Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders

by John Mortimer

  ‘That’s not true! None of that’s true.’ His voice was almost dying when he gulped water and told the jury, ‘Lies! From start to finish. Stupid lies.’

  By then I had sat down, my best cards played. I had nothing left in my hand but Simon’s evidence, and my final speech. I looked at the jury and managed to find, I told myself, the beginnings of doubt on some of their faces.

  Meanwhile, the judge, whose interest in the time was still obvious, said, ‘I have been looking at the clock. I expect you may have a number of questions to ask in re-examination, Mr Winterbourne?’

  ‘Oh, I have, My Lord.’ The prosecutor rumbled to his feet to help the judge’s release.

  ‘Then I suggest we adjourn now as it’s Friday. Would Mr Benson be available to deal with your questions on Monday morning?’

  ‘My Lord, indeed he would.’

  ‘He’s not of course to discuss his evidence over the adjournment.’

  ‘My Lord, I’m sure he understands that.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole, in view of the serious charges you’ve made against this witness and the pressure put on him, do you agree to the course I have suggested?’

  I knew that whatever I said wouldn’t make the slightest difference to His Lordship’s decision. So Mr Rumpole agreed, with unexpected results.

  22

  ‘Luci Gribble tells me you’re writing your memoirs, Rumpole.’

  ‘That’s true. And I’ve just reached the point of crisis in perhaps the most important case I ever did. Although, and I have to add this in all fairness, I have done many important cases, and even managed to give a feeling of importance to the dull ones.’

  ‘But you are writing your memoirs in a room in chambers.’

  ‘My wife, Hilda, has got an old schoolfriend to stay. My flat in the Gloucester Road is filled with loud laughter and hilarious accounts of life in the dorm and on the hockey field. I came here in search of quiet, Ballard. I have just reached a vital moment in my life, so if you’ll forgive me . . .’

  ‘You’re dealing with your life in these chambers in this book, are you, Rumpole?’

  ‘My legal life, yes.’

  ‘During a great part of which I have been your Head of Chambers.’

  ‘You are now.’ I had to acknowledge it.

  ‘And as your Head, I shall of course wish to see the chapters you have written about me before you have any thought of publication. Can I do that? I shall have to be satisfied that you have written nothing libellous and that I haven’t been treated with ridicule and contempt. I know how greatly you are tempted to ridicule, Rumpole, even Her Majesty’s judges.’

  ‘Particularly Her Majesty’s judges. At least some of them.’

  ‘So let me see.’ Soapy Sam Ballard held his hand out, as though expecting to receive a bundle of manuscript pages.

  ‘It absolutely can’t be done.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘Because there aren’t any chapters about you.’

  ‘None?’ Soapy Sam apparently couldn’t believe it.

  ‘Not a single chapter. And only a passing reference.’

  ‘A passing reference?’ He sounded deeply disappointed. ‘What sort of reference is that?’

  ‘A passing one.’

  Ballard thought this over and then pronounced judgement. ‘As your Head of Chambers and a leading counsel, ’ he pronounced his verdict, ‘I feel I’m entitled to more than a passing reference in any account of your life in the law, Rumpole.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I told him - the man was taking up valuable memoir time - ‘I feel I’ve rather exhausted the subject.’

  There was a pained silence then and Ballard said, in tones that were quiet and clearly intended to be menacing, ‘This room is set aside for you to do your legal work in, Rumpole. To note up briefs and write opinions. I don’t believe your tenancy covers the writing of memoirs. It’s a matter I shall consider asking Luci Gribble to put on the agenda for the next chambers meeting.’

  With which dire threat Soapy Sam withdrew, and I bit the end of my pen as I remembered those faraway days at the Old Bailey and took out another sheet of paper.

  It was the longest weekend I’ve ever lived through. The hours seemed to take days to pass and the days felt like months. On Sunday morning my landlady, Mrs Ruben, unexpectedly brought up my breakfast, the full English on a tray, together with the copy of the ‘News of the Screws’. ‘“Did you shoot pilot heroes?” Penge Bungalow barrister accuses’ and there was my name, staring out at me and staring out at a nation eating a late Sunday breakfast and enjoying other people’s tragedies. And then I thought of the number of deaths it had taken to get Mrs Ruben to bring me breakfast in bed and fell into a mood of bleak despair, considering that next week’s newspaper would announce the verdict and terrible sentence passed on Simon Jerold.

  The flicker of fame that Sunday morning had brought me was no doubt the reason for Teddy Singleton ringing me up and suggesting we might have lunch in the French pub in Soho and then, ‘What about doing a movie?’ I was grateful to him, as I had been for his handing over to me the brief in the Timson case. I was also thankful for anything that might take my mind off Simon and his troubles over some part of that long, empty Sunday.

  Teddy had given up his velvet-collared overcoat and rolled umbrella when we met at the French pub, in fact called the York Minster, just off Old Compton Street. The walls of its small bar were crammed with photographs of artists and writers. At least, that’s what Teddy Singleton assured me they were. The drinkers in the pub looked dazed, hung-over and not yet fully awake as they reached eagerly for their life-saving first whisky. Teddy, dressed for Sunday in a tweed jacket and grey flannel trousers, shod with polished brown brogues, said, ‘La vie de Bohème. That’s what you get a taste of in this French pub. Gaston!’ He called to an elderly man with a luxurious moustache behind the bar. ‘Deux of your vin ordinaire for me and my learned friend, s’il vous plaît.’ After a number of calls for ‘encore du vin ordinaire’ from Teddy, we climbed the stairs to an almost empty dining room, where a pair of elderly and sullen waiters managed to ignore our existence for a considerable time, until Teddy eventually persuaded them to bring us ‘deux steaks, medium rare, with beaucoup de pommes frites’.

  ‘Wystan’s really going to kick you out of chambers, isn’t he?’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure so. I mean, as I read it in the “News of the Screws”, you’re really doing quite well. Wystan won’t be able to forgive you for that. He’ll chuck you out with the empty sherry bottles.’

  ‘You think he’d do that?’

  ‘Of course. I say, you’re not in any danger of winning that case, are you?’

  ‘Sometimes I think I’ve got a chance. Most of the time I don’t.’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Teddy was sawing away at the medium rare, ‘if your chap gets off, Wystan’ll have you out in the next ten minutes. He couldn’t bear that.’

  ‘If I get him off, it would be worth it.’

  ‘You really think so?’ Teddy seemed to find this hard to believe.

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘Then when you’re kicked out, which you will be whatever happens, let’s you and I start a fun chambers.’

  ‘What’s a “fun chambers”?’

  ‘Well, we could get some rooms just outside the Temple. Have them decorated by some really fun people. You know, one wall yellow and one blue sort of idea. And we can do fun cases.’

  ‘What’s your idea of “fun” cases exactly?’ I was curious to know.

  ‘Divorce is the most tremendous fun.’

  ‘Really?’ I felt I’d need a great deal of convincing.

  ‘Who’s up who and who pays,’ Teddy told me, I thought mysteriously.

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘Well, it’s all about sex. And people throwing their dinner plates at each other, and screwing money out of their husbands for adopting unusual sexual positions. It’s generally about the fun w
ays married people find to torment each other.’

  ‘I’ve done some of that in the magistrates’ court,’ I told him. ‘I think I’d rather stick to ordinary decent crime.’

  ‘Oh, well.’ Teddy continued to smile cheerfully at the prospect of so much fun divorce. ‘You’ll probably change your mind when you’re out on the street and homeless. Now, eat up, we’re off to the flicks.’

  That afternoon, Teddy Singleton and I sat in a darkened Odeon watching Quo Vadis. The emperor Nero lolled about, ordering various bloodstained events which took place in the Colosseum, a venue almost as fatal as the Penge bungalows. When we emerged blinking in the late afternoon, Teddy said, ‘I’ll find you a home, Rumpole, don’t worry your not so pretty little head about it.’ Then he kissed me lightly on the cheek and wandered back into the purlieus of Soho.

  I spent a mainly sleepless night, worrying about Simon and realizing that there was at least this to be said about fun divorce cases: very few of them ended in a sentence of death.

  Inevitably the morning came and I was back in the Old Bailey robing room, where I was accosted by an unusually quiet and far less triumphant Reggie Proudfoot.

  ‘Oh, there you are at last, Rumpole,’ he said, as though I’d been deliberately hiding from him. ‘My leader wants to see you as a matter of urgency. He’s in the bar mess.’

  ‘I’ll go up right away.’

  ‘You do that, Rumpole.’ Reggie spoke with all the bitterness of a man who hadn’t been invited to join the party.

  23

  It’s notable that so many of the important events of this period of my life took place, not only in court, but while people were eating meals. When I got up to the bar mess, on the top floor of the Old Bailey, Tom Winterbourne was finishing up his breakfast, wiping the last stains of fried eggs off his plate with a piece of bread. His wig was off his head and was nestling beside the toast rack. ‘Sit down, young Rumpole,’ he said, ‘and have a cup of coffee.’

  I agreed to both propositions and then he surprised me by saying, ‘You know, your cross-examination of Benson was so effective that the witness in question has gone absent without leave.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Could this possibly be good news on a Monday morning?

  ‘Moved on. Taken himself off and left no forwarding address.’

  ‘I suppose you’ll find him.’ I hurried to dampen what might be a flickering but misleading light of hope.

  ‘I’m not so sure. The police have been round to his flat, of course. It’s all locked up and empty. The neighbours said they saw him leave on Friday night in a taxi. He had a case with him and no one’s seen him since. Of course, we didn’t keep a check on the ports and Northolt during the weekend. He may have gone to ground anywhere in Europe.’

  Gone to ground. Done the vanishing trick. The disappearing act. It seemed to have happened to so many people. Harry Daniels, who might have given evidence helpful to the defence, had been persuaded to go AWOL by somebody. The story started when Jerry Jerold and ‘Tail-End’ Charlie decided to disappear at a difficult moment of the war and now Peter Benson, star prosecution witness, had also melted away into the great unknown.

  Tom Winterbourne pulled a piece of toast from behind his wig and started to butter it lavishly. ‘Would you ever consider doing a bit of prosecuting?’

  ‘No.’ I didn’t have too much difficulty in answering the question.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I suppose I’d rather get people out of trouble than into it, by whatever I might do in court.’

  ‘That’s very odd.’ Winterbourne applied a thick coating of marmalade. ‘I much prefer getting people into trouble. In fact I greatly enjoy it! All the thoroughly bad men and women in the world! I consider it’s my mission in life to make them squirm.’

  ‘And do you think of young Simon Jerold as one of the bad people of the world?’

  ‘That remains to be seen.’ He chewed his toast thoughtfully. ‘We’ll have to see what the jury make of it.’

  So I wasn’t going to do fun divorce cases and I wasn’t going to prosecute. I was stuck with a life of crime. But it was the most anxious moment of one of the most alarming cases I was ever going to do. A matter, quite simply, of life and death.

  We went back to Court Number One and further facts emerged, one of them being that Peter Benson had removed a large amount of money from his bank in cash on the day before he gave evidence, as though he was already considering the possibility of flight before he entered the witness box. Mr Winterbourne asked for another adjournment for further enquiries.

  Mr Rumpole said it was intolerable for Simon Jerold to be kept waiting for his fate to be decided merely because a prosecution witness could no longer face the court. He also wanted the jury to be told about Peter Benson cashing in a large amount of money.

  Rather to my surprise, the judge agreed with Mr Rumpole on both points. The trial would start again the next morning and, if Mr Benson didn’t turn up to be re-examined, we would have to make the best of it and go on without him.

  After another day of waiting and nerve-racking suspense, Tom Winterbourne announced that the police were no nearer finding Peter Benson, and there seemed a strong likelihood of his having gone abroad over the weekend. He called his last witness, Joan (‘everyone calls me Joanie’) Plumpton, who acted as cleaning lady for both of the murdered men. She took the oath and, unlike the vanished Benson, looked straight at the dock and gave Simon a broad smile, which he returned faintly but, I thought, with gratitude.

  Joanie told us that she had been working as a dresser at the old Streatham Empire, but now just did cleaning round the bungalows. She gave her horrified account of finding ‘Tail-End’ Charlie dead in his hallway when she opened his front door with the key she was allowed to keep. He lived alone in his bungalow and he was alone when she found him.

  When I rose to cross-examine her Joanie gave me one of her smiles and was clearly anxious to help. She remembered vaguely being in Jerry Jerold’s bungalow when he was having an argument with one of his friends about his having been a prisoner of war. She thought things were going to turn nasty, so she went off to clean the bath. So the prosecution case ended on a note that was only just favourable to the defence.

  It’s often wiser for customers accused of crime to stay silent and sit in the safety of the dock, where they can’t be cross-examined, rather than come into the dangerous witness box, where their evidence can be attacked and torn to pieces. As much of my case depended on Simon’s account of his father’s fears, I had no choice but to expose him as a witness.

  So he stood in his best suit and, at first, the jury were reluctant to look at this young man, this boy almost, they might feel bound to condemn to death. But as time went on, and as his answers sounded modest, quietly spoken and reasonably convincing, some of the jury members turned to look at him, and their looks were not entirely unfriendly.

  All Simon had to say is contained in my account of the meetings with him in the interview room under the Old Bailey, so I needn’t repeat his story here. It’s enough to say that he admitted he had been extremely foolish when he pointed the gun at his father, but he had never loaded it and, of course, never meant to shoot. Finally I asked, ‘If it were suggested to you that your father attacked you later on that night and you shot him in self-defence, what would you say?’

  ‘I’d say that was nonsense. He never attacked me and I never shot him. I couldn’t have done that and I never did.’

  ‘And Charles Weston?’

  ‘I never shot him either.’

  Tom Winterbourne, of course, made the most of the fact that Simon never called the police or a doctor as soon as he saw his father bloodstained in the chair. Again Simon said he was worried he’d be blamed for his father’s death, and he went for a walk to calm his nerves. If our case was no better after Simon left the witness box, at least it was no worse. I scribbled a quick note of reassurance and gave it to Bonny Bernard to deliver to the dock.

  �
�Two men, two officers in the Royal Air Force, decide that the war is no longer for them. They have become terrified of their nightly raids, risking death, which they feel must come to them in time, over enemy territory - fighting a war they are sure is lost and in which they can no longer believe. Can you not understand, members of the jury, how anything, even a prisoner-of-war camp, seemed safer than that? So they planned to surrender. Was it prearranged with someone working for the enemy, or did they just think it would be enough to come out of the plane with their hands in the air? Whatever the plan, it’s clear, isn’t it, that David Galloway didn’t agree with it, so he had to die. The story that he was the only one of the three to be caught in a burning plane may seem as implausible to you as it did to Peter Benson. So Peter Benson believed that both Jerold and Weston were traitors, who might well have been responsible for the death of his friend. In wartime they would have been executed as traitors. In these days of peace, did he decide to become their executioner? That night presented him with a remarkable opportunity. It offered him a gun and a magazine. More than that, it offered him young Simon Jerold, whom everyone had heard threatening to kill his father. The execution of Jerry Jerold and “Tail-End” Charlie would certainly be blamed on Simon. So he talked about execution after the young man had gone to bed. You’ll remember the witness Dempsy, who heard him. And so he returned later that night and shot both the men as they opened their doors to him. Shot them through the heart as they stood in their hallways, in the way the medical evidence and the positions of the bloodstains have been made clear to you.’

  I had, of course, got to know the jury well during our days in court together. There was one red-faced, grey-haired man who smiled at the faintest approach to a joke, and I felt sure he was on my side. And there was a hawk-nosed, tweezer-lipped woman who never smiled whom I took to be the leader of the opposition. My task was to convert Tweezer Lips and strengthen Red Face with persuasive arguments to use in the jury room.