The First Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  Kathy, I feel I know her well enough to call her Kathy for the rest of this narrative, withdrew her hand. She was still smiling.

  ‘Well, you’ve met me, my dear!’ Sam rambled on undiscouraged. ‘One of the glamour boys. One of the Brylcreem brigade. One of the very, very few.’ He stood himself another Teachers. ‘And if I had a crate available, I’d bloody well smuggle you up in the sky for a couple of victory rolls. You see him… You see “Groundstaff Rumpole”? Well, we’d leave him far below us! Grounded!’

  ‘I don’t think we should do that,’ Kathy protested. The only time she stopped smiling was when Sam made a joke.

  ‘Why ever not?’ Sam frowned.

  ‘I think I’m going to need him.’ As she said this I felt ridjcu-lously honoured.

  ‘Rumpole? Why ever should you need Rumpole? What did you say your name was?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  Now my time had come. I had great pleasure in performing the introduction.

  ‘This is Miss Kathy Trelawny. Of “Nirvana”, 34 Balaclava Road.’ And I added, in a whisper to Sam, ‘the well-known unmade bed’.

  Sam looked like a man who has just lifted what he imagined was a glass of vintage champagne and discovered it contained nothing but Seven Up. He looked at Kathy with pronounced distaste and said, ‘No bloody wonder you don’t drink.’

  ‘It’s just something I don’t like doing.’ She smiled back at him.

  ‘Naturally. Naturally you won’t have a pink gin like a normal girl. Excuse me.’ He moved away from us, shouting, ‘Drink up please. Haven’t any of you lot got homes?’

  The piano stopped, people started to drift out into the night.

  ‘Was that meant to be a joke… All that “pilot officer” business?’ Kathy asked me.

  ‘No joke at all. Sam was a great man on bombers. He could find any target you’d care to mention, in the pitch dark, on three fingers of whisky… He was good, Sam. Extremely good.’

  ‘You mean good at killing people?’ When she put it like that, I supposed that was what I did mean. Kathy turned to look at Bobby, who was sitting on the piano stool, lighting a cigarette. She asked me and I told her that was Sam’s wife and I used to think she was gorgeous.

  ‘Gorgeous for the war time, anyway. Things were a bit utility then.’

  ‘And now?’

  I looked at her. ‘Children seem to grow up more beautiful. It must be the orange juice.’

  ‘Or the peace?’

  Sam gave us a crescendo version of ‘Time Please’ and I walked my client to the bus shelter. It was a still, rather warm September night. The sea murmured perpetually, and the moonlight lit up the headland and whitened the strip of beach. There were only very few words for it, and I recited them to Kathy as we moved away from the cars starting up round the Crooked Billet.

  ‘It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a Nun Breathless with adoration…’

  ‘We read poetry. At the house,’ Kathy told me. ‘It’s a good way to end the day. Someone reads a poem. Anything.’ And then she shivered on that warm night, and said, ‘They won’t lock me up will they?’

  ‘I told you. We’ll knock out the evidence! Put your trust in Rumpole!’ I tried to sound as cheerful as possible, but she stood still, trembling slightly, her hand on my arm.

  ‘My brother Pete’s locked up in Turkey… twelve years. He was always such a scared kid. He couldn’t sleep with the door shut. Neither of us could.’

  ‘What on earth did your brother do in Turkey?’

  ‘Drugs,’ she said, and I wondered what sort of an idiot her brother must be. Then she asked me, ‘Will it be over soon?’

  ‘It’ll be over.’

  There were lights coming up the hill, to take her away from me.

  ‘That’s my bus… why don’t you come and see me in “Nirvana”?’

  Then the most strange thing happened, she leant forward and kissed me, quite carefully on the cheek. Then she was gone, and I was saying to myself, ‘ “Nirvana”? Why ever not?’ I walked back to the Crooked Billet in a state of ridiculous happiness. Flower power that year was exceedingly potent.

  I was up early the next morning, sinking a boiled egg in the residents’ lounge as the sun sparkled on the sea and Bobby fussed around me, pouring tea. Sam was still asleep, God was in his heaven and with old Rice Crispies on the bench I could find nothing particularly wrong with the world. After breakfast I put a drop of eau-de-cologne on the handkerchief, ran a comb through the remaining hair and set off for the Coldsands seat of justice.

  When I got down to the Shire Hall, and into the wig and gown, I had my first view of the inhabitants of ‘Nirvana’, the lotus eaters of 34 Balaclava Road. They were out in force, clean jeans, Mexican-looking shawls, the statutory baby. One tall coloured boy whom I later discovered to be called ‘Oswald’ was carrying a small flute. I just hoped they weren’t going to mistake the whole business for a bit of harmless fun round the South African Embassy.

  ‘Morning. You must be Rumpole. Welcome to the Western Circuit.’ I was being addressed by a tall fellow with a rustic tan beneath his wig, a gentleman farmer and gentleman barrister. I looked down to discover if he had jodhpur boots on under the pinstripes.

  ‘Tooke. Vernon Tooke’s my name. I’m prosecuting you.’

  ‘Awfully decent of you.’ I smiled at him.

  Tooke glanced disapprovingly at my supporters club.

  ‘I say, Rumpole. Where did you get that shower from? Rent-a-hippie. What a life, eh… Gang-bangs on the National Assistance?’

  Did I detect in Farmer Tooke’s voice - a note of envy?

  ‘Used to be a decent area,’ he continued, ‘Balaclava Road. Until that lot got their foot in the door. Squatters, are they?’

  ‘They’ve got a nine-year lease. And they’ve all got jobs. The only fellows scrounging off the State, Tooke, are you and I!’

  ‘Really Rumpole?’ Tooke looked pained.

  ‘Well, they’re paying you on the rates, aren’t they?’

  ‘Most amusing!’ He looked as if I’d pointed out a bad case of foot and mouth in the herd, but he offered me a cigarette from a gold case. I refused and produced theremainsofa small cigar from the waistcoat pocket. Tooke ignited it with a gold lighter.

  ‘Is this going to take long?’ he asked anxiously. ‘Coldsands gymkhana tomorrow. We tend to make it rather a day out.’

  ‘Take long? I don’t suppose so. It’s quite a simple point of law.’

  ‘Law, Rumpole… Did you say law?’ The casually dropped word seemed to fill Tooke with a certain amount of dread.

  ‘That’s right. You do have law, I suppose, down on the Western Circuit?’

  I left Tooke and moved towards the commune. A young man with dark hair and a permanent frown who seemed to be their leader greeted me, as I thought, in an unfriendly fashion.

  ‘You her lawyer?’

  I admitted it. Kathy, smiling as ever, introduced him to me as a friend of hers, named Dave Hawkins. I speculated, with a ridiculous stab of regret, that the friendship was a close one.

  ‘This is Dave.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘Will she be going in today?’ Dave wanted to be put in the picture.

  ‘In?’

  ‘Into the witness box. I mean, there’s something I want her to say. It’s pretty important.’

  I was accustomed to being the sole person in charge of my cases. I put Dave right patiently. ‘Dave. May I call you Mr Hawkins? If I were a doctor taking out your appendix, old darling, you wouldn’t want Kathy, would you, telling me where to put the knife?’ At this point the usher came out of court and called,

  ‘Katherine Trelawny.’

  ‘You’d better answer your bail.’ As I said this Kathy gave a little shiver and asked me. ‘Will they lock me up now?’

  ‘Of course not. Trust me.’

  The usher called her again. I dropped the remnants of the small cigar on the marble floor of the Shire Hall and ground i
t underfoot. The lance was in the rest, Sir Galahad Rumpole was about to do battle for the damsel in distress, or words to that effect.

  Half-way through the afternoon things were going pretty well. Rice Crispies, doing his job in a very decent fashion, was decidedly interested in the point of agent provocateur. Kathy was smiling in the dock, the commune were gripped by the spectacle, and outside the Court room the baby, unaware of the solemnity of the occasion, was yelling lustily. In the witness box, Detective Sergeant Jack Smedley was looking extremely square, clean shaven and in his natty Old Bill uniform.

  ‘I see Detective Sergeant,’ I had the pleasure to put to him, ‘you are no longer wearing your beads.’

  ‘Beads? What beads are those?’ The judge was puzzled.

  ‘I was wearing beads, your Honour - on the occasion of my visits to 34 Balaclava Road.’

  ‘Beads! With the uniform?’ His Honour couldn’t believe his ears. No one had sported beads in the Navy.

  ‘Not with the uniform! With the embroidered jeans, and the waistcoat of Afghan goat, and the purple silk drapery knotted round your neck.’ I pursued my advantage.

  ‘I was in plain clothes, your Honour.’

  ‘Plain clothes, Sergeant? You were in fancy dress!’ I rode over a titter from the commune. ‘Now perhaps you’ll tell the Court. What’s happened to your gaucho moustache?’

  ‘I… I shaved it off.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘In view of certain comments, your Honour, passed in the Station. It wasn’t a gaucho. More a Viva Zapata, actually.’

  ‘A Viva, what was that, Mr Rumpole?’ The judge seemed to feel the world slipping away from him.

  ‘The officer was affecting the moustache, your Honour, of a well-known South American revolutionary.’ This news worried the old darling on the bench deeply.

  ‘A South American! Can you tell me, officer, what was the purpose of this elaborate disguise?’ The witness paused. I filled the gap with my humble submission.

  ‘May I suggest an answer, Sergeant? You took it into your head to pose as a drug dealer in order to trap this quite innocent young woman…’ I had the pleasure of pointing out Kathy in the dock… ‘into taking part in a filthy trade she wouldn’t otherwise have dreamed of.’

  ‘Well yes, but…’

  ‘What did he say?’ Rice Crispies pounced on the grudging admission.

  ‘Your Honour.’ The witness tried to start again.

  ‘Shorthand writer, just read me that answer.’

  There was a long pause while the elderly lady shuffled through her notes, but at last the passage was reproduced.

  ‘… in order to trap this quite innocent young woman into taking part in a filthy trade.’ ‘Well yes, but…’

  The judge made a note of that. I could have kissed the old darling. However, I pressed on.

  ‘But what, Sergeant?’

  ‘She wasn’t so innocent.’

  ‘What reason had you to suppose that?’

  ‘Her way of life, your Honour.’

  ‘What I want you to tell me, officer, is this.’ The judge weighed in in support of Rumpole. ‘Did you have any reason to believe that this young woman was dealing in drugs before you went there in your Viva… What?’

  ‘Zapata, your Honour,’ I helped him along.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Rumpole. I’m much obliged.’

  ‘We had received certain information.’ The sergeant did his best to make it sound sinister.

  ‘And will you let us into the secret, officer. What was this information?’

  ‘That Miss Trelawny was the type to get involved.’

  ‘Involved by you?’

  ‘Involved already.’

  Tooke, who seemed to feel the case was eluding his grasp, rose to his feet. ‘I shall be calling the evidence, your Honour, of the neighbour, Miss Tigwell.’

  ‘Very well, Mr Tooke.’

  ‘But if the evidence shows no previous attempt to deal in drugs, then you would agree the whole of this crime was a result of your fertile imagination.’ I fired a final salvo at the witness but the judge interrupted me, perfectly fairly.

  ‘Doesn’t that rather depend, Mr Rumpole, on the effect of Miss Tigwell’s evidence? When we hear it?’

  ‘If your Honour pleases. Of course, as always, your Honour is perfectly right!’ I rewarded that upright fellow Rice Crispies with a low bow and sat down in a mood of quiet self-congratulation. I hadn’t been sitting long before the man, Dave, was at my side whispering furiously, ‘Is that all you’re going to ask?’

  ‘You want to have a go?’ I whispered back. ‘Do borrow the wig, old darling.’

  The evidence of Kathy’s previous malpractices was offered to us in the person of Miss Tigwell who lived opposite at No. 33 Balaclava Road, and whose idea of entertainment appeared to be gazing into the windows of ‘Nirvana’ in the daily hope of moral indignation.

  ‘I could tell exactly what they were.’

  ‘What were they, Miss Tigwell?’

  ‘Perverted. All living higgledy-piggledy. Men and women, black and white.’

  ‘Did your supervision include the bedrooms?’

  ‘Well… No. But they all sat together in the front room.’

  ‘Sat together? What did they talk about?’

  ‘I couldn’t hear that.’

  ‘They were a community, that’s what it comes to. They might well have been Trappist monks for all you knew.’

  ‘I don’t know if Mr Rumpole is suggesting his client is a Trappist monk.’ Tooke made a mistake, he should have left the jokes to me. Rice Crispies didn’t smile.

  ‘Now, Miss Tigwell, apart from the fact that persons of different sex, sat together… Did you ever observe anything suspicious from your post in the crow’s nest?’

  ‘I saw a man giving her money.’ Miss Tigwell was playing her King. ‘Quite a lot of money. It was in ten pound notes.’

  ‘Was this the first time you had ever seen money passing or any sort of dealing going on in “Nirvana”?’

  ‘The first time, yes.’

  The judge was making a note. I decided to play my Ace and prayed that I wouldn’t be trumped by the prosecution.

  ‘Can you describe to his Honour the man you saw passing the money?’

  ‘Dreadful-looking person. A clear criminal type. Looked as if he’d been dragged through a hedge backwards.’

  ‘Long hair?’

  ‘And the horrible sort of moustache.’

  ‘Beads? Embroidered jeans? Afghan goat’s hair and purple silk fancy for the neck?’ I saw Detective Sergeant ex-hippie Smedley bow his head in shame, and I knew I was home and dry.

  ‘Disgusting! I saw it all quite distinctly!’ Miss Tigwell ended in triumph.

  ‘Congratulations, madam. You have now given us a perfectly accurate description of Detective Smedley of the local force.’

  As I took off the wig in the robing room, Farmer Tooke was looking distinctly worried. I did my best to cheer him up. ‘Ah, Tooke… I have good news for you. Hope to get you all off in time for the gymkhana tomorrow. Got a daughter, have you, in the potato race?’

  ‘Do you think the judge is agin me?’ Tooke felt all was not well with the prosecution.

  ‘Not you, personally. But I know what he’s thinking.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Encourage that sort of police officer and he’ll be out in a frock on the Prom tomorrow - soliciting the chairman of the bench.’

  Tooke saw the point. ‘I say. I suppose that sort of thing is worrying.’

  ‘Not English, if you want my opinion.’

  At which Tooke, climbing into his Burberry, put the law behind him and extended an invitation.

  ‘What are you doing tonight, Rumpole? I mean, there’ll be a few of us dining at the Bar hotel… With the leader of the Circuit.’

  ‘Roast lamb, sea shanties and old jokes from Quarter Sessions? No. Not tonight, Tooke.’

  ‘Oh well. I’m sorry. We like to give our visitors a little hos
pitality.’

  ‘Tonight, I am dropping out.’

  Dinner at ‘Nirvana’ was a distinct surprise. I’d expected nut cutlets and carrot juice. I got an excellent steak and kidney pud and a very drinkable claret. Oswald had told me he was something of a ‘wine freak’. The house was clean and the big cushions and old sofas remarkably comfortable. The babies were good enough to withdraw from the company, the record-player gave us unobtrusive flute music from the Andes and Kathy tended to all my needs, filling my glass and lighting my cigar, and remained a perpetual pleasure to the eye. I began to think that I’d rather live at 34 Balaclava Road than at the Gloucester Road mansion flat with She Who Must Be Obeyed; I’d rather sit back on the scatter cushions at ‘Nirvana’ and let my mind go a complete blank than drag myself down to the Bailey on a wet Monday morning to defend some over-excited Pakistani accused of raping his social worker. In fact I thought that for tuppence, for a packet of small cigars, I’d give up the law and spend the rest of my life in a pair of old plimsolls and grey flannel bags, shrimping on the beach at Coldsands.

  The only fly in this soothing ointment was the fellow Dave. When I told Kathy she wouldn’t even have to go into the witness box if we won our agent provocateur argument, Dave said, ‘I’m not sure I agree with that.’ I told him firmly that I wasn’t sure he had to.

  ‘When we brought you here I thought you’d understand… It’s not just another case,’ Dave protested. Protesting seemed to be his main occupation.

  ‘Every case is just another case,’ I told him.

  ‘To you, all right! To us it’s a chance to say what we have to. Can’t we put the law straight - on the drug scene?’

  ‘I mean, this isn’t a den of thieves, is it? You’ve seen “Nirvana”!’ Oswald put the point more gently. He was right, of course, I had seen ‘Nirvana’.

  ‘Now’s our only chance to get through to the law,’ Dave told me. I decided to instruct him on the facts of life.

  ‘The law? You know where the law is now? Down in the George Hotel drinking the Circuit port and singing “What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor”. The law is talking about the comical way the old Lord Chief passed a death sentence. The law is in another world; but it thinks it’s the whole world. Just as you lot think the world’s nothing but poetry, and perhaps the occasional puff of a dangerous cigarette.’