The Second Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Erskine-Brown was clearly cowed. ‘Oh, yes. Of course.’

  I wasn’t listening to them. I was gazing like a man entranced at a stop-press item on the back of the Standard. The golden words read LATE RESULT FROM REDCAR. NUMBER ONE, MOTHER’S RUIN. Two down and two to go! Things were going so well that I suggested to Hearthrug he might order a bottle of the real stuff.

  ‘Why? What are you celebrating?’ Phillida asked.

  ‘I don’t know about you fellows,’ I told them. ‘But I’ve made a few investments which seem to have turned out rather well. In fact, my future is almost entirely secure. Perhaps I won’t have to do this job any more.’ I looked round the table, smiling. ‘Suppose this should turn out to be Rumpole’s positively last case!’ At which point my learned friends, and one of my learned enemies, looked at me with a wild surmise, silent at a table in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar, faced with what might well count as the most significant moment in recent legal history.

  Events were moving quickly. Diogenes had won the Derby the previous Wednesday, and on Monday morning Henry had paid out my little bit of capital when I called into Chambers on my way to participate in R. v. Timson. By Monday night, two of my favoured horses had brought home the bacon: Pretty Balloon at Goodwood, and Mother’s Ruin most recently at Redcar. The speed of my success had somewhat stunned me, but I began to feel, as anyone must half-way through a successful four-horse accumulator, that I had the Midas touch. I had listened to Dennis’s advice perhaps, but I could certainly pick them. As I settled in my armchair at the gas-fireside in the Gloucester Road area that Monday evening I had no real doubt that Hilda and I were bound for some easy retirement by a sunkissed lagoon. We should soon, I thought, be boarding an aeroplane for the Seychelles. ‘I’ve got it, Rumpole.’ She broke into my reverie.

  ‘What’ve you got, Hilda?’

  ‘What I’ve been wanting for a long time, that little hearthrug. It looks smart, doesn’t it?’

  ‘If that’s what you always wanted, I think you might be rather more ambitious!’ The new arrival at our ‘mansion’ flat seemed hardly appropriate to our new-found wealth.

  ‘Just don’t you dare throw your cigar ends at it!’

  ‘Don’t you worry,’ I told her. ‘I shall be chucking my cigar ends, my Havana cigar ends, my Romeo y Julieta cigar ends, at the sparkling ocean, as I wander barefoot along the beach in a pair of old white ducks and knock the sweet oysters off the rocks.’

  ‘You’re hardly going to do that in the Gloucester Road.’ Hilda seemed not to be following my drift.

  ‘Forget the Gloucester Road! We’ll move somewhere far away from Gloucester Road and the Old Bailey.’ I rose to get a glass of Château Fleet Street from the bottle on the sideboard. ‘It’s not real Persian, of course, but I think it’s a traditional pattern,’ Hilda told me.

  ‘ “Courage!” he said,’ – I gave her a taste of ‘The Lotos-Eaters’:

  ‘and pointed toward the land,

  “This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.”

  And in the afternoon they came unto a land

  In which it seemed always afternoon.

  All round the coast the languid air did swoon,

  Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea what you mean,’ Hilda sighed and turned her attention to the Daily Telegraph.

  ‘It’s not the meaning, Hilda, it’s the sounds we shall hear: the chatter of monkeys, the screech of parrots in the jungle, the hum of dragonflies, the rattle of grasshoppers rubbing their little legs together, the boom of breakers on the coral reef. And we shall sit out on the hotel verandah, drinking Planter’s Punch and never having to wear a bloody winged collar again.’

  ‘I don’t wear a winged collar now.’ Hilda tends to think first of herself. Then she said, as I thought, a little sharply, ‘I wonder if the bank manager will have anything to say about the hearthrug.’

  ‘Hardly, Hilda!’ I reassured her. ‘I rather suspect that when I next run into Mr Truscott of the Caring Bank, he’ll be inviting me for a light lunch at the Savoy Grill. I just hope I can make time for him.’

  ‘The bank manager inviting you to lunch? That’ll be the day!’ She suddenly looked at me. ‘You have got the hundred pounds for our hearthrug, haven’t you, Rumpole?’

  ‘ “Fear not, Hilda… I do expect return/Of thrice three times the value of this bond.” ’

  ‘That’s all very well. But have you got the hundred pounds?’

  Tuesday dawned with only the case and Yarmouth races to worry about, but soon a new drama was unfolding itself before my eyes. I got to Chambers a little too late for my breakfast at the Taste-Ee-Bite in Fleet Street, so, once trapped again in the robes and the winged collar, I went down to the Old Bailey canteen, took my solitary coffee and bun to a corner table and sank behind The Times. I was soon aware of voices at the next table. It was Phillida again, but this time her companion was Charlie Hearthrug, and they both seemed blissfully unaware of old Rumpole at the table behind them.

  ‘You might come back into the fold?’ I heard Phillida say, and Hearthstoke answered, ‘Well, without Rumpole there, I don’t see why I shouldn’t find my way back into your Chambers at Equity Court.’

  ‘That’d be something to look forward to. I used to think nothing would ever change. Marriage and building up the practice and having the kids and taking silk and perhaps becoming one of the statutory women on the Circuit Bench – Circus Bench, Rumpole calls it…’ Phillida was clearly choosing this unlikely time and place to pour out her heart to Hearthstoke, who encouraged her by asking in soft and meaningful tones, like a poorish actor, ‘Doesn’t that seem enough for you now?’

  ‘Not really. You know’ – more confidences were clearly to come from Mrs Erskine-Brown – ‘sometimes I envy my clients getting into trouble and leaving home and doing extraordinary things, dreadful things sometimes. But their lives aren’t dull. Nothing happens to us! Nothing adventurous, really.’

  ‘Perhaps it will if this is really Rumpole’s last case and we’re in Chambers together. Almost anything can happen then.’

  ‘Almost anything?’ I saw Phillida’s elegant hand, with its rosy nails and sparkling cuff, descend gently on to Hearthrug’s. It was time to clear the throat, stand up and approach the couple.

  ‘How are you enjoying our duel to the death, Portia?’

  ‘Fighting you, Rumpole’ – she withdrew her hand as casually as possible – ‘is always a pleasure.’

  ‘Of course, you’ve got one great advantage,’ I told her.

  ‘Have I?’

  ‘Oh yes. You’ve got an excellent Junior. Good old Claude. He’s always behind you. Working hard. I think you should remember that.’ And with a brief nod to both of them, I swept on towards the corrida for another day’s battle with the Bull.

  When I rose to cross-examine Inspector Broome, the Officer-in-Charge of the case, a glance up at the Public Gallery told me that Peanuts Molloy was still in situ and apparently enjoying the proceedings. My gaze lingered on him for but a moment and then I turned my attention to the Inspector as I had done over so many cases and confronted a middle-aged, somewhat sardonic man who was capable of rare moments of humour and even rarer moments of humanity. He looked back at me, as always, with a sort of weary patience. Defence barristers in general, and Horace Rumpole in particular, were not among the Inspector’s favourite characters.

  ‘Inspector Broome,’ I began my cross-examination. ‘I understand that no fingerprints were found on the gun.’ At which point the Bull couldn’t resist weighing in with ‘I imagine, Mr Rumpole, that these gentry would be too…’ – for a wild moment I hoped he was going to say ‘experienced’ and then I’d have him on toast in the Court of Appeal, but his dread of that unjust tribunal made him say ‘too intelligent to leave fingerprints?’

  Something, perhaps it was the success I was enjoying with the horses, emboldened me to protest at the Judge’s constant interruptions at the
expense of my client. ‘My Lord,’ I ventured to point out, ‘the prosecution in this case is in the hands of my learned friend, Mr Hearthrug.’

  ‘Hearthstoke.’ The young gentleman in question rose to correct me. ‘Beg his pardon. Hearthstone. I’m sure he needs no assistance from your Lordship.’

  There was the usual pause while the Bull lowered his head, snorted, pawed the ground and so on. Then he charged in with ‘Mr Rumpole. That was an outrageous remark! It is one I may have to consider reporting as professional misconduct!’

  Of course, by the time he did that, I might be safely on my way to the Seychelles, but I still had to get through Yarmouth that day and Newbury the next. I thought it best to return the retort courteous. ‘I’m sorry if anything I might have said could possibly be construed as critical of your Lordship…’

  ‘Very well! Let’s get on with it.’ Bullingham suspended his attack for the moment and I returned to the witness. ‘Were the other areas of the strong-room examined for finger-prints, in particular the safe?’

  ‘Yes, they were,’ the Inspector told me.

  ‘And again no fingerprints of either Mr Cyril or Mr Dennis Timson were found?’ Bullingham roused himself to interrupt again, so I went on quickly, ‘My Lord is about to say, of course, that they’d still be wearing their gloves when they opened the safe and that is a perfectly fair point. I needn’t trouble your Lordship to make that interjection.’

  ‘Isn’t Rumpole going rather over the top?’ I heard Phillida whispering to her husband, and she got the sensible reply, ‘He’s behaving like a chap who’s got a secure future from investments.’

  ‘No fingerprints identifiable as the defendant’s were found, my Lord. That is true,’ Broome told the Court.

  ‘But no doubt a number of fingerprints were found on the door of the safe?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And they were photographed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No doubt many of them came from bank employees?’

  ‘No doubt about that, my Lord.’

  ‘But did you take the trouble to check any of those fingerprints with criminal records?’

  ‘Why should we have done that?’ The Inspector looked somewhat pained at the suggestion.

  ‘To see if they corresponded to the fingerprints of any known criminal, other than the two Mr Timsons.’

  ‘No. We didn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘The two Mr Timsons were the only men we found at the scene of the crime and we had established that they were wearing gloves.’

  ‘Because they had gloves on them when you caught them,’ Bullingham explained to me as though I were a child, for the benefit of the Jury.

  ‘We are so much obliged to the learned judge for his most helpful interjection, aren’t we, Inspector? Otherwise you might have had to think of the answer for yourself.’

  Of course that brought the usual warning rumble from the Bench, but I pressed on, more or less regardless, with, ‘Let me ask you something else, Inspector. When the defendants were apprehended, they were carrying about three thousand pounds worth of cash and other valuables from various deposit boxes?’

  ‘That is so.’

  ‘Was that the total amount missing from the safe?’

  ‘No. No, as a matter of fact, it wasn’t.’ For the first time Broome sounded puzzled. ‘That particular safe had been almost entirely emptied when we came to inspect it.’

  ‘Were its entire contents valued at something over sixty thousand pounds?’

  ‘Well over that, my Lord.’

  ‘Well over that…’ The Judge made a grateful note.

  ‘You have no idea when the sixty-thousand-pound worth was taken?’ I heard Bullingham start with a menacing ‘Perhaps…’ and went on, ‘My Lord is about to say perhaps they took it first and carried it out by the tunnel. That would be a sound point for my Lord to make.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Rumpole.’ The Judge tried the retort ironical.

  ‘Not at all, my Lord. I’m only too glad to be of assistance.’ I smiled at him charmingly. ‘But let me ask you this, Inspector. Your men came to the bank because an alarm went off in the strong-room?’

  ‘That is so. The signal was received at Tooting Central at…’

  ‘About 3 a.m. We know that. But it’s clear, isn’t it, that when your men invaded the bank they knew nothing about the tunnel?’

  ‘That is quite right.’

  ‘So they were admitted by the second guard on duty and went down to the vaults.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No police officer ever entered by the tunnel?’

  ‘Not so far as I am aware.’

  ‘We all heard that evidence, Mr Rumpole. Or perhaps you weren’t listening?’ Nothing subtle, you see, about Judge Bullingham’s little sallies.

  ‘On the contrary, my Lord. I was listening most intently.’ I turned back to the Inspector. ‘And when your officers entered the vaults they found there two men running down a passage towards them?’

  ‘That’s what they reported.’

  ‘Running away from the entrance to the tunnel.’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  ‘That is all I have to ask’ – I gave Bullingham another of my smiles – ‘unless your Lordship wishes to correct any of those answers…’

  ‘Hadn’t you better sit down, Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘Sit down? Yes, of course. I’d be glad to. Your Lordship is most kind and considerate as always…’ As I sat I thought that dear old Ever So Grateful had better get a spurt on or I would find myself up on a charge of professional misconduct. These thoughts were interrupted by Charlie Hearthstoke’s re-examination of the witness.

  ‘Mr Rumpole has asked you if you consulted criminal records on any of the fingerprints you did find on the safe.’

  ‘Yes. I remember him asking me that,’ Broome answered.

  ‘Mr Rumpole no doubt felt that he had to ask a large number of questions in order to justify his fee from the legal aid.’ Bullingham did one of his usual jokes to the Jury; it was a moderate success only with the twelve honest citizens.

  ‘I suppose you could compare the photographs of fingerprints you have with criminal records, couldn’t you?’ Hearthstoke suggested, greatly to my relief.

  ‘I could, my Lord. If the Court wishes it.’ Inspector Broome turned politely to the Bench for guidance and the Judge did his best to sound judicial. ‘Mr Hearthstoke has made a very fair suggestion, Inspector, as one would expect of a totally impartial prosecutor.’ He said graciously, ‘Perhaps you would be so kind as to make the inquiry. We don’t want to give Mr Rumpole any legitimate cause for complaint.’

  When we left Court at lunchtime, I followed the Inspector down the corridor in pursuit of the line of defence I had decided to adopt for Dennis Timson. When I caught up with him, I ventured to tell Inspector ‘New’ Broome what a thoroughly dependable and straightforward officer I had always found him. Quite rightly he suspected that I wanted something out of him and he asked me precisely what I had in my mind.

  ‘A small favour,’ I suggested.

  ‘Why should I do you a favour, Mr Rumpole? You have been a bit of a thorn in my flesh over the years, if I have to be honest.’

  ‘Oh yes, you have to be honest. But if I promised never to be a thorn in your flesh ever again?’

  ‘Not making me and my officers look Charlies in front of the Jury?’ Broome asked suspiciously.

  ‘Never again.’

  ‘Not letting the Timsons get away with murder?’

  ‘Never murder, Inspector! Perhaps, occasionally, stolen fish.’

  ‘Not getting my young D.C.s tied up in their own notebooks?’ He pressed for specific assurances.

  ‘If I swore on my old wig never to do anything of the sort again. In fact, Inspector Broome, if I were to promise you that this would be positively my last case!’

  ‘Your last case, Mr Rumpole?’ The Inspector was clearly reluctant to believe his ears.


  ‘My positively last case!’

  ‘You’d be leaving the Bailey after this for good?’ Hope sprang in the officer’s breast.

  ‘I was thinking in terms of a warmer climate. So if I were to leave and never trouble you again…’

  ‘Then I suppose I might be more inclined to help out,’ Inspector Broome conceded. ‘But if it’s that fingerprint business!’

  ‘Oh, you won’t get anything out of that. I just wanted to get somebody worried. No respectable thief’s ever going to leave their prints on a Peter. No, what I was going to suggest, old darling, is something entirely different.’

  ‘Nothing illegal, of course?’

  ‘Illegal! Ask Detective Inspector Broome to do anything illegal?’ I hope I sounded suitably appalled at the idea. ‘Certainly not. This is only guaranteed to serve the interests of justice.’

  After lunch, and after I had made my most respectful suggestions to the Inspector, Hearthstoke closed the prosecution case and Phillida called Cyril Timson to the witness-box. He agreed with most of the prosecution case and accepted the evidence, which we had heard, of Mr Huggins of having been shot at by some person and wounded in the foot. Phillida held the revolver in her hand and asked in her most solemn tones, ‘Cyril Timson. Did you take this weapon with you when you tunnelled into the Penny-Wise Bank?’ When he had, not unexpectedly, answered, ‘No. I never,’ I whispered a request to her to sit down and resist the temptation of cutting Dennis’s throat. She was not in a temptation resisting mood.

  ‘Did you ever,’ she asked Cyril, ‘have any idea that your cousin, the co-defendant, Dennis Timson, was armed with a pistol?’

  ‘My Lord,’ I objected, ‘there is absolutely no evidence that Dennis was armed with anything!’

  ‘The pistol was there at the scene of the crime, Mr Rumpole. Someone must have brought it,’ Bullingham reasoned.

  ‘Someone perhaps. But the question assumes…’

  ‘Please continue, Mrs Erskine-Brown.’ The Judge, ignoring me, almost simpered at Phillida, ‘You may ask your question.’

  ‘But you don’t have to, Portia,’ I whispered to her as I sat down. ‘Remember the quality of mercy!’