The Collected Stories of Rumpole

by John Mortimer

  ‘Why are you telling me then?’ I only asked for information, I wasn’t following the fellow’s drift. But the effect was extraordinary. Guthrie sprang to his feet, paling beneath his non-existent tan. ‘I’m not telling you anything, Horace. Good heavens, my dear man! What ever gave you the idea I was telling you anything?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, returning to the calculations. ‘I should have realized you were just babbling away meaninglessly. What are you, Featherstone, a sort of background noise, like Muzak?’

  ‘Horace, it is vital that you should understand that I have said nothing to you whatsoever.’ Featherstone’s voice sank to a horrified whisper. ‘Just as it is essential to preserve the quiet, respectable image of our Chambers. There was that difficult period we went through when the Erskine-Browns were expecting, rather too early on in their married lives.’*

  ‘They weren’t married.’ I recalled the happy event.

  ‘Well, exactly! And of course that all passed over quite satisfactorily. We had a marquee in the Temple Gardens, if you remember, for the wedding. I believe I said a few words.’

  ‘A few words, Guthrie? That’s hardly like you.’

  The above somewhat enigmatic conversation was interrupted by the telephone on my desk ringing and, after a few deft passes by Dianne on the intercom in our clerk’s room, my wife Hilda’s voice came over the line, loud, clear and unusually displeased.

  ‘There’s a young girl here, Rumpole,’ She Who Must Be Obeyed was reading out the indictment over the phone. ‘She is sitting in the kitchen, asking for you. Well, she’s making her own cigarettes, and they smell of burnt carpets.’

  ‘But any sort of breath of scandal now. At this historic moment in the life of our Chambers.’ Looking, if possible, more ashen than ever, Guthrie was still burbling in the background. And he didn’t look particularly cheered up when he heard me address the instrument in my hand along the following lines:

  ‘Something sort of arty-tarty, is she, do you say, Hilda? A young girl who says she’s in trouble. What kind of trouble? Well, perhaps I haven’t got your vivid imagination, but I quite honestly can’t … Well, of course I’m coming home. Don’t I always come home in the end?’ I put down the telephone. Featherstone was looking at me, appalled, and started to say, in a voice of deep concern, ‘I couldn’t help overhearing.’

  ‘Couldn’t you?’ Well I thought he might, if he were a man of tact, have filtered out of the room.

  ‘Horace, is your home life completely satisfactory?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course it isn’t.’ I don’t know what the man was thinking about. ‘It’s exactly as usual. Some girl seems to have aroused the wrath of She Who Must Be Obeyed.’

  ‘Did you say … some girl?’

  ‘Friend of yours, Guthrie?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I thought it might be someone you had your eye on, from the typing pool, perhaps. I mean, I remember when …’ But before I could call the Featherstone mind to remembrance of things past, he went on firmly, ‘This is not a time for looking backwards, Horace. Let us look forward! To the fine reputation of this set of Chambers.’

  He went to the door and opened it, but before he left the Rumpole presence he said, as though it were a full explanation, ‘And do please remember, I haven’t told you anything!’

  I suppose that was true, in a manner of speaking.

  As, from the sound of She Who Must Be Obeyed’s voice, there appeared to be a bit of a cold wind blowing in Casa Rumpole (our so-called ‘mansion’ flat in the Gloucester Road, which bears about as much relation to a mansion as Pommeroy’s plonk does to Château Pichon-Longueville), I delayed my return home and wandered into my usual retreat, where I saw our clerk Henry there before me. He was leaning nonchalantly against the bar, toying with his usual Cinzano Bianco, taken with ice and a twist of lemon. I began to press him for information which might throw some faint light on the great Featherstone mystery.

  ‘As a barrister’s clerk, Henry,’ I said, ‘you might be said to be at the very heart of the legal profession. You have your finger on the Lord Chancellor’s pulse, to coin a phrase. Tell me honestly, has the old fellow lost his marbles?’

  ‘Which old fellow, sir?’ Henry seemed mystified. It was an evening for mystification.

  ‘The Lord Chancellor, Henry! Has he gone off his rocker?’

  ‘That’s not for me to say, is it?’ Our clerk Henry was ever the diplomat, but I pressed on. ‘Is his Lordship seriously thinking of making Guthrie Feathersone, QC, MP, a Red Judge? I mean, I know our learned Head of Chambers has given up politics …’

  ‘He’s joined the SDP.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I mean. But a judge!’

  ‘Speaking entirely for myself, Mr Rumpole, and I have no inside information …’ Henry had decided to play it cautiously.

  ‘Oh, come on. Don’t be so pompous and legal, Henry.’

  ‘I would say that Mr Featherstone would cut a fine figure on the Bench.’ Our clerk had the sort of voice which could express nothing whatsoever, a genuinely neutral tone.

  ‘Oh, he’d look all right,’ I agreed. ‘He’d fit the costume. But is he, Henry? That’s what I want to know. Is he?’

  ‘Is he what, Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘He may look like a judge, but is he really the genuine article?’

  So I left Henry, having hit, almost by chance I suppose, on one of the questions which troubled old Plato, led Bishop Berkeley to some of his more eccentric opinions and brought a few laughs to Bertrand Russell and a whole trainload of ideas to A. J. Ayer. It was that little matter of the difference between appearance and reality which lay at the heart of the strange case which was about to engage my attention.

  As I say, I didn’t expect much of a welcome from She Who Must Be Obeyed when I put into port at 25B Froxbury Court, and I wasn’t disappointed. I had brought a peace offering in the shape of the last bunch of tulips I had found gasping for air in the shop at the Temple tube station.

  ‘Where did you find those, Rumpole?’ my wife Hilda asked tersely. ‘Been raiding the cemetery?’

  ‘Is she still here?’ I hoped to see the cause of Hilda’s discontent, and entered the kitchen. The place was empty. The bird, whoever she might have been, had flown.

  ‘By she I suppose you mean your girl?’ Hilda followed me into the kitchen and tried to bring back life to the tulips with the help of a cut-glass vase.

  ‘She’s not “my girl”.’

  ‘She came to see you. Then she burst into tears suddenly and left.’

  ‘People who come to see me often burst into tears. It’s in the nature of the legal profession.’ I tried to sound reassuring. But I was distracted by a strange sound, a metallic clatter, as though someone were throwing beer cans up at our kitchen window.

  ‘Hilda,’ I put the question directly. ‘What on earth’s that?’ She took a look out and reported – as it turned out, quite accurately – what she saw. ‘There’s a small man in a loud suit throwing beer cans up at our window, Rumpole. Probably another of your friends!’ At which my wife made off in the direction of our living room with the vase of tulips, and I proceeded to the window to verify the information. What I saw was a small, cunning-looking old cove in a loud check suit, with a yellow stock round his neck. Beside him was a girl in ethnic attire, carrying a large, worn holdall, no doubt of Indian manufacture. The distant view I had of her only told me that she had red hair and looked a great deal too beautiful to have any business with the elderly lunatic who was shying beer cans up at our window. As I stuck my head out to protest, I was greeted by the old party with a loud hail of ‘Horace Rumpole! There you are at last!’

  ‘Who are you?’ I had no idea why this ancient person, who had the appearance of a superannuated racing tipster, should know my name.

  ‘Don’t you remember Blanco Basnet? Fellow you got off at Cambridge Assizes? Marvellous, you were. Just bloody marvellous! Hang on a jiff. Coming up!’ At which our visitors made off for the ent
rance of the building.

  The name ‘Blanco Basnet’ rang only the faintest of bells. I had a vague recollection of some hanger-on round Newmarket, but what had he been charged with? Embezzlement? Common assault? Overfamiliarity with a horse? My reverie was interrupted by a prolonged peal on the front doorbell, and I opened up.

  ‘Are you Basnet?’ I asked the fellow as Hilda joined us, looking distinctly displeased.

  ‘Course not. I’m Brittling.’ He introduced himself. ‘Harold Brittling. I was a close chum of old Blanco’s though. And when you got him off without a stain on his bloody character, we drank the night away, if you will recall the occasion, at the Old Plough at Stratford Parva. Time never called while the landlord had a customer. We swapped addresses, don’t you remember? I say, is this your girl?’ This last remark clearly and inappropriately referred to She Who Must Be Obeyed.

  ‘This is my wife Hilda,’ I said with as much dignity as I could muster.

  ‘This is my girl Pauline.’ Brittling introduced the beauty dressed in a rug at his side.

  ‘I’ve met her,’ Hilda said coldly. ‘Is she your daughter?’

  ‘No, she’s my girl.’ Brittling enlarged on the subject. ‘Don’t talk much, but strips down like an early Augustus John. Thighs that simply call out for an HB pencil. I say, Rumpole, your girl Hilda looks distinctly familiar to me. Met before, haven’t we?’

  ‘I think it’s hardly likely.’ Hilda did her best to freeze the little man with a glance. It was ineffective.

  ‘Round the Old Monmouth pub in Greek Street?’ Brittling suggested. ‘Didn’t you hang a bit round the Old Monmouth? Didn’t I have the pleasure of escorting you home once, Hilda, when the Guinness stout had been flowing rather too freely?’

  At which Brittling, with the girl in tow, moved off towards the sitting room, and I was left with the thought that either the little gnome was completely off his chump or there were hidden depths to She Who Must Be Obeyed.

  When we followed him into our room, Brittling furnished some further information.

  ‘You two girls have chummed up already,’ he said. ‘I sent Pauline to find you, Horace, as I was temporarily detained in the cooler.’

  It was with some relief that I began to realize that Brittling had not paid a merely social call. He brought business. He was a customer, a member of the criminal fraternity, and probably quite a respectable little dud-cheque merchant. However, legal etiquette demanded that I spoke to him sharply. ‘Look, Brittling,’ I said, ‘if you’ve come here for legal advice, you’ll have to approach me in the proper manner.’

  ‘I shall approach you in the proper manner, bearing bubbly! Perhaps your girl will go and fetch a few beakers from the kitchen. Then we can start to celebrate!’

  At which he started to yank bottles of champagne out of Pauline’s holdall, with all the éclat of a conjurer producing rabbits from a hat.

  ‘Celebrate what?’ I was puzzled. Nothing good seemed to have happened.

  ‘The case in which I’m going to twist the tail of the con-o-sewers,’ Brittling almost shouted. ‘And you, my dear Horace, are going to twist the tail of the legal profession. Game for a bit of fun, aren’t you?’

  At this moment he released the wine, which began to bubble out over the elderly Persian-type floor covering. This, of course, didn’t add a lot to Hilda’s approval of the proceedings. ‘Do be careful,’ she said tartly, ‘that stuff is going all over the carpet.’

  ‘Then get the glasses, Hilda.’ Brittling was giving the orders. ‘It’s not like you, is it, to hold up a party?’

  ‘Rumpole!’ Hilda appealed to me with a look of desperation, but for the moment I couldn’t see the point of allowing all the champagne to be drunk up by the carpet. ‘No harm in taking a glass of champagne, Hilda,’ I said reasonably.

  ‘Or two.’ Brittling winked at her. To my amazement, she then went off to fetch the beakers. When Hilda was gone I pressed on with the interrogation of Brittling.

  ‘Who are you, exactly?’ I asked, as a starter. The question seemed to provoke considerable hilarity in the old buffer.

  ‘He asks who I am, Pauline!’ He turned to his companion incredulously. ‘Slade Gold Medal. Exhibited in the Salon in Paris. Hung in the Royal Academy. Executed in the Bond Street Galleries. And once, when I was very hungry, decorated the pavement outside the National Portrait Gallery. And the secret is – I can do it, Horace. So can you. We’re pros. Give me a box of Conté crayons and I can run you up a Degas ballet dancer that old Degas would have given his eye teeth to have drawn.’

  ‘His name’s Harold Brittling.’ The girl, Pauline, spoke at last, and as though that settled the matter. Brittling set off on a survey of the room as Hilda came back with four glasses.

  ‘Who is he?’ she asked anxiously as she handed me a glass.

  ‘An artist. Apparently. Hung in the Royal Academy.’ That was about all I was able to tell her.

  ‘Not over-pictured, are you? What’s this objet d’art?’ Brittling had fetched up in front of a particularly watery watercolour presented to Hilda by her bosom chum Dodo, an artwork which I wouldn’t give house room to were the choice mine, which of course it wasn’t.

  ‘Oh, that’s a study of Lamorna Cove, done by my old school friend, Dorothy Mackintosh. Dodo Perkins, as was. She lives in the West Country now.’

  ‘ “Dodo” keeps a tea shop in St Ives.’ I filled in the gaps in Hilda’s narrative.

  ‘She has sent in to the Royal Academy. On several occasions. Do you like it, Mr …?’ She actually seemed to be waiting anxiously for the Brittling verdict.

  ‘Harold,’ he corrected her. And, looking at her with particularly clear blue eyes, he added, in a way I can only describe as gallant, ‘Do you like it, Hilda?’

  ‘Oh, I think it’s rather fine.’ It was She, the connoisseur, speaking. ‘Beautiful in fact. The way Dodo’s caught the shadow on the rocks, you know.’

  Brittling was sloshing the champagne around, smiling at Hilda and actually winking at Pauline as he said, ‘Then if you think it’s fine and beautiful, Hilda, that’s what it is to you. To you it’s worth a fortune. The mere fact that to me it looks like a rather colourless blob of budgerigar’s vomit is totally irrelevant. You pay for what you think is beautiful. That’s what our case is all about, isn’t it, Horace? What’s the difference between a Dodo and a Degas? Nothing but bloody talent which I can supply!’

  ‘Look here, Brittling …’ Although grateful for the glass full of nourishing bubbles, I thought the chap was putting the case against Dodo’s masterpiece a little strongly.

  ‘Harold,’ he suggested.

  ‘Brittling.’ I was sticking to the full formality. ‘My wife and I are grateful for this glass of …’

  ‘The Widow Clicquot. Non-vintage, I’m afraid. But paid for with ready money.’

  ‘But I certainly can’t do any case unless you go and consult a solicitor and he cares to instruct me.’

  ‘Oh I see.’ Brittling was recharging all our glasses. ‘Play it by the rules, eh?’

  ‘Exactly.’ I intended to get this prospective client under control.

  ‘Then it’s much more fun breaking them when the time comes,’ said the irresponsible Brittling.

  ‘I must make it quite clear that I don’t intend to break any rules for you, Brittling,’ I said. ‘Come and see me in Chambers with a solicitor.’

  ‘ “Oh, I walk along the Bois du Boulogne … With an independent air …” ’ Brittling began to sing in a way which apparently had nothing whatever to do with matters in question.

  ‘Oh come along, Harold.’ The girl, Pauline, took the old boy’s arm and seemed to be urging him towards the door. ‘He’s not going to take your case on.’

  ‘Why ever not?’ Brittling seemed puzzled.

  ‘She doesn’t like you. And I don’t think he likes you much either.’

  ‘ “You can hear them all declare, I must be a millionaire”,’ Brittling sang and then looked at me intently. ‘Horace Rumpo
le may not like me,’ he said at last, ‘but he envies me.’

  ‘Why should he do that?’

  ‘Because of what he has to live with.’ Brittling’s magnificent gestures seemed to embrace the entire room. ‘Pissy watercolours!’

  And then they left us, as unexpectedly as they had come, abandoning the rest of the Veuve Clicquot, which we had with our poached eggs for supper. It wasn’t until much later, when we were lying at a discreet distance in the matrimonial bed, that I happened to say to Hilda, by way of encouragement, ‘I don’t suppose we’ll see either of them again.’

  ‘Oh yes, you will,’ she announced, as I thought, tartly. ‘You’ll do the case. You won’t be able to resist it!’

  ‘I can resist Mr Harold Brittling extremely easily,’ I assured her.

  ‘But her. Can you resist her, Rumpole?’ And she went on in some disgust, ‘Those thighs that simply seem to be asking for an HB pencil. I don’t know when I’ve heard anything quite so revolting!’

  ‘All the same, old Brittling seems to enjoy life.’ I said it quietly, under my breath, but She almost heard me.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said I don’t suppose he’s got a wife.’

  ‘That’s what I thought you said.’ And Hilda, somewhat mortified, snapped off the light, having decided it was high time we lost consciousness together.

  To understand the extraordinary case of the Queen against Harold Brittling, it is necessary to ask if you have a nodding acquaintance with the work of the late Septimus Cragg, RA. Before he turned up his toes, which I imagine must have been shortly before the last war, Septimus Cragg appeared to the public gaze as just what they expected of the most considerable British painter of his time. His beard, once a flaming red, later a nicotine-stained white, his long procession of English and European mistresses, his farmhouse in Sussex, his huge collection of good-looking children who suffered greatly from never being able to paint as well as their father, his public denunciations of most other living artists, and his frequently pronounced belief that Brighton Pavilion was a far finer manifestation of the human spirit than Chartres Cathedral – all these things brought him constantly to the attention of the gossip columnists, and perhaps made his work undervalued in his final years.