Rumpole Rests His Case

by John Mortimer

  At my meeting with Miss Maresfield, I formed a favourable impression of her and think that, if the time should ever come, she'd make a good witness. She said she was very disappointed with David, who she thought had gone back to his old criminal ways and ruined his life. She was, however, extremely worried about his condition and, when pressed, said she would see him again, and I feel she retains her affection for him.

  Her attitude to the Major was in marked contrast to the view of him held by all the other witnesses. When I first mentioned him she sighed heavily and said, ‘Don't talk about him.’ When I told her that he was what I wanted her to talk about, she said he'd been a pest, a nuisance, a bit of a joke at times, and at times a menace. I asked if that meant he had taken a fancy to her, and she said she would have described it as ‘besotted’. He'd sent her flowers, presents, bits of jewellery that had belonged to his family which didn't suit her and she had no use for. She said she'd been out with him once or twice but she'd got tired of moving his hand off her knee. ‘He even tried to stick his tongue down my throat in the car and would have if I hadn't clenched my teeth on him. At his age it is just ridiculous.’ His letters to her became ‘just disgusting’, so she stopped opening them. Quite recently he'd telephoned her at work and told her he knew she'd marry him if it wasn't for that ‘bloody little crook' he'd seen her with. She thought that when he said that he was probably drunk, because she'd never told him about Stoker and, as far as she knew, they'd never met. She never told Stoker about the Major's advances as she was afraid he'd go up to the big house and make a scene, which would do her no good: she relied on the Major's many friends of both sexes to get their hair styled at Snippers.

  I don't know how much this helps and I am not clear at the moment what further steps I can take. I therefore await further instructions and I enclose my account, which includes travel expenses and a reasonable sum for entertaining at the Badger's Arms and the Pizza Palace in the Parallelogram Shopping Mall.

  (signed) F. I. G. Newton. Member of the National Institute of Enquiry Agents.

  I put down Fig's report and yes, I thought, we're ready for trial. I had a great deal to say and I could hardly wait for an opportunity to say it.

  It was late, almost midnight, when I began my final speech. I made it to a Jury which included the snorer, the tooth-grinder and the serial urinator, who stayed in his bed during the greater part of it. I was sufficiently confident of my case to allow Ted the screw on duty to remove his earphones and listen from the public gallery. Quietly and, I believe, with perfect fairness, I outlined the prosecution case, the facts which had appeared in all the newspapers, the story of an outraged householder who was merely upholding the sacred principle that an Englishman's home is his castle.

  ‘Now I come,’ I spoke even more quietly, causing the Jury to listen attentively as I lured them into taking another and totally different view of the facts, ‘to the case for the defence of David Stoker. The defence is not made easier by the fact that it is well known that he had committed offences in the past, indeed he has written about them and spoken about them on television. We are not trying him for his past offences, and you must be even more vigilant to see that he is not now, because of his past, convicted of a crime he didn't commit.

  ‘The first thing that puzzled me was the report of the Scene of Crime Officer who was in charge of taking fingerprints. There were, of course there were, Mr Stoker's fingerprints on the old army pistol on the library table, but, extraordinarily enough, Members of the Jury, nowhere else. In the light of that, let us consider how he got into the house.

  ‘You will remember the kitchen window, broken and forced, things knocked over by the kitchen sink, clear signs that someone had climbed in that way. But none of Mr Stoker's fingerprints! Many of the Major's fingerprints, of course – that was to be expected, in his kitchen. But what is suggested here? That Mr Stoker wore gloves? No gloves were found on him or anywhere near the scene of the crime. And remember, he was taken straight from the library floor to hospital. Do you think he climbed in through the kitchen window and then carefully wiped all the surfaces on which he might have left his prints? Can you picture that happening, Members of the Jury? Is it within the realms of probability? Let us take this matter a little further. There were none of Mr Stoker's prints by the front door, none on the bell push, none at all. Does that, or does it not, Members of the Jury, support the suggestion that the Major heard Mr Stoker's car arrive and park at the back of the house, so he opened the front door to him? Was Mr Stoker a visitor the Major was expecting? Could it be, could it just possibly be, he was a visitor the Major had invited? The Major has said he never saw Mr Stoker before in his life. Can you really believe that, if he opened the door before Mr Stoker had even rung the bell? Let us see, shall we, if we can find the facts that might account for this.

  ‘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 Ian Gilmour 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 lic
ence 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.’

  * See ‘Rumpole and the Last Resort’.