The Second Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  I pulled the letter Henry had given me from my pocket, and saw it was embossed with the insignia of the Royal Courts of Justice. I have kept the Featherstone letter in my Black Museum to this day, together with other criminally used instruments of murder and mayhem, so I can now give it to you verbatim. All you will miss is Guthrie’s haphazard and occasionally illegible handwriting.

  ‘Dear old Horace, old boy,’ the letter ran. ‘Just a brief note to introduce Sam Ballard, who was, in fact, my fag master at Marlborough, and is now a silk with an excellent practice in the Midlands.’ As I read this I felt a faint hope: perhaps the wretched Bollard would stay in the Midlands. ‘But,’ the letter went on, ‘Sam came to us looking for a London home. All the other fellows agreed and, as you were off in the jungle, we knew you’d have no objection. Someone’ll have to take over as Head of Chambers as I’m detained “During Her Majesty’s Pleasure”. And Sam Ballard is clearly a likely candidate. But I don’t want to interfere, at this distance, with the democratic process of my old set. Marigold joins me in sending all our best wishes to you and Hilda. May you soldier on for many years yet, old fellow. Guthrie Featherstone.’

  ‘Glad you could make it to the meeting, Rumpole.’ Hoskins was smiling at me.

  ‘Are you?’ I took a seat by the door.

  ‘We thought Roger Bullingham might have put you in chokey, Horace, on a little matter of Contempt of Court!’ Claude was having his little joke.

  ‘Oh, Erskine-Brown, you’re so amusing!’

  ‘Well. Now we’re all assembled…’ The Bollard throat was being cleared in an ecclesiastical manner.

  ‘Dearly beloved brethren,’ I muttered.

  ‘I suppose we should decide who is going to approach the Inn, as the new Head of this Chambers,’ Ballard ploughed on regardless. ‘Now I don’t suppose it’s a matter we should want to discuss in a public meeting.’

  ‘What do you suggest we do, Bollard?’ I asked. ‘Go into a session of silent prayer, and then send puffs of smoke up from the clerk’s room? Let’s have it out, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Speaking for myself, I have been in these Chambers for a good many years,’ Erskine-Brown weighed in.

  ‘Not half as long as Rumpole!’ Uncle Tom made the first pro-me remark. I thanked him for it silently.

  ‘Rumpole’s been here since the year dot, as far as I can remember,’ Uncle Tom added, less helpfully.

  ‘And although I’ve not yet been able to put on the knee breeches and silk gown, as you have, Ballard,’ Erskine-Brown gave a modest grin, ‘my application is in to the Lord Chancellor’s office and I can’t imagine there’ll be any difficulty.’

  ‘Don’t count your chickens, old darling,’ I warned him.

  ‘Why? Have you heard anything?’ I was relieved to see a look of anxiety on the Erskine-Brown face.

  ‘There’s many a slip,’ I improvised, ‘between the knee breeches and the hip.’ This managed to get a lone chuckle from Uncle Tom.

  ‘Of course, I’m a complete newcomer here,’ Ballard started off again, very seriously.

  ‘Yes, you are,’ I agreed. ‘They just dropped you in with today’s Times.’

  ‘But whoever heads these Chambers will, I hope, be able to take the position seriously.’ Ballard gave me an aloof sort of look.

  ‘Here endeth the first lesson,’ I said.

  ‘It’s also terribly important that whoever heads us should be a barrister entirely sans reproche,’ Claude suggested.

  ‘Oh, absolument, Erskine-Brown,’ I said.

  ‘Our Chambers is riding high at the moment. One of our number has just been made up to the High Court Bench,’ Claude went on.

  ‘Oh, I agree.’ Hoskins always agreed. ‘We should remember that this election is caused because Guthrie Featherstone has been made a judge.’

  ‘The age of miracles is not dead.’ I did a bit of agreeing myself.

  ‘We must be careful to keep our high reputation,’ Erskine-Brown said. ‘It would be most unfortunate if we had a Head who could possibly be accused of sharp practice.’ He gave a casual glance in my direction, and I asked him, ‘What do you mean exactly, Erskine-Brown?’

  ‘I don’t think there should be any speculation arising out of the recent case at the Old Bailey,’ Ballard was delighted to say. ‘It’s true a question of Contempt of Court did arise, but that issue still has to be decided. There has been no finding as to how the information was “leaked”. Of course,’ he also gave me a look, ‘one hopes that the “leak” didn’t come from any member of the legal profession.’

  ‘Does one really hope that?’ I asked, but Ballard ignored the question.

  ‘So I would ask you all to put the regrettable matter of a flagrant Contempt out of your minds for the purposes of this decision. Wouldn’t you agree that that is the fair approach?’

  ‘Oh, Bollard,’ I thought. ‘How very clever!’

  ‘Well now. Rumpole, as an old member of this set…’

  ‘Of course he’s old. Rumpole can’t help being old!’ Uncle Tom explained to the meeting.

  ‘Have you anything to say?’ Ballard asked.

  ‘Why sentence of death should not be passed against me?’ I said, and then addressed them all. ‘Only this. Don’t forget the claims of someone who has been associated with these Chambers for far, far longer than any of you, who grew up in these fly-blown rooms and on this dusty staircase, who doesn’t aspire to silk, or judicial office, or even to appearing before the Uxbridge Magistrates, one whose whole ambition is centred on that meaningless title, “Head of Chambers”!’

  ‘What’s Rumpole talking about?’ Uncle Tom asked no one in particular.

  ‘He means himself,’ said Claude.

  ‘No, Erskine-Brown,’ I assured him. ‘I don’t mean me.’

  I was thinking, of course, of She Who Must Be Obeyed, whose ambition to be married to the Head of her father’s old Chambers was, thinking again of the old Scottish Tragedy, much like Lady Macbeth’s bizarre longing to see her husband tricked out in Duncan’s crown. When I got home to our mansion flat, She was ambling round a hot stove, and once again She asked me how it went.

  ‘Half and half,’ I told her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Lees got off the blackmail. Six months apiece on the disorderly house.’

  ‘I don’t mean in Court! I mean in Chambers.’

  ‘Well, it’s in Court that things happen, Hilda. People don’t get sent to prison in Chambers. Well, not yet, anyway.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so tiresome, Rumpole. I mean in the Chambers meeting! Has it been decided yet?’

  It was time to attack an evening bottle of the ordinary claret with a corkscrew, and I did so without delay. Someone had to celebrate something.

  ‘Well. Not finally,’ I told her.

  ‘But in principle, Rumpole. I mean, it’s been decided in principle?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I think so.’

  ‘The Chambers party’s on the 29th. That’s when they’ll announce the decision, isn’t it?’

  ‘I shouldn’t bother to go to that, Hilda.’ I poured her a generous slurp. ‘They’re pretty grim occasions.’

  ‘This won’t be grim!’ She assured me. ‘It’ll be a triumph, Rumpole. And nothing on earth is going to keep me away!’

  Until the day of the Chambers party dawned, I avoided discussing the subject further with Hilda, and She remained determined to join in what she felt sure would be the jollifications. Not long before the party, our assorted barristers voted on the question of leadership, but for one reason or another I didn’t bring home to Hilda the result of their decision. On the day in question, several large cardboard boxes, filled, so it seemed, with ‘cocktail snacks’, were brought by Hilda’s friend, Dodo Mackintosh, round to the mansion flat, and I had to ferry them down to Chambers by taxi.

  So, at the end of the day, we all assembled in the former Featherstone room, where Henry and Dianne had set up a bar on the desk, and had Dodo’s delicacies set out on plates rea
dy for handing round. Hilda was there, resplendent in what seemed to be a new rig-out, and there were a few other wives and girlfriends, although Mrs Phillida Erskine-Brown, whose practice seemed to be growing to gigantic proportions, was now away doing an arson in Swansea.

  I hovered around, keeping within pouring distance of the bar, and I heard my wife in close conversation with the blasted Ballard. She seemed to be giving him a guided tour of Dodo’s cookery, which he was consuming steadily without interrupting her flow of words.

  ‘These are cheese-and-oniony, and those are the little sausage arrangements, if that’s what you’d prefer,’ I heard Hilda telling him. ‘Of course, I’ll be looking after these parties now. Marigold Featherstone was a sweet person, wasn’t she? But I don’t think she took a great interest in the canapés.’ The same could not be said of Ballard. He took another couple of items from a plate, and Hilda went on talking. ‘That’s a little prawny sort of volauvent arrangement. Frightfully light, isn’t it? I do want these evenings to be a success for Rumpole!’

  There was a scatter of applause then for Henry, who requested silence by bumping a glass on the desk, and Uncle Tom was called on to say a few moderately ill-chosen words.

  ‘It falls to me,’ he started, ‘as the oldest member of Chambers, in the matter of years, to do honours here tonight.’

  ‘Uncle Tom!’ Hilda called out to him in high excitement. He stopped and gave her a look of some surprise. ‘Mrs Rumpole?’

  ‘Carry on then, Uncle Tom,’ Hilda gave her permission gracefully.

  ‘Thank you. I remember Number 3 Equity Court years ago, when old C. H. Wystan was Head of Chambers.’

  ‘Uncle Tom remembers Daddy!’ Hilda announced to the world in general.

  ‘Exactly. And Horace Rumpole and I used to hang about waiting for work. I used to practise approach shots with an old mashie niblick! It seemed my one legal ambition was to get my balls into the waste-paper basket in the clerk’s room.’

  This last sentence caused Miss Fiona Allways to choke on an asparagus roll, and have to be slapped on the back by Henry. Uncle Tom went on with his past history of Equity Court.

  ‘Then the present Mr Justice Featherstone came to head us. Of course, he was then plain Guthrie Featherstone, Q.C., M.P. And now another chapter opens in our history…’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ Hilda applauded loudly.

  ‘The man I have to introduce as our new Head, agreed on by a comfortable majority, is well known, not only in legal circles but in the Church…’ Uncle Tom said, and in this puzzled She Who Must Be Obeyed. She looked at me, startled, and murmured, ‘Rumpole religious?’

  ‘He is a man deeply concerned with problems of morality,’ Uncle Tom continued, warming to his work. ‘I happened to be taking dinner with old Tuppy Timpson, ex-Canon of Southwark Cathedral, and he said, “Little bird told me about your new Head of Chambers. You’ve got a sound man there. And one who walketh in the ways of righteousness, even through the Valley of the Central Criminal Court.” ’

  ‘The ways of righteousness!’ Hilda was laughing. ‘You ought to see him at breakfast, particularly when he’s in a nasty temper!’

  ‘Hilda!’ I whispered to her, begging her to stop.

  ‘Not much of the ways of righteousness then, Uncle Tom,’ She said, but the oldest inhabitant was into his peroration.

  ‘So let us raise a glass, ladies and gentlemen, to our new Head of Chambers. I give you our dear old Chambers, Number 3 Equity Court, coupled with the name…’

  ‘Rumpole!’ Hilda said loudly, but Uncle Tom was louder when he announced, ‘The name of Sam Ballard, One of Her Majesty’s Counsel. Long may he reign over us!’

  They were all drinking to the Bollard health and all I could say was, ‘Amen.’ Then I turned to Hilda, and there were tears in her eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry old girl.’ I felt I should comfort her.

  ‘You never told me!’

  ‘I funked it.’ It was perfectly true.

  ‘Passed over again!’ She dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief, sniffed and looked extremely bleak.

  ‘Cheer up,’ I said. ‘It’s not the end of the world. You know you’re still a great advocate. Terrific in an argument. Who cares about being Head of Chambers?’

  Henry had found a bottle of Pommeroy’s special offer champagne to toast our new leader, and I got my fingers round it. Hilda looked at me coldly, and then pronounced judgement.

  ‘You’re a failure, Rumpole!’ she said.

  ‘Then take a slurp of champagne, why don’t you?’ I filled our glasses. ‘Let’s drink to failure!’

  But Hilda was looking across to where Ballard stood masticating.

  ‘He’s eating all Dodo’s little cheesy bits. The cheek of it!’ she said. She sounded furious and I knew, with considerable relief, that She Who Must Be Obeyed was herself again.

  Rumpole and the Female of the Species

  It may be said by those who read these memoirs, particularly by those of the female persuasion, that Rumpole is in some ways unsympathetic to the aspirations of women. This may be because, in the privacy of my own thoughts and when writing late at night in the solitary confines of my kitchen, I refer to my wife, Hilda Rumpole, as ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed’. It is true that I have given her this title, but Hilda’s character, her air of easy command which might, if she had been born in other circumstances, have brought empires under her sway, and her undisputed government of our daily life at Froxbury Court, entitles her to no less an acclamation. Those who feel that I am not firmly on the female side in the Battle of the Sexes may care to consider my long struggle to get Miss Fiona Allways accepted as a member of our Chambers at Equity Court, and those who might think that I only engaged myself in this struggle to annoy the egregious Bollard and irritate Claude Erskine-Brown are guilty of a quite unworthy cynicism.

  The dispute over the entry of Miss Allways into our close-knit group of learned friends arose during the time that our Chambers had a brief in the Pond Hill bank job. We were charged with the defence of Tony Timson.

  I have written repeatedly elsewhere of the Timsons, the large family of South London villains who, many years ago, appointed me their Attorney-General and whose unending efforts have brought a considerable amount of work to Equity Court. Tony Timson belonged to the younger generation of the clan. He occupied a pleasant, semi-detached house on a South London estate with his wife, April, and their child, Vincent. His house was lavishly furnished with a large variety of video-recording machines, television sets, hi-fi equipment, spindriers, eye-line grills, ultraviolet-ray cookers, deep freezes and suchlike aids to gracious living. Many of these articles were said to be the fruit of Tony Timson’s tireless night work.

  When Inspector Broome called at the Timson house shortly after the Pond Hill bank job, he found the young master alone and playing ‘Home Sweet Home’ on a newly acquired electric organ. He also found five thousand pounds in crisp, new, neatly packaged twenty-pound notes in the gleaming Super Snow White Extra Deluxe model washing machine. Tony Timson was ripped from the bosom of his wife April and young Vincent, and placed within the confines of Brixton Prison, and I wondered if I should ultimately get the brief.

  The appointment of Rumpole for the defence should, of course, have been a foregone conclusion. But the Timson Solicitor-General was Mr Bernard, and between that gentleman and Rumpole there was a bit of a cold wind blowing, owing to a tiff which had taken place one day at the Uxbridge Magistrates Court. I had arrived at this particular Palais de Justice a little late one day, owing to a tailback on the Piccadilly Line, only to discover that the gutless Bernard had allowed our client of the day to plead guilty to a charge of handling. He had thrown in the towel!

  I hadn’t actually been rude to Mr Bernard. I had merely improved his education by quoting Shakespeare’s Richard II. ‘O, villain, viper, damned without redemption!’ I said to my instructing solicitor, ‘Would you make peace? Terrible hell make war upon your spotted soul for this.’ Mr Bernard, it seem
ed, hadn’t appreciated the quality of the lines and there was, as I say, an east wind blowing between us. So I wasn’t greatly surprised when Henry gave me an account of what happened when Bernard came into our clerk’s room and gave Henry the brief in R. v. Timson. Henry said that he supposed that would be for Mr Rumpole.

  ‘You suppose wrong, young man,’ Mr Bernard said firmly.

  ‘Do I?’ Henry raised his eyebrows.

  ‘The brief is clearly marked for the attention of Mrs Phillida Erskine-Brown,’ Bernard pointed out, and Henry saw that it was so. ‘I can put up with a good deal, Henry, from members of the so-called senior branch of our great profession,’ Mr Bernard told him, ‘but I will not be called a villainous viper in the clear hearing of the Clerk to the Uxbridge Magistrates Court.’

  At which point Mrs Phillida Erskine-Brown, now an extremely successful lady barrister, entered the clerk’s room and Henry handed her the papers.

  ‘A wonderfully prepared brief, I don’t doubt, like all Mr Bernard’s work.’ Phillida smiled with great charm at the glowing solicitor, and then asked tactfully, ‘How’s your daughter, Mr Bernard? Polytechnic going well still, is it?’ Mrs Erskine-Brown, since the days when she was plain Miss Phillida Trant, hadn’t got where she was by legal ability alone; she was expert at public relations.

  ‘Three A’s,’ Mr Bernard was delighted to say. ‘Thank you for asking.’

  ‘And still keeping up her figure skating, I bet. Chip off the old block, wouldn’t you say so, Henry? See you in Brixton, Mr Bernard.’

  She flashed another smile and went on her way, whereupon Bernard told Henry that he always thought that Mrs Erskine-Brown had a real feeling for the law.

  I had decided to improve the facilities in our mansion flat at Froxbury Court by erecting a shelf on our living-room wall to accommodate such necessities as The Oxford Book of English Verse (the Quiller-Couch edition), Professor Andrew Ackerman on The Importance of Bloodstains in the Detection of Crime, Archbold’s Criminal Pleading and Practice – a little out of date, and a spare bottle or two of Château Thames Embankment of a fairly recent year. I celebrated my entry into the construction industry by buying what I think is known as a ‘kit’ of Easy-Do Convenience Shelving and a few basic tools, and in no time at all, such was my natural feeling for woodwork, I had the shelf up and triumphantly bearing its load.