Forever Rumpole

by John Mortimer

  ‘You were dancing with Rumpole?’ Hilda was outraged. ‘I knew he was up to something. As soon as my back was turned. I heard all that going on when I telephoned. Rocking and rolling all over the place. At his age!’

  ‘Mrs Rumpole. Hilda …’ Liz began to protest but only provoked a brisk ‘Oh, please. Don’t you “Hilda” me! Young Radical Lawyers, I suppose that means you’re free and easy with other people’s husbands!’ At which point I regret to report that Liz Probert could scarcely contain her laughter and asked, ‘You don’t think I fancy Rumpole, do you?’

  ‘I don’t know why not.’ Hilda has her moments of loyalty. ‘Rumpole’s a “character”. Some people like that sort of thing.’

  ‘Hilda. Look, please listen,’ and Liz began to explain. ‘Dave Inchcape and I and a whole lot of us came to give Rumpole a party. To cheer him up. Because he was lonely. He was missing you so terribly.’

  ‘He was what?’ She Who Must could scarcely believe her ears, Liz told me.

  ‘Missing you,’ the young radical repeated. ‘I saw him at breakfast. He looked so sad. “She’s left me,” he said, “and gone off with her cousin Everard.” ’

  ‘Rumpole said that?’ Hilda no longer sounded displeased.

  ‘And he seemed absolutely broken-hearted. He saw nothing ahead, I’m sure, but a lonely old age stretching out in front of him. Anyone could tell how much he cared about you. Dave noticed it as well. Please can I have my shirt back now?’

  ‘Of course.’ Hilda was now treating the girl as though she were the prodigal grandchild or some such thing. ‘But, Liz …’

  ‘What, Hilda?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like me to put it through the wash for you before you take it home?’

  Back in the Ludgate Circus verdict factory, Mary Skelton gave evidence along the lines I have already indicated and the time came for me to make my final speech. As I reached the last stretch I felt I was making some progress. No one in the jury-box was asleep, or suffering from terminal bronchitis, and a few of them looked distinctly sympathetic. The same couldn’t be said, however, of the scorpion on the Bench.

  ‘Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury.’ I gave it to them straight. ‘Miss Mary Skelton, the cashier, was in love. She was in love with her boss, that larger-than-life cook and “character”, Jean-Pierre O’Higgins. People do many strange things for love. They commit suicide or leave home or pine away sometimes. It was for love that Miss Mary Skelton caused a mouse to be served up in La Maison Jean-Pierre, after she had paid the station waiter liberally for performing the trick. She it was who wanted to ruin the business, so that my client’s vengeful wife should get absolutely nothing out of it.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole!’ His Lordship was unable to contain his fury.

  ‘And my client knew nothing whatever of this dire plot. He was entirely innocent.’ I didn’t want to let Graves interrupt my flow, but he came in at increased volume, ‘Mr Rumpole! If a restaurant serves unhygienic food, the proprietor is guilty. In law it doesn’t matter in the least how it got there. Ignorance by your client is no excuse. I presume you have some rudimentary knowledge of the law, Mr Rumpole?’

  I wasn’t going to tangle with Graves on legal matters. Instead I confined my remarks to the more reasonable jury, ignoring the judge. ‘You’re not concerned with the law, Members of the Jury,’ I told them, ‘you are concerned with justice!’

  ‘That is a quite outrageous thing to say! On the admitted facts of this case, Mr O’Higgins is clearly guilty!’ His Honour Judge Graves had decided, but the honest twelve would have to return the verdict and I spoke to them.

  ‘A British judge has no power to direct a British jury to find a defendant guilty! I know that much at least.’

  ‘I shall tell the jury that he is guilty in law, I warn you.’ Graves’s warning was in vain. I carried on regardless.

  ‘His Lordship may tell you that to his heart’s content. As a great Lord Chief Justice of England, a judge superior in rank to any in this court, once said, “It is the duty of the judge to tell you as a jury what to do, but you have the power to do exactly as you like.” And what you do, Members of the Jury, is a matter entirely between God and your own consciences. Can you really find it in your consciences to condemn a man to ruin for a crime he didn’t commit?’ I looked straight at them. ‘Can any of you? Can you?’ I gripped the desk in front of me, apparently exhausted. ‘You are the only judges of the facts in this case, Members of the Jury. My task is done. The future career of Jean-Pierre O’Higgins is in your hands, and in your hands alone.’ And then I sat down, clearly deeply moved.

  At last it was over. As we came out of the doors of the court, Jean-Pierre O’Higgins embraced me in a bear hug and was, I greatly feared, about to kiss me on both cheeks. Ballard gave me a look of pale disapproval. Clearly he thought I had broken all the rules by asking the jury to ignore the judge. Then a cheerful and rejuvenated Claude came bouncing up bleating, ‘Rumpole, you were brilliant!’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I told him. ‘I’ve still got a win or two in me yet.’

  ‘Brilliant to get me off. All that nonsense about a brief for Philly.’

  ‘Not nonsense, Leonard. I mean, Claude. I telephoned the fair Tricia and she’s sending your wife the Balham Mini-Cab Murder. Are you suggesting that Rumpole would deceive the court?’

  ‘Oh’ – he was interested to know – ‘am I getting a brief too?’

  ‘She said nothing of that.’

  ‘All the same, Rumpole’ – he concealed his disappointment – ‘thank you very much for getting me out of a scrape.’

  ‘Say no more. My life is devoted to helping the criminal classes.’

  As I left him and went upstairs to slip out of the fancy dress, I had one more task to perform. I walked past my locker and went on into the silks’ dressing-room, where a very old QC was seated in the shadows snoozing over the Daily Telegraph. I had seen Ballard downstairs, discussing the hopelessness of an appeal with his solicitor, and it was the work of a minute to find his locker, feel in his jacket pocket and haul a large purse out of it. Making sure that the sleeping silk hadn’t spotted me, I opened the purse, slipped in the nail-brush I had rescued from Uncle Tom’s tin of golf balls, restored it to the pocket and made my escape undetected.

  I was ambling back up Fleet Street when I heard the brisk step of Ballard behind me. He drew up alongside and returned to his favourite topic. ‘There’s nothing for it, Rumpole,’ he said, ‘I shall chain the next one up.’

  ‘The next what?’

  ‘The next nail-brush.’

  ‘Isn’t that a bit extreme?’

  ‘If fellows, and ladies, in chambers can’t be trusted,’ Ballard said severely, ‘I am left with absolutely no alternative. I hate to have to do it, but Henry is being sent out for a chain tomorrow.’

  We had reached the newspaper stand at the entrance to the Temple and I loitered there. ‘Lend us twenty Pee for the Evening Standard, Bollard. There might be another restaurant in trouble.’

  ‘Why are you never provided with money?’ Ballard thought it typical of my fecklessness. ‘Oh, all right.’ And then he put his hand in his pocket and pulled out the purse. Opening it, he was amazed to find his ten pees nestling under an ancient nail-brush. ‘Our old nail-brush!’ The reunion was quaintly moving. ‘I’d recognize it anywhere. How on earth did it get in there?’

  ‘Evidence gets in everywhere, old darling,’ I told him. ‘Just like mice.’

  When I got home and unlocked the front door, I was greeted with the familiar cry of ‘Is that you, Rumpole?’

  ‘No,’ I shouted back, ‘it’s not me. I’ll be along later.’

  ‘Come into the sitting-room and stop talking rubbish.’

  I did as I was told and found the room swept and polished and that She, who was looking unnaturally cheerful, had bought flowers.

  ‘Cousin Everard around, is he?’ I felt, apprehensively, that the floral tributes were probably for him.

  ‘He had to go back to Sa
skatoon. One of his clients got charged with fraud, apparently.’ And then Hilda asked, unexpectedly, ‘You knew I’d be back, didn’t you, Rumpole?’

  ‘Well, I had hoped …’ I assured her.

  ‘It seems you almost gave up hoping. You couldn’t get along without me, could you?’

  ‘Well, I had a bit of a stab at it,’ I said in all honesty.

  ‘No need for you to be brave any more. I’m back now. That nice Miss Liz Probert was saying you missed me terribly.’

  ‘Oh, of course. Yes. Yes, I missed you.’ And I added as quietly as possible, ‘Life without a boss …’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘You were a great loss.’

  ‘And Liz says you were dreadfully lonely. I was glad to hear that, Rumpole. You don’t usually say much about your feelings.’

  ‘Words don’t come easily to me, Hilda,’ I told her with transparent dishonesty.

  ‘Now you’re so happy to see me back, Rumpole, why don’t you take me out for a little celebration? I seem to have got used to dining à la carte.’

  Of course I agreed. I knew somewhere where we could get it on the house. So we ended up at a table for two in La Maison and discussed Hilda’s absent relative as Alphonse made his way towards us with two covered dishes.

  ‘The trouble with Cousin Everard,’ Hilda confided in me, ‘is he’s not a “character”.’

  ‘Bit on the bland side?’ I enquired politely.

  ‘It seems that unless you’re with a “character”, life can get a little tedious at times,’ Hilda admitted.

  The silver domes were put in front of us, Alphonse called out, ‘Un, deux, trois!’ and they were lifted to reveal what I had no difficulty in ordering that night: steak and kidney pud. Mashed spuds were brought to us on the side.

  ‘Perhaps that’s why I need you, Rumpole.’ She Who Must Be Obeyed was in a philosophic mood that night. ‘Because you’re a “character”. And you need me to tell you off for being one.’

  Distinctly odd, I thought, are the reasons why people need each other. I looked towards the cashier’s desk, where Jean-Pierre had his arm round the girl I had found so unmemorable. I raised a glass of the champagne he had brought us and drank to their very good health.

  Rumpole and the Children of the Devil

  Sometimes, when I have nothing better to occupy my mind, when I am sitting in the bath, for instance, or in the doctor’s surgery having exhausted the entertainment value of last year’s Country Life, or when I am in the corner of Pommeroy’s Wine Bar waiting for some generous spirit in chambers, and there aren’t many of them left, to come in and say, ‘Care for a glass of Château Fleet Street, Rumpole?’, I wonder what I would have done if I had been God. I mean, if I had been responsible for creating the world in the first place, would I have cobbled up a globe totally without the minus quantities we have grown used to, a place with no fatal diseases or traffic jams or Mr Justice Graves – and one or two others I could mention? Above all, would I have created a world entirely without evil? And, when I come to think rather further along these lines, it seems to me that a world without evil might possibly be a damned dull world – or an undamned dull world, perhaps I should say – and it would certainly be a world which would leave Rumpole without an occupation. It would also put the Old Bill and most of Her Majesty’s judges, prosecutors, prison officers and screws on the breadline. So perhaps a world where everyone rushes about doing good to each other and everyone, including the aforesaid Graves, is filled with brotherly love, is not such a marvellous idea after all.

  Brooding a little further on this business of evil, it occurs to me that the world is fairly equally divided between those who see it everywhere because they are always looking for it and those who hardly notice it at all. Of course, the mere fact that some people recognize devilment in the most everyday matters doesn’t mean that it isn’t there. I have known the first indication that evil was present, in various cases that I have been concerned with, to be a missing library ticket, a car tyre punctured or the wrong overcoat taken from the cloakroom of an expensive restaurant. At other times, the signs of evil are so blatant that they are impossible to ignore, as in the dramatic start to the case which I have come to think of as concerning the ‘Children of the Devil’. They led to a serious and, at times, painful enquiry into the machinations of Satan in the Borough of Crockthorpe.

  Crockthorpe is a large, sprawling, in many parts dejected, in others rather too cosy for comfort, area south of the Thames. Its inhabitants include people speaking many languages, many without jobs, many gainfully employed in legal and not so legal businesses – and the huge Timson clan, which must by now account for a sizeable chunk of the population. The Timsons, as those of you who have followed my legal career in detail will know, provide not only the bread and marge, the Vim and Brasso, but quite often the beef and butter of our life in Froxbury Mansions, Gloucester Road. A proportion of my intake of Château Thames Embankment, and my wife Hilda’s gin and tonic, comes thanks to the tireless activities of the Timson family. They are such a large group, their crime rate is so high and their success rate so comparatively low, that they are perfect clients for an Old Bailey hack. They go in for theft, shop breaking and receiving stolen property but they have never produced a Master Crook. If you are looking for sensational crimes, the Timsons won’t provide them or, it would be more accurate to say, they didn’t until the day that Tracy Timson apparently made a pact with the devil.

  The story began in the playground of Crockthorpe’s Stafford Cripps Junior School. The building had not been much repaired since it was built in the heady days of the first post-war Labour government, and the playground had been kicked to pieces by generations of scuffling under-twelves. It was during the mid-morning break when the children were out fighting, ganging up on each other, or unhappy because they had no one to play with – among the most active, and about to pick a fight with a far larger black boy, was Dominic Molloy, angel-faced and Irish, who will figure in this narrative – when evil appeared.

  Well, as I say, it was halfway through break and the headmistress, a certain Miss Appleyard, a woman in her early forties who would have been beautiful had not the stress of life in the Stafford Cripps Junior aged her prematurely, was walking across the playground, trying to work out how to make fifty copies of The Little Green Reading Book go round two hundred pupils, when she heard the sound of concerted, eerie and high-pitched screaming coming from one of the doors that led on to the playground.

  Turning towards the sound of the outcry, Miss Appleyard saw a strange sight. A small posse of children, about nine of them, all girls and all screaming, came rushing out like a charge of miniature cavalry. Who they were was, at this moment, a mystery to the headmistress for each child wore a similar mask. Above the dresses and the jeans and pullovers hung the scarlet and black, grimacing and evil faces of nine devils.

  At this sight even the bravest and most unruly children in the playground were taken aback, many retreated, some of the younger ones adding to the chorus of screams. Only young Dominic Molloy, it has to be said, stood his ground and viewed the scene that followed with amusement and contempt. He saw Miss Appleyard step forward fearlessly and, when the charge halted, she plucked off the devil’s mask and revealed the small, heart-shaped face of the eight-year-old Tracy, almost the youngest, and now apparently the most devilish, of the Timson family.

  Events thereafter took an even more sinister turn. At first the headmistress looked grim, confiscated the masks and ordered the children back to the classroom, but didn’t speak to them again about the extraordinary demonstration. Unfortunately she laid the matter before the proper authority, which in this case was the Social Services and Welfare Department of Crockthorpe Council. So the wheels were set in motion that would end up with young Tracy Timson being taken into what is laughingly known as care, this being the punishment meted out to children who fail to conform to a conventional and rational society.

  Childhood has, I
regret to say, like much else, got worse since I was a boy. We had school bullies, we had headmasters who were apparently direct descendants of Captain Bligh of the Bounty, we had cold baths, inedible food and long hours in chapel on Sundays, but there was one compensation. No one had invented social workers. Now British children, it seems, can expect the treatment we once thought was only meted out to the political opponents of the late unlamented Joseph Stalin. They must learn to dread the knock at the door, the tramp of the Old Bill up the stairs, and being snatched from their nearest and dearest by a member of the alleged caring professions.

  The dreaded knock was to be heard at six-thirty one morning on the door of the semi in Morrison Close, where that young couple Cary and Rosemary (known as Roz) Timson lived with Tracy, their only child. There was a police car flashing its blue light outside the house and a woman police constable in uniform on the step. The knock was administered by a social worker named Mirabelle Jones, of whom we’ll hear considerably more later. She was a perfectly pleasant-looking girl with well-tended hair who wore, whenever I saw her, a linen jacket and a calf-length skirt of some ethnic material. When she spoke she modulated her naturally posh tones into some semblance of a working-class accent, and she always referred to the parents of the children who came into her possession as Mum and Dad and spoke with friendliness and deep concern.

  When the knock sounded, Tracy was asleep in the company of someone known as Barbie doll, which I have since discovered to be a miniature American person with a beehive hairdo and a large wardrobe. Cary Timson was pounding down the stairs in his pyjamas, unhappily convinced that the knock was in some way connected with the break-in at a shop in Gunston Avenue about which he had been repeatedly called in for questioning, although he had made it clear, on each occasion, that he knew absolutely bugger all about it.