The Second Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  ‘My brother supplies our office equipment,’ our client told him proudly.

  ‘Mr Ward-Webster,’ said the Judge. ‘This family story is no doubt extremely fascinating, but has it really anything to do with the case?’

  ‘I agree, my Lord. And I will pass to another matter…’

  While this was happening, Rumpole asked me in a whisper if I thought that our client had ever danced with Blythe’s secretary. I told him that I had no idea. In fact, I couldn’t see the point of the question. But Rumpole leaned forward and asked Mr Myers, of our instructing solicitor’s office, to get Mr Newton down to the Old Bailey during the lunch adjournment.

  Mr Newton came and we met him with our client in the public canteen. He took a look at Frank Armstrong and said that Blythe’s secretary’s dancing partner did look like our client but he was sure that he wasn’t the same man. Rumpole, who seemed to have a great deal of confidence in this detective whom he always called ‘Fig’ Newton, seemed to accept this and asked Frank Armstrong if he had a photograph of his brother.

  ‘Yes, indeed.’ Frank Armstrong got out his wallet. ‘Taken in Marbella. The summer before last.’ He handed a photograph to Newton.

  ‘That’s the gentleman,’ Mr Newton said. ‘No doubt about it.’

  ‘Fred’s been dancing!’ Rumpole laughed. ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘In the Gulf. Dubai. So far as I know. He’s been asked to develop a computer,’ centre,’ Frank Armstrong answered vaguely.

  ‘How long did you think he’d been away?’

  ‘Six months. All of six months.’

  ‘Since before you were arrested?’ Rumpole was puzzled. ‘You see, Newton saw him a couple of weeks ago in London.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole, I don’t know what you’re getting at. I’m sure Fred would help me if he possibly could,’ Mr Armstrong said.

  ‘You’ve never quarrelled?’

  ‘Only one little falling out, perhaps. When he wanted to buy the land in Cornwall.’

  ‘Did he offer you much money?’ That seemed to interest Rumpole.

  ‘Enormous! Stupid sort of price, I called it. But I wasn’t selling. Bit unbrotherly of me perhaps, but I wanted to build up my empire.’

  ‘Perhaps Fred wanted to build up his,’ Rumpole said, and then he turned to us and gave orders. He seemed, at that moment, quite determined and in charge of the case.

  ‘There’s a lot to be done,’ he said. ‘Newton’s got to find brother Fred.’

  ‘In Dubai?’ Mr Newton protested.

  ‘Keep a watch on the office of Sun-Sand Holidays after hours, late at night, early in the morning. Blythe, too. We have to get hold of Blythe. You may have to go to Cornwall,’ he told Newton.

  ‘I suppose you want all that before two o’clock?’ Mr Myers was used to Rumpole’s moments of decision.

  ‘No. No, Myersy. Come on, Fiona. This time I’ve got to get the Mad Bull to give us an adjournment, or die in the attempt!’

  So much of what Rumpole said that day sticks in my memory – that last sentence is one I shall never forget, as long as I live.

  Of course, when Rumpole got to his feet after lunch Judge Bullingham was as unreceptive as ever.

  ‘So what is the basis of this application, which you are now making for the fifth time since the start of this case?’ the Judge asked, and when Mr Mason, the Clerk of the Court, rose to remind him of something, he was delighted to correct himself. ‘Is it? Oh, thank you, Mason. For the sixth time, Mr Rumpole!’

  ‘The basis should be clear, even to your Lordship,’ Rumpole said; it was pretty typical of him, actually. ‘It is vital that justice should be done to the gentleman I have the honour to represent.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole. This case has been committed for six months. If Mr Blythe could have helped you he’d have come forward long ago.’

  ‘That’s an entirely unwarranted assumption! Perivale Blythe may have other reasons for his absence.’

  ‘It seems you know very little about Mr Blythe. May I ask, have you a proof of his evidence?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’ The Judge raised his voice angrily.

  ‘No, I haven’t.’ I remember Rumpole spoke casually and I remember he sounded quieter than usual.

  ‘So you have no idea what this Mr Blythe is going to say?’

  ‘No, but I know what I’m going to ask him. If he answers truthfully, I have no doubt that my client will be acquitted.’

  ‘A pious hope, Mr Rumpole!’ The Judge was smiling at the jury now.

  ‘Of course, if your Lordship wishes to exclude this vital evidence, if you have no interest in doing justice in this case, then I have little more to say…’ His voice was really tired and quiet by then, and I wondered if he was going to give up and sit down, but he was still on his feet.

  ‘Well, I have a lot more to say. As you should know perfectly well, Mr Rumpole, getting through the work at the Old Bailey is a matter of considerable public importance…’

  ‘Oh, of course. Far more important than justice!’ Rumpole’s voice was still faint and I thought he looked pale.

  ‘In my view these constant applications by the defence are merely an attempt to put off the evil hour when the jury have to bring in a verdict,’ the Judge went on, quite unnecessarily I thought. ‘It’s my duty to see that justice is done speedily. Mr Rumpole, I believe you have a taste for poetry. You will no doubt remember the quotation about the “law’s delays”.’

  ‘Oh yes, my Lord. It comes in the same passage which deals with “the insolence of office”. My Lord, if I might say…’

  ‘Mr Rumpole!’ the Judge barked at him. ‘This application for an adjournment is refused. There is absolutely nothing you could say which would persuade me to grant it.’

  Then Rumpole seemed to be swaying slightly. He raised a finger to loosen his collar. His voice was now hoarse and almost inaudible.

  ‘Nothing, my Lord?’

  ‘No, Mr Rumpole. Absolutely nothing!’ The Judge had reached his decision. But Rumpole was swaying more dangerously. Judge Bullingham watched, astonished, and the whole Court was staring as Rumpole collapsed, apparently unconscious. The Judge spoke loudly over the gasps of amazement.

  ‘I shall adjourn this case.’ Judge Bullingham rose, and then bent to speak to Mr Mason, the Clerk of the Court. ‘Send for Matron!’ he said.

  In a while, when the Court had cleared, Mr Myers, the Usher and I managed to get Rumpole, who seemed to have recovered a certain degree of consciousness, out into the corridor and sit him down. He was still looking terribly grey and ill and the Usher went off to hurry up Matron.

  ‘Always thought I’d die with my wig on,’ Rumpole just managed to murmur.

  ‘Did he say die?’ A woman in glasses, whom I had noticed in Court, asked the Usher and, when he nodded at her, walked quietly away. I took his wig off then and stood holding it. ‘Nonsense, Rumpole.’ I tried to sound brisk. ‘You’re not going to die.’

  ‘Fiona.’ His voice was now a sort of low croak. I had to bend down to hear what came out like a last request. ‘Air… Miss Allways… Must have air. Take me… Take me out…’

  He was pulling feebly at his winged collar and bands. I managed to get them undone and then he rose to his feet and stood swaying. He looked absolutely ghastly. Mr Myers was supporting him under one arm. ‘Just a breath of air… Want to smell Ludgate Circus… Your little runabout, Fiona… Is it outside? Can’t spend my last moments outside Bullingham’s Court.’

  I suppose I shouldn’t have done it, but he looked so pathetic. He whispered to me about not being taken to some hospital full of bedpans and piped Capital Radio, and promised that his wife would send for their own doctor – he could at least die with dignity. Myers and I helped him out to my battered Deux Chevaux and I drove Rumpole to his home.

  It took a long time to help him up the stairs and into his flat, but he seemed happy to be home and managed a sort of fleeting smile. His wife wasn’t there but he muttered something about her having o
nly just slipped out – said that she’d be back in a moment from the shops and that Dr MacClintock would look after him – for so long, he murmured, as anything could be done. At least, I told him, I’d help him into bed. So we moved towards the bedroom, but at the door he seemed to have second thoughts.

  ‘Perhaps… Better not. She Who Must Be Obeyed… Bound to stalk in… Just when I’ve lowered the garments… Gets some… funny ideas… does She.’

  All the same, I helped him as he staggered into the bedroom and I hung his wig and gown, which I was carrying, over the bedrail as he lay down, still dressed. It was very cold in the mansion flat and I thought that the old couple must be extremely hardy. I covered Rumpole with the eiderdown and he was babbling, apparently delirious.

  ‘Ever thought about… the hereafter, Fiona?’ I heard him say. ‘Hereafter’s all right. Until Bollard gets there… He’s bound to make it… Have to spend all eternity listening to Bollard… on the subject of “Lawyers for the Faith”… Difficult to make an excuse… and slip away. He’ll have me buttonholed… in the hereafter. Go along now…’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I hated to leave him but I knew that our wretched client had been taken down to the cells when the trial was interrupted.

  Someone would have to go and get him released until he was needed again.

  ‘And bail,’ Rumpole was muttering very faintly, echoing my thoughts. ‘Ask bail… from the dotty Bull. For Frank. Suppose Bullingham’ll be turning up there too… in the hereafter. Apply for bail… Fiona.’

  ‘I’ll ring you later,’ I promised as I moved to the door.

  ‘Later… Not too late…’ Rumpole closed his eyes as I went out of the door; he was quite motionless, apparently asleep.

  Judge Bullingham was looking at me, smiling, apparently deeply sympathetic, when I applied for bail. Mr Mason, the Court Clerk, later told me that the Judge had taken something of a ‘shine’ to me and was considering sending me a box of chocolates. Life at the Bar can be absolute hell for a girl sometimes.

  ‘Bail? Yes, of course, Miss Allways. By all means,’ said the Judge. ‘On the same terms. And what is the latest news of Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘He is resting peacefully, my Lord,’ I told him truthfully.

  ‘Peacefully.’ The Judge sounded very solemn. ‘Yes, of course. Well, that comes to all of us in time. Nothing else for this afternoon, is there, Mason?’

  The Judge went home early. But in the Old Bailey, round the other London Courts and in the Temple the news spread like wildfire. Rumpole had collapsed, the stories went, it was all over and the old boy had gone home at last. I heard that in the cells villains, with their trials due to come up, cursed because they wouldn’t have Rumpole to defend them.

  Some said he’d died with his wig on, others told how he’d been suddenly taken away before the Matron could get at him. Quite a lot of people, from Detective Inspectors to safe-blowers, said that, if he had to go, Rumpole would have wanted it to come as it did, when he was on his feet and in the middle of a legal argument.

  When I got back to Chambers I found a crowd gathered in our clerk’s room. Henry had been trying the phone in Rumpole’s flat over and over again and getting no reply.

  ‘No reply from Rumpole’s flat!’ said Hoskins, a rather dreary sort of barrister who’s always talking about his daughters.

  ‘Probably no one at home,’ Uncle Tom, our oldest inhabitant, hazarded a guess.

  ‘That would appear to be the natural assumption, Uncle Tom.’ Erskine-Brown was as sarcastic as usual.

  ‘Surely, we’ve got absolutely no reason to think…’ Hoskins said.

  ‘I agree. All we know is that Rumpole suffered some sort of a stroke or a seizure,’ Ballard told them.

  ‘Rumpole often said Judge Bullingham had that effect on him,’ Uncle Tom said.

  ‘And that he’s clearly been taken somewhere,’ Erskine-Brown added.

  ‘ “Taken somewhere” expresses it rather well.’ Uncle Tom shook his head. ‘ “Taken somewhere” is about the long and short of it.’

  Then I told them I’d taken Rumpole home where his wife would be able to get their own doctor to look after him. In the pause that followed Henry gave me the good news that he had got me a porn job in Manchester and I’d have to travel up overnight.

  ‘A porn job!’ Our Head of Chambers looked shocked. ‘I’d’ve thought this was hardly the moment for that sort of thing.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole would want Chambers to carry on, sir, I’m sure. As usual,’ Henry said solemnly.

  ‘Poor old fellow. Yes,’ Uncle Tom agreed. ‘Well. One thing to be said for him. He went in harness.’

  ‘I don’t really think it’s the sort of subject we should be discussing in the clerk’s room,’ Ballard decided. ‘No doubt I shall be calling a Chambers meeting, when we have rather more detailed information.’

  As they went, I lingered long enough to hear Dianne, our rather hit-and-miss typist, give a little sob as she pounded her machine.

  ‘Oh, please, Dianne,’ Henry protested. ‘Didn’t you hear what I said to Mr Ballard? Chambers must go on. That would have been his wishes.’

  So I went to Manchester and read a lot of jolly embarrassing magazines in a dark corner of the railway carriage. Meanwhile Mr Newton, the inquiry agent, was still keeping a watch on the offices of Sun-Sand Holidays every night. Of course, I saw his reports eventually and it seemed that the office was visited, late at night and in a highly suspicious manner, by our client’s brother Fred, who spent a long time working on the computers.

  And there were other developments. Archie Featherstone, the Judge’s nephew, was still very anxious to get into our Chambers and, when there was no news of Rumpole’s recovery, I suppose the poor chap felt a bit encouraged in a horrible sort of way.

  Perhaps I can understand how he felt because, although I never liked Archie Featherstone much (he’d danced with me at some pretty gruesome ball and his way of dancing was to close his eyes, suck in his teeth, and bob up and down in the hope that he looked like Mick Jagger, which he didn’t), I knew jolly well what it was like to be desperate to get a seat in Number 3 Equity Court.

  It was while I was still in Manchester that Henry received a telemessage about Rumpole and immediately took it up to our Head of Chambers. Sometime later, when I bought him his usual Cinzano Bianco in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar, Henry gave me a full account of how his meeting with Ballard went. First of all our Head read the message out aloud very carefully and slowly, Henry told me.

  ‘ “Please let firm of Blythe, Winterbottom and Paisley know sad news. Deeply regret Rumpole gone up to a Higher Tribunal. Signed Rumpole.” ’ Ballard apparently looked puzzled. ‘What is it, Henry?’

  ‘It’s a telemessage, sir. Telegrams having been abolished, per se,’ Henry explained.

  ‘Yes, I know it’s a telemessage. But the wording. Doesn’t it strike you as somewhat strange?’

  ‘Mr Rumpole was always one for his joke. It caused us a good deal of embarrassment at times.’

  ‘But presumably this can’t be signed by Rumpole. Not in the circumstances.’ Ballard was working on the problem. ‘On any reasonable interpretation, the word “Rumpole”, being silent so far as sex is concerned, must surely be construed as referring to Mrs Rumpole?’ He was being very legal, Henry told me, and behaving like a Chancery barrister.

  ‘That’s what I assumed, sir,’ said Henry. ‘Unfortunately I can’t get through to the Gloucester Road flat on the telephone. It seems there’s a “fault on the line”.’

  ‘Have you tried calling round?’

  ‘I have, sir. No answer to my ring.’

  ‘Well, of course, it’s a busy time in any family. A busy and distressing time.’ But Ballard was clearly worried. ‘Does it strike you as rather odd, Henry?’

  ‘Well, just a bit, sir.’

  ‘As Head of Chambers I surely should be the first to be informed of any decease among members. Am I not entitled to that?’

  ‘In the normal course
of events, yes.’ Henry told me he agreed to save any argument.

  ‘In the normal course. But this message doesn’t refer to me, or to his fellow members, or even to the Court where he was appearing when he was stricken down. This Blythe, Sidebottom and…’

  ‘Winterbottom, sir. And Paisley.’

  ‘Was it a firm to which old Rumpole was particularly attached?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Mr Ballard. They owed him money,’ Henry said he told him frankly.

  ‘They owed him money! Strange. Very strange.’ Ballard was thoughtful, it seems. ‘From the way he was talking the other day, I think the old fellow had a queer sort of premonition that the end was pretty close.’ And then our Head of Chambers went back to the document Henry had given him. ‘All the same, Henry. There is something hopeful in this telemessage.’

  ‘Is there, sir?’

  ‘I mean the reference to a “Higher Tribunal”. You know, I’m afraid I’d always found Rumpole a bit of a scoffer. I couldn’t get him interested in “Lawyers As Churchgoers”. He wouldn’t even come along to one meeting of LAC! But his wife’s message says he was thinking in terms of a “Higher Tribunal”. It suggests he found faith in the end, Henry. It must have been a great comfort to him.’

  As I say, Henry told me this after I got back from Manchester, when I was buying him a drink in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar. As we were talking I noticed that the frumpy sort of woman in glasses, the one who’d been listening to the Armstrong trial, was doing her best to overhear our conversation. She carried on listening when Jack Pommeroy slid his counter cloth up to us and said to Henry,

  ‘I say. Has old Rumpole really had it? I’ve got about twenty-three of his cheques!’

  ‘My clerk’s fees aren’t exactly up to date either,’ Henry said. ‘You’ll miss him round here, won’t you, Jack?’

  ‘Well, he did use to pass some pretty insulting remarks about our claret. Called it Château Thames Embankment!’ Jack Pommeroy looked pained. ‘Didn’t exactly help our business. And when he wasn’t paying cash…’

  I wasn’t really listening to him then. I was watching the woman in glasses. She was talking into the telephone on the wall and I distinctly heard her say, ‘True? Yes, of course it’s true.’