Rumpole and the Reign of Terror

by John Mortimer

  •

  Mrs Justice Templett had sat on the bench for many years, in fact she was appointed when there were not nearly as many women judges as there are today. On her elevation she seemed to feel it right to suppress any feminine qualities that might cause controversy. She wore no makeup, although it was said that she allowed herself a thin line of lipstick when trying murder cases. Her first name, which was Floribel, was kept strictly under wraps, never to be referred to. She behaved with particular severity towards any woman unfortunate enough to appear before her in a divorce or criminal case.

  She was flanked by other members of the commission who seemed to have been placed there merely as bookends, or to decorate the otherwise sparsely populated courtroom, because Floribel Templett gave them little opportunity to intervene in the proceedings.

  On the other side of the court sat Peter Plaistow, QC, MP, and Claude Erskine-Brown, who looked almost unbearably self-satisfied at having to take part in important affairs of state. They were flanked by the Home Office officials and lawyers who had given them, no doubt, their little brief authority.

  On the other side, I was in the second row, and behind me Dr Khan sat informally with my faithful solicitor, a small enough band to fight the assembled powers of the state.

  'Mr Rumpole,' Floribel turned a vaguely disapproving eye on my good self, 'we understand you have some sort of an application to make.'

  'Indeed I have, My Lady. And it's not some sort of an application. It's an application which concerns our civil rights, our liberties and the basic principles of our criminal law.'

  'Very well.' Her Ladyship sighed heavily and looked at me as though I were some woman taken in adultery or had at least been caught pinching knickers in Marks and Spencer. 'You may make your point shortly.'

  'I can put it very shortly. Dr Khan is at least entitled to know what the charges are against him. That he should be denied that right is unthinkable. That's all I have to say.'

  'Is it really, Mr Rumpole? You're not normally at a loss for words.'

  At this the bookends giggled obediently. Peter Plaistow smiled and Claude permitted himself a quiet guffaw.

  'Very well. If Your Ladyship wants further argument I am quite prepared for it.' During the next half an hour I trundled the old dear on the bench through all those cases in which the prosecutors had been called on to disclose particulars of charges in the indictment. She looked at me with all the eager interest of a vicar's wife hearing her husband repeat a sermon she has heard twenty times before, and then, as I sank wearily into my seat, rewarded me by giving a huge sigh and turning to prosecution counsel, saying, 'I needn't trouble you, Mr Plaistow.'

  At this the QC, MP subsided gracefully into his seat and Floribel Templett announced her decision. 'It's well known that the government cannot disclose this information to the appellant or his legal advisers. To do so would be to disclose the sources of the information. Mr Rumpole, as is well known, has practised in criminal courts for many years and it appears from his present submission that he is living in the past. It is for us, the members of this commission, to deal with present circumstances and present dangers. No further "details of charges", as Mr Rumpole calls them, will be given to the appellant Khan.'

  At this Peter Plaistow climbed to his feet and, smiling obsequiously, said, 'I'm grateful to Your Ladyship.' It was not a pretty sight.

  So the so-called appeal of Dr Mahmood Khan carried on with all the good sense of a treasure hunt in a dark room from which the treasure had been carefully removed.

  Making what she described as 'a concession to Mr Rumpole's case', Mrs Justice Templett allowed me to call a character witness and Barry Whiteside gave Dr Khan full marks for his honesty, hard work, kindness and decency, and said he found it impossible to believe that the doctor could have had anything to do with any sort of terrorist activity. The judge seemed to take a full note of this and I thanked Barry for his time after Claude had asked a few obvious and ineffective questions such as, 'Can you swear that Dr Khan wasn't meeting terrorists during the hours when he was away from the hospital?', to which the good Barrington could only shake his head and repeat that such conduct would be incredible in the Mahmood Khan he knew and respected. Then the witness left the court after a quick smile in our direction.

  We next moved further into the so-called legal procedures of the alleged appeals commission. Claude had to make a speech dealing with the facts of the case and Dr Khan's involvement, and I asked that he should speak first so I might discover what the case was all about.

  Of course, this was clearly contrary to SIAC's procedures, having too much of a hint of fairness about it. I could make a speech and then I and Dr Khan and Bonny Bernard would have to leave the court in case we discovered what crimes, if any, the doctor was meant to have committed.

  'This precious government of ours,' I had reached the climax, the final, as I thought, unanswerable argument of the one speech I was allowed, 'this government, which wouldn't know a constitutional right if it came up and shouted in its ear, has told us that the terrorists want to destroy our way of life, our civilization, everything we hold most dear.

  'Well, all I can say is that our government is working night and day to collaborate with the terrorists. To help them to destroy our civilization and give away our most precious liberties.

  'The terrorists would take away our right to juries and give us imprisonment without trial. "You can have it," says the government today. "You can have Magna Carta, we've got no use for it. And while we're about it, we'll throw in the presumption of innocence and the Bill of Rights."

  'All I can ask Your Ladyship to do is to reject the illegal instructions of this lawless government and decide Dr Khan's case according to the principles of a fair trial, which we have fought and struggled for over the centuries. Let Dr Khan be told the charges he faces and then let him answer them.'

  'Mr Rumpole, have you anything more to say?' Her Ladyship asked me.

  'Only this. Ask yourself what justice really means and then do it.'

  With this, I wrapped my gown about me and sat down.

  •

  'A fine speech, Mr Rumpole.' My client, who had nothing to thank me for, seemed curiously unperturbed by the result of our appeal. I was grateful for his praise; however, I was less grateful to my instructing solicitor, Bonny Bernard, who put the situation with brutal simplicity.

  'Mr Rumpole always makes fine speeches,' he said. 'But, as I'm sure you understand, we lost the case.'

  'There's no justice.' Dr Khan shrugged his shoulders.

  'Very little of it nowadays,' I agreed. 'But one has to think of another way out. Don't give up hope.'

  'I shall not hope.' Dr Khan was still smiling his totally unjustified smile. 'I shall not trust in hope. You will tell my wife all that has happened?'

  Bonny Bernard promised to tell her, then Dr Khan returned to Belmarsh and I headed back to Froxbury Mansions with another defeat to notch up on my braces.

  12

  Extract from Hilda Rumpole's Memoirs

  RUMPOLE CAME HOME WITH his tail between his legs. From the way he behaved, the unusual silence and the fact that he had at least three glasses too many of the wine he brings back from that awful little wine bar, which he seems to prefer to here, I could tell he'd had a bad day. I did my best to cheer him up. In fact I told him that he had performed a public service by keeping at least one more terrorist under lock and key. I said Mr Blair and his whole government, including that Chief Superintendent of Police, who we all respect, would be very grateful to Rumpole for managing not to lose another terrorist in London. I'm afraid telling Rumpole all this failed to cheer him up at all. He's in a difficult mood and I'm sure I'll have trouble getting him to take his Omni Vite in the morning. Well, if he's determined to die I'll have to tell him it's entirely his own affair. I can't take any further responsibility for him.

  Rumpole certainly wasn't in the mood to listen to the interesting news I had got from a charming person I me
t via my bridge club. It all started when Marcia Hopnew (Mash we called her at school) took the odd class 'just to polish up her game'. Mash and I were both monitors in our last year and although she was much cleverer than I was we seemed to hit it off, and I was sorry when we left school and parted. So I was glad enough to see her at the bridge club. I'm making a note here to tell Dodo Mackintosh about this because, at school, Dodo acquired an unreasonable hatred for Mash, who she called a 'stuck-up pig with bushy eyebrows', a description which was 100 per cent unfair.

  Anyway, to get to the point, Mash very kindly asked me to play an afternoon's bridge with her husband, who has an important job in insurance and is sometimes able to 'work from home', and a good friend of theirs who had a rare day off from his 'exhausting' job.

  So we all met at Mash's delightful mews house just off Lowndes Square and I was introduced to a perfectly charming fellow with grey hair and red cheeks, who smiled at me and said, 'Delighted to meet you, Mrs Rumpole. Of course, I know your husband well.'

  Just as I was thinking that there's no one but me who knows Rumpole really well, I mean someone who doesn't just watch him showing off in court but is prepared to look after him twenty-four hours a day, Mash astonished me by saying, 'This is Leonard Bullingham. He's lucky to get a day off from the Old Bailey.'

  'The Mad Bull!' How many times has Rumpole come home complaining of the way he alleged this Leonard Bullingham, who was now smiling at me in the friendliest possible way, had treated him in court? And now here was the same 'Mad Bull', sitting opposite me at Mash's lunch table.

  We had a really nice quiche with salad and an individual crème caramel for afters. Mash's husband poured a little wine and Leonard (he asked me to call him Leonard) said the judges at the Old Bailey usually took a glass or two at lunchtime. 'Difficult to face your husband, Mrs Rumpole,' Leonard told me, 'without at least a glass of wine at lunchtime.'

  'Do you find Hilda's husband so difficult to face?' Mash was interested to know.

  'He can be a bit alarming. Intolerant of judges, that's what I'd say about your husband, Mrs Rumpole. Of course, it's all part of the job, I suppose, but I always feel a bit nervous when I've got Rumpole in front of me. I know I've got to keep my wits about me.'

  When we cut for partners this Leonard Bullingham and I played together. We didn't exactly win, but we played one memorable hand of four spades. I was dummy and particularly admired the cunning way Leonard finessed the queen.

  As I am writing this in the boxroom I can hear the front door and Rumpole's footsteps. They don't sound like the footsteps of a man in a particularly good mood.

  Should I tell Rumpole that Leonard Bullingham, as I know him, or the 'Mad Bull', as Rumpole calls him, is quite nervous when Rumpole appears before him? I don't think so. The news would only make Rumpole unbearably pleased with himself, and I'm in no mood for that at the moment.

  Oh, and I forgot to say that Mash promised to arrange another bridge afternoon in three weeks' time. Leonard hopes to join us if his present defendant in a long-term fraud pleads guilty.

  13

  I HAVE TO WARN anyone thinking of taking up the wig and gown that being a barrister is not half as much fun as it used to be.

  The new bureaucracy took a long look at the free and independent life of the courtroom advocate and decided that here was a class of individuals far too free of trivial rules and penny-pinching regulations. So to begin with we each have to acquire a 'practising certificate' at a steep price, which leaves me with far too little to invest in Pommeroy's Wine Bar, or most of Hilda's exorbitant expenditure on Vim and other articles devoted to household cleaning. Speaking for myself, I don't need to practise. Barristers at the level of Claude Erskine-Brown should, perhaps, be allowed to practise at home, but I can do my job perfectly well without this now compulsory control-freakery, having over the years perfected my courtroom technique.

  We are now required to fill in forms justifying every minute we spend on a case. Of course, I put in a bill for lying in a bath contemplating my final speech, to which I added the price of heating the water. I also charged for a bottle of Château Thames Embankment, during the leisurely consumption of which I had thought of a new and devastating line of cross-examination. Neither of these claims was met.

  Worst of all, we are required to take lessons. I have learned my lessons in a long series of cases, from the interesting moment when I managed to win the Penge Bungalow Murders case alone and without a leader. I can find a fatal flaw in the prosecution case. I can stand up on my hind legs and appeal to the hearts and minds of twelve honest citizens. Such talents require no information technology or mechanical aids. They can only be gained from experience and, only occasionally, listening to even older Old Bailey hacks. I have absolutely no need of classes.

  But the rules of the game are that you have to score twelve points a year to stay on as a hack in the Courts of Law, and each class you attend scores you so many points in this radical new game. At first I thought to simplify the process by sending in the sort of little notes children take to school to be excused prep. 'Mr Rumpole is occupied with a double murder and unable to come to school today', or 'Mr Rumpole's cold has gone to his chest and he is hovering between life and death, so may he be excused from this class?' Such words fell into a deep pool of silence, until one day Soapy Sam Ballard, our so-called Head of Chambers, approached my room looking extremely solemn and said, 'This is a serious matter, Rumpole.'

  'What's happened now? Has someone been fiddling the coffee money? Or stolen the missing nailbrush in the upstairs loo?' I mentioned the scandals which had previously rocked our chambers to their foundations.

  'Worse than that, Rumpole. I have received a serious complaint from the Bar Council.'

  'What've you been up to, Ballard – selling T-shirts with "Brief Sexy Sam Ballard for Best Legal Results" written all over them?' Not much of a joke, I'm afraid, but I couldn't resist it.

  'The complaint is not about me. It's about you, Rumpole.' He looked as grave as though sentence of death had been passed against me, and he added, 'As I say, it's a serious matter.'

  'I don't think we should take the Bar Council too seriously.'

  'In this case we have to. It seems, Rumpole, that you've been missing classes.'

  'They seem to me rather good things to miss.'

  'You're wrong about that, Rumpole. You've got to keep up with the times. People have noticed that you're living too much in the past. What's that old case of yours you're always talking about? The Croydon killer, was it?'

  'The Penge Bungalow Murders. Have you no sense of history, Ballard?'

  'Whatever it was, it's a long time ago. Learn to move with the times. You'd better get yourself off to class, Rumpole. Or they'll take away your practising certificate. It'll be Rumpole out of the Old Bailey.' Here Ballard gave a small wintry smile, as though, in fact, he rather relished the idea.

  So I went, like Shakespeare's boy, creeping like a snail, unwillingly to school to learn.

  This important change in our legal system, as I had tried to explain to Mrs Justice Templett, meant that our lords and masters had just given away Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights for a pound of tea. These disastrous alterations in the law didn't appear to interest the eager lecturer, a certain Whitlow-Smith, whom I vaguely remembered as someone who made a rather poor fist of a prosecution for dangerous driving at Old Street Magistrates' Court. He had an urgent delivery, which resulted in his words popping out so fast they occasionally obliterated each other. The title of his hour that afternoon was 'Whither Contract?' And our teacher was explaining some sensational developments in the law governing Bills of Exchange when I found myself falling into a light doze.

  I was woken by a voice which sounded vaguely familiar. 'My dear, never too old to learn, are you?' I looked up and found myself in the presence of Peter Plaistow, QC, MP. 'I called in at your chambers and they said I'd find you here. I was going to suggest a spot of lunch.'

  •

&n
bsp; The life of an Old Bailey hack is full of surprises. There was I, suffering from a lecture on 'Whither Contract?', when I was whisked away for lunch by a QC, MP known to be close to the Prime Minister and constantly to be found strolling up and down the corridors of power. Moreover, when I suggested a pint of Guinness and a steak pie at a pub in Fleet Street, he insisted on taking me to the Myrtle restaurant in Covent Garden – a classy eatery which I hadn't visited since I took Hilda there on our wedding anniversary to discuss the terms and conditions of peace after a fairly chilly east wind had been blowing between us.

  The Myrtle was just as I remembered it – full of the faces of celebrities to whom I couldn't put a name, familiar from the pages of Hilda's tabloids. I remembered the snowy-white tablecloths, the waiters wearing white aprons, the low, contented murmur of successful people, accentuated by the popping of corks and the rattle of champagne bottles in ice buckets.

  'I've chosen a rather unpretentious little St Emilion, Rumpole. I think you might find it amusing.'

  'I'm sure I'll find it hilarious.'

  After this Plaistow kept up a more or less sprightly conversation and it wasn't until we reached a longish pause between the potted shrimps and the entrecôte that I discovered the motive behind all this lavish hospitality.

  'There's a rumour going round the Temple, Rumpole, that you're writing your memoirs.'

  'I have to admit that I will be committing to paper some of the highlights and triumphs, as well as a considerable number of low moments, since I burst upon the legal world, at a fairly young age, as the young white wig who managed to win the Penge Bungalow Murders alone and without a leader.'

  'When you publish your memoirs, Rumpole, I'm sure they'll create … well, a good deal of interest.'

  'Publish them? I hadn't really thought about that.'

  'I'm sure you have. I'm sure you know that you've become a bit of a legend in your own lifetime.'