‘Mr Stoker undoubtedly visited Badgershide Wood on a number of occasions to see his girlfriend, Dawn Maresfield, who worked in the hairdresser’s shop. He stayed with her in her flat, which was in the town a few miles away, but you’ve heard that he sometimes drove her to work and picked her up again in his car. Now I have to give you a rather different picture of the lovable and eccentric major. He was seriously sexually obsessed with Dawn, and you’ll forgive me if I take up a little more of your time by reading an account of a conversation Miss Maresfield had with a highly reputable private detective, a Mr Ferdinand Isaac Gerald Newton.’ (Here Fig Newton’s evidence was read to the jury.)
‘What picture have you in your minds now, Members of the Jury, of Major Ben Dunkerton? Is it not of an old man sexually obsessed with a young woman almost to the point of insanity? So obsessed that he starts to give her the family jewellery, which she doesn’t want, and writes her letters so embarrassingly obscene that she stops reading them. But does he get more and more deeply convinced that she might, at last, be tempted by his house and his wealth and agree to be his mistress, perhaps his wife? Only one thing, he was deluded enough to think, stood in his way. She has a lover, much younger and considerably more attractive than the elderly major, and moreover a man with a criminal past whom she feels she can keep on the straight and narrow path of virtue. Does it need a great effort of your imagination, Members of the Jury, to understand how the major managed to convince himself that, if only her lover was removed, Miss Dawn Maresfield might become available to him?
‘How did he set about it? He had, we all have, read cases in the papers of householders shooting at intruders and earning public approval. Did this outrageous plan begin to form in the obsessed, in the by now mentally unbalanced, old man’s mind? We all have to grow old, Members of the Jury, but we may hope to come to terms with the limitations of old age and not, in a vain effort to recover some of the joys of youth, commit desperate and criminal acts. So let us look again at the evidence and see if we can see behind the carefully calculated pretence and discover exactly what Major Ben Dunkerton did out of frustrated love and irrational jealousy.
‘First he met Mr Stoker when he was walking in the woods. You may think that he had Mr Stoker under observation for some time and his plan to obliterate his rival had been carefully worked out. You’ll remember he asked Mr Stoker about the attraction of Badgershide Wood, a question which might well have had a reference to the charms of Dawn. He then invented a story about a famous film director wanting to meet Mr Stoker, a ploy which had no point except to lure my client to the major’s house after ten thirty on a particular night. He risked this pack of lies because he didn’t expect David to live to tell the tale.
‘What did the major do on the night of the visit, Members of the Jury? Consider this as a possibility with me. Did he break his kitchen window? Did he, carefully and deliberately, create evidence of a break-in? Then, when he heard the car, did he open his front door and welcome in the man he was prepared to kill?
‘It all went quite easily. He took Mr Stoker into the library, and showed him the old army pistol he had brought home from the war and never bothered to get a licence for. He told Mr Stoker to handle the weapon, so his fingerprints might be left on it. And then, Members of the Jury, he left the room to fetch his shotgun.
‘None of us can know, not one of us should ever know, what it feels like to commit a murder. Was the major afraid, or triumphant, or filled with nervous excitement? What it was that caused his shotgun to go off too soon we shall never know. Did his old finger press the trigger before he’d taken aim? Did he see Mr Stoker duck down behind the table and try to follow him like a moving bird? All we know is that he shot his rival for Dawn’s affection, but, happily, he didn’t kill him. His victim is here, in the bed beside me, still alive to tell you his story.
‘Did this happen, Members of the Jury? Is that an account which fits all the facts of this case? If you think it’s true you will, of course, acquit. But if you only think it might very well be true, if as a thoughtful and fair-minded jury you cannot reject the possibility, then you must also acquit because the prosecution won’t have satisfied you beyond reasonable doubt.
‘Members of the Jury, this case has only occupied a short part of your lives. Perhaps an hour of late-night entertainment to take the place of the telly or the headphones. You will soon forget all about Badgershide Wood, and Snippers hairdresser’s, and the conversation in the Pizza Palace. But for David Stoker, whom I represent, this case represents the whole of his life. Is he to go free, or is he to be forced, by the devilish plot of a mad old man, back to his misspent younger life of prison and crime? It is his life I now leave, Members of the Jury, in your hands, confident that he will hear from you, in the fullness of time, those blessed words “Not guilty” which, more effectively than any surgery, will give life back to David Stoker.’
Then with a great flood of relief, I lay back on the pillows and closed my eyes. My final speech was over and I could do no more. The decision now had to be taken by other beds. It was the best moment of an anxious trial. As I lay resting, I heard the sound of distant voices. Verdicts came from the snorer, the tooth-grinder and many others. ‘Not guilty,’ they said, and ‘Not guilty’ they all voted. Even Ted, the screw, at the end of the chain piped up with ‘I don’t reckon David did it.’ So the trial in the Princess Margaret ward was over.
Would I ever do the case down the Bailey? Would I ever repeat that closing speech to a real jury, up and dressed, in a real jury box? I felt sleep drifting over me, dulling my senses and darkening my world. Should I ever … Who knows? For the moment all I can say is, ‘The defence rests.’
Rumpole and the Primrose Path
The regular meeting of the barristers who inhabit my old chambers in Equity Court took place, one afternoon, in an atmosphere of particular solemnity. Among those present was a character entirely new to them, a certain Luci Gribble, whom our leader, in a momentary ambition to reach the status of ‘entrepreneur’, had taken on as director of marketing and administration.
Mizz Liz Probert, observing the scene, later described Luci (why she had taken to this preposterous spelling of the name of Wordsworth’s great love was clear to nobody) as in her thirties, with a ‘short bob’, referring to hair which was not necessarily as blonde as it seemed, a thin nose, slightly hooded eyes and a determined chin. She wore a black trouser suit and bracelets clinked at her wrists. The meeting was apparently interrupted from time to time, as she gave swift instructions to the mobile phone she kept in her jacket pocket. She also wore high-heeled black boots which Liz Probert priced at not far short of three hundred pounds.
‘I’m vitally concerned with the profile of Equity Court.’ Luci had a slight northern accent and a way, Liz noticed, of raising her voice at the end of her sentence, so every statement sounded like a question. ‘I take it that it’s in the parameters of my job description to include the field of public relations and the all-important question of the company’s – that is to say’ (here Liz swears that Luci corrected herself reluctantly) ‘the chambers’ image. Correct, Chair?’
This was an undoubted question, but it seemed to be addressed to an article of furniture, one of that old dining-room set, now much mended and occasionally wobbly, which had been bequeathed to Equity Court in the will of C. H. Wystan, my wife Hilda’s father and once head of our chambers. However, Soapy Sam Ballard, as our present head and so chairman of the meeting, appeared to follow the new arrival’s drift.
‘Of course that’s your job, Luci.’ Soapy Sam was on Christian-name terms with the woman who called him chair. ‘To improve our image. That’s why we hired you. After all, we don’t want to be described as a group of old fuddy-duddies, do we?’ Chair, who might be thought by some to fit the description perfectly, smiled round at the meeting.
‘It’s not so much the fuddy-duddy label that concerns me at the moment, although I shall be including that in a future presentation. It’s the
heartless thing that worries me.’
‘Heartless?’ Ballard was puzzled.
‘The public image of barristers,’ Luci told the meeting, ‘equals money-grabbing fat cats, insincere defenders of clients who are obviously guilty, chauvinists and outdated wig-wearing shysters.’
‘Did you say “shysters”?’ Claude Erskine-Brown, usually mild mannered, ever timid in court, easily doused by a robust opponent or an impatient judge, rose in his seat (once again this is the evidence of Liz Probert) and uttered a furious protest. ‘I insist you withdraw that word “shyster”.’
‘No need for that, Erskine-Brown.’ Ballard was being gently judicial. ‘Luci is merely talking us through the public perception.’
‘You put it, Chair, succinctly and to the point.’ Once again, Luci was grateful to the furniture.
‘Oh, well. If it’s only the public perception.’ Erskine-Brown sank back in his seat, apparently mollified.
‘What we have to demonstrate is that barristers have outsize hearts. There is no section of the community, and we can prove this by statistics, which cares more deeply, gives more liberally to charity, signs more letters to The Times, and shows its concern for the public good by pointing out more frequent defects in the railway system, than the old-fashioned, tried-and-trusted British barrister.’
‘You can prove anything by statistics.’ Erskine-Brown was still out, in a small way, to cause trouble.
‘Exactly so.’ Luci seemed unexpectedly delighted. ‘So we have chosen our statistics with great care, and we shall use them to the best possible advantage. But I’m not talking statistics here. I’m talking of the situation, sad as I’m sure we all agree it may be, which gives us the opportunity to show that we do care.’ Luci paused and seemed, for a moment, moved with deep emotion. ‘So much so that we should all join in a very public display of heartfelt thanks.’
‘Heartfelt thanks for what?’ Erskine-Brown was mystified. ‘Surely not our legal aid fees?’
At this point, Luci produced copies of a statement she invited Erskine-Brown to circulate. When Liz Probert got it, she found that it read:
We wish to give heartfelt thanks for the life of one of our number. An ordinary, workaday barrister. An old warhorse. One who didn’t profess to legal brilliance, but one who cared deeply and whom we loved as a fellow member of number 3 Equity Court.
‘By this act we shall show that barristers have hearts,’ Luci summed up the situation.
‘By what act is that, exactly?’ Erskine-Brown was still far from clear.
‘The memorial service. In the Temple Church for the late Horace Rumpole, barrister at law. Chair, I’m sure we can rely on you for a few remarks, giving thanks for a life of quiet and devoted service.’
It later emerged that at this stage of the chambers meeting Liz Probert, undoubtedly the most sensible member of the gathering, suggested that a discussion of a memorial service was a little premature in view of the fact that there had as yet been no announcement of Rumpole’s death. Erskine-Brown told her that he had spoken to She Who Must Be Obeyed, who was, he said, ‘putting a brave face on it’, but admitted that I had been removed from the hospital to which I had been rushed after a dramatic failure in the ticker department, brought about by an unusually brutal encounter with Judge Bullingham, to the Primrose Path Home in Sussex, and would not be back in chambers for a very long time indeed. In that case, Liz suggested, all talk of a memorial service might be postponed indefinitely.
‘Put our programme on hold?’ Luci was clearly disappointed. ‘It’d be a pity not to continue with the planning stage. Naturally, Mrs Rumpole’s hoping for the best, but let’s face it, at his age Rumpole’s actuarial chances of survival are approximate to a negative-risk situation –’
‘And one knows, doesn’t one,’ Erskine-Brown asked, ‘what places like the Primrose Path are like? They call themselves “homes”, but the reality is they are –’
‘What do you think they are?’ Liz Probert was cynical enough to ask. ‘Houses of ill fame? Gambling dens? Five-star hotels?’
‘They are places,’ Erskine-Brown was looking at her, she said, more in sorrow than in anger, ‘where people are sent to end their days in peace. They call themselves “convalescent homes” to reassure the relatives. But the truth of it is that not many people come out of them alive.’
‘We’ll need to put together a programme.’ Ballard was seriously worried. ‘And we can hardly ask Mrs Rumpole for her help. As yet.’
‘I have an aunt in Godalming.’ Erskine-Brown seemed unnaturally proud of the fact. ‘I can call in on Rumpole when I go down to see her next.’
‘And I’m sure your visit, Erskine-Brown,’ Ballard said, ‘will be a welcome treat for Rumpole.’
As usual, our head of chambers had got it completely wrong.
So now Claude and I were together in my room in the Primrose Path Home, somewhere on the sleepy side of Sussex. It was a place of unremitting cleanliness, and so tidy that I was homesick for the unwashed ashtray, resting place for the butt ends of small cigars, the pile of unreturned briefs, the dusty, yellowing accounts of ancient crimes (for which those found guilty must have now completed their sentences), outdated copies of Archbold on Criminal Law and Procedure, and the Old English Law Reports, bound in crumbling leather and gathering dust, as was the collapsing umbrella left by some long-forgotten client. On the mantelpiece I kept a few souvenirs of my notable cases: the bullet found embedded in the radiogram in the Penge Bungalow affair, the china mug inscribed to a ‘Perfect Dad’ from which Leonard Peterson had drunk his last, arsenic-flavoured cup of tea, and the sheet music of ‘In a Monastery Garden’, which Mrs Florence Davenport had been playing as she awaited the news of her husband’s death after his brakes had been partially severed by her lover.
By contrast, the Primrose Path Home was uncomfortably tidy. The atmosphere was heavy with the smell of furniture polish, chemical air fresheners and disinfectant. There was a constant hum of hoovering and the staff seemed to handle everything, including the patients, with rubber gloves.
‘What’s your favourite music, Rumpole?’
‘Music, Erskine-Brown?’
‘Schubert trio? Mozart concerto? We know you’re absurdly prejudiced against Wagner. What about “When I was a little page” from Verdi’s Falstaff?’
‘I never was a little page! Don’t babble, Erskine-Brown.’
‘Or Elgar? Typically English, Elgar.’
‘When I sing to myself, which is only very occasionally –’ Poor old Claude seemed, for no particular reason, to be in some distress, and I was doing my best to help him out.
‘Yes. Yes!’ His nose twitched with excitement. ‘Tell me, Rumpole. When you sing to yourself, what do you sing?’
‘Sometimes “Pop Goes the Weasel”. Occasionally “Knock’d ’em in the Old Kent Road”. More often than not a ballad of the war years, “We’re going to hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line”. You remember that, don’t you?’
‘No, Rumpole, I’m afraid I don’t.’ Erskine-Brown’s nose twitched again, though this time it was a sign of displeasure. He tried another tack. ‘Tell me, Rumpole. Talking of the war years, did you ever serve your country overseas?’
‘Oh yes,’ I told Claude, in answer to his ridiculous question. ‘I flew Spitfires in the war. I shot down the Red Baron and was the first British pilot to enter Berlin.’
Claude looked at me sadly and said, ‘I only ask because Ballard wants material for his speech.’
‘His speech about me?’ I was puzzled.
‘About your life. To give thanks for your existence.’
It sounded extremely improbable. ‘Ballard’s going to do that?’
‘We shall celebrate you, Rumpole.’
‘You mean –’ I was hoping against all the probabilities that they were contemplating some sort of party ‘– a chambers piss-up in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar? Drinks on the Soapy Sam Memorial Fund?’
‘Not exactly that, Rumpole.’ Claud
e glanced, nervously I thought, at his watch. ‘I’d better be getting back. I’ve got a rating appeal tomorrow.’
‘I envy you, Erskine-Brown. You seem to lead a life of perpetual excitement.’
‘Oh, there’s just one more thing.’ The man was already on his feet. ‘Do you have a favourite prayer?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘To help us, Rumpole, to celebrate your life.’
‘Then I pray to God to be left alone. So I can get out of here as quickly as possible. It’s all far too clean for my liking.’
‘I’m sure you’re quite comfortable here, Rumpole.’ Erskine-Brown gave me a smile of faint encouragement. ‘And I know they’ll look after you extremely well. For as long as you have left.’
At which he stood up and stole silently out of the room with the guilty look of a man leaving a funeral early.
When Erskine-Brown had gone, I watched morning television. A group of people had been assembled, having, it seemed, only one thing in common. They had each had sexual intercourse with someone who turned out to be a close relative. This incident in their lives, which many people might wish to keep discreetly under wraps, led them to speak out at length, as cheerfully as though they were discussing gardening or cookery, to the huge audience of the unemployed, the pensioned-off and the helpless in hospitals. As their eager, confiding faces filled the screen I began to doze off – the best way, I had found, of enjoying life at the Primrose Path Home.
Forever Rumpole Page 46
