The Second Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  ‘I always thought old Dodo would look a lot better, heavily veiled.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘You were going to tell me where you sailed…’

  ‘Sailed? We didn’t sail anywhere, Rumpole. We went on a bus. Mr Waterlow sat at my table at lunch in the Parador. Such a charming man and so distinguished-looking. He wears one of those white linen shirts with short sleeves. What do you call them? Bush-whacking shirts?’ I said I didn’t call them anything.

  ‘I think it’s “bush-whacking”. Anyway, you ought to get a shirt like that, Rumpole.’

  ‘Did you happen to tell this Waterlow person that you were here with your husband?’

  ‘Oh, Rumpole! We didn’t talk about my life; I don’t suppose he even knows my name. He told me a little about himself though; he says he’s all alone in the world now. He does seem rather sad about it.’

  So life continued and each evening Hilda regaled me with her travels round the Iberian peninsula and told me of the charm and general helpfulness of the man Waterlow. Strangely we never saw this paragon about the hotel. He knew, Hilda told me, a lot of little restaurants along the coast. ‘Places where the continentals go, Rumpole. But then, of course, Mr Waterlow speaks absolutely perfect Spanish.’

  On the last but one night of our stay dinner was laid out in the nippy darkness beside the pool. The ladies pulled on cardigans over thin dresses, the men brought out sweaters, and a group of shifty-looking customers in big hats and frilly shirts sang ‘Deep in the Heart of Texas’ and such-like old Spanish folk-songs. Derek was tablehopping, telling his jokes and flirting in a nauseating manner with the female senior citizens, when Hilda looked up from a battle with a slice of singed bull which had no doubt weathered a good many corridas, and almost shrieked, ‘Why, Rumpole. There he is!’

  ‘There who is?’

  ‘Why, Mr Waterlow, of course.’

  I saw him then, sitting among the group who were so often poolside with their ladies. He saw Hilda and my back only. He raised his Sangría when she looked at him, but when he saw me he seemed to freeze, his glass an inch from his lower lip.

  ‘Hilda,’ I said, with all the determination I could muster, ‘you must never speak to that man again!’

  I looked back and he had gone, out of the poolside lights perhaps, and was still lingering in the shadows.

  ‘But why, Rumpole? Why ever do you say that?’

  I couldn’t tell her about the man with whom she had struck up a friendship. Even if he had changed his name, substituted contact lenses for National Health specs and a safari suit and a gold medallion for a greengrocer’s overall, I knew exactly who he was. I may have cherished uncharitable thoughts about She Who Must Be Obeyed at times, when a cold wind was blowing around Casa Rumpole, but I never wanted to see her end up in a freezer cabinet.

  ‘Why mustn’t I speak to him again?’

  ‘Because I say so.’

  ‘Rumpole, you silly old thing.’ Hilda’s face was wreathed in smiles. She looked some years younger, and intensely flattered. ‘I do believe you’re jealous.’

  ‘Jealous?’

  ‘Of Mr Waterlow. It’s so silly, Rumpole. But it’s nice to know that you really care as much as that. I do think that’s awfully nice to know.’ She’s eyes were smiling. She put out her hand and took mine in a fairly moist embrace.

  ‘You know, there’s no one else really, don’t you? Mr Waterlow was very charming, but what I really liked about him was he made you jealous! Would you like to dance with me, Rumpole?’

  ‘No, Hilda.’ I disengaged my hand as gently as possible. ‘I don’t really think I would.’

  The next day was our last and Hilda forswore all trips. She came with me when I bought The Times and sat beside me in the church making some unhelpful suggestions for One Across. I didn’t take her to the tiled bar, but we chose a restaurant by the sea where we ate calamares, food that tasted much like India rubber teething-rings. Hilda was smiling and cheerful all day. Harold Gimlett, the Kilburn greengrocer, seemed to have greatly improved my married life by giving Rumpole an undeserved reputation as a jealous husband.

  Rumpole’s Last Case

  Picture, if you will, a typical domestic evening, à côté de chez Rumpole, in the ‘mansion’ flat off the Gloucester Road. I am relaxed in a cardigan and slippers, a glass of Jack Pommeroy’s Very Ordinary perched on the arm of my chair, a small cigar between my fingers, reading a brief which, not unusually, was entitled, R. v. Timson. She Who Must Be Obeyed was staring moodily at the small hearthrug, somewhat worn over the ages I must admit, that lay in front of our roaring gas-fire.

  ‘The Timsons carrying a shooter!’ I was shocked at what I had just read. ‘Whatever’s the world coming to?’

  ‘We need a new one urgently,’ Hilda was saying, ‘and we need it now.’ She was still gazing at our hearthrug, scarred by the butt ends of the small cigars I was aiming at the bowl of water that stood in front of the fire.

  ‘It’s like music in lifts and wine in boxes.’ I was lamenting the decline of standards generally. ‘We’ll be having Star Wars machines in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar next. Decent, respectable criminals like the Timsons never went tooled up.’

  ‘Rumpole, you’ve done it again!’ Hilda recovered the end of my cigar from the rug and ground it ostentatiously out in an ashtray as I told her a bit of ash never did a carpet any harm, in fact it improved the texture.

  ‘There’s a perfectly decent little hearthrug going in Debenhams for £100,’ Hilda happened to mention.

  ‘Going to someone who isn’t balancing precariously on the rim of their overdraft.’

  ‘Rumpole, what on earth’s the use of all these bank robberies and the rising crime-rate they’re always talking about if we can’t even get a decent little hearthrug out of it?’ Hilda was clearly starting one of her campaigns, and I got up to recharge my glass from the bottle on the sideboard. ‘Remember what they’re paying for legal aid cases nowadays,’ I told her firmly. ‘It hardly covers the fare to Temple station. And there’s Henry’s ten per cent and the cost of a new brief-case…’

  ‘You’re never buying a new brief-case!’ She was astonished.

  ‘No. No, of course not. I can’t afford it.’ I took a quick sustaining gulp and carried the glass back to my armchair. ‘… And there’s a small claret at Pommeroy’s to recover from the terrors of the day.’

  ‘That’s your trouble, isn’t it, Rumpole.’ She looked at me severely. ‘If it weren’t for the “small claret” at Pommeroy’s we’d have no trouble buying a nice new hearthrug, and if it weren’t for those awful cheroots of yours we shouldn’t need one anyway. I warn you I shall call in at Debenhams tomorrow; it’s up to you to deal with the bank.’

  ‘How do you suggest I deal with the bank?’ I asked her. ‘Tunnel in through the drains and rob the safe? Not carrying a shooter, though. A Timson carrying a shooter! It’s the end of civilization as we know it.’

  Counsel is briefed for Mr Dennis Timson. He will ‘know the Timson family of old’. It appears that Dennis and his cousin Cyril entered the premises of the ‘Penny-Wise Bank’ in Tooting by masquerading as workers from British Telecom inspecting underground cables that were laid in Abraham Avenue. Whilst working underground the two defendants contrived to burrow into the ‘strong-room’ of the ‘Penny-Wise’ and open the safe, abstracting therefrom a certain quantity of cash and valuables. As they were doing so, they were surprised by a Mr Huggins, a middle-aged bankguard. It is clear from the evidence that Huggins was shot and wounded by a revolver, which was then left at the scene of the crime. The alarm had been given and the two Timson cousins were arrested by police officers who arrived at the scene of the crime.

  Mr Dennis Timson admits the break-in and the theft. He says, however, that he had no idea that his cousin Cyril was carrying a ‘shooter’, and is profoundly shocked at such behaviour in a member of the family. He is most anxious to avoid the ‘fourteen’, which he believes would be the sentence if the J
ury took the view he was party to the wounding of Mr Huggins. Cyril Timson, who, instructing solicitors understand, is represented by Mrs Phillida Erskine-Brown, Q.C., as ‘silk’ with Mr Claude Erskine-Brown as her ‘learned Junior’, will, it seems likely, say that it is all ‘down to’ our client, Dennis. He has told the police (D.I. Broome) that he had no idea Dennis came to the scene ‘tooled up’, and that he was horrified when Dennis shot the bankguard. It seems clear to those instructing that Cyril is also anxious to avoid the ‘fourteen’ at all costs.

  Counsel will see that he is faced with a ‘cut-throat’ defence with the defendants Timson blaming each other. Counsel will know from his long experience that in such circumstances the Prosecution is usually successful, and both ‘throat-cutters’ tend to ‘go down’. Counsel may think it well to have a word or two with Mr Cyril Timson’s ‘silk’, Mrs Phillida Erskine-Brown, who happens to be in Counsel’s Chambers, to see if Cyril will ‘see sense’ and stop ‘putting it all down’ to Mr Dennis Timson.

  Counsel is instructed to appear for Mr Dennis Timson at the Old Bailey, and secure his acquittal on the charges relating to the firearm. Those instructing respectfully wish Learned Counsel ‘the best of British luck’.

  Dear old Bernard, the Timsons’ regular solicitor, was a great one for the inverted comma. He had put the matter clearly enough in his instructions with my brief in R. v. Timson, and the case as he described it had several points of interest as well as a major worry. Both Cyril and Dennis were well into middle-age and, at least so far as Cyril was concerned, somewhat overweight. The whole enterprise, setting up a tent over a manhole in the road and carrying out a great deal of preliminary work in the guise of men from British Telecom, seemed ambitious for men whom I should never have thought of as bank robbers. It was rather as though the ends of a pantomime horse had decided to get together and play Hamlet. Den and Cyril Timson, I thought, should have stuck to thieving frozen fish from the Cash & Carry. The Penny-Wise affair seemed distinctly out of their league.

  The fly in the ointment of our case had been accurately spotted by the astute and experienced Bernard. In a cut-throat defence, two prisoners at the Bar blame each other. The Prosecutor invariably weighs in with titbits of information designed to help the mutual mayhem of the two defendants and the Jury pot them both. The prospects were not made brighter by the fact that his Honour Judge Bullingham was selected to preside over this carnage. On top of all this anxiety, I was expecting my overdraft, already bursting at the seams constructed for it by Mr Truscott of the Caring Bank, to be swollen by Hilda’s extravagant purchase of a new strip of floor-covering.

  And then an event occurred which set me on the road to fortune and so enabled me to call this particular account ‘Rumpole’s Last Case’.

  My luck began when I called in at the clerk’s room on the first morning of R. v. Timson and found, as usual, Uncle Tom getting a chip shot into the waste-paper basket, Dianne brewing up coffee, and Henry greeting me with congratulations such as I had never received from him after my most dramatic wins in Court (barristers, according to Henry, don’t win or lose cases, they just ‘do’ them and he collects his ten per cent). ‘Well done, indeed, Mr Rumpole,’ he said. ‘You remember investing in the barristers clerks’ sweepstake on the Derby?’ In fact I remembered his twisting my arm to part with two quid, much better spent over the bar at Pommeroy’s. ‘You drew that Dire Jeans,’ Henry told me.

  ‘I drew what?’

  ‘Diogenes, Rumpole.’ Uncle Tom translated from the original Greek. ‘Do you know nothing about the turf? It came in at a canter. I said to myself, “That’s old Rumpole for you. He has all the luck!” ’

  ‘Oh. Got a winner, did I?’ I tried to remain cool when Henry handed me a bundle and told me that it was a hundred of the best and asked if I wanted to count them. I told him I trusted him implicitly and counted off twenty crisp fivers. It was an excellent start to the day.

  ‘You know what they say!’ Uncle Tom looked on with interest and envy. ‘Lucky on the gee-gees, unlucky in love. You’ve never been tremendously lucky in love, have you, Rumpole?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, Uncle Tom. I’ve had my moments. One hundred smackers!’ I put the loot away in my hip-pocket. ‘It’s not every day that a barrister gets folding money out of his clerk.’ Uncle Tom looked at me a little sceptically. Perhaps he wondered what sort of moments I had had; after all he had enjoyed the privilege of meeting Mrs Hilda Rumpole at our Chambers parties.

  As I sat in the café I said to myself,

  They may talk as they please about what they call ‘pelf’,

  They may sneer as they like about eating and drinking,

  But I cannot help it, I cannot help thinking…

  How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!

  How pleasant it is to have money…

  So pleasant it is to have money…

  The lines went through my head as I took my usual walk down Fleet Street to Ludgate Circus and then up to the Old Bailey. As I walked I could feel the comforting and unusual bulge of notes in my hip-pocket. As I marched up the back lanes to the Palais de Justice, I passed a newspaper kiosk which, I had previously noticed, seemed to mainly cater to the racing fraternity. There were a number of papers and posters showing jockeys whose memoirs were printed and horses whose exploits were described, and I noticed that morning the advertisement for a publication entitled The Punter’s Guide to the Turf which carried a story headed FOUR-HORSE WINNER FATHER OF THREE TELLS HOW HE HIT QUARTER OF A MILLION JACKPOT.

  Naturally, as a successful racing man (a status I had achieved in the last ten minutes), I took a greater interest in the familiar kiosk. I had, clearly, something of a talent for the turf. The Derby one day, perhaps the Grand National the next – was it the Grand National or the Oaks? With a few winners, I thought, a fellow could live pretty high on the hog – I took a final turning and the Old Bailey hoved into view – a fellow might even be able to consider giving up the delights of slogging down the Bailey for the dubious pleasure of doing a cut-throat defence before his unpredictable Honour Judge Roger Bullingham.

  And then, walking on towards the old verdict factory, I heard the familiar voices of Phillida Erskine-Brown, Q.C., and her spouse; fragments of conversation floated back to me on the wind.

  ‘Rumpole’s got Probert taking a note for him,’ our Portia said. ‘Do try not to dream about taking her to the Opera again.’

  ‘I only took her once. And then she didn’t enjoy it.’ This was Claude’s somewhat half-hearted defence.

  ‘I bet she didn’t. You would have been better off inviting her to a Folk Festival at the Croydon Community Centre. Much more her style.’

  ‘Philly! Look, aren’t you ever going to forget it?’

  ‘Frankly, Claude, I don’t think I ever am.’

  They crossed the road in front of me and their voices were lost, but I had heard enough to know that all was not sweetness and light in the Erskine-Brown household. I hoped that our Portia’s natural irritation with her errant husband would not lead her to sharpen her scalpel for the cut-throat defence.

  Half an hour later I knew the answer to that question. I was robed up with Liz Probert and Mr Bernard in tow on my way to a pre-trial conference with my client Dennis Timson, when we met Phillida Erskine-Brown and her husband on a similar mission to Den’s cousin, Cyril.

  ‘Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.’ I thought this was a suitable greeting to the lady silk in the lift.

  ‘Rumpole! What’s all this about proud Titania?’

  ‘You’re not going to listen to me?’

  ‘I’ll certainly listen, Rumpole. What’ve you got to say?’

  ‘You know it’s always fatal when two accused persons start blaming each other! A cut-throat defence with the Prosecutor chortling in his joy and handing out the razors. That’s got to be avoided at all costs.’

  ‘Why don’t you admit it then?’

  ‘Admit what?’

  ‘Admit you had the s
hooter? Accept the facts.’

  ‘Plead guilty?’ I must admit I was hurt by the suggestion. ‘And break the habit of a lifetime?’ We were out of the lift now and waiting, at the gateway of the cells in the basement, for a fat and panting screw, who had just put down a jumbo-sized sandwich, to unlock the oubliettes. ‘Who’s prosecuting?’ I asked Phillida.

  ‘Young fellow who was in our Chambers for about five minutes,’ she told me. ‘Charles Hearthstoke.’

  ‘My life seems to be dominated by hearthrugs,’ I told her.

  ‘He’s rather sweet.’

  ‘If you can possibly think Hearthrug’s sweet’ – I must say I was astonished – ‘no wonder you suspect Dennis Timson of carrying a shooter.’

  ‘Dennis Timson was tooled up.’ She was positive of the fact.

  ‘Cyril was!’ I knew my Dennis.

  ‘Moreover, he shot the bankguard extremely inefficiently – in the foot.’

  ‘Come on, proud Titania. Plead guilty…’ I tried a winsome smile to a minus effect.

  ‘Not for thy fairy kingdom, Rumpole!’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Isn’t that what Titania tells him. At the end of the scene? I suppose it means “no deal”.’ We parted then, to interview our separate clients, and I was left wondering if, when she was a white-wig, I had not taught young Phillida Trant, as she then was, far too much.

  We, that is to say, Liz, Mr Bernard and I, found Dennis in one of the small interview rooms, smoking a little snout and reading The Punter’s Guide to the Turf. I thought I should do best by an appeal to our old friendship and business association. ‘You and I, Dennis,’ I reminded him, ‘have known each other for a large number of years and I’ve never heard of you carrying a shooter before.’

  ‘You’re a sporting man, Mr Rumpole,’ the client said unexpectedly. I had to admit that I had enjoyed some recent success on the turf.