Forever Rumpole

by John Mortimer

  ‘Yes, my Lord,’ Brush told the judge.

  ‘Have you known both Peanuts and his brother to use coshes like this one in the course of crime?’

  ‘Well. Yes, possibly …’

  ‘My Lord, I really must object!’ Hearthstoke was on his feet and Guthrie said, ‘Mr Rumpole. Your client’s own character …’

  ‘He is a petty thief, my Lord.’ I was quick to put Tony’s character before the jury. ‘Tape-recorders and freezer-packs. No violence in his record, is there, Inspector?’

  ‘Not up to now, my Lord,’ Brush agreed reluctantly.

  ‘Very well. Did you think he had been guilty of that attempted murder charge, after he and his wife quarrelled in the bathroom?’

  ‘I thought so, yes.’

  ‘You were called to the scene very quickly when the quarrel began.’

  ‘A neighbour called us.’

  ‘Was that neighbour a member of the Molloy family?’

  ‘Mr Rumpole, I prefer not to answer that question.’

  ‘I won’t press it.’ I left the jury to speculate. ‘But you think he got off lightly at his first trial?’ I was reading the note Tony Timson had scribbled in the dock while listening to the evidence as DI Brush answered, ‘I thought so, yes.’

  ‘What he actually said in the car was “I suppose you think you got me this time, then?” ’

  ‘No.’ Brush looked at his notebook. ‘He just said, “You got me this time, then.” ’

  ‘You left out the words “I suppose you think” because you don’t want him to get off lightly this time?’

  ‘Now would I do a thing like that, sir?’ Brush gave us his most honestly pained expression.

  ‘That, Inspector Brush, is a matter for this jury to decide.’ And the jury looked, by now, as though they were prepared to consider all the possibilities.

  Lord Justice MacWhitty’s wife, it seems, met Marigold Featherstone in Harrods, and told her she was sorry that Guthrie had such a terrible attitude to women. There was one old judge, apparently, who made his wife walk behind him when he went on circuit, carrying the luggage, and Lady MacWhitty said she felt that poor Marigold was married to just such a tyrant. When we finally discussed the whole history of the Tony Timson case at the chambers party, Guthrie told me that Marigold had said that she was sick and tired of women coming up to her and feeling sorry for her in Harrods.

  ‘You see,’ Guthrie had said to his wife, ‘if Timson gets off, the Lord Chancellor and all the women of England will be down on me like a ton of bricks. But the evidence isn’t entirely satisfactory. It’s just possible he’s innocent. It’s hard to tell where a fellow’s duty lies.’

  ‘Your duty, Guthrie, lies in keeping your nose clean!’ Marigold had no doubt about it.

  ‘My nose?’

  ‘Clean. For the sake of your family. And if this Timson has to go inside for a few years, well, I’ve no doubt he richly deserves it.’

  ‘Nothing but decisions!’

  ‘I really don’t know what else you expected when you became a judge.’ Marigold poured herself a drink. Seeking some comfort after a hard day, the judge went off to soak in a hot bath. In doing so, I believe Lady Featherstone made it clear to him, he was entirely on his own.

  Things were no easier in the Rumpole household. I was awakened at some unearthly hour by the wireless booming in the living-room and I climbed out of bed to see Hilda, clad in a dressing-gown and hairnet, listening to the device with her pencil and notebook poised while it greeted her brightly with ‘Good morning, students. This is first-year Criminal Law on the Open University. I am Richard Snellgrove, law teacher at Hollowfield Polytechnic, to help you on this issue … Can a wife give evidence against her husband?’

  ‘Good God!’ I asked her. ‘What time does the Open University open?’

  ‘For many years a wife could not give evidence against her husband,’ Snellgrove told us. ‘See R. v. Boucher 1952. Now, since the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, a wife can be called to give such evidence.’

  ‘You see, Rumpole.’ Hilda took a note. ‘You’d better watch out!’ I found and lit the first small cigar of the day and coughed gratefully. Snellgrove continued to teach me law.

  ‘But she can’t be compelled to. She has been a competent witness for the defence of her husband since the Criminal Evidence Act 1898. But a judgment in the House of Lords suggests she’s not compellable …’

  ‘What’s that mean, Rumpole?’ she asked me.

  ‘Well, we could ask April Timson to give evidence for Tony. But we couldn’t make her,’ I began to explain, and then, perhaps because I was in a state of shock from being awoken so early, I had an idea of more than usual brilliance. ‘April Timson!’ I told Hilda. ‘She won’t know she’s not compellable. I don’t suppose she tunes into the “Open at Dawn University”. Now I wonder …’

  ‘What, Rumpole? What do you wonder?’

  ‘Quarter to six.’ I looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘High time to wake up Bernard.’ I went to the phone and started to dial my instructing solicitor’s number.

  ‘You see how useful I’ll be to you’ – Hilda looked extremely pleased with herself – ‘when I come to work in your chambers.’

  ‘Oh, Bernard,’ I said to the telephone, ‘wake you up, did I? Well, it’s time to get moving. The Open University’s been open for hours. Look, an idea has just crossed my mind …’

  ‘It crossed my mind, Rumpole,’ Hilda corrected me. ‘And I was kind enough to hand it on to you.’

  When Mr Bernard called on April Timson an hour later, there was no need for him to go into the nice legal question of whether she was a compellable witness or not. Since she had seen Peanuts and her friend Chrissie come out of the ‘offey’, she was, she made it clear, ready and willing to come to court and tell her whole story.

  ‘Mrs April Timson,’ I asked Tony’s wife when, to the surprise of most people in court including my client, she entered the witness-box, as a witness for the defence, ‘some while ago you had a quarrel with your husband in a bathtub. What was that quarrel about?’

  ‘Peanuts Molloy.’

  ‘About a man called Peter “Peanuts” Molloy. What did you tell your husband about Peanuts?’

  ‘About him as a man, like … ?’

  ‘Did you compare the virility of these two gentlemen?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’ April was able to cope with this part of the evidence without embarrassment.

  ‘And who got the better of the comparison?’

  ‘Peanuts.’ Tony, lowering his head, got his first look of sympathy from the jury.

  ‘Was there a scuffle in your bath then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mrs April Timson, did your husband ever try to drown you?’

  ‘No. He never.’ Her answer caused a buzz in court. Guthrie stared at her, incredulous.

  ‘Why did you suggest he did?’ I asked.

  ‘My Lord. I object. What possible relevance?’ Hearthrug tried to interrupt but I and everyone else ignored him.

  ‘Why did you suggest he tried to murder you?’ I repeated.

  ‘I was angry with him, I reckon,’ April told us calmly, and the prosecutor lost heart and subsided.

  The judge, however, pursued the matter with a pained expression. ‘Do I understand,’ he asked, ‘you made an entirely false accusation against your husband?’

  ‘Yes.’ April didn’t seem to think it an unusual thing to do.

  ‘Don’t you realize, madam,’ the judge said, ‘the suffering that accusation has brought to innocent people?’

  ‘Such as you, old cock,’ I muttered to Mizz Liz.

  ‘What was that, Rumpole?’ the judge asked me.

  ‘Such as the man in the dock, my Lord,’ I repeated.

  ‘And other innocent, innocent people.’ His Lordship shook his head sadly and made a note.

  ‘After your husband’s trial did you continue to see Mr Peanuts Molloy?’ I went on with my questions to the uncompellable wi
tness.

  ‘We went out together. Yes.’

  ‘Where did you meet?’

  ‘We met round the offey in Dalton Avenue. Then we went out in his car.’

  ‘Did you meet him at the off-licence on the night this robbery took place?’

  ‘I never.’ April was sure of it.

  ‘Your husband says that your neighbour Chrissie came round and told him that you and Peanuts Molloy were going to meet at the off-licence at nine-thirty that evening. So he went up there to put a stop to your affair.’

  ‘Well, Chrissie was well in with Peanuts by then, wasn’t she?’ April smiled cynically. ‘I reckon he sent her to tell Tony that.’

  ‘Why do you reckon he sent her?’

  Hearthstoke rose again, determined. ‘My Lord, I must object,’ he said. ‘What this witness “reckons” is entirely inadmissible.’ When he had finished, I asked the judge if I might have a word with my learned friend in order to save time. I then moved along our row and whispered to him vehemently, ‘One more peep out of you, Hearthrug, and I lay a formal complaint on your conduct!’

  ‘What conduct?’ he whispered back.

  ‘Trying to blackmail a learned judge on the matter of a pot plant sent to a shorthand writer.’ I looked across at Lorraine. ‘Not in the best traditions of the Bar, that!’ I left him thinking hard and went back to my place.

  After due consideration he said, ‘My Lord. On second thoughts, I withdraw my objection.’

  Hearthstoke resumed his seat. I smiled at him cheerfully and continued with April’s evidence. ‘So why do you think Peanuts wanted to get your husband up to the off-licence that evening?’

  ‘Pretty obvious, innit?’

  ‘Explain it to us.’

  ‘So he could put him in the frame. Make it look like Tony done Ruby up, like.’

  ‘So he could put him in the frame. An innocent man!’ I looked at the jury. ‘Had Peanuts said anything to make you think he might do such a thing?’

  ‘After the first trial.’

  ‘After Mr Timson was bound over?’

  ‘Yes. Peanuts said he reckoned Tony needed a bit of justice, like. He said he was going to see he got put inside. Course, Peanuts didn’t mind making a bit hisself, out of robbing the offey.’

  ‘One more thing, Mrs Timson. Have you ever seen a weapon like that before?’

  I held up the cosh. The usher came and took it to the witness.

  ‘I saw that one. I think I did.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In Peanuts’s car. That’s where he kept it.’

  ‘Did your husband ever own anything like that?’

  ‘What, Tony?’ April weighed the cosh in her hand and clearly found the idea ridiculous. ‘Not him. He wouldn’t have known what to do with it.’

  When the evidence was complete and we had made our speeches, Guthrie had to sum up the case of R. v. Timson to the jury. As he turned his chair towards them, and they prepared to give him their full attention, a distinguished visitor slipped unobtrusively into the back of the court. He was none other than old Keith from the Lord Chancellor’s office. The judge must have seen him, but he made no apology for his previous lenient treatment of Tony Timson.

  ‘Members of the Jury,’ he began. ‘You have heard of the false accusation of attempted murder that Mrs Timson made against an innocent man. Can you imagine, Members of the Jury, what misery that poor man has been made to suffer? Devoted to ladies as he may be, he has been called a heartless “male chauvinist”. Gentle and harmless by nature, he has been thought to connive at crimes of violence. Perhaps it was even suggested that he was the sort of fellow who would make his wife carry heavy luggage! He may well have been shunned in the streets, hooted at from the pavements, and the wife he truly loves has perhaps been unwilling to enter a warm, domestic bath with him. And then, consider,’ Guthrie went on, ‘if the unhappy Timson may not have also been falsely accused in relation to the robbery with violence of his local “offey”. Justice must be done, Members of the Jury. We must do justice even if it means we do nothing else for the rest of our lives but compete in croquet competitions.’ The judge was looking straight at Keith from the Lord Chancellor’s office as he said this. I relaxed, lay back and closed my eyes. I knew, after all his troubles, how his Lordship would feel about a man falsely accused, and I had no further worries about the fate of Tony Timson.

  When I got home, Hilda was reading the result of the trial in the Evening Sentinel. ‘I suppose you’re cock-a-hoop, Rumpole,’ she said.

  ‘Hearthrug routed!’ I told her. ‘The women of England back on our side and old Keith from the Lord Chancellor’s office looking extremely foolish. And a miraculous change came over Guthrie.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He suddenly found courage. It’s something you can’t do without, not if you concern yourself with justice.’

  ‘That April Timson!’ Hilda looked down at her evening paper. ‘Making it all up about being drowned in the bathwater.’

  ‘ “When lovely woman stoops to folly” ’ – I went to the sideboard and poured a celebratory glass of Château Thames Embankment – ‘ “And finds too late that men betray, What charm can soothe her melancholy …” ’

  ‘I’m not going to the Bar to protect people like her, Rumpole.’ Hilda announced her decision. ‘She’s put me to a great deal of trouble. Getting up at a quarter to six every morning for the Open University.’

  ‘ “What art can wash her guilt away?” What did you say, Hilda?’

  ‘I’m not going to all that trouble, learning Real Property and Company Law and eating dinners and buying a wig, not for the likes of April Timson.’

  ‘Oh, Hilda! Everyone in chambers will be extremely disappointed.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry.’ She had clearly made up her mind. ‘They’ll just have to do without me. I’ve really got better things to do, Rumpole, than come home cock-a-hoop just because April Timson changes her mind and decides to tell the truth.’

  ‘Of course you have, Hilda.’ I drank gratefully. ‘What sort of better things?’

  ‘Keeping you in order for one, Rumpole. Seeing you wash up properly.’ And then she spoke with considerable feeling. ‘It’s disgusting!’

  ‘The washing-up?’

  ‘No. People having baths together.’

  ‘Married people?’ I reminded her.

  ‘I don’t see that makes it any better. Don’t you ever ask me to do that, Rumpole.’

  ‘Never, Hilda. I promise faithfully.’ To hear, of course, was to obey.

  That night’s Sentinel contained a leading article which appeared under the encouraging headline BATHTUB JUDGE PROVED RIGHT.

  Mrs April Timson [it read] has admitted that her husband never tried to drown her and the jury have acquitted Tony Timson on a second trumped-up charge. It took a judge of Mr Justice Featherstone’s perception and experience to see through this woman’s inventions and exaggerations and to uphold the law without fear or favour. Now and again the British legal system produces a judge of exceptional wisdom and integrity who refuses to yield to pressure groups and does justice though the heavens fall. Such a one is Sir Guthrie Featherstone.

  Sir Guthrie told me later that he read these comforting words while lying in a warm bath in his flat near Harrods. I have no doubt at all that Lady Featherstone was with him on that occasion, seated at the tap end.

  Rumpole and the Bubble Reputation

  It is now getting on for half a century since I took to crime, and I can honestly say I haven’t regretted a single moment of it.

  Crime is about life, death and the liberty of the subject; civil law is entirely concerned with that most tedious of all topics, money. Criminal law requires an expert knowledge of bloodstains, policemen’s notebooks and the dark flow of human passion, as well as the argot currently in use round the Elephant and Castle. Civil law calls for a close study of such yawn-producing matters as bills of exchange, negotiable instruments and charter parties. It is true, of course,
that the most enthralling murder produces only a small and long-delayed legal aid cheque, sufficient to buy a couple of dinners at some Sunday supplement eaterie for the learned friends who practise daily in the commercial courts. Give me, however, a sympathetic jury, a blurred thumbprint and a dodgy confession, and you can keep Mega-Chemicals Ltd v. The Sunshine Bank of Florida with all its fifty days of mammoth refreshers for the well-heeled barristers involved.

  There is one drawback, however, to being a criminal hack: the judges and the learned friends are apt to regard you as though you were the proud possessor of a long line of convictions. How many times have I stood up to address the tribunal on such matters as the importance of intent or the presumption of innocence only to be stared at by the old darling on the Bench as though I were sporting a black mask or carrying a large sack labelled SWAG? Often, as I walk through the Temple on my way down to the Bailey, my place of work, I have seen bowler-hatted commercial or revenue men pass by on the other side and heard them mutter, ‘There goes old Rumpole. I wonder if he’s doing a murder or a rape this morning?’ The sad truth of the matter is that civil law is regarded as the Harrods and crime the Tesco’s of the legal profession. And of all the varieties of civil action the most elegant, the smartest, the one which attracts the best barristers like bees to the honey-pot, is undoubtedly the libel action. Star in a libel case on the civilized stage of the High Court of Justice and fame and fortune will be yours, if you haven’t got them already.

  It’s odd, isn’t it? Kill a person or beat him over the head and remove his wallet, and all you’ll get is an Old Bailey judge and an Old Bailey hack. Cast a well-deserved slur on his moral character, ridicule his nose or belittle his bank balance and you will get a High Court judge and some of the smoothest silks in the business. I can only remember doing one libel action, and after it I asked my clerk, Henry, to find me a nice clean assault or an honest break and entering. Exactly why I did so will become clear to you when I have revealed the full and hitherto unpublished details of Amelia Nettleship v. The Daily Beacon and Maurice Machin. If, after reading what went on in that particular defamation case, you don’t agree that crime presents a fellow with a more honourable alternative, I shall have to think seriously about issuing a writ for libel.