The First Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  ‘Fraud indeed!’ Marigold was her old scornful self.

  ‘And then he left her.’ I ignored the interruption. ‘Her friend never turned up and she went shortly afterwards.’

  ‘But they opened a parcel. A bottle of scent.’ I could see that the Court was shaken.

  ‘Of course! He wanted her opinion, as a woman rather than a lawyer, on his choice of a present for you.’

  ‘Oh really? And why did he happen to slip into the Trattoria Gallactica?’

  I allowed a long pause and then smiled and said softly, ‘Can’t you guess?’

  ‘I certainly can’t.’

  It was time to play my last trump. If this didn’t work, then nothing would. ‘He went in to book a table, of course. It is there he intends to take you out for a slap-up spread, Mrs Featherstone, with champagne laid on regardless, to celebrate a decade of happy marriage. On the twenty-first of next month!’

  After the hard hour with Mrs Featherstone, I went to meet Guthrie, by arrangement, in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar where he was waiting for me with considerable anxiety. In fact he could hardly bring himself to ask, ‘Rumpole! How did it go?’

  ‘I think I can say, Featherstone, that it was touch and go until my final speech,’ I told him, after I had settled down and forced him to buy a bottle of the Pichon Longueville, Pommeroy’s best and most costly wine.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I reminded the Court that she enjoyed considerable status as your wife. In the course of time she would almost certainly become Lady Marigold, when you are elevated to the High Court Bench. I think that tipped the scales.’

  ‘And the result was?’ Featherstone was looking at me in a hunted fashion. I took a long gulp and reassured the poor blighter.

  ‘I would say, a conditional discharge. “Tell Guthrie I’ll forget the divorce,” she said, “if he puts his back into being made a judge.’ ”

  ‘Oh, thank God! I say, that’s splendid, Rumpole! Of course I owe it to Marigold to get my bottom on the High Court Bench eventually.’

  ‘I think you do.’ I regarded him judicially and said, ‘I think you’ve got off extremely lightly, I must say.’

  ‘Well, yes.’ At least he admitted it.

  ‘At the mere cost of a bottle of French pong, slap-up do at the Eyetie restaurant, and a dozen of the Pichon Longueville.’

  ‘A dozen?’

  ‘Or should we say two dozen? Twenty-four is a good round number and the advocate, as you always say, my old darling, is worthy of his hire. Oh, by the way, Featherstone. I hear you’ve been taken in to prosecute Bertie Timson on a quite ridiculous charge of being in possession of house-breaking implements by night, and complicity in the Steadfast Savings Bank robbery. You will remember, won’t you, that there may always be an innocent explanation, however unlikely it may sound? Oh, and Guthrie…’

  ‘Yes, Horace?’ Featherstone sounded more friendly than at any time since my return.

  ‘About my leaving Chambers…’

  ‘Well, that’s not necessary, of course. Not,’ he added, still a little hopefully, ‘until you really want to retire.’

  I was delighted that I had got the old fathead to see reason at last. ‘I mean,’ I said, ‘I must be here in case you need defending again. I seem to have got the ear of Mrs Marigold Featherstone.’

  ‘Oh, you have, Horace, indeed you have! And I’m most grateful for it.’

  I don’t know if Guthrie bore my words in mind, but he prosecuted Bertie Timson like a gentleman. In due course I got my two dozen of Pommeroy’s very best and Bertie got acquitted, for which he said a profound and heartfelt merci beaucoup. I approached the opening of the Notting Hill Gate Murder at the Old Bailey, therefore, well lubricated with the best stuff, and with a great deal of my early confidence restored.

  Chapter Sixteen

  By and large I was satisfied with my preparations for my leading role in the case of R v. Simpson. I had played my cards pretty close to my chest and I hadn’t taken my learned junior, Ken Cracknell, into my confidence about the nature of the defence. I didn’t want him dousing my tender schemes in cold water just when they had started to take root, and I wanted to try my ideas out in cross-examination before I paraded them before anyone. When Ken Cracknell asked me about our strategy, I would utter such Sibylline phrases as ‘I propose to play it largely by ear’, or ‘Sufficient unto the day, my dear fellow’, or ‘Let’s just deny everything and then see where we go from there’. I had no real time to wonder why, when I made these hopeless and clearly unprepared pronouncements, my junior counsel looked far from displeased, but instead gave me a small smile of satisfaction.

  One front on which I was making absolutely no progress whatever was in my relations with my client. When I went to see Percival Simpson, as I did on a number of occasions, the last one being the afternoon before the trial started, he appeared increasingly lethargic and detached from the reality which faced him.

  ‘Look, Duchess,’ I pronounced on that final afternoon, ‘you may not give a toss about the outcome of this case, but it’s exceedingly important to me. I’ve come out of my alleged retirement to do this murder, and my whole future, such as it is, depends on it. It may be a matter of complete indifference to you, but I desperately want to win.’

  ‘You want to win?’ Simpson looked at me; something seemed to amuse him. ‘You want to win my case?’

  ‘That, Duchess, is the general idea. That’s why I’ve been calling on you religiously over the last few months.’

  ‘Win?’ He laughed a little contemptuously.

  ‘That’s the ticket.’

  ‘You might as well hope to stop the sun rising tomorrow, or put an end to the tides.’

  ‘What do you mean? There’s no law of nature which says you have to be found guilty.’

  ‘Don’t you think there is?’

  ‘When,’ I asked him directly for the umpteenth time, ‘are you going to tell me exactly what happened when you went for your holiday in Florida?’

  ‘There’s absolutely no point in your asking me questions like that.’ Simpson shook his head firmly. ‘No point whatsoever.’

  ‘But if I don’t ask you questions, how do you expect me to win, Duchess?’

  ‘I don’t expect you to win. It’s only you who keeps talking about winning.’

  Discouraging, I’m sure you’ll agree. But in spite of the distinct lack of cooperation from the client, I was in a high and even optimistic frame of mind when Henry said, and I thought I detected a new note of respect in his voice, ‘Your murder’s in tomorrow, Mr Rumpole. You’ve got a clean start at 10.30. Court Number Two down the Old Bailey.’

  Court Number Two wasn’t Court Number One. It was not the absolute centre, not quite the creme de la creme of Old Bailey Courts. The great classic murders had taken place in Court Number One. But Number Two was a large and impressive arena, one of the Courts in the old block which opened onto the fine marble-tiled hall with its Edwardian civic murals and statues of judges, away from the liverish-looking pale woodwork and concealed lighting of the new Courts. Number Two Court was home.

  As, of course, were all the places I visited that morning when I went down to the Old Bailey to do my poor best, in so far as he would allow me, for the accursed Percival Simpson.

  ‘Nor for ray peace will I go far,

  As wanderers do, that still do roam;

  But make ray strengths, such as they are,

  Here in my bosom, and at home.’

  It was ridiculous, but home was walking down to Ludgate Circus in the rain; home was the admirable scrambled eggs produced by the Italian cook in Rex’s Cafe, eaten among the Fleet Street printers who had been up all night, and the early working officers in charge of the case, and a couple of nervous villains, and some over-eager jurors. Home was the Old Bailey entrance, with the friends and relations of various villains reading the list of cases to be tried; home was being greeted by the large officers inside the swing doors; home was going up to the robing
roonv and climbing into the fancy dress. In all this excitement, and drunk with nostalgia, I failed to ask my learned junior, Kenneth Cracknell, Esq., who appeared wearing a lightish-grey suit under his gown (no doubt in some radical protest against the regulation subfusc) with dark hair flowing in some profusion from under his wig, who was the learned Judge whom Fate had selected to preside over the trial of the unhappy Revenue official.

  When he told me, I felt a sinking stomach and rising nausea. My hands started to sweat and I was breathing with difficulty. Home, I discovered with something akin to horror, was his Honour Judge Bullingham.

  This may need a word of explanation, in case it should seem to the instructed reader that the powers that be, at the Lord Chancellor’s office, had taken complete leave of their senses and elevated the crazy Bull to the status of High Court or ‘Red’ Judges who usually try murders. No such promotion would have been known to history since the day when the late Emperor Caligula made his horse a Consul; and Bullingham remained, at the height of his appalling career, a mere Old Bailey Judge. However, he was an Old Bailey Judge of such seniority that he had been empowered to try murders. Of the two High Court Judges down at the Old Bailey that morning, one was engaged in trying a well-known politician for forgery, and the other was doing something mysteriously connected with the three or four Official Secrets still left to us.

  So I drew Judge Bullingham for the eleventh time of asking, and I had the horrible certainty that the old enemy would organize an eleventh crushing defeat, which would make this much sought-after murder the absolute end of the line for Rumpole. If the gods really wish to destroy a person, I remembered, they grant his foolish requests. Had my feverish pursuit of the brief in R. v. Simpson been no more than a final act of legal suicide? Filled with such unworthy fears, I kept my eyes to the ground as we all stood and the Bull charged into Court.

  But then I remembered that I was an advocate not without experience, that I was doing an important murder that was bound to find its way into the evening papers and would, in all probability, make the News of the “World, and that the case would not be tried by judge alone, but by a jury of good men, and women and teenagers and true who were even then filing into their box in answer to their names. So I took in several deep breaths and accepted, on behalf of defence counsel, the hard luck of the draw. I force myself to raise my head and look Judge Bullingham in the eye.

  Such time as had elapsed since our last encounter had not improved the old devil, and such changes as had taken place might generally be said to have been for the worse. The wig that sat askew his shining bald head seemed even greyer, his yellowing collar and bands looked more grubby and his nose appeared a deeper shade of purple. His eyes had become distinctly more bloodshot, and the lids hung heavily upon them so that they seemed in constant danger of closing, even during the prosecution case when he did his best to appear awake. His teeth, when he opened his mouth to lick the end of his pencil, seemed to be more yellow, and I wondered at what precise moment of the proceedings he would choose to pick his nose, or explore, with an extended little finger, his inner ear.

  Our eyes met and he registered, I was pleased to see, the same surprise and dismay that I had felt when I realized that it had been decreed that we should, yet again, work together. Apparently he told his clerk that he thought I’d been put out to grass. He should have known that you can’t get rid of Rumpole so easily.

  ‘Mister Rumpole.’ The growl came, as usual, somewhere from the depths of the Bull. ‘Do you appear for the defence?’

  When I realized quite clearly that the Judge was just as displeased to see me as I was to be before him, my fear evaporated. I smiled charmingly and gave an inscrutable bow in which I hoped he might have been aware of some small element of mockery.

  ‘Yes, my Lord. I have the honour to represent Mr Percival Simpson. And may I take this opportunity of saying what a pleasure it is to be appearing before your Lordship once again.’

  At which the Bull frowned and grunted unhappily. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Let’s get on with it. Mr Colefax?’

  ‘If your Lordship pleases.’ Moreton Colefax, Q.c, leading counsel for the Crown, was a handsome, ex-Guards officer, ex-Eton and New College, member of White’s and the Beefsteak Club and a Bencher of his Inn. He was a decent enough prosecutor according to his lights, and I gave him the credit of finding the judicial antics of the Bull, although all meant to assist the prosecution, vulgar and distasteful. I had known Colefax when he was in rompers, doing ‘dangerous drivings’ in a superior sort of way round the Thames Magistrates Court. He was a man I believed to be totally ignorant on the subject of blood.

  ‘The defence is represented,’ Colefax started quietly, ‘by my learned friends Mr Horace Rumpole and Mr Kenneth Cracknell. Members of the jury, this case concerns the knifing of a perfectly respectable citizen, a member of a well-known family, late one evening last January in the Notting Hill Gate underground station. It’s a somewhat squalid story.’

  Oh dear. Poor old Colefax sounded as though the Notting Hill Gate Murder was something he wouldn’t wish to touch with a pair of silver sugar-tongs.

  ‘Squalid motives have been suggested for this killing,’ Colefax said with some contempt, and I knew that he was referring to the ‘Guardsman’s Defence’ suggested by Ken Cracknell in his cross-examination in the Magistrates Court, which never had a hope. ‘Those suggested motives may well be that there was some kind of sexual, or homosexual, reason for this crime. Members of the jury, you will hear that the Honourable Roderick, known as Rory, Canter was a perfectly normal young man sexually, who had as his fiancee a young lady with good family connections and who was himself a young man of strong religious views.’

  I smiled at this and made my first note. Colefax had called the deceased ‘religious’ and there, I thought, the old darling might be on to something.

  My nerves were quite settled before I started to cross-examine the Crown’s first witness, Mr Byron MacDonald, the guard of the train that had been standing at the platform of Notting Hill Gate station when the Hon. Rory Canter came down the stairs. His evidence, as elicited in its full details by Moreton Colefax, was in no way helpful to the defence. For a start he made it clear that Canter came down to the platform first and was followed by Simpson, who clearly appeared to be the pursuer, whereas Canter was obviously the victim. He saw, he said, Simpson come down, peer about him and then move towards Canter; they were then locked in the struggle which he saw as his train moved away - a chain of events which, there was no possibility of dispute, ended shortly afterwards with the death of Canter.

  Now I rose to question the tall Jamaican guard who stood in the witness box in his London Transport uniform. He had been an excellent witness, and I started with the soft touch, the approach courteous and the questions devious.

  ‘Mr MacDonald,’ I began. ‘You say you saw the deceased, Mr Canter, come on to the platform first?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Rumpole. He said that,’ the Judge growled from his notebook.

  ‘And you saw my client, Mr Simpson, come down afterwards?’ I went on, ignoring the Bull for the moment.

  ‘Following him, Rumpole. Your client was clearly the pursuer. Going after his victim.’

  ‘No, my Lord. He didn’t say “following”.’ I sounded patient, as if I only wanted to help the Bull, and I picked up the notebook in which my junior had been writing down the evidence. ‘I have my learned friend Mr Cracknell’s note. The witness said, “He came down afterwards.” ’

  ‘Well, if you think it makes the slightest difference…’ The Bull snorted and practically winked at the jury as though to say, ‘We don’t, do we, ladies and gentlemen? We’re far too bright to split hairs with the defending barrister.’

  ‘The difference it makes will become apparent by the end of this case. Even to your Lordship.’ I must say I was starting to lose my patience with the Bull. He gave a warning growl of ‘Mr Rumpole’, but I moved rapidly on to the next question before he could giv
e voice to his protest.

  ‘For all you knew the Honourable Rory Canter may have been going down the tube station to look for Mr Simpson?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about the two gentlemen,’ said Mr MacDonald.

  ‘Exactly!’ I did my best to sound satisfied with his answer. ‘Or if Canter knew that Mr Simpson was about to make that journey, he may have deliberately got to the platform first, to lie in wait for him?’

  ‘That hardly sounds likely, though, does it, Mr MacDonald?’ The Judge, falling into his well-loved role as counsel for the prosecution, had put the question.

  ‘My Lord, the witness has already said he didn’t know anything about the gentlemen,’ I reminded him.

  ‘Then it was quite pointless putting the question, wasn’t it, Mr Rumpole?’ I got a grin from the yellow teeth, as did the jury.

  ‘I put the question, my Lord, in order that the jury may be aware of all the possibilities.’ I did my best to remain polite.

  ‘All the possibilities, Mr Rumpole? However remote?’ The jury got another sympathetic smile; the Bull was clearly sorry that they were being troubled by the idiot Rumpole.

  ‘My Lord, indeed yes…’

  ‘It’s hardly likely, is it, that a man would go down to a station platform to wait for his murderer. Or go out looking for the man who’s going to attack him?’

  ‘My Lord, I should say that frequently happens.’ After all, I had come half way round the world to find Judge Bullingham.

  ‘Very well. Let’s get on with it.’ The Judge had decided that there was nothing to be gained for the moment from bandying words with Rumpole.

  ‘But you did see the deceased, Canter, waiting in an alcove on the station?’ I resumed my dialogue with the witness.

  ‘Yes. He was just standing there,’ Mr Byron MacDonald agreed.

  ‘He made no attempt to get on the train?’