The Second Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  I thought it right and proper to climb to my feet at this juncture. ‘Then I wish to object, my Lord, to a leading question.’

  ‘It was very heated this argument, yes.’ The witness burst in on our argument uninvited, and the Chief Justice smiled at me for the first time. ‘Too late, I think, Mr Rumpole,’ he said, and I subsided. What we had was undoubtedly a black version of Judge Bullingham, the terror of the Old Bailey, but somewhat quicker off the mark than his English equivalent.

  ‘Did the defendant say anything to the Bishop?’ Taboro was pursuing the even tenor of his way.

  ‘Yes. He said “I’ll kill you.” ’

  There was a stir in Court, the usual reaction to a piece of important and damaging evidence, and the Judge was careful to repeat the words as he wrote them down. ‘ “I’ll kill you,” ’ he said.

  ‘That’s an old judicial trick,’ I whispered to Freddy Ruingo, and then I suggested a little practical demonstration we might indulge in when I rose to cross-examine. The judicial pencil tapped again, and I was addressed from on high.

  ‘Mr Rumpole,’ said Sir Worthington menacingly. ‘Please do not hesitate to rise if you have something to say.’

  ‘I have nothing whatever to say, my Lord.’ I rose to about halfway and then sank back in to my seat.

  ‘Then it is customary to remain silent when seated. Did not your old pupil master teach you that? Was he not C. H. Wystan of the Inner Temple?’

  I hadn’t bargained for a Nerangan Chief Justice with an encyclopaedic knowledge of English barristers. He had even remembered the name of my sainted father-in-law, Daddy to She Who Must Be Obeyed, who had guided my first faltering steps in his own inexpert sort of way when I first went into Chambers.

  ‘What happened then, Mr Nagoma?’ Taboro went on when the judicial rebuke was over.

  ‘We got into the Minister’s car,’ the witness answered.

  ‘Just you and Mazenze?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did the defendant say?’

  ‘He said, “Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?” ’

  ‘And by “turbulent priest”, who did you take him to mean?’ Taboro was taking no chances.

  ‘He meant the Bishop.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you, Mr Nagoma.’ Taboro sat down smiling. I took off my wig, applied the red spotted handkerchief to the brow, replaced the wig and rose to cross-examine.

  ‘Mr Nagoma…’ I started, and then, as arranged, Freddy tugged at my gown and whispered, ‘This man is a Matatu. Naturally he is hostile to David.’

  So I whispered angrily back, loudly enough for everyone in the Court to hear. ‘Look, if you interrupt my cross-examination, I’ll kill you!’

  My Apu supporters in the public gallery took the point and laughed. The Chief Justice’s pencil got to work again, and rapped the desk in an angry manner.

  ‘Mr Rumpole. There is no jury here!’ he reminded me.

  ‘My Lord, I’m sorry we abolished that great institution.’ I took the opportunity of denouncing a retrograde step.

  ‘That was a jury trick you pulled quite shamelessly, Mr Rumpole. It was not worthy of a former pupil of Mr C. H. Wystan.’

  Not worthy of Wystan, a man who knew nothing whatever about bloodstains! I controlled myself with difficulty. ‘It was not a trick. It was a demonstration.’ I told the Judge. ‘I am about to put the question to the witness.’

  ‘Put it then, Mr Rumpole. Without play-acting please!’

  It was too early in the case to quarrel with the Judge, and there was – oh the pity of it! – no jury. I addressed myself to the witness. ‘Were not the words used to the Bishop just as I’ve used them to my learned instructing solicitor, as a bit of meaningless abuse?’ I asked Nagoma.

  ‘I don’t know that, sir.’

  ‘Do you not? And do you not know what they were quarrelling about? “The freedom of religious instruction in the Schools Enabling Bill”. Apparently the Bishop was putting up what is known as a filibuster and talking for hours to delay matters.’

  Taboro half rose, and made a funny. ‘I’m sure that is a process well known to my learned friend,’ he said.

  The Chief Justice and the police officers and about half of the public, who were, no doubt, of the Matatu tribe, had an excellent laugh at this gem. When the hilarity had died down, I asked another question.

  ‘It was a moment of irritation at some unparliamentary behaviour, isn’t that so?’

  ‘Mr Rumpole.’ The Judge was serious again. ‘The witness was outside the parliament building. How can he answer?’

  ‘He can answer this. Was it meant seriously?’

  Mr Nagoma, bless his heart, hesitated for a long time before he said, ‘I don’t know. Quite honestly.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you, Mr Nagoma.’ I was grateful. ‘And when he said, “Who can rid me of this turbulent priest?” you recognized the quotation, I imagine?’

  ‘Quotation? No.’ Mr Nagoma looked blank and the Chief Justice’s disapproval was turned on him for a change.

  ‘Oh really!’ The pencil was thrown down on to the desk on this occasion. ‘It beats me how some of you fellows get into the Civil Service, let alone become Ministers’ secretaries. Henry the Second said that of Thomas à Becket in the year – what year was it, Mr Rumpole?’ For the first time he asked me a question which was not an attack.

  ‘I don’t immediately recollect.’

  ‘Oh, I do. I recollect.’ The wily old Judge had clearly known the answer all the time. ‘It was 1170, I’m sure.’

  But he had delivered himself into my hands. I looked hard at the foreign reporters, my only jury, and said loudly, ‘And I’m sure Henry the Second was never charged with murder!’

  I shouldn’t have under-estimated Sir Worthington Banzana. He came back fighting with a smile and said, ‘Although St Thomas à Becket, just like the unfortunate Bishop Kareele, found himself dead as mutton. Yes, Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘No more questions, my Lord.’

  I sat down and looked gloomily round the Court as Mr Nagoma left the witness-box with obvious relief, and a young clergyman, whose head seemed to emerge reluctantly from a dog collar several sizes too large for his neck, replaced him. The darling old Chief Justice, I thought, was beginning to make me feel almost nostalgic for Judge Bullingham, and the fog descending comfortably on Ludgate Circus, and Henry sending me out to do a little V.A.T. fraud with absolutely no danger of anyone being condemned to death. I had never thought that the Golden Road to Samarkand would prove such hard going.

  It was at about this time that, on the other side of the world, Mr Myers, my favourite solicitor’s clerk, or ‘legal executive’, as they are called today, stepped into our clerk’s room in Chambers with a brief concerning the unfortunate killing in the Kilburn pub.

  ‘Mr Rumpole in, is he?’ Mr Myers asked Henry.

  ‘I think he just slipped out for a moment to Central Africa. You wanted to see him, Mr Myers?’

  ‘Fixed this little murder of his – down the Bailey for the 21st of the month. 10.30 start.’ Myers put the brief on Henry’s desk. ‘He will be there, won’t he, Henry?’

  ‘I’ll get him back for you by then. Leave it with me, Myersy,’ Henry assured him.

  ‘Central Africa! What’s Mr Rumpole gone there for?’

  ‘I rather gather his wife’s got a visitor at home.’

  ‘Oh, well then. That explains it.’ Mr Myers went on his busy way and Henry turned to Dianne and said, ‘We’ve got to get Mr Rumpole back for the 21st, Dianne. We can’t have him out there forever, not sunning himself in the tropics. What did he say, send him a cable?’

  Dianne sighed, got out her pencil and notebook, and prepared to take dictation.

  Across that angry or that glimmering sea I was cross-examining the Reverend Kenneth Cuazango, the young clergyman who had been driving Bishop Kareele on the night of the murder. In spite of the huge fans, the courtroom was growing more stifling as the day wore on, and the Chief Justice had fallen into a
temporary silence.

  ‘You say that when you first heard shots you jumped out of the car and ran with your head down?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you didn’t see the attacker at that time?’

  ‘No. I told you, sir. I saw him through the windscreen.’

  ‘When you reached your house – after a run of how long?’

  ‘About three miles. That’s all.’

  ‘Did you telephone the police immediately?’

  ‘Almost immediately, sir.’

  ‘Almost immediately,’ the Judge muttered as he wrote.

  ‘What did you do first, when you got home?’

  ‘I changed my clothes first. I was soaked to the skin.’

  ‘Exactly!’ I picked up a sheet of paper supplied by Freddy. ‘I have a metereological report here. There was heavy rain that night, was there not, between the hours of nine and eleven o’clock?’

  ‘Didn’t I say that?’

  ‘No. I’m sorry, you didn’t. And when it rains in Neranga it’s not a gentle April shower, is it? It’s a cataract!’

  ‘Call it Noah’s Flood?’ The reverend young gentleman smiled.

  ‘Why not? The windscreen was streaming with water, wasn’t it? You couldn’t possibly have identified my client!’

  The Chief Justice, of course, couldn’t resist an interruption. ‘Could you identify him?’ He asked the witness, in a way that made the answer he wanted perfectly clear.

  ‘I’m sure I could.’ But the Bishop’s chaplain didn’t sound entirely convinced.

  ‘I’m sure I could…’ The Judge wrote down the words, but not the doubt, and looked at me. ‘You see, Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘I see, my Lord. But he couldn’t.’

  ‘Isn’t that the fact which I shall have to decide?’ The Chief Justice gave me a wide, and I thought dangerous, smile.

  It had been a long, hot and hard day, and I sat in the big, empty lounge of the Majestic Hotel drinking cold beer. (Wine seemed to be served only in the confines of the prison, and a glass of whisky would have absorbed almost my entire fee from Justitia International.) I was trying to remember a bit of old Wordsworth, partly because it would stop me thinking of the trial, but mainly because it gave me an obscure feeling of comfort.

  In the soothing thoughts that spring

  Out of human suffering;

  In the faith that looks through death,

  In years that bring the philosophic mind.

  But before the mind could become too philosophical, I was brought back to the matter in hand by the sight of Mrs Grace Mazenze being directed by the porter across the waste land of the lounge towards my table. She sat down, refused my offer of refreshment and seemed reluctant to start talking. At last she said, ‘That Judge, sir! He wants to hang David.’ I took a swig of beer, having no particular comfort for her. ‘You said you needed evidence,’ she went on.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A witness?’

  ‘Your brother-in-law offered me any amount of useless ones.’

  ‘Jonathan! He wants to make an Apu martyr of David.’ She spoke with a sudden vehemence. ‘I want my David alive, though.’

  ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like a drink?’

  ‘Nothing, thank you.’ There was another silence, and then she said, ‘I have a witness for you. One who tells the truth.’

  ‘The best sort,’ I assured her.

  ‘Only one thing is wrong. David wouldn’t allow this one witness to come for him. Not if he knew. He would forbid it.’

  ‘Why ever…?’ I was puzzled.

  ‘This is a person of the Matatu people. David would never agree to such a witness.’

  ‘It’s the evidence that matters, for God’s sake. Not the family background.’

  ‘You may know very much law, Mr Rumpole, but you don’t understand our country. Also, I’m afraid, David would not want this witness,’ her voice sank almost to a whisper, ‘for my sake.’

  ‘For your sake?’

  ‘This is something David try to keep a secret from me! Too late now for secrets. I think so.’

  She opened a smart handbag she was carrying, a contrast to her bright African costume, and brought out a sheet of paper, covered with handwriting. I took it and looked at her. Then I read what had been written in primitive, badly spelled English and realized that bedtime would have to be indefinitely postponed.

  An hour later I was sitting in David Mazenze’s comfortably appointed cell in the District Police Headquarters. I was drinking wine, and thought he had probably drunk more than a bottle. He was playing music – not Fauré this time, but a Mozart piano concerto. I didn’t show him the document I had read in the hotel, and some instinct stopped me telling him about it at once. So I sat for a minute in silence, staring into my glass.

  ‘Don’t look so down in the dumps, old fellow.’ David Mazenze smiled at me.

  ‘You may not have noticed, but the Chief Justice is against us.’

  At which my client looked entirely unconcerned. ‘A member of the Matatu tribe, and the Prime Minister’s little chicken?’ he said. ‘Why shouldn’t he be against an Apu leader? Everything is going as expected.’

  ‘We’ve got to win this case.’ I got up restlessly and went for a walk round the cell.

  ‘Don’t worry, old fellow. You’re doing exactly what is needed.’ My client, I thought, was trying to cheer me up.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘Upholding the best traditions of British justice for the foreign papers. When we lose, everyone will know this Dr Death has no respect for the law. So our revolution will be perfectly justified.’

  I switched off Mozart. What he was saying had suddenly become too important for even the most enticing distraction.

  ‘Your revolution?’

  David Mazenze refilled his glass and drank deeply. ‘Our boys in the bush, Horace, yes. They will attack on the day I am convicted. No sentence will ever be carried out against David Mazenze. Now then, has that taken a bit of a weight off your mind?’

  ‘Not really.’

  I felt entirely lost, aimless and deceived. I asked the question that had been nagging at me since our last inconclusive conference.

  ‘Tell me the truth,’ I said. ‘Are you saying that I was brought out here to lose this case?’

  ‘Calm down,’ David Mazenze said soothingly. ‘You were brought out here to make your speech about the Golden Thread, Horace.’

  ‘And then to lose?’ I stood in front of him, no longer able to control my temper, exhausted by the long, apparently pointless day.

  ‘It will be Dr Death who loses in the end, Horace. And the Judge. Some of our boys in the bush are likely to pass a motion of censure on that old Chief Justice Banzana.’

  ‘I was brought out here to lose!’ I shouted at him in my certainty. ‘No wonder you didn’t want an important Q.C.! Old Horace Rumpole is good enough to utter a few legal platitudes, and accept defeat gracefully. Is that it? Look, I was going to tell you…’

  ‘Tell me what, Horace?’ He went to the gramophone and turned the music on again. He sat and closed his eyes, apparently bored by our conversation. It was then that I decided on a course which was, I must reluctantly admit, entirely unprofessional.

  ‘No. I see it wouldn’t do any good,’ I said. ‘Do you know what the Golden Thread that runs through British justice is?’

  ‘Yes, Horace. I know that,’ David Mazenze murmured through the Mozart.

  ‘Rumpole presumes every case to be winnable until it’s lost. I don’t know any other way of doing them. And you can tell that to your “Boys in the Bush”.’

  ‘Thank you for coming to see me, Horace. I appreciate your efforts.’

  But I had knocked on the door and the guard was letting me out. From then on I would have to do the Mazenze case alone and without a client.

  The next morning I found my opponent adjusting his wig in front of the robing-room mirror. He was smoking a black Balkan Sobranie cigarette in his white iv
ory holder. I waved the scrap of paper I had been given by Mrs Grace Mazenze in his general direction.

  ‘My learned friend!’ said Taboro, in a pitying sort of way. ‘His Lordship is giving you a bit of a bully ragging, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Look, I should have served you with an alibi notice. Under British law.’ I started, ignoring the commiserations.

  ‘Under our law too.’

  ‘If I show you a statement, would you object to my calling the witness?’

  Rupert Taboro took my precious document and glanced at it. The only sign of his surprise was the lift of about half an inch in the angle of his cigarette holder. He handed the statement back to me with a smile of absolute friendliness.

  ‘I shall raise no objection at all to this witness being called, at short notice. See you in Court, old fellow.’ So he left me, as I was wishing to goodness that my Judge was as sympathetic as my prosecutor.

  Freddy Ruingo came up to me in the crowded passage outside the Court and said he’d been talking to David Mazenze, and that our client had decided that, as the charge was beneath his contempt, he was not going to give evidence. ‘So it’s up to you now, sir. The great final speech on the presumption of innocence. Isn’t that it?’

  ‘Not quite yet.’

  ‘Not?’

  ‘We may have to go through certain legal formalities first.’

  As I pushed my way on through the crowd, I met Grace standing by the door of the Court. She told me that my witness was there, and ready to give evidence.

  ‘I will now call Mrs Mabel Mazenze.’ The Chief Justice made a note, the reporters looked interested, Freddy turned to me with a look of almost comic dismay, Jonathan rose in his seat in the public gallery and my client shouted, ‘No!’ furiously from the dock. The Court attendant called for silence, but David was struggling with the warder in the dock and insisting that he would not have the witness called. In a moment’s silence I heard the tap of the Judge’s pencil.