The First Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  ‘I thought he was a friend of yours, Mr Rumpole.’ Ransom frowned.

  ‘He was a friend. I suppose he is one still. The bloody mauve dressing-gown. It’s gone to his head!’

  ‘I don’t want Francesca to suffer,’ Ransom was playing the old gramophone record.

  ‘All right then,’ I told him, ‘you suffer. Do you want to be away? Maybe for a year? Maybe eighteen months, locked in with a gay mugger, watched over by an underpaid screw with a fifteen-year-old daughter of his own, spending your time slopping out and volunteering for pills to decrease your libido? Because if that’s what you want, my friend George is prepared to offer it to you. On a plate!’ I paused for my words to take effect, looked at Ransom, and then I said, ‘Of course, if you tell me that you actually bedded the young lady.’

  ‘No. No, I don’t tell you that,’ Ransom answered slowly.

  ‘Then we plead “Not Guilty”. We teach old George a lesson he’ll never forget. And we win this case!’

  ‘How do we do that, Mr Rumpole?’ Grayson seemed to be merely asking for information.

  ‘By having a go at Miss Francesca Capstick.’

  ‘Please, Mr Rumpole. Treat her gently,’ Ransom still insisted.

  ‘I shall treat her as gently as if I were a steam-roller, going at ninety miles per hour,’ I reassured him. ‘How much is known about her?’

  ‘Nothing at all is known about her. By me, Mr Grayson said.

  ‘You mean someone might know?’

  ‘Well, Hughie… Hughie might know a good deal.’

  ‘Who is this invaluable grass?’

  ‘My son Hughie,’ Grayson admitted. ‘He goes to John Keats. He knows most of Francesca’s friends.’

  So we had a dependable source of information for the cross-examination of Francesca. Even then, it seemed, Ransom’s luck was holding well.

  The proceedings in R. v. Ransom were opened kindly and gently by Miss Trent. She told the ladies and gentlemen of the jury that there was no question but that Francesca was a willing party, she was almost sixteen at the time, and they must be careful of accepting her evidence unless it was corroborated in a material particular. She then called the Headmaster who was apparently anxious to get away (no doubt to an urgent meeting of the British Drama League). I thought the most interesting part of his evidence was the fact that a whole bundle of Ransom’s letters (poetic effusions which left the issue as to whether he had in fact committed an offence under Section 6 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956 quite unresolved) together with copies, or drafts of Francesca’s letters to him, appeared as if by magic, fastened with an elastic band, on the Headmaster’s desk, and were waiting for him when he came back from Assembly (a reading from Lord of the Rings and a snatch of Joan Baez on the record-player). Who, I wondered, had been kind enough to present the Ransom-Capstick correspondence to the Headmaster, and who had abstracted it from its beautiful recipient?

  When the witness went on to describe the interview he had with Miss Capstick on the vital issue, Rumpole pushed himself to his hind legs to protest.

  ‘Your Honour.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Rumpole.’ George, my old friend, sounded curiously aloof.

  ‘Any statement made by this young lady is no evidence. I object…’

  ‘Very well,’ said the co-operative Miss Trant. ‘I won’t press the matter.’ Good old Portia. I sat down, delighted, when George did something totally unexpected.

  ‘The evidence of a complaint is admissible, surely,’ he said. ‘In a sexual case. To negative consent.’

  ‘But everyone agrees she consented! Consent is not an issue here.’ I almost added, ‘Come on, George. You never had any instinctive grasp of the rules of evidence.’ (He probably found it more convenient to look it all up in a book.)

  ‘It is my responsibility to rule on the evidence and I do so now,’ said George pompously. The whole business of becoming a judge seemed to have done absolutely nothing for his personality. ‘The evidence of a complaint is admissible. Yes. What was the question, Miss Trant?’

  I sat in a fury which I did absolutely nothing to conceal while Miss Trant asked her questions, and the answers revealed that Miss Capstick had ‘complained’ that she had been taken to a concert, an Italian meal and to bed in a place in Fitzjohn’s Avenue where ‘the defendant’ had borrowed a room. ‘Intimacy had also taken place’ in Ransom’s Ford Capri while parked in a wood near St Albans, at Francesca’s house whilst her parents were away for the weekend and, in what must have been a hasty moment of extreme danger and discomfort, in a corner of the art-room during the course of a school dance. All this had happened within two weeks. Ransom and Francesca, it seemed, had taken the advice of Andrew Marvell in the poem they had read together.

  ‘Thus, though we cannot make our sun

  Stand still, yet we will make him run…’

  At the lunch break I saw Francesca leaving Court with her parents and a sixteen-year-old, spotty-faced youth with ginger hair, glasses, a long scarf and a scowl of perpetual bad temper. I was standing with my client as the group passed us; all, including Francesca, looking self-consciously in the opposite direction. However, after they had gone by I saw the youth turn his head to look back at Ransom with a smile which I can only describe as unpleasantly triumphant.

  ‘It’s agonizing!’ Ransom said. ‘Hearing the letters read out. Hers and mine. It was love, that’s all it was. Does it have to be dragged out in Court and cheapened?’

  ‘I’m afraid it does,’ I told him, and led the way to the bleak pub opposite, where we sat on tartan-covered benches, listened to piped music and consumed Scotch eggs and gassy beer. ‘By the way, who was that unpleasant-looking youth with Francesca? Not her brother?’

  ‘Someone in her class,’ Ransom told me vaguely. ‘His name’s Mowersby. C. J. Mowersby.’ ‘Charlie?’

  ‘I don’t know. He always put C.J. on the top of his essays.’

  ‘Any good, are they?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘His essays.’

  ‘Absolutely appalling. C. J. Mowersby can’t wait to give up English language and literature and take up computer- programming as his special subject. Why on earth are you interest- ed in him?’

  ‘He looked as if he hated you.’

  ‘Probably because I wrote on one of his essays, “Poetry is emotion recollected in tranquillity; not quotations collected for a quick O-level.” I remember writing that.’

  ‘C. J. Mowersby is not an admirer of poetry?’

  ‘As far as I can tell, he’s not an admirer of anything. Except computers.’

  ‘And Francesca?’

  ‘She talks to him of course. She talks to everyone. She’s such a wonderful, friendly sort of kid.’

  ‘Yes, of course. There’s no particular reason why he should be with her family at this trial?’

  ‘None I can think of.’

  Ransom returned to his theme of the horrors of having the tender emotions of a young Juliet such as his pupil dragged out in Court to be coarsely prodded and examined by the hard hands of such as Rumpole; and I asked Grayson to instruct his son Hughie, our undercover-agent at the John Keats Comprehensive, to give us all the dirt on Mowersby, C. J.

  As we went back to Court the Mowersby youth was lurking alone on the steps that led up to the public gallery. He gave my client another look of undisguised contempt.

  ‘You must have done more to him,’ I suggested, ‘than write a snide remark on his Wordsworth essay.’

  ‘Well. I may have suggested to the Headmaster that his attitude was simply bloody-minded in Poetry Appreciation. I remember Mowersby saying in a seminar on the metaphysicals that all my bloody understanding of John Donne didn’t mean I could knock up more than four thousand a year. I believe I told the H.M. that Mowersby was quite unsuitable for John Keats and might be asked to continue his education elsewhere.’

  ‘So he’s come to sit at your trial,’ I said, ‘like an old woman knitting by the side of the guillotine.’

  Af
ter Court that day Mr Grayson drove me to his house where young Hughie Grayson was delighted to knock off his biology prep and give me an hour on the life and loves of Form Five B. By the end of our little chat I felt I had lived through a peculiarly sultry chapter in the History of the Italian Renaissance, around the time when the Borgias were at the height of their sexual potency. I also knew why C. J. Mowersby was so greatly enjoying our trial.

  ‘The bundle of letters left on the Headmaster’s desk consisted of letters from Mr Ransom and copies of your letters to him.’ I was cross-examining Francesca. She looked pretty and demure, she answered softly, and was unostentatiously chewing gum.

  ‘That’s right. I kept them in a bundle together.’

  ‘You kept copies of the letters you wrote to him?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice sank another few decibels.

  ‘Speak up, please.’

  ‘Yes, I did. I kept copies.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose I just wanted to.’.

  ‘Was it because you were in love with Mr Ransom?’

  Francesca removed her chewing-gum delicately, stuck it under the rail of the witness-box, shrugged slightly and answered, ‘I just kept copies.’

  ‘And this correspondence started with a letter from you?’

  ‘Did it?’

  I fished out the first incriminating document and waved it at her. ‘It’s the first letter in date order you wrote to Mr Ransom, “And all my fortunes at thy foot I’ll lay,” you wrote, “And follow thee my Lord throughout the world”.’

  ‘It comes from the play we were doing. Romeo and Juliet.’

  ‘Exactly! And what did you mean by all your “fortunes”?’

  There was a pause. Then she shrugged again. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You weren’t offering your teacher your pocket money or your savings certificates?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ She smiled politely, as if she thought I had made a joke.

  ‘You were offering your love.’

  ‘That’s what I said,’ she qualified her answer.

  ‘Offering to do anything for him.’

  After only a second’s hesitation she answered, ‘Yes.’

  ‘And to follow him wherever he asked you to go?’

  ‘Your client wasn’t bound to take advantage of that offer, Mr Rumpole,’ George put his oar in, as I thought quite unnecessarily.

  ‘Oh no, your Honour. I just wish to establish who made the first approach.’ I turned to the witness. ‘Miss Capstick. Have you any idea how this bundle of letters got on to the Headmaster’s table?”

  ‘No. No idea.’ She was starting to look bored, as if I were a particularly dull geography lesson.

  ‘Presumably you kept them safely?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you keep them at home?’

  A small hesitation, then she said, ‘No.’

  ‘Because you didn’t want your parents to find them?’

  ‘I didn’t keep them at home.’

  ‘So you kept them at school. In your locker, perhaps?’

  ‘No. No, I gave them to a friend of mine to keep for me.’

  ‘May we hear the name of this friend?’

  But George put in another unhelpful word. ‘Really, Mr Rumpole. Is that relevant?’

  ‘Perhaps not, my Lord. I’ll leave it for the moment.’ I turned back to Francesca and again attempted, not too successfully, to engage her interest. ‘You have a good many friends at school, haven’t you?’

  ‘Of course I have.’

  ‘Of course. You’re a very popular girl.’ She didn’t look in the least flattered and I picked up the copy of her first letter again. ‘When you wrote this first letter to Mr Ransom, did you have any particular friends at that time?’

  ‘Girlfriends, do you mean?’

  ‘You know I don’t mean girlfriends,’ I pressed her and she looked slightly more interested.

  ‘You mean anyone I was going out with?’

  ‘Going out with so often means staying in with, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Really, Mr Rumpole…” George tried to protest.

  I ignored him and repeated. ‘Doesn’t it?’

  ‘You mean Charles?’

  ‘Yes.’ Now at last something was cooking. I hoped it was C. J. Mowersby’s goose.

  ‘You mean I was going out with Charles… Yes, I was. What about it?’ She smiled at the jury. They didn’t smile back.

  ‘Is Charles Mowersby in Court? Perhaps he’d stand up.’ I looked round and saw the sullen, spotty face in the gallery. He didn’t move. ‘Perhaps he’d stand up,’ I repeated. The unappealing youth lumbered to his feet. ‘Is that Mr C. J. Mowersby?’

  ‘That’s Charles. Yes.’ Unsmiling and sullen as ever, Mr Mowersby resumed his seat.

  ‘He’s the one you were going out with. When you wrote the letter, swearing to follow your Lord Mr Ransom throughout the world?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Tell me. The school term’s still on, isn’t it? Do you know why Mr Mowersby is here?’

  ‘I suppose he’s interested.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose he is.’ I picked up the letters again. ‘Before you wrote your first letter to Mr Ransom had you been on a school holiday in France, camping with Charles Mowersby?’

  ‘With all our class. Yes.’

  ‘Camping. Sleeping under canvas?’

  ‘I was sharing a tent with my girlfriend.’

  ‘Exactly. A girl named Mary Pennington?’

  ‘With Mary. Yes.’

  ‘Did a boy called Hugh Grayson go on that holiday with you?’ I was now prepared to divulge the source of my information.

  ‘Hughie did. Yes. He was sharing a tent with Charles.’

  ‘Exactly. And on the first night did you ask Mary Pennington to go into Hughie Grayson’s tent so that Charles Mowersby could come into yours?’

  There was a long pause. The jury looked at her stonily, but Miss Capstick said, ‘I might have done…’ clearly, almost defiantly.

  ‘Did you spend the night with Charles Mowersby? Did you sleep with him?’

  This time the answer was quiet, inaudible. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Mr Rumpole. I’m really wondering what the relevance…’ Once again George needed ignoring. I kept my eyes on the witness.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said I might have done.’

  ‘And did you say to Mr C. J. Mowersby of Form Five B of the John Keats Comprehensive “I’ll follow thee my Lord throughout the world”?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Charles doesn’t like poetry.’

  ‘Charles doesn’t like poetry. And he doesn’t like Mr Ransom either, does he?’

  ‘Mr Rumpole…” It was George again. I carried on regardless.

  ‘Does he?’ I asked, with some determination. ‘Because Mr Ransom writes rude remarks on his essays on Wordsworth, and Mr Ransom reported him to the Headmaster, and Mr Ransom thought that Mr C. J. Mowersby might be invited to continue his education elsewhere. So Charles doesn’t like your schoolteacher?’

  ‘He doesn’t like him. No.’

  ‘He hates him.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  By now even George had given up and the jury were clearly interested.

  ‘The friend you gave your bundle of letters to for safe keeping. Was that Mr Mowersby, by any chance?’

  The witness-box is an odd sort of place. Sometimes people feel unable to lie in it. Francesca said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘And it was Mr Mowersby who gave them to the Headmaster?’

  ‘It might have been.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole. Suppose all this is true…’ George was burbling on again and I turned on him and almost shouted.

  ‘Suppose all this is true? Then this whole charge is nothing but a pretence, a cruel joke, played on my client by this… this young woman who wanted to help her boyfriend get his revenge!’ I said to Francesca quietly, ‘Your first let
ter… your letter full of Juliet’s love. Didn’t Charles suggest you write that?’

  ‘He wanted to show Mr Ransom up.’ At last, she gave me the answer I wanted.

  ‘For what? For a fool who’d have his head turned by young girls writing poetry?’

  ‘Something like that. Yes.’

  ‘So Charles suggested you write that letter?’

  ‘He found the bit out of the play. Yes.’

  ‘Really! That must have been the first time Mr Mowersby showed an interest in literature.’ The jury gave an obedient titter. ‘And did you hand my client’s replies to Mowersby as you got them?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘And I suppose he was delighted with the way things were going? He had a nice little bundle of trouble for Mr Ransom to drop on the Headmaster’s table?’

  ‘I suppose he did. He never wanted me to go to the concert though.’ She answered quickly and I stopped to think of the next question.

  ‘You mean the concert at the Festival Hall?’

  ‘Charles never wanted me to go to that.’ I felt a sort of danger, but ignored it and pressed on.

  ‘You’re not going to say you acted independently for once in your life?’ By now Francesca was answering quite confidently, as if she were telling me some not very interesting school gossip.

  ‘I’d found out Charles was taking Mary Pennington out. Hughie Grayson told me he’d seen them together at Saturday Night Fever:

  I looked up again at the sullen, spotty face in the gallery, the glasses, the muffler, the ginger hair: I tried to imagine Charles Mowersby in the role of a demon lover and failed utterly. ‘So, well… I went to the concert.’

  ‘But not to bed with my client?’ I said it with all possible determination. She didn’t answer, and that encouraged me to go on. ‘Not to bed with the man on whom you were playing an elaborate practical joke, just so your boyfriend could get him into trouble with the Headmaster? Your victim! Your poor, wretched gull. You didn’t go to bed with him, did you?’

  There was a pause. Francesca sighed, and then said patiently, as though explaining things to an idiot, ‘I told you. I’d heard Charles was taking out Mary Pennington. So that’s how it happened.’