Rumpole and the Angel of Death

by John Mortimer

  ‘How?’

  ‘Because you were doing something far more sensible. You were making love to Janet Freebody.’

  There was a silence. Den looked down at his large hands, folded on his lap. Then he looked up again and said, ‘Janet’s not going to say that, surely?’

  ‘Yes, she is. She’s going to brave the story in the Sun and the giggles in her class at the comprehensive, and she’s going to say it loud and clear.’

  ‘I’m not going to let her.’

  ‘You can’t stop her.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you’re going to tell the truth also. And because you’re going to fight this case to the bitter end. With a little help from me, you might even win.’

  ‘Why should I fight it?’ Den looked back at his hands, avoiding my eye. ‘You give me one good reason.’

  So then I gave him one very good reason indeed. ‘You can’t tell the story,’ I warned Den. ‘It can’t be proved and you’d be sued for libel. But I promise to tell them what I know.’ Later, when I had finished with Den, I went into the robing-room to slip into the fancy dress and there I confronted little Marcus, combing his mouse-coloured hair. ‘My learned friend,’ I told him, ‘I’m serving an alibi notice on you. Only one witness.

  You’ll be a sweetheart and tell darling old Jamie that you don’t want an adjournment or anything awkward like that. I can rely on you, can’t I, Marcus?’

  ‘Why on earth’ – Marcus looked like a very determined mouse that morning – ‘should you think that you can rely on me?’

  ‘Because,’ I told him, with some confidence, ‘if you behave well, Hilda and my good self might see our way to looking after Bernadette while you’re away in the Chancery Division.’

  ‘That’ – little Marcus turned back to the mirror and the careful arrangement of his hair – ‘puts an entirely different complexion on the matter.’

  ‘What is the single most important fact about this case, Members of the Jury? The fact which I ask you to take with you into your room and put first and last in your deliberations. It’s just this: Mrs Eyles met her death half a mile from any point where the hunt had been. If Dennis Pearson intended to kill her, how did he lure her away to that remote woodland path? Did he offer her a date or an assignation? Did he promise to give her the winner of the two-thirty at Cheltenham? Or did he say, “Just gallop along the track in Fallows Wood and you’ll probably be killed by a bit of tight wire I stretched there yesterday lunchtime”? How did he organize not only that she should be killed, but that she should go so far out of her way to meet her death? It was impossible to organize it, was it not, Members of the Jury? Doesn’t that mean that you must have doubts about Dennis Pearson’s guilt?

  ‘Remember, he was seen at various places during the hunt, with the other saboteurs, shouting his usual abuse at the riders. So whoever went off and lured Dorothea Eyles to her death, it certainly wasn’t him. And remember this, if he’s guilty, the whole hunt would have had to come down that track, and the first to be killed wouldn’t have been Mrs Eyles but the Master of Foxhounds himself, or one of the hunt servants. The Prosecution haven’t even tried to explain these mysteries and, unless they can explain them, you cannot be certain of guilt.’

  Little Marcus was reading a guidebook on Elba and Jamie MacBean was feigning sleep, but the Jury was listening, attentive and, I thought, even interested. The abrupt manner in which the Judge had put an end to my cross-examination of Tricia had, I suspected, aroused their curiosity. What was it that the Judge didn’t wish them to know? There are moments when an objection sustained can be almost as good as evidence.

  And then Janet Freebody turned out to be a dream witness. When Jamie asked her, in what he hoped were withering tones, if she was in the habit of having sexual intercourse with men at lunch time, she answered, with the smallest of smiles, ‘Only when my feelings overcome me, my Lord. And I am dreadfully in love.’ The Judge was silent, the Jury liked her, and little Marcus closed his eyes and no doubt thought of Clarissa. I needn’t go through all the points I made in my final speech, brilliant as they were. They will have become obvious to my readers who have studied my cross-examination. Jamie summed up for a conviction which, as the Jury were not entirely on his side, was a considerable help to us. They were out for an hour and a half, but when they came back they looked straight at my client and said not guilty. The Judge then threatened to have those cheering in the gallery committed to prison for contempt; however astute he was, and however long ago he’d been born, he had failed to achieve a conviction.

  When I said goodbye to Dennis he was hardly overcome with gratitude. He said, ‘You prevented me from striking a real blow for animal rights, Mr Rumpole. I came prepared to suffer.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘Janet Freebody ruined your suffering for you. And I think she’s prepared to give you something a good deal more valuable than a martyr’s crown.’

  Months later, on the occasion of a long-suffering member of our Chambers becoming a Metropolitan magistrate, he gave his fellow legal hacks dinner at the Sheridan Club. She Who Must was not of the party, having gone off on yet another visit to Dodo and the dog Lancelot on the Cornish Riviera. As I sat trying not to drop off during one of Ballard’s lively discussions of the Chambers’ telephone bill, I saw, softly lit by candlelight, Rollo Eyles and Tricia Fothergill dining together at a distant table. I remembered a promise unfulfilled, a duty yet undone. I excused myself and went over to join them.

  ‘Horace! Have a seat. What’s going on over there? A Chambers dinner? This is the claret we choose on the wine committee. Not too bad.’ Rollo was almost too welcoming. Tricia, on the other hand, looked studiously at her plate.

  ‘So’ – Rollo was signalling to the waiter to bring me a glass – ‘you won another murder?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I suppose the Jury thought another of those revolting antis did it.’

  ‘I don’t suppose we’ll ever know exactly what they thought.’

  ‘By the way, Horace’ – Rollo looked at me, one eyebrow raised quizzically – ‘I thought you’d like to know. Tricia and I are going to get married.’

  ‘I thought you would be.’

  For the first time Tricia raised her eyes from her plate. ‘Did you?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Rollo would never have left his wife, while she was alive. Thank you.’ The waiter had brought a glass and Rollo filled it. ‘You know my client, Dennis Pearson, was going to take the blame for the crime. He thought, in some strange way, that it might help the animals. He only agreed to fight because, if he was acquitted, the real murderer might still be discovered.’

  ‘The real murderer?’ I still didn’t believe that Rollo knew the truth. Tricia knew it and I wanted Tricia to be sure I knew it too.

  ‘What made Dorothea ride through Fallows Wood?’ I looked at Tricia. ‘I think you were riding with her in the hunt and you said something, probably something about Rollo, which made her want to know more. But you rode away and she followed you. When you got on to the track between the trees, you knew where the wire was and you ducked. Dorothea was galloping behind and knew nothing. It was a very quick death. You carried on and jumped the stile, where your horse lost a shoe.’

  ‘You’re drunk!’ Rollo had stopped smiling.

  ‘Not yet!’ I took a gulp of his wine.

  Tricia said, ‘But I saw the man with the wire.’

  ‘At least we proved you were lying about that. The only person who went into the wood with wire was you. And when you’d done the job, you dumped the coil in the sabs’ van. You knew one of them could be relied on to threaten the riders. Dennis said exactly what was required of him.’

  ‘Tricia?’ Rollo looked at her, expecting her furious denial. He was disappointed.

  ‘You repeat one word of that ridiculous story, Rumpole’ – he was angry now – ‘and I’ll bloody sue you.’

  ‘I don’t think you will. I don’t think she’ll let you.’

  �
��What are you going to do?’ Tricia was suddenly businesslike, matter of fact.

  ‘Do? I’m not going to do anything. I don’t know who could prove it. Anyway, I’m not the police, or the prosecuting authority. What you do is for you two to decide. But I promised the man you wanted to convict that I’d let you know I knew. And now I’ve kept my promise.’

  I drained my glass, got up and left their table. As I went, I saw Rollo put his hand on Tricia’s and hold it there. Did he not believe in her crime, or was he prepared to live with it? I don’t know and I can’t possibly guess. I had left the world of the hunters and those who hunted them, and I never saw Rollo or his new wife again, although Hilda did tell me that their wedding had been recorded in the Daily Telegraph.

  When I got back to our table I sat in silence for a while beside Mrs Justice Erskine-Brown, Phillida Trant that was, the Portia of our Chambers.

  ‘What are you thinking about, Rumpole?’ Portia asked me.

  ‘With all due respect to your Ladyship, I was thinking that a criminal trial is a very blunt implement for digging out the truth.’

  Some weeks later Ballard entered my room when I was busy noting up an affray in Streatham High Street.

  ‘I’m sending you a memo about the telephone bill, Rumpole.’

  ‘Good. I shall look forward to that.’

  ‘Very well. I’ll send it to you then.’ Apparently in search ofanother topic of conversation, the man sniffed the air. ‘No dogs in here now, are there?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘I well remember the time when you had a dog in here.’

  ‘No longer.’

  ‘And we had to call a Chambers’ meeting on the subject!’

  ‘That was some while ago.’

  ‘And you assure me you now have got no dog here, of any sort?’

  ‘Close the door behind you, Bollard, when you go.’

  As he left, the volume was turned up on the sound of heavy breathing. Bernadette was sleeping peacefully behind my desk.

  Hilda’s Story

  MRS HILDA RUMPOLE TO DOROTHY (DODO) MACKINTOSH

  My dear Dodo

  This is the story Rumpole will never tell. It’s not at all how he would wish to present himself to his audience, his readers, his ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, in the many accounts he has written of his brilliance down at the Old Bailey, and his particular cleverness at enabling assorted scamps and scallywags to escape their just deserts. Such work Rumpole sees as protecting the liberty of the subject, Magna Carta and the presumption of innocence, and he assumes a look of injured nobility when I tell him that he has become little more than an honorary uncle to the Timson family – that infamous clan of South London villains, whom Rumpole, when under attack, says I have to rely on for my scanty housekeeping allowance. Rumpole also prides himself on his worldly wisdom and the fact that he can see further through a brick wall than anyone else in the legal profession, the entire Bench of Judges, including the Lord Chancellor, the Master of the Rolls and the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary. My reason for writing this account, entirely for my own consumption – and yours, Dodo, as my oldest schoolfriend and one who has seen the best and the worst of Rumpole at quarters which may have been, from time to time, uncomfortably close – is to show that in the case of R. v. Skelton, I certainly saw further through a brick wall than he could without having passed a single Bar exam. I pulled off a coup to equal his in that case which he never tires of telling us about, the Penge Bungalow murders.

  Rumpole is, I have to tell you, Dodo, a bit of an actor. I don’t think you’ve ever seen him in Court, with his grey wig askew (dirty when he bought it secondhand from the ex- Attorney-General of the Windward Islands, and now even dirtier after fifty years of contact with Rumpole’s glistening forehead), his gown tattered (he never asks me to mend it), and his waistcoat gravy-stained (he seldom allows me to take it to the Smarty Pants cleaners, who give a pretty reliable service in the Gloucester Road). He is, of course, acting the part of an inadequately paid and outspoken rebel against authority. And when he’s at home, and you’ve seen this, my dear old Dodo, many times, he is acting the part of a free spirit imprisoned, through no fault of his own, in marriage, just as the clients in his less successful cases are banged up in Wormwood Scrubs.

  Dodo, I don’t know if you remember the case of Michael Skelton? There was a good deal about it in the Daily Telegraph at the time, but I know you object to the amount of quite gratuitous violence there is in crime-reporting these days, and perhaps you were too busy with your splendid watercolours to notice it! Your ‘Lamorna Cove on a Wet Afternoon’ hangs over the gas fire as I write and I can feel the dampness rising. We all know that young people have got quite difficult lately. Since our Nick went off to teach in Florida and married his Erica we have hardly been close but, quite honestly, Dodo, families have got to learn to live together and, although no one knows better than you how completely maddening Rumpole can be at times, it’s impossible to imagine Nick ever being tempted to beat his father to death with a golf club, the crime which the Skelton boy was up for. I mean, it simply isn’t the way youngsters from nice homes carry on.

  You can imagine the poorer sort of people doing it – people on drugs and income support and such like – although I can’t really imagine them having golf clubs available in their entrance halls. But young Michael Skelton seemed to have nothing in the world to complain about. His father, Dimitri Skelton, was a very successful surgeon. (I believe there was Russian blood in the family somewhere and, although I can connect the Russians with violence, they don’t seem, in the course of history, to have played much golf . . . Just a passing thought, Dodo.) Anyway, the father did cosmetic surgery, I think they call it, which means giving other rich people better bosoms or more youthful faces. I don’t know, you and I have lived quite comfortably with our faces since we were a couple of new bugs, all wet around the ears, at Chippenham. And, as for Rumpole’s face, it seems to me, it is quite beyond repair – only fit for demolition, I might think sometimes – but I wouldn’t say it aloud, Dodo. Apart from the various acts he puts on, he can be quite a sensitive soul at times and I don’t wish to cause him pain – unless it’s absolutely necessary.

  Well, as I was saying, this business of yanking up people’s bosoms and tightening their cheeks had provided the Skeltons with an extremely nice converted farmhouse in Sussex, with a marble swimming-pool (there were colour pictures in the Weekend Telegraph), a jacuzzi, four cars in the garage, and all the trimmings, which we tell each other we wouldn’t want but might quite like if we found them provided for us. Having been sent to Lancing, and then to Cambridge to study medicine and follow in his father’s footsteps (or should I say his father’s wrinkles, Dodo, if you will forgive a small joke on a serious subject) the boy should have been grateful or, if he couldn’t have managed that, at least not beaten his father about the head with a favourite driver.

  Late one afternoon – could it have been last July? Anyway, I know it was still light – I came home from my bridge lesson with Marigold Featherstone. She’s Lady Featherstone, you know, the Judge’s wife, and we both suffer from extremely irritating husbands. Of course she’s not an old friend like you, Dodo. Marigold and I were never together as new bugs at Chippenham. She is a somewhat younger person but actually not as silly as she quite often sounds. Well, when I got back to Froxbury Mansions, I found Rumpole home surprisingly early. An urgent conference in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar over a bottle of Château Fleet Street usually takes up at least two hours at the end of his working day. He had his jacket and waistcoat off and sat in his braces and shirtsleeves in a flat with closed windows, where you might have roasted a chicken without the help of the gas oven.

  ‘You seem to be enjoying that brief, Rumpole,’ I said as I forced open a reluctant window, ‘even more than a bottle of your usual third-rate red wine.’

  ‘Are you planning to freeze me to death before I can pull off what promises to be one of my most sensational defences?’ he
asked in a plaintive sort of voice.

  ‘If you’re cold’ – when dealing with Rumpole, you have to be merciless – ‘there’s always your cardigan. Don’t tell me you’ve found another Penge Bungalow murder?’

  ‘Penge Bungalow? What was that exactly? I tell you, R. v. Skelton is going to outdo the fame of all my previous triumphs. This is a case which will go down in history. I envisage a final speech lasting at least a day.’

  ‘Why will you be giving the final speech, Rumpole?’

  ‘Because, needless to say, I am doing this case – as I did that rather more trivial affair of the Penge Bungalow – alone and without a leader!’

  ‘Is that because all the leaders realize that Michael Skelton has simply got no defence?’

  ‘It’s because my instructing solicitor knows that I am a far greater defender than all those self-important amateurs who wrap themselves in silk gowns and flaunt the initials Q.C. after their names.’

  ‘And who is your instructing solicitor?’ I asked to put an end to a speech which, after a lengthy marriage to a permanent non-Q.C., I could repeat by heart. ‘Some owner of a South London bucket-shop? Cut-price defences in hopeless murder cases offered to close friends of the Timson family?’

  ‘What nonsense you do talk, Hilda.’ Rumpole sighed heavily. ‘My instructing solicitor happens to be Daniel Newcombe. To those of us who know him well, and undertake his more difficult cases, he will always be Danny Newcombe.’

  ‘And who is this Danny, anyway?’ It seems extraordinary to me now, Dodo, that there was ever a time when I had to ask such a question.

  ‘Hilda, I know you are a complete innocent when it comes to the law, but Newcombe, Pouncefort & Delaney are quite the grandest firm dealing in criminal matters. Danny is the senior partner. I believe that, with me in command, his firm may pull off something sensational.’

  ‘You mean, get a boy off who murdered his father.’

  ‘Who is alleged to have murdered his father. Young Michael is as innocent as you are until he’s proved guilty.’