John Mortimer - Rumpole 1 - Rumpole of The Bailey

by Rumpole of The Bailey(lit)

  'Is it important?' the Member asked innocently.

  'Oh, no. A triviality. It only means she hated your guts before anyone suggests you might have raped her. You know, Mr Aspen, if you're applying the same degree of thought to the economy as you are to this case, no wonder the pound's dickie.' I have been politer to clients, but Aspen took it very well. He stood up, smiling, and said, 'You're right. The case is yours, Mr Rumpole. I'll go back to worrying about the pound.' Mrs Aspen also stood and looked at me as though I was a regrettable necessity in their important lives, like drains.

  I said nothing cheering, 'Case?' I told them. 'We haven't got a case. Yet. Because at the moment, Mr Myers doesn't know a damn thing about Miss Bridget Evans.' That evening the fatted guinea-fowl was consumed. I brought home three very decent bottles of claret from Pommeroy' and we entertained Nick and his intended. It was always a treat to have Nick at home with us, even though he'd given up reading Sherlock Holmes and taken to sociology, a subject which might, for me, be entirely written in the hieroglyphics of some remote civilization. I can think of no social theory which could possibly account for such sports as Rumpole and She Who Must Be Obeyed, and I honestly don't believe we're exceptions, being surrounded by a sea of most peculiar, and unclassifiable individuals.

  Dinner was over, but we still sat round the table and I was giving the company one of my blue-chip legal anecdotes, guaranteed to raise a laugh. It was the one about the retiring Chief Justice of the Seaward Isles.

  'How much do you give a ponce!' I was laughing myself now, in joyful anticipation of the punch line, 'And the answer came back by very fast rickshaw, "Never more than two and six."' Nick joined me in a burst of hilarity.

  Hilda said, 'Well! Thank goodness that's over,' and Erica looked totally mystified. Then she told us that Nick had been offered a vacancy in the department of social studies in the University of Baltimore, which came as something of a surprise to us as we both thought Nick had settled on the job he'd been offered at Warwick.

  ' So it's not decided,' Hilda said, voicing the general anxiety.

  'From our point of view I suppose Warwick would have certain advantages over Baltimore,' I told Nick.

  'I doubt the academic standards are any higher,' Erica was defensive.

  'No. But it is a great deal nearer Gloucester Road. Another glass of water?' I rose and poured for Erica. She was a good-looking girl and seemed healthy enough, although I regretted her habit of drinking water, as I told her. ' Scientific research has conclusively proved that water causes the hair to drop out, fallen arches and ingrowing toe nails. They should pass a law against it.' At this point Erica did her best to raise the level of the conversation, by saying, 'Nicky's told me all about your work. I think it's just great the way you stand up in Court for the underprivileged!' 'I will stand up in Court for absolutely any underprivileged person in the world. Provided they've got Legal Aid!' 'What's your motivation, in taking on these sort of cases?' Erica asked me seriously, and I told her, 'My motivation is the money.' 'I think you're just rationalizing.' 'He does it because he can't resist the sound of his own voice,' Nick, who knows most about me, told her; but I would allow no illusions.

  'Money! If it wasn't for the Legal Aid cheque, I tell you, Rumpole would be silent as the tomb! The Old Bailey would no longer echo with my pleas for acquittal and the voice of the Rumpole would not be heard in the Strand. But, as it is, the poor and the underprivileged can rely on me.' ' I'm sure they can,' Erica sounded consoling.

  'And the Legal Aid brings us a quite drinkable claret.' I refilled my glass. 'From Jack Pommeroy's Wine Bar. As a matter of fact I get privately paid sometimes. Sometimes I get a plum!' 'Erica wants to come and hear you in Court,' Nick told me and she smiled.

  'How could I miss it?' 'Well, I'm not exactly a tourist attraction.' ' If I'm going to live in England I want to know all I can about your mores,' Erica explained. Well, if she wanted to see the natives at their primitive crafts who was I to stop her? 'Come next week. Down the Bailey. Nick'll bring you for lunch. We'll have steak and kidney pud. Like the old days. Nick used to drop in at the Bailey when he came back from school. He enjoyed the occasional murder, didn't you Nick? That's settled then. We'll have a bit of fun!' 'Fun? What sort of fun?' Erica sounded doubtful, and I told her, 'Rape.' Mr Myers, of my instructing solicitors, went to the Honourable Member's constituency and discovered gold. Miss Bridget Evans was not greatly liked in the local party, being held to be a left-wing activist, and a bloody nuisance. More important than her adherence to the late Leon Trotsky was her affair with Paul Etherington, the Labour Party agent. I was gloating over this, and other and more glorious goodies provided by the industrious Myers, when there was a knock on my door in Chambers and in filtered Erskine-Brown, glowing with some mysterious triumph.

  'Rumpole. One doesn't want to bother the Head of Chambers...' 'Why not bother him? He's got very little on his mind, except settling a nice fat planning case and losing at golf to the Lord Chancellor. Guthrie Featherstone, Q.c., old sweetheart, is ripe for bothering!" I turned my attention back to the past of Miss Bridget Evans.

  'It's our head clerk,' Erskine-Brown went on mysteriously.

  'Albert? You want to go and bother him?' Erskine-Brown could restrain himself no longer. 'He's a criminal! Our head clerk is a criminal, Rumpole.' I looked at the man with considerable disapproval. 'As an ornament of the civil side, don't you find that sort of word a little distasteful?' 'I have proof.' And Erskine-Brown fished a pound note out of his pocket. I examined it curiously.

  'Looks like a fairly conventional portrait of Her Majesty.' 'There's a red cross in the corner,' he announced proudly. 'I put it there. I marked the money in the petty cash!' I looked at my fellow barrister in astonishment.

  'I've suspected Albert for a long time. Well, I saw him in Pommeroy's Wine Bar and I got the note he'd paid with off one of the girls. Perhaps it's difficult for you to believe.' 'Extremely!' I stood up and fixed him with an unfriendly gaze. 'A private eye. Taking up the Bar as a profession!' 'What do you mean, Rumpole?' 'I mean, in my day they used to be nasty little men in macs, sniffing round the registers in cheap hotels. They used to spy into bedrooms with field-glasses, in the ever-present hope of seeing male and female clothing scattered around. It's the first time I ever heard of a private Dick being called to the Bar, and becoming an expert on the law of contract.' I handed the marked pound back to Erskine-Brown, the well-known Dick. He looked displeased.

  ' It's obvious that I will have to go straight to the Head of Chambers.' As he made for the door I stopped him.

  'Why not?' I said. 'Oh just one thing that may have escaped your attention, my dear Watson.' 'What's that?' 'Yesterday afternoon, I borrowed five pound notes from petty cash, no doubt notes decorated by you. And I paid for all of Albert's drinks in Pommeroys.' 'Rumpole. Are you sure?' I could see he felt his case crumbling.

  ' I would really advise you, Erskine-Brown, as a learned friend, not to go round Chambers making these sort of wild allegations against our clerk. A man who's been here, old darling, since you were in nappies!' 'Very well, Rumpole. I'm sorry I interrupted your rape.' Erskine-Brown had the door open, he was about to slink away.

  'Say no more, old sweetheart. Not one word more. Oh, convey my condolences to the unfortunate Henry. The position of second clerk must be continually frustrating.' When I was alone I was well pleased. Albert and I had been together now for forty years and I was anxious not to cross my old Dutch. And the evidence little Myersy had uncovered put me in mind of Lewis Caroll.

  'Oh, hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms! Thou beamish boy...' 'Not yet father', I said to myself. 'But I will. Oh yes. I certainly will...' 'Tomatoes doing well, Mr Myers, are they?' ' I apply a great deal of artificial, you see, Mr Rumpole. And they're just coming up to the fourth truss.' 'Fourth truss, are they? Lively little blighters, then!' We were waiting outside Court. Mr and Mrs Aspen were sitting on a bench, he looking curiously relaxed, she glaring across at Miss Bridget
Evans who was looking young and demure on a bench some distance away. Meanwhile I was going through the old legal gambit of chatting up the instructing solicitor. I showed concern for his tomatoes, he asked after my son whom he remembered as a visitor to the Courts of Law.

  'Nick? Oh, he's the brains of the family. Sociology. They've offered him a lectureship at Warwick University! And he's engaged to be married. Met her in America and now he's bringing the lady to live in England.' 'I never had a family,' Mr Myers told me, and added, 'I do find having young kids about plays merry hell with your tomatoes.' At which point Mrs Anna Aspen drew me aside for a conference. The first thing she said surprised me a little.

  ' I just hope you're not going to let me down.' 'Let you down, Mrs Aspen? So far as I can see you're in no danger of the Nick.' 'I'm in danger of losing everything I ever worked for.' 'I understand.' 'No. You don't understand, Mr Rumpole. It's been hard work, but I made Ken fight. I made him go for the nomination. I made him fight for the Seat. When he got in he wanted... I don't know, to relax on the back benches. He said he'd throw in ideas. But I told him to fight for the PJP.S.'s job and he's got it!' She looked across to where her husband was actually trying the ghost of a smile in Bridget's direction. 'He can't see it's either him or her now. Ken can't see that! You're right about him looking for compromises. Sometimes it makes me so angry!' 'Angrier than the idea of your husband and Miss Bridget Evans. On the floor of the office?' 'Oh that! Why should I worry about that?' Before I could answer her question, an usher came out to invite the Honourable Member to step into the dock, and we were away.

  When you go into Court in a rape case it's like stepping into a refrigerator with the light off. All the men on the jury are thinking of their daughters, and all the women are sitting with their knees jammed together. I found a sympathetic-looking, moderately tarty, middle-aged lady juror, the sort that might have smiled at the Honourable Member and thought, 'Why didn't you ring me, dearie. I'd have saved you all this trouble.' But her lips snapped shut during the opening by Mr Twenty-man, Q.C. for the prosecution, and I despaired of her.

  Even the judge, old Sam Parkin, an amiable old darling, perfectly capable of giving a conditional discharge for manslaughter or putting an old lag on probation, even old Sam looked, when the case opened, as if he'd just heard the clerk say, 'Put up Jack the Ripper.' Now he seemed to be wanning to Miss Bridget Evans who was telling her hair-raising story with effective modesty. As I tottered to my feet old Sam gave me an icy look. When you start to cross-examine in a rape case you open the flap of the tent, and you're out in the blizzard.

  'Miss Bridget Evans. This... this incident involving Mr Aspen occurred at 11.30 on Wednesday night?' ' I don't know. I wasn't watching the clock.' The door of the Court opened, to admit the Rumpole fan club, my son Nick and Erica his intended. She was wearing an ethnic skirt and gave me a warm smile, as though to encourage my efforts on behalf of the underprivileged and the oppressed.

  'After all the witnesses had conveniently departed. When there was no one there, to establish my client's innocence. After it was all over, what did you do?' ' I went home.' 'A serious and terrible crime had been committed and you went home, tucked yourself up in bed and went to sleep! And you said not one word to the police about it until 6.30 the following day?' Albert, also of the fan club, was sitting in front of me next to Mr Myers. I heard his penetrating whisper, 'He's doing the old Alhambra cinema technique.' It was nice to feel that dear old Albert was proud of me.

  'When you went to bed. Did you go alone?' 'I don't see what that's got to do with it.' Her answer had a hint of sharpness and, for the first time, there was a centimetre up in some of the juror's eyebrows.

  'Did you go alone?' 'I told you. I went to bed.' 'Miss Evans. I shall ask my question again and I shall go on asking it all night if it's necessary in the interests of my client. Did you go to bed alone?' 'Do I have to answer that sort of question, my Lord?' 'Yes you do. And my Lord will so direct.' I got in before Sam could draw breath.

  'Perhaps if you answer Mr Rumpole's questions shortly you will be out of the box quite quickly, and your painful experience will be over.' Sam Parkin meant well, but I intended to keep her there a little while longer.

  'Yes. I went to bed alone.' 'How long had that been going on?' 'How long had what been going on, Mr Rumpole?' Sam asked.

  'That the witness had taken to sleeping alone, my Lord. You were no longer friendly with Mr Etherington?' 'Paul and I? We split about two years ago. If you're interested in the truth.' I began to hear what a barrister longs for when he's cross-examining, the note of anger.

  'Yes, Miss Evans. I am interested in the truth, and I expect the ladies and gentlemen of the jury are also.' The tarty lady nodded perceptibly. She and I were beginning to reach an understanding.

  'Mr Rumpole. Is it going to help us to know about this young lady and Paul..." Sam was doing his best.

  'Paul Etherington, my Lord. He was the Parliamentary agent.' 'I'm anxious not to keep this witness longer than is necessary.' 'I understand, my Lord. It must be most unpleasant.' Almost as unpleasant I thought, as five years in the Nick, which was what the Honourable Member might expect if I didn't demolish Miss Evans. 'But I have my duty to do.' 'And a couple of refreshers to earn,' Mr Twentyman, Q.C., whispered, a thought bitchily, to his junior.

  'You had been living with Paul Etherington for two years before you parted?' 'Yes.' 4 So you were eighteen when you started living together.* 'Just... nearly eighteen.' 'And before that?' 'I was at school.' 'You had lovers before Paul?' 'Yes.' 'How many?' 'One or two.' ' Or three or four? How many? or didn't they stay long enough to be counted?"

  My dear friend the lady juror gave a little disapproving sigh. I had misjudged her. The old darling was less afille dejoie than a member of the festival of light, but I saw Erica whisper to Nick, and he held her hand, shushing her.

  'Mr Rumpole!' Sam had flushed beneath his wig. I took a swift move to lower his blood pressure.

  'I apologize my Lord. Pure, unnecessary comment. I withdraw it at once."

  'Your Mr Rumpole is doing us proud,' I heard Mr Myers whisper to Albert who replied complacently, 'His old hand has lost none of its cunning, Myersy.' After a dramatic pause, I played the ace. 'How old were you when you had the abortion?' I looked round the Court and met Erica's look; not exactly a gaze of enraptured congratulation.

  ' I was nineteen... It was perfectly legal.' Miss Evans was now on the defensive.' I got a certificate. From the psychiatrist.' 'Saying you were unfit for childbirth?' 'I suppose so.' 'And the psychiatrist certified... you were emotionally unstable?' It was a shot in the bloody dark, but I imagine that's what trick cyclists always say, to prevent any unwanted increase in the population.

  'Something like that... yes.' I gave Ken Aspen a cheering glance. He was busy writing a note, containing, I hoped, more ammunition for Rumpole in the firing line.

  ' So the jury have to rely, in this case, on the evidence of a yovosg vroman. vfho has been certified emotionally, unstable.' The jury were looking delightfully doubtful as the usher brought me the note from the dock. No ammunition, not even any congratulation, but just one line scrawled, 'Leave her alone now, please! K. A.' I crumpled the note with visible irritation; in such a mood, no doubt, did Nelson put the glass to his blind eye when reading the signal to retreat.

  'Just three months ago, you were rushed into hospital. You'd taken a number of sleeping tablets. By accident?' I continued to attack.

  'No.' 'Why?' 'Well, it was... I told you. I'd just parted from Paul.' ' Come now, Miss Evans. Just think. You'd parted from Paul over a year ago.' ' I was... I was confused.' ' Was it then you first met Mr Aspen?' 'Just... Just about that time.' 'And fell in love with him?' 'No!' She was really angry now, but she managed to smile at the jury who didn't smile back. If I could have dropped dead of a coronary at that moment, I thought, Miss Bridget Evans might be dancing for joy.

  'Became so obsessed with him that you were determined to pursue him at any cost to hi
m, or to his family ?' ' Shall I tell you the truth ? I didn't even like him!' 'And that night after you and Mr Aspen had made love...' ' Love! Is that what you call it?' 'He refused to leave his wife and children.' ' We never discussed his wife and children!' 'And it was in rage, because he wouldn't leave his family, that you made up this charge to ruin him. You hate him so much.' 'I don't hate him.' ' Oh. Can it be you are still in love with him?' ' I never hated him, I tell you. I was indifferent to him.' It was the answer I wanted, and just the moment to hold up the poster of Ken's face, scrawled on by Miss Evans in her fury.

  'So indifferent that you did that. To his face on the wall?' 'Perhaps. After.' 'Before! Because you had done that early in the evening, hadn't you? In one of your crazy fits of rage and jealousy?' Now Bridget Evans was crying, her face in her hands, but whether in fury or grief, or simply to stop the questions, not I but the jury would have to judge.

  'Will that poster be Exhibit 24, Mr Rumpole?" Sam spoke in his best matter-of-fact judge's voice, and I gave him a bow of deep satisfaction and said,' If your Lordship pleases.' 'Is that your work?' I was entertaining Nick and Erica to an apres-Gouxt drink in Pommeroy's Wine Bar. A group from Chambers, Guthrie Featherstone, Erskine-Brown, my friend George Frobisher and old Uncle Tom were at the bar. The Rumpole family occupied a table in that part of Pommeroy's where ladies are allowed to assemble. I felt as if I'd spent a day digging the roads, in a muck sweat and exhausted after the cross-examination. I was, of course, moderately well pleased with the way it had gone and I had asked Joan the waitress to bring us a bottle of Pommeroy's cooking champagne, and Erica's special, a coca-cola. When it came I took a quick glassful and answered her question.