Rumpole at Christmas

by John Mortimer

  When she saw me she looked up and wiped the tears from her eyes with the knuckles of her hands. She said, ‘Forgive me, Mr Rumpole. I’m being silly.’ And she switched off the music.

  ‘Not at all,’ I told her. ‘You’ve got plenty to cry about.’

  ‘She told me you’re a famous defender. You’ll do all you can for her, won’t you, Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘All I can. But it might not be very much.’

  ‘Oriana wouldn’t hurt anyone. I’m sure of that.’

  ‘She’s a powerful woman. People like her are continually surprising.’

  ‘But you will do your best, won’t you?’

  I looked at Shelagh, sadly unable to say much to cheer her up. ‘Could you turn me into a slim, slender barrister in a couple of days?’ I asked her.

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘There, you see. We’re both playing against impossible odds.’ I picked up the small recording machine. ‘Is this what you used to record the children?’ It was about as thick as a cigarette packet but a few inches longer.

  ‘Yes. Isn’t it ridiculous? It’s the dictaphone we use in the office. It’s high time we got some decent equipment.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, as I gave it back to her. ‘Everything that can be done for Oriana will be done.’

  The dining hall was almost empty at breakfast time, but I heard a call of ‘Rumpole! Come and join us.’ So I reluctantly went to sit down with Graham Banks, the solicitor, and his wife. I abolished all thoughts of bacon and eggs and tucked into a low-calorie papaya biscuit. I rejected the yak’s milk on this occasion in favour of a pale and milkless tea.

  ‘She wants you to represent her,’ Banks began.

  ‘That’s what she told me.’

  ‘So I’ll be sending you a brief, Rumpole. But of course she’s in a hopeless situation.’

  I might have said, ‘She wouldn’t be in such a hopeless situation if you hadn’t handed over quite so much evidence to help the police in their conviction of your client’s guilt.’ But I restrained myself and only said, ‘You feel sure she’s the one who did it?’

  ‘Of course. She was due to inherit all Airlie’s money. Who else had a motive?’

  ‘I can’t think of anyone at the moment.’

  ‘If she’s found guilty of murdering Airlie she won’t be able to inherit the money anyway. That’s the law, isn’t it?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘I’ll have to tell her that. Then there’d be no hope of the health farm getting the money either. Tom Minchingham’s father made the contract with her personally.’

  ‘Then you’ve got a bundle of good news for her.’ I dug into what was left of my papaya biscuit.

  ‘There is another matter.’ Banks looked stern. ‘I’ll also have to tell her that the prosecution will probably oppose bail because of the seriousness of the offence.’

  ‘More good news,’ I said, but this time the solicitor ignored me and continued to look determinedly grave and hopeless. At this point Mrs Banks announced that they were going straight back to London. ‘This place is now too horrible to stay in for a moment longer.’

  ‘Are you going back to London this morning, Rumpole?’ Banks asked me.

  ‘Not this morning. I might stay a little while longer. I might have a chat with some of the other people who were with us at the table with Airlie.’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘Oh, they might have heard something helpful.’

  ‘Can you imagine what?’

  ‘Not at the moment.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Graham Banks gave me a look of the utmost severity, ‘it’s the solicitor’s job to go around collecting the evidence. You won’t find any other barrister doing it!’

  ‘Oh, yes, I know.’ I did my best to say this politely. ‘But then I’m not any other barrister, am I?’

  It turned out that She Who Must Be Obeyed was of one mind with Mrs Banks. ‘I want to get out of here as quickly as possible,’ she said. ‘The whole Christmas has been a complete disaster. I shall never forget the way that horrible woman killed that poor man.’

  ‘So you’re giving up on health farms?’

  ‘As soon as possible.’

  ‘So I can keep on being fat?’

  ‘You may be fat, Rumpole, but you’re alive! At least that can be said for you.’

  I asked Hilda for her recollection of the dinner-table conversation, which differed only slightly from my own memory and that of Banks and his wife. There was another, slim, young couple at our table, Jeremy and Anna, who were so engrossed in each other that they had little recall of what else had been going on. The only other person present was Tom Minchingham.

  I obtained his number from Shelagh and I rang him. I told him what I wanted and suggested we discuss it over a bottle of wine in the dining hall.

  ‘Wine? Where do you think you’re going to find that at the health farm?’

  ‘I took the precaution of placing a bottle in my hand luggage. It’s vintage Château Thames Embankment. I feel sure you’d like it.’

  He told me that it would have to be in the afternoon, so I said that would suit me well.

  After lunch was over and the table had been cleared I set out the bottle and two glasses. I also moved a large and well-covered potted plant nearer to where we were going to sit.

  Then I made a brief call to Shelagh and received a satisfactory answer to the question I should have asked earlier. I felt a strange buzz of excitement at the almost too late understanding of a piece of the evidence in Oriana’s case which should have been obvious to me. Then I uncorked the bottle and waited as calmly as I could for the arrival of the present Lord Minchingham.

  He arrived, not more than twenty minutes late, in a politely smiling mood. ‘I’m delighted to have a farewell drink with you, Rumpole,’ he said. ‘But I’m afraid I can’t help you with this ghastly affair.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s very ghastly.’

  ‘It’s terrible to think of such a beautiful woman facing trial for murder.’

  ‘It’s terrible to think of anyone facing trial for murder.’

  ‘You know, something about Oriana has the distinct look of my ancestor Henrietta Ballantyne, as she was before she became Countess Minchingham. There she is, over the fireplace.’

  I turned to see the portrait of a tall, beautiful woman dressed in grey silk, with a small spaniel at her feet. She had none of Oriana’s features except for a look of undisputed authority.

  ‘She married the fourth earl in the reign of James the Second. It was well known that she took lovers, and they all died in mysterious circumstances. One poisoned, another stabbed in the dark on his way home from a ball. Another drowned in a mill stream.’

  ‘What was the evidence against her?’

  ‘Everyone was sure she was guilty.’

  ‘Perhaps her husband did it.’

  ‘He was certainly capable of it. He is said to have strangled a stable lad with his bare hands because his favourite mare went lame. But the countess certainly planned the deaths of her lovers. You’re not going to defend her as well, are you, Rumpole? It’s a little late in the day to prove my dangerous ancestor innocent.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘She lived to the age of eighty. An extraordinary attainment in those days. Her last three years were spent as a nun.’

  ‘As you say, a considerable attainment,’ I agreed. ‘Shall we drink to her memory?’

  I filled our glasses with Château Thames Embankment. His Lordship drank and pulled a face. ‘I say, this is a pretty poor vintage, isn’t it?’

  ‘Terrible,’ I told him. ‘There is some impoverished area of France, a vineyard perhaps, situated between the pissoir and the barren mountain slopes, where the Château Thames Embankment grape struggles for existence. Its advantages are that it is cheap and it can reconcile you to the troubles of life and even, in desperate times, make you moderately drunk. Can I give you a refill?’

  In spite of
his denigration of the vintage Lord Minchingham took another glass. ‘Are you well known for taking on hopeless cases, Rumpole?’ he asked me, when his glass was empty.

  ‘Some people might say that of me.’

  ‘And I should think they may be damned right. First of all you want to defend my ancestor, who’s dead, and now I hear you’ve taken on the beautiful Oriana, who is clearly guilty.’

  ‘You think that, do you?’

  ‘Well, isn’t it obvious?’

  I poured myself another glass and changed the subject. ‘You’re devoted to this house, aren’t you?’

  ‘Well, it does mean a lot to me. It’s the home of my ancestors. Their portraits are on the walls around us. If they could speak to us, God knows what they would say about the present occupants.’

  ‘You don’t think that the health farm should be here?’

  ‘You want me to be honest, Rumpole?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’d like you to be that.’

  ‘This house has been in my family since Queen Elizabeth made one of her young courtiers the first Earl of Minchingham, probably because she rather fancied him. I don’t say that my ancestors had any particular virtues, Rumpole, but they have been part of British history. We fought for the King in the Civil War. We led a regiment at Waterloo. We went out and ruled bits of the British Empire. One was a young brigadier killed on the Somme. I suppose most of them would have fancied Oriana, but not as a marriage proposition. But as for the rest of the people here, I don’t think there’s a chance that any one of them would have received an invitation to dinner.’

  ‘Do you think they would have invited me to dinner?’

  There was a pause and then he said, ‘If you want me to be completely honest, Rumpole, no.’

  ‘Didn’t they need lawyers?’

  ‘Oh, yes. They needed them in the way they needed gamekeepers and carpenters and butlers and cooks. But they didn’t invite them to dinner.’

  I considered this and refilled our glasses. ‘I suppose you think your old father did the wrong thing, then?’

  ‘Of course he did. I suppose he became obsessed with Oriana.’

  ‘Did you argue with him about it?’

  ‘I was away in the army at the time. He sent me a letter, after the event. I just couldn’t believe what he’d done.’

  ‘How did he meet Oriana?’

  ‘Oh, she had some sort of health club in London. A friend recommended it to him. I think she cured his arthritis. It couldn’t have been very bad arthritis, could it?’

  I couldn’t help him about his father’s arthritis, so I said nothing.

  ‘I imagine he fell in love with her. So he gave her this – all our history.’

  ‘But she must have been paying for it. In rent.’

  ‘Peanuts. He must have been too besotted when he signed the contract.’

  We had got to a stage in the conversation where I wanted to light a small cigar. Lord Minchingham told me that I was breaking all the rules.

  ‘I feel the heart has been taken out of the health farm,’ I told him.

  ‘Good for you. I hope it has.’

  ‘I can understand how you must feel. Where do you live now?’

  ‘My father also sold the Dower House. He did that years ago, when my grandmother died. I live in one of the cottages in the village. It’s perfectly all right but it’s not Minchingham Hall.’

  ‘I can see what you mean.’

  ‘Can you? Can you really, Rumpole?’ He seemed grateful for my understanding. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t been much help to you.’

  ‘Don’t worry. You’ve been an enormous help.’

  ‘We all heard what Airlie said at dinner. That he was leaving his fortune to Oriana.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘We all heard that.’

  ‘So I suppose that’s why she did it.’

  ‘That’s the generally held opinion,’ I told him. ‘The only problem is, of course, that she didn’t do it.’

  ‘Is that what she’s going to say in court?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No one will believe her.’

  ‘On the contrary. Everyone will believe she didn’t do it.’

  ‘Why?’ Lord Minchingham laughed, a small, mirthless laugh, mocking me.

  ‘Shelagh told me what she found. The steam turned up from the outside and a chair leg stuck through the door handle to stop it opening from the inside.’

  ‘So that’s how Oriana did the murder.’

  ‘Do you really think that if she’d been the murderer she’d have left the chair leg stuck in the handle? Do you think she’d have left the steam turned up? Oriana may have her faults but she’s not stupid. If she’d done it she’d have removed the chair leg and turned down the steam. That would have made it look like an accident. The person who did it wanted it to look like murder.’

  ‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’

  ‘What am I forgetting?’

  ‘No one else would want to kill Airlie.’

  ‘Oh, Airlie wasn’t considered important by whoever did this. Airlie was just a tool, like the chair leg in the door handle and the steam switch on the outside. If you want to know which victim this murderer was after, it wasn’t Airlie, it was Oriana.’

  ‘Then who could it possibly be?’

  ‘Someone who wanted Oriana to be arrested, and tried for murder. Someone who would be delighted if she got a life sentence. Someone who thought the health farm wouldn’t exist without her. I haven’t seen the contract she signed with your father. Did his lawyer put in some clause forbidding indecent or illegal conduct on the premises? In fact, Lord Minchingham, someone who desperately wanted his family home back.’

  The effect of this was extraordinary. As he sat at the table in front of me Tom Minchingham was no longer a cheerful, half-amused aristocrat. His hand gripped his glass and his face was contorted with rage. He seemed to have turned, before my eyes, into his ancestor who had strangled a stable lad with his bare hands.

  ‘She deserved it,’ he said. ‘She had it coming! She cheated my father and stole my house from me!’

  ‘I knew it was you,’ I told him, ‘when we met in the pub. You talked about the chair leg in the door handle. When Shelagh rang you, she never said anything about a chair leg. She told me that. I suppose you’ve still got a key to the house. Anyway, you got in after everyone had gone to bed. Airlie told us at dinner about his late-night steam baths. You found him in there, enjoying the steam. Then you jammed the door and left him to die. Now Oriana’s in an overnight police cell, I suppose you think your plan has been an uncommon success.’

  In the silence that followed Tom Minchingham relaxed. The murderous ancestor disappeared, the smiling aristocrat returned. ‘You can’t prove any of it,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t be so sure.’

  ‘You can invent all the most ridiculous defences in the world, Mr Rumpole. I’m sure you’re very good at that. But they won’t save Oriana because you won’t be able to prove anything. You’re wasting my time and yours. I have to go now. I won’t thank you for the indifferent claret and I don’t suppose we will ever meet again.’

  He left then. When he had gone I retrieved, from the foliage of the potted plant on the table, the small dictaphone I had borrowed from Shelagh. I felt as I always did when I sat down after a successful cross-examination.

  Going home on the train, Hilda said, ‘You look remarkably pleased with yourself, Rumpole.’

  ‘I am,’ I said, ‘a little cheered.’

  ‘And yet you haven’t lost an ounce.’

  ‘I may not have lost an ounce but I’ve gained a defence brief. I think, in the case of the Queen versus Oriana, we might be able to defeat the dear old Queen.’

 

 

 
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