The Second Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  ‘Yes. They was quarrelling, like. In the sitting room. I could hear voices.’

  ‘Whose voices?’

  ‘Both, I reckon.’

  ‘Could you hear any words?’

  ‘I hear two words.’

  ‘What were they?’

  ‘ “Kill you” – I heard that said. Loud. By her.’

  ‘By Mrs Postern.’ Pinker paused to let the evidence sink in. ‘And after that?’

  ‘Then I see Mr Postern go out. He walked towards the woods.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘Mrs Postern stayed indoors. Then she went out.’

  ‘How long did she stay out?’

  ‘I don’t rightly know. Ten minutes, quarter of an hour perhaps. Then she came back and got it.’

  ‘Got what?’

  Mrs Hempe pursed her lips as though about to have to mention some indelicacy, looked at the jury and said, ‘Her shotgun.’

  ‘Did you see her get it?’ Pinker asked.

  ‘No. But I see her go out with it under her arm. She went back towards the woods again.’

  ‘That is the direction Mr Postern had taken?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What happened next? Just tell the jury.’

  ‘I heard a shot from the wood,’ Mrs Hempe just told the jury.

  ‘From the way they’d both gone.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Hempe.’

  Gavin Pinker consulted Harmsway, who took the view that Mrs Hempe had done all that could be expected of her to scupper the defence, and I rose to cross-examine. I knew I would get nowhere at all by calling Mrs Hempe a liar, so I began to investigate the points that interested me, hoping to get the cooperation of the good Mrs Hempe.

  ‘You heard one shot?’ I asked her.

  ‘No. I heard others.’

  ‘You heard others. When?’

  ‘I heard some shooting from the wood. That was before Mrs Postern went out.’

  ‘But after Mr Postern went out?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘After Mrs Postern went out, how many shots did you hear?’

  ‘Just one.’

  ‘Are you sure of that?’

  ‘I’ll take my Bible oath to it.’ Mrs Hempe sounded nettled.

  ‘Just one shot and that is all?’

  ‘It was enough, wasn’t it?’

  The jury nodded in sympathy with the witness. I hurried on to another topic. ‘Now, you heard these words, “Kill you”. You’ve sworn that was all you heard her say?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  I took my courage in my hands and launched an extremely dangerous question. ‘You didn’t hear her say, “I’ll kill you”, for instance?’ I suggested, and held my breath until the witness gave me a hesitant and reluctant, ‘No.’

  ‘So she might possibly have been warning him that someone else might kill him?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Mrs Hempe sounded extremely grudging. ‘But she was the only one there, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Exactly.’ Twyburne was no longer able to restrain himself. ‘Are you suggesting that someone else might have killed him, Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘My Lord. I was merely exploring the possibilities.’ I gave the old darling my most charming smile and sat down.

  Sometime during that morning I glanced up at the public gallery and saw the face of Maurice Fishbourne staring down at me through a new pair of spectacles. Mr Figgis from the cottage in the woods near the Postern house was in the witness-box. He was a grizzled, stooping man in his late sixties, I judged, wearing an old torn tweed jacket. He was imperfectly shaved, and his shirt looked as though it hadn’t been washed for some time. He was an old man who lived alone. Harmsway took him through his evidence-in-chief and then I rose to cross-examine.

  ‘When did you first see Mrs Postern on that day?’

  ‘When she was holding the shotgun. Standing about ten yards off him.’ Figgis was only too anxious to repeat his evidence.

  ‘Eventually you took the gun off her and broke it open?’

  ‘I did, yes.’

  ‘How many cartridges had been fired?’

  ‘Just the one.’ Figgis seemed to think the evidence damning, but I blessed him silently for it.

  ‘Just the one,’ I repeated for the jury. ‘You ejected the spent cartridge?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And did you go with her back to the house where she telephoned the police?’

  ‘I did.’ The old man seemed proud of the important part he played in these stirring events.

  ‘And was her gun in your possession until the police arrived?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m much obliged.’ I gave the jury another look. ‘Now, when you first saw Mrs Postern, what did she say, exactly?’

  ‘She said, “I did it. It was an accident.” ’

  ‘She said, “I did it.” Might it not have been, “I did it”?’

  ‘Is there a dispute as to what your client said, Mr Rumpole?’ Twyburne was irritated at what he clearly thought was a quibble.

  ‘No dispute as to what she said, my Lord. I am only interested to discover where the emphasis was put.’

  ‘You may be interested in that, Mr Rumpole. It remains to be seen in the fullness of time whether the point interests the jury.’ Twyburne looked at the jury and sighed heavily. The solid citizens continued to give nothing away.

  ‘It may be a question of some importance, my Lord.’

  ‘The words are there.’ And then Twyburne delivered himself into my hands. ‘How they were said seems to be a matter of unimportant insignificance,’ he said weightily.

  ‘May I suggest that it might be better to say, “of insignificance”, my Lord.’ I was extremely polite.

  ‘What?’ The Judge looked as puzzled as Harmsway had been on a similar occasion.

  ‘ “Unimportant insignificance” might be a bit of a tautology, might it not? Something of a torment to the English language,’ I suggested innocently. The barristers in Court seemed too stunned to laugh. There was a moment’s appalled silence when it seemed that the Judge might be prepared to commit me for Contempt of Court. Then he said quietly, ‘Ask your question, Mr Rumpole.’

  ‘Thanks awfully.’ Harmsworth gave me a whisper of gratitude, and I whispered back, ‘Don’t mention it.’ Then I asked Figgis again if he could remember how Jennifer Postern had emphasized the words of her admission.

  ‘She said, “I did it,” ’ he decided, after a good deal of thought.

  ‘Now I wonder why she said that,’ I speculated. ‘There was no one else about who could have done it, was there?’

  ‘Not as I could see.’

  ‘Not that you could see.’ I gave the jury time to think about that answer and then attacked another subject.

  ‘Mr Figgis. Do you keep a calling pheasant?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he protested.

  ‘Oh, I think you do. A cock bird in a cage whose cries invite numerous lady pheasants to visit your front garden when you knock them off from your downstairs window. So far as I can gather, you must have pheasant for breakfast, dinner and tea.’

  That got a small laugh from the jury. Figgis smiled modestly. ‘Maybe I does a bit of that,’ he admitted.

  ‘Mr Rumpole. This witness is not on trial for poaching.’ Twyburne was getting edgy. ‘Has this evidence the slightest relevance to this case?’

  ‘No doubt the jury will tell us that, my Lord. In the fullness of time.’ I turned back to the witness before the Judge could get at me again. ‘On the day you have been telling us about…’

  ‘The day I see Mr Postern dead?’

  ‘That’s it. What had you been doing that afternoon?’

  ‘I was in my cottage.’

  ‘And as usual you were doing a bit of shooting, were you?’

  ‘I may have been…’ His answer was extremely reluctant.

  ‘And your cottage is not more than fifteen yards from the scene of this alleged
crime?’

  ‘Mr Rumpole!’ The Judge came to Figgis’s rescue. ‘May I remind you that your client admitted shooting her husband with a shotgun and shotgun wounds and pellets were found in her husband’s body.’

  ‘Your Lordship may remind me of that, but I can assure you I haven’t forgotten it. Thank you, Mr Figgis.’ I smiled politely at the Judge, the witness, the jury and anyone else I could think of and sat down. Harmsway announced that he had no further questions for the witness.

  ‘Very well.’ Mr Justice Twyburne looked at the clock, and gave a small, wintry smile at the jury. ‘Members of the jury. This may be a convenient moment for you to obtain some refreshment. Be back at ten past two, please.’

  So the Judge rose. As I was about to leave, Fiona came up to me and asked if I was coming down to see ‘Sprod’.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I told her. ‘Not till she’s ready to tell me what happened.’

  At which moment the Judge’s clerk came up to me and said he had a message from his master.

  ‘Am I under arrest?’

  ‘On the contrary, sir. You’re invited to lunch in the lodgings.’

  ‘This case is full of surprises.’

  ‘The car’s outside. We travel in robes, sir.’

  On my way out to the Judge’s Rolls, I saw Maurice Fishbourne. He was standing on the pavement outside the Court, and he seemed about to speak to me, but then he changed his mind and turned away.

  The invitation to take lunch in the Judges’ ‘lodgings’, referred to above, may require some explanation for those not deeply versed in legal matters. In the olden days judges, barristers and their respective clerks and hangers-on, used to roll up in large coaches on circuit from one Assize town to the other, emptying the jails and usually despatching their inhabitants to some further proceedings beyond the grave. Each town had to provide fitting accommodation for the judges’ regular visits. A house was set aside, provided with silver, decanters, wine and servants, bed linen and firewood and all appropriate comforts by the municipality, and was known as the ‘Judges’ lodging’.

  Although the same enlightened planner (his name now escapes me) who abolished the greater part of the railways also cut out the circuit system – as though it were a rather slow branch line from Ashby de la Zouch – Red Judges, Judges of the Queen’s Bench, still go on tour and sit to try criminal cases in provincial centres and once there, become prisoners in their own lodgings. They are waited on by elderly retainers, they have no worries about queueing at Tesco’s, and they find it difficult to go to the pictures without a police escort. I have often wondered what would induce anyone to sentence themselves to such long terms of confinement.

  The lodgings, of course, are usually large and pleasant old houses, and the one at Tester was no exception. It was of a warm red brick, much decorated by honeysuckle and clematis and surrounded by a carefully manicured lawn. We had travelled there with a couple of policemen on motorbikes as outriders and I resisted a strong temptation to wave in a royal fashion to a little crowd of women at a bus stop. We left our wigs on the hall table, where they lay like dead and dirty white birds while we ate in our robes. Twyburne sat at the head of the table, Rumpole for the defence on his right, and Harmsway and Pinker on his left. The lunch, which was plain but excellent, passed without any particular embarrassment, except that Twyburne ignored me and addressed all his remarks to the prosecution team. As the butler served coffee and put the decanter of port on the table, Twyburne was finishing a well-used anecdote.

  ‘ “He sat beside me in the cinema, sir,” said the girl in the indecency case, “and put his hand up my skirt.” “Very well,” said the old Recorder, with his eye on the clock at lunchtime, “I suggest we leave it there until five past two.” ’

  Twyburne’s shoulders heaved and he laughed soundlessly at this. Pinker and Harmsway burst into almost uncontrollable mirth, and the Judge pushed the decanter in their direction. I was not laughing, and perhaps it was because he felt some sort of a challenge that the Judge turned to me for the first time.

  ‘Well now. No more arguments about grammar this afternoon, eh, Rumpole?’ he said.

  ‘Possibly not.’ I was making no promises.

  ‘All the same, you stood up to me pretty well.’ Twyburne was smiling in a patronizing sort of way. ‘That’s what we need in our job. Guts and determination to stick to an argument.’

  ‘Even if it’s wrong?’ I asked him.

  ‘Mistakes can usually be put right.’ He took an apple from a dish in front of him and began to peel it slowly and with great accuracy. Still angry at being ignored over the last half-hour, I said, ‘I suppose not in the death penalty days.’

  ‘Oh, you’re thinking of the young fellow who went out on the robbery. Case where they shot a policeman?’ Twyburne spoke vaguely, as though it were a minor matter that had happened a long time ago.

  ‘Martin Muschamp,’ I reminded him firmly.

  ‘Muschamp. Yes. Nothing else I could have done about that. I summed up the evidence – it was pretty damning, of course – and I left the matter to the jury.’ He had finished peeling the apple now, and divided it into neat quarters.

  ‘So it was just the luck of the draw, really?’ I asked him.

  ‘All this argument about the death penalty. We managed to take it in our stride. Did our duty. We didn’t enjoy it, of course. Lot of nonsense talked about judges eating muffins after death sentences. Well, you couldn’t get muffins in the Army and Navy Club.’ He looked at me and seemed to be waiting for a comment, or an apology. I didn’t oblige him. ‘All you could do was sum up and leave the matter to the jury.’ There was a new note in his voice now. It was no longer the voice of a Judge, but of an advocate, pleading for something. At last he said, ‘Nothing else I could do, was there?’

  I had a sudden feeling that Mr Justice Twyburne wanted to be forgiven, but who was I to forgive him? The only answer I had was, ‘I don’t know.’

  A long silence followed and ended when Twyburne popped a quarter of the apple in to his mouth, chewed it and asked, ‘Are you a gardener, Rumpole?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ I was no use to him.

  ‘Excuse me, Judge, where…?’ Harmsway asked, and when the Judge told him it was on the right just outside the door, he left, followed by his learned junior.

  ‘I’m a rose man myself,’ the Judge told me when we were left alone. ‘Of course, it’s been difficult to get round all the pruning since my wife died. Come and look at this.’ Twyburne got up and went to the sideboard. I knew now, without a doubt, that he wanted me to feel pity for him. He took a silver-framed photograph off the long stretch of mahogany. I was looking at two little girls in the garden.

  ‘The Mrs Sam Macreadys are flowering well, don’t you think? And that’s two of the grandchildren. I’ve got six now, altogether. This one’s the budding show-jumper.’

  He put the photograph down slowly and looked at me. He seemed very tired and enormously old. ‘I think I summed up Muschamp quite fairly,’ he said.

  ‘Didn’t you tell the jury they might well not believe a word of his evidence?’ I wasn’t letting him off.

  ‘That was my personal opinion. They were quite free to come to their own conclusion, wouldn’t you agree?’

  I said nothing. I didn’t want to give him what he wanted from me, not even a crumb of comfort. We stood facing each other in silence for a moment, and then Harmsway came back from the lavatory.

  ‘So kind of you, Judge,’ he said. ‘Such an agreeable luncheon.’

  When we had made our royal progress back to Court I cross-examined Detective Inspector Clover, the comfortable, rubicund local officer in charge of the case. I took hold of Exhibit One, which was Jennifer Postern’s shotgun, and held it up for his inspection. I put my questions gently. I was saving all my strength for the coming battle with Dr Overton, the pathologist.

  ‘This was the gun that fired the shot. You’re satisfied of that, Inspector?’

  ‘Quite sati
sfied, sir.’

  ‘It was, of course, immediately submitted to the ballistics expert, Mr Collinson, whose evidence has been read. You know his view is that only one barrel had been fired within the hours before he saw it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you found one cartridge case and one only at the scene of the crime?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So your view of this case, after the most thorough inquiries by the police, is that Mrs Postern fired one shot at her husband and one shot only?’

  The good Inspector turned to the Judge and gave me what I wanted. ‘That is absolutely clear, my Lord,’ he said.

  ‘Absolutely clear.’ I looked at the jury, willing them to remember what he’d said, and then I let the Inspector go.

  Dr Overton was young and extremely pleased with himself. He stood in the witness-box, with his reports and the mortuary photographs spread out in front of him, and lectured us as though we were a collection of housewives taking a course in elementary pathology on the University of the Air. He smiled at the jury after every answer and, when addressed by the Judge, he bowed like an over-eager hall porter working his way up to a generous tip. He wore a neat blue suit, his hair came over the tops of his ears, and he sported a small moustache. As Harmsway took him through his evidence, I stirred in my seat restlessly. I couldn’t wait for my turn to cross-examine.

  ‘Dr Overton, have you investigated previous cases of death by shotgun wounds?’ I began, when my opportunity came at last.

  ‘I think one.’ He smiled modestly at the jury.

  ‘Just one. And have you been called on to give evidence in a murder trial before?’

  ‘Well, no. Not, actually…’

  ‘Congratulations on your debut.’ I gave him a smile for which he wasn’t grateful. ‘Why was it that you were called in to perform the post mortem in this most important case? Is not Dr Gravely the most experienced and aptly named Home Office pathologist for the Tester district?’

  ‘Dr Gravely was away at a conference in Scarborough. I was called in at short notice.’

  ‘And saw your big chance?’

  ‘His big chance of what, Mr Rumpole?’ Twyburne didn’t like my tone with the young doctor.