements with his hands. And Hilda, walking free and unfastened from her partner, was also strutting and waving her arms, smiling with pleasure. It wasn’t, I’m sure, the most up-to-date form of dancing, but it was, I suppose, a gesture from two sedate citizens who were doing their best to become, for a wine-filled moment on Christmas Eve, a couple of teenagers.

  Christmas Day at Cherry Picker’s Hall was uneventful. The judge suggested church, and I stood while he and Hilda bellowed out “O come, all ye faithful . . .” Then we sat among the faithful under the Norman arches, beside the plaques and monuments to so many vanished rectors and country squires, looking out upon the holly around the pulpit and the flowers on the altar. I tried to understand, not for the first time, how a religious belief could become so perverted as to lead to death threats, terror and a harmless professor shot through the head.

  We had lunch in a pub and then the judge announced he had work to do and left us.

  After a long and satisfactory sleep, Hilda and I woke around teatime and went to the residents’ lounge. Long before we got to the door, we could hear the excited cries of children, and when we went in we saw them crowded round the Christmas tree. And there, stooping among the presents, was the expected figure in a red dressing gown (trimmed with white fur), wellington boots, a white beard and a long red hat. As he picked up a present and turned towards us, I felt that fate had played the greatest practical joke it could have thought up to enliven the festive season.

  Standing in for his friend Mulliner from the Chancery Division, the sepulchral, unforgiving, prosecution-minded Mr Justice Gravestone, my old enemy, had become Father Christmas.

  On Boxing Day, I rang a persistent, dogged, ever useful private detective who, sickened by divorce, now specialized in the cleaner world of crime—Ferdinand Ian Gilmour Newton, known in legal circles as “Fig Newton.” I told him that, as was the truth, my wife Hilda was planning a long country walk and lunch in a distant village with a judge whom I had spent a lifetime trying to avoid. And I asked him, if he had no previous engagements, if he’d like to sample the table d’hôte at Cherry Picker’s Hall.

  Fig Newton is a lugubrious character of indeterminate age, usually dressed in an old mackintosh and an even older hat, with a drip at the end of his nose caused by a seemingly perpetual cold—most likely caught while keeping observation in all weathers. But today he had shed his outer garments, his nose was dry and he was tucking into the lamb cutlets with something approaching enthusiasm. “Bit of a step up from your usual pub lunch, this, isn’t it, Mr Rumpole?”

  “It certainly is, Fig. We’re splashing out this Christmas. Now this case I’m doing down the Bailey . . .”

  “The terrorist?”

  “Yes, the terrorist.”

  “You’re on to a loser with that one, Mr Rumpole.” Fig was gloomily relishing the fact.

  “Most probably. All the same, there are a few stones I don’t want to leave unturned.”

  “Such as what?”

  “Find out what you can about the Glossops.”

  “The dead woman’s family?”

  “That’s right. See what’s known about their lives, hobbies, interests. That sort of thing. I need to get more of a picture of their lives together. Oh, and see if the senior tutor knows more about the Glossops. Pick up any gossip going around the university. I’ll let you know if Bonny Bernard has found out why Honoria had a date with her solicitor.”

  “So when do you want all this done by, Mr Rumpole?” Fig picked up a cutlet bone and chewed gloomily. “Tomorrow morning, I suppose?”

  “Oh, sooner than that if possible,” I told him.

  It was not that I felt that the appalling Hussein Khan had a defence—in fact he might well turn out to have no defence at all. But something at the children’s Christmas party had suggested a possibility to my mind.

  That something was the sight of Mr Justice Graves standing in for someone else.

  III

  Christmas was over, and I wondered if the season of goodwill was over with it. The Christmas cards had left the mantelpiece, the holly and the mistletoe had been tidied away, we had exchanged green fields for Gloucester Road and Cherry Picker’s Hall was nothing but a memory. The judge was back on the bench to steer the case of R. v. Khan towards its inevitable guilty verdict.

  The Christmas decorations were not all that had gone. Gerald the cheerful dinner guest, Gerald the energetic dancing partner of She Who Must Be Obeyed, Gerald the fisherman and, in particular, Gerald as Santa Claus had all gone as well, leaving behind only the old thin-lipped, unsmiling Mr Justice Gravestone with the voice of doom, determined to make a difficult case harder than ever.

  All the same there was something of a spring in the Rumpole step. This was not only the result of the Christmas break but also due to a suspicion that the case R. v. Khan might not be quite as horrifyingly simple as it had at first appeared.

  As I crossed the hall on my way to Court Number One, I saw Ricky Glossop—the dashingly handsome husband of the murdered professor—with a pretty blonde girl whom I took to be Sue Blackmore, Honoria’s secretary, who was due to give evidence about her employer’s reception of the fatal letter. She seemed, so far as I could tell from a passing examination, to be a girl on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She lit a cigarette with trembling fingers, then almost immediately stamped it out. She kept looking, with a kind of desperation, towards the door of the court, and then turning, with a sob, to Ricky Glossop and choking out what I took to be some sort of complaint. He had laid a consoling hand on hers and was talking in the sort of low, exaggerat edly calm tone that a dentist uses when he says, “This isn’t going to hurt.”

  The medical and police evidence had been disposed of before Christmas and now, in the rather strange order adopted by Soapy Sam Ballard for the prosecution, the only witnesses left were Arthur Luttrell (who manned the reception desk), Ricky Glossop and the nervous secretary.

  Luttrell, the receptionist, was a smart, precise, self-important man with a sharp nose and a sandy moustache who clearly regarded his position as being at the centre of the university organization. He remembered Hussein Khan coming at nine thirty that evening, saying he had an appointment with the senior tutor and going up to the library. At quarter to ten the Glossops had arrived. Ricky had gone with his wife to her office, but had left about fifteen minutes later. “He stopped to speak to me on the way out,” Luttrell told Soapy Sam, “which is why I remember it well.”

  After that, the evening at William Morris University followed its horrible course. Around eleven o’clock, Hussein Khan left, complaining that he had wasted well over an hour, no senior tutor had come to talk to him and that he was going back to his parents’ restaurant in Golders Green. After that Ricky telephoned the reception desk saying that he couldn’t get any reply from his wife’s office and would Mr Luttrell please go and make sure she was all right. As we all know, Mr Luttrell went to the office, knocked, opened the door and was met by the ghastly spectacle which was to bring us all together in Court Number One at the Old Bailey.

  “Mr Rumpole.” The judge’s tone in calling my name was as aloofly disapproving as though Christmas had never happened. “All this evidence is agreed, isn’t it? I don’t suppose you’ll find it necessary to trouble Mr Luttrell with any questions.”

  “Just one or two, My Lord.”

  “Oh, very well.” The judge sounded displeased. “Just remember, we’re under a public duty not to waste time.”

  “I hope Your Lordship isn’t suggesting that an attempt to get to the truth is a waste of time.” And before The Old Gravestone could launch a counter-attack, I asked Mr Luttrell the first question.

  “You say Mr Glossop spoke to you on the way out. Can you remember what he said?”

  “I remember perfectly.” The receptionist looked personally insulted as though I doubted his word. “He asked me if Hussein Khan was in the building.”

  “He asked you that?”

  “Yes, he did.”


  “And what did you tell him?”

  “I told him yes. I said Khan was in the library where he had an appointment with the senior tutor.”

  I allowed a pause for this curious piece of evidence to sink into the minds of the jury. Graves, of course, filled in the gap by asking if that was my only question.

  “Just one more, My Lord.”

  Here the judge sighed heavily, but I ignored that.

  “Are you telling this jury, Mr Luttrell, that Glossop discovered that the man who had threatened his wife with death was in the building, then left without speaking to her again?”

  I looked at the jury as I asked this and saw, for the first time in the trial, a few faces looking puzzled.

  Mr Luttrell, however, sounded unfazed.

  “I’ve told you what he said. I can’t tell you anything more.”

  “He can’t tell us anything more,” the judge repeated. “So that would seem to be the end of the matter, wouldn’t it, Mr Rumpole?”

  “Not quite the end,” I told him. “I don’t think it’s quite the end of the matter yet.”

  This remark did nothing to improve my relations with His Lordship, who gave me a look from which all traces of the Christmas spirit had been drained.

  The jury may have had a moment of doubt during the receptionist’s evidence, but when Ricky Glossop was put in the witness box, their sympathy and concern for the good-looking, appealingly modest and stricken husband was obvious. Graves supported them with enthusiasm.

  “This is clearly going to be a terrible ordeal for you, Mr Glossop,” the judge said, looking at the witness with serious concern. “Wouldn’t you like to sit down?”

  “No thank you, My Lord. I prefer to stand,” Ricky said bravely. The judge gave him the sort of look a commanding officer might give to a young subaltern who’d volunteered to attack the enemy position single-handed. “Just let me know,” Graves insisted, “if you feel exhausted or overcome by any part of your evidence, and you shall sit down immediately.”