The Collected Stories of Rumpole

by John Mortimer

  ‘You mean you’re going to invite that terrible tribe of South London criminals?’ I thought this ungrateful of Hilda. The Timsons’ addiction to ordinary decent crime had kept us in groceries, including huge quantities of furniture polish, washing-up liquid and scouring pads, and had frequently paid the bill at the butcher’s and several times redecorated the bathroom over the long years of our married life.

  ‘I hardly think,’ Claude hastened to reassure her, ‘that the Timsons would fit in with the congregation at the Temple Church.’

  ‘I’m sure there will be many people,’ Ballard was smiling at She Who Must, ‘who aren’t members of the criminal fraternity and who’ll want to give Rumpole a really good send-off.’

  It was at this point that I entered the room, carrying a bottle of Château Thames Embankment and glasses. ‘Thank you for that kind thought, Ballard,’ I greeted him. ‘And now you’re both here, perhaps we will all drink to Rumpole revived.’

  Hamlet, happening to bump into his father’s ghost on the battlements, couldn’t have looked more surprised than my learned friends.

  The return to life was slow and, in many ways, painful. At first there was a mere trickle of briefs. Bonny Bernard, my favourite solicitor, had given up hope of my return and sent a common theft charge against two members of the Timson clan to Hoskins in our Chambers. I’m only too well aware of the fact that Hoskins has innumerable daughters to support, but I had to make sure that the Timsons knew I was no longer dead, and had to finance a wife with a passion for cleaning materials, as well as the life-giving properties of Pommeroy’s Very Ordinary Claret.

  I was sitting in my room in Chambers, wondering if I would ever work again, when our clerk Henry put through a phone call and I heard, to my delight, the cheerful voice of Sister Dotty, although on this memorable occasion the cheerfulness seemed forced and with an undertone of deep anxiety. After the usual inquiries about whether or not I was still alive, and the news that she was doing freelance and temporary nursing and had taken a small flat in Kilburn, she said, with a small and unconvincing laugh, ‘I had a visit from the police.’

  ‘You had a burglary?’

  ‘No. They wanted me to help them with their inquiries.’

  I felt a chill wind blowing. People who help the police with their inquiries often end up in serious trouble.

  ‘Inquiries about what?’

  ‘Poor old Freddy Fairweather’s death. They suggest I call in at the station and bring my solicitor. And I haven’t really got a solicitor.’

  ‘Then I’ll get you one. Where are you? I’ll ring you back.’

  This was clearly a job for my old friend Bonny Bernard. I called him to remind him that I was, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, up for work, and put him in touch with Dotty. A few days later, they called in at my Chambers to report the result of an extraordinary conversation which had taken place with Detective Inspector Maundy and Detective Sergeant Thorndike in a nick not too far from the Primrose Path Home.

  ‘They were a decent enough couple of officers,’ Bernard told me. ‘But they soon made their suspicions clear to me and the client.’

  ‘Suspicions of what?’

  ‘Murder.’

  I looked at Dotty, all her smiles gone to be replaced with a bewildered, incredulous terror. I did my best to make light of the moment. ‘You haven’t done in Sister Sheila?’

  ‘They’re investigating the death of one of the patients,’ Bernard said. ‘A Mr Frederick Fairweather.’

  ‘Freddy! As though I’d do anything to hurt him. We were friends. You know that. Just as we were, Mr Rumpole.’

  ‘And what’s she supposed to have done to Fairweather?’

  ‘Digitalis.’ Bernard looked at his notes.

  ‘Foxgloves?’ I remembered Dotty’s collection of herbal remedies.

  ‘It’s used to stabilize the action of the heart.’ Words began to pour out of Dotty. ‘They asked me about the access I had to digitalis, they seemed to think that I had a huge collection of pills and potions …’

  ‘Well, you had, hadn’t you?’

  ‘Herbal remedies, you know that. And, of course, I had digitalis, but I’d enter every dose I had to give a patient – and I never treated Freddy with it at all.’

  ‘So what do they suggest?’ I asked Bernard.

  ‘That they have evidence my client used a whole lot of digitalis without entering it or keeping a note,’ he told me. ‘And that she was seen coming out of Fairweather’s room an hour before he died. She also boasted she was going to benefit from the deceased’s will.’

  ‘It’s all completely ridiculous!’ Dotty could contain herself no longer. ‘I went to bed early and never left my room until I went on duty next day. I didn’t care a scrap about Freddy’s will. I only wanted him to get better, that was all I wanted. Nothing would have made me harm him, nothing in the world!’

  She was crying, I remembered, as she watered a bowl of hyacinths after Freddy Fairweather died. She was crying again now, but angrily, dabbing at her eyes with the clutched ball of a handkerchief.

  ‘That Doctor. Lucas, was it? He must have entered the cause of death?’ I asked Bernard.

  ‘The cause of death was a heart attack. The deceased had heart problems. But Lucas told the Inspector that what he saw might also have been brought about by an overdose of digitalis.’

  I made a note and then asked Dotty, ‘You told me you were going to Freddy’s cremation. Did you go?’

  ‘It was very strange. I rang the undertakers that used to come to the Primrose Path, but they knew nothing about Freddy. Then I rang the crematorium and I got a date. It was terrible, Mr Rumpole, just terrible. There was no one there. Absolutely no one at all. Sheila had said Freddy didn’t want anyone to see him go, but I couldn’t believe it. I was alone, in that horrible place … I think they were waiting for someone to come. I don’t know who they thought I was. One of the family, even a wife, perhaps. I told them I was his nurse and they said they might as well begin. There was some sort of music. I suppose they had it left over from someone else’s funeral, but there was no one to say anything. Not a word. Not a prayer. And there was just me to watch the coffin slide away behind the curtains. Apart from me – he went quite alone.’ She dabbed her eyes again and then looked up at me. A look full of unanswered questions.

  ‘Did you tell the police that?’

  ‘No. I just answered their questions.’

  ‘And is there anything else you want to tell me?’

  ‘Only that I’m angry. So angry.’

  ‘Because you know who’s been talking to the police?’

  ‘Of course. Sister Sheila!’

  ‘You think it’s Sheila?’

  ‘Who else could it be?’

  ‘They told us, Mr Rumpole,’ Bonny Bernard, of course, had no experience of the mysteries of the Primrose Path Home, ‘that they’d be making further inquiries. Of course, we don’t know what they’ll find out.’

  ‘Perhaps they’ll find out,’ I told my client Dotty, ‘why Sister Sheila should have gone to them with a story like that.’

  I was, of course, torn. I believed that Nurse Dotty was wholly innocent and would remain innocent even if proven guilty. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than pricking this bubble of so-called evidence and unworthy suspicion, and teaching the jury to love Nurse Dotty as much as they doubted the thin-lipped and hard-faced Sister who had given evidence for the prosecution. And yet, the more I thought about it, the more there seemed something unconvincing about the whole story, from the escape of the man Masklyn to the tenuous accusation about an overdose of digitalis. The trial, if there was to be a trial, might answer none of these questions. Well, that was often the case with trials. And I needed a sensational case at the Old Bailey, didn’t I, to resurrect Rumpole’s fading career? Then I felt a pang of guilt. Did I want Dotty to suffer just so that I could, after all these years, do something almost as sensational in Court as the case of the Penge Bungalow Murders? The
‘Primrose Path Crime’ would be sure to hit the headlines.

  It was while I was turning these matters over in my mind that my room was invaded by a pungent but not unpleasant perfume, and a tall, blonde woman in a black trouser suit came with it. She spoke in a surprisingly deep voice with more than a hint of a Yorkshire accent.

  ‘Got a minute? It’s about time we had a word. I’m Luci Gribble. Luci with an “i”. I’m your new Director of Marketing and Administration. Sorry I haven’t had a window before.’

  A window? What was the woman talking about? Was she shut in some airless oubliette in the Chambers cellarage? By now she had made herself comfortable in my clients’ chair.

  ‘I never had an old Director of Marketing,’ I had to tell her. ‘So I don’t know why I should need a new one.’ I had, of course, heard complaints from our clerk Henry, who regarded Luci with deep suspicion as one likely to butt into his drinks with solicitors and seriously deplete his clerk’s fees.

  ‘I’m here to look after your image,’ Luci told me.

  ‘I know what that means.’ I’d heard it all before. ‘It means you think I should get a new hat.’

  ‘Not at all! The hat’s perfect! And the striped pants, and the cigar ash down the waistcoat. They all suit your image perfectly. Don’t change a thing!’

  I suppose I should have found that reassuring, but somehow I didn’t.

  ‘I believe,’ I told her, ‘you were behind the idea of a church service to celebrate my death.’

  ‘To celebrate your life, Horace. That’s what we were going to celebrate. Of course, that’s on hold. For the time being.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’

  ‘I understand you’re going through a bit of a sticky period, practice wise.’

  ‘Sticky?’

  ‘Bit of a lull? A serious shortfall in briefs?’

  ‘Not at all.’ I had on my desk the instructions Bonny Bernard had sent me in the matter of Nurse Dotty and I fingered the papers proudly. ‘I’ve just been instructed in a rather sensational murder case.’

  ‘Really?’ Luci showed a polite interest. ‘Who got murdered?’

  ‘Probably no one. My client’s a nurse. It’s suggested she murdered a patient called Freddy Fairweather in the Primrose Path Home. A place,’ I had to add, ‘from which I was extremely glad to escape.’

  What Luci said then astonished me. She only seemed mildly surprised. ‘Not Freddy Fairweather of Primrose?’

  ‘The Primrose Path,’ I reminded her.

  ‘I don’t know anything about the “Path”. The Freddy Fairweather I worked for was Primrose Personal Pensions. He was an IFA – Independent Financial Adviser. Invested anyone’s money in what he called a “gilt-edged pension scheme”. On the whole, about as gilt-edged as a bouncing cheque. Which is why we parted company. Do you say he’s dead?’

  ‘I’m afraid so, and without a memorial service. If he’s the same Freddy Fairweather, of course.’

  ‘Short, square shoulders? No hair and a broken nose? He could turn on the charm, Freddy could. Had a bit of a chip on his shoulder as he’d left school at fifteen and never been to university like the rest of the Chamber of Commerce. Of course, if he’s been murdered, you never met him, did you, Horace?’

  ‘I might have done, strangely enough. You say you worked for him. Where exactly?’

  ‘You know Leeds, Horace?’

  ‘I’m afraid I have only a sketchy knowledge of Leeds.’

  ‘That’s where I started in marketing. I was marketing for Freddy. I won’t say they were the best days of my life. I left because I didn’t like the way the place was run. And I couldn’t stand the company doctor, a quack who was meant to examine the pensioners. Objectionable’s not the word.’

  ‘His name wasn’t Lucas, was it?’

  ‘Sydney Lucas! That was him! But as for Freddy, he might have cut a few business corners but I wouldn’t have wanted to see him murdered.’

  I looked at her then, her black-trousered legs crossed, shiny boots pointed, an alien being in the dusty world of Equity Court. I lit a small cigar and, rather to my surprise, she made no protest. I blew out smoke and said, ‘I’d be very much obliged if you’d tell me everything you know about the late Freddy Fairweather.’

  ‘All right then. But would you mind passing me one of those whiffs?’

  I did so, and we sat smoking and talking together, and what the new Director of Marketing told me was of considerable interest.

  It was time to call in old favours. I had entered Pommeroy’s Wine Bar in order to arrange overdraft facilities until the legal aid cheques came dribbling in (my recuperation at the Primrose Path had not only provided the tempting possibility of a brief in a sensational murder case, but exhausted a cashed-in insurance policy). I stood at the bar waiting for a lugubrious figure, who wore, however pleasant the weather, an elderly mackintosh and the expression of a man suffering from a cold who forever feels a drip forming at the end of his nose. This was, of course, the invaluable sleuth Ferdinand Ian Gilmour Newton, known throughout the legal profession as ‘Fig’, who, since adultery no longer had any legal significance, had taken to crime, in which field his investigations were often more thorough, and far more useful, than those carried out by the police.

  ‘Hello, Mr Rumpole.’ There was no hint of welcome in Fig’s voice; his emotions were hidden under his perpetual raincoat. ‘I heard you passed over.’

  ‘I’ve come back to haunt you, Fig. And also to remind you of the interesting and profitable work I’ve put your way over many years.’

  ‘Interesting, Mr Rumpole. Rather less profitable. I wouldn’t say any of them paid out above the average. What’ve you got in mind?’

  I invested in a bottle of Château Thames Embankment (I’m afraid it was of an indifferent year and not long enough in bottle) and sat Fig down at a quiet table in the corner of the bar. Then I told him all I knew, and all Luci the Marketing Director had told me, about Freddy Fairweather and the Primrose Path, which had led, in his case so suddenly, ‘ “to the everlasting bonfire” ’. Then I gave him the list I’d made of all the required information. Fig looked at it doubtfully, like a man invited to swallow peculiarly nasty medicine.

  ‘Are you suggesting, Mr Rumpole, that I do all this as some sort of favour?’

  ‘We’ll try and meet your reasonable expenses. I can’t promise you much more at the moment.’

  There’s no point in recording that Fig looked disappointed, his expression was one of perpetual disappointment, but it’s enough to say that he didn’t jump at my offer.

  ‘Time’s money, Mr Rumpole. If you can give me one good reason—’

  ‘All right, Fig,’ I said, ‘I’ll give you a good reason. I’m just back from a near-death experience. Business is slow, not to say boring. An excellent, charming and entirely innocent woman has been accused of a murder. It may all come to nothing, in a way I hope so, but meanwhile the case is shrouded in mystery and I need your help. And if I can’t solve it I might as well turn up my toes and hang up my wig.’

  It was a long speech, but heartfelt. As I refreshed myself with a gulp of Pommeroy’s Very Ordinary I saw something suspiciously like a smile pass over Fig’s far-from-cheerful face.

  ‘Don’t do that, Mr Rumpole,’ he said. ‘When do we start?’

  I also had more work for Bonny Bernard. After I had reminded him of at least three considerable victories which we had achieved together in the Ludgate Circus Palais de Justice, I was able to persuade him to pursue inquiries at Somerset House and, through a local firm, in the Leeds area, the costs of which might be attributed to Dotty’s legal aid if her trial ever occurred. I also got him to agree to open informal discussions with that apparently decent and reasonable officer, Detective Inspector Maundy of the Sussex Police.

  So south and north my messengers set forth in search of information, and I had nothing much to do but sit in my room awaiting results. I was busily engaged in lighting a small cigar while wrestling with The Times c
rossword puzzle when my phone rang and I heard the voice of Dotty, still troubled, but a little calmer than when I had last seen her. No, she hadn’t been summoned to another interview with the forces of law and order. She had, however, had a call from the Primrose Path.

  ‘You heard from Sister Sheila?’

  ‘No. From Gavin. You remember Gavin? The quiet boy, university student. He used to be on the desk at nights. Always had his head in a book.’

  ‘Or else he wasn’t there much. He wasn’t on guard to prevent the escape of Michael Masklyn. Or, come to that, mine.’

  ‘We used to get on rather well. He seemed a lonely sort of boy. We used to make coffee and talk when I was on nights and nothing much was happening. We argued about God and sex and fidelity and Eminem. All those things that students talk about. It made me feel quite young again. I think he liked me.’

  ‘I’m not at all surprised. Did you talk about the night they took away Freddy Fairweather?’

  ‘He told me, long ago, he was away on some sort of course when that happened. No. This call was about his degree. He’s due to get it soon from the University of North Sussex. He asked me to go and watch. I was rather flattered.’

  ‘What’s he qualified in? Golf-Course Management? Window Dressing? Spiritual Furniture Arrangement? Aren’t they the sort of things you get degrees in nowadays?’ I may have sounded cynical; I hadn’t yet become fully reconciled to the world I had returned to.

  ‘Nothing like that. Theology.’

  I was thinking hard then, about the Primrose Path and young Gavin, occasionally present at the desk downstairs, doing his best to discover how to justify the ways of God to Man. I had advice for Dotty.

  ‘Then I think you should go to the degree ceremony. Definitely. Get a good seat and keep your eyes open.’

  And at long last I was ready to return along the Primrose Path. It was an afternoon in early spring, with the trees covered in a green mist of young shoots and pale sunshine on the garden of the home, where a patient or two had been pushed out in wheelchairs to snooze away the few afternoons that were left to them. The front door was open and I stepped into the familiar smell of furniture polish, disinfectant and an air freshener in which the scent of early flowers and budding leaves had been strongly sterilized. I thought, again, how easy it was to get in and out of the Primrose Path without attracting any particular attention. I stood for a minute alone in the hallway, thinking about the eventful night which had led to Dotty’s tears, and then a young nurse, one I had not seen before, asked my name and said that Sister Sheila was expecting me in her office.