Rumpole and the Angel of Death

by John Mortimer

  ‘I just hope I can be a help to him.’

  ‘I’m sure you can.’ Although not, I thought, the sort of help the ever-hopeful Claude was after.

  ‘I could never rise to be a barrister like that.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s just as well,’ I encouraged her.

  ‘I mean I could never stand up and speak with such command – and in such a beautiful voice too. Of course he’s handsome, which means he can absolutely dominate a courtroom. You need to be handsome to do that, don’t you?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘thank you very much.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t mean that. Of course you dominate all sorts of courtrooms. And it doesn’t matter what you look like.’ She gave a little gasp to emphasize her point. ‘It doesn’t matter in the least!’

  ‘The extraordinary thing is that his name is Weaver. He was on the same floor as me, a couple of cell doors away.’ Matthew Gribble spoke as if he were describing a neighbour in a country village. ‘Bob Weaver. He used to laugh at me because I kept getting books from the library. He was sure I got all the ones with dirty bits in because I knew where to look for them. Of course, in those days, he couldn’t tell the difference between soft porn and Mansfield Park. He was hardly literate.’

  ‘You say he was.’

  ‘Until I taught him to read, that is.’

  ‘You taught him?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I honestly don’t know how I’d’ve got through the years here if I hadn’t had that to do.’ He gave a small, timid smile. ‘As a matter of fact, I enjoyed the chance to teach again.’

  ‘How did you manage it?’

  ‘Oh, I read to him at first. I read all the stories I’d liked when I was a child. We started with Winnie-the-Pooh and got on to Treasure Island and Kidnapped. Then he began to want to read for himself.’

  ‘So you decided to cast him?’

  ‘If we ever did the Dream. He looked absolutely right. A huge mountain of a man with the outlook of a child. And kind, too. He even had the right name for it.’

  ‘You mean, to play Nick, the weaver?’

  ‘Exactly! I asked him to do it a long time ago. Two years at least. I asked him if he’d like to play Bottom.’

  ‘And he agreed?’

  ‘No.’ The timid smile returned. ‘He looked profoundly shocked. He thought I’d made some sort of obscene suggestion.’

  We had been in the Worsfield interview room four and a bit years before, sitting on either side of the same table, with the bright blue paint and the solitary cactus, and the walls and door half glass so the screws could look in and see what we were up to. Then, we had been talking about his teaching, his production with the Cowshott drama group, the performances which he got out of secretaries and teachers and a particularly dramatic district nurse – and of his wife who apparently hated him and his amateur theatricals. When she flew at him and tore at his face with her fingernails during one of their nightly quarrels over the washing up, he had stabbed her through the heart. I thought I had done the case with my usual brilliance and got the jury to find provocation and reduce the crime to manslaughter, for which the Judge, taking the view that a kitchen knife is not the proper reply to an attack with fingernails, had given him seven years. As the Governor told me, he was a model prisoner. With full remission he’d be out by the end of the month. That is, unless he was convicted on the charge I was now concerned with. If the Board of Visitors did him for dangerous assault on a prison warden, he’d forfeit a large chunk of his remission.

  ‘The incident we have to talk about,’ I said, ‘happened in the carpenter’s shop.’

  ‘Yes,’ he sighed, ‘I suppose we have to talk about it.’

  All subjects seemed to him, I guessed, flat, stale and unprofitable after the miracle of getting an illiterate East End prizefighter to enjoy acting Shakespeare. I remembered his account of the last quarrel with his wife. She had told him he was universally despised. She had mocked him for his pathetic sexual attainments while, at the same time, accusing him, quite without foundation, of abusing his child by a previous marriage. He had heard it all many, many times before. It was only when she told him that he had produced Hamlet as though it were a television situation comedy that their quarrel ended in violence.

  ‘Yes, the carpenter’s shop.’ Matthew Gribble sighed. Then he cheered up slightly and said, ‘We were building the set for the Dream.’

  I had a note of the case given to me by the Governor. There were only four members of the cast working on the scenery, one civilian carpenter and a prison officer in overall charge. His name was Steve Barrington.

  ‘Do you know’ – my client’s voice was full of wonder – ‘Barrington gave up a job as a teacher to become a screw? Isn’t that extraordinary?’

  ‘Do you think he regrets it? He may not have got chisels thrown at him in class, with any luck.’

  What was thrown was undoubtedly the tool which Matthew had been using. The screw was talking to one of the carpenters and didn’t see the missile before it struck his cheek. The other cast members, except for one, said they were busy and didn’t see who launched the attack.

  ‘I put the chisel on the bench and I was just turning round to tack the false turf on to the mound we’d built. I didn’t see who threw it. I only know that I didn’t. I told you the truth in the other case. Why should I lie to you about this?’

  Because you don’t want to spend another unnecessary minute as a guest of Her Majesty, I thought of saying, but resisted the temptation. It was not for me to pass judgement, not at any stage of the proceedings. My problem was that there was a witness who said he’d seen Matthew Gribble throw the chisel. A witness who seemed to have no reason to tell lies about his friend and educator. It was Bob Weaver who had made the journey from illiteracy to Shakespeare, and been rewarded with the part of bully Bottom.

  ‘Rumpole, a terrible thing has happened in Chambers!’ Mizz Liz Probert sat on the edge of my client’s chair, her face pale but determined, her hands locked as though in prayer, her voice low and doom-laden. It was as though she were announcing, to waiting relations on the quayside, the fact that the Titanic had struck an iceberg.

  ‘Not the nailbrush disappeared again?’

  ‘Rumpole, can’t you ever be serious?’

  ‘Hardly ever when it comes to things that have happened in Chambers.’

  ‘Well, this time, perhaps your attitude will be more helpful.’

  ‘It depends on whether I want to be helpful. What is it? Don’t tell me. Henry blew the coffee money on a dud horse?’

  ‘Claude has committed the unforgivable sin.’

  ‘You mean, adultery? Well, that’s something of an achievement. His attempts usually end in all-round frustration.’

  ‘That too, most probably. No. This is what he said in the clerk’s room.’

  ‘Go on. Shock me.’

  ‘Kate Inglefield, who’s an assistant solicitor in Damiens, heard him say it. And, of course, she was tremendously distressed.’

  ‘Can you tell me what he said?’ I wondered. ‘Or are you too embarrassed? Would you prefer to write it down?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Rumpole. He asked Henry if he’d seen his fat pupil about recently.’

  There followed a heavy silence, during which I thought I was meant to say something. So I said, ‘Go on.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Go on till you get to the bit that caused Kate Inglefield – not, I would have thought, a girl who distresses easily – such pain.’

  ‘Rumpole, I’ve said it. Do I have to say it again?’

  ‘Perhaps if you do, I’ll be able to follow your argument.’

  ‘Erskine-Brown said to Henry, “Have you seen my fat pupil?”’

  ‘Recently?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He said recently.’

  ‘Really, Rumpole. Recently is hardly the point.’

  ‘So the point is my fat pupil?’

  ‘Of course it is!’

  I took out a sm
all cigar and placed it between the lips. Sorting out the precise nature of the charge against Claude would require a whiff of nicotine. ‘And he was referring – I merely ask for clarification – to his pupil Mizz Crump?’

  ‘Of course he meant Wendy, yes.’

  ‘And he called her fat?’

  ‘It was’ – Liz Probert described it as though murder had been committed – ‘an act of supreme chauvinism. It’s daring to assume that women should alter the shape of their bodies just for the sake of pleasing men. Disgusting!’

  ‘But isn’t it’ – I was prepared, as usual, to put forward the argument for the Defence – ‘a bit like saying the sky’s blue?’

  ‘It’s not at all like that. It’s judging a woman by her appearance.’

  ‘And isn’t the other judging the sky by its appearance?’

  ‘I suppose I should have known!’ Mizz Probert stood up, all her sorrow turned to anger. ‘There’s no crime so contemptible that you won’t say a few ill-chosen words in its favour. And, don’t you dare light that thing until I’m out of the room.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re busy.’

  ‘I certainly am. We’re having a special meeting tonight of the Sisterhood of Radical Lawyers. We aim to blacklist anyone who sends Claude briefs or appears in Court with him. We’re going to petition the Judges not to listen to his arguments and Ballard’s got to give him notice to quit.’

  ‘Mizz Liz,’ I said, ‘how would you describe me?’

  ‘As a defender of hopeless causes.’

  ‘No, I mean my personal appearance.’

  ‘Well, you’re fairly short.’ The Prosecutor gave me the once over. ‘Your nose is slightly purple, and your hair – what’s left of it – is curly and you’re . . .’

  ‘Go on, say it.’

  ‘Well, Rumpole. Let’s face it. You’re fat.’

  ‘You said it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So should I get you blackballed in Court?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you’re a man.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think you do. I shouldn’t think you do for a moment.’

  Mizz Probert left me then. Full of thought, I applied the match to the end of the small cigar.

  It was some weeks later that Fred Timson, undisputed head of the Timson clan, was charged with receiving a stolen video recorder. The charge was, in itself, something of an insult to a person of Fred’s standing and sensitivity. It was rather as if I had been offered a brief in a case of a non-renewed television licence, or, indeed, of receiving a stolen video recorder. I only took the case because Fred is a valued client and, in many respects, an old family friend. I never tire of telling Hilda that a portion of our family beef, bread, marmalade and washing-up liquid depends on the long life of Fred Timson and his talent for getting caught on the windy side of the law. I can’t say that this home truth finds much favour with She Who Must Be Obeyed, who treats me, on these occasions, as though I were only a moderately successful petty thief working in Streatham and its immediate environs.

  The Defence was elaborate, having to do with a repair job delivered to the wrong address, an alibi, and the fact that the chief prosecution witness was a distant relative of a member of the Molloy family – all bitter rivals and enemies of the Timsons. While Fred and I were drinking coffee in the Snaresbrook canteen, having left the Jury to sort out the complexities of this minor crime, I told him that I’d seen Tony Timson playing the King of the Fairies.

  ‘No, Mr Rumpole, you’re mistaken about that, I can assure you, sir. Our Tony is not that way inclined.’

  ‘No, in Midsummer Night’s Dream. An entirely heterosexual fairy. Married to the Fairy Queen.’

  Fred Timson said nothing, but shook his head in anxious disbelief. I decided to change the subject. ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard of one of Tony’s fellow prisoners. Bob Weaver, a huge fellow. Started off as a boxer?’

  ‘Battering Bob Weaver!’ Fred seemed to find the memory amusing. ‘That’s how he was known. Used to do bare-knuckle fights on an old airfield near Colchester. And my cousin Percy Timson’s young Mavis married Battering Bob’s brother, Billy Weaver, as was wrongly fingered for the brains behind the Dagenham dairy-depot job. To be quite candid with you, Mr Rumpole, Billy Weaver is not equipped to be the brains behind anything. Pity about Battering Bob, though.’

  ‘You mean the way he went down for the Deptford minicab murder?’

  ‘Not that exactly. That’s over and done with. No. The way he’s deteriorated in the nick.’

  ‘Deteriorated?’

  ‘According as Mavis tells Percy, he has. Can’t hold a decent conversation when they visits. It’s all about books and that.’

  ‘I heard he’s learnt to read.’

  ‘Mavis says the family’s worried desperate. Bob spent all her visit telling her a poem about a nightingale. Well, what’s the point of that? I mean, there can’t be all that many nightingales round Worsfield Prison. Course, it’s the other bloke they put it down to.’

  ‘Matthew Gribble?’

  ‘Is that the name? Anyway, seems Bob thinks the world of this chap. Says he’s changed his life and that he worships him, Mr Rumpole. But Mavis reckons he’s been a bad influence on Bob. I mean that Gribble’s got terrible form. Didn’t he kill his wife? No one in our family ever did that.’

  ‘Of course not. Although Tony Timson was rumoured to have attempted it.’

  ‘Between the attempt and the deed, as you well know, Mr Rumpole, there is a great gulf fixed. Isn’t that true?’

  ‘Very true, Fred.’

  ‘And Mavis says Bob’s been worse for the last three months. Nervous and depressed like as though he was dreading something.’ What, I wondered, had been bugging Battering Bob? It couldn’t have been the fact that his friend was in trouble for attacking a warden; that had only happened a month before. ‘I suppose,’ I suggested, ‘it was stage-fright. They started rehearsing Midsummer Night’s Dream around three months ago.’

  ‘You mean like he was scared of being in a play?’

  ‘He might have been.’

  ‘I hardly think a bloke what went single-handed against six Molloys during the minicab war would be scared of a bit of a play.’

  It was then that the tireless Bernard came to tell me that the Jury were back with a verdict. Fred stood up, gave his jacket a tug, and strolled off as though he’d just been called in to dinner at the local Rotary Club. And I was left wondering again why Battering Bob Weaver should decide to be the sole witness against a man he had worshipped.

  I got back to Chambers in a reasonably cheerful mood, the Jury having decided to give Uncle Fred the generous benefit of a rather small supply of doubt, and there waiting in my client’s chair was another bundle of trouble. None other than Wendy Crump, Claude’s pupil, clearly in considerable distress. ‘I had to talk to you,’ she said, ‘because it’s all so terribly unfair!’

  Was unfair the right word, I wondered. Unkind, perhaps, but not unfair, unless she meant it as a general rebuke to the Almighty who handed out sylphlike beauty to the undiscerning few with absolutely no regard for academic attainment or moral worth. ‘Of course,’ I said, ‘I think you look very attractive.’

  ‘What?’ She looked at me surprised and, I thought, a little shocked.

  ‘In the days of Sir Peter Paul Rubens,’ I assured her, ‘a girl with your dimensions would have been on page three of the Sun, if not on the ceiling of the Banqueting Hall.’

  ‘Please, Rumpole,’ she said, ‘there are more important things to talk about.’

  ‘Well, exactly,’ I assured her. ‘People have suggested that I’m a little overweight. They have- hinted that from time to time, but do I let it worry me? Do I decline the mashed spuds or the fried slice with my breakfast bacon? I do not. I let such remarks slide off me like water off a duck’s back.’

  ‘Rumpole!’ she said, a little sharply, I thought. ‘I don�
�t think your physical appearance is anything to do with all this trouble.’

  ‘Is it not? I just thought that we’re birds of a feather.’

  ‘I doubt it!’ This Mizz Crump could be very positive at times. ‘I came to see you about Erskine-Brown.’

  ‘Of course, he shouldn’t have said it.’ I was prepared, as I have said, to accept the brief for the Defence. ‘It was just one of those unfortunate slips of the tongue.’

  ‘You mean he shouldn’t have told me about Kate Inglefield?’

  ‘What’s he told you about Mizz Inglefield? You mean that rather bright young solicitor from Damiens? She’s quite skinny, as far as I can remember.’

  ‘Rumpole, why do you keep harping on people’s personal appearances?’

  ‘Well, didn’t Claude say . . .?’

  ‘Claude told me that Kate Inglefield had decided never to brief him again. And she’s taken his VAT fraud away from him. And Christine Dewsbury, who’s meant to be his junior in a long robbery, has said she’ll never work with him again, and Mr Ballard . . .’

  ‘The whited sepulchre who is Head of our Chambers?’

  ‘Mr Ballard has been giving him some quite poisonous looks.’

  ‘Those aren’t poisonous looks. That’s Soapy Sam’s usual happy expression.’

  ‘He’s hinted that Erskine-Brown may have to look for other Chambers. He’s such a wonderful advocate, Rumpole!’

  ‘Well now, let’s say he’s an advocate of sorts.’

  ‘And a fine man! A man with very high principles.’ I listened in some surprise. Was this the Claude I had seen stumbling into trouble and lying his way out of it over the last twenty years? ‘And he has absolutely no idea why he is being victimized.’

  ‘Has he not?’

  ‘None whatever.’