The Collected Stories of Rumpole

by John Mortimer

  ‘Only when he’s in trouble,’ Marigold said grimly. ‘But I suppose I might ask if he could put in a word about your Horace.’

  ‘Oh, Marigold. Would you?’

  ‘Why not? I’ll wake the old fellow up and tell him.’

  As it happened, my possible escape from the agonies of the Bar was not by such an honourable way out as that sought by Hilda in the Silver Grill. The route began to appear as Mr Tong staggered slowly towards the high point of his evidence. We had enjoyed numerous quotations from the Old Testament. We had been treated to a blow-by-blow account of a quarrel between him and his wife during a holiday in Clacton-on-Sea and many other such incidents. We had learned a great deal more about the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries than we ever needed to know. And then Ollie, driven beyond endurance, said, ‘For God’s sake—’

  ‘My Lord?’ Mr Tong looked deeply pained.

  ‘All right, for all our sakes. When are we going to come to the facts of this manslaughter?’

  So I asked the witness, ‘Now, Mr Tong, on the night this accident took place.’

  ‘Accident! That’s a matter for the jury to decide!’ Ollie exploded. ‘Why do you call it an accident?’

  ‘Why did your Lordship call it manslaughter? Isn’t that a matter for the jury to decide?’

  ‘Did I say that?’ the Judge asked. ‘Did I say that, Mr Erskine-Brown?’

  ‘Yes, you did,’ I told him before Claude could stagger to his feet. ‘I wondered if your Lordship had joined the prosecution team, or was it a single-handed effort to prejudice the jury?’

  There was a terrible silence and I suppose I should never have said it. Mr Bernard hid his head in shame, Erskine-Brown looked disapproving and Liz appeared deeply worried. The Judge controlled himself with difficulty and then spoke in quiet but dangerous tones. ‘Mr Rumpole, that was a quite intolerable thing to say.’

  ‘My Lord. That was a quite intolerable thing to do.’ I was determined to fight on.

  ‘I may have had a momentary slip of the tongue.’ It seemed that the Judge was about to retreat, but I had no intention of allowing him to do so gracefully. ‘Or,’ I said, ‘your Lordship’s well-known common sense may have deserted you.’

  There was another sharp intake of breath from the attendant legal hacks and then the Judge kindly let me know what was in his mind. ‘Mr Rumpole. I think you should be warned. One of these days you may go too far and behaviour such as yours can have certain consequences. Now, can we get on?’

  ‘Certainly. I didn’t wish to interrupt the flow of your Lordship’s rebuke.’ So I started my uphill task with the witness again. ‘Mr Tong, on the night in question, did you and Mrs Tong quarrel?’

  ‘As per usual, my Lord.’

  ‘What was the subject of the quarrel?’

  ‘She accused me of being overly familiar with a near neighbour. This was a certain Mrs Grabowitz, my Lord, a lady of Polish extraction, whose deceased husband had, by a curious coincidence, been a colleague of mine – it’s a small world, isn’t it? – in the Min of Ag and Fish.’

  ‘Mr Tong, ignore the neighbour’s deceased husband, if you’d be so kind. What did your wife do?’

  ‘She ran at me, my Lord, with her nails poised, as though to scratch me across the face, as it was often her habit so to do. However, as ill luck would have it, the runner in front of the gas-fire slipped beneath her feet on the highly polished flooring and she fell. As she did so, the back of her head made contact with the raised tiling in front of our hearth, my Lord, and she received the injuries which ultimately caused her to pass over.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole, is that the explanation of this lady’s death you wish to leave to the jury?’ The Judge asked with some contempt.

  ‘Certainly, my Lord. Does your Lordship wish to prejudge the issue and are we about to hear a little premature adjudication?’

  ‘Mr Rumpole! I have warned you twice, I shall not warn you again. I’m looking at the clock.’

  ‘So I’d noticed.’

  ‘We’ll break off now. Back at ten past two, members of the jury.’ And then Ollie turned to my client and gave him the solemn warning which might help me into retirement. ‘I understand you’re on bail, Mr Tong, and you’re in the middle of giving your evidence. It’s vitally important that you speak to no one about your case during the lunchtime adjournment. And no one must speak to you, particularly your legal advisers. Is that thoroughly understood, Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘Naturally, my Lord,’ I assured him. ‘I do know the rules.’

  ‘I hope you do, Mr Rumpole. I sincerely hope you do.’

  The events of that lunch hour achieved a historic importance. After a modest meal of bean-shoot sandwiches in the Nuthouse vegetarian restaurant down by the Bank (Claude was on a regime calculated to make him more sylph-like and sexually desirable), he returned to the Old Bailey and was walking up to the silks’ robing room when he saw, through an archway, the defendant Tong seated and silent. Approaching nearer, he heard the following words (Claude was good enough to make a careful note of them at the time) shouted by Rumpole in a voice of extreme irritation.

  ‘Listen to me,’ my speech, which Claude knew to be legal advice to the client, began. ‘Is this damn thing going to last for ever? Well, for God’s sake, get on with it! You’re driving me mad. Talk. That’s all you do, you boring old fart. Just get on with it. I’ve got enough trouble with the Judge without you causing me all this agony. Get it out. That’s all. Short and snappy. Put us out of our misery. Get it out and then shut up!’

  As I say, Claude took a careful note of these words but said nothing to me about them when I emerged from behind the archway. When we got back to Court I asked my client a few more questions, which he answered with astounding brevity.

  ‘Mr Tong. Did you ever intend to do your wife the slightest harm?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you strike her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or assault her in any way?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Just wait there, will you?’ – I sat down with considerable relief – ‘in case Mr Erskine-Brown can think of anything to ask you.’ Claude did have something to ask, and his first question came as something of a surprise to me. ‘You’ve become very monosyllabic since lunch, haven’t you, Mr Tong?’

  ‘Perhaps it’s something he ate,’ I murmured to my confidant, Bernard.

  ‘No’ – Erskine-Brown wouldn’t have this – ‘it’s nothing you ate, is it? as your learned Counsel suggests. It’s something Mr Rumpole said to you.’

  ‘Said to him?’ Ollie Oliphant registered profound shock. ‘When are you suggesting Mr Rumpole spoke to him?’

  ‘Oh, during the luncheon adjournment, my Lord.’ Claude dropped the bombshell casually.

  ‘Mr Rumpole!’ Ollie gasped with horror. ‘Mr Erskine-Brown, did I not give a solemn warning that no one was to speak to Mr Tong and he was to speak to no one during the adjournment?’

  ‘You did, my Lord,’ Claude confirmed it. ‘That was why I was so surprised when I heard Mr Rumpole doing it.’

  ‘You heard Mr Rumpole speaking to the defendant Tong?’

  ‘I’m afraid so, my Lord.’

  Again Bernard winced in agony, and there were varying reactions of shock and disgust all round. I didn’t improve the situation by muttering loudly, ‘Oh, come off it, Claude.’

  ‘And what did Mr Rumpole say?’ The Judge wanted all the gory details.

  ‘He told Mr Tong he did nothing but talk. And he was to get on with it and he was to get it out and make it snappy. Oh, yes, he said he was a boring old fart.’

  ‘A boring old what, Mr Erskine-Brown?’

  ‘Fart, my Lord.’

  ‘And he’s not the only one around here either,’ I informed Mr Bernard.

  If the Judge heard this he ignored it. He went on in tones of the deepest disapproval to ask Claude, ‘And, since that conversation, you say that the defendant Tong has been monosyllabic. In other words, he is obeying Mr Ru
mpole’s quite improperly given instructions?’

  ‘Precisely what I am suggesting, my Lord.’ Claude was delighted to agree.

  ‘Well, now, Mr Rumpole.’ The Judge stared balefully at me. ‘What’ve you got to say to Mr Erskine-Brown’s accusation?’

  Suddenly a great weariness came over me. For once in my long life I couldn’t be bothered to argue and this legal storm in a lunch hour bored me as much as my client’s evidence. I was tired of Tong, tired of judges, tired of learned friends, tired of toothache, tired of life. I rose wearily to my feet and said, ‘Nothing, my Lord.’

  ‘Nothing?’ Mr Justice Oliphant couldn’t believe it.

  ‘Absolutely nothing.’

  ‘So you don’t deny that all Mr Erskine-Brown has told the Court is true?’

  ‘I neither accept it nor deny it. It’s a contemptible suggestion, made by an advocate incapable of conducting a proper cross-examination. Further than that I don’t feel called upon to comment. So far as I know I am not on trial.’

  ‘Not at the moment,’ said the Judge. ‘I cannot answer for the Bar Council.’

  ‘Then I suggest we concentrate on the trial of Mr Tong and forget mine, my Lord.’ That was my final word on the matter.

  When we did concentrate on the trial it went extremely speedily. Mr Tong remained monosyllabic, our speeches were brief, the Judge, all passion spent by the drama of the lunch hour, summed up briefly and by half past five the jury were back with an acquittal. Shortly after that many of the characters important to this story had assembled in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar.

  Although he was buying her a drink, Liz Probert made no attempt to disguise her disapproval of the conduct of her learned leader, as she told me after these events had taken place. ‘Why did you have to do that, Claude?’ she asked in a severe manner. ‘Why did you have to put that lunchtime conversation to Tong?’

  ‘Rather brilliant, I thought,’ he answered with some self-satisfaction and offered to split a half-bottle of his favourite Pouilly Fumé with her. ‘It got the Judge on my side immediately.’

  ‘And got the jury on Rumpole’s side. His client was acquitted, I don’t know if you remember.’

  ‘Well, win a few, lose a few,’ Claude said airily. ‘That’s par for the course, if you’re a busy silk.’

  ‘I mean, why did you do that to Rumpole?’

  ‘Well, that was fair, wasn’t it? He shouldn’t have talked to his client when he was still in the box. It’s just not on!’

  ‘Are you sure he did?’ Liz asked.

  ‘I heard him with my own ears. You don’t think I’d lie, do you?’

  ‘Well, it has been known. Didn’t you lie to your wife, about taking me to the opera?’* Liz had no compunction about opening old wounds.

  ‘That was love. Everyone lies when they’re in love.’

  ‘Don’t ever tell me you’re in love with me again. I shan’t believe a single word of it. Did you really mean to get Rumpole disbarred?’

  ‘Rumpole disbarred?’ Even Claude sounded shaken by the idea. ‘It’s not possible.’

  ‘Of course it’s possible. Didn’t you hear Ollie Oliphant?’

  ‘That was just North Country bluff. I mean, they couldn’t do a thing like that, could they? Not to Rumpole.’

  ‘If you ask me, that’s what they’ve been longing to do to Rumpole for years,’ Liz told him. ‘Now you’ve given them just the excuse they need.’

  ‘Who needs?’

  ‘The establishment, Claude! They’ll use you, you know, then they’ll throw you out on the scrapheap. That’s what they do to spies.’

  ‘My God!’ Erskine-Brown was looking at her with considerable admiration. ‘You’re beautiful when you’re angry!’

  At which point Mizz Probert left him, having seen me alone, staring gloomily into a large brandy. Claude was surrounded with thirsty barristers, eager for news of the great Rumpole–Oliphant battle.

  Before I got into conversation with Liz, who sat herself down at my table with a look of maddening pity on her face, I have to confess that I had been watching our clerk Henry at a distant table. He had bought a strange-looking white concoction for Dot Clapton, and was now sitting gazing at her in a way which made me feel that this was no longer a rehearsal for the Bexley Heath Thespians but a real-life drama which might lead to embarrassing and even disastrous results. I didn’t manage to earwig all the dialogue, but I learned enough to enable me to fill in the gaps later.

  ‘You can’t imagine what it was like, Dot, when my wife was Mayor.’ Henry was complaining, as he so often did, about his spouse’s civic duties.

  ‘Bet you were proud of her.’ Dot seemed to be missing the point.

  ‘Proud of her! What happened to my self-respect in those days when I was constantly referred to as the Lady Mayoress?’

  ‘Poor old Henry!’ Dot couldn’t help laughing.

  ‘Poor old Henry, yes. At council meetings I had to sit in the gallery known as the hen pen. I was sat there with the wives.’

  ‘Things a bit better now, are they?’ Dot was still hugely entertained.

  ‘Now Eileen’s reverted to Alderperson? Very minimally, Dot. She’s on this slimming regime now. What shall I go back to? Lettuce salad and cottage cheese – you know, that white stuff. Tastes of soap. No drink, of course. Nothing alcoholic. You reckon you could go another Snowball?’

  ‘I’m all right, thanks.’ I saw Dot cover her glass with her hand.

  ‘I know you are, Dot,’ Henry agreed enthusiastically. ‘You most certainly are all right. The trouble is, Eileen and I haven’t exactly got a relationship. Not like we’ve got a relationship.’

  ‘Well, she doesn’t work with you, does she? Not on the fee notes,’ Dot asked, reasonably enough.

  ‘She doesn’t work with me at all and, well, I don’t feel close to her. Not as I feel close to you, Dot.’

  ‘Well, don’t get that close,’ Dot warned him. ‘I saw Mr Erskine-Brown give a glance in this direction.’

  ‘Mr Erskine-Brown? He’s always chasing after young girls. Makes himself ridiculous.’ Henry’s voice was full of contempt.

  ‘I had noticed.’

  ‘I’m not like that, Dot. I like to talk, you know, one on one. Have a relationship. May I ask you a very personal question?’

  ‘No harm in asking.’ She sounded less than fascinated.

  ‘Do you like me, Dot? I mean, do you like me for myself?’

  ‘Well, I don’t like you for anyone else.’ Dot laughed again. ‘You’re a very nice sort of person. Speak as you find.’

  And then Henry asked anxiously, ‘Am I a big part of your life?’

  ‘Course you are!’ She was still amused.

  ‘Thank you, Dot! Thank you very much. That’s all I need to know.’ Henry stood up, grateful and excited. ‘That deserves another Snowball!’

  I saw him set out for the bar in a determined fashion, so now Dot was speaking to his back, trying to explain herself, ‘I mean, you’re my boss, aren’t you? That’s a big part of my life.’

  Things had reached this somewhat tricky stage in the Dot–Henry relationship by the time Liz came and sat with me and demanded my full attention with a call to arms. ‘Rumpole,’ she said, ‘you’ve got to fight it. Every inch of the way!’

  ‘Fight what?’

  ‘Your case. It’s the establishment against Rumpole.’

  ‘My dear Mizz Liz, there isn’t any case.’

  ‘It’s a question of free speech.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Your freedom to speak to your client during the lunch hour. You’re an issue of civil rights now, Rumpole.’

  ‘Oh, am I? I don’t think I want to be that.’

  And then she looked at my glass and said, as though it were a sad sign of decline, ‘You’re drinking brandy!’

  ‘Dutch courage,’ I explained.

  ‘Oh, Rumpole, that’s not like you. You’ve never been afraid of Judges.’

  ‘Judges? Oh, no, as I always taught you, M
izz Liz, fearlessness is the first essential in an advocate. I can cope with Judges. It’s the other chaps that give me the jim-jams.’

  ‘Which other chaps, Rumpole?’

  ‘Dentists!’ I took a large swig of brandy and shivered.

  Time cures many things and in quite a short time old smoothy-chops Leering had the nagging tooth out of my head and I felt slightly better-tempered. Time, however, merely encouraged the growth of the great dispute and brought me nearer to an event that I’d never imagined possible, the trial of Rumpole.

  You must understand that we legal hacks are divided into Inns, known as Inns of Court. These Inns are ruled by the benchers, judges and senior barristers, who elect each other to the office rather in the manner of the Council which ruled Venice during the Middle Ages. The benchers of my Inn, known as the Outer Temple, do themselves extremely proud and, once elected, pay very little for lunch in the Outer Temple Hall, and enjoy a good many ceremonial dinners, Grand Nights, Guest Nights and other such occasions, when they climb into a white tie and tails, enter the dining hall with bishops and generals on their arms, and then retire to the Parliament Room for fruit, nuts, port, brandy, Muscat, Beaumes de Venise and Romeo y Julieta cigars. There they discuss the hardships of judicial life and the sad decline in public morality and, occasionally, swap such jokes as might deprave and corrupt those likely to hear them.

  On this particular Guest Night Mr Justice Graves, as Treasurer of the Inn, was presiding over the festivities. Ollie Oliphant was also present, as was a tall, handsome, only slightly overweight QC called Montague Varian, who was later to act as my prosecutor. Sam Ballard, the alleged Head of our Chambers and recently elected bencher, was there, delighted and somewhat overawed by his new honour. It was Ballard who told me the drift of the after-dinner conversation in the Parliament Room, an account which I have filled up with invention founded on a hard-won knowledge of the characters concerned. Among the guests present were a Lady Mendip, a sensible grey-haired headmistress, and the Bishop of Bayswater. It was to this cleric that Graves explained one of the quainter customs of the Outer Temple dining process.

  ‘My dear Bishop, you may have heard a porter ringing a handbell before dinner. That’s a custom we’ve kept up since the Middle Ages. The purpose is to summon in such of our students as may be fishing in the Fleet River.’