‘Members of the jury, I don’t have to prove my case against Peter Benson. He has chosen to run away and hide from this court, and that fact may persuade you that he has something serious to hide. The question you have to ask yourselves is that, given all this evidence, including the fact that he was the last person to be seen with the gun, is it possible that he committed the Penge Bungalow Murders? If you, as we would say you must, come to the conclusion that he is very possibly the murderer, then you can’t be sure of Simon Jerold’s guilt and it will be your duty, and I’m sure your pleasure, to return a verdict of “not guilty”.’
None too soon, I reached the peroration. ‘In a day or two this case will be over. It’s taken up just over two weeks of your lives. Soon you’ll go back to your jobs and you won’t have to think any more about the Penge bungalows and the Luger pistol, the magazine and the bloodstains in the hall. This case is only a small part of your lives. But for that young man sitting there in the dock -’ here I swung round and pointed at Simon - ‘it’s the whole of his life that’s at stake. And I put that young life with confidence in your hands.’
So I sat down and felt, as I have since in so many cases, an extraordinary feeling of relief, as though some unbearably heavy load had been lifted from my shoulders. I had done all I could for Simon and my job was over. Now it was for the jury to decide. The Penge Bungalow Murders case was out of my control entirely. It was with a curious sense of detachment that I listened to the judge’s summing up.
‘Mr Rumpole,’ he told the jury, and by then my name came quite easily to him, ‘has provided little evidence of Benson’s guilt. However, you are entitled to take into account the fact that he fled from that witness box and has, apparently, gone into hiding. That may or may not be a manifestation of guilt, it’s for you to decide. You can take into account all the other matters that emerged from the prosecution witnesses, the fact that Benson quarrelled with the deceased Jerold, his use of the word “execution” and so on. Mr Rumpole is right in telling you that if you think there is a real possibility that Benson shot them, you can’t be sure of Simon Jerold’s guilt. Remember, members of the jury, our law has always held that it’s a greater horror for an innocent man to be convicted than that someone who may be guilty goes free.’
He took snuff then, but I felt I could have run up to the bench and hugged him, or at least shaken the hand which had carried the brown powder to the judicial nose. I, of course, restrained myself, and the jury were sent out looking, some of them at least, as though they were worrying about what the word ‘manifestation’ might mean.
‘Have I got a chance, Mr Rumpole? That’s all I want to know.’
‘Of course you’ve got a chance. The judge’s summing up was very fair. Quite favourable to us in fact.’
‘Is it a real chance? Tell me the truth.’
‘I’m telling you the truth. It’s a real chance.’
The self-possessed Simon we had seen in the witness box had gone, disappeared completely, and he had drifted back to the Simon we first met, a creature already halfway out of this world, with his eyes full of terror. My detachment had gone and, although there was nothing more I could do, I felt the full weight of responsibility again. I saw nothing ahead but the impossible task of saying goodbye to him after a guilty verdict.
‘Do you think I’ve got a chance?’ Simon had turned, in his despair, to Bonny Bernard.
‘You’ve got a good chance. Mr Rumpole’s given you the best chance possible.’
‘Is it the truth? You’re not just saying that?’
‘No, Simon, it’s the truth.’
‘I can’t believe you.’ And young Simon Jerold closed his eyes, as though not daring to look at the events to come.
After we left him Bonny Bernard and I sat in the canteen, our stomachs awash with coffee and our fears growing. The jury had been out nearly three hours, a long time in those days, and then, as now, a prolonged retirement was not good news for the defence. Bernard told me that his principal, Barnsley Gough, would be coming down. We tried to discuss the case, or other cases we might perhaps do together. And then such topics dried up and we sat in silence until, at very long last, the message came, the jury was coming back to Court Number One with a verdict.
The courtroom was gradually filling with the principal players in our two-and-a-bit-week drama. Simon was brought up from the cells and sat between the dock officers, staring at his hands as though afraid to look up. Hilda smiled down at me from the public gallery and raised her thumbs as a sign of encouragement, and then an extraordinary thing happened: Hilda’s daddy, C. H. Wystan, wigged and gowned as though he had been fighting the case, slid into the seat in front of me just as the jury came clattering back into their places. The clerk of the court rose to ask the final question. Hope drained away from me like cold bathwater and I was sure the answer would be fatal.
‘Will your foreman please stand?’
Neither Red Face nor Tweezer Lips rose to their feet. Instead an unremarkable sandy-haired man in the front row stood up.
‘Have you reached a verdict on which you are all agreed?’
‘We have, My Lord.’
‘And do you find Simon Jerold guilty or not guilty of wilful murder?’
‘Not guilty, My Lord.’
Of course I couldn’t believe it at first; neither could Simon, who was looking round the court in amazement. The press benches emptied as the reporters ran out to queue for the telephones. And then, to my further amazement, C. H. Wystan rose in front of me and addressed the judge. ‘May my client be released, My Lord?’ He spoke with great authority, as though he’d pulled off a remarkable triumph.
‘Certainly, Mr Wystan. It’s good to see you back. Release the prisoner.’
‘I’m much obliged, My Lord.’
The judge had spoken, and my part in the Penge Bungalow trial was over.
24
It was, I suppose, one of the best days in a long life when Simon Jerold, free and innocent, came out of the entrance of the Old Bailey, blinking in the light of the last autumn sun and the flashing of many press photographers. He was accompanied and closely attended by his one-time leading counsel, C. H. Wystan, QC. They were closely followed by our instructing solicitor, Barnsley Gough, whose moustached lips were stuck in a triumphant grin. Bringing up the rear of this procession came the foot soldiers, who had stood in the front line of the battle, myself and Bonny Bernard.
We stopped on the pavement outside the old Palais de Justice and Simon turned to me, holding out his hand, and I took it. He seemed dazed, as anyone might be who, having been sent down to hell, is suddenly told to clear off to the world above and get on with his life.
‘How can I thank . . .’ he began, with no clear idea of how to end the sentence.
‘No need,’ I told him. ‘Absolutely no need at all. It’s enough satisfaction that you’ve won the case.’
As the palms of our hands, now dry, were joined, the cameras flashed in my direction. They were accompanied by a word of warning from C. H. Wystan.
‘Allowing yourself to be photographed for the daily press, Rumpole, is not in the finest traditions of our great profession.’
‘You weren’t exactly camera-shy, were you, my absent leader?’ was what I didn’t say.
While this was going on, a happily smiling Joanie had emerged from the court and, taking Simon’s arm, steered him towards the taxi Barnsley Gough had hired on the Legal Aid to take Simon back to the lonely bungalow and out of my life.
There was the loud roar of a powerful motorbike as Tom Winterbourne sped past us, no doubt in pursuit of the thoroughly bad men and women in the world.
‘Well done, Rumpole. Well done, indeed!’ It was Hilda Wystan, down from the public gallery and apparently in a mood of euphoria. ‘Are you walking back to chambers? I know Daddy wants a serious word with you.’
‘He’s already had one. About not getting my photograph in the paper.’
‘Oh, much more serious than that
! I’ll have to go back to my boring secretarial course this afternoon. But not for long, I hope and pray. Certainly not for long. Tell you what, I’ll walk you up to the Temple.’
So Hilda and I walked from Ludgate Circus, the route I had taken after our breakfast in the Tastee Bite with such feelings of pessimism and dread. Now I was bursting with pride, prepared to sink a whole bottle of Château Thames Embankment in Pommeroy’s and perform a ritual dance of triumph on the lawns of the Temple gardens, with all the astonished members of the bar, white and dirty-grey wigs, leaning out of their open windows to applaud me. A serious talk with Hilda’s daddy in his room in chambers seemed a poor sort of celebration.
‘Don’t worry about it.’ Hilda was clearly doing her best to cheer me up when we parted. ‘It’s just one of those formalities we have to go through. Daddy’s not going to eat you, Rumpole.’
I never thought he was. It was Hilda’s use of the word ‘we’ that I found a little confusing. Hilda clearly hadn’t been invited to the summit meeting in her father’s room. She peeled off at the entrance to Equity Court with a wave and wished me luck.
As I went into the door of Equity Court chambers Teddy Singleton, swinging his rolled umbrella and wearing his velvet-collared overcoat, came out. ‘Are you up for a little chat with the old Wistful?’ he asked me. ‘Ready to start a “fun chambers” outside the Temple area?’ and then went off laughing, having bestowed no kiss upon me. As I went down the passage, Albert Handyside emerged from the clerk’s room, closed the door behind him and offered me, again no kiss, but more well-meaning advice.
‘That was a good win, Mr Rumpole. A truly remarkable win. My sincere advice as a clerk with some thirty years, man and boy, of clerking in the Temple is to play it down, Mr Rumpole. Try not to refer to it in conversation. Don’t smirk about it. Do your level best not to boast.’
‘Do you really mean that?’ I have to confess I was disappointed. ‘I had been looking forward to a good many years of boasting about the part I played in the Penge Bungalow Murders.’
‘You pulled off a good win, Mr Rumpole. Solicitors don’t always like men at the bar who pull off a good win.’
‘You mean solicitors like to lose cases? I must confess the idea hadn’t occurred to me.’
‘They’ve usually advised their clients that the case presents various difficulties and they can’t hold out much hope. They don’t like to be taken by surprise.’
‘I think Simon Jerold was quite pleased to be taken by surprise.’
‘He’s a client. Clients are different. But my advice to you, sir,’ it was the first time my clerk had called me ‘sir’ and it made me feel as though I had grown up at last, but his next piece of advice put me back in the junior league, ‘when you see Mr Wystan now, I would advise you not to exaggerate the part you played in R. v. Jerold.’
‘Exaggerate!’ I have to say that by now Albert Handyside, for all his long experience of the law, was starting to irritate me. ‘Can you exaggerate the part played by Hamlet, Prince of Denmark? He’s not just a spear carrier, after all, is he?’
‘I don’t think,’ Albert looked at me as though I were still a white wig who had much to learn, ‘that you’ll find that Mr Wystan has any great interest in Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.’
On this point, I was to discover, Albert had got it absolutely right. But my interview with C. H. Wystan took a course which came, I have to confess, as a complete surprise to me.
‘Sit you down, Rumpole. I must say, you were a considerable help on R. v. Jerold.’
‘You mean, I was a considerable help to Simon? You might even say I saved his life.’ Wystan’s greeting had been curiously friendly, but I was still convinced he was going to announce my eviction from the sacred precincts of Equity Court.
‘I mean,’ Hilda’s daddy was leaning back comfortably in his chair, his fingertips pressed together as though as an aid to deep thought, ‘you were not only a help to the client, Rumpole. You were a considerable help to me. As you know, I had other commitments which prevented me from leading you, as I wished to do, for the greater part of the trial.’
‘“Other commitments”, was it? I thought you were sacked for useless inactivity quite early in the proceedings, ’ was what I didn’t say. I was astonished at the way my ex-leader could rewrite history. What I actually said was, ‘Oh, of course, other commitments,’ hoping at least that my tone of voice would make it clear that no commitment could be more important than a young man on trial for his life.
‘That is the general impression around the Temple,’ he assured me, and although I thought the general impression around the Temple must be pretty silly, I didn’t say so.
‘That having been said,’ Wystan’s fingertips were still pressed together so his hands resembled a church roof, ‘you managed to produce a successful result.’
‘Let’s say I was lucky.’ I remembered Albert’s advice and my ex-leader looked suitably grateful.
‘Luck of course played the greater part in it. Apart from that, I have to say that your cross-examination of the chief prosecution witness invited criticism. To accuse a witness of murder on what seemed to be pretty slender evidence is not, Rumpole, in the finest traditions of the bar.’
‘Perhaps not.’
‘You were lucky that the Lord Chief allowed it.’
‘Extremely lucky,’ I had to admit.
‘It’s not the sort of thing a leading barrister would do.’
‘Bloody lucky there wasn’t a leading barrister around, then,’ was what I didn’t say. Instead I pointed out that my questions had caused Peter Benson to do a runner.
‘Do a runner? Really, Rumpole, your language has been infected by the criminal practice you seem determined to pursue.’
As ‘doing a runner’ was clearly unacceptable, I gave Wystan a truncated quotation from The Tempest which seemed to stop the man dead in his tracks:
‘He melted into air, into thin air . . .
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Left not a rack behind.’
‘Well, yes. I suppose so.’ Wystan coughed and turned with relief to another topic. ‘There is something else we have to discuss.’
‘I know.’ I wasn’t prepared to argue. Perhaps a ‘fun chambers’ with Teddy Singleton would be a good idea. ‘I know I’ve got to leave Uncle Tom’s room as the case is over. I should be able to find somewhere now.’
‘No, it’s not that.’ He sounded impatient. ‘It’s not that at all. I’ve just had a long conversation with Hilda.’
‘Hilda?’
‘My daughter, Hilda. Of course, I’ve known all about it for a long time.’
‘All about what exactly?’
‘What was going on.’ He was growing impatient, as though I was being unusually dense. ‘It seems that you two reached an agreement when Hilda joined you for breakfast at a café in Fleet Street.’
‘The Tastee Bite?’
‘Is it? I don’t know the name.’
The famous breakfast eatery was only about fifty yards from the entrance of Equity Court, but C. H. Wystan had never dropped in for a couple of eggs and a fried slice. But what was the exact significance of my encounter with Hilda there? I asked for further and better particulars. ‘You say we reached an agreement?’
‘Well, you know what happened better than I do, Rumpole. You agreed that any sort of . . .’ Here he searched for a word and at last settled for, ‘familiarity between you should be postponed until you were legally married. That was a correct and proper decision, and of course I commend you for it. I’m afraid it’s not always so with young couples nowadays.’
‘Married? Did you say married?’
‘Well, of course. What else could you have been discussing?’
‘Nothing. No, of course not, absolutely nothing.’ How extraordinary it was, I thought, that the purchase of three rubber johnnies before dinner with Daisy Sampson should have such far-reaching results.
‘My daughter, Hilda,’ C. H. Wys
tan was summing up the situation, ‘is strong-minded and usually persuasive. You may well find, Rumpole, in what I hope will turn out to be a happy future for both of you, that when Hilda has made up her mind to such and such a thing, it usually happens.’
‘I imagine,’ I told him, ‘that might be so.’
‘It is so, Rumpole. So Hilda has persuaded me that you should remain with us here, at Equity Court, as a member of the family!’
‘If I could have a little time to think about it . . .’ I began, but our Head of Chambers was against any form of adjournment.
‘I’m sure you’ve thought about it, Rumpole, long and hard. And now, dear boy, to celebrate our entirely new relationship, what about a glass of sherry?’
My heart sank as he approached the dusty decanter in the corner cupboard. This again was an offer I felt I could not decently refuse.
25
‘Daddy agreed, Rumpole. I talked him into it!’
We were in the Temple gardens. Hilda had come in to me as soon as I had repossessed Uncle Tom’s room and suggested we go into the gardens, where no one would overhear us and start talking. The leaves were gently turning to gold and the chrysanthemums were still out and the roses starting to fade. I wasn’t whooping or doing a wild triumphal dance and the windows of the surrounding chambers remained shut. But I was still euphoric after winning the case alone and without a leader, as I shall always claim, in spite of C. H. Wystan’s attempts to get in on the act.
We enjoyed a period of silence and then I said, ‘Your father seems to be discussing marriage.’ It sounded stupid as I said it. I would have to have been deaf and blind not to understand what C. H. Wystan was talking about.
‘You’ve got it, Rumpole!’ Hilda was laughing as though my slowness in the uptake was nothing but a joke.
‘My marriage to you?’ I ventured.
‘Well, I don’t know who else would want to marry you. I shouldn’t think that Daisy Sampson’s particularly keen on it, is she?’
Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders Page 17
