John Mortimer - Rumpole On Trial

by Rumpole On Trial(lit)

  'Oh, I'm only used to murder and robbery,' I told him.

  'Suchlike trivialities. I'd never heard of the crime of flat buttons before.' There was a silence then, broken by Richard Sackbut. 'We had rather a nasty accident here, Rumpole. Some old tramp woman managed to drown herself in the castle lake.' 'Is Swabey going to be a pain in the neck about it, Richard?' Gavin Bastion asked.

  'Oh, you know what he is. He wants to get his name in the papers, make a sensational trial of it. He thinks he's going to discover all sorts of things that aren't there to be discovered.

  It's just a bore, quite honestly.' 'Well, I don't see that you're responsible for anything,' Plunger assured our host. 'Most people have got a lake of some sort, haven't they, Rumbold?' 'Well, we have to make do with rather a small one, in the Gloucester Road.' This was another joke which went down like a lead balloon, but Rosemary came to my rescue. 'Talking of sensational trials, darling. Uncle Horace was telling me about that one he did yonks ago. In a bungalow, wasn't it, Uncle Horace?' Then I lent back and prepared to enjoy myself for the first time since we arrived in the castle. 'It was an extraordinary case. I was a young man then, a white wig really, and I won it alone and without a leader. It raised some most interesting questions about bruising and the time of death. I mean, it should be relatively simple to discover if a bruise were pre, or post-mortem, of course, A careless pathologist could cause bruising when removing the tongue during an autopsy. That's what happened in the Penge Bungalow Murders.' There was a somewhat embarrassed pause, and I felt that neither my jokes nor my tales from the morgue were greatly appreciated.

  Pippa said, 'Where is Penge, actually?' 'Isn't it somewhere near Bognor?' Tarquin Yarrowby guessed. But Richard gave a signal to his wife at the other end of the table, at which she rose, saying, 'Oh, yes. Well. Shall we leave the men to their...' 'Post-mortems, apparently,' Gavin finished her sentence for her gloomily.

  After the ladies had left us the masculine conversation flowed like cement. Nobody told improper jokes, and, after a while, Plunger Plumstead, who had been staring at me balefully, growled, 'I say, Rumbold. Can you get your gamekeepers to eat rook?' 'Well, now you mention it. I've never really tried.' 'When I was a boy, gamekeepers pretty well lived on rook.

  Their wives used to make it up into pies. You won't find a woman who'll do that now.' 'Tell the truth, I don't have any gamekeepers, or rooks either, come to that.' 'Odd! I thought you said you had a place in Gloucester.' I was saved further embarrassment as Richard moved from his place at the head of the table to sit next to me. Then, as Gavin Bastion started a long story about some local adultery, our host said, confidentially, 'Mr Rumpole, Rosemary was telling me you've had a great deal of success in your cases.' 'I suppose I have acquired a certain reputation round the Brixton cells,' I told him. 'I never knew I was famous in castles.' 'And a good many of your cases,' he went on, 'have concerned, well, dead people.' 'Dead people? Yes. I've always found, contrary to popular belief, that they can tell you a lot.' 'I wonder if you'd have time for a bit of a chat tomorrow?' he asked tentatively.

  'I'm yours for the weekend.' 'You're still available for business?' 'Always. Always available.' 'Good! That's very good.' He seemed relieved and, for the first time, I saw him smile. 'Well, now. Shall we join the ladies?' 'Why not? Let's join them', I tried a final joke, 'and make one huge, enormous lady!' Lord Sackbut was still smiling politely, but he didn't laugh. He was a man, I was later to discover, who sometimes missed the point.

  As I was tearing off the stiff collar in a large and drafty bedroom, I told Hilda that I need never have gone through that blunt execution. 'I thought they were slackly dressed for a castle,' she said. 'Never mind. We looked smart, Rumpole.' 'We wore the wrong things, but they never referred to it.

  You noticed that? They never said a word.' 'It was sweet of them to ask us, wasn't it?' 'Why do you suppose they did?' 'Well, we're family, aren't we?' 'Not because we're family and not even because they never asked us to the wedding. My Lord Richard Sackbut's in trouble, Hilda. At least he's got that in common with Walter The Wally Wilkinson. He needs a good brief.' The next morning there didn't seem to be very much to do but look around the house. At the end of the row of family portraits I saw a man who looked so like our host that he could only have been Richard's father, a long-chinned, blueeyed, gingery-haired man in army uniform. Under the picture the legend was captain the lord sackbut m.p., D.s.o. born 1912, died 1972. By the drawing-room fireplace Rosemary was taking Hilda through a number of volumes of family photographs leading up to an extensive record of the wedding which we had unfortunately missed. As I couldn't gasp at the length of the bride's train, or the good looks of the bridegroom, I returned down the passage to the part of the castle thrown open to the public, with whom I had decided to mingle.

  I had hardly entered the Great Hall, or heard much of the guide's monologue, when a man in assertive tweeds emerged from the hoi polloi, and introduced himself as Dr Hugo Swabey. 'We met briefly, Mr Rumpole,' he said, 'when you came up to Leeds on that stabbing in the Old People's Home.' 'Of course. And you gave some rather novel evidence on the direction of knife wounds.' 'Well, thank you, thank you very much.' I hadn't meant it as a compliment, and, in fact, Swabey's evidence was generally ignored. 'One is sometimes able to throw a new light in dark corners, you know, given a sound medical knowledge and the sort of mind that asks the occasional awkward question. I suppose that's why they landed me with the coroner's job.' 'I hear you're enjoying it.' 'Yes, well... Seeing the sights of North Yorkshire, are you?' 'No, as a matter of fact. We're guests of the Sackbuts.' 'You're privileged! I've never been invited on to the other side of that door, into the Holy of Holies, strange as it may seem.

  Though I go out with the hunt and I'm pretty well known in the neighbourhood. His Lordship invited you, did he?' 'Oh I think it was his wife.' 'It must have been his Lordship. Women don't make many decisions in the Sackbut clan. Come to think of it, it may have been rather an intelligent move with the inquest coming up.' 'I heard about that. Some poor old lady tumbled into the lake, one of the homeless.' 'Homeless? Is that whiat she was? Or was she looking for a home? My officer's downstairs now, taking statements. Who was she, when was she killed, how did she die? These are the questions my court will have to answer. Meanwhile, I thought I'd just wander around and soak up the castle atmosphere. All ' these suits of armour, for instance, maximum protection and nothing much inside them. Typical Sackbut.' 'Have you come to see my client?' I asked him.

  'Oh, is his Lordship that already?' Dr Swabey seemed delighted. 'That will be fun. I think we'll be able to offer you a few surprises.' 'Good! I shall look forward to it,' I promised.

  'I hope his Lordship will too. Just one thing you might be asking your client to explain, among others.' 'What's that?' 'I had the dead woman's possessions sent over to my office.

  The police like to hang on to their things, but I insisted.

  Well, she had a big plastic bag, full of old clothes and rotting food and a gin bottle, almost empty. But there was a sort of plastic purse, pretty well waterproof. You might be interested in its contents.' 'Might I?' 'There was a return coach ticket to Victoria, so she wasn't a local tramp, nothing like that. But more interestingly, a photograph, taken on the terrace of this castle. An old photograph.

  Shows a woman holding a baby and a man in uniform. No doubt who the man was. Absolutely no mistaking the family features. It was Lord Sackbut's father. Now how do you imagine a homeless old bag lady got hold of that, Mr Rumpole?' There was, I thought, a certain amount of triumph in his voice as he asked me the question.

  'I really have no idea.' 'I wonder if your client has. I'm telling you all this for your assistance, of course.' As he said it, I thought that the Welldyke coroner had absolutely no intention of helping Lord Sackbut who had never invited him beyond the door marked private.

  'I'm very grateful.'' Dr Swabey was looking down to the far end of the Great Hall where the conducted tour was filing out under the command of
their giAide. 'I mustn't miss my chance of another look around the grounds, and the lake!' That morning I also inspected the lake. I took a turn round the gardens and the found my host in the stables, talking to a girl in jodhpurs bout the lameness of one of the horses, whose solemn faces,, peering over their stable doors, put me in mind of the portrait the Sackbut family. At my request he drove me down to the lake in his Range Rover, and took me to the spot where tfr drowned bag lady had been pulled out of the water. It had been a wet summer in North Yorkshire, and there were plenty of marks on the grass path. Richard told me he drove past there often, on his way to a field where he had horses out.

  So I looked dowt"! to the weedy, muddy water from the top of a steep, slippery bank, and at the odd branches and tree stumps on the way down. I stooped to look at a branch, freshly broken, an d tnen I t0 my client that I'd met the local coroner, didn't seem to like his Lordship very much.

  'The feeling's mutual.' It was a heavy f Y' with a low sky which seemed darker than the bright fields and green trees. There were insects buzzing and a part 'Y °f ducks on the lake floated lethargically as though half asl P, I looked at my client and wondered what secrets he wa s keeping from me. 'What on earth are you worrying about?' I asked him 'What do you m-ea"?' 'Why call on th expert services of Rumpole of the Bailey, who has studied death by cross-examining the great Professor Andrew Ackerman, King of the Morgues. An old bag lady slipped and drowned herself in your grounds. Sad but hardly a threat to your peace of mind, I might have thought.' 'We're open to the public,' he tried to explain, 'I mean, they might say we're not safe...' 'Nonsense! You're not responsible for tramps in the nighttime.

  What's the real problem? And what's making the Grand Inquisitor of Welldyke so excited?' 'Perhaps...' But if he were about to tell me something, he changed his mind. 'It's entirely a family matter. We'd better be getting back.' 'Tell me,' I asked him again. 'I'm used to hearing about family matters. Murder's a family matter, nine times out of ten.' 'Murder?' He seemed surprised. 'Who said anything about murder?' 'Nothing yet. But dear old Dr Swabey looks as though he's longing to come out with it.' I didn't get any more from my client, and he drove me back to, the castle, promising a treat for the afternoon: a dog show, bowling for a pig, a tombola and other delights in the castle grounds. It sounded like a fete worse than death, a comment I kept to myself.

  When I entered the drawing-room, in search of She Who Must Be Obeyed, I thought, at first, that the room was empty.

  Then I heard a boy's voice, only just audible, repeating words which were well known to me. Jonathan was alone, sitting on his window-seat with a book, but he wasn't reading, he was reciting, only occasionally reminding himself of the lines: 'So through the darkness and the cold we flew, And not a voice was idle; with the din, Meanwhile, the precipices rang aloud; The leafless trees and every icy crag Tinkled like iron; while the distant hills Into the tumult sent an alien sound...' Jonathan continued to recite quietly, and I joined in with: 'Of melancholy not unnoticed, while the stars Eastward were sparkling clear, and in the west The orange sky of evening died away...' The boy closed the book as soon as he heard my voice, and now he looked embarrassed.

  'You like that?' I asked him.

  'Well, yes. The sound of it,' he admitted reluctantly.

  'So do I. I like the sound of it very much.' I went to sit at the fireside, in front of a big coffee table piled with the family photograph albums Hilda and Rosemary had been looking at.

  I began to turn the pages idly. 'You live here with your father in the holidays?' I asked.

  'With father, yes.' 'See much of your mother, do you?' 'Not really.' 'Why's that?' Perhaps he wouldn't have answered my question if we hadn't recited Wordsworth together, but he said, 'I went once or twice. Now it seems easier if I don't go. I didn't enjoy it much, really.' Then there was a silence while I turned more pages of the albums. 'Fascinating,' I said at last, 'these old family photographs.' I found a page with Jonathan, aged about five, sitting on a Shetland pony. 'Is that you when you were really small and insignificant?' He got up and stood beside me. 'That's me on Mouse.' 'Any pictures of your mother?' 'No, I don't think so.' But perhaps there had been; there were blank spaces and small traces of paper having been torn out. 'Shall we take a dive back into history?' I found a volume dated 1940-50 and, ", after turning a number of pages, I found snaps of the man who looked so like Richard. 'That's your grandfather. I recognize him from his portrait.' 'Everyone says he looks just like my father,' Jonathan said.

  'I don't seem to look like them at all.'

  'Don't apologize. Here's Grandad on a horse, and playing tennis, and opening something and, oh, in uniform. That must have been in the last war. Is there anything like a wedding photograph?' There wasn't. What I found were the same blank spaces, the same traces of pictures torn out, the signs of a memory someone wanted to obliterate. 'Isn't that rather odd?' I asked Jonathan. 'Your grandmother doesn't seem to be here either.' The sky remained dark, but the rain held off that afternoon.

  The castle walls were illuminated by a low shaft of sunlight directed from under gun-metal clouds. The stalls and tents were set out on a patch of grass under the East Tower. Hilda had gone off to buy what seemed, when I had to carry them back to London, a huge selection of jams, and I was chatting to Rosemary, who was in charge of an old clothes-stall which was being eagerly searched by the mothers and wives of the village. 'Got anything suitable for wearing in a cardboard box?' I asked her.

  'You going to take up residence. Uncle Horace?' Rosemary asked.

  'I've got a client who may have to go back to one. That is, if I manage to spring him from the nick. I had an interesting talk to Jonathan. He doesn't see much of his mother, does he?' 'Quite honestly, Richard thinks it best not. She made this ghastly second marriage.' 'To somebody ghastly?' 'To a chap who sold her a car. They live in Pinner or somewhere quite impossible. Can you imagine that after Richard and the castle?' And then the loudspeakers announced that the contest for the dog who looked most like its owner was about to start.

  Hilda came hurrying up, saying we mustn't miss this extraordinary entertainment, and as we hurried towards the judging ring, she said, 'Just look at the castle, towering over us.

  Doesn't it make you feel we've been in the Middle Ages?' 'Lucky for you, we're not.' 'It must have been so romantic.' 'Not that I'd ever have locked you up in the East Tower, Hilda. I'd never have dreamt of doing anything like that, not being a Lord.' 'Oh, really, Rumpole! I hope you weren't talking that sort of nonsense to Rosemary!' 'Not quite. We were talking about Richard's first wife. Not that it could have been her, of course, she's much too young.

  Besides which, she's alive and wed and living in Pinner...' I was following a private train of thought and Hilda had stopped listening for we had arrived at the dog ring, where owners were assembling with their four-footed look-alikes. There was a fat woman with a Pekinese, a hatchet-faced man with a lurcher, and a man who had taken off his shirt and was holding his grey, long-haired Yorkshire terrier against the grey hairs on his chest. Richard stood proudly beside Monty, the Labrador, and old Plunger Plumstead was there with an ancient, watery-eyed and evil-looking bull-terrier to whom he might have been closely related. Hilda had wandered off to talk to the Yarrowbys, whom she had greeted as lifelong friends, and I stood alone, watching, as Pippa Bastion, the judge, announced that the first prize went to Plunger's dog.

  The prize was presented by the coroner, who stood, in another suit of brilliant checks, at the judge's table. When he had been rewarded I went up to congratulate Plunger.

  'Oh, Bo'sun and I win it every year. God knows what I'm going to do when the filthy dog snuffs it. Bottle of Cherry Bounce, presented by Dr Swabey. Revolting! Can't drink the stuff.' I told him I had spotted a beer tent where we might find something more acceptable. 'Oh, very good,' he said. 'Good idea of yours, Rumbold. You have these sort of do's in your part of Gloucester?' When we were in the tent, coping with large plastic I tumblers full of North Yorkshire bitter, I
said, 'Perhaps dogs grow to look like their masters in the way that men grow up to be reproductions of their dads.' 'Reproductions? Oh, Richard certainly is. Spitting image of old Robert. Fine man, Robert. Had a bloody good war. Peace didn't treat him quite so kindly. Came back home. Found all sorts of things wrong. Lot of pheasant covers cut. Rooks out of control. Labour Government. Something seriously dicky about the roof. Things not so marvellous on the domestic front either, not too long afterward his wife bolted off.' 'Did you know Richard's mother?' 'Depends what you mean by know. Not in the biblical sense, old chap!' He laughed, gulped his beer and went on. 'So I was probably in a minority. But she always seemed a perfectly nice woman to me. A bit affected. I remember she always called Richard, Riccardo, with a sort of funny Italian accent.

  Or was it Riccardino? Of course he hated it.' 'What was her name?' 'Margaret. Maggie was what we called her.' 'And what happened to her in the end?' 'In the end? Oh, in the end she died.' That evening we were only four at dinner but, with due formality, Hilda and Rosemary left us men to our port and I began to ask Richard about his childhood. It was then he told me something that had occurred at his prep school, a story I shall never forget. 'I suppose I was about nine,' he said. 'Just nine. And the message came: "The Headmaster wants to see you in his study after prayers." Well, you know what that meant. You got that awful sort of feeling in the pit of your stomach and sweaty hands. All the usual symptoms of terror, I suppose. Anyway, I knocked on the study door and there he was. Snowy Slocombe. A hard man. But just. Perfectly just.