Rumpole at Christmas

by John Mortimer

  The medical and police evidence had been disposed of before Christmas and now, in the rather strange order adopted by Soapy Sam Ballard for the prosecution, the only witnesses left were Arthur Luttrell (who manned the reception desk), Ricky Glossop and the nervous secretary.

  Luttrell, the receptionist, was a smart, precise, self-important man with a sharp nose and a sandy moustache who clearly regarded his position as being at the centre of the university organization. He remembered Hussein Khan coming at nine thirty that evening, saying he had an appointment with the senior tutor, and going up to the library. At quarter to ten the Glossops had arrived. Ricky had gone with his wife to her office, but had left about fifteen minutes later. ‘He stopped to speak to me on the way out,’ Luttrell told Soapy Sam, ‘which is why I remember it well.’

  After that, the evening at William Morris University followed its horrible course. Around eleven o’clock, Hussein Khan left, complaining that he had wasted well over an hour, no senior tutor had come to talk to him, and that he was going back to his parents’ restaurant in Golders Green. After that Ricky telephoned the reception desk saying that he couldn’t get any reply from his wife’s office and would Mr Luttrell please go and make sure she was all right. As we all know, Mr Luttrell went to the office, knocked, opened the door, and was met by the ghastly spectacle which was to bring us all together in Court Number One at the Old Bailey.

  ‘Mr Rumpole.’ The judge’s tone in calling my name was as aloofly disapproving as though Christmas had never happened. ‘All this evidence is agreed, isn’t it? I don’t suppose you’ll find it necessary to trouble Mr Luttrell with any questions.’

  ‘Just one or two, My Lord.’

  ‘Oh, very well.’ The judge sounded displeased. ‘Just remember, we’re under a public duty not to waste time.’

  ‘I hope Your Lordship isn’t suggesting that an attempt to get to the truth is a waste of time.’ And before The Old Gravestone could launch a counter-attack, I asked Mr Luttrell the first question.

  ‘You say Mr Glossop spoke to you on the way out. Can you remember what he said?’

  ‘I remember perfectly.’ The receptionist looked personally insulted as though I doubted his word. ‘He asked me if Hussein Khan was in the building.’

  ‘He asked you that?’

  ‘Yes, he did.’

  ‘And what did you tell him?’

  ‘I told him yes. I said Khan was in the library where he had an appointment with the senior tutor.’

  I allowed a pause for this curious piece of evidence to sink into the minds of the jury. Graves, of course, filled in the gap by asking if that was my only question.

  ‘Just one more, My Lord.’

  Here the judge sighed heavily, but I ignored that.

  ‘Are you telling this jury, Mr Luttrell, that Glossop discovered that the man who had threatened his wife with death was in the building, then left without speaking to her again?’

  I looked at the jury as I asked this and saw, for the first time in the trial, a few faces looking puzzled.

  Mr Luttrell, however, sounded unfazed.

  ‘I’ve told you what he said. I can’t tell you anything more.’

  ‘He can’t tell us anything more,’ the judge repeated. ‘So that would seem to be the end of the matter, wouldn’t it, Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘Not quite the end,’ I told him. ‘I don’t think it’s quite the end of the matter yet.’

  This remark did nothing to improve my relations with His Lordship, who gave me a look from which all traces of the Christmas spirit had been drained.

  The jury may have had a moment of doubt during the receptionist’s evidence, but when Ricky Glossop was put in the witness box, their sympathy and concern for the good-looking, appealingly modest, and stricken husband was obvious. Graves supported them with enthusiasm.

  ‘This is clearly going to be a terrible ordeal for you, Mr Glossop,’ the judge said, looking at the witness with serious concern. ‘Wouldn’t you like to sit down?’

  ‘No thank you, My Lord. I prefer to stand,’ Ricky said bravely. The judge gave him the sort of look a commanding officer might give to a young subaltern who’d volunteered to attack the enemy position single-handed. ‘Just let me know,’ Graves insisted, ‘if you feel exhausted or overcome by any part of your evidence, and you shall sit down immediately.’

  ‘Thank you very much, My Lord. That is very kind of Your Lordship.’

  So, with the formalities of mutual admiration over, Ricky Glossop began to tell his story.

  He had met Honoria some ten years before when they were both cruising round the Greek Islands. ‘She knew all the classical legends and the history of every place. I thought she’d never be bothered with an undereducated slob like me.’ Here he smiled modestly, and the judge smiled back as a sign of disagreement. ‘But luckily she put up with me. And, of course, I fell in love with her.’

  ‘Of course?’ Soapy Sam seemed to feel that this sentence called for some further explanation.

  ‘She was extremely beautiful.’

  ‘And she found you attractive?’

  ‘She seemed to. God knows why.’ This answer earned him smiles for his modesty.

  ‘So you were married for ten years,’ Ballard said. ‘And you had no children.’

  ‘No. Honoria couldn’t have children. It was a great sadness to both of us.’

  ‘And how would you describe your marriage up to the time your wife got this terrible letter?’ Ballard was holding the letter out, at a distance, as though the paper itself might carry a fatal infection.

  ‘We were very happy.’

  ‘When she got the letter, how did she react to it?’

  ‘She was very brave, My Lord,’ Ricky told the judge. ‘She said it had obviously been written by some nutcase and that she intended to ignore it.’

  ‘She was extremely brave.’ The judge spoke the words with admiration as he wrote them down.

  So Ricky Glossop told his story. And when I – the representative, so it appeared, of his wife’s murderer – rose to cross-examine, I felt a chill wind blowing through Number One Court.

  ‘Mr Glossop, you said your marriage to your wife Honoria was a happy one?’

  ‘As far as I was concerned it was very happy.’ Here he smiled at the jury and some of them nodded back approvingly.

  ‘Did you know that on the afternoon before she was murdered, your wife had consulted a solicitor, Mr Anthony Hawkin of Henshaw and Hawkin?’

  ‘I didn’t know that, no.’

  ‘Can you guess why?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. My wife had considerable financial interests under her father’s will. It might have been about that.’

  ‘You mean it might have been about money?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you know that Anthony Hawkin is well known as an expert on divorce and family law?’

  ‘I didn’t know that either.’

  ‘And you didn’t know that your wife was considering proceedings for divorce?’

  ‘I certainly didn’t.’

  I looked at the jury. They were now, I thought, at least interested. I remembered the frightened blonde girl I had seen outside the court and the hand he had put on hers as he had tried to comfort her.

  ‘Was there any trouble between your wife and yourself because of her secretary, Sue Blackmore?’

  ‘So far as I know, none whatever.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole. I’m wondering, and I expect the jury may be wondering as well, what on earth these questions have to do with your client’s trial for murder,’ the judge interjected.

  ‘Then wonder on,’ I might have quoted Shakespeare to Graves, ‘till truth make all things plain.’ But I did not do that. I merely said, ‘I’m putting these questions to test the credibility of this witness, My Lord.’

  ‘And why, Mr Rumpole, are you attacking his credibility? Which part of this gentleman’s evidence are you disputing?’

  ‘If I may be allowed to cross-examine in the
usual way, I hope it may become clear,’ I said, and then I’m afraid I also said, ‘even to Your Lordship.’

  At this, Gravestone gave me the look that meant, ‘You just wait until we come to the summing up, and I’ll tell the jury what I think of your attack on this charming husband.’ But for the moment he remained as silent as a block of ice, so I soldiered on.

  ‘Mr Glossop. Your wife’s secretary delivered this threatening letter to her.’

  ‘Yes. Honoria was working at home and Sue brought it over from her pigeonhole at the university.’

  ‘You’ve told us that she was very brave, of course. That she had said it was probably from some nutcase and that she intended to ignore it. But you insisted on taking the letter to the police.’

  ‘An extremely wise decision, if I may say so,’ Graves took it upon himself to note.

  ‘And I think you gave the story to the Press Association so that this death threat received wide publicity.’

  ‘I thought Honoria would be safer if it was all out in the open. People would be on their guard.’

  ‘Another wise decision, the members of the jury might think.’ Graves was making sure the jury thought it.

  ‘And when the letter was traced to my client, everyone knew that it was Hussein Khan who was the author of the letter?’

  ‘He was dismissed from the university, so I suppose a lot of people knew, yes.’

  ‘So, if anything were to have happened to your wife after that, if she were to have been attacked or killed, Hussein Khan would have been the most likely suspect?’

  ‘I think that has been obvious throughout this trial.’ Graves couldn’t resist it.

  ‘My Lord, I’d really much rather get the answers to my questions from the witness than receive them from Your Lordship.’ I went on quickly before the judge could get in his two pennies’ worth. ‘You took your wife to the university on that fatal night?’

  ‘I often did. If I was going somewhere and she had work to do in her office, I’d drop her off and then collect her later on my way home.’

  ‘But you didn’t just drop her off, did you? You went inside the building with her. You took her up to her office?’

  ‘Yes. We’d been talking about something in the car and we went on discussing it as I went up to her office with her.’

  ‘He escorted her, Mr Rumpole,’ the sepulchral voice boomed from the bench. ‘A very gentlemanly thing to do.’

  ‘Thank you, My Lord.’ Ricky’s smile was still full of charm.

  ‘And what were you discussing?’ I asked him. ‘Was it divorce?’

  ‘It certainly wasn’t divorce. I can’t remember what it was exactly.’

  ‘Then perhaps you can remember this. How long did you stay in the office with your wife?’

  ‘Perhaps five, maybe ten minutes. I can’t remember exactly.’

  ‘And when you left, was she still alive?’

  There was a small silence.

  The witness looked at me and seemed to catch his breath. Then he gave us the invariably charming smile.

  ‘Of course she was.’

  ‘You spoke to Mr Luttrell at the reception area on your way out?’

  ‘I did, yes.’

  ‘He says you asked him if Hussein Khan was in the building?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘I suppose I’d heard from someone that he might have been there.’

  ‘And what did Mr Luttrell tell you?’

  ‘He said that Khan was in the building, yes.’

  ‘You knew that Hussein Khan’s presence in that building was a potential danger to your wife.’

  ‘I suppose I knew. Yes.’

  ‘I suppose you did. And yet you left and drove off in your car without warning her?’

  There was a longer silence then and Ricky’s smile seemed to droop.

  ‘I didn’t go back to the office, no.’

  ‘Why not, Mr Glossop? Why not warn her? Why didn’t you see that Khan left before you went off?’

  And then Ricky Glossop said something which changed the atmosphere in court in a moment, even silencing the judge.

  ‘I suppose I was in a hurry. I was on my way to a party.’

  After a suitable pause I asked, ‘There was no lock on your wife’s office door, was there?’

  ‘There might have been. But she never locked it.’

  ‘So you left her unprotected, with the man who had threatened her life still in the building, because you were on your way to a party?’

  The smile came again, but it had no effect now on the jury.

  ‘I think I heard he was with the senior tutor in the library. I suppose I thought that was safe.’

  ‘Mr Glossop, were you not worried by the possibility that the senior tutor might leave first, leaving the man who threatened your wife still in the building with her?’

  ‘I suppose I didn’t think of that,’ was all he could say.

  I let the answer sink in and then turned to more dangerous and uncharted territory.

  ‘I believe you’re interested in various country sports.’

  ‘That’s right, My Lord.’ The witness, seeming to feel the ground was now safer, smiled at the judge.

  ‘You used to go shooting, I believe.’

  ‘Well, I go shooting, Mr Rumpole.’ A ghastly twitch of the lips was, from the bench, Graves’s concession towards a smile. ‘And I hope you’re not accusing me of complicity in any sort of a crime?’

  I let the jury have their sycophantic laugh, then went on to ask, ‘Did you ever belong to a pistol shooting club, Mr Glossop?’ Fig Newton, the private eye, had done his work well.

  ‘When such clubs were legal, yes.’

  ‘And do you still own a handgun?’

  ‘Certainly not.’ The witness seemed enraged. ‘I wouldn’t do anything that broke the law.’

  I turned to look at the jury with my eyebrows raised, but for the moment the witness was saved by the bell as the judge announced that he could see by the clock that it was time we broke for lunch.

  Before we parted, however, Soapy Sam got up to tell us that his next witness would be Mrs Glossop’s secretary, Sue Blackmore, who would merely give evidence about the receipt of the letter and the deceased’s reaction to it. Miss Blackmore was, apparently, likely to be a very nervous witness, and perhaps his learned friend Mr Rumpole would agree to her evidence being read.

  Mr Rumpole did not agree. Mr Rumpole wanted Miss Sue Blackmore to be present in the flesh and he was ready to cross-examine her at length. And so we parted, expecting the trial of Hussein Khan for murder to start again at two o’clock.

  But Khan’s trial for murder didn’t start again at two o’clock or at any other time. I was toying with a plate of steak and kidney pie and a pint of Guinness in the pub opposite the Old Bailey when I saw the furtive figure of Sam Ballard oozing through the crowd. He came to me obviously heavy with news.

  ‘Rumpole! You don’t drink at lunchtime, do you?’

  ‘Yes. But not too much at lunchtime. Can I buy you a pint of stout?’

  ‘Certainly not, Rumpole. Mineral water, if you have to. And could we move to that little table in the corner? This is news for your ears alone.’

  After I had transported my lunch to a more secluded spot and supplied our Head of Chambers with mineral water, he brought me up to date on that lunch hour’s developments.

  ‘It’s Sue, the secretary, Rumpole. When we told her that she’d have to go into the witness box, she panicked and asked to see Superintendent Gregory. By this time, she was in tears and, he told me, almost incomprehensible. However, Gregory managed to calm her down and she said she knew you’d get it out of her in the witness box, so she might as well confess that she was the one who had made the telephone call.’

  ‘Which telephone call was that?’

  Soapy Sam was demonstrating his usual talent for making a simple statement of fact utterly confusing.

  ‘The telephone cal
l to your client. Telling him to go and meet the senior tutor.’

  ‘You mean…?’ The mists that had hung over the case of Khan the terrorist were beginning to clear. ‘She pretended to be…’

  ‘The senior tutor’s secretary. Yes. The idea was to get Khan into the building while Glossop…’

  ‘Murdered his wife?’ I spoke the words that Ballard seemed reluctant to use.

  ‘I think she’s prepared to give evidence against him,’ Soapy Sam said, looking thoughtfully towards future briefs. ‘Well, she’ll have to, unless she wants to go to prison as an accessory.’

  ‘Has handsome Ricky heard the news yet?’ I wondered.

  ‘Mr Glossop has been detained. He’s helping the police with their inquiries.’

  So many people I know, who help the police with their inquiries, are in dire need of help themselves. ‘So you’ll agree to a verdict of not guilty of murder?’ I asked Ballard, as though it was a request to pass the mustard.

  ‘Perhaps. Eventually. And you’ll agree to guilty of making death threats in a letter?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I admitted. ‘We’ll have to plead guilty to that.’

  But there was no hurry. I could finish my steak and kidney and order another Guinness in peace.

  ‘It started off,’ I was telling Hilda over a glass of Château Thames Embankment that evening, ‘as an act of terrorism, of mad, religious fanaticism, of what has become the new terror of our times. And it ends up as an old-fashioned murder by a man who wanted to dispose of his rich wife for her money and be free to marry a pretty young woman. It was a case, you might say, of Dr Crippen meeting Osama Bin Laden.’

  ‘It’s hard to say which is worse.’ She Who Must Be Obeyed was thoughtful.

  ‘Both of them,’ I told her. ‘Both of them are worse. But I suppose we understand Dr Crippen better. Only one thing we can be grateful for.’

  ‘What’s that, Rumpole?’

  ‘The terrorist got a fair trial. And the whole truth came out in the end. The day when a suspected terrorist doesn’t get a fair trial will be the day they’ve won the battle.’