Forever Rumpole

by John Mortimer

  ‘Not guilty, my Lord.’

  Four words that usually set the Rumpole ears tingling with delight and the chest swelling with pleasure. Why was it, that at the end of what was no doubt a remarkable win, a famous victory even, I felt such doubt and depression? I told myself that I was not the judge of fact, that the jury had clearly not been satisfied and that the prosecution had not proved its case. I did the well-known shift of responsibility which is the advocate’s perpetual comfort, but I went out of court unelated. In the entrance hall I saw Maggie leaving; she didn’t turn back to speak to me, and I saw that she was holding the hand of Mr Alan Copeland. Such congratulations as I received came from the diminutive Derwent.

  ‘Triumph. My dear, a total triumph.’

  ‘You told me she was truthful …’ I looked at him.

  ‘I meant her acting. That’s quite truthful. Not to be faulted. That’s all I meant.’

  At which he made his exit and my learned friend for the prosecution came sailing up, beaming with the joy of reconciliation.

  ‘Well. Congratulations, Rumpole. That was a bloody good win!’

  ‘Was it? I hope so.’

  ‘Coming to the circuit dinner tonight?’

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘You’ll enjoy it! We’ve got some pretty decent claret in the Mess.’

  If my judgement hadn’t been weakened by exhaustion I would never have agreed to the circuit dinner which took place, as I feared, in a private room at the Majestic Hotel. All the gang were there – Skelton J., Pierce, Roach and my one-time leader Jarvis Allen, QC. The food was indifferent, the claret was bad, and when the port was passed an elderly silk whom they called ‘Mr Senior’ in deference to his position as leader of the Circuit, banged the table with the handle of his knife and addressed young Roach at the other end of the table.

  ‘Mr Junior, in the matter of Rumpole.’

  ‘Mr Senior,’ Roach produced a scribble on a menu. ‘I will read the indictment.’

  I realized then that I had been tricked, ambushed, made to give myself up to the tender mercies of this savage northerly circuit. Rumpole was on trial: there was nothing to do but drink all the available port and put up with it.

  ‘Count one,’ Roach read it out. ‘Deserting his learned leader in his hour of need. That is to say on the occasion of his leader having been given the sack. Particulars of offence …’

  ‘Mr Senior. Have five minutes elapsed?’ Allen asked.

  ‘Five minutes having elapsed since the loyal toast, you may now smoke.’

  Tommy Pierce lit a large cigar. I lit a small one. Mr Junior Roach continued to intone.

  ‘The said Rumpole did add considerably to the seriousness of the offence by proceeding to win in the absence of his learned leader.’

  ‘Mr Junior. Has Rumpole anything to say by way of mitigation?’

  ‘Rumpole.’ Roach took out his watch – clearly there was a time limit in speeches. I rose to express my deepest thoughts, loosened by the gentle action of the port.

  ‘The show had to go on!’

  ‘What? What did Rumpole say?’ Mr Justice Skelton seemed to have some difficulty in hearing.

  ‘Sometimes. I must admit, sometimes … I wonder why,’ I went on, ‘what sort of show is it exactly? Have you considered what we are doing to our clients?’

  ‘Has that port got stuck to the table?’ Allen sounded plaintive and the port moved towards him.

  ‘What are we doing to them?’ I warmed to my work. ‘Seeing they wear ties, and hats, keep their hands out of their pockets, keep their voices up, call the judge “my Lord”. Generally behave like grocers at a funeral. Whoever they may be.’

  ‘One minute,’ said Roach, the time-keeper.

  ‘What do we tell them? Look respectable! Look suitably serious! Swear on the Bible! Say nothing which might upset a jury of lay-preachers, look enormously grateful for the trouble everyone’s taking before they bang you up in the nick! What do we find out about our clients in all these trials, do we ever get a fleeting glimpse of the truth? Do we … ? Or do we put a hat on the truth. And a tie. And a serious expression. To please the jury and my Lord the judge?’ I looked round the table. ‘Do you ever worry about that at all? Do you ever?’

  ‘Time’s up!’ said Roach, and I sat down heavily.

  ‘All right. Quite all right. The performance is over.’

  Mr Senior swigged down port and proceeded to judgment.

  ‘Rumpole’s mitigation has, of course, merely added to the gravity of the offence. Rumpole, at your age and with your experience at the Bar you should have been proud to get the sack, and your further conduct in winning shows a total disregard for the feelings of an extremely sensitive silk. The least sentence I can pass is a fine of twelve bottles of claret. Have you a cheque-book on you?’

  So I had no choice but to pull out a cheque-book and start to write. The penalty, apparently, was worth thirty-six quid.

  ‘Members of the Mess will now entertain the company in song,’ Roach announced to a rattle of applause.

  ‘Tommy!’ Allen shouted.

  ‘No. Really …’ The learned prosecutor was modest but was prevailed upon by cries of ‘Come along, Tommy! Let’s have it. “The Road to Mandalay” … etc. etc.’

  ‘I’m looking forward to this,’ said Mr Justice Skelton, who was apparently easily entertained. As I gave my cheque to young Roach, the stout leading counsel for the Crown, rose and started in a light baritone:

  ‘On the Road to Mandalay …

  Where the old Flotilla lay …

  And the dawn came up like thunder

  Out of China ’cross the Bay!’

  Or words to the like effect. I was not really listening. I’d had quite enough of show business.

  Rumpole and the Tap End

  There are many reasons why I could never become one of Her Majesty’s judges. I am unable to look at my customer in the dock without feeling ‘There but for the grace of God goes Horace Rumpole.’ I should find it almost impossible to order any fellow citizen to be locked up in a Victorian slum with a couple of psychopaths and three chamber-pots, and I cannot imagine a worse way of passing your life than having to actually listen to the speeches of the learned friends. It also has to be admitted that no sane Lord Chancellor would ever dream of the appointment of Mr Justice Rumpole. There is another danger inherent in the judicial office: a judge, any judge, is always liable to say, in a moment of boredom or impatience, something downright silly. He is then denounced in the public prints, his resignation is called for, he is stigmatized as malicious or at least mad and his Bench becomes a bed of nails and his ermine a hair-shirt. There is, perhaps, no judge more likely to open his mouth and put his foot in it than that, on the whole well-meaning old darling, Mr Justice Featherstone, once Guthrie Featherstone, QC, MP, a member of Parliament so uninterested in politics that he joined the Social Democrats and who, during many eventful years of my life, was head of our chambers in Equity Court. Now, as a judge, Guthrie Featherstone had swum somewhat out of our ken, but he hadn’t lost his old talent for giving voice to the odd uncalled-for and disastrous phrase. He, I’m sure, will never forget the furore that arose when, in passing sentence in a case of attempted murder in which I was engaged for the defence, his Lordship made an unwise reference to the ‘tap end’ of a matrimonial bathtub. At least the account which follows may serve as a terrible warning to anyone contemplating a career as a judge.

  I have spoken elsewhere, and on frequent occasions, of my patrons the Timsons, that extended family of South London villains for whom, over the years, I have acted as attorney-general. Some of you may remember Tony Timson, a fairly mild-mannered receiver of stolen video-recorders, hi-fi sets and microwave ovens, married to that April Timson who once so offended her husband’s male chauvinist prejudices by driving a getaway car at a somewhat unsuccessful bank robbery. Tony and April lived in a semi on a large housing estate with their offspring, Vincent Timson, now aged eight, who I hoped would grow up in t
he family business and thus ensure a steady flow of briefs for Rumpole’s future. Their house was brightly, not to say garishly, furnished with mock tiger-skin rugs, Italian-tile-style linoleum and wallpaper which simulated oak panelling. (I knew this from a large number of police photographs in various cases.) It was also equipped with almost every labour-saving device which ever dropped off the back of a lorry. On the day when my story starts this desirable home was rent with screams from the bathroom and a stream of soapy water flowed out from under the door. In the screaming, the word ‘murderer’ was often repeated at a volume which was not only audible to young Vincent, busy pushing a blue-flashing toy police car round the hallway, but to the occupants of the adjoining house and those of the neighbours who were hanging out their washing. Someone, it was not clear who it was at the time, telephoned the local cop shop for assistance.

  In a surprisingly short while a real, flashing police car arrived and the front door was flung open by a wet and desperate April Timson, her leopard-skin-style towelling bathrobe clutched about her. As Detective Inspector Brush, an officer who had fought a running battle with the Timson family for years, came up the path to meet her she sobbed out, at the top of her voice, a considerable voice for so petite a redhead, ‘Thank God, you’ve come! He was only trying to bloody murder me.’ Tony Timson emerged from the bathroom a few seconds later, water dripping from his earlobe-length hair and his gaucho moustache. In spite of the word RAMBO emblazoned across his bathrobe, he was by no means a man of formidable physique. Looking down the stairs, he saw his wife in hysterics and his domestic hearth invaded by the Old Bill. No sooner had he reached the hallway than he was arrested and charged with attempted murder of his wife, the particulars being that, while sharing a bath with her preparatory to going to a neighbour’s party, he had tried to cause her death by drowning.

  In course of time I was happy to accept a brief for the defence of Tony Timson and we had a conference in Brixton Prison where the alleged wife-drowner was being held in custody. I was attended, on that occasion, by Mr Bernard, the Timsons’ regular solicitor, and that up-and-coming young radical barrister, Mizz Liz Probert, who had been briefed to take a note and generally assist me in the cause célèbre.

  ‘Attempted murderer, Tony Timson?’ I opened the proceedings on a somewhat incredulous note. ‘Isn’t that rather out of your league?’

  ‘April told me,’ he began his explanation, ‘she was planning on wearing her skin-tight leatherette trousers with the revealing halter-neck satin top. That’s what she was planning on wearing, Mr Rumpole!’

  ‘A somewhat tasteless outfit, and not entirely haute couture,’ I admitted. ‘But it hardly entitles you to drown your wife, Tony.’

  ‘We was both invited to a party round her friend Chrissie’s. And that was the outfit she was keen on wearing …’

  ‘She says you pulled her legs and so she became submerged.’ Bernard, like a good solicitor, was reading the evidence.

  ‘The Brides in the Bath!’ My mind went at once to one of the classic murders of all times. ‘The very method! And you hit on it with no legal training. How did you come to be in the same bath, anyway?’

  ‘We always shared, since we was courting.’ Tony looked surprised that I had asked. ‘Don’t all married couples?’

  ‘Speaking for myself and She Who Must Be Obeyed the answer is, thankfully, no. I can’t speak for Mr Bernard.’

  ‘Out of the question.’ Bernard shook his head sadly. ‘My wife has a hip.’

  ‘Sorry, Mr Bernard. I’m really sorry.’ Tony Timson was clearly an attempted murderer with a soft heart.

  ‘Quite all right, Mr Timson,’ Bernard assured him. ‘We’re down for a replacement.’

  ‘April likes me to sit up by the taps.’ Tony gave us further particulars of the Timson bathing habits. ‘So I can rinse off her hair after a shampoo. Anyway, she finds her end that much more comfortable.’

  ‘She makes you sit at the tap end, Tony?’ I began to feel for the fellow.

  ‘Oh, I never made no objection,’ my client assured me. ‘Although you can get your back a bit scalded. And those old taps does dig into you sometimes.’

  ‘So were you on friendly terms when you both entered the water?’ My instructing solicitor was quick on the deductions.

  ‘She was all right then. We was both, well, affectionate. Looking forward to the party, like.’

  ‘She didn’t object to what you planned on wearing?’ I wanted to cover all the possibilities.

  ‘My non-structured silk-style suiting from Toy Boy Limited!’ Tony protested. ‘How could she object to that, Mr Rumpole? No. She washed her hair as per usual. And I rinsed it off for her. Then she told me who was going to be at the party, like.’

  ‘Mr Peter Molloy,’ Bernard reminded me. ‘It’s in the brief, Mr Rumpole.’

  Now I make it a rule to postpone reading my brief until the last possible moment so that it’s fresh in my mind when I go into court, so I said, somewhat testily, ‘Of course I know that, but I thought I’d like to get the story from the client. Peanuts Molloy! Mizz Probert, we have a defence. Tony Timson’s wife was taking him to a party attended by Peanuts Molloy.’

  The full implications of this piece of evidence won’t be apparent to those who haven’t made a close study of my previous handling of the Timson affairs. Suffice it to say the Molloys are to the Timsons as the Montagues were to the Capulets or the Guelphs to the Ghibellines, and their feud goes back to the days when the whole of South London was laid down to pasture, and they were quarrelling about stolen sheep. The latest outbreak of hostilities occurred when certain Molloys, robbing a couple of elderly Timsons as they were robbing a bank, almost succeeded in getting Tony’s relatives convicted for an offence they had not committed. Peter, better known as ‘Peanuts’, Molloy was the young hopeful of the clan Molloy and it was small wonder that Tony Timson took great exception to his wife putting on her leatherette trousers for the purpose of meeting the family enemy.

  Liz Probert, however, a white-wig at the Bar who knew nothing of such old legal traditions as the Molloy–Timson hostility, said, ‘Why should Mrs Timson’s meeting Molloy make it all right to drown her?’ I have to remind you that Mizz Liz was a pillar of the North Islington women’s movement.

  ‘It wasn’t just that she was meeting him, Mr Rumpole,’ Tony explained. ‘It was the words she used.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘I’d rather not tell you if you don’t mind. It was humiliating to my pride.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Tony. Let’s hear the worst.’ I had never known a Timson behave so coyly.

  ‘She made a comparison like, between me and Peanuts.’

  ‘What comparison?’

  Tony looked at Liz and his voice sank to a whisper. ‘Ladies present,’ he said.

  ‘Tony,’ I had to tell him, ‘Mizz Liz Probert has not only practised in the criminal courts, but in the family division. She is active on behalf of gay and lesbian rights in her native Islington. She marches, quite often, in aid of abortion on demand. She is a regular reader of the woman’s page of the Guardian. You and I, Tony, need have no secrets from Mizz Probert. Now, what was this comparison your wife made between you and Peanuts Molloy?’

  ‘On the topic of virility. I’m sorry, Miss.’

  ‘That’s quite all right.’ Liz Probert was unshocked and unamused.

  ‘What we need, I don’t know if you would agree, Mr Rumpole,’ Mr Bernard suggested, ‘is a predominance of men on the jury.’

  ‘Under-endowed males would condone the attempted murder of a woman, you mean?’ The Probert hackles were up.

  ‘Please. Mizz Probert.’ I tried to call the meeting to order. ‘Let us face this problem in a spirit of detachment. What we need is a sympathetic judge who doesn’t want to waste his time on a long case. Have we got a fixed date for this, Mr Bernard?’

  ‘We have, sir. Before the Red Judge.’ Mr Bernard meant that Tony Timson was to be tried before the High Cou
rt judge visiting the Old Bailey.

  ‘They’re pulling out all the stops.’ I was impressed.

  ‘It is attempted murder, Mr Rumpole. So we’re fixed before Mr Justice Featherstone.’

  ‘Guthrie Featherstone.’ I thought about it. ‘Our one-time head of chambers. Now, I just wonder …’

  We were in luck. Sir Guthrie Featherstone was in no mood to try a long case, so he summoned me and counsel for the prosecution to his room before the start of the proceedings. He sat robed but with his wig on the desk in front of him, a tall, elegant figure who almost always wore the slightly hunted expression of a man who’s not entirely sure what he’s up to – an unfortunate state of mind for a fellow who has to spend his waking hours coming to firm and just decisions. For all his indecision, however, he knew for certain that he didn’t want to spend the whole day trying a ticklish attempted murder.

  ‘Is this a long case?’ the judge asked. ‘I am bidden to take tea in the neighbourhood of Victoria. Can you fellows guess where?’

  ‘Sorry, Judge. I give up.’ Charles Hearthstoke, our serious-minded young prosecutor, seemed in no mood for party games.

  ‘The station buffet?’ I hazarded a guess.

  ‘The station buffet!’ Guthrie enjoyed the joke. ‘Isn’t that you all over, Horace? You will have your joke. Not far off, though.’ The joke was over and he went on impressively. ‘Buck House. Her Majesty has invited me – no, correction – “commanded” me to a royal garden party.’

  ‘God Save the Queen!’ I murmured loyally.

  ‘Not only Her Majesty,’ Guthrie told us, ‘more seriously, one’s lady wife would be extremely put out if one didn’t parade in grey top-hat order!’

  ‘He’s blaming it on his wife!’ Liz Probert, who had followed me into the presence, said in a penetrating aside.

  ‘So naturally one would have to be free by lunchtime. Hearthstoke, is this a long case from the prosecution point of view?’ the judge asked.

  ‘It is an extremely serious case, Judge.’ Our prosecutor spoke like a man of twice his years. ‘Attempted murder. We’ve put it down for a week.’ I have always thought young Charlie Hearthstoke a mega-sized pill ever since he joined our chambers for a blessedly brief period and tried to get everything run by a computer.