The Second Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

‘I believe so. Yes.’ For the first time Sir Michael Tuffnell sounded doubtful.

  ‘You can take the date from me. The police did nothing for well over a month…’

  ‘They were making inquiries, my Lord,’ Bernard Crompton rose to his hind legs to protect the honour of the force. ‘At Vernon’s bank, for instance.’

  ‘Yes, of course, Mr Crompton. I’m sure most of us in Court understand that perfectly well.’ The Judge looked coldly at Rumpole, who didn’t understand. I asked my next question undeterred.

  ‘And it was during that month, but after the first of November, while the police were making their inquiries, that you gave young Peter Vernon this gold cigarette case? Might I just have it, usher. Exhibit twelve.’

  The usher obliged, and I stood in Court holding the heavy gold object, weighing it in my hand. The jury paid me the compliment of looking intensely interested. Florrie gave a slight frown and Bernard Crompton lay back in his seat and studied the ceiling. Sir Michael Tuffnell looked as though he’d just stumbled on something which upset his whole theory of the Universe – proof of the existence of God for instance.

  ‘No, I’m sure,’ he said, ‘I’m sure that can’t be right.’

  ‘It can’t be right if you’re telling the truth, can it? You wouldn’t decide to put an end to the blackmailing by complaining to the police, and then spend five hundred pounds on a gold cigarette case for Peter Vernon?’

  ‘No. Certainly not!’

  Oh, Tuffnell, my dear old sweetheart, I breathed a sigh of relief, you have delivered yourself into my hands.

  ‘But you see, that’s exactly what you did, Sir Michael. I will be calling evidence to prove that you bought this case on the fifth of December last year at a jeweller’s in Burlington Arcade, near your Club, and gave it to Peter Vernon as a Christmas present!’

  ‘What date was that, Mr Rumpole?’

  For the first time in the course of my cross-examination, the learned Judge was preparing to make a note.

  ‘The fifth of December, my Lord.’

  ‘Why should I do that, Mr Rumpole?’ The witness was asking me the question.

  ‘I’ll tell you, Sir Michael. Because you wanted to frame Peter Vernon on a blackmail charge…’

  ‘Frame him!’

  Mr Justice Everglades was showing signs of genuine distress, but I addressed myself entirely to the witness. ‘Oh, yes. You wanted to make sure that Peter Vernon wasn’t going to be believed if he ever told the truth. You knew that Grice was on to your trail like an old bloodhound, and you also knew Peter was planning to get married to a young lady solicitor. You didn’t know him very well, did you? You thought he’d start talking – about your nights together. And if he was going to talk, you wanted him to talk from the dock, where no one would believe him.’

  ‘But I’d already given him the cheques.’ Sir Michael was now driven to try and argue the prosecution case.

  ‘Presents. Presents that could be used to get Peter Vernon arrested and have him convicted as a criminal whom no one could believe. You might have got away with it, Sir Michael, if you hadn’t wanted to add one final bit of evidence. The gold cigarette case that you bought him in London after you’d gone to the police!’

  From then on, in spite of a bumpy ride from the Judge, it was really downhill all the way for Rumpole. We called the jeweller from the Burlington Arcade, who had his books in good order, and there could be no doubt about the date when Sir Michael bought the case that was designed to frame a blackmailer. Peter Vernon went into the witness-box, was greeted with a blast of hostility from the Judge, and left it with the jury looking as if they might all chip in for a set of Tupperware to give the happy couple. When it came to my turn to address the Court I was able to do a bit of a Bernard Crompton for the defence.

  ‘Members of the jury. We may be able to forgive some forms of criminal activity, the man who steals because his wife or his children are in need, the man who loses his self-control and commits an assault. But blackmail, and here I agree with every word that my learned friend, Mr Bernard Crompton, said to you on behalf of the Crown, is really the meanest form of crime! Blackmail, when it means planting false evidence on an innocent young man so that you can have him convicted of an offence he had never committed, so that you can gain the advantage of being safe from scandal, must be the meanest crime of all. Who was the blackmailer in this case, members of the jury? Was it the young man in the dock, or the older man in the witness-box? Who is lying about whom? Ask yourselves that question. And remember that the answer is a gold cigarette case, bought to bolster up a false charge, and bought after Sir Michael had complained to the police.’

  When the case was over, Peter Vernon came out blinking into the sunlight, surprised to be free, and Miss Sue Galton was surprised only that he had never told her everything. They went away, I suppose to flog the cigarette case and buy wallpaper, saucepan scourers, lino tiles, acres of Vim and other domestic articles.

  After I had said goodbye to the young couple, I saw Sir Michael getting into a taxi. He smiled his own goodbye at me, I thought very charmingly. He resigned a little while later as Principal of St Joseph’s College, a job Humphrey Grice, so Fozzy said in his letter to me, doesn’t do as well, and the food at High Table has deteriorated. Sir Michael has just presented a hugely successful telly series on ‘Man – the Moral Animal’.

  As for me, I caught the train to London immediately after the trial, and like Matthew Arnold’s old gypsy

  … came, as most men deem’d, to little good

  But came to Oxford and his friends, no more.

  Seated at breakfast in the mansion flat some weeks later I opened an envelope which was lying beside my plate, and regretted having done so when a document fluttered out, marked with a huge sum of money.

  ‘Hilda,’ I put the question fearlessly to She Who Must Be Obeyed, ‘what on earth’s this?’

  ‘It’s an estimate, Rumpole. For redecorating the flat.’

  ‘Why should we want the flat redecorated?’ I didn’t follow.

  ‘To brighten it up, Rumpole.’ Hilda then paused dramatically, and said, ‘Of course, if you’d agreed to buy new chair covers, that wouldn’t be necessary.’

  Now that was a decent bit of blackmail, clear and open, and, of course, quite effective. I had absolutely no alternative but to say, ‘All right then, Hilda. Chair covers it is.’

  Rumpole and the Dear Departed

  Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;

  Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes

  Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.

  Let’s choose executors and talk of wills;

  And yet not so – for what can we bequeath

  Save our deposed bodies to the ground.

  The only reason why I, Horace Rumpole, Rumpole of the Old Bailey, dedicated, from my days as a white-wig and my call to the bar, almost exclusively to a life of crime should talk of wills, was because of a nasty recession in felonies and misdemeanours. Criminals are, by and large, of an extraordinary Conservative disposition. They believe passionately in free enterprise and strict monetarist policies. They are against state interference of any kind. And yet they, like the owners of small businesses, seem to have felt the cold winds of the present recession. There just isn’t the crime about that there used to be. So when Henry came into my room staggering under the weight of a heavy bundle of papers and said, ‘Got something a bit more up-market than your usual, Mr Rumpole; Mowbray and Pontefract want to instruct you in a will case, sir,’ I gave him a tentative welcome. Even our learned Head of Chambers, Guthrie Featherstone, Q.C., M.P., could scarce forbear to cheer. ‘Hear you’ve got your foot in the door of the Chancery Division, Horace. That’s the place to be, my dear old chap. That’s where the money is. Besides it’s so much better for the reputation of Chambers for you not to have dangerous criminals hanging about in the waiting-room.’

  I said something about dangerous criminals at least being alive. The law of probate, so
it seemed to me, is exclusively concerned with the dead.

  ‘Let’s choose executors and talk of wills; and yet not so” – for, besides having nothing to bequeath, Rumpole knows almost nothing about the law of probate.’

  That is what I told Miss Beasley, the Matron of the Sunnyside Nursing Home on the peaceful Sussex coast, when she came to consult me about the testamentary affairs of the late Colonel Ollard. It was nothing less than the truth. I know very little indeed on the subject of wills.

  Miss Beasley was a formidable-looking customer: a real heavyweight with iron-grey hair, a powerful chin and a nose similar in shape to that sported by the late Duke of Wellington. She was in mufti when she came to see me (brogues and a tweed suit), but I imagine that in full regimentals, with starched cap and collar, the lace bonnet and medals pinned on the mountainous chest, she must have been enough to put the wind up the bravest invalid.

  She gave me the sort of slight tightening of the lips which must have passed, in the wards she presided over, as a smile. ‘Never you mind, Mr Rumpole,’ she said, ‘the late Colonel wanted you to act in this case particularly. He has mentioned your name on several occasions.’

  ‘Oh, really? But Miss Beasley, dear lady, the late Colonel Bollard…’

  ‘Colonel Ollard, Mr Rumpole, Colonel Roderick Ollard, M.C., D.S.O., C.B.E., late of the Pines, Balaclava Road, Cheeveling-on-Sea, and the Sunnyside Nursing Home,’ she corrected me firmly. ‘The dear departed has come through with your name, perfectly clearly more than once.’

  ‘Come through with it, Miss Beasley?’ I must say the phrase struck me as a little odd at the time.

  ‘That is what I said, Mr Rumpole.’ Miss Beasley pursed her lips.

  ‘We should be alleging fraud against the other side, Mr Rumpole.’

  The person who had spoken was Mr Pontefract, of the highly respected firm of Mowbray and Pontefract, an elderly type of solicitor with a dusty black jacket, a high stiff collar and the reverent and deeply sympathetic tone of voice of a reputable undertaker. He was someone, I felt sure, who knew all about wills, not to mention graves and worms and epitaphs. And the word he had used had acted like a trumpet call to battle. I felt myself brighten considerably. I beamed on La Beasley and said with confidence,

  ‘Fraud! Now, there is a subject I do know something about. And whom are we alleging fraud against?’

  ‘Mr Percival Ollard, Mrs Percival Ollard…‘ Mr Pontefract supplied the information.

  ‘That Marcia. She didn’t give a toss for the Colonel!’ Miss Beasley interrupted with a thrust of the chest and a swift intake of breath. ‘And young Peter Ollard, their son, aged thirteen years, represented by his parents as guardians, ad litem.’ Mr Pontefract completed the catalogue of shame.

  ‘The Colonel thought Peter was a complete sissy, Mr Rumpole!’ Miss Beasley hastened to give me the low-down on this shower. ‘The boy didn’t give a toss for military history, he was more interested in ballet dancing.’

  ‘Young Peter, it appears, had ambitions to enter the West Sussex School of Dance.’ Mr Pontefract made this announcement with deep regret.

  ‘You should have heard Colonel Ollard on the subject!’ Miss Beasley gave me another tight little smile.

  ‘I can well imagine,’ I said. ‘Mr Pontefract… just remind me of the history of Colonel Ollard’s testamentary affairs.’

  I needed to be reminded because Pontefract’s instructions, as set out in his voluminous brief, were on the dryish side. As a lawyer, Pontefract was no doubt admirable, as an author he lacked the knack, which many criminal solicitors possess, of grabbing the attention. In fact I had slumbered over his papers and a bottle of Pommeroy’s plonk in front of the electric fire in Froxbury Court.

  ‘Colonel and Percival Ollard were the only two sons of the late Reverend Hector Ollard, Rector of Cheeveling-on-Sea,’ Pontefract started to recap. ‘They inherited well and by wise investments both became wealthy men. Percival Ollard started a firm known as Ollard’s Kitchen Utensils which prospered exceedingly. During the last six years the brothers never met; and Colonel Roderick Ollard, who was an invalid…’

  ‘It was his heart let him down, Mr Rumpole. His poor old ticker.’ Miss Beasley supplied the medical evidence.

  ‘Colonel Ollard was nursed devotedly by Miss Beasley at her nursing home, Sunnyside,’ Pontefract assured me, and was once again interrupted by Matron.

  ‘He was a real old sport, was the Colonel! Often had my incurable ladies in a roar! Quite a schoolboy at heart, Mr Rumpole. And I’ll take my dying oath on this, the Percival Ollards never visited him, not after the first fortnight. They never even wrote to him. Not so much as a little card for a Christmas or birthday.’

  I was about to ‘tut-tut’ sympathetically, as I felt was expected, when Pontefract took up the narrative. ‘When the Colonel died all we could find was a will he made in 1970, under which his estate would be inherited by his brother Percival, his sister-in-law Marcia, and his nephew, Peter…’

  ‘The ballet dancer!’ I remembered.

  ‘Exactly! In equal shares, after a small legacy to an old batman.’

  ‘Of course their will’s a forgery.’ Miss Beasley clearly had no doubt about it.

  ‘I thought you said it was a fraud.’ The allegations seemed to be coming thick and fast.

  ‘A fraud and a forgery!’

  It was all good, familiar stuff. In some relief I stood up, found and lit a small cigar.

  ‘Concocted by the Percival Ollards,’ I said gleefully. ‘Yes, I see it all. You know, even though it’s only a probate action, I do detect a comforting smell of crime about this case. Tell me, Miss Beasley. Where do you think the Colonel should have left, how much was it, did you say, Mr Pontefract?’

  ‘With the value of The Pines, when we sell it. I would say, something over half a million pounds, Mr Rumpole.’

  Half a million nicker! It was a crock of gold that might command a fee which would even tempt Rumpole into the dreaded precincts of the Chancery Division. I sat down and asked Matron the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.

  ‘Well, of course, he should have left his money to the person who looked after him in his declining years,’ Miss Beasley said it in all modesty.

  ‘To your good self?’ I was beginning to get the drift of this consultation.

  ‘Exactly!’ Miss Beasley had no doubt about it. But Pontefract came in sadly, with a little legal difficulty.

  ‘What I have told Miss Beasley is,’ he said, ‘that she has no locus standi.’ I had no doubt he was right but I hoped that the learned Pontefract was about to make his meaning clear to a humble hack. Happily he did so. ‘Miss Beasley is in no way related to the late Colonel.’

  ‘In absolutely no way!’ Matron was clearly not keen to be associated with the Percival Ollards.

  ‘And she doesn’t seem to have been named in any other will.’

  ‘We haven’t found any other will. Yet.’ Matron looked more than ever like the Duke of Wellington about to meet her Waterloo.

  ‘So she can’t contest the February 1970 will in favour of Peter Ollard. If it fails, she stands to gain… nothing.’ Mr Pontefract broke the news gently but clearly to the assembled company.

  Little as I know of the law of wills, some vague subconscious stirring, some remote memory of a glance at Chancery in a Nutshell before diving into the Bar Finals, made me feel that the sepulchral Pontefract had a point. I summed up the situation judicially by saying,

  ‘Of course in law, Miss Beasley, your very experienced solicitor is perfectly right. I agree with what he has said and I have nothing to add.’

  ‘There is another law, Mr Rumpole.’ Miss Beasley spoke quietly, but very firmly. ‘The higher law of God’s justice.’

  ‘I’m afraid you won’t find they’ll pay much attention to that in the Chancery Division.’ I hated to disillusion her.

  ‘Miss Beasley insisted we saw you, Mr Rumpole. But you have only confirmed my own views. Legally, we haven’t got a leg to stand
on.’ Mr Pontefract was gathering up his papers, ready for the ‘off’.

  ‘Well, we’ll jolly well have to find one, won’t we?’ Matron sounded unexpectedly cheerful, ‘Mr Rumpole. I won’t keep you any longer. I’ll be in touch as soon as we find that leg you’re looking for.’

  And now Miss Beasley stood up in a business-like way. I felt as though I’d been ordered a couple of tranquillizers and a blanket bath and not to fuss because she’d be round with Doctor in the morning. Before she went, however, I had one question to ask:

  ‘Just one thing, Miss Beasley. You say the late Colonel recommended me, as a sound legal adviser?’

  ‘He did indeed! He was mentioning your name only last week,’ Miss Beasley answered cheerfully.

  ‘Last week? But, Miss Beasley, I understand that Colonel Ollard departed this life almost six months ago.’

  ‘Oh yes, Mr Rumpole.’ She explained, as though to a child, ‘that’s when he died. Not when he was speaking to me.’

  At which point I sneezed, and Matron said, ‘You want to watch that cold, Mr Rumpole. It could turn into something nasty.’

  Miss Beasley, of course, was right. The reason I hadn’t been able to concentrate with my usual merciless clarity on the law governing testamentary matters was that I had the dry throat and misty eyes of an old legal hack with a nasty cold coming on. A rare burst of duty took me down to the Old Bailey for a small matter of warehouse breaking, and four nights later saw me drinking, for medicinal reasons, a large brandy, sucking a clinical thermometer and shivering in front of my electric fire at Froxbury Court, dressed in pyjamas and a dressing-gown. She Who Must Be Obeyed looked at me without any particular sympathy. There has never been much of the Florence Nightingale about my wife Hilda.

  ‘Rumpole! That’s the third time you’ve taken your temperature this evening. What is it?’

  ‘It’s sunk down to normal, Hilda. I must be fading away.’

  ‘Really! It’s only a touch of flu. Doctor MacClintock says there’s a lot of it about.’