The First Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  I have very little patience with Erskine-Brown.

  ‘A person who is tired of crime,’ I told him quite candidly, ‘is tired of life.’

  ‘Your Dangerous and Careless at Clerkenwell is on the mantelpiece, Mr Hoskins,’ Albert said.

  Hoskins is a gloomy fellow with four daughters; he’s always lurking about our clerk’s room looking for cheques. As I’ve told him often enough crime doesn’t pay, or at any rate not for a very long time.

  When a young man called MacLay had asked in vain for a brief I invited him to take a note for me down at the Old Bailey. At least he’d get a wig on and not spend a miserable day unemployed in Chambers. Our oldest member, Uncle Tom (very few of us remember that his name is T. C. Rowley) also asked Albert if there were any briefs for him, not in the least expecting to find one. To my certain knowledge, Uncle Tom hasn’t appeared in Court for fifteen years, when he managed to lose an undefended divorce case, but, as he lives with a widowed sister, a lady of such reputed ferocity that she makes She Who Must Be Obeyed sound like Mrs Tiggywinkle, he spends most of his time in Chambers. He looked remarkably well for 78.

  ‘You aren’t actually expecting a brief, Uncle Tom, are you?’ Erskine-Brown asked. I can’t like Erskine-Brown.

  ‘Time was,’ Uncle Tom started one of his reminiscences of life in our Chambers. ‘Time was when I had more briefs in my corner of the mantelpiece, Erskine-Brown, than you’ve seen in the whole of your short career at the Bar. Now,’ he was opening a brown envelope, ‘I only get invitations to insure my life. It’s a little late for that.’

  Albert told me that the robbery was not before 11.30 before Mr Justice Everglade in Number 1 Court. He also told me who was prosecuting, none other than the tall, elegant figure with the silk handkerchief and gold wristwatch, leaning against the mantelpiece and negligently reading a large cheque from the Director of Public Prosecutions, Guthrie Featherstone, m.p. He removed the silk handkerchief, dabbed the end of his nose and his small moustache and asked in that voice which comes over so charmingly, saying nothing much about any important topic of the day in ‘World at One’,

  ‘Agin me Rumpole? Are you agin me?’ He covered a slight yawn with the handkerchief before returning it to his breastpocket. ‘Just come from an all-night sitting down at the House. I don’t suppose your robbery’ll be much of a worry.’

  ‘Only, possibly, to young Jim Timson,’ I told him, and then gave Albert his orders for the day. ‘Mrs Rumpole’s gone down to see her father in Horsham.’

  ‘How is Wystan? No better, is he?’ Uncle Tom sounded as gently pleased as all old men do when they hear news of illness in others.

  ‘Much the same, Uncle Tom, thank you. And Young Nick. My son…’

  ‘Master Nick?’ Albert had always been fond of Nick, and looked forward to putting him through his paces when the time came for him to join our stable in Chambers.

  ‘He’s breaking up today. So he’ll need meeting at Liverpool Street. Then he can watch a bit of the robbery.’

  ‘We’re going to have your son in the audience? I’d better be brilliant.’ Guthrie Featherstone now moved from the fireplace.

  ‘You needn’t bother, old darling. It’s his Dad he comes to see.’

  ‘Oh, touché, Rumpole! Distinctement touché!’

  Featherstone talks like that. Then he invited me to walk down to the Bailey with him. Apparently he was still capable of movement and didn’t need a stretcher, even after a sleepless night with the Gas Mains Enabling Bill, or whatever it was.

  We walked together down Fleet Street and into Ludgate Circus, Featherstone wearing his overcoat with the velvet collar and little round bowler hat, I puffing a small cigar and with my old mac flapping in the wind; I discovered that the gentleman beside me was quietly quizzing me about my career at the Bar.

  ‘You’ve been at this game a long while, Rumpole,’ Featherstone announced. I didn’t disagree with him, and then he went on.

  ‘You never thought of taking silk?’

  ‘Rumpole, Q.c.?’ I almost burst out laughing. ‘Not on your Nelly. Rumpole “Queer Customer”. That’s what they’d be bound to call me.’

  ‘I’m sure you could, with your seniority.’ I had no idea then, of exactly what this Featherstone was after. I gave him my view of Q.C.s in general.

  ‘Perhaps, if I played golf with the right judges, or put up for Parliament, they might make me an artificial silk, or, at any rate, a nylon.’ It was at that point I realized I had put up a bit of a black. ‘Sorry. I forgot. You did put up for Parliament.’

  ‘Yes. You never thought of Rumpole, Q.c.?’ Featherstone had apparently taken no offence.

  ‘Never,’ I told him. ‘I have the honour to be an Old Bailey Hack! That’s quite enough for me.’

  At which point we turned up into Newgate Street and there it was in all its glory, touched by a hint of early spring sunshine, the Old Bailey, a stately Law Court, decreed by the City Fathers, an Edwardian palace, with an extensive modern extension to deal with the increase in human fallibility. There was the Dome and the Blindfold Lady. Well, it’s much better she doesn’t see all that’s going on. That, in fact, was our English version of the Palais de Justice, complete with murals, marble statues and underground accommodation for some of the choicest villains in London.

  Terrible things go on down the Bailey - horrifying things. Why is it I never go in the revolving door without a thrill of pleasure, a slight tremble of excitement? Why does it seem a much jollier place than my flat in Gloucester Road under the strict rule of She Who Must Be Obeyed? These are questions which may only be partly answered in the course of these memoirs.

  At the time when I was waving a cheerful umbrella at Harry, the policeman in the revolving door of the Old Bailey extension, my wife Hilda was at her Daddy’s bedside at the Horsham General arranging her dozen early daffs and gently probing, so she told me that evening, on the subject of his future, and mine.

  ‘I’ll have to give up, you know. I can’t go on forever. Crocked up, I’m afraid,’ said Wystan. ‘Nonsense, Daddy. You’ll go on for years.’

  I imagine Hilda did her best to sound bracing, whilst putting the daffs firmly in their place.

  ‘No, Hilda. No. They’ll have to start looking for another Head of Chambers.’

  This gave Hilda her opportunity. ‘Rumpole’s the senior man. Apart from Uncle Tom and he doesn’t really practise nowadays.’

  ‘Your husband the senior man.’ Wystan looked back on a singularly uneventful life. ‘How time flies! I recall when he was the junior man. My pupil.’

  ‘You said he was the best youngster on bloodstains you’d ever known.’ Hilda was doing her best for me.

  ‘Rumpole! Yes, your husband was pretty good on bloodstains. Shaky, though, on the law of landlord and tenant. What sort of practice has Rumpole now?’

  ‘I believe… Today it’s the Old Bailey.’ Hilda was plumping pillows, doing her best to sound casual. And her father showed no particular enthusiasm for my place of work.

  ‘It’s always the Old Bailey, isn’t it?’

  ‘Most of the time. Yes. I suppose so.’

  ‘Not a frightfully good address, the Old Bailey. Not exactly the S.W.i of the legal profession.’

  Sensing that Daddy would have thought better of me if I’d been in the Court of Appeal or the Chancery Division, Hilda told me she thought of a master stroke.

  ‘Oh, Rumpole only went down to the Bailey because it’s a family he knows. It seems they’ve got a young boy in trouble.’

  This appealed to Daddy, he gave one of his bleak smiles which amount to no more than a brief withdrawal of lips from the dentures.

  ‘Son gone wrong?’ he said. ‘Very sad that. Especially if he comes of a really good family.’

  That really good family, the Timsons, was out in force and waiting outside Number i Court by the time I had got on the fancy dress, yellowing horse-hair wig, gown become more than a trifle tattered over the years, and bands round the neck that Al
bert ought to have sent to the laundry after last week’s death by dangerous driving. As I looked at the Timson clan assembled, I thought the best thing about them was the amount of work of a criminal nature they had brought into Chambers. They were all dressed for the occasion, the men in dark blazers, suede shoes and grey flannels; the ladies in tight-fitting suits, high heels and elaborately piled hairdos. I had never seen so many ex-clients together at one time.

  ‘Mr Rumpole.’

  ‘Ah, Bernard! You’re instructing me.’

  Mr Bernard, the solicitor, was a thirtyish, perpetually smiling man in a pinstriped suit. He regarded criminals with something of the naive fervour with which young girls think of popular entertainers. Had I known the expression at the time, I would have called him a grafters’ ‘groupie’.

  ‘I’m always your instructing solicitor in a Timson case, Mr Rumpole.’ Mr Bernard beamed and Fred Timson, a kindly man and most innocent robber, stepped out of the ranks to do the honours.

  ‘Nothing but the best for the Timsons, best solicitor and best barrister going. You know my wife Vi?’

  Young Jim’s mother seemed full of confidence. As I took her hand, I remembered I had got Vi off on a handling charge after the Croydon bank raid. Well, there was really no evidence.

  ‘Uncle Cyril.’ Fred introduced the plumpish uncle with the small moustache whom I was sure I remembered. What was his last outing exactly? Carrying house-breaking instruments by night?

  ‘Uncle Dennis. You remember Den, surely, Mr Rumpole?’

  I did. Den’s last little matter was an alleged conspiracy to forge log books.

  ‘And Den’s Doris.’

  Aunty Doris came at me in a blur of henna-ed hair and darkish perfume. What was Doris’s last indiscretion? Could it have been receiving a vast quantity of stolen scampi? Acquitted by a majority, at least I was sure of that.

  ‘And yours truly. Frederick Timson. The boy’s father.’

  Regrettable, but we had a slip-up with Fred’s last spot of bother. I was away with flu, George Frobisher took it over and he got three years. He must’ve only just got out.

  ‘So, Mr Rumpole. You know the whole family.’

  A family to breed from, the Timsons. Must almost keep the Old Bailey going single-handed.

  ‘You’re going to do your best for our young Jim, I’m sure, Mr Rumpole.’

  I didn’t find the simple faith of the Timsons that I could secure acquittals in the most unlikely circumstances especially encouraging. But then Jim’s mother said something which I was to long remember.

  ‘He’s a good boy. He was ever so good to me while Dad was away.’

  So that was Jimbo’s life. Head of the family at fourteen, when Dad was off on one of his regular visits to Her Majesty.

  ‘It’s young Jim’s first appearance, like. At the Old Bailey.’ Fred couldn’t conceal a note of pride. It was Jim boy’s Bar Mitzvah, his first Communion.

  So we chatted a little about how all the other boys got clean away, which I told them was a bit of luck as none of them would go into the witness box and implicate Jim, and Bernard pointed out that the identification by the butchers was pretty hopeless. Well, what did he expect? Would you have a photographic impression of the young hopeful who struck you a smart blow on the back of the head with a cricket stump? We talked with that curious suppressed excitement there always is before a trial, however disastrous the outcome may be, and I told them the only thing we had to worry about, as if that were not enough, was Jim’s confession to the boy in the Remand Centre, a youth who rejoiced in the name of Peanuts Molloy.

  ‘Peanuts Molloy! Little grass.’ Fred Timson spoke with a deep contempt.

  ‘Old “Persil” White fitted him up with that one, didn’t he?’ Uncle Cyril said it as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and only to be expected.

  ‘Chief Detective Inspector White,’ Bernard explained.

  ‘Why should the Chief Inspector want to fit up your Jimbo?’ It was a question to which I should have known what their answer would be.

  ‘Because he’s a Timson, that’s why!’ said Fred.

  ‘Because he’s the apple of our eye, like,’ Uncle Den told me, and the boy’s mother added:

  ‘Being as he’s the baby of the family.’

  ‘Old Persil’d fit up his mother if it’d get him a smile from his Super.’ As Fred said this the Chief Inspector himself, grey-haired and avuncular, walked by in plain clothes, with a plain-clothes sergeant.

  ‘Morning, Chief Inspector,’ Fred carried on without drawing breath.

  ‘Morning, Fred. Morning, Mrs Timson.’ The Chief Inspector greeted the family with casual politeness, after all they were part of his daily work, and Vi sniffed back a ‘Good morning, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘Mr Timson. We’ll shift our ground. Remove good friends.’

  Like Hamlet, after seeing the ghost, I thought it was better to continue our conference in private. So we went and sat round a table in the canteen, and, when we had sorted out who took how many lumps, and which of them could do with a choc roll or a cheese sandwich, the family gave me the lowdown on the chief prosecution witness.

  ‘The Chief Inspector put that little grass Peanuts Molloy into Jim’s painting class at the Remand Centre.’ Fred had no doubt about it.

  ‘Jim apparently poured out his soul to Peanuts.’ The evidence sounded, to my old ears, completely convincing, and Bernard read us a snatch from his file.

  ‘We planned to do the old blokes from the butcher’s and grab the wages…’

  ‘That,’ I reminded the assembled company, ‘is what Peanuts will say Jim told him.’

  ‘You think I’d bring Jim up to talk in the Nick like that? The Timsons ain’t stupid!’ Fred was outraged, and Vi, pursing her lips in a sour gesture of wounded respectability added, ‘His Dad always told him. Never say a word to anyone you’re banged up with — bound to be a grass.’

  One by one, Aunty Doris, Uncle Den and Uncle Cyril added their support.

  ‘That’s right. Fred’s always brought the boy up proper. Like the way he should be. He’d never speak about the crime, not to anyone he was banged up with.’

  ‘Specially not to one of the Molloys!’

  ‘The Molloys!’ Vi spoke for the Timsons, and with deep hatred. ‘Noted grasses. That family always has been.’

  ‘The Molloys is beyond the pale. Well known for it.’ Aunty Doris nodded her henna-ed topknot wisely.

  ‘Peanuts’s Grandad shopped my old father in the “Streatham Co-op Robbery”. Pre-war, that was.’

  I had a vague memory then of what Fred Timson was talking about. The Streatham Co-op case, one of my better briefs - a long case with not much honour shown among thieves, as far as I could remember.

  ‘Then you can understand, Mr Rumpole. No Timson would ever speak to a Molloy.’

  ‘So you’re sure Jimbo never said anything to Peanuts?’ I was wondering exactly how I could explain the deep, but not particularly creditable, origins of this family hostility to the jury.

  ‘I give you my word, Mr Rumpole. Ain’t that enough for you? No Timson would ever speak to a Molloy. Not under any circumstances.’

  There were not many matters on which I would take Fred Timson’s word, but the history of the Streatham Co-op case came back to me, and this was one of them.

  It’s part of the life of an Old Bailey Hack to spend a good deal of his time down in the cells, in the basement area, where they keep the old door of Newgate, kicked and scarred, through which generations of villains were sent to the treadmill, the gallows or the whip. You pass this venerable door and ring a bell, you’re let in and your name’s taken by one of the warders who bring the prisoners from Brixton. There’s a perpetual smell of cooking and the warders are snatching odd snacks of six inches of cheese butties and a gallon of tea. Lunch is being got ready, and the cells under the Bailey have a high reputation as one of the best caffs in London. By the door the screws have their pinups and comic cartoons of judges
. You are taken to a waiting-room, three steel chairs and a table, and you meet the client. Perhaps he is a novice, making his first appearance, like Jim Timson. Perhaps he’s an old hand asking anxiously which judge he’s got, knowing their form as accurately as a betting-shop proprietor. Whoever he is, the client will be nervously excited, keyed up for his great day, full of absurd hope.

  The worst part of a barrister’s life at the Old Bailey is going back to the cells after a guilty verdict to say ‘good-bye’. There’s no purpose in it, but, as a point of honour, it has to be done. Even then the barrister probably gets the best reaction, and almost never any blame. The client is stunned, knocked out by his sentence. Only in a couple of weeks’ time, when the reality of being banged up with the sour smell of stone walls and his own chamber pot for company becomes apparent, does the convict start to weep. He is then drugged with sedatives, and Agatha Christies from the prison library.

  When I saw the youngest Timson before his trial that morning, I couldn’t help noticing how much smaller, and how much more experienced, he looked than my Nick. In his clean sports jacket and carefully knotted tie he was well dressed for the dock, and he showed all the carefully suppressed excitement of a young lad about to step into the limelight of Number i with an old judge, twelve jurors and a mixed bag of lawyers waiting to give him their undivided attention.

  ‘Me speak to Peanuts? No Timson don’t ever speak to a Molloy. It’s a point of honour, like,’ Jim added his voice to the family chorus.

  ‘Since the raid on the Streatham Co-op. Your grandfather?’

  ‘Dad told you about that, did he?’

  ‘Yes. Dad told me.’