Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders

by John Mortimer

  ‘I’m going to stay,’ I told His Lordship. ‘I mean, our client wants me to do the case.’

  ‘Then your client’s wishes must be respected. How long since you’ve been called to the bar?’

  ‘Eighteen months,’ was what I had to tell him.

  ‘Eighteen months! It was fifteen years before I did my first defence in a murder case. The Hastings strangler, if you remember it, Wystan? Of course I made a complete balls-up of it. Merely tightened the noose round the client’s neck. I’d better have young Jerold up in court and warn him of the dangers. Thank you for keeping me in the picture, Wystan. No doubt you’ll find a more profitable occupation than a murder on Legal Aid. By the way, Winterbourne,’ here the judge addressed the prosecutor, who was entitled to be present at the meeting and had nothing much to lose, ‘how long is this trial going to last?’

  ‘It’ll be more weeks, My Lord. We’ve got all the witnesses from the party and the police evidence. And if the defence call the boy . . .’

  ‘Two more weeks?’ The Lord Chief Justice seemed surprised. ‘Cases were much shorter in my day. Well, I suppose we’ll get through it!’

  As he left, I was hoping against hope that Simon would live through it as well as the rest of us.

  Simon was brought up from the cells and, in the absence of the jury, the situation was explained to him with painstaking clarity by the Lord Chief Justice. Simon’s leader, a man of huge experience and the highest of reputations, had withdrawn from the case. He, the judge, was surprised beyond belief that Simon Jerold should have caused Mr C. H. Wystan’s departure. That left young Mr Umm . . . (He seemed longer than ever searching for my name, as though to emphasize my obscurity and complete absence of reputation around the courts of law.) Ah! (The Lord Chief Justice had found my name, but pronounced it with some difficulty) Mr Rum - yes, Rumpole. A barrister only recently called, who was unknown, as far as he could gather, around the Old Bailey. Usually a junior withdrew from the case with his leader, but this young man had chosen to offer himself as counsel for the defence. It had to be said that he had asked a few questions with reasonable confidence, but he had clearly never before dealt with a case of such importance. Now, would Simon Jerold like an adjournment in order that a barrister of similar standing to Mr Wystan be found who might be prepared to act?

  ‘No, sir.’ Simon spoke clearly and with determination from the dock. ‘I’d like to get on with it. And I want Mr Rumpole to do my case.’

  It was an odd moment when Simon, and not the judge, seemed to dominate the proceedings. The judge, without even having taken snuff, blew his nose on the silk handkerchief and then wiped it carefully. After a short period of contemplation, staring at the apparently determined young man in the dock, he gave in. ‘Well, I suppose you’re entitled to the counsel of your choice. Have you any objections to Mr Rumpole conducting the case for the defence, Mr Winterbourne?’

  The prosecutor rumbled to his feet and, with a knowing smile, said, ‘None whatever, My Lord.’

  ‘I thought you might say that.’ The judge smiled back, but his smile died when he said, ‘Mr Rumpole, you now take over the sole responsibility for this young man’s defence.’

  As I stood to thank His Lordship, I heard Reggie Proudfoot, in a stage whisper beside me, say how delighted he’d be to see me make a complete pig’s breakfast of the job. Then I sat down while the jury were called back into court and my sole responsibility began.

  So, that is how I came to do the Penge Bungalow Murders alone and without a leader.

  15

  ‘Why did you have to put that disgusting bit about the Sampson woman in your memoirs, Rumpole?’

  Hilda’s question alerted me to the danger of a man leaving his memoirs free and open about the matrimonial home. Perhaps I should always write in chambers in future. For the moment, however, I answered her as well as I could. ‘Because it wasn’t disgusting. Unhappily, nothing in the least disgusting occurred. I’m trying to tell the truth, Hilda, to be honest about my failures.’

  ‘Well, you’d better not be a failure next month.’

  Her remark puzzled me. ‘I’m not expecting any particularly important trial.’

  ‘You’ll have to be on your best behaviour, Rumpole. Dodo Mackintosh will be here and some of the girls we were at school with. Sandy Butterworth and Emma Glastonbury and the Gage twins and lots more. We’ve got tickets for Phantom of the Opera and then we’re coming back here for a slap-up supper.’

  ‘You mean Dodo Mackintosh will be staying?’ I was somewhat daunted by the prospect.

  ‘She likes you, Rumpole. She does her best to help. Don’t you remember, she makes cheesy bits for your chambers’ parties?’

  ‘Which was the one who said it was such a pity I never got made a circus judge?’

  ‘Circuit judge, Rumpole. Heather Gage said she was sorry your face didn’t fit with the powers that be.’

  ‘Thank God for that. I don’t have a face for the circus.’

  ‘The Gage twins’ father was a circuit judge, so of course he knows all about it.’

  ‘And I bet he never, at my tender age, stood up to do a double murder without a leader at the Old Bailey.’

  ‘He lives in Wimbledon.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I mean. So all your school friends will be coming back here after an evening at the theatre?’

  ‘The whole jolly crowd of them.’

  ‘I can only hope,’ I was remembering another after-theatre party, ‘that no one gets shot.’

  ‘Now we can really talk.’ My first day alone in court hadn’t presented too many problems. Simon’s statement to the police was put in and read. We had the evidence of finding the pistol in the dustbin. The Lord Chief wanted to rise early: it was a Friday and he said, with apparent generosity, we could have the afternoon off ‘so Mr Rumpole could prepare himself to take over the defence’. In reality, I suspected, he was longing to visit his prize pigs. The ex-officers who had made up the theatre party were to be called next week. This was just as well, because I had to put our defence to them and I hadn’t as yet any idea of what our defence could be. I knew that if I went back to my chambers, I should find C. H. Wystan skulking in his tent, no doubt determined to banish me from Equity Court for ever, so I took the opportunity of another meeting in the interview room down below and hoped for help from Simon. Barnsley Gough had remembered an important meeting of his local Masons’ lodge, so Bonny Bernard was left with me in sole charge of the case.

  ‘You were a schoolboy when the war broke out. Old enough to remember . . .’

  ‘Oh, yes. Quite old enough.’

  ‘Your father joined up early?’

  ‘Very early. He was excited about it. Enthusiastic. I remember he was so pleased with himself when he was made a pilot officer. He said he got through his training first class. He was so proud, the first time he came home on leave in the full uniform.’

  Simon had changed. His words, held back in the gloomy conferences with Hilda’s daddy, seemed unblocked and came tumbling out of him. He had, I suppose, achieved a legal triumph and changed barristers in midstream. The terrifying fact was that I felt sure that he thought, with me in charge, he was set fair for an acquittal. Little did he know that, on that Friday afternoon, the Rumpole head was quite empty of ideas. Had I made an enemy of C. H. Wystan and invited my exit from Equity Court just in order to achieve the ghastly result Hilda’s daddy could have arrived at with no trouble at all? I did my best to dismiss such unhelpful thoughts from my mind and concentrated on listening to Simon.

  ‘And were you proud of him?’

  ‘Of course I was! A schoolboy with a pilot officer, a man with wings on his uniform, for a father. Of course. I used to boast at school about him.’

  ‘In the early years of the war, during the Blitz, you were living in a London suburb?’

  ‘I know. It was exciting, wasn’t it? Skies lit up with fires. Streets full of broken glass. And Mum and I used to go down the shelter with our gas ma
sks and listen to Gracie Fields singing on the portable.’

  ‘“Walter! Walter! Lead me to the altar. It’s either the workhouse or you.”’ In the memory of those old days, I burst into song, perhaps unexpectedly, as the door opened and one of the screws, still chewing a sandwich, said, ‘You all right, Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘Perfectly all right, thank you. I’m afraid I sang rather too loudly.’

  ‘Don’t worry, sir. We don’t get much singing of any sort. Not down here.’ And so the friendly screw left us.

  ‘And your mother?’ I gave Simon my full attention.

  ‘Oh, she was proud too. I’m sure she loved Dad. Particularly in uniform.’

  I remembered my uniform as a member of the ground staff. It hadn’t won me many conquests, apart from the brief but memorable love affair with WAAF Bobby O’Keefe. But back to business. ‘The chaps at the party after the Palladium, were they friends of your father’s in the early days?’

  ‘Charlie of course. And Peter Benson.’

  ‘Benson was the one who relieved you of the pistol?’

  ‘He did that, yes. You were right, though, I never loaded it.’

  ‘I know. How often did you see this man Benson?’

  ‘He lived somewhere in Sutton. He and Dad used to go out to the pub when they were on leave. Then they’d come back to the bungalow and Mum would do them scrambled eggs. Charlie was with them sometimes.’

  ‘So it was quite a happy war?’ How could all this love and pride, evenings at the pub and scrambled eggs, end in a boy who murdered his father facing another kind of death?

  ‘At first it seemed happy. We were proud of Dad and he seemed proud of himself. Then he got worse.’

  ‘What do you mean, worse?’

  ‘Silent. Not speaking or flying out at me and Mum. He made her cry, often. Mum said he couldn’t sleep. He got miserably drunk when he went to the pub instead of just cheerful.’

  ‘When he went to the pub with Benson?’

  ‘Yes, with him, and Charlie sometimes.’

  ‘And this was?’

  ‘When he was doing those raids over France. Almost every night, he told us, in the Bristol . . . It was as though he had a premonition or something.’

  ‘A premonition?’

  ‘Before they told us his plane had crashed over France, Mum often said it was as though he could see it coming. And he had changed his mind about the war.’

  ‘You mean, he didn’t think he should be fighting it?’

  ‘Not that. I’m sure he was a loyal officer, obeyed orders and all that sort of thing. He got miserable because it was a war we couldn’t win.’

  ‘He told you that?’

  ‘And Mum. He said the Germans had all the power, “. . . look at the way they got the whole of Europe”. So many of his friends had been killed on raids and he thought there was no longer any sense in it. Oh, he said Hitler didn’t really want to conquer the British Empire. We should make peace and let him get on with “kicking those bloody Russian Communists up the arse”.’

  ‘But he went on flying raids over occupied France?’

  ‘I told you, he was a loyal officer. He wouldn’t have done anything else.’

  ‘All the same, you weren’t meant to talk like that in the war, were you?’

  ‘That’s what worried Mum. She told me not to tell anyone at school. Of course, she never told her friends.’

  There was a silence as I tried to digest this information and then I changed the subject. ‘Talking of friends, does the name David Galloway mean anything to you?’

  ‘He was Dad’s navigator.’

  ‘And apparently the only one to die when the plane was shot down.’

  ‘I think he came to the bungalow a few times. He was a quiet sort of bloke. He didn’t have much to say for himself. I think he was more Peter Benson’s friend than Dad’s. He was nice to me, though, brought me off-ration Mars Bars.’

  ‘A generous sort?’

  ‘With Mars Bars.’

  ‘And then you heard your father’s plane had been brought down?’

  ‘Dad was missing, believed dead. It was then Mum began to tell me about the premonitions.’

  ‘He felt he was going to die?’

  ‘He got scared of going on raids. That’s what she told me. Really scared. So scared that he couldn’t sleep at night. In a way the news came as a sort of relief to her. It was all over. He wasn’t going to suffer any more of that terrible fear.’

  ‘Then your mother . . .’

  ‘Shopping round Oxford Street, a stupid buzz bomb. A chance in a thousand. She’d done no harm to anyone. Do you wonder why I hate war, Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘No, I don’t wonder.’

  ‘My Aunt Harriet came over from Chertsey to look after me. Then the news came. Dad and Charlie had been picked up by the allies in France. The war was over and he and Charlie came home.’

  ‘Were you glad to see him?’

  ‘Of course I was glad. You don’t know my Aunt Harriet, Mr Rumpole.’

  I looked at him, amazed. This boy, up till now paralysed, as his father had been, by the fear of death, had made what was almost a joke. ‘And how did he seem to you when he got back?’

  ‘He’d changed again.’

  ‘For the worse?’

  ‘He was just like he’d been at the start of the war, full of pride and enthusiasm. We didn’t hear anything about making peace with Hitler.’

  ‘Did he tell you much about what had happened to him?’

  ‘He said the plane was damaged by anti-aircraft fire and he made a crash-landing. He and Charlie got out before it burst into flames.’

  ‘And the navigator didn’t?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And then what did he say happened?’

  ‘Well, it was always a bit vague. He said they tried to hide but they were eventually captured by the Germans. They were sent to a prison in Germany until . . . well, until the war was almost over. Then they managed to get out and they were picked up by the American 7th Army. Anyway, they were brought home.’

  ‘So he was a prisoner of war?’

  ‘I think they both were.’

  ‘You and your mother never got any notification of that. You never heard from the Red Cross, for instance?’

  ‘No.’ Simon shook his head. ‘I suppose it all got a bit chaotic. In the last years of the war.’

  ‘What did he tell you about his time as a prisoner?’

  ‘Nothing really. I don’t think he wanted to remember. Oh, he told us about the pistol he’d found on the body of a dead German officer. After they’d got out of whatever prison that was.’

  The cursed weapon, I thought, the cause of so many deaths, brought back as a trophy of war. ‘The rest of the collection on the mantelpiece, did he bring that back as well?’

  ‘Oh, no. He decorated the mantelpiece as soon as he was a pilot, at the start of the war. When he was gone, we kept it there out of respect for him, I suppose. Then he put up the German pistol.’

  ‘One thing puzzles me.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Your father went through a time, you said, when he hated war and was afraid of flying. But then he quarrelled with you at the party, saying you shouldn’t have missed that war and you ought to enjoy training for the next one.’

  ‘That was what he was like when he came home. The war had just been a glorious victory and he’d lived dangerously. After that I think he found the job at the bank pretty dull. All his excitement was in the past.’

  ‘You got on well together?’

  ‘Not all the time. He was always saying the war would have made a man of me.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘That I didn’t want to crash planes or shoot German officers and I just hoped it didn’t happen again. I wanted him to stop talking about it.’

  ‘And that made him angry?’

  ‘Very angry at times.’

  I sat a while in thought. Then I found Simon looking
at me, his moment of confidence gone, his eyes desperate for reassurance. ‘Have I given you what you wanted? Told you the right things, have I?’

  ‘I’m sure what you’ve told me will be very useful, yes.’ This was a lie. I wasn’t sure of any such thing. I just wanted him to have some small hope to cling on to during his trial.

  16

  ‘Mr Wystan wanted to see you as soon as you got back from court.’ Our clerk, Albert Handyside, uttered the words I’d been dreading, and he didn’t make them any less unnerving by adding, ‘It’s been nice knowing you, Mr Rumpole. I hope our paths may cross again some time in the future.’

  So I knocked politely and entered our leader’s room with the grimmest forebodings and was surprised by the apparent warmth of my welcome.

  ‘So there you are, Rumpole! Sit down. Can I offer you a glass of sherry wine?’ C. H. Wystan produced a decanter, otherwise kept under lock and key in his cupboard, a glass of which was offered to special clients on special occasions. One far-off night at Keble College I had consumed, with a couple of dissolute theology students (one of whom has since become Bishop of Bath and Wells), a couple of bottles each of the college sherry, causing the room to sway and pitch like the Titanic on a bad night and much staggering to the lavatory. Since then I have had a particular horror of sherry, which seems to me as sickly as port, sticking faithfully to Pommeroy’s Very Ordinary and the pints of Guinness favoured by Albert Handyside. This was a situation, however, where I had to thank our leader profusely, swallow some of the sweet and sickly fluid and hope the room would at least keep still. C. H. Wystan took a sip, smacked his lips and said, ‘Wonderful stuff, this Amontillado!’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I assured him, ‘wonderful stuff.’

  ‘Hard to get a decent glass of sherry these days.’

  ‘Indeed,’ I was prepared to agree, ‘very hard.’

  ‘Stocks of this particular label are running low. I have to save it for special occasions.’

  Was this a special occasion, the dismissal of a rebellious member of Equity Court? I did my best to look gratified.