Rumpole and the Angel of Death

by John Mortimer

  ‘The first question, of course, is why?’

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘Why do you think your friend Matthew threw a chisel at the officer? Can you help me about that?’ It would have been no use trying to batter the batterer – he had clearly won the hearts of the Visitors – so I came at him gently and full of smiles. ‘He’s always been a model prisoner. Not a hint of violence.’

  ‘Perhaps’ – Bob Weaver closed one eye, giving me his careful consideration – ‘he kind of had it bottled up, his resentment against Mr Barrington.’

  ‘We haven’t heard he resented Mr Barrington?’

  ‘Well, we all did to an extent. All of us actors.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘He put Jimmy Molloy on a charge, so he lost two weeks’ rehearsal with Puck.’

  The Visitors smiled. I had gone and provided my client with a motive. Up to now this cross-examination seemed a likely candidate for the worst in my career so I tried another tack.

  ‘All right. Another why.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘If you feel you’d rather be dead than do it, why did you decide to grass against your friend?’

  ‘I don’t know why you have adopted the phrase “grass” from prison argot, Mr Rumpole.’ The Bishop was clearly a circus judge manqué. ‘This inmate has come here to give evidence.’

  ‘Evidence which may or may not turn out to be the truth. Very well then. The Bishop has told us to forget the argot.’

  ‘Forget the what?’ Bob looked amicably confused and the Bishop smiled tolerantly. ‘Slang,’ he translated. ‘I should have called it slang.’

  ‘Why did you decide to give evidence against your friend?’

  ‘Let me tell you this quite honestly.’ The Batterer turned from me and faced the Visitors. ‘Years ago, I might not have done it. In fact, I wouldn’t. Grass on a fellow inmate. Never. Might have given him a bit of a hiding like. If I’d felt the need of it. But never told the tale. Rather have had me tongue cut out. But then . . . Well, then I got to know Matthew. I’d still like to call him that. With all respect. And he taught me . . . Well, he taught me everything. He taught me to read. Yes. He taught me to like poetry, which I’d thought worse than a punch in the kidneys. Then he taught me to act and to enjoy myself like I never did even in the old days of the minicab battles, which now seem a complete waste of time, quite honestly. But Matthew taught me more than that. “You have to be truthful, Bob”, those were his words to me. Well, that’s what I remembered. So, when it came to it, I remembered his words. That’s all I’ve got to say.’

  ‘You took his advice and told the truth.’ The Bishop was clearly delighted, but I was looking at Bob. It had never happened before. It certainly didn’t happen when he performed in the Dream, but now I knew that he was an actor playing a part.

  And then something clicked in my mind. A picture of Dodo Mackintosh at school, not wanting to let her heroine go, and I knew what the truth really was.

  ‘You’ve told us Matthew Gribble is the friend who meant most to you.’

  ‘Meant everything to me.’

  ‘The only real friend you’ve ever had. Would you go as far as to say that?’

  ‘I would agree with that, sir. Every word of it.’

  ‘And one who has let you into a new world.’

  ‘He’s already told us that, Mr Rumpole.’ I prayed for the Bishop to address himself to God and leave me alone.

  ‘It’s too true. Too very true.’

  ‘I don’t suppose life in Worsfield Category A Prison could ever be compared to a holiday in the Seychelles, but he has made your life here bearable?’

  ‘More than that, Mr Rumpole. I wouldn’t have missed it.’

  ‘And in a week, if he is acquitted on this charge, Matthew Gribble will be free.’

  It was as if I had got in a sudden, unexpectedly powerful blow in the ring. Bob closed his eyes and almost seemed to stop breathing. When he shook his head and answered, he had come back, it seemed to me, to the truth.

  ‘I don’t want to think about it.’

  ‘Because you may never see him again?’

  ‘Visits. There might be visits.’

  ‘Are you afraid there might not be?’ Matthew appeared to be about to say something, or utter some protest. I shot some sotto voce advice into his earhole to the effect that if he uttered another sound, I would walk off the case. Then I looked back at the Batterer. He seemed not to have recovered from the punch and was still breathless.

  ‘It crossed my mind.’

  ‘And did it cross your mind that he might move away, to another part of England, get a new job, work with a new drama group and put on new plays with no parts in them for you? Did you think he might forget the friend he’d made in prison?’

  There was a long silence. Bob was getting his breath back, preparing to get up for the last round, but with defeat staring him in the face.

  He said, ‘Things like that do happen, don’t they?’

  ‘Oh yes, Bob Weaver. They happen very often. If a man wants to make a new life, he doesn’t care to be reminded of the people he met inside. Did that thought occur to you?’

  ‘I did worry about that, I suppose. I did worry.’

  ‘And did you worry that all that rich, fascinating new world might vanish into thin air? And you’d be left with only a few old lags and failed boxers for company?’

  There was silence then. Bob didn’t answer. He was saved by the bell. Rung, of course, by the Bishop.

  ‘Where’s all this leading up to, Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘Let me suggest where it led you, Bob.’ I ignored the cleric and concentrated on the witness. ‘It led you to think of the one way you could stop Matthew Gribble leaving you.’

  ‘How was I going to do that?’

  ‘Quite a simple idea but it seems to have worked. Up to now. The way to do it was to get him into trouble.’

  ‘Trouble?’

  ‘Serious trouble. So he’d lose his remission. I expect you thought of that some time ago and you waited for an opportunity. It came, didn’t it, in the carpenter’s shop?’

  ‘Did it?’

  ‘Matthew turned away to fix the grass covering on the mound. No one else was looking when you picked up his chisel. No one saw you throw it. Like all successful crimes it was helped by a good deal of luck.’

  ‘Crime? Me? What are you talking about? I done no crime.’ Bob looked at the Visitors. For once even the Bishop was silent.

  ‘I suppose I’m talking about perverting the course of justice. Of assaulting a prison officer. I’ve got to hand it to you, Bob. You did it for the best of motives. You did it to keep a friend.’

  Bob’s head was lowered, but now he made an effort to raise it and looked at the Visitors. ‘I didn’t do it. I swear to God I didn’t. Matthew did it and he’s got to stay here. You can’t let him go.’ By then I think even they thought he was acting. But that wasn’t the end of the story.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ The trial, if you could call it a trial, was over. Matthew and I were together for the last time in the interview room. We were there to say goodbye.

  ‘I told you. What’ve I got outside? Schools that won’t employ me. Actors and actresses who wouldn’t want to work with me. What would they think? If I didn’t like their performances, I might stab them. They’d be talking about me, whispering, laughing perhaps. And I’d come in the room and they’d be silent or look afraid. Here, they all want to be in my plays. They want to work with me, and I want to work with them. I thought of Much Ado next. Won’t Bob make a marvellous Dogberry? Then, I don’t know, do you think he could possibly do a Falstaff?’

  ‘Become an old English gent? Who knows. You’ve got plenty of time. They knocked a year and a half off your remission.’

  ‘Yes. A long time together. You were asking me why I threw the chisel?’

  He knew I wasn’t asking him that. At the end of Battering Bob’s evidence I had to decide whether or not to call my client
. Matthew had kept quiet when I’d told him to, and I knew he’d make a good impression. He walked to the witness table, took the oath and looked at me with patient expectation.

  ‘Matthew Gribble. We’ve heard you were a model prisoner.’

  ‘I’ve never been in trouble here, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘And of all you’ve done for Bob Weaver.’

  ‘I think it’s been a rewarding experience for both of us.’

  ‘And you are due to be released next week.’

  ‘I believe I am.’

  I drew in a deep breath and asked the question to which I felt sure I knew the answer. ‘Matthew, did you ever throw that chisel at Prison Officer Barrington?’

  The answer, when it came, was another punch in the stomach, this time for me. ‘Yes, I did. I threw it.’ Matthew looked at the Visitors and said it as though he was talking about a not very interesting part of the prison routine. ‘I did it because I couldn’t forgive him for putting Puck on a charge.’ After that, the case was over and Matthew’s exit from Worsfield inevitably postponed.

  ‘You know I wasn’t asking you why you threw the chisel because you didn’t throw it. I’m asking you why you said you did.’

  ‘I told you. I’ve decided to stay on.’

  ‘You knew Battering Bob did it and he blamed you to keep you here because he thought he needed you.’

  ‘Don’t you think that’s rather an extraordinary tribute to a friendship?’

  There seemed no answer to that. I didn’t know whether to curse Matthew Gribble or to praise him. I didn’t know if he was the best or the worst client I ever had. I knew I had lost a case unnecessarily, and that is something I don’t like to happen.

  ‘You can’t win them all, Mr Rumpole, can you?’ Steve Barrington looked gratified at the result. He took me to the gate and, as he waited for the long unlocking process to finish, he said, ‘I don’t think I’ll ever go back to teaching. They seem half barmy, some of them.’

  At last the gates and the small door in the big one were open. I was out and I went out. Matthew was in and he stayed in. Damiens sent a brief in a long case to Claude and I told him he had a brilliant pupil.

  ‘I suppose she’ll be wanting a place in Chambers soon?’ Claude didn’t seem to welcome the idea.

  ‘So far as I’m concerned she can have one now.’

  ‘Young Jenny Attienzer is apparently not happy with Nick Davenant over in King’s Bench Walk. Do you think I might take her on as a pupil?’

  ‘I think,’ I told him, ‘that it would be a very bad idea indeed. I’m sure Philly wouldn’t like it, and I’d have to start charging for defending you.’

  ‘Rumpole’ – Claude was thoughtful – ‘do you know why everyone went off me in that peculiar way?’

  ‘Not really.’

  But Claude had his own solution. ‘It never ceases to amaze me,’ the poor old darling said, ‘how jealous everyone is of success.’

  Six months later I saw a production of Much Ado About Nothing in Worsfield gaol with Bob Weaver as Dogberry. I enjoyed it very much indeed.

  Rumpole and the Way through the Woods

  There are times, I have to admit, when even the glowing flame of Rumpole sinks to a mere flicker. It had been a bad day. I had finished a case before old Gravestone, a long slog against a hostile judge, an officer in charge of the case who seemed to regard the truth as an inconvenient obstacle to the smooth and efficient running of the Criminal Investigation Department, and a client whose unendurable cockiness and self-regard rapidly lost all hearts in the Jury. It had been a hard slog which would have seemed as nothing if it had ended in an acquittal. It had not been so rewarded and, when I said goodbye to my client in the cells, carefully failing to remind him that he might be away for a long time, he said, ‘What’s the matter with you, Mr Rumpole? Losing your touch, are you? They was saying in the Scrubs, isn’t it about time you hung up the old wig and took retirement?’ Every bone in my body seemed to ache as I stumbled into Pommeroy’s where the Château Thames Embankment tasted more than ever of mildew and Claude Erskine-Brown cornered me in order to describe, at interminable length, the triumph he had enjoyed in a rent application. Leaving for home early, I had to stand up in the tube all the way back. Returning to the world from the bowels of Gloucester Road station, I struggled towards Froxbury Mansions with the faltering determination of a dying Bedouin crawling towards an oasis. All I wanted was my armchair beside the gas fire, a better bottle of the very ordinary claret, and a little peace in which to watch other people in trouble on the television. It was not to be.

  When I entered the living-room the lights were off and I heard the sound of heavy and laboured breathing. My first thought was that She had fallen asleep by the gas fire, but I could hear the clatter of saucepans from the kitchen. I sniffed the air and received the usual whiff of furniture polish and cabbage being boiled into submission. But, added to this brew, was a not particularly exotic perfume, acrid and pervasive, which might, if bottled extravagantly, have been marketed as wet dog. Then the heavy breathing turned into the sort of dark and distant rumble which precedes the arrival of an Underground train. I snapped on the light and there it was: long legged, overweight and sprawled in my armchair. It was awake now, staring at me with wide-open, moist black eyes. I put out a hand to shift the intruder and the sound of the approaching train increased in volume until it became a snarl, and the animal revealed sharp and unexpectedly white pointed teeth. ‘Hilda,’ I called for help from a usually reliable source, ‘there’s a stray dog in the living-room.’

  ‘That’s not a stray dog. That’s Sir Lancelot.’ I turned round and She was standing in the doorway, looking with disapproval not at the trespasser but at me.

  ‘What on earth do you mean, Sir Lancelot?’

  ‘That’s your name, isn’t it, darling?’ She approached the animal with a broad smile. ‘Although sometimes we call you Lance for short, don’t we?’ To these eager questions the dog returned no answer at all, although it did, I was relieved to see, put away its teeth.

  ‘Whatever its name is, shall we call the police?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To have it removed.’

  ‘Have you removed, Sir Lancelot? What a silly husband I’ve got, haven’t I?’ In this, the dog and my wife seemed to be of the same mind. It settled itself into my chair and she tickled it, in a familiar fashion, under the chin.

  ‘Better be careful. It’s got a nasty snarl.’

  ‘He only snarls if you do something to annoy him. Was Rumpole doing something to annoy you, Lance?’

  ‘I was trying to budge it off my chair,’ I told her quickly, before the dog could get a word in.

  ‘You like Rumpole’s chair, don’t you, Lance? You feel at home there, don’t you, darling?’ I was starting to feel left out of the conversation until she said, ‘I think we might make that his chair, don’t you, Rumpole? Just until he settles in.’

  ‘Settles in? What do you mean, settles in? What’s this, a home of rest for stray animals?’

  ‘Lance isn’t a stray. Didn’t I tell you? I meant to tell you. Sir Lancelot is Dodo Mackintosh’s knight in shining armour. Aren’t you, darling?’ Darling was, of course, the dog.

  ‘You mean he’s come up from Cornwall?’ I looked at the hound with new respect. Perhaps he was one of those animals they make films about, that set off on their own to travel vast distances. ‘Hadn’t we better ring Dodo to come and fetch him?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Rumpole.’ Hilda had put on one of her heroically patient voices. ‘Dodo brought Lancelot up here this afternoon. She left him on her way to the airport.’

  ‘And what time’s she getting back from the airport? I suppose I can wait until after supper to sit in my chair.’

  ‘She’s going to Brittany to stay with Pegsy Throng who was jolly good at dancing and used to be at school with us. Of course, she couldn’t take Sir Lancelot because of the quarantine business.’

  ‘And how long is
Pegsy Throng entertaining Dodo?’ I could feel my heart sinking.

  ‘Just the three weeks, Rumpole. Not long enough, really. Dodo did ask if I thought you’d mind and I told her, of course not, Lance will be company for both of us. Come and have supper now, and after that you can take him out on the lead to do his little bit of business. It’ll be a chance for you two to get to know each other.’

  Sleep was postponed that night as I stood in the rain beside a lamp-post with the intruder. Sir Lancelot leapt to the extent of his lead, as though determined to choke himself, wrenching my arm almost out of its socket, as he barked savagely at every passing dog. Looking down at him, I decided that I never saw a hound I hated more, and yet it was Sir Lancelot that brought me a case which was one of the most curious and sensational of my career.

  ‘What on earth are we doing here, Hilda?’ Here was a stretch of countryside, blurred by a sifting March rain so, looking towards the horizon, it was hard to tell at which precise point the soggy earth became the sodden sky.

  ‘Breathe in the country air, Rumpole. Besides which, Sir Lancelot couldn’t spend all his time cooped up in a flat. He had to have a couple of days’ breather in the Cotswolds. It’ll do you both good.’

  ‘Couldn’t Sir Lancelot have gone for a run in the Cotswolds on his own?’

  ‘Try not to be silly, Rumpole.’

  The dog was behaving in an eccentric manner, making wild forays into the undergrowth as though it had found something to chase and, ending up with nothing, it came trotting back to the path quite unconscious of its own stupidity. It was, I thought, an animal with absolutely no sense of humour.

  ‘Why on earth does your friend Dodo Mackintosh call that gloomy hound Sir Lancelot?’

  ‘After Sir Lancelot of the Lake, of course. One of the knights of the Table Round. Dodo’s got a very romantic nature. Come along, Lance. There’s a good boy. Enjoying your run in the country, are you?’

  ‘Lance,’ I told her firmly, ‘or, rather, Launce is the chap who had a dog called Crab in Two Gentlemen of Verona. Crab got under the duke’s table with some “gentlemanlike dogs” and after “a pissing while” a terrible smell emerged. Launce took responsibility for it and was whipped.’