Forever Rumpole

by John Mortimer

  Of course, She didn’t tackle me openly about this, but I could sense what was in the wind when she started up a conversation about the male libido at breakfast one morning. It followed from something she had read in her Daily Telegraph.

  ‘They’re doing it again, Rumpole.’

  ‘Who are?’

  ‘Men.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Causing trouble in the workplace.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose so.’

  ‘Brushing up against their secretaries. Unnecessarily. I suppose that’s something you approve of, Rumpole?’

  ‘I haven’t got a secretary, Hilda. I’ve got a clerk called Henry. I’ve never felt the slightest temptation to brush up against Henry.’ And that answer you might have thought would finish the matter, but Hilda had more information from the Telegraph to impart.

  ‘They put it all down to glands. Men’ve got too much something in their glands. That’s a fine excuse, isn’t it?’

  ‘Never tried it.’ But I thought it over. ‘I suppose I might: “My client intends to rely on the glandular defence, my Lord.” ’

  ‘It wouldn’t wash.’ Hilda was positive. ‘When I was a child we were taught to believe in the devil.’

  ‘I’m sure you were.’

  ‘He tempts people. Particularly men.’

  ‘I thought it was Eve.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I thought it was Eve he tempted first.’

  ‘That’s you all over, Rumpole.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Blame it all on a woman! That’s men all over.’

  ‘Hilda, there’s nothing I’d like more than to sit here with you all day, discussing theology. But I’ve got to get to work.’ I was making my preparations for departure when She said darkly, ‘Enjoy your lunch-hour!’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said, “I hope you enjoy your lunch-hour,” Rumpole.’

  ‘Well, I probably shall. It’s Thursday. Steak pie day at the pub in Ludgate Circus. I shall look forward to that.’

  ‘And a few other little treats besides, I should imagine.’

  Hilda was immersed in her newspaper again when I left her. I knew then that, no matter what explanation I had given, She Who Must Be Obeyed had come to the firm conclusion that I was up to something devilish.

  It’s a strange fact that it was not until nearly the end of the threescore years and ten allotted to me by the psalmist that I was first called upon to perform in a Juvenile Court. It was, as I was soon to discover, a place in which the law as we know and occasionally love it had very little place. It was also a soulless chamber in Crockthorpe’s already chipped and crumbling glass and concrete courthouse complex. Tracy’s three judges – a large motherly-looking magistrate as chairwoman, flanked by a small, bright-eyed Sikh justice in a sari, and a lean and anxious headmaster – sat with their clerk, young, officious and bespectacled, to keep them in order. The defence team, Rumpole and the indispensable Bernard, together with the prosecutor, Mizz Liz Probert, and a person from the council solicitor’s office, sat at another long table opposite the justices. Miss Mirabelle Jones, armed with a ponderous file, was comfortably ensconced in the witness chair and a large television set was playing that hit video, the interview with Dominic Molloy.

  We had got to the familiar dialogue which started with Mirabelle’s question: ‘He wanted you to play at devils? This man did?’

  ‘He said he was the devil. Yes,’ the picture of the boy Dominic alleged.

  ‘He was to be the devil. And what were you supposed to be? Perhaps you were the devil’s children?’

  At which point Rumpole ruined the entertainment by rearing to his hind legs and making an objection, a process which in this court seemed as unusual and unwelcome as a guest lifting his soup plate to his mouth and slurping the contents at a state banquet at Buckingham Palace. When I said I was objecting, the clerk switched off the telly with obvious reluctance.

  ‘That was a leading question by the social worker,’ I said, although the fact would have been obvious to the most superficial reader of Potted Rules of Evidence. ‘It and the answer are entirely inadmissible, as your clerk will no doubt tell you.’ And I added, in an extremely audible whisper to Bernard, ‘If he knows his business.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole’ – the chairwoman gave me her most motherly smile – ‘Miss Mirabelle Jones is an extremely experienced social worker. We think we can rely on her to put her questions in the proper manner.’

  ‘I was just venturing to point out that on this occasion she put her question in an entirely improper manner,’ I told her, ‘Madam.’

  ‘My Bench will see the film out to the end, Mr Rumpole. You’ll have a chance to make any points later.’ The clerk gave his decision in a manner which caused me to whisper to Mr Bernard, ‘Her Master’s Voice.’ I hope they all heard, but to make myself clear I said to Madam Chair, ‘My point is that you shouldn’t be seeing this film at all.’

  ‘We are going to continue with it now, Mr Rumpole.’ The learned clerk switched on the video again. Miss Jones appeared to ask, ‘What was the game you had to play?’ And Dominic answered, ‘Dance around.’

  ‘Dance around.’ Mirabelle Jones’s shadow repeated in case we had missed the point. ‘Now I want you to tell me, Dominic, when did you meet this man? At Tracy Timson’s house? Is that where you met him?’

  ‘It’s a leading question!’ I said aloud, but the performance continued and Mirabelle asked, ‘Do you know who he was?’ And on the screen Dominic nodded politely.

  ‘Who was he?’ Mirabelle asked and Dominic replied, ‘Tracy’s dad.’

  As the video was switched off, I was on my feet again. ‘You’re not going to allow that evidence?’ I couldn’t believe it. ‘Pure hearsay! What a child who isn’t called as a witness said to Miss Jones here, a child we’ve had no opportunity of cross-examining said, is nothing but hearsay. Absolutely worthless.’

  ‘Madam Chairwoman.’ Mizz Probert rose politely beside me.

  ‘Yes, Miss Probert.’ Liz got an even more motherly smile; she was the favourite child and Rumpole the black sheep of the family.

  ‘Mr Rumpole is used to practising at the Old Bailey –’

  ‘And has managed to acquire a nodding acquaintance of the law of evidence,’ I added.

  ‘And of course this court is not bound by strict rules of evidence. Where the welfare of a child is concerned, you’re not tied down by a lot of legal quibbles about hearsay.’

  ‘Quibbles, Mizz Probert? Did I hear you say quibbles?’ My righteous indignation was only half simulated.

  ‘You are free,’ Liz told the tribunal, ‘with the able assistance of Miss Mirabelle Jones, to get at the truth of this matter.’

  ‘My learned friend was my pupil.’ I was, I must confess, more than a little hurt. ‘I spent months, a year of my life, in bringing her up with some rudimentary knowledge of the law. And when she says that the rule against hearsay is a legal quibble …’

  ‘Mr Rumpole, I don’t think my Bench wants to waste time on a legal argument.’ The clerk of the court breathed heavily on his glasses and polished them briskly.

  ‘Do they not? Indeed!’ I was launched on an impassioned protest and no one was going to stop me. ‘So does it come to this? Down at the Old Bailey, that backward and primitive place, no villain can be sent down to chokey as a result of a leading question, or a bit of gossip in the saloon bar, or what a child said to a social worker and wasn’t even cross-examined. But little Tracy Timson, eight years old, can be banged up for an indefinite period, snatched from the family that loves her, without the protection the law affords to the most violent bank robber! Is that the proposition that Mizz Liz Probert is putting before the court? And which apparently finds favour in the so-called legal mind of the court official who keeps jumping up like a jack-in-the-box to tell you what to do?’

  Even as I spoke the clerk, having shined up his spectacles to his total satisfaction, was whispering to his well-upholstered chai
r.

  ‘Mr Rumpole, my Bench would like to get on with the evidence. Speeches will come later,’ the chairwoman handed down her clerk’s decision.

  ‘They will, Madam. They most certainly will,’ I promised. And then, as I sat down, profoundly discontented, Liz presumed to teach me my business.

  ‘Let me give you a tip, Rumpole,’ she whispered. ‘I should keep off the law if I were you. They don’t like it around here.’

  While I was recovering from this lesson given to me by my ex-pupil, our chairwoman was addressing Mirabelle as though she were a mixture of Mother Teresa and Princess Anne. ‘Miss Jones,’ she purred, ‘we’re grateful for the thoroughness with which you’ve gone into this difficult case on behalf of the local authority.’

  ‘Oh, thank you so much, Madam Chair.’

  ‘And we’ve seen the interview you carried out with Tracy on the video film. Was there anything about that interview which you thought especially significant?’

  ‘It was when I showed her the picture of the devil,’ Mirabelle answered. ‘She wasn’t frightened at all. In fact she laughed. I thought …’

  ‘Is there any point in my telling you that what this witness thought isn’t evidence?’ I sent up a cry of protest.

  ‘Carry on, Miss Jones. If you’d be so kind.’ Madam Chair decided to ignore the Rumpole interruption.

  ‘I thought it was because it reminded her of someone she knew pretty well. Someone like Dad.’ Mirabelle put in the boot with considerable delicacy.

  ‘Someone like Dad. Yes.’ Our chair was now making a careful note, likely to be fatal to Tracy’s hopes of liberty. ‘Have you any questions, Mr Rumpole?’

  So I rose to cross-examine. It’s no easy task to attack a personable young woman from one of the caring professions, but this Mirabelle Jones was, so far as my case was concerned, a killer. I decided that there was only one way to approach her and that was to go in with all guns firing. ‘Miss Jones’ – I loosed the first salvo – ‘you are, I take it, against cruelty to children?’

  ‘Of course. That goes without saying.’

  ‘Does it? Can you think of a more cruel act, to a little child, than coming at dawn with the Old Bill and snatching it away from its mother and father, without even a Barbara doll for consolation?’

  ‘Barbie doll, Mr Rumpole,’ Roz whispered urgently.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s a Barbie doll, Mrs Timson says,’ Mr Bernard instructed me on what didn’t seem to be the most vital point in the case.

  ‘Very well, Barbie doll.’ And I returned to the attack on Mirabelle. ‘Without that, or a single toy?’

  ‘We don’t want the children to be distracted.’

  ‘By thoughts of home?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘You wanted Tracy to concentrate on your dotty idea of devil-worship!’ I put it bluntly.

  ‘It wasn’t a dotty idea, Mr Rumpole, and I had to act quickly. Tracy had to be removed from the presence of evil.’

  ‘Evil? What do you mean by that exactly?’ The witness hesitated, momentarily at a loss for a suitable definition in a rational age, and Mizz Liz Probert rose to the rescue.

  ‘You ought to know, Mr Rumpole. Haven’t you had plenty of experience of that down at the Old Bailey?’

  ‘Oh, well played, Mizz Probert!’ I congratulated her loudly. ‘Your pupilling days are over. Now, Miss Mirabelle Jones’ – I returned to my real opponent – ‘let’s come down, if we may, from the world of legend and hearsay and gossip and fantasy, to what we call, down at the Old Bailey, hard facts. You know that my client, Mr Cary Timson, is a small-time thief and a minor villain?’

  ‘I have given the Bench the list of Dad’s criminal convictions, yes.’ Mirabelle looked obligingly into her file.

  ‘It’s not the sort of record, is it, Mr Rumpole, that you might expect a good father to have?’ The chair smiled as she invited me to agree but I declined to do so.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Are only the most law-abiding citizens meant to have children? Are we about to remove their offspring from share-pushers, insider dealers and politicians who don’t tell the truth? If we did, even this tireless local authority would run out of children’s homes to bang them up in.’

  ‘Speeches come later, Mr Rumpole.’ The loquacious clerk could keep silent no longer.

  ‘They will,’ I promised him. ‘Cary Timson is a humble member of the Clan Timson, that vast family of South London villains. Now, remind us of the name of that imaginative little boy you interviewed on prime-time television.’

  ‘Dominic Molloy.’ Mirabelle knew it by heart.

  ‘Molloy, yes. And, as we’ve been told so often, you are an extremely experienced social worker.’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘With a vast knowledge of the social life in this part of South London?’

  ‘I get to know a good deal. Yes, of course I do.’

  ‘Of course. So it will come as no surprise to you if I suggest that the Molloys are a large family of villains of a slightly more dangerous nature than the Timsons.’

  ‘I didn’t know that. But if you say so …’

  ‘Oh, I do say so. Did you meet Dominic’s mother, Mrs Peggy Molloy?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I had a good old chat with Mum. Over a cuppa.’ The Bench and Mirabelle exchanged smiles.

  ‘And over a cuppa did she tell you that her husband, Gareth, Dominic’s dad, was in Wandsworth as a result of the Tobler Road supermarket affair?’

  ‘Mr Rumpole. My Bench is wondering if this is entirely relevant.’ The clerk had been whispering to the chair and handed the words down from on high.

  ‘Then let your Bench keep quiet and listen,’ I told him. ‘It’ll soon find out. So what’s the answer, Miss Jones? Did you know that?’

  ‘I didn’t know that Dominic’s dad was in prison.’ Miss Jones adopted something of a light, insouciant tone.

  ‘And that he suspected Tracy’s dad, as you would call him, Cary Timson, of having been the police informer who put him there?’

  ‘Did he?’ The witness seemed to find all this talk of adult crime somewhat tedious.

  ‘Oh, yes. And I shall be calling hearsay evidence to prove it. Miss Jones, are you telling this Bench that you, an experienced social worker, didn’t bother to find out about the deep hatred that exists between the Molloys and the Timsons, stretching back over generations of villainy to the dark days when Crockthorpe was a village and the local villains swung at the crossroads?’

  ‘I have nothing about that in my file,’ Mirabelle told us, as though that made all such evidence completely unimportant.

  ‘Nothing in your file. And your file hasn’t considered the possibility that young Dominic Molloy might have been encouraged to put an innocent little girl of a rival family “in the frame”, as we’re inclined to call it down the Old Bailey?’

  ‘It seems rather far-fetched to me.’ Mirabelle gave me her most superior smile.

  ‘Far-fetched, Miss Jones, to you who believe in devil-worship?’

  ‘I believe in evil influences on children.’ Mirabelle chose her words carefully. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then let us just examine that. Your superstitions were first excited by the fact that a number of children appeared in the playground of Crockthorpe Junior wearing masks?’

  ‘Devil’s masks. Yes.’

  ‘Yet the only one you took into so-called care was Tracy Timson?’

  ‘She was the ringleader. I discovered that Tracy had brought the masks to school in the kitbag with her lunch and her reading books.’

  ‘Did you ask her where she got them from?’

  ‘I did. Of course, she wouldn’t tell me.’ Mirabelle smiled and I knew a possible reason for Tracy’s silence. Even if Cary had been indulging in satanic rituals his daughter would never have grassed on him.

  ‘I assumed it was from her father.’ Mirabelle inserted her elegant boot once more.

  ‘Miss Mirabelle Jones. Let’s hope that at some point we�
�ll get to a little reliable evidence, and that this case doesn’t rely entirely on your assumptions.’

  The lunch-break came none too soon and Mr Bernard and I went in search of a convenient watering-hole. The Jolly Grocer was to Pommeroy’s Wine Bar what the Crockthorpe Court was to the Old Bailey. It was a large, bleak pub and the lounge bar was resonant with the bleeping of computer games and the sound of muzak. Pommeroy’s claret may be at the bottom end of the market, but I suspected that the Jolly Grocer’s red would be pure paint stripper. I refreshed myself on a couple of bottles of Guinness and a pork pie, which was only a little better than minced rubber encased in cardboard, and then we started the short walk back to the Crockthorpe palais de justice.

  On the way I let Bernard know my view of the proceedings so far. ‘It’s all very well to accuse the deeply caring Miss Mirabelle Jones of guessing,’ I told him, ‘but we’ve got to tell the old darlings on the Bench, bonny Bernard, where the hell the masks came from.’

  ‘Our client, Mr Cary Timson …’

  ‘You mean “Dad”?’

  ‘Yes. He denies all knowledge.’

  ‘Does he?’ And then, quite suddenly, I came to a halt. I found myself outside a shop called Wedges Carnival and Novelty Stores. The window was full of games, fancy-dress, hats, crackers, Hallowe’en costumes, Father Christmas costumes, masks and other equipment for parties and general merrymaking. It was while I was gazing with a wild surmise at these goods on display that I said to Mr Bernard, in the somewhat awestruck tone of a watcher of the skies when a new planet swims into his ken, ‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he? The honour of the Timsons.’

  ‘What do you mean, Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘What’s the name of this street? Is it by any chance … ?’

  It was. My instructing solicitor, looking up at a street sign, said, ‘Gunston Avenue.’

  ‘Who robbed Wedges?’ We had arrived back at the courthouse with ten minutes in hand and I found Cary Timson smoking a last fag on the gravel outside the main entrance. His wife was with him and I lost no time in asking the vital question.