Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders

by John Mortimer

  ‘Peter Benson, yes. Do you know what I’ve got to throw at him? I mean, do you want to know?’

  ‘If you want to tell me, Rumpole.’ She gave me one of her most encouraging smiles. But I remembered our conversation in the Hibernian Hostelry. ‘Or does Reggie Proudfoot want to know?’ I asked her.

  ‘To be absolutely honest, I’ve hardly discussed your case with Reggie at all.’

  I had been long enough at the bar to know that the words ‘to be absolutely honest’ are usually followed by a thumping lie. I was starting to learn that the world can be a very wicked place, particularly the world of solicitors’ clerks and junior barristers. ‘Tell Reggie Proudfoot,’ I instructed Daisy, ‘that he’ll just have to wait and see.’

  ‘I thought they’d turfed you out of chambers.’ Surprised by my entrance, Uncle Tom missed the wastepaper basket and his ball rolled away under what was again my desk.

  ‘They have, but I’m allowed to use this room during the case. Thanks to my learned ex-leader’s daughter.’

  ‘They told me in the clerk’s room that you were doing quite well.’

  ‘Not yet. We can’t say that yet.’

  ‘Odd they should turf you out of chambers because you’re doing well.’

  ‘I think that was why they did it.’

  ‘Damned odd!’ Uncle Tom thought it over and could come to no reasonable explanation. He retrieved his golf ball and left me to it.

  I gave myself a small cigar. I had no need to go through the prosecution statements again as I knew them by heart. Half an hour later I heard the voice of C. H. Wystan saying goodnight to the clerk, Albert. He didn’t call in to say goodnight to me. All I knew was that the day when I had to stand up and cross-examine Peter Benson would come inevitably, and when it did I would have to fire off all that remained of my ammunition. I put away my brief at last and went down to Pommeroy’s and bought myself a solitary Château Thames Embankment. As I drank it down I wished myself luck.

  Before I went to sleep I thought again of the strange connection I had been shocked into when Reggie Proudfoot called me a loser in the robing room. Was Jerry Jerold exactly like Uncle Cyril Timson in that they both thought that, in the different circumstances of their lives, prison was the safest place for them? This thought, which had made me feel as elated as stout Cortez when it first occurred to me, had survived the evidence of Martyn Dempsy and even been strengthened by it. Whether it would survive the evidence of Peter Benson, I was about to discover.

  21

  ‘Call Peter Benson. Call Peter Benson.’

  The name echoed down the hall outside the court. I was checking my notes as he took the oath, and then I looked up and saw the tall, pale man with a lock of black hair I had first seen among the prehistoric monsters in conversation with my non-informant, Don Charleston.

  When he had taken the oath, ex-Pilot Officer Benson answered Winterbourne’s questions quietly but clearly and then looked round the court as though anxious to see the effect he was having on us all. I noticed that he looked everywhere but at the dock, where Simon was now watching him attentively. No doubt conscious of it being Friday afternoon, and knowing the lure of His Lordship’s pigs in Berkshire, counsel for the prosecution took Benson quite quickly through his evidence so, sooner than I had expected, I was on my feet, ready to play any card left in my hand and hope for the best.

  ‘Mr Benson, did you like Jerry Jerold?’

  The question was unexpected and there was a long pause before the witness answered. ‘We knew each other for a long time. We were in the same squadron. And we went on seeing each other after the war.’ Then he was silent.

  ‘You haven’t answered my question. Perhaps I can help you. Do you remember when Jerry Jerold turned against the war?’

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

  ‘Aren’t you? Did he say that Hitler was bound to win?’

  Again the witness took a long time to answer. I was thinking of a perhaps over-elaborate plan concerning a man called Don Charleston who had wanted to find out why I went to Coldsands and whom I was told to meet in Crystal Palace Park. Was that meeting to persuade me that Jerry never said anything of the sort?

  ‘We’ve all heard a prosecution witness say that Jerold was convinced Hitler was going to win. Are you suggesting that Mr Dempsy made that up? I shall be calling further evidence on the subject.’ Faced with this threat of evidence, Peter Benson made his first concession, opening the door just wide enough for me to get my foot in it.

  ‘He said something like that.’

  ‘And did he say that we ought to make peace with Hitler and leave him to fight the Russians?’

  ‘Some people thought that, yes.’

  ‘And was one of them Jerry Jerold?’

  ‘At one time, yes.’

  ‘And was that about the time his plane is said to have crashed somewhere over France?’

  ‘It was round about then. It was all a long time ago.’

  ‘So I ask you again, did you like Jerry Jerold?’

  ‘I didn’t like what he said.’

  ‘So you didn’t like him for saying that?’

  ‘I told you. It was a long time ago.’

  ‘But you didn’t agree with what he was telling you?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  At this point, it seemed to me that we were going well. Peter Benson had clearly decided that there was no point in arguing about Jerold’s attitude to the war. He knew about Dempsy’s evidence and luckily he didn’t know what other evidence I had to call on the subject. It was lucky he didn’t know that, because young Simon was my only witness.

  But my pleasure in the result so far was not shared by His Lordship, who was looking meaningfully at the clock on the wall of the court. ‘Mr Rumpole,’ he said, ‘need we waste time on events which occurred years before the night these crimes took place? As the witness has said so rightly, it was all a long time ago.’

  ‘My Lord, Mr Winterbourne in opening his case told the jury that Jerry Jerold was a war hero. I’m entitled to put it to the witness that he was perhaps not as heroic as all that.’

  ‘Whatever degree of heroism he attained, Mr Rumpole, he didn’t deserve to be shot.’

  I don’t quite know what degree of heroism I had reached as a white wig, but I was astonished at my new-found courage when I heard myself say, ‘That’s a question I intend to discuss with the witness in due course. May I also remind Your Lordship that, in view of the fact that this crime arose from a discussion about the war, you ruled I could ask questions about earlier talk on the same subject.’

  ‘I’m beginning to regret I did that.’ The judge was looking at the clock again.

  ‘That was Your Lordship’s ruling.’

  ‘Oh, very well, Mr Rumpole. You may learn in the fullness of time that the most effective cross-examinations are those that are kept brief.’

  ‘We’d finish more quickly if you took another snort of snuff and let me get on with it.’ I didn’t of course say that, my heroism hadn’t reached such a point of daring, and perhaps never would. I turned to another subject. ‘You knew David Galloway, the navigator?’

  ‘Very well indeed.’

  ‘Was he a particular friend of yours?’

  ‘Perhaps my closest friend.’

  ‘Until he died in the burning plane?’

  ‘Until he was killed, yes.’

  I repeated his answer. ‘Until he was killed. But to keep his memory alive, you proposed a toast in the bar of the Cafe Royal.’

  ‘I did that, yes.’

  ‘May I remind you of the words you used on that occasion. They are in Martyn Dempsy’s evidence, My Lord.’

  The judge, who had been flipping back his notebook pages at high speed, said, ‘Yes, I’ve got it, Mr Rumpole,’ in a voice which meant, ‘For God’s sake, speed it up.’

  ‘Did you congratulate Jerry Jerold and Charles Weston on their extraordinary good luck in escaping from a burning aeroplane without getting burned?’ />
  ‘I may have said something like that.’

  ‘Martyn Dempsy swore that you said exactly that.’

  ‘Perhaps I didn’t mean it entirely seriously.’

  ‘It was a strange subject to joke about, wasn’t it?’ I waited for an answer and didn’t get one, so I took an enormous and necessary risk. ‘You never took the whole story of their plane crash entirely seriously, did you?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ The witness tried a shake of the head and a tolerant smile.

  The judge did his best to help by saying, ‘I too would welcome it if Mr Rumpole clarified the question.’

  ‘Certainly, My Lord. This was the situation. Both Jerry Jerold and Charles Weston had become increasingly terrified of flying on their bombing raids, hadn’t they?’

  ‘Of course. We were all terrified from time to time. We weren’t all on the ground staff like you, Mr Rumpole.’ Benson got a small laugh for this and a warning from the judge that the witness was there to answer questions and not to discuss Mr Rumpole’s war record, however humble it might have been. And I was left with the certainty that Benson had found out more about me than a witness needs to know.

  ‘I can quite understand a bomber pilot’s terror,’ I assured him, ‘and it must have reached a high level with those two pilots. But we have to add the fact that Jerry Jerold thought we would lose the war and no doubt persuaded “Tail-End” Charles to share his opinions.’ It was then that the memory of Uncle Cyril Timson came into use. ‘So they decided that prison was the only safe place for them. Is that what you suspected?’

  ‘Do you mean an English prison, Mr Rumpole?’ In the silence that followed my question the judge asked for further particulars.

  ‘No, My Lord, a German prison.’ And then I turned to the witness. ‘Or perhaps something better than that, if they brought down the plane and handed it over to the enemy? Did you know that was their plan?’

  There was another long silence, in which the jury were suddenly still and all staring at Peter Benson with increased interest. It took him a long time to answer, and when he did so it was hardly a denial. ‘How was I to know what they planned? All we heard was that the plane was lost and they were, all three of them, missing. That was all we heard.’

  ‘Until after the war?’

  ‘Until Jerry came back to England, yes.’

  ‘And did he tell you that David the navigator was caught in a burning plane?’

  ‘He told us all that.’

  ‘Did you believe him?’

  ‘That was what he told us.’

  ‘And were you deeply suspicious of the whole story?’

  ‘Why would I be suspicious?’

  ‘Because Galloway’s family had heard something about an officer found shot near an abandoned plane. Did you tell Jerry Jerold that?’

  ‘I may have done.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Peter Benson, who had no idea what evidence I was about to call, thought it best to admit it.

  ‘So you started to check up on the whole story, didn’t you? You wanted Jerry Jerold to agree to you getting confirmation that he’d been a prisoner of war.’

  ‘He didn’t want me to do it.’

  ‘I know he didn’t. So there was a quarrel?’

  ‘A bit of an argument. Yes.’

  ‘An argument because by then you couldn’t believe Jerold’s story?’

  ‘There were things about it that puzzled me perhaps, yes.’

  My foot had got further into the door, so I pushed it and dared to ask, ‘Did it occur to you that David Galloway might have been killed because he wouldn’t agree to the surrender?’

  ‘Which surrender are you talking about?’ I got a dusty answer.

  ‘The surrender of Jerold and Weston, those two officers. ’

  ‘How would I get an idea like that?’ Peter Benson smiled.

  ‘Over the years perhaps. When you had your suspicions and kept close to Jerry Jerold because you wanted to find out the truth.’

  ‘And how do you think I’d do that?’ Benson was cross-examining me.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I had to confess. ‘Perhaps from things Jerry said when you were out drinking together. Perhaps from your researches, when you couldn’t find any evidence of his being an official prisoner of war. Did you imagine they might have got a warmer welcome from the enemy?’

  ‘What the witness imagined,’ the judge told me, ‘is scarcely evidence. You can only ask him what he knew.’

  ‘Very well, My Lord. Mr Benson, you knew a great deal and suspected more, didn’t you, when you went on that night out at the London Palladium?’

  Peter Benson’s bright eyes flickered as he took in the whole court, again with the exception of the dock. Finally he was looking at counsel for the prosecution as though for help, but the growling Winterbourne had his head down, close to his notebook, and even Reggie Proudfoot failed to return his gaze, so no help was forthcoming from either of them. Again, he thought perhaps that a complete denial might be dangerous in the light of unknown evidence to come. He decided on a moderate concession.

  ‘I thought there were questions still to be answered, yes.’

  ‘Questions still to be answered.’ I gave the jury a look to remember and said, ‘So now we have reached the events in Jerry Jerold’s Penge bungalow after the theatre.’

  ‘I’m sure we’re all extremely grateful for that, Mr Rumpole,’ the Lord Chief Justice said with what I took to be a distinct note of irony and gave another look at the clock.

  ‘You kept your overcoat on?’ I asked the witness.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Your overcoat. You kept it on until you left, and you were the last to leave.’

  ‘I feel the cold. I haven’t been well lately.’ Again he looked round the court as though asking for sympathy. ‘Anyway I thought I wouldn’t stay all that long.’

  ‘But things got dramatic and you did stay.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you think of Jerold and some of the others baiting young Simon for not having taken part in a war?’

  ‘I . . . I didn’t like it.’

  ‘Did you protest as Harry Daniels did and ask them to stop?’

  ‘No. But I didn’t join in.’

  ‘Very brave of you! With your unanswered questions about Jerry Jerold’s crashed plane and his admitted terror of bombing raids, didn’t you think it was a bit rich that he attacked his son for not fighting in a war?’

  ‘I may have thought that.’

  ‘But you didn’t say so.’

  ‘No.’

  I looked at the jury. I could see in their faces that they no longer felt any affection for Mr Peter Benson.

  ‘We’ve heard that someone threatened to remove Simon’s trousers and he picked up the Luger pistol.’

  ‘And threatened to kill his father with it,’ Peter Benson was pleased to add.

  ‘And you were the one who got him to give up the gun.’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘No one else tried to do it?’

  ‘I suppose I was the quickest.’

  ‘Did he resist you? Did he try to keep hold of the gun?’

  ‘Not very effectively.’

  ‘The witnesses all say he let go of the gun without any resistance at all.’

  ‘Let’s say I was stronger than him.’

  ‘And they all say they didn’t see him put the magazine in. Did you see that?’

  ‘I can’t remember him using the magazine.’

  ‘So we can agree that he may have been pointing an empty gun?’

  ‘Perhaps he was at that time. Things may have been different later.’

  ‘Oh, yes, they were. Entirely different.’ I picked up a sheet of paper then, part of my brief, anything that would do to make the witness feel that I had more to back up my interpretation of the events of that night than an inspired guess and a curious faith in Simon’s innocence. ‘Every witness called by the prosecutio
n has said that they couldn’t remember you putting the gun back on the mantelpiece after Simon had gone to his room.’

  ‘They may not have noticed.’

  ‘Or you may not have put it back?’

  ‘Of course I put it back.’

  ‘Nobody saw you do it, Mr Benson. And do you know why nobody saw you?’

  ‘I can’t answer for them.’

  ‘Because it went straight into your overcoat pocket. Together with the magazine, which you collected when the drinks began to flow again and nobody was looking.’

  ‘That is entirely untrue!’

  ‘Entirely untrue,’ the judge repeated as he made his note and underlined the words.

  ‘Why ever would I want to take the gun away with me?’ The witness smiled at the jury, perhaps hoping to get them to join him in ridiculing the suggestion, but I felt I had at least held their attention.

  ‘Let me try to help you. Here were two officers you thought apparently surrendering their plane and themselves to the enemy. What would have been the penalty if that sort of conduct had been discovered during the war? The penalty for treason.’

  ‘I suppose . . . possibly death.’

  ‘“Execution” was the word Mr Dempsy heard you use. And you had another score to settle with those two men, because you were sure they’d killed your friend David Galloway.’

  ‘I told you, they said David died when the plane caught fire.’

  ‘Of course they did - and you didn’t believe them. So you saw your perfect opportunity to do justice.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Let me help you again. Young Simon had threatened his father with a gun. In a shooting, of course he’d be the number-one suspect, and that’s why he’s sitting there in that dock, on trial for his life.’ Here I pointed to Simon, but the witness wouldn’t turn his face to look. ‘So you could return later, perhaps an hour later, and execute both of the officers.’

  ‘You mean murder.’ The witness’s quiet voice had sunk almost to a whisper.

  ‘Yes, Mr Benson. That’s exactly what I mean. And when you’d done it, all you had left to do was to wipe the gun and the magazine free of fingerprints and leave them in the Jerolds’ dustbin as further evidence against the young man who may have to pay with his life for the crimes you committed.’