The Anti-Social Behaviour of Horace Rumpole

by John Mortimer

  I thought it was far too early to reach such a verdict, so I said, ‘Until I’ve cross-examined the prosecution witnesses, including the forensic expert, we can’t say that there is no hope.’

  ‘You seem to have forgotten, Rumpole,’ Soapy Sam reminded the meeting, ‘that the duty of cross-examining the prosecution witnesses will fall on me.’

  ‘Then perhaps there is no hope after all,’ I thought, but I restrained myself from saying it.

  ‘I’m seriously worried about Wetherby,’ Sam Ballard told me as we walked out of the prison gate.

  ‘Don’t give up all hope,’ I said, and advised him to have a careful look at the post-mortem photographs.

  ‘It’s not that, Rumpole. But should a silk in my position at the Bar, with my reputation for complete moral probity, be concerned in this extremely squalid murder? Added to that, as Chair-elect of the Lawyers as Christians Society, should I be defending a client who has lost all sense of decency and become a frequenter of brothels?’

  I would like to have said, ‘That’s exactly why he needs defending’, but I didn’t. I remained silent, and I now saw some blessed hope arising from Sam Ballard’s strong sense of moral repugnance.

  7

  Rumpole, QC. As I say, Queer Customers is what I always call them, and no doubt they’d be calling me that; but there are so many queer customers who have attained the rewards of senior barristers, a silk gown and a seat in the front row, that one more shouldn’t make much difference. I remembered what Bonny Bernard had said about this most unassuming of men accused of manual strangulation: he wanted a QC to defend him. Even Hilda had wondered why, after so many years at the Bar, I had not reached the front row. I tried saying ‘Rumpole, QC’ again and found that it had rather a distinguished ring to it.

  In the good old days – well, there were some good things about them – a barrister with a longing for a silk gown had only to get a couple of judges to write up to the Lord Chancellor, who as head judge easily found out who got drunk in court, or ate peas with his knife, or would date a woman on the jury, and indeed anything else likely to let down the high standards of the front bench.

  Times, of course, have changed and nowadays it seems there must be a committee for everything, including sorting out the list of applicants for the silk gown. There are still written reports to the Lord Chancellor, who has incidentally been removed from his time-honoured task of supervising the debates in the House of Lords from the Woolsack, appropriately dressed in a wig, knee breeches, a gown and silk stockings. Now the poor chap has been siphoned off to something called the Ministry of the Constitution or some such title, where, for all I know, he shows up in jeans, a T-shirt and an elderly anorak. He has, I suppose, to follow the whims of the committee in the choice of who to dress in silk.

  Meanwhile, I had to call on a platoon of judges, clients and solicitors to back the Rumpole application. I had no illusions about the difficulty of this task. So far as many people in the top echelon of the legal profession were concerned, my face still didn’t fit, and even though I could think of many less fit faces peering out above silk gowns, this was, as I had to explain to Hilda, owing to my determination to get my clients a fair run.

  It was a tricky situation, but God, or whatever means the good, came to my assistance. My run of luck started with an unpromising case of dangerous driving in Potters Bar. There was the usual argument about the accuracy of speed cameras and the inaccuracy of police evidence, but the important thing was the prosecutor, a certain Matthew Wick-stead, a tall, forbidding bird with a pronounced Adam’s apple, a thin beak of a nose and the sort of voice better suited to a church service than the Potters Bar Magistrates’ Court.

  After my client had been convicted, this Wickstead approached me in a friendly fashion and said, ‘You’re in Samuel Ballard, QC’s chambers, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ I had to admit it.

  ‘He’s possibly the next Chairman of the Lawyers as Christians Society. He’s on the committee of course. He gives of his time so generously. I shall certainly vote for him as Chair. Do you see much of him?’

  ‘Quite a lot. He’s leading me in a case of murder at the moment.’

  ‘A worthy cause? Samuel Ballard’s always fighting for worthy causes.’

  ‘Not all that worthy, I’m afraid.’ I tried to sound disapproving. ‘He’s defending a client who went to a brothel. He’s alleged to have killed a prostitute. Manual strangulation.’

  ‘Oh dear!’ This appeared to be Matthew Wickstead’s equivalent of ‘What the hell!’ ‘Samuel Ballard, QC’s defending a man who resorts to fallen women?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘And a man who, far from trying to restart and reform, killed one of them?’

  ‘That’s what’s alleged.’

  ‘Oh, dear me!’ Wickstead continued to lament. ‘I left the Church and came to the Bar to support worthy causes.’

  Was prosecuting a fast driver on the M25 a worthy cause? I supposed so and didn’t argue the point, because of what he next said. ‘I can scarcely believe that Samuel Ballard, QC, would defend a man who resorts to fallen women.’

  ‘You mean,’ I said, determined to clarify the situation, ‘the Lawyers as Christians would disapprove of anyone undertaking Graham Wetherby’s case?’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ Wickstead told me, ‘we at LAC would be deeply disappointed.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘That’s all I wanted to know.’ And so I left him.

  It was a sharp, spring morning some weeks later, with a wind that sent our trouser legs flapping and into which we leaned forward like skaters, when Soapy Sam Ballard and I were on our way back from the Old Bailey, where a judge had fixed a date for Graham Wetherby’s trial and we had agreed rather more of the facts than I should have liked with the prosecution.

  As we walked, I chucked a few well-chosen words into the wind. ‘I was against a friend of yours a while back. Matthew Wickstead.’

  ‘Splendid fellow! We serve together on the board of LAC.’

  ‘He mentioned that. He has great respect for you. In fact, he said he’d vote for you as Chair.’

  ‘How was he? Keeping well?’

  ‘He seemed perfectly healthy. Only, I’m afraid, a little sad, a trifle distressed.’

  ‘Not ill, I hope.’

  ‘Not ill, but worried. Not to put too fine a point on it, he was worried about you, Ballard.’

  ‘About me? I hope you reassured him. I’m perfectly well.’

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t your health, Ballard. Quite frankly, he was distressed to hear what you’re doing.’

  ‘Doing our work?’

  ‘Yes, but what sort of work?’

  ‘Leading you in a murder case.’

  ‘That’s true.’ I had to admit it reluctantly. ‘But what sort of a case? Defending a man who frequents prostitutes and is supposed to have strangled one of them. Not the sort of work for a potential Chair of LAC.’

  ‘Is that what he said?’ Ballard stood still now, troubled in the wind.

  ‘Words to that effect.’

  Ballard thought for a while and then struck a note of resignation.

  ‘I can’t get out of it now.’

  ‘I don’t see why not.’

  ‘I can’t tell the client it’s not the sort of case I should be concerned with.’

  ‘You’ll have to say you’re engaged elsewhere – you’ll have to be sure that there is someone else thoroughly capable of taking it on.’

  ‘Whom might I suggest?’

  ‘Me, of course.’ Perhaps it was the wind, but my unlearned leader seemed more than unusually slow on the uptake.

  ‘You feel you could do it?’

  ‘Hopeless cases are my speciality.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s what should be done.’ Ballard seemed to make up his mind and stepped purposefully forward into the wind. ‘Thank you, Rumpole.’

  ‘Oh, don’t thank me. Always willing to help. But if you’re really grateful, there’s a l
ittle thing you could do for me.’

  ‘All right. What is it?’

  ‘I’m thinking of applying for a silk gown and a seat in the front row. Would you support my application?’

  ‘You a QC, Rumpole?’ He was grinning broadly. ‘What a novel suggestion! Well! We’ll have to see about that, won’t we?’

  He seemed to be laughing as he strode on. I let him go. I had R. v. Wetherby under my belt and I mustn’t be greedy.

  8

  ‘So has Mr Ballard found a chap in deeper trouble than me?’

  ‘It’s not that, Mr Wetherby.’ Bonny Bernard spoke with the tone of someone giving an official explanation which he didn’t entirely believe to be true. ‘Mr Ballard has another commitment which he couldn’t get out of.’

  ‘So that means I’m not going to have a QC defend me?’

  ‘You may well have. Mr Rumpole here has applied for a silk gown. I hope that I may be able to mark the brief for Horace Rumpole, QC.’ Again I was disturbed by a lack of conviction in Bonny Bernard’s tone of voice.

  ‘I have no doubt that I shall be in the front bench when your trial comes on.’ I adopted a positive tone to reassure the client. ‘I don’t see how they can possibly refuse me. My career, ever since the Penge Bungalow Murders, has made me a legend in the Courts of Law.’

  ‘You’re sure they’ll make you a QC?’ The client still didn’t sound entirely convinced.

  ‘Just as sure as I am that you’re coming on for trial at the Old Bailey. Speaking of which, perhaps you can help me by answering some simple questions.’

  We were back again in the interview room in Brixton Prison, with its bare table, its cactus wilting on the window sill and its officer posted on the other side of the door to make sure that there was no sort of dash for freedom. The meeting had begun by our client refusing Bernard’s offer of a cigarette, a normal way of putting prisoners at ease, with a long lecture on the dangers of smoking. An odd sort of attitude, I thought, from a man accused of inflicting the far greater danger of manual strangulation.

  ‘You’re sure you’re going to get the QC?’

  ‘As I say, I don’t see how they can refuse me.’

  There was a silence, during which Graham Wetherby was no doubt considering whether he could share this optimistic view of Rumpole’s future. At last he said, ‘All right then. What do you want to know?’

  ‘That mark on your face. Have you had it since you were a child?’

  He was sitting by the window, so the swollen red stain was clearly visible. Now he put up a hand to cover it.

  ‘Since I was born, yes.’ He explained carefully as though to an imbecile. ‘That’s why it’s called a birthmark.’

  ‘You think that’s why girls don’t like you?’

  ‘What do you mean, they don’t like me?’

  ‘Why they don’t want to go to bed with you.’

  ‘I never ask them.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I know what they’d say.’

  ‘So it’s because of the mark on your face that all your experience of sex has been with prostitutes.’

  ‘They don’t mind about it. Not if you can pay them enough.’

  ‘So let’s say you’d had a number of girls who were on the game for, let’s say, at least the last ten years?’

  ‘For as long as I could afford it.’

  ‘Then let’s say for about the last five years?’

  ‘About that – yes.’

  ‘And did anything like this ever happen before?’

  ‘That I killed any of them? No. Of course it didn’t happen. I keep telling you. What’ve I got?’ Graham Wetherby turned angrily to Bonny Bernard. ‘What’ve you got for me? A brief, not even a QC, who thinks I’m guilty. I always strangle them, is that what he thinks?’

  ‘I think nothing of the sort.’ I did my best to quieten the client. ‘To me you’re innocent until the jury comes back and tells me otherwise. What I really want to know is, had you ever been locked in a sitting room before, on your previous visits to them?’

  ‘Never. No, that never happened. Not that I can recall.’

  I made a note on my brief and then asked the final question.

  ‘And just tell me. How close did you get to her? When you discovered she was dead?’

  There was a silence in the small, closely guarded room before he answered. ‘I kissed her.’ And then, while his legal advisers remained silent, he said, ‘They don’t do kissing. Those types of girls. Not when they’re alive.’

  The familiar interview room seemed cold and I felt an unusual sadness in the presence of the pale young man with the funny cheek who only received a kiss from the dead. Then I pulled myself together and gave some instructions to my solicitor.

  ‘Get on to Professor Andrew Ackerman,’ I told Bonny Bernard. ‘Get him to hurry up and give us a report on the post-mortem findings and photographs. Oh, and I suppose we might get some sort of a character reference.’ I turned to the client. ‘I understand you work at the Home Office. In which department?’

  ‘I used to be in youth crimes – juvenile delinquency.’

  I thought of the youth crime I was dealing with, the little matter of a thoughtlessly kicked football, a million miles away from the adult offence which had brought me to Brixton.

  ‘But I was moved last year. A new post – seconded to a new department.’

  ‘Your boss there,’ I asked him, ‘would he speak up for you?’

  ‘There are so many of us there. I don’t really know my boss.’

  ‘Well, Mr Bernard will see what he can do. I think that’s all for the moment.’

  ‘Just one thing, Mr Rumpole. You say you’re getting a QCship?’

  ‘It’s in the pipeline.’ I did my best to reassure him.

  ‘You think it’ll come through in time for my trial?’

  ‘Let’s hope so. But even if it doesn’t you’ll have the best service available at the Old Bailey.’

  ‘From you, Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘And from no one else.’

  ‘I’d just feel satisfied in my mind if I could have a QC there for this occasion.’

  He had kissed a dead girl, he was up on a charge of murder with a defence which was not yet entirely clear, and his only worry seemed to be the quality of my gown and whether or not I might be seated in the front or second row.

  As we parted he brought the matter up again. ‘Please, Mr Rumpole,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t you manage to speed it up?’

  ‘You mean the trial?’

  ‘No, sir. I mean your QC.’

  My wife, Hilda, was back from the bridge club early that afternoon and, instead of her usual reliving of some of the more dramatic hands and sad tales of how she had just missed three No Trumps because of her partner’s ineptitude, that evening she seemed to be taking an unusual interest in the law.

  ‘Of course provocation would reduce the crime of murder to manslaughter,’ She Who Must stated. ‘Was there no provocation in the Wetherby case?’

  ‘Not really. He says the girl was dead.’

  ‘Of course he would say that, wouldn’t he? They all do.’

  ‘Who are “they all”?’

  ‘Everyone in that type of situation.’ Hilda seemed to be speaking of her vast experience. ‘How’s his mentality?’

  ‘Pretty worried at the moment, I should say.’

  ‘You know what I mean, Rumpole.’ Hilda was getting impatient ‘Has he a classified mental disease? Is he unhinged? Mentally deficient?’

  ‘I suppose so, seeing as he works for the Home Office.’

  ‘Oh, do be serious, Rumpole! What I mean is, as I’m sure you realize, could he go for diminished responsibility?’

  ‘I hardly think so. He seemed to be perfectly bright, for a civil servant.’

  ‘It’s saying things like that, Rumpole,’ Hilda’s tone was serious, ‘that so irritates judges. You want to avoid those little jokes you’re so full of. They don’t do you any good at all. No provocatio
n. No diminished responsibility. I’ll have to give R. v. Wetherby some more serious thought.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, Hilda,’ I felt I had to say.

  ‘Not at all. Of course I’m anxious to prevent your practice going totally to pieces. You can tell Wetherby that I’m giving his case some serious thought.’

  ‘That’s very big of you.’

  ‘It’s good to have a practical case to work on.’

  ‘I’m sure. But there’s only one thing my client is really worried about.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘He wants me to become a QC. He really wants to be defended by a silk.’

  ‘Really? And have you agreed to that, Rumpole?’

  ‘The thought had crossed my mind.’

  ‘If you got it you’ll be put at the level of Daddy.’

  ‘That would be an honour.’ My fingers were crossed. My late father-in-law’s performances in court didn’t improve when he became a QC.

  ‘Let me put my mind to it,’ Hilda said again as she was serving out the lamb chops, frozen peas and boiled potatoes. ‘We’ll see what we shall see.’

  Though I asked her for further particulars of her last remark she clammed up, and we had no more discussion about the law for the rest of the evening.

  9

  Extract from the Memoirs of Hilda Rumpole

  Rumpole, who in my opinion has been mouldering for far too long as about the oldest junior at the Criminal Bar, seems to have come to his senses at last and decided to pull himself up by his own bootstraps. He has at last decided to apply for silk. Of course Rumpole will never be as distinguished a QC as Daddy – to whom Rumpole’s murder cases seemed very downmarket when compared with his speciality in property rights, contracts and bills of exchange. At least no one had to die to provide my father with work. I think, however, Daddy would have been pleased that I at least had a husband who was entitled to put the letters QC after his name.