The Second Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  When I showed the results of my labours to Hilda, she didn’t immediately congratulate me, but asked, unnecessarily I thought, if I had ‘plugged’ the wall in accordance with the instructions that came in the ‘Easy-Do’ box.

  ‘I never read the instructions to counsel before doing a murder, Hilda,’ I told her firmly. ‘Rely on the facts, and the instinct of the advocate. It’s never let me down yet in Court.’

  ‘Well, I do notice you haven’t been in Court very much lately.’ Hilda took an unfair advantage.

  ‘A temporary lull in business. Nothing serious,’ I assured her.

  ‘It’s because you’re rude to solicitors.’ Hilda, of course, knew best. I didn’t want to argue the matter further, so I told her that my new shelf was firm as a rock, and added an air of distinction to our living room.

  ‘Are you sure it’s straight?’ Hilda asked. ‘I think it’s definitely at an angle.’

  ‘Oh really, Hilda! It’s because you’re at an angle,’ I said, I’m afraid a little impatiently. ‘One small gin and tonic at lunchtime and you do your well-known imitation of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.’

  ‘Well, if that’s how you talk to solicitors,’ Hilda was starting to tidy away my carpenter’s tools and sweep up the sawdust, ‘no wonder I’ve got you at home all day.’ As I have remarked earlier, there is a good deal to be said in favour of She Who Must Be Obeyed, but she’s hardly a fair opponent in an argument.

  I left our improved home and went down to Chambers and, there being not much else to engage my attention before a five o’clock Chambers meeting, I took a little time off to instruct Miss Fiona Allways, who had proudly acquired a case entirely of her own, in the art of making a final speech for the defence. Picture us then, alone in my room, the teacher Rumpole standing as though to address the Court and the pupil Allways sitting obediently to learn.

  ‘Soon this case will be over, members of the jury.’ I gave her my usual peroration. ‘In a little while you will go back to your jobs and your families, and you will forget all about it. At most it is only a small part of your lives. But for my client it is the whole of his life! And it is that life I leave with confidence in your hands, certain that there can be only one verdict in this case – “Not Guilty”!… Sink down exhausted then, Fiona,’ I told her, ‘mopping the brow.’ I sat and plied a large red spotted handkerchief. ‘Good end to a final speech, don’t you think?’

  ‘Will it work just as well for me?’ she asked doubtfully. ‘I mean, my man’s only accused of nicking six frozen chicken pieces from Safeways.’

  ‘Goes just as well on any occasion!’ I assured her.

  And then Claude Erskine-Brown put his head round the door and told me that Ballard was upstairs and just about to start the Chambers meeting. Erskine-Brown then retired and Fiona looked at me in a despondent sort of manner.

  ‘Is this when they decide,’ she sounded desperately anxious, ‘if they’re going to let me stay on here?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I shall tell them…’ I promised her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, let me think. Something like, “The female of the species is more deadly than the male.” Look on the bright side, Miss Allways. Perk up, Fiona. I’ve cracked far tougher Courts than that lot up there!’

  I went to the door without any real idea of how to handle the case of Allways and then, as so often happens, thank God, inspiration struck. I turned back towards her.

  ‘Oh, by the way,’ I said. ‘Just one question. You know old Claude, who just popped his head in here?’

  ‘Mr Erskine-Brown?’

  ‘He doesn’t tickle your fancy, does he, by any chance? You don’t find him devastatingly attractive?’

  ‘Of course not!’ Fiona managed her first smile of the day. ‘He’s hardly Paul Newman, is he?’

  ‘No, I suppose he isn’t.’ I must confess the news came to me as something of a relief. ‘Well, that’s all right then. I’ll see what I can do.’

  Ballard had made a few changes, none of them very much for the better, in Featherstone’s old room. Guthrie’s comfortable chairs had gone, and his silver cigarette-box, his picture of Marigold and the children, his comforting sherry decanter and bone china tea service and his perfectly harmless watercolours. Ballard had few luxuries except a number of etchings of English cathedrals in plain, light oak frames, the corners of which protruded in a Gothic and ecclesiastical manner, and an old tin of ginger biscuits which stood on his desk, and which he never offered about.

  ‘Sorry. Am I late for Evensong?’ I asked cheerfully as I sat beside Uncle Tom. Ballard, without a glance in my direction, continued with the business in hand.

  ‘We have to consider an application by Fiona Allways for a permanent seat in Chambers,’ he said. ‘Mrs Erskine-Brown, you were her pupil master.’

  ‘Mistress,’ I corrected him, but nobody noticed.

  ‘It’s an extremely tough life at the Bar for a woman,’ Phillida spoke from the depths of her experience. ‘I’m by no means sure that Allways has got what it takes. Just as a for instance, she burst into tears when left alone at Thames Magistrates Court.’

  ‘I know exactly how she felt,’ I said. ‘That was never my favourite tribunal.’

  ‘Of course. Rumpole’s done a case with her.’ Ballard looked at me in a vaguely accusing manner.

  ‘She took a note for me once. Something about her I liked,’ I had to admit. And when Hoskins asked me what it was, I said that she felt strongly about winning cases.

  ‘Who is this fellow Allways?’ Uncle Tom asked with an expression of mild bewilderment.

  ‘This fellow’s a girl, Uncle Tom,’ I told him.

  ‘Oh, good heavens. Are we getting another one of them?’ Our oldest inhabitant grumbled, and Mrs Erskine-Brown brought the discussion up to date by saying, ‘I really don’t think that the mere fact that this girl is a girl should guarantee her a place at 3 Equity Court.’

  ‘Philly’s perfectly right.’ Claude came in as a dutiful husband should. ‘We shouldn’t take in a token woman, like a token black.’

  ‘Are we taking in a black woman, then?’ Uncle Tom merely asked for clarity.

  ‘Why not?’ I said. ‘I could’ve brought one back from Africa.’

  ‘This is obviously a problem that has to be taken seriously.’ Ballard spoke disapprovingly from the chair.

  ‘Well, I think we should go for a well-established man. Someone who’s got to know a few solicitors, who can bring work to Chambers,’ Mrs Erskine-Brown suggested politically.

  ‘Steady on, Portia old fellow,’ I cautioned her. ‘Whatever happened to the quality of mercy?’

  ‘I honestly don’t see what mercy has to do with it.’

  ‘Dear God,’ I was moved to say. ‘It seems but yesterday that Miss Phillida Trant, white in the wig and a newcomer to the ladies’ robing room, was accusing Henry of hiding the key to the lavatory, as a sexist gesture! Can it be that now you’ve stormed the citadel you want to slam the door behind you?’

  ‘Really, Rumpole!’ Ballard called me to order. ‘You’re not addressing a jury now. I don’t think anyone could possibly accuse this Chambers of having the slightest prejudice against female barristers.’

  ‘Of course not. Provided they settle somewhere else, no doubt we find them quite delightful,’ I agreed.

  ‘I believe I’ve told you all that I’ve applied for a silk gown.’ Erskine-Brown was never tired of telling us this.

  ‘And I’m sure you’ll look extremely pretty in it,’ I assured him.

  ‘And from what I hear, quite informally of course…’

  ‘In the bag, is it, Erskine-Brown?’

  ‘That’s not for me to say, but Philly is, of course, right behind me in this.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ his wife assured him. The Erskine-Browns were in a conjugal mood that day. And he rambled on, saying, ‘So with two Q. C.s at the top, it would be a great pity if these Chambers became weak in the tail.’

  ‘What would be a pity?’
Uncle Tom asked me.

  ‘If our tail got weak, Uncle Tom.’

  ‘Of course it would.’ It was a puzzling meeting for the old boy. Erskine-Brown didn’t further enlighten him by saying, ‘I’m not interested in the sex side, of course.’ I noticed then that his wife was looking into the middle distance in a detached sort of way. ‘But I just don’t feel that Allways is the right person to carry on the best traditions of these Chambers.’

  ‘I agree,’ Hoskins agreed.

  ‘So Fiona Allways can swell the ranks of the unemployed?’ I asked with some asperity.

  ‘Oh, come on, Rumpole. She’s got a rich daddy. She’s not going to starve.’

  ‘Only miss the one thing she’s ever wanted to do,’ I grumbled, but Ballard was collecting the final views of the meeting. He asked Uncle Tom for his considered opinion.

  ‘I remember a Fiona. Used to work in the List Office.’ Uncle Tom wasn’t particularly helpful. ‘She wasn’t black, of course. No, I’m against it.’

  ‘Well, I think I’ve got the sense of the meeting. I shall tell Miss Allways that she’ll have to look elsewhere.’

  It was time for quick thinking, and I thought extremely quickly. The best way to confuse lawyers is to tell them about a law which they think they’ve forgotten.

  ‘Just a moment.’ I hauled a diary out of my waistcoat pocket.

  ‘What is it, Rumpole?’ Ballard sounded impatient.

  ‘This isn’t the third Thursday of the Hilary Term!’ I said severely.

  ‘Of course it isn’t.’ Erskine-Brown had not got my point, but I had, just in time. ‘Well!’ I said positively. ‘We always decide questions of Chambers entry on the third Thursday of the Hilary Term. It was the rule of my sainted father-in-law’s day. Guthrie Featherstone, Q.C., observed it religiously. Of course, if the new broom wants to make any radical changes…? I looked at Ballard in a strict sort of way, and I must say he flinched.

  ‘Well. No,’ he said. ‘I suppose not. Are you sure it’s the rule?’ He looked at Erskine-Brown, who couldn’t say he remembered it.

  ‘You were in rompers, Erskine-Brown, when this thing was first decided,’ I told him impatiently. ‘Our old clerk, Albert, said it was impossible otherwise, from a book-keeping point of view. I do think we should keep to the rules, don’t you, Bollard? I mean, we can’t have anarchy at Equity Court!’

  ‘That’s in four weeks’ time.’ Ballard was consulting his diary now.

  ‘Exactly!’

  Ballard put away his diary and came to a decision. ‘We’ll deal with it then. It shouldn’t take long, as we’ve reached a conclusion.’

  ‘Oh no. A mere formality,’ I agreed.

  ‘What are you playing at, Rumpole?’ Mrs Erskine-Brown was looking at me with some suspicion.

  ‘Nothing much, Portia,’ I assured her. ‘Merely keeping up the best traditions of these Chambers.’

  The Pond Hill branch of the United Metropolitan Bank was held up by a number of men in stocking masks, who carried holdalls from which emerged a sawn-off shotgun or two and a sledgehammer for shattering the glass in front of the cashier. When the robbery was complete the four masked men ran to the getaway car, a stolen Ford Cortina, which was waiting for them outside the bank, and it was this vehicle, the prosecution alleged, that Tony Timson had been driving. On the way to the car one of the men stumbled and fell. He was seized upon by an officer on traffic duty, and later found to be a Mr Gerry Molloy – a remarkable fact when you consider the deep hostility which has always existed between the Timson family and the clan Molloy. Indeed, these two tribes have hated each other for as long as I can remember and I have already chronicled an instance of their feud.*

  It seems that all the other men engaged on the Pond Hill enterprise were Molloys. They got away, so it was hardly to be wondered at that Mr Gerald Molloy decided to become a grass and involve a Timson when he told his story to the police.

  In the course of time Mrs Erskine-Brown and her instructing solicitor went to Brixton to see their client but, as I later heard from him and from Mr Bernard, Tony Timson seemed to have only one thing on his mind as he walked into the interview room and said, ‘Where’s Mr Rumpole?’

  Phillida Erskine-Brown, in her jolliest, ‘we’re all lads together’ voice, merely said, ‘Care for a fag, Tony?’ Tony didn’t mind if he did, and when Phillida had lit it for him, Bernard broke the bad news.

  ‘This is Mrs Erskine-Brown, Tony,’ he said. ‘She’s going to be your brief.’

  ‘I see they’ve charged you with taking part in the robbery, not merely the receiving. Of course, they’ve done that on Gerry Molloy’s evidence.’ Phillida started off in a businesslike way, but Tony Timson was looking at his solicitor in a kind of panic and paying no attention to her at all.

  ‘Mr Rumpole’s always the Timsons’ brief,’ he said. ‘You know that, Mr Bernard. Mr Rumpole defended my dad, and my Uncle Cyril and saw me through my Juvenile Court and my Borstal training…’

  ‘Mr Rumpole can’t have done all that well for you if you got Borstal training,’ Bernard said reasonably.

  ‘Well…’ Tony looked at Phillida for support. ‘Win a few, lose a few, you know that, missus?’

  ‘Any reason why Gerry Molloy should grass on you, Tony?’ Phillida tried to return to the matter in hand.

  ‘Look. It’s good of you to come here but…’

  At which Phillida, no doubt in an attempt to reassure the client, lapsed into robbers’ argot. ‘You ever had a meet with him where any sort of bank job was ever mentioned?’ she asked. ‘Molloy says in the deps that he was the sledge, two others had sawn-offs in their holdalls, and you were the driver. He says you’re pretty good on wheels, Tony.’

  ‘This is highly embarrassing, this is.’ Tony looked suitably pained at Phillida’s personal knowledge of crime.

  ‘What is, Tony?’ She did her best to sound deeply sympathetic.

  ‘You being a woman and all. It don’t feel right, not with a woman.’

  ‘Don’t think of me as a woman, Tony,’ she tried to reassure him. ‘Think of me entirely as a brief.’

  ‘It’s no good.’ Tony shook his head. ‘I keep thinking of my wife, April.’

  ‘Well, of course she’s worried about you. That’s only natural, seeing you got nicked, Tony.’

  ‘I don’t mean that. I mean I wouldn’t want a woman like my April to take on my job, would I? Briefs, and us what gets ourselves into a bit of trouble down the Bailey and that. It’s all man’s work, innit?’

  Well, that may come as a shrewd shock to all readers of those women’s pages which I have occasionally glanced at in Fiona Allways’s Guardian, but I’m told that it is exactly what Tony Timson said. As a consequence it was a rueful Phillida Erskine-Brown who walked away from the interview room, across the yard where the screws exercised the alsatians and the trusties weeded the flower beds, towards the gate.

  ‘The Timsons are such old-fashioned villains.’ Mr Bernard apologized for them. ‘They’re always about half a century behind the times.’

  ‘It’s not your fault, Mr Bernard,’ said Phillida miserably.

  ‘You wait till my wife gets to hear about this! They’re pretty hot on women’s rights in the Hammersmith S.D.P.’ Bernard was clearly deeply affronted.

  ‘It’s the client’s right to choose.’ Phillida was taking it on the chin.

  ‘It’s decent of you to be like that about it, Mrs Erskine-Brown. It’s absolutely no reflection on you, of course. But…’ Bernard looked deeply embarrassed. ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to take in a chap to lead you.’

  They had arrived at the gatehouse and were about to be sprung, when Phillida Erskine-Brown looked at Mr Bernard and said she wondered who the chap would be exactly.

  ‘It goes against the grain,’ said Bernard, ‘but we’ve really got no choice, have we?’

  A good deal later that evening I was on my way home when I happened to pass Pommeroy’s Wine Bar and, in the hope that they might be offloading cooking cl
aret at a reasonable rate, I went in and saw, alone and palely loitering at the bar with an oldish sandwich and a glass of hock, none other than Claude Erskine-Brown. I saw the chance of playing another card in the long game of ‘Getting Fiona into Chambers’, and I engaged the woebegone figure in conversation, the burden of which was that Phillida was so enormously busy at the Bar that the sandwich might well have to do for the Erskine-Brown supper.

  ‘Of course,’ I said sympathetically. ‘Your wife must be pretty hard pressed now she’s taken the Timsons off me.’

  ‘She doesn’t get home in the evenings until Tristan’s gone to bed,’ Erskine-Brown told me, and I looked at him and said, ‘Just as well.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ The man sounded slightly offended.

  ‘Just as well young Fiona Allways isn’t coming into Chambers,’ I explained.

  ‘You agree that we shouldn’t take her?’

  ‘In all the circumstances, well, perhaps I’d better not say anything.’

  ‘What do you mean, Rumpole?’ Erskine-Brown was puzzled.

  ‘It might have raised all sorts of problems. I mean, it might have got too much for you to handle.’

  ‘What might have got too much for me to handle?’

  ‘It would create all sorts of difficulties, in the spring, and all that sort of thing. We don’t want the delicate perfume of young Fiona floating round Chambers, do we?’ I said, as casually as possible.

  ‘Well, I don’t suppose I’d’ve seen much of her.’

  ‘Oh, but you would, you know.’

  ‘Not as a silk.’

  ‘You’d’ve been thrown together. Chambers meetings. Brushing past each other in the clerk’s room. Before you knew where you were you’d be popping out for tea and a couple of chocky biscuits in the ABC.’ I looked as gravely concerned as I knew how. ‘Terribly dangerous!’