The Collected Stories of Rumpole

by John Mortimer

  I had known, instinctively, that something was very wrong. It had, however, taken some time for me to realize what I had really seen that night at the Tufnell Park Empire. It was nothing less than an outrage to a Great British Tradition. The Widow Twankey was a woman.

  DI Grimble made his arrest and the case against Dennis Timson was dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service. As spring came to the Temple Gardens, Hilda opened a letter in the other case which turned on the recognition of old, familiar faces and read it out to me.

  ‘The repointing’s going well on the tower and we hope to have it finished by Easter,’ Poppy Longstaff had written. ‘And I have to tell you, Hilda, the oil-fired heating has changed our lives. Eric says it’s like living in the tropics. Cooking supper last night, I had to peel off at least one of my cardigans.’ She Who Must Be Obeyed put down the letter from her old school friend and said, thoughtfully, ‘Noblesse oblige.’

  ‘What was that, Hilda?’

  ‘I could tell at once that Donald Compton was a true gentleman. The sort that does good by stealth. Of course, poor old Eric thought he’d never get the tower mended, but I somehow felt that Donald wouldn’t fail him. It was noblesse.’

  ‘Perhaps it was,’ I conceded, ‘but in this case the noblesse was Rumpole’s.’

  ‘Rumpole! What on earth do you mean? You hardly paid to have the church tower repointed, did you?’

  ‘In one sense, yes.’

  ‘I can’t believe that. After all the years it took you to have the bathroom decorated. What on earth do you mean about your noblesse?’

  ‘It’d take too long to explain, old darling. Besides, I’ve got a conference in Chambers. Tricky case of receiving stolen surgical appliances. I suppose,’ I added doubtfully, ‘it may lead, at some time in the distant future, to an act of charity.’

  Easter came, the work on the tower was successfully completed, and I was walking back to Chambers after a gruelling day down the Bailey when I saw, wafting through the Temple cloisters, the unlikely apparition of the Rev. Eric Longstaff. He chirruped a greeting and said he’d come up to consult some legal brains on the proper investment of what remained of the Church Restoration Fund. ‘I’m so profoundly grateful,’ he told me, ‘that I decided to invite you down to the Rectory last Christmas.’

  ‘You decided?’

  ‘Of course I did.’

  ‘I thought your wife Poppy extended the invitation to She …’

  ‘Oh yes. But I thought of the idea. It was the result of a good deal of hard knee-work and guidance from above. I knew you were the right man for the job.’

  ‘What job?’

  ‘The Compton job.’

  What was this? The Rector was speaking like an old con. The Coldsands caper? ‘What can you mean?’

  ‘I just mean that I knew you’d defended Donald Compton. In a previous existence.’

  ‘How on earth did you know that?’

  Eric drew himself up to his full, willowy height. ‘I’m not a prison visitor for nothing,’ he said proudly, ‘so I thought you were just the chap to put the fear of God into him. You were the very person to put the squeeze on the Lord of the Manor.’

  ‘Put the squeeze on him?’ Words were beginning to fail me.

  ‘That was the idea. It came to me as a result of knee-work.’

  ‘So you brought us down to that freezing Rectory just so I could blackmail the local benefactor?’

  ‘Didn’t it turn out well!’

  ‘May the Lord forgive you.’

  ‘He’s very forgiving.’

  ‘Next time,’ I spoke to the Man of God severely, ‘the Church can do its blackmailing for itself.’

  ‘Oh, we’re quite used to that.’ The Rector smiled at me in what I thought was a lofty manner. ‘Particularly around Christmas.’

  Rumpole and the Primrose Path

  The regular meeting of the barristers who inhabit my old Chambers in Equity Court took place, one afternoon, in an atmosphere of particular solemnity. Among those present was a character entirely new to them, a certain Luci Gribble, whom our leader, in a momentary ambition to reach the status of an ‘entrepreneur’, had taken on as Director of Marketing and Administration.

  Mizz Liz Probert, observing the scene, later described Luci (why she had taken to this preposterous spelling of the name of Wordsworth’s great love was clear to nobody) as in her thirties, with a ‘short bob’, referring to hair which was not necessarily as blonde as it seemed, a thin nose, slightly hooded eyes and a determined chin. She wore a black trouser suit and bracelets clinked at her wrists. The meeting was apparently interrupted from time to time, as she gave swift instructions to the mobile phone she kept in her jacket pocket. She also wore high-heeled black boots which Liz Probert priced at not far short of three hundred pounds.

  ‘I’m vitally concerned with the profile of Equity Court.’ Luci had a slight Northern accent and a way, Liz noticed, of raising her voice at the end of her sentence, so every statement sounded like a question. ‘I take it that it’s in the parameters of my job description to include the field of public relations and the all-important question of the company’s – that is to say’ (here Liz swears that Luci corrected herself reluctantly) ‘the Chambers’ image. Correct, Chair?’

  This was an undoubted question, but it seemed to be addressed to an article of furniture, one of that old dining-room set, now much mended and occasionally wobbly, which had been bequeathed to Equity Court in the will of C. H. Wystan, my wife Hilda’s father and once Head of our Chambers. However, Soapy Sam Ballard, as our present Head and so Chairman of the meeting, appeared to follow the new arrival’s drift.

  ‘Of course that’s your job, Luci.’ Soapy Sam was on Christian-name terms with the woman who called him Chair. ‘To improve our image. That’s why we hired you. After all, we don’t want to be described as a group of old fuddy-duddies, do we?’ Chair, who might be thought by some to fit the description perfectly, smiled round at the meeting.

  ‘It’s not so much the fuddy-duddy label that concerns me at the moment, although I shall be including that in a future presentation. It’s the heartless thing that worries me.’

  ‘Heartless?’ Ballard was puzzled.

  ‘The public image of barristers,’ Luci told the meeting, ‘equals money-grabbing fat cats, insincere defenders of clients who are obviously guilty, chauvinists and outdated wig-wearing shysters.’

  ‘Did you say “shysters”?’ Claude Erskine-Brown, usually mild mannered, ever timid in Court, easily doused by a robust opponent or an impatient Judge, rose in his seat (once again this is the evidence of Liz Probert) and uttered a furious protest. ‘I insist you withdraw that word “shyster”.’

  ‘No need for that, Erskine-Brown.’ Ballard was being gently judicial. ‘Luci is merely talking us through the public perception.’

  ‘You put it, Chair, succinctly and to the point.’ Once again, Luci was grateful to the furniture.

  ‘Oh, well. If it’s only the public perception.’ Erskine-Brown sank back in his seat, apparently mollified.

  ‘What we have to demonstrate is that barristers have outsize hearts. There is no section of the community, and we can prove this by statistics, which cares more deeply, gives more liberally to charity, signs more letters to The Times and shows its concern for the public good by pointing out more frequent defects in the railway system, than the old-fashioned, tried-and-trusted British barrister.’

  ‘You can prove anything by statistics.’ Erskine-Brown was still out, in a small way, to cause trouble.

  ‘Exactly so.’ Luci seemed unexpectedly delighted. ‘So we have chosen our statistics with great care, and we shall use them to the best possible advantage. But I’m not talking statistics here. I’m talking of the situation, sad as I’m sure we all agree it may be, which gives us the opportunity to show that we do care.’ Luci paused and seemed, for a moment, moved with deep emotion. ‘So much so that we should all join in a very public display of heartfelt thanks.’

&
nbsp; ‘Heartfelt thanks for what?’ Erskine-Brown was mystified. ‘Surely not our legal aid fees?’

  At this point, Luci produced copies of a statement she invited Erskine-Brown to circulate. When Liz Probert got it, she found that it read:

  We wish to give heartfelt thanks for the life of one of our number. An ordinary, workaday barrister. An old warhorse. One who didn’t profess to legal brilliance, but one who cared deeply and whom we loved as a fellow member of number 3 Equity Court.

  ‘By this act we shall show that barristers have hearts,’ Luci summed up the situation.

  ‘By what act is that, exactly?’ Erskine-Brown was still far from clear.

  ‘The Memorial Service. In the Temple Church for the late Horace Rumpole, barrister-at-law. Chair, I’m sure we can rely on you for a few remarks, giving thanks for a life of quiet and devoted service.’

  It later emerged that at this stage of the Chambers meeting Liz Probert, undoubtedly the most sensible member of the gathering, suggested that a discussion of a Memorial Service was a little premature in view of the fact that there had as yet been no announcement of Rumpole’s death. Erskine-Brown told her that he had spoken to She Who Must Be Obeyed, who was, he said, ‘putting a brave face on it’, but admitted that I had been removed from the hospital to which I had been rushed after a dramatic failure in the ticker department, brought about by an unusually brutal encounter with Judge Bullingham, to the Primrose Path Home in Sussex, and would not be back in Chambers for a very long time indeed. In that case, Liz suggested, all talk of a Memorial Service might be postponed indefinitely.

  ‘Put our programme on hold?’ Luci was clearly disappointed. ‘It’d be a pity not to continue with the planning stage. Naturally, Mrs Rumpole’s hoping for the best, but let’s face it, at his age Rumpole’s actuarial chances of survival are approximate to a negative-risk situation—’

  ‘And one knows, doesn’t one,’ Erskine-Brown asked, ‘what places like the Primrose Path are like? They call themselves “Homes”, but the reality is they are—’

  ‘What do you think they are?’ Liz Probert was cynical enough to ask. ‘Houses of ill fame? Gambling dens? Five-star hotels?’

  ‘They are places,’ Erskine-Brown was looking at her, she said, more in sorrow than in anger, ‘where people are sent to end their days in peace. They call themselves “convalescent homes” to reassure the relatives. But the truth of it is that not many people come out of them alive.’

  ‘We’ll need to put together a programme.’ Ballard was seriously worried. ‘And we can hardly ask Mrs Rumpole for her help. As yet.’

  ‘I have an aunt in Godalming.’ Erskine-Brown seemed unnaturally proud of the fact. ‘I can call in on Rumpole when I go down to see her next.’

  ‘And I’m sure your visit, Erskine-Brown,’ Ballard said, ‘will be a welcome treat for Rumpole.’

  As usual, our Head of Chambers had got it completely wrong.

  So now Claude and I were together in my room in the Primrose Path Home, somewhere on the sleepy side of Sussex. It was a place of unremitting cleanliness, and so tidy that I was homesick for the unwashed ashtray, resting place for the butt ends of small cigars, the pile of unreturned briefs, the dusty, yellowing accounts of ancient crimes (for which those found guilty must have now completed their sentences), outdated copies of Archbold on Criminal Law and Procedure, and the Old English Law Reports, bound in crumbling leather and gathering dust, as did the collapsing umbrella left by some long-forgotten client. On the mantelpiece I kept a few souvenirs of my notable cases: the bullet found embedded in the radiogram in the Penge Bungalow affair, the china mug inscribed to a ‘Perfect Dad’ from which Leonard Peterson had drunk his last, arsenic-flavoured cup of tea, and the sheet music of ‘In a Monastery Garden’, which Mrs Florence Davenport had been playing as she awaited the news of her husband’s death after his brakes had been partially severed by her lover.

  By contrast, the Primrose Path Home was uncomfortably tidy. The atmosphere was heavy with the smell of furniture polish, chemical air fresheners and disinfectant. There was a constant hum of hoovering and the staff seemed to handle everything, including the patients, with rubber gloves.

  ‘What’s your favourite music, Rumpole?’

  ‘Music, Erskine-Brown?’

  ‘Schubert Trio? Mozart Concerto? We know you’re absurdly prejudiced against Wagner. What about “When I was a little page” from Verdi’s Falstaff?’

  ‘I never was a little page! Don’t babble, Erskine-Brown.’

  ‘Or Elgar? Typically English, Elgar.’

  ‘When I sing to myself, which is only very occasionally—’ Poor old Claude seemed, for no particular reason, to be in some distress, and I was doing my best to help him out.

  ‘Yes. Yes!’ His nose twitched with excitement. ‘Tell me, Rumpole. When you sing to yourself, what do you sing?’

  ‘Sometimes “Pop Goes the Weasel”. Occasionally “Knock’d ’em in the Old Kent Road”. More often than not a ballad of the war years, “We’re going to hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line”. You remember that, don’t you?’

  ‘No, Rumpole, I’m afraid I don’t.’ Erskine-Brown’s nose twitched again, though this time it was a sign of displeasure. He tried another tack. ‘Tell me, Rumpole. Talking of the war years, did you ever serve your country overseas?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I told Claude, in answer to his ridiculous question. ‘I flew Spitfires in the war. I shot down the Red Baron and was the first British pilot to enter Berlin.’

  Claude looked at me sadly and said, ‘I only ask because Ballard wants material for his speech.’

  ‘His speech about me?’ I was puzzled.

  ‘About your life. To give thanks for your existence.’

  It sounded extremely improbable. ‘Ballard’s going to do that?’

  ‘We shall celebrate you, Rumpole.’

  ‘You mean—’ I was hoping against all the probabilities that they were contemplating some sort of party ‘—a Chambers piss-up in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar? Drinks on the Soapy Sam Memorial Fund?’

  ‘Not exactly that, Rumpole.’ Claude glanced, nervously I thought, at his watch. ‘I’d better be getting back. I’ve got a rating appeal tomorrow.’

  ‘I envy you, Erskine-Brown. You seem to lead a life of perpetual excitement.’

  ‘Oh, there’s just one more thing.’ The man was already on his feet. ‘Do you have a favourite prayer?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘To help us, Rumpole, to celebrate your life.’

  ‘Then I pray to God to be left alone. So I can get out of here as quickly as possible. It’s all far too clean for my liking.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re quite comfortable here, Rumpole.’ Erskine-Brown gave me a smile of faint encouragement. ‘And I know they’ll look after you extremely well. For as long as you have left.’

  At which he stood up and stole silently out of the room with the guilty look of a man leaving a funeral early.

  When Erskine-Brown had gone, I watched morning television. A group of people had been assembled, having, it seemed, only one thing in common. They had each had sexual intercourse with someone who turned out to be a close relative. This incident in their lives, which many people might wish to keep discreetly under wraps, led them to speak out at length, as cheerfully as though they were discussing gardening or cookery, to the huge audience of the unemployed, the pensioned-off and the helpless in hospitals. As their eager, confiding faces filled the screen I began to doze off – the best way, I had found, of enjoying life at the Primrose Path Home.

  Whoever had christened this place of eternal rest the Primrose Path betrayed insufficient knowledge of English literature. According to Ophelia in Hamlet, it’s the path of dalliance – and any dalliance in the home was confined strictly to the television. The porter in Macbeth, however, said that the primrose way led ‘ “to the everlasting bonfire” ’. This may have been a more accurate description. The inhabitants of the rooms down the corridor were
given to disappearing quietly during the night and leaving the Primrose Path, I felt sure, for the nearest crematorium.

  I woke up, it seemed hours later, to my untouched lunch, a tray mainly loaded with a plethora of paper napkins, much unwelcome salad and a glass of orange juice. I was searching for a mouthful of edible cheese under the stationery when I caught a sound, unusual, even unknown in the Primrose Path. A woman was sobbing. People died there, but you heard no cries of agony, no angry slamming of doors, or wailing of relatives. The sobs I heard were restrained, but they were undeniably heartfelt. I abandoned my lunch, switched off the television and moved, as quietly as I could manage it, into the corridor.

  At the end of the passage, with its linoleum shining like polished shoes, a woman was sobbing as she watered a bowl of hyacinths. She was, perhaps, in her late forties, her chestnut hair fading a little, but with high cheekbones, usually amused eyes and a generous mouth. She was Nurse Albright, my favourite member of staff, known to me as Dotty Dorothy, owing to her habit of occasionally promising to dust off my aura by polishing the surrounding air. She also brought me an assortment of roots, herbs and leaves, which, if added to my tea, she promised, would soon make me fit to run a mile, spend a day defending in a murder trial and learn to tango at evening classes. She was, above all, cheerful and unfailingly kind, and we would sing together songs we both loved, songs I had kept from the prying ears of Erskine-Brown, such as ‘Night and Day’, ‘That Old Black Magic’ and ‘Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered’, which I had danced to in a far-distant time, before Hilda’s and my fox-trotting days were over.

  Dotty Dorothy’s singing, her use of herbs and strange roots and, on many occasions, her kindness got her into frequent trouble with her boss, Sister Sheila Bradwell, who ruled the Primrose Path with the kind of enlightened and liberal principles which guided Captain Bligh when he was in charge of the Bounty. Sister Sheila recognized no superior being, except for one called Nanki-Poo, an evil-tempered, spoiled and domineering Pekinese whom I had seen the Sister kiss, fondle, feed with chocolate biscuits and generally spoil in a way she would never treat a patient. Like many of the inhabitants of the Primrose Path, Nanki-Poo suffered a degree of incontinence which littered the garden and added some significance to his name. He would also, when out walking, sit down if a leaf attached itself to his trailing hair, and yelp until a nurse came and relieved him of the encumbrance.