Rumpole Rests His Case

by John Mortimer

  ‘You'd better tell us about it.’

  ‘I saw her. I came out of Gales… builders' suppliers in the High Street. I saw her outside the picture house.’ And then he said quietly, in a matter-of-fact sort of way, ‘A woman seated upon a scarlet-coloured beast, arrayed in purple, having a golden cup in her hand full of the abomination and filthiness of her fornication.’

  I waited for the visions to fade, for my client to look hard at the cold interview room, the screw on the other side of the glass door, the dog handler in the prison yard under the window. Then I asked him the question he'd have to answer in Court. ‘Mr Twineham, did you kill your wife?’

  ‘Yes, I killed her.’

  ‘And buried her body under the floor?’

  ‘I buried her. Yes.’

  ‘Because you were afraid of being charged with murder?’

  He shook his head then and gave me one of his charming and disarming smiles. ‘No. Because I didn't want to be parted from her.’

  ‘Insanity's out.’

  ‘You mean you've come to your senses, Rumpole, at last.’

  Hilda made this critical observation in what was, for her, a relatively jovial manner, and I ignored it. I was getting outside a nourishing breakfast (egg, bacon and fried slice) before heading off to the Old Bailey for the case of Mr Twineham.

  ‘He must have been sane, that's what all the quacks say, because he hid his wife's body. He knew perfectly well he'd committed a crime and was trying to escape detection. Even Bernard couldn't find a doctor who'd disagree with that. But in my view, burying your wife under the sitting-room floor is a sure sign of madness.’

  ‘I should think so too.’ She looked at me as though such an idea might never have entered my head. I changed the subject.

  ‘By the way, how was the Old Girls' Reunion?’

  ‘It went extremely well. In fact, it was a whole lot of fun. Dodo and I enjoyed it hugely.’

  I tried to imagine what sort of fun the Old Saint Elfreda's Girls got up to, failed and said, ‘But I thought you were dreading it?’

  ‘Oh, we were.’

  ‘How was Chrissie what's her name?’

  ‘You mean Chrissie Snelling – Lady Shiplake now. She was in the chair.’

  ‘And cut you two dead, did she?’

  ‘Not at all. She was enormously pleased to see us. She kept saying what an entertaining pair we were at school. She said we were a laugh a minute.’

  ‘She said that?’ I tried to picture She Who Must and her friend Dodo Mackintosh as two capering schoolgirls constantly telling jokes and irritating the science mistress, but failed. ‘But you said she left because of you and Dodo?’

  ‘Oh, she explained that. It was nothing to do with us.’

  ‘It wasn't?’

  ‘No. Chrissie's father…’

  ‘Snelling?’

  ‘Yes. Anyway, he was high up in the Foreign Office and he got posted to Washington, so they decided to send her to school over there. It was quite a sudden decision.’

  ‘And no one told you that…?’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘So you've felt guilty. All these years?’

  ‘Up till last night. Yes. As I said to Dodo, it's quite a weight off my mind.’

  ‘It must be.’ Did I see, I wondered, some faint glow of light at the end of Will Twineham's tunnel? A life spent in the mistaken assumption of guilt? Still chewing the last bit of breakfast, I set off to meet my client down the Bailey.

  ‘Professor Ackerman, you can learn a good deal from a skeleton, can't you?’

  ‘I can tell you that it was the skeleton of a fully grown woman approximately five foot four inches high. I would say the body had been buried carefully and the digger brought it up all in one piece.’

  ‘Been buried carefully, had it?’ Judge Cameron Foulks was a ginger-moustached, wary-eyed Scot who behaved, throughout his trials, in a military fashion, having a tendency to bark out orders as though without them courtroom discipline couldn't be maintained and proceedings might, at any moment, slide into anarchy. ‘The Jury will remember that. A woman of average height, buried carefully.’ So far the evidence was giving him great pleasure.

  ‘Could you form any view as to how long ago the body was buried?’ I asked the Master of the Morgues.

  ‘A considerable time. More than twenty years.’

  ‘It was thirty-three years ago that your client's wife disappeared.’ The Judge was sitting bolt upright, perky as a cock who has just exercised his droit de seigneur over all the surrounding hens.

  ‘I think the Jury can work that out without any assistance from your Lordship.’ I thought the time had come to take the Judge down a peg or two. He considered flying at me in a whirl of ruffled feathers but, thinking better of it, relapsed into a sulky silence.

  ‘Professor Ackerman, you're familiar with a condition known as obstructive cardiac myopathy.’ Here I smiled at the Judge in a pleasant sort of way. ‘May I spell that for your Lordship?’ And before he could protest, I did so.

  Then I turned from him to the witness.

  ‘Is that a hardening of a muscle of the heart?’

  ‘It is more or less that.’

  ‘Doesn't it cause breathlessness and, in an extreme attack, death?’

  ‘It could do, certainly.’

  ‘And could such an attack be brought on by extreme emotional stress – in a young woman, for example?’

  ‘I believe it might.’

  ‘And if this young woman were taking drugs in the shape of LSD tablets, might that worsen her condition?’

  ‘I don't think it would do her any good.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole. Are you suggesting that death in this case had something to do with a heart condition?’

  Prof. Ackerman and I had built up a certain rapport across many courts and in many murder trials. We both looked at the Judge who had interrupted our dialogue with a sort of weary patience.

  ‘I congratulate your Lordship.’ I smiled at him in a way he clearly found irritating. ‘Your Lordship has grasped the exact nature of the defence.’

  Before his Lordship could find the breath to reply, I asked the expert witness the next question.

  ‘Was it possible to tell, from your examination of her bones, if this woman had any such heart condition?’

  I knew, of course, what his answer was going to be, but Dr Paul of Acton was dead and his notes gone, God knows where. Asking my old friend and sparring partner, Professor Ackerman of the Morgues, the above question was the only way I had of getting the facts of this complaint in front of the Jury.

  ‘I'm afraid, Mr Rumpole, I couldn't tell that.’

  ‘He couldn't possibly tell that.’ The Judge had his tail feathers up again. ‘You've got your answer, Mr Rumpole.’

  ‘Certainly I have, my Lord.’ I continued to look as though it were just the answer I wanted. Then I changed the subject.

  ‘Professor Ackerman, I want to ask you about the cause of death. Can you help us?’

  ‘I'll do my best.’

  ‘I'm sure you will. The skull was completely intact, wasn't it?’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘So we can rule out a heavy blow to the head, let us say with a blunt instrument?’

  ‘Yes we can.’

  ‘There were no broken bones?’

  ‘There were not.’

  ‘So we can rule out a violent attack?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘You mean very possibly we can rule such an attack out?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There were no bones broken in the neck?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘So you can rule out violent strangulation?’

  ‘There were no signs of violence on the skeleton. No.’

  ‘So, to sum up, Professor. There was no evidence to show that this young woman had been murdered?’

  The Court was silent, the Jury attentive as he answered fairly, ‘No evidence from the bones I examined. No.’

  ‘You did
wonders with the Professor.’

  ‘Thank you, Bernard. I made bricks without straw. What can we do with bones? They don't prove much. One way or the other.’

  The prosecution had closed its case, and the steak and kidney and nourishing Guinness in the pub opposite the Old Bailey were to give me strength for what was likely to prove one of the trickiest afternoons in the Rumpole career. When our client admitted, calmly and as though it was the most natural thing in the world, that he killed his wife, Bernard was convinced there was no alternative to a guilty plea and told the Court as much. But things began to happen. Tony Thrale, perhaps ashamed of his determination to keep out of Court, remembered a couple of middle-aged ex-flower-power children who could speak of Jo's quest for adventure by way of acid tablets and the Age of Aquarius club. One of them even remembered an attack of breathlessness. I had talked to Will Twineham in the cells under the Old Bailey, and I believed he was in a fit state to enter the witness box.

  It started well. Will stood, quiet, grey haired, good looking, in the dock. We went through his life as a young builder falling in love with the girl next door. We got through his promotion to management, his married life and Jo's frequent absences. He remained calm as he described the lengthy kiss he saw in front of the cinema.

  ‘I waited for her to come home. It seemed that I went on a journey.’

  ‘You mean you left the house?’

  ‘Not in the body. In the spirit.’

  ‘In the body you stayed waiting for her?’

  ‘Yes. But my spirit was upon the side of the sea.’

  Poor old His Lordship looked thoroughly confused. ‘Is your client saying he went to the seaside, Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘His spirit went, my Lord.’

  ‘I'm not interested in where his spirit went to.’

  ‘He went to the seaside, only in his imagination, my Lord.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole. Whatever is in his imagination is not evidence. You should know better by now. Considering the length of time you've been at the Bar.’

  I decided to ignore such rudeness and turned to the witness. ‘Mr Twineham. Tell the Court. What did you do?’

  ‘I saw a beast rising out of the sea,’ Will told the Judge in the most matter-of-fact tone of voice, ‘having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns, ten crowns and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole.’ The Judge was getting desperate. ‘Has this beast, whatever it is, anything at all to do with your case?’

  ‘Not directly, my Lord,’ I had to admit.

  ‘Then get the beast out of my Court. Can't you persuade your client to give evidence in the proper manner?’

  ‘I'll try. Mr Twineham, did your wife come home?’

  ‘She came home later.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I told her what I had seen. Coming out of Gales, I had seen her with a man, kissing, in the way of fornicators.’

  ‘Did she deny it?’

  ‘No. She laughed. It was one of the moods she had. When she came home. Laughing. But then she stopped laughing.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I believe I killed her.’

  It was what we had all come there to decide, but suddenly, unexpectedly, the decision seemed to have been made. The Jury looked away, as if embarrassed by the moment of truth, this stark admission. I had to show them that it wasn't at all as simple as that.

  ‘You say you believe you killed her?’

  ‘I believe that, yes.’

  ‘Did you strike her over the head?’

  ‘I never did that.’

  ‘Did you strangle her?’

  ‘I didn't do that either.’

  ‘Did you have your hands round her throat?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Did you touch her at all?’

  ‘I never touched her.’ Will Twineham seemed surprised by his own answer.

  ‘But you say you believed you killed her?’

  ‘I shouted at her. I called out in a loud voice.’

  ‘What did you call out?’

  ‘I told her. I told her what I could see when I looked at her.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘A woman. Arrayed in purple, having a cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of fornications. I believe I called her the great mother of harlots and abominations of the Earth…’

  ‘What happened then…?’

  ‘The words killed her.’

  ‘The words?’

  ‘She was upset. I could see that. As if she couldn't breathe. She was fighting for breath. I saw that. I saw her fall… She never got up again.’

  ‘And you swear you never touched her?’

  ‘Never! It was the words. The power of the words was too much for her strength.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then I did touch her. There was no heart. No breath either. I watched by her all night. All next day too. And the next night, when I was sure she was dead, I buried her.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In front of the fireplace. Under the big hearthstone. I knew the earth was soft there. I laid her gently… And then I covered her over.’

  The Jury were watching him now, puzzled by a scene they could hardly imagine, let alone understand.

  ‘Did you do that because you were afraid you'd be accused of murdering her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why then?’

  ‘I loved her.’ He was looking at the Jury now. ‘I wanted to keep her with me.’ It was what he had always told us.

  Two days later, I was waiting for the Jury to come back with a verdict. The trial had gone as smoothly as possible. Old George Kilroy for the prosecution had asked Will, over and over again, about his lies to the neighbours and the story that Jo had left him. To all of which Will smiled and said that she had left him by dying, and he had wanted, above all, to keep her close to him. The Judge, who would never, so long as he lived, be able to dream dreams and see visions, had told the Jury that there was only one reason for Jo's burial in the house. Will Twineham wanted to avoid the inevitable justice which had been so long delayed.

  ‘Will your foreman please stand?’

  A grey-haired woman rose to her feet. I had counted her as a friend in the Jury. She had listened intently and smiled at my occasional jokes.

  ‘Have you reached a verdict on which you are all agreed?’

  ‘We have.’

  ‘Do you find the defendant, William Twineham, guilty or not guilty of murder?’

  She was looking straight at Will, neither apologetic nor embarrassed, which is always meant to be a good sign. My hopes soared until she spoke.

  ‘Guilty.’

  When I went down to the cells with Bernard, I had the sour taste of failure in my mouth and he said nothing to console me except words as trite as ‘You can't win them all, Mr Rumpole.’ Of course I started every case, however unpromising, hoping to win some small victory, and no loss was ever welcome. But now something worse seemed to have happened: the old Bailey, dedicated to common sense and hard facts, had failed in an act of the imagination. The life of the Twinehams had remained a mystery and Justice had not been done. These were my thoughts as we passed the carefully preserved door of the old Newgate prison, blacked with age and scarred with initials of hopeless cases on their way to the gallows. We saw the bulky screws brewing up tea and eating doorstep sandwiches and one of them called out, ‘He's waiting for you, Mr Rumpole.’

  And there he was, out of his cell and in the cramped interview room, waiting patiently, as he would wait to see if he could live out his life sentence, and, incredibly, smiling.

  ‘I want to thank you, Mr Rumpole,’ he said. ‘For all you've done. I honestly believe it's what I wanted.’

  ‘You wanted to spend your old age in prison?’

  ‘It's fair and right. Seems to me. I closed her up. I did that to her. I put earth and cement on her and shut her away. It's right I should be shut away too. Shut away from the world as she
was. Like this, it seems to me now, we're still together. You can't understand that, can you?’

  Will Twineham had been right. I couldn't understand it. There had been, in a destroyed semi-detached near Hangar Lane, a clash between two worlds, both alien to me. The Book of Revelations had met the Age of Aquarius, fallen in love and reached a conclusion which involved death, the concealment of a young body until it became, over the years, a collection of bones for a forensic expert to pick over. As I walked back to our Chambers, I knew the case, which had filled the last few days, would never vanish from my mind. It would remain a nagging doubt, perhaps, a recollection of failure to return in black moments. But its place would be taken by simpler, more ordinary cases and, above all, by the great case in which I felt sure of success – Rumpole v. Soapy Sam Ballard. Remembering this, a spring came into the Rumpole step and I bore down on Equity Court to taste the fruits of victory.

  On my way to my room, I passed the Chambers notice-board – the place where I had threatened to pin up the cherished picture of the Pithead Stompers. And then I stopped dead in my tracks. The photograph was already there. High above the government health warnings and the list of services in Temple Church, there was the band and Bonzo Ballard strutting his stuff, grinning inanely with long hair flopping to his shoulders and an electric guitar, a monstrous instrument, apparently erupting from his crotch. The familiar voice of Mizz Liz Probert was heard from behind me.

  ‘Haven't you seen it before, Rumpole? Isn't it cool?’

  ‘Who put it there?’

  ‘Ballard did. He showed it to us at the last Chambers meeting. When you were busy with that poor buried woman. We thought it was great.’

  ‘Great? What do you mean, great?’

  ‘Well, we always thought he was a bit stuffy. You know, rather dull. But now we know. He had a life once. Good on Ballard, that's what I say. We thought it right to go up on the notice-board.’

  She looked at me in a critical sort of way. ‘You were never part of a group, were you, Rumpole?’

  ‘Never,’ I assured her. ‘Never at any time. I'm a one-off. Entirely on my own.’ Which is exactly how I felt as I made my way to my room in the smoke-free zone.