Rumpole and the Angel of Death

by John Mortimer

  This method of public assassination had, I later discovered, been copied from a detective story where it attracted less attention. Sandra Atherton, a secretary at Citibank, saw a young man of Middle-Eastern appearance apparently push Freeling in the back before he fell. She lost sight of him in the crowd, but then she saw him again, running towards the exit. She called to the guard, who gave chase, followed by some other passengers who also thought they’d seen Freeling pushed – among them Vernon Wynstanley, a young stockbroker, and Emily Brotherton, a tea-lady. For a very short time these witnesses lost sight of the supposed assassin in the tiled and echoing underground passages, but the guard managed to communicate with ground level. Amin Hashimi was stopped as he was leaving the station and the City police were sent for. The three named witnesses made a positive identification. Later, when Hashimi was examined forensically, fibres similar to those in the blue glove were found, in a microscopic quantity, under the fingernails of his right hand. Peter Fishlock got the case, thanks to a friend in the Magistrates Court, and, as I had just won a rather tricky affray and criminal damage for him, he was wise enough to instruct Horace Rumpole for the Defence. During the complicated course of the proceedings he got the idea of Rumpole as the champion of the underdog, or at least of a student of Middle-Eastern extraction, which led us to the choucroute and the eau de vie – and to my international acclaim in Strasburg.

  The case came on before his Honour Judge Bloxham, a person who, I think, deliberately cultivated his likeness to a pallid bulldog. His skin was curiously white and his forehead was perpetually furrowed, as were his jowls. With these similar lines above and below, and his eyebrows matching his moustache, he had one of those faces which could make sense either way up, like the comical drawings that once appeared in children’s books.

  I can’t say I had embarked on the Defence of Mr Hashimi with any high hopes of success. I could only do my poor best, although I have to say, in all modesty, that my poor best is considerably better than the poorer best of such learned friends as Claude Erskine-Brown and Soapy Sam Ballard, Q.C. The most I could do, I thought, was to unsettle the identification evidence, have a bit of harmless fun on the subject of wool and polyester fibres, and point to the great weakness of the Prosecution case: the complete absence of any sort of motive for the alleged assassination of George Freeling.

  ‘You had never met this man Freeling?’

  ‘Never. Never had I spoken to him.’

  ‘Or seen him?’

  ‘Perhaps. Travelling on that Underground line you see many faces. Perhaps his was among them.’

  ‘You use that line every day?’

  ‘Back and forwards. To my college in Holborn, where I take business studies and office management. I am reading during the journey; I don’t notice many people.’

  ‘Did you know anything about Netherbank where Freeling worked?’

  ‘I have heard of it, of course. Not much more.’ We were sitting in the interview room in Brixton and I thought that Mr Hashimi might appeal to the women on the Jury. He looked young enough to be mothered and his large brown eyes gave him an expression of injured innocence. He had long, pale fingers and, even in the disinfected atmosphere of Brixton, he seemed to give off a faint smell of sandalwood and spices. I told him that I would do my best for him.

  ‘We are in the hands of Allah the Compassionate and Merciful. He ordains life and death and has power over all things.’

  ‘You pray to Allah?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well, ask him to be particularly compassionate and merciful down the Old Bailey next week, why don’t you?’

  As the gates of the prison house closed behind us and we squeezed into Peter Fishlock’s small Japanese motor, I said, ‘We have one bright spot in a rather gloomy prospect.’

  ‘The absence of motive?’

  ‘No. The presence of his Honour Judge Bloxham.’

  ‘I thought Billy Bloxham disapproved of foreign students using the Health Service.’

  ‘Better than that. He’s allergic to any sort of alien. Visitors from what was once our far-flung empire bring him out in a nervous rash.’

  ‘How’s that going to help Amin?’

  ‘Because if we can get Billy to show his hand, if we can needle the old darling into a quaint little display of racial prejudice, then we can present a bigoted Bloxham to the Jury and they might decline to obey orders. In fact, there’s an outside chance, I say no more than that, my fine Fishlock, that we might just scrape home to victory!’

  ‘Of course, their evidence on the fibres is very unconvincing.’

  ‘The fibres are one thing. But Bloxham’s prejudices are something else entirely. He never stops talking about being British and living in the U.K. He’s a fellow who sings “Rule Britannia” in his bath and wants the Kingdom to be reserved strictly for Bloxham look-alikes, their lady wives and white children. If Allah the Compassionate wants a way for Amin Hashimi to walk, then Billy’s going to lead him to it.’

  ‘Miss Atherton. You say you saw a young man of Middle-Eastern appearance push the victim’s back as the train was about to stop.’

  ‘I saw the man in the dock do that.’

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to test, Miss Atherton. Just bear with me, will you? I suggest the first time you got a good look, face to face, at my client Mr Hashimi was when he was stopped on his way out of the station. You came up then and identified him?’

  ‘I did, yes.’

  ‘Are you quite sure that was the same Middle-Eastern gentleman you saw push the man on the platform?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sure.’

  ‘You had lost sight of him during the chase?’

  ‘For a short while, yes.’

  ‘And might not you and the others have ended up pursuing another Middle-Eastern young man?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Come now, Miss Atherton. Don’t all Middle-Eastern young men look rather similar to you? Are you sure you could have told the two of them apart?’

  ‘Mr Rumpole.’ I smiled towards the Bench, waiting for Billy to let his prejudices show. To my dismay he did nothing of the sort. ‘Mr Rumpole,’ he said, surprisingly gently, ‘this Court is colour-blind! Where in the world this young man came from is a matter of no significance. He’s fully entitled to the fair trial which I’m sure this jury is going to give him. I’m also sure that this very intelligent young lady can identify an assailant without going into racist characteristics. Isn’t that so, Miss Atherton?’

  ‘Of course I can.’ Sandra Atherton was delighted to agree with the not so learned Judge.

  ‘Very well, then. Let us continue, Mr Rumpole. And let us do so without reference to creed or colour.’

  My heart sank. I could see the Jury, a mixed bag from the Hoxton area, looking at the pallid Bloxham and rather liking what they saw. He had decided, I now realized, to play a particularly mean trick on the Defence. He was going to give us a fair trial.

  Vernon Wynstanley, the stockbroker, and Emily Brotherton were hardly less sure of their identification. Mrs Brotherton, the image of the jolly tea-lady about to be replaced by a mechanical dispenser, was particularly popular with the Jury. I let them both go as soon as possible, but spent a good deal of time cross-examining the fibre expert on the amount of wool and polyester mixture available in London, and the vast number of garments which might have left innocent traces under my client’s fingernails. I stopped when I noticed that number three in the jury-box had dropped off to sleep.

  In my final speech, given, I had to say, with even more than my usual eloquence, I dwelt on the uncertainty of identification evidence at the best of times, and particularly when the incident took place in an Underground station during the rush hour and must have been a horrific shock to all concerned. I gave the Jury at least twenty minutes on the absence of motive. What was my client, Amin Hashimi, meant to be? A criminal lunatic who killed at random just for kicks? Nothing in his history, his success at his studies and his hi
therto unimpeachable behaviour could support such a theory. After I had imitated the Scales of Justice, and put in the ounce of reasonable doubt which would weigh them down on the side of the Defence, I sank into my seat, tired and sweating. I had done my best and I could only hope that Billy Bloxham would put his foot in it.

  He didn’t. He told the Jury that, although the Prosecution didn’t have to supply a motive, they should take full account of all Mr Rumpole had said about the apparent purposelessness of the crime. He told them that identification evidence was often unreliable and they should approach it with great care, but whether they believed the secretary, the stockbroker and the tea-lady was a matter entirely for them. He said they should think about whether the fibres helped prove the case and that they mustn’t convict unless they were quite sure. In fact, it was an appallingly fair summing-up.

  I said goodbye to my client after Allah the Compassionate, the Merciful, had failed to come up trumps. Amin Hashimi, as calm as ever, thanked me politely and said, ‘The hypocrites will not be forgiven. He does not guide the evildoers. And he has knowledge of all our actions. I have nothing to regret, Mr Rumpole, so please give my best wishes to your lady wife.’ I had no doubt that, three or four weeks later, he would wake up to the reality of life imprisonment and his soft, brown eyes would fill with tears.

  A few weeks later, however, the Compassionate one arranged something that might possibly provide an escape route for my imprisoned client. His Honour Judge Bloxham was invited to a rugby club dinner somewhere near his home in the Midlands, and he was asked to sing for his supper.

  END IMMIGRATION TO END CRIME. JUDGE THANKFUL TO HAVE GOT ONE MORE ARAB STUDENT BEHIND BARS. So screamed the headline in Hilda’s Daily Telegraph which I saw as we sat at breakfast in the mansion flat.

  ‘Your Judge Bloxham,’ she said, crunching toast, ‘seems to have been rather a Silly Billy.’

  ‘He seems to have said it all a bit too late.’ I borrowed Hilda’s paper. ‘Anyway, he’s not my Judge. I want no part of him.’

  I suppose it was bad luck in a way. Billy Bloxham had no doubt expected the speech to be a private affair, and in this simple faith he must have let himself go with the pink gin, the claret, the brandy and the port. He stood up to address those used to scrumming down and tackling each other perilously low, and let the real Billy Bloxham bubble to the surface. He wasn’t to know that some eager young rugby-playing reporter, fresh from the local Echo and anxious to make a name for himself in the world of journalism, was writing shorthand on the back of a menu and would communicate the highlights to the Press Association. The report in the Daily Telegraph of what Bloxham had said was fairly full:

  A great many of these towel-headed gentry come here as so-called students to escape the tough laws of their own countries. No doubt they find a short stretch of community service greatly preferable to losing a hand if they’re caught with their fingers in the till. No doubt they prefer our free Health Service to the attentions of the Medicine Man in the Medina. I don’t know how much studying they do, but they certainly have time for plenty of extra-curricular activities. They take special courses in drug-dealing and the theft of quality cars.

  Coming from a part of the world where scraps were always breaking out, they are easily drawn into violence. This is not so bad when they do it to each other, but not, repeat not, when a law- abiding subject of Her Majesty gets shot in the Underground. I have to tell you, gentlemen, that when my jury brought in a guilty verdict on the murderer Hashimi, I had a song in my heart. I retired to my room and invited my dear old usher, ex-Sergeant Major Wrigglesworth of the Blues and the Royals, to join me in a glass of sherry. ‘Well done, sir,’ Wrigglesworth said. ‘You managed to pot the bastard.’

  ‘One down,’ I replied, ‘and thousands left to go.’

  When I got into Chambers Fishlock, the human rights solicitor, was already there, cradling a bundle of morning papers as though it were a long-lost child. ‘Biased Judge,’ he almost whooped for joy. ‘Flagrantly biased! No doubt at all about that. So what do we do now?’

  ‘We get whoever was the mole in the rugby club to swear an affidavit and troop off to the Court of Appeal.’

  ‘To tell them the Judge was biased?’

  ‘And has, with any luck, delivered himself into our hands.’

  I am not an habitué of the Court of Appeal. It has none of the amenities I’m used to – such as witnesses to cross-examine and juries to persuade. One Judge is bad enough, but the Appeal Court comes equipped with three who bother you with unnecessary and impertinent questions which are not always easy to answer.

  Lord Justice Percival Ponting, who presided over the Hashimi appeal, had hooded eyes and the distasteful look of a person who goes through life with a bad smell under his nose. He had never recovered from having achieved a double first at Cambridge and regarded Old Bailey hacks in general, and Horace Rumpole in particular, as ill-educated dimwits who couldn’t read the Institutes of Justinian in Latin.

  ‘Mr Rumpole’ – the Lord of Appeal in Ordinary pronounced my name as though he regretted having stepped in it – ‘will you be so good as to refer us to any passage in the transcript of the trial in which the learned Judge made any sort of biased remark to the Jury concerning your client, Mr Harashimi?’

  ‘Hashimi, my Lord, as it so happens.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. I do beg his pardon. Hashimi then. Well, Mr Rumpole, will you now refer us to the passages in the transcript.’

  ‘In the transcript of the speech at the rugby club? The Judge couldn’t have made his views more absolutely clear . . .’

  ‘Do remind us, Mr Rumpole. The Jury wasn’t empanelled to sit in judgement at the rugby club dinner, was it?’

  ‘No, my Lord, but . . .’

  ‘And by the time that event took place, the Jury had reached a verdict, after an unbiased summing-up, had they not?’

  ‘His after-dinner diatribe, his post-prandial peroration, my Lord, shows exactly what the Judge had in mind.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole. We all may have things on our minds. We may have views about the merits of this Appeal which it might be kinder not to express in public. You may have in mind a proper realization of the shallowness of your argument. It’s what’s said in Court that matters!’

  ‘We don’t live our entire lives in courtrooms. What’s my client to think now? What’s any reasonable man to think? That he was tried unfairly by a biased judge.’

  ‘Is that your best point?’

  ‘Indeed, it is!’ I turned up the volume to show I was running out of patience with Ponting, alarming the ushers and causing the little Lord Justice on the left to open his eyes.

  ‘No need to raise your voice, Mr Rumpole. You are perfectly audible. Your first point is that your client was tried by a Judge who successfully concealed his true feelings?’

  ‘And secondly, that he did so deliberately to secure a conviction.’

  ‘You were right, Mr Rumpole.’ Percy Ponting smiled down at me from a great height and in a wintry fashion. ‘Your first point was the best one.’

  ‘“A great many of these towel-headed gentry came here as so-called students to escape the tough laws of their own countries . . . when my jury brought in a guilty verdict on the murderer Hashimi I had a song in my heart.” How can you possibly say that’s not biased?’

  ‘Words which he didn’t utter at the trial?’

  ‘Words which show exactly how he felt at the trial.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole, I think we are now seized of your argument.’

  ‘I don’t think you are. I think you are about to ignore my argument.’

  ‘If you have nothing more to add . . .’

  ‘Oh, yes, I have. A great deal more to add.’ I added it for another three-quarters of an hour, while Percy Ponting joined the little fellow on his left in carefully simulated sleep. It came as no surprise when we lost, and leave to appeal to the House of Lords was refused. Two days later that august and elevated body also refused leave.


  ‘I’m afraid,’ I had to tell Fishlock, ‘it looks like the end of the line.’

  ‘Not exactly.’ He looked like a man possessed of a well-kept secret. ‘What about Article Six of the European Convention on Human Rights?’

  ‘A document,’ I hastened to tell him, ‘which is my constant bedtime reading.’

  ‘Everyone is entitled to a fair hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal!’

  ‘That is what I had in mind. So we’re off to The Hague, are we?’

  ‘You may be, Mr Rumpole. But the Court of Human Rights sits in Strasburg.’

  ‘Of course! That’s the one I meant. So you’re going to brief me in Strasburg, are you? It’ll make a change from the Uxbridge Magistrates Court.’

  It was then that Peter Fishlock began to talk about Rumpole and human rights being as inseparable as Marks & Spencer, and I speculated on the possible generosity of Euro legal aid.

  ‘I hear you’re off to Europe, Rumpole.’ Soapy Sam Ballard looked at me with incredulity and distaste, as though I had just won the National Lottery.

  ‘Rather a bore, really.’ I lit a small cigar in an offhand manner. The man had entered my room eagerly enough, but now covered his mouth with his fist and coughed as though I had set out to asphyxiate him. ‘But you’ve got to be prepared to travel when you’ve got an international practice like mine.’