John Mortimer - Rumpole On Trial

by Rumpole On Trial(lit)

  'Or else wore gloves.' The Judge wrote a note. 'That's a possibility, isn't it. Members of the Jury?' Ignoring this interruption I asked the witness, 'Mr Casterini has agreed that it was his gun. He must have been mad to leave it at the scene of the crime, mustn't he?' 'Mr Rumpole,' Oilie Oliphant answered, 'you know we have a saying up in the North where I come from: "There's nowt so queer as folks"?' 'Do you really, my Lord? Down here, in the Deep South, I suppose we're more inclined to look for some sort of logical explanation. That's what I shall invite the Jury to do.' 'And I shall be inviting them to use their common sense.' The Judge repeated his creed.

  'What an excellent idea!' I bowed politely. 'I do so thoroughly agree with your Lordship.' 68 ", After this preliminary skirmish my opponent, Hilary Peek, a big beefy Q.C. with an unnervingly high voice, called Peter Matheson, the horn player. He gave the account I have outlined about seeing Desmond and finding the body but, perhaps more interestingly, he spoke of a previous conversation he had heard between Elizabeth and Tom Randall. They came down for the lift, which had chosen to be stuck, on that occasion, on the fourth floor. Matheson's door was open a little and he put down his horn long enough to hear Tom say, 'I'll have to tell him. Before everyone else knows.' ' "I'll have to tell him."' The Judge was writing it down with pleasure. 'No doubt that means, Mr Casterini, the lady's husband.' 'My Lord, there is no evidence of that,' I reminded him.

  'But we can use our common sense, can't we, Mr Rumpole?

  Isn't this just another of those cases about the eternal triangle?' 'At the moment,' I said, 'all we know is that they were a trio.' Not long after that I rose to cross-examine Mr Matheson, who was a nondescript, nervous young man who only came, entirely to life, I imagined, when playing his horn.

  'Did you hear a shot?' was my first question.

  'No, I didn't.' 'And did Mr Casterini tell you, straightaway, that he had found Mr Randall dead and he had no idea who did it?' 'He told me that, yes,' Matheson agreed.

  'You said you were at college with the members of the trio.' 'Just Tom and Elizabeth. Desmond Casterini met them later.' 'You said you knew Elizabeth Casterini well?' 'I suppose I was a bit in love with her. Most men were.

  You can understand that?' 'You mustn't ask me questions,' I told him firmly.

  'But I never got to know her well. No,' Matheson conceded.

  'Just help me about something. Did she start a shop, a boutique I suppose you'd call it, for the sale of model dresses?' 69 'Yes, she did. I think it did rather well.' 'Do you remember what the shop was called?' 'It was called Dreams of Youth, as far as I can remember.' Mr Justice Oliphant grew restless. 'Mr Rumpole, what on earth have dreams of youth got to do with the case?' 'I'm not quite sure, my Lord. Perhaps they're just things we all like to have occasionally.' This was greeted by a stir of laughter from the Jury, who seemed easily amused, and his Lordship rebuked them.

  'Members of the Jury. If we want a good laugh, we can all tune into the television set tonight. I believe they're giving us Coronation Street. We all thoroughly enjoy that, don't we?

  Shall we say ten-thirty tomorrow and then use your common sense and take this case seriously. In spite of Mr Rumpole's performance.' 'Or yours, your Lordship' was what I might have said.

  Ten-thirty the next morning brought a surprise which, if I have to be honest, I had been, as I thought long and hard about the case, half expecting. My opponent announced that he was going to call Elizabeth Casterini as a witness for the Prosecution.

  I went through the protests expected of me. I told him that I had been quite prepared to agree her statements, but Hilary Peek said that the Jury might like to see her in person and, as usual, Oilie agreed with the Prosecution. When she entered the witness-box the Jury can't have been disappointed. She looked as beautiful as ever and was dressed, I thought, as though for a concert, in a loose-fitting, patterned dress which again gave her the appearance of having stepped out of some medieval legend. As a concession to the time of day she was wearing boots and her hair was tied back in a way which left her pale forehead exposed. When she entered the witness-box " she smiled at her husband in the dock, and he smiled back, confident, I'm sure, that she had come there to help him. But if that was her purpose the evidence she gave was, in fact, no help at all.

  She stuck, in the main, to the facts in her statements. She 70 identified the revolver as looking like the one her husband kept in a drawer in their flat. But she told the Jury, as she had told me, that her husband seemed terribly jealous of her and Tom Randall for no earthly reason. That frightened her considerably because, of course, he had the gun. This was an answer Oilie Oliphant repeated and wrote down with considerable relish.

  So I rose to talk to Elizabeth, not over a lunch table but across a crowded courtroom. And now my purpose wasn't to establish our friendship but to destroy her credibility. I spoke to her quietly, with tenderness. I had decided this was the best technique and I also found it extremely easy to do.

  'When you were at college did you own a boutique called Dreams of Youth?' 'Yes, I did.' 'Mr Rumpole,' Oilie intruded into the conversation, 'are we going back to these dreams of yours?' 'Don't worry, my Lord. They may lead us to wake up to the truth.' And then I turned to the witness. 'You did well out of the shop, didn't you?' 'Yes. I sold it when I left college and invested the profits.' Elizabeth sounded unexpectedly businesslike.

  'And have lived quite comfortably ever since?' 'With our fees for playing. Yes.' 'Let me just remind you of what the dead man's last message to your husband was. Here's the police note of it: i WANT TO DISCUSS OUR LIVES SINCE DREAMS OF YOUTH.

  Was he referring to your shop?' 'I... I don't think so.' She had hesitated for the first time.

  'Let us suppose he was. When you were at college, a musicians' agent was tried for dealing in hard drugs. Some of your fellow students were said to be involved.' 'You know that, don't you?' She gave me a secret smile and I had to tell her, 'I may do, but the Jury don't. You attended the trial, didn't you?' 'Yes. A friend of mine was in the dock. You got him off.

  Brilliantly.' 7i 'We'll take that for granted!' I got another easy stir of laughter for this and a growling 'Mr Rumpole!' from the Judge, so I went on quickly. 'During the course of the trial there were a number of references to people meeting at the Dreams of Youth boutique.' 'I can't remember all the details.' Elizabeth now looked beautifully vague.

  'But you were never charged?' 'You know I wasn't.' She was still smiling. 'There was nothing I could have been charged with.' 'My Lord, if Mr Rumpole is suggesting the witness has committed some offence, she should be warned.' Hilary Peek arose in all his glory. The Judge, somewhat miffed, said, 'Thank you, Mr Peek. I do know my business,' and with exaggerated courtesy to Elizabeth, 'Mrs Casterini. I have to warn you that you needn't answer any question that might incriminate you.' 'I'm quite prepared to answer all Mr Rumpole's questions, my Lord.' And then the witness turned to me as though she trusted me entirely.

  'Thank you.' And I went on. 'One of the students gave evidence for the prosecution, and he wasn't charged either. He looked a bit different then, perhaps. He had a beard and another name: Tom Cogswill. I've got a photograph of him here printed in the News of the World at the time. Who is that a picture of?' She looked at the cutting the usher handed up to her and agreed, 'Tom Cogswill. So far as I can remember.' 'Later to become Tom Randall, beardless and a member of your trio. The murdered man.' Her 'yes' to this was almost inaudible.

  'He gave evidence for the Prosecution in the Hoffman trial?' I asked her.

  'Yes, he did.' 'And gave no evidence implicating you in this musical drug ring?' 'Mr Rumpole, are those all the questions you have on this ancient trial?' Oilie put his oar in again. 'It seems miles away from the issue in this case.' 72 "c* 'For the moment, my Lord.' And then I looked at Elizabeth.

  'Mrs Casterini. Your husband will say he was never jealous of you and Tom Cogswill, otherwise known as Randall.' 'You know he was, don't you, Mr Rumpole?' She smiled as though tolerant of my sudden f
orgetfulness.

  'No. I don't.' I still did my best to sound like a kindly confidant. 'And the Jury don't know. We only know what you've told us. And perhaps we don't know whether to believe you. Let's assume for a moment that this wasn't a quarrel between two men over a beautiful woman. Now what other explanation is there for Tom Randall getting shot?' 'I have no idea. Suppose you tell me, Mr Rumpole?' Even at that point we still sounded like friends.

  'Indeed I will. After a few more questions.' I picked up the bundle of bank statements we had from the Prosecution. 'Did you ever pay money to Tom Randall?' 'Money? No, I don't think so.' She was still calm and smiling.

  'Just try and help us, Mrs Casterini. When the trio was formed, didn't you tell your husband you'd given Tom some of your plentiful store of money so he could turn down other work and concentrate on playing with you?' 'I said I'd helped Tom out. Yes.' Now she was hesitating.

  'And did you go on paying him money from time to time?' 'What are you looking at?' She made the mistake of asking me the question.

  'The dead man's bank accounts. He got a regular payment in from a certain source. Was that source you?' 'Perhaps. Sometimes. Is that what it says?' The answer to that question was no, so I ignored it and asked another, 'Was he blackmailing you, Mrs Casterini?' 'Blackmailing? Whatever for?' 'Threatening to tell your husband, and then the police, all he knew about your part in the Hoffman drug ring if you didn't go on paying?' 'No. No, of course not.' She turned her smile on the Jury, but now, I noticed, they didn't smile back.

  'You remember what Mr Matheson heard Tom Randall say 73 to you one day by the lift?, 'I'll have to tell him. Before everyone else knows.' Did that mean he was going to tell your husband that your nice little lump of capital came from drugs?' 'No!' Her denial was too loud, too vehement.

  'What did it mean then?' 'Perhaps that he loved me. I don't really know.' I let that answer hang in the air for a moment and then I changed the subject. 'What were you doing on the day that Tom Randall died?' 'I went out in the morning. I had a doctor's appointment.

  Then I went to a lunchtime concert in Portland Place. I went to buy a dress. Oh, I had to have a drink with our agent at six.' 'Before that you popped back home and saw what your husband had written on the pad by the answering machine: TOM AT THE ROOM, SIX O'CLOCK?' 'No.' 'Mrs Casterini. It didn't take you from lunchtime to six o'clock to buy a dress. Were you carrying it all the afternoon, walking about London?' 'No. I did just call at the flat, to put the dress away.' 'And you didn't look at the message pad?' 'I never saw that.' I could tell by the way the Jury was looking at her that they found it hard to believe in a woman who would come home and not bother to look at the messages.

  'Did you telephone Tom Randall from your car and arrange to meet him at the rehearsal room at five-thirty, before he spoke to your husband?' 'No. No, of course I didn't.' As she said that, I picked up another document and reminded her, 'Bills from car telephones have a nasty habit of showing the numbers called. You telephoned Tom Randall that day, didn't you?' 'No. No, I'm sure I didn't.' And then she changed it to 'I... I can't remember.' 'Didn't you go to the rehearsal room some time before six 74 -e* o'clock, taking your husband's gun in case Tom couldn't be dissuaded?' 'No! I had to meet the agent at six at the Warren Hotel. I told you that!' 'Plenty of time to do the deed, hide the gun somewhere the police could find it, then go up the stairs, out to the fireescape and down to the street. No doubt you arranged for the lift to be stuck at the top floor. How far from the rehearsal room to the Warren Hotel? Just around the corner?' 'Not very far away.' 'So,' I put it to her quietly, 'let's get back to the vital question. Who else had a motive for killing Tom Randall?

  Might it be someone who wanted to stop paying him blackmail and also shut his mouth?' 'Not me... It wasn't...' She was stumbling, but Hilary Peek rose to her rescue. 'My Lord, Mr Rumpole is putting a whole string of suppositions to this witness. He's accusing her of the very crime for which his client is on trial. How can these questions be relevant?' 'Because, my Lord, if the Jury thinks someone else might be guilty, my client can't be convicted.' I supplied Oilie with, the answer. 'I'm fully entitled to put these suppositions to the witness. Or does your Lordship want me to argue the matter in the Court of Appeal?' At the mention of this dreaded court Oilie looked shaken and poured a great deal of North Country oil on our troubled water. 'Let's use our common sense about this, Mr Rumpole.

  No need to bother the Court of Appeal, is there? They've got quite enough on their plates nowadays. You go on at your own risk. Accusing this lady may not exactly endear your client to the Jury. And remember I shall be watching you like a hawk, so "mind tha step, lad", as we say where I come from.' So I turned to Elizabeth and asked her the single most important question. 'Why did you come here as a witness, Mrs Casterini?' 'The police asked me.' 'You know you couldn't be compelled to give evidence 75 against your husband, they must have told you that. So you came here of your own free will. Why?' 'To tell you the truth as I know it.' 'Or to make sure your husband gets convicted for a crime you committed?' She didn't answer that but stood in silence for a moment.

  She looked suddenly older, harder and when she spoke I knew she hated me. 'Is there anything else wicked I'm supposed to have done, Mr Rumpole?' 'Oh, yes,' I told her, 'you recommended your husband to brief a barrister you hoped wouldn't attack you. I'm sorry to have disappointed you, Mrs Casterini.' There is often a moment in a trial when you know for certain that the case is decided. R. v. Casterini was won when I had finished my cross-examination and my short, unreasonably happy and misguided friendship with Elizabeth. She left the witness-box and the court and I never saw her or spoke to her again. Three days later her husband also left the court, sad, confused but acquitted. I don't know when they met or what they said to each other. In any event their time together was short. Not long after the Jury's verdict D. I. Baker and D. S. Straw called at the Butterworth Buildings rehearsal room. There they found Elizabeth playing a violin solo and charged her with the murder of Thomas Randall. In spite of her high opinion of my brilliance she didn't call upon me to defend her.

  After the Casterini trial my life returned to normal, which meant another Chambers meeting. This one was to reach a final verdict on the matter of the alleged harassment of Dot Clapton. Erskine-Brown, who was, as I thought, unwisely conducting his own defence, addressed us in a plaintive fashion. 'It's totally unfair,' he submitted. 'I never intended to harass Dot. That is, Miss Clapton. I heard Henry approaching her in the most outrageous manner and I asked her to tell me about it, so we could make a proper complaint. Well, she must have misunderstood me.' 'What outrageous manner was that?' I asked.

  'Well, he was going on about the swishing sound made by 76."* her stockings and her modestly hidden breasts. Oh, and he said, "Just you and I, Annabelle. Two will become one when our bodies mingle."' 'Is that all?' 'Rumpole, just because you happen to have won in Casterini, don't feel you're entitled to take over this important inquiry.' Ballard objected to my stealing his thunder, but I was in possession of the facts.

  'I have investigated the matter, Bollard,' I told him, 'as no one else seems to have bothered to do. May I just ask a simple question, with your Lordship's permission? I'm grateful to your Lordship. Erskine-Brown, is Miss Clapton's name Annabelle?' 'I... I don't think so,' Claude had to admit.

  'It certainly isn't. Her name is Dot, short, all too short I'm afraid, for Dorothy. Have you forgotten that Henry is a thespian, a mummer, a star of the Bexleyheath Amateurs? Dot Clapton is also a native of Bexleyheath, with a taste for the stage. That ghastly dialogue was not Henry's but the product of the fevered brain of a Miss Mildred Hannay, a local author who has written a play especially for the group. What you had the misfortune to hear, Erskine-Brown, was a rehearsal. Any further questions?' There was a silence which Mizz Probert broke by asking, 'Yes. Why are we wasting our time with this meeting?' 'It's not all a waste of time, Probert,' Ballard spoke to her severely. 'There's the matter of your baby!' 'Her what?' Dave asked angrily.


  'And your garage, Inchcape.' Ballard fired off the most serious allegation. 'With all that money you're earning, how could you refuse to maintain Probert's child? Are we to have a public scandal and a paternity suit in Chambers?' 'What have you got into your head about me and garages?' Dave Inchcape was running out of patience.

  Liz Probert started to laugh. 'I know what it was!' 'What?' Soapy Sam Ballard sounded not a little put out.

  'You came into the room during my telephone call about Singleton v. Singleton,' Liz told him. 'I wasn't talking about 77 me and Dave. We were talking about our clients. It's hilarious!' 'No, it isn't,' I corrected her. 'It's quite serious, really. You all think sex is the explanation for everything that happens, but quite often it's something else entirely.' 'Is there another chop, Hilda?' I was sitting at supper with She Who Must Be Obeyed and, having poured the remains of my bottle of Machismo for Men down the lavatory, I was reverting to my old ways.

  'You've given up being a vegetarian, then?' she asked as she dropped one on my plate.

  'Oh, yes. The last vegetarian I met was a murderer and a teetotaller.' 'What came over you, Rumpole, when you started to smell so exotic?' 'I met a lady in the meads (I explained) Full beautiful, a faery's child; Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild.' 'I suppose you're talking about that Mrs Casterini. When I think we sat and listened to her fiddling! If I'd've known what she was like I wouldn't have stayed.' 'Ah, but we didn't know, did we? La Belle Dame Sans Merci had us in her thrall..' 'There are actually two chops going begging, Rumpole.' And she rewarded me with the other.