The Second Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  ‘All right. Let’s try to take this little scandal seriously. Have you been able to check whether the information leaked to the Press about money spent on refreshments and entertaining, and so on, is accurate?’

  ‘It’s not entirely accurate.’ Sir Frank had blinked at an unexpected question and taken a while to answer. Now he seemed embarrassed.

  ‘The report is exaggerated?’

  ‘I’m afraid my inquiries have led me to believe that we spend a good deal more than has been suggested, my Lord.’

  ‘So the secrets she’s supposed to have leaked aren’t accurate Official Secrets at all?’ I went on, before My Lord could interrupt.

  ‘Not… entirely accurate. No.’

  ‘Sir Frank Fawcett’ – I paused and looked seriously at the witness – ‘there’s something a good deal more significant than biscuits at the bottom of this case, isn’t there?’

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean exactly.’

  ‘Neither am I, Mr Rumpole.’ The Lord Chief wasn’t going to be left out.

  ‘We’re not all assembled here – you, the Permanent Under-Secretary and my learned friend and the Lord Chief Justice of England – to sit in secret session in a Court which has now been closed to the public…’

  ‘Mr Rumpole. It was I who decided that Sir Frank’s evidence should be taken in camera,’ the Judge reminded me, but I soldiered on: ‘Denying the principle that justice should be seen to be done, just to discuss a few little white lies about the number of bikkies you took with your elevenses! Far more sensitive information than that has recently been leaked from the Ministry of Defence, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Mr Rumpole. Do you really think that question is in the interests of your client?’ The Judge wanted the Jury to know that, in his view, I was about to land Miss Tuttle in the soup.

  ‘That’s why I asked it. Now will you answer it, Sir Frank?’

  ‘My Lord…’ The witness turned to the Lord Chief for guidance but he merely sighed heavily and said, ‘You’d better answer Mr Rumpole’s question. We are in camera.’

  ‘The answer’ – again it came after a long pause – ‘is yes.’

  ‘You don’t know the source of that leak?’

  ‘No…’

  ‘And no application has been made to add further charges against my client, Miss Tuttle?’

  ‘Not as yet, my Lord,’ Ballard interjected in a vaguely threatening manner, which was echoed by the Judge. ‘No, Mr Rumpole, not as yet.’

  ‘And when those charges are brought against whoever it is, these little leaks about Civil Service extravagance will seem even more paltry and insignificant.’

  ‘Isn’t that going to be a matter for the Jury?’ The Lord Chief had had enough of Rumpole and wanted his tea.

  ‘Oh, I entirely agree, my Lord.’ I was at my most servile. ‘It will be a matter for the Jury. If this petty prosecution lasts until the end.’

  The Court rose then, not in the best of tempers, and the Usher intoned his usual rigmarole that marks the ending of another day: ‘All persons who have anything further to do before my Lords, the Queen’s Justices at the Central Criminal Court may depart hence and give their attendance here again tomorrow at ten thirty o’clock in the forenoon. God Save the Queen.’ ‘And protect her’ – I joined silently in the prayer – ‘from her civil servants.’

  Back in Chambers, I sat at my desk with the curiously elated feeling of having solved the mystery and learned something, at least, of the secrets of R. v. Tuttle. I lifted the telephone and asked Dianne to ring Oliver Bowling’s number for me.

  In the long interval which took place before she called me back, Claude Erskine-Brown came into my room with the haunted and hangdog look of a man who has spent the past few nights being pursued by the Valkyries. ‘I have to tell you, Rumpole,’ he announced. ‘We didn’t go to the Opera together.’

  ‘Pity. I was looking forward to it.’

  ‘I mean, if you see my wife, if Phillida should happen to bump into you around Chambers, don’t bother to tell her how much you enjoyed Meistersinger.’

  ‘Snoozed off in it, did I?’

  ‘She knows I didn’t take you.’

  ‘Been rumbled, Erskine-Brown?’ I couldn’t help looking at the man with pity.

  ‘As I suppose you might say “grasse”.’ He gave a small and quite mirthless laugh. ‘Well, I may as well tell you the horrible truth. Liz Probert rang up Phillida and said that I’d invited her to Covent Garden.’

  ‘But hadn’t you?’

  ‘Of course I had.’

  ‘And Mrs Phillida Erskine-Brown, the Portia of our Chambers, hasn’t shown much of the quality of mercy?’

  ‘She doesn’t speak, Rumpole.’ The fellow was clearly in distress. ‘Breakfast passes by in utter silence. And I did nothing, you understand! Absolutely nothing.’

  ‘Not even compliment Mizz Probert on her eyes?’

  ‘How do you know?’ He looked at me as though I had the gift of second sight.

  ‘That was your mistake, Claude. Girls don’t care for that sort of thing nowadays.’

  ‘To go and blurt out the truth like that, to a chap’s wife! It was totally uncalled for!’

  ‘Perhaps Mizz Liz Probert doesn’t believe in Official Secrets. Talking of which…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your friend Bowling,’ I wondered. ‘Why did you call him Batty?’

  ‘No reason, really. He never minded what he said, questioned everything in class, that sort of thing. And he was a bit of a show-off.’

  ‘Show-off? What about?

  ‘Oh, his literary knowledge. Something like you, Rumpole.’ He looked up at me and finally asked in a tragic way, ‘Do you think Philly will ever speak to me again?’

  ‘Oh yes. I imagine so. If only to say goodbye.’ And then the phone rang on my desk, and I was able to tell Batty Bowling that I wanted an urgent word with him about Miss Tuttle. He said he was about to leave home, but he would come out of Tosca quarter of an hour before the end of the first Act, and we could have a quiet word in the room behind the Royal Box. I told him that I would go anywhere for a client, and he rang off with every expression of goodwill.

  So, after a few thoughtful glassfuls at Pommeroy’s Wine Bar, I strolled through the gift shops and boutiques and bistros of Covent Garden (lamenting the days of ever-open pubs and old cabbage stalks) to the small Floral Street entrance to the Royal Box. At the mention of Bowling’s name an ornately uniformed attendant pointed me up a back staircase, which led to a small dining-room. There, under a chandelier, the remnants of an excellent light dinner still littered the table, and whiffs of excited music came from a curtained doorway. At exactly the appointed time, Oliver Bowling emerged from the doorway wearing a black velvet dinner-jacket that might have seen some service. ‘I can give you ten minutes.’ He looked at his watch and I thought there was a certain irritation beneath the habitual charm. ‘Tosca doesn’t really get going until the second Act, does it?’

  ‘Until she kills him?’

  ‘Well, exactly,’ he smiled. ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘I wanted to defend Miss Tuttle on the basis that what she did was entirely public-spirited and honourable…’ I began at the beginning.

  ‘I’m inclined to agree.’

  ‘But she’s always maintained she did nothing’ – I was looking at her Head of Department – ‘and I believe her.’

  ‘But my dear chap.’ Bowling smiled tolerantly. ‘The evidence!’

  ‘What evidence exactly?’ I asked him. ‘Someone left her glove beside a copying-machine. Someone used her typewriter, someone who wasn’t a trained typist. She went to the park as she always did, to feed the ducks. Perhaps she had no idea that Mr Chatterbox from the Sunday Fortress was there watching her. She got up as the clock struck two. Someone else could have passed the bench and dropped an envelope wrapped in the Daily Telegraph.’

  ‘Why should anyone…?

  ‘Want to frame Miss Tuttle on a silly charge about
biscuits?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘Someone wanted to make her look ridiculous and dishonest, and totally unreliable,’ I told him. ‘Someone wanted her to appear in public as a gossiping little busybody who couldn’t even get her facts right. So that, if she ever gave evidence about anything really important, no one would take a blind bit of notice!’

  ‘Really important?’ He was still smiling. Somehow I longed to dislodge his smile. ‘The big leak… The great hole in the system. Whatever it was. Weapons. Submarine bases. Engines of death. Perhaps, after all, it was no more important than biscuits. Would the world be any more dangerous if we did without secrets all together? You don’t think so, do you, Mr Bowling?’

  ‘Did I say that to you?’

  ‘Oh yes. I’m prepared to believe your intentions were honourable. The end of the arms race perhaps. The beginning of peace…’

  A burst of music penetrated the curtain. Bowling looked at his watch; the smile had gone now. ‘I really ought to get back to the Opera.’

  ‘I don’t know exactly when it was, but I’m sure it was some time when you ought to have been away on leave and out of the office. It was late at night and she heard you singing, whistling or whatever. So she came in and saw you with… perhaps she never realized what she saw you doing. But you couldn’t be sure of her, could you? Bank robbers shoot witnesses. It’s a great deal more subtle to make fools of them. Perhaps that’s the sort of thing they teach you at Winchester.’ I poured the remains of a bottle of wine into an empty glass. ‘You want to go back to the Opera? Try and remember not to sing the tunes around the office. Opera appears to be the downfall of Englishmen who want to keep secrets.’ I held up the glass to the chandelier. ‘Perfectly decent bit of claret. It seems a pity to waste it.’ I didn’t.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Bowling asked after a long silence.

  ‘I suppose, recall Sir Frank and put the whole business to him. Remember Sir Frank whose family survived the flood. That was your quotation from Congreve. Love for Love.’

  ‘Congreve…?’

  ‘Who was also quoted in your note to Mr Chatterbox. That was what Erskine-Brown told me about you. You couldn’t resist showing off your literary knowledge, even when engaged on forgery. Poor old Miss Tuttle; she’s extremely conventional at heart and does her best to be an English spinster lady. She’d never dream of demonstrating at Molesworth; you should never have started that rumour. And I’m afraid she’s never even heard of Congreve…’

  Bowling said nothing. He turned back to the curtain. He seemed about to go and then said, almost pleading with me. ‘Rumpole…’

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you. It’s a question of loyalty to my client. She has my allegiance; I can’t worry about yours.’ Far away from us, on the stage, the Te Deum was swelling from the Cathedral on the stage. The curtain was about to fall. ‘You’d better get back to Tosca,’ I told him. ‘Isn’t this where the melodrama begins?’

  There was a small item in the next morning’s Times. A man, later identified as Mr Oliver Bowling, O.B.E., Assistant Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Defence, had apparently slipped while waiting on the platform at Covent Garden underground station and fallen under a passing train. Mr Bowling had been quite alone at the time and foul play was not suspected. He was dead on his admission to hospital.

  When I arrived, robed, that morning outside the Court, Sam Ballard came up to me. ‘Rumpole’ – he looked almost apologetic – ‘there’s been a development.’

  ‘I know. A small accident at Covent Garden underground station. It was unnecessary,’ I told him. ‘Like everything else about this case.’

  ‘I’ve been in touch with the Attorney-General.’

  ‘Really? What did he feel like?’

  ‘We’re offering no further evidence. In view of the fact that the information leaked to the Press was apparently inaccurate.’

  ‘Oh, that gives you the out, does it? Lucky for you, Ballard. And my client’s discharged without a stain on her character?’

  Ballard was silent and then forced himself to say, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Bowling finally told the truth, did he?’

  ‘I’m not prepared to divulge that.’

  ‘Old Batty Bowling. Bit of a literary show-off. But not a bad fellow, all the same. What did he do? Telephone Sir Frank from the Opera?’

  ‘I told you. I’m not prepared to divulge…’

  ‘Secrets! My God, Bollard. I wonder what we’d do without them. But they lead to death, don’t they? Stupid, unnecessary secrets lead to death?’

  So Miss Tuttle and the rest of us were released by the Judge and I went home to Froxbury Court. Hilda was not there, no doubt out on some shopping spree, and I felt unusually tired. I pulled out my old India-paper edition of The Oxford Book of English Verse, and started to read by way of consolation: ‘The clouds that gather round the setting sun/Do take a sober colouring from an eye/That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality;’ – My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of hammering – ‘Another race hath been, and other palms are won./Thanks to the human heart by which we live,/ Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,…’ By now the hammering was building to a crescendo. I put down the book, and went to the window, opened it and looked out into the street where I thought the din must be coming from. But as I did so, there was a final crash from behind me, and I turned to see, to my horror, the end of a chisel appear through my living-room wall. Was the Secret Service getting its revenge? In a matter of moments I had doubled into the hall and flung open the kitchen door. There I was greeted with the spectacle of a small gnome-like person of undoubtedly Irish extraction, who, armed with a bag of tools, was tunnelling through my wall.

  ‘A fair cop!’

  ‘Mr Rumpole?’ The man apparently recognized me.

  ‘There’s one thing to be said for a practice at the criminal Bar.’ I told him. ‘You don’t expect to be burgled…’

  ‘Burgled, Mr Rumpole?’ He seemed shocked at the suggestion.

  ‘You know the meaning of the word. Breaking and entering! Except you seem to have entered my kitchen and you’re breaking out. Do you mind me telling you, that’s an inside wall you’re attacking. I suggest you give up your life of crime, old darling, you’ve clearly got very little talent for it.’

  ‘Crime! I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr Rumpole.’

  ‘House-breaking instruments!’ I was looking at his bag of tools. But at this moment we heard the front door open and the voice of Hilda calling ‘Rumpole!’

  ‘I might have sent you on your way with a promise of future good behaviour,’ I told the intruder, ‘but one is coming in whom the quality of mercy is considerably strained.’

  ‘I thought you were in Court all day.’ She came into the kitchen and viewed me with every sign of disfavour.

  ‘Hilda! There is a man here.’

  ‘Of course there’s a man in here. He’s come to do that hatch. How are you getting on, Mr O’Rourke?’

  ‘O’Rourke? Not Seamus O’Rourke by any chance?’ The name rang a pretty enormous bell. Then the man pulled out a smudged card and offered it to me. SEAMUS O’ROURKE, I read, ALL REPAIRS AND CONVERSIONS CHEERFULLY UNDERTAKEN. ‘They’ve been listening to you on the telephone, Hilda.’

  ‘Speaking of telephones, Rumpole…’

  ‘Listening to you! On the subject of a kitchen hatch.’ At which point, She moved to the wall, took down the telephone and held it out to me.

  ‘The instrument has died on us at last! Listen to that! Silent as the tomb! I told you to pay the bill.’

  ‘The bill? It must have slipped my mind. Pressure of business…’

  ‘And now they’ve cut it off.’

  I listened for a moment to the silent telephone, and then restored it to its place on the wall. ‘They’ve cut it off at last,’ I agreed with Hilda. ‘No one’s listening to us any more. No one wants to look in my brief-case. No one’s following me from the tube station. The Secre
ts case is over. Old Batty Bowling is dead, and normal service will be resumed shortly.’

  Rumpole and the Judge’s Elbow

  Up to now in these accounts of my most famous or infamous cases I have acted as a faithful historian, doing my best to tell the truth, the whole truth, about the events that occurred, and not glossing over the defeats and humiliations which are part of the daily life of an Old Bailey hack, nor being ridiculously modest about my undoubted triumphs. When it comes to the matter of the Judge’s elbow, however, different considerations arise. Many of the vital incidents in the history of the tennis injury to Mr Justice Featherstone, its strange consequences and near destruction of his peace of mind, necessarily happened when I was absent from the scene, nor did the Judge ever take me into his confidence over the matter. Indeed as most of his almost frenetic efforts during the trial of Dr Maurice Horridge were devoted to concealing the truth from the world in general, and old Horace Rumpole in particular, it is a truth which may never be fully known. I have been, however, able to piece together from the scraps of information at my disposal (a word or two from a retired usher, some conversations Marigold Featherstone had with She Who Must Be Obeyed) a pretty clear picture of what went on in the private and, indeed, sheltered life of one of the Judges of the Queen’s Bench. I feel that I now know what led to Guthrie Featherstone’s curious behaviour during the Horridge trial, but in reconstructing some of the scenes that led up to this, I have had, as I say for the first time in these accounts, to use the art of the fiction writer and imagine, to a large extent, what Sir Guthrie or Lady Marigold Featherstone, or the other characters involved, may have said at the time. Such scenes are based, however, on a long experience of how Guthrie Featherstone was accustomed to behave in the face of life’s little difficulties, that is to say, with anxiety bordering on panic.

  I think it is also important that this story should be told to warn others of the dangers involved in sitting in Judgement on the rest of erring humanity. However, to save embarrassment to anyone concerned, I have left strict instructions that this account should not be published until after the death of the main parties, unless Mr Truscott of the Caring Bank should become particularly insistent over the question of my overdraft.