The First Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  ‘Very well, Rumpole. I’m sorry I interrupted your rape.’ Erskine-Brown had the door open, he was about to slink away. ‘Say no more, old sweetheart. Not one word more. Oh, convey my condolences to the unfortunate Henry. The position of second clerk must be continually frustrating.’

  When I was alone I was well pleased. Albert and I had been together now for forty years and I was anxious not to cross my old Dutch. And the evidence little Myersy had uncovered put me in mind of Lewis Caroll.

  ‘Oh, hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms! Thou beamish boy…’ ‘Not yet father’, I said to myself. ‘But I will. Oh yes. I certainly will…’

  ‘Tomatoes doing well, Mr Myers, are they?’

  ‘I apply a great deal of artificial, you see, Mr Rumpole. And they’re just coming up to the fourth truss.’

  ‘Fourth truss, are they? Lively little blighters, then!’

  We were waiting outside Court. Mr and Mrs Aspen were sitting on a bench, he looking curiously relaxed, she glaring across at Miss Bridget Evans who was looking young and demure on a bench some distance away. Meanwhile I was going through the old legal gambit of chatting up the instructing soli- citor. I showed concern for his tomatoes, he asked after my son whom he remembered as a visitor to the Courts of Law.

  ‘Nick? Oh, he’s the brains of the family. Sociology. They’ve offered him a lectureship at Warwick University! And he’s engaged to be married. Met her in America and now he’s bring- ing the lady to live in England.’

  ‘I never had a family,’ Mr Myers told me, and added, ‘I do find having young kids about plays merry hell with your tomatoes.’

  At which point Mrs Anna Aspen drew me aside for a confer-ence. The first thing she said surprised me a little.

  ‘I just hope you’re not going to let me down.’

  ‘Let you down, Mrs Aspen? So far as I can see you’re in no danger of the Nick.’

  ‘I’m in danger of losing everything I ever worked for.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘No. You don’t understand, Mr Rumpole. It’s been hard work, but I made Ken fight. I made him go for the nomination. I made him fight for the Seat. When he got in he wanted… I don’t know, to relax on the back benches. He said he’d throw in ideas. But I told him to fight for the P.P.S.’s job and he’s got it!’ She looked across to where her husband was actually trying the ghost of a smile in Bridget’s direction. ‘He can’t see it’s either him or her now. Ken can’t see that! You’re right about him looking for compromises. Sometimes it makes me so angry!’

  ‘Angrier than the idea of your husband and Miss Bridget Evans. On the floor of the office?’

  ‘Oh that! Why should I worry about that?’

  Before I could answer her question, an usher came out to invite the Honourable Member to step into the dock, and we were away.

  When you go into Court in a rape case it’s like stepping into a refrigerator with the light off. All the men on the jury are thinking of their daughters, and all the women are sitting with their knees jammed together. I found a sympathetic-looking, moderately tarty, middle-aged lady juror, the sort that might have smiled at the Honourable Member and thought, ‘Why didn’t you ring me, dearie. I’d have saved you all this trouble.’ But her lips snapped shut during the opening by Mr Twentyman, Q.c. for the prosecution, and I despaired of her.

  Even the judge, old Sam Parkin, an amiable old darling, perfectly capable of giving a conditional discharge for manslaughter or putting an old lag on probation, even old Sam looked, when the case opened, as if he’d just heard the clerk say, ‘Put up Jack the Ripper.’ Now he seemed to be warming to Miss Bridget Evans who was telling her hair-raising story with effective modesty. As I tottered to my feet old Sam gave me an icy look. When you start to cross-examine in a rape case you open the flap of the tent, and you’re out in the blizzard.

  ‘Miss Bridget Evans. This… this incident involving Mr Aspen occurred at 11.30 on Wednesday night?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t watching the dock.’

  The door of the Court opened, to admit the Rumpole fan club, my son Nick and Erica his intended. She was wearing an ethnic skirt and gave me a warm smile, as though to encourage my efforts on behalf of the underprivileged and the oppressed.

  ‘After all the witnesses had conveniently departed. When there was no one there, to establish my client’s innocence. After it was all over, what did you do?’

  ‘I went home.’

  ‘A serious and terrible crime had been committed and you went home, tucked yourself up in bed and went to sleep! And you said not one word to the police about it until 6.30 the following day?’

  Albert, also of the fan club, was sitting in front of me next to Mr Myers. I heard his penetrating whisper, ‘He’s doing the old Alhambra cinema technique.’ It was nice to feel that dear old Albert was proud of me.

  ‘When you went to bed. Did you go alone?’

  ‘I don’t see what that’s got to do with it.’ Her answer had a hint of sharpness and, for the first time, there was a centimetre up in some of the juror’s eyebrows.

  ‘Did you go alone?’

  ‘I told you. I went to bed.’

  ‘Miss Evans. I shall ask my question again and I shall go on asking it all night if it’s necessary in the interests of my client. Did you go to bed alone?’

  ‘Do I have to answer that sort of question, my Lord?’

  ‘Yes you do. And my Lord will so direct.’ I got in before Sam could draw breath.

  ‘Perhaps if you answer Mr Rumpole’s questions shortly you will be out of the box quite quickly, and your painful experience will be over.’ Sam Parkin meant well, but I intended to keep her there a little while longer.

  ‘Yes. I went to bed alone.’

  ‘How long had that been going on?’

  ‘How long had what been going on, Mr Rumpole?’ Sam asked.

  ‘That the witness had taken to sleeping alone, my Lord. You were no longer friendly with Mr Etherington?’

  ‘Paul and I? We split about two years ago. If you’re interested in the truth.’ I began to hear what a barrister longs for when he’s cross-examining, the note of anger.

  ‘Yes, Miss Evans. I am interested in the truth, and I expect the ladies and gentlemen of the jury are also.’

  The tarty lady nodded perceptibly. She and I were beginning to reach an understanding.

  ‘Mr Rumpole. Is it going to help us to know about this young lady and Paul…’ Sam was doing his best.

  ‘Paul Etherington, my Lord. He was the Parliamentary agent.’

  ‘I’m anxious not to keep this witness longer than is necessary.’

  ‘I understand, my Lord. It must be most unpleasant.’ Almost as unpleasant, I thought, as five years in the nick, which was what the Honourable Member might expect if I didn’t demolish Miss Evans. ‘But I have my duty to do.’

  ‘And a couple of refreshers to earn,’ Mr Twentyman, Q.c, whispered, a thought bitchily, to his junior.

  ‘You had been living with Paul Etherington for two years before you parted?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you were eighteen when you started living together.’

  ‘Just… nearly eighteen.’

  ‘And before that?’

  ‘I was at school.’

  ‘You had lovers before Paul?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘One or two.’

  ‘Or three or four? How many? or didn’t they stay long enough to be counted?’

  My dear friend the lady juror gave a little disapproving sigh. I had misjudged her. The old darling was less a fille de joie than a member of the festival of light, but I saw Erica whisper to Nick, and he held her hand, shushing her.

  ‘Mr Rumpole!’ Sam had flushed beneath his wig. I took a swift move to lower his blood pressure.

  ‘I apologize my Lord. Pure, unnecessary comment. I withdraw it at once.’

  ‘Your Mr Rumpole is doing us proud,’ I heard Mr M
yers whisper to Albert who replied complacently, ‘His old hand has lost none of its cunning, Myersy.’

  After a dramatic pause, I played the ace. ‘How old were you when you had the abortion?’

  I looked round the Court and met Erica’s look; not exactly a gaze of enraptured congratulation.

  ‘I was nineteen… It was perfectly legal.’ Miss Evans was now on the defensive. ‘I got a certificate. From the psychiatrist.’

  ‘Saying you were unfit for childbirth?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘And the psychiatrist certified… you were emotionally unstable?’ It was a shot in the bloody dark, but I imagine that’s what trick cyclists always say, to prevent any unwanted increase in the population.

  ‘Something like that… yes.’ I gave Ken Aspen a cheering glance. He was busy writing a note, containing, I hoped, more ammunition for Rumpole in the firing line.

  ‘So the jury have to rely, in this case, on the evidence of a young woman who has been certified emotionally unstable.’

  The jury were looking delightfully doubtful as the usher brought me the note from the dock. No ammunition, not even any congratulation, but just one line scrawled, ‘Leave her alone now, please! K. A.’ I crumpled the note with visible irritation; in such a mood, no doubt, did Nelson put the glass to his blind eye when reading the signal to retreat.

  ‘Just three months ago, you were rushed into hospital. You’d taken a number of sleeping tablets. By accident?’ I continued to attack.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, it was… I told you. I’d just parted from Paul.’

  ‘Come now, Miss Evans. Just think. You’d parted from Paul over a year ago.’

  ‘I was… I was confused.’

  ‘Was it then you first met Mr Aspen?’

  ‘Just… Just about that time.’

  ‘And fell in love with him?’

  ‘No!’

  She was really angry now, but she managed to smile at the jury who didn’t smile back. If I could have dropped dead of a coronary at that moment, I thought, Miss Bridget Evans might be dancing for joy.

  ‘Became so obsessed with him that you were determined to pursue him at any cost to him, or to his family?’

  ‘Shall I tell you the truth? I didn’t even like him!’

  ‘And that night after you and Mr Aspen had made love…’

  ‘Love! Is that what you call it?’

  ‘He refused to leave his wife and children.’

  ‘We never discussed his wife and children!’

  ‘And it was in rage, because he wouldn’t leave his family, that you made up this charge to ruin him. You hate him so much.’

  ‘I don’t hate him.’

  ‘Oh. Can it be you are still in love with him?’

  ‘I never hated him, I tell you. I was indifferent to him.’

  It was the answer I wanted, and just the moment to hold up the poster of Ken’s face, scrawled on by Miss Evans in her fury.

  ‘So indifferent that you did that. To his face on the wall?’

  ‘Perhaps. After.’

  ‘Before! Because you had done that early in the evening, hadn’t you? In one of your crazy fits of rage and jealousy?’

  Now Bridget Evans was crying, her face in her hands, but whether in fury or grief, or simply to stop the questions, not I but the jury would have to judge.

  ‘Will that poster be Exhibit 24, Mr Rumpole?’ Sam spoke in his best matter-of-fact judge’s voice, and I gave him a bow of deep satisfaction and said, ‘If your Lordship pleases.’

  ‘Is that your work?’ I was entertaining Nick and Erica to an apres-Couit drink in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar. A group from Chambers, Guthrie Featherstone, Erskine-Brown, my friend George Frobisher and old Uncle Tom were at the bar. The Rumpole family occupied a table in that part of Pommeroy’s where ladies are allowed to assemble. I felt as if I’d spent a day digging the roads, in a muck sweat and exhausted after the cross-examination. I was, of course, moderately well pleased with the way it had gone and I had asked Joan the waitress to bring us a bottle of Pommeroy’s cooking champagne, and Erica’s special, a Coca-Cola. When it came I took a quick glassful and answered her question.

  ‘When it goes well. We made a bit of headway, this afternoon.’

  ‘You sure did.’

  ‘Erica was a bit upset,’ Nick looked from one to the other of us, embarrassed.

  ‘Is that the way you make your living?’ Erica repeated.

  ‘A humble living. With an occasional glass of cooking champagne, with paying briefs.’

  ‘Attacking women?’ I must confess I hadn’t thought of Bridget Evans as a woman, but as a witness. I tried to explain.

  ‘Not women in particular. I attack anyone, regardless of age or sex, who chooses to attack my client.’

  ‘God knows which is the criminal. Him or her.’

  ‘But, old darling. That’s what we’re rather trying to find out.’

  ‘What worries Ricky is,’ Nick was doing his best to explain, ‘the girl has to go through all that. I mean, it’s not only the rape.’

  ‘Not only the rape?’

  ‘Well, it’s like she’s getting punished, isn’t it?’

  ‘Aren’t you rather rushing things? I mean, who’s saying a rape took place?’

  ‘Well, isn’t she?’

  ‘Oh, I see. You think it’s enough if she says it? It’s a different sort of crime, is it? I mean, not like murder or shoplifting, or forging cheques. They still have to be proved in the old-fashioned way. But rape… Some dotty girl only has to say you did it and you trot off to chokey without asking embarrassing questions… Look, you don’t want to discuss a boring old case. What’ve you been doing Nick? Getting ready for Warwick?’

  But Erica wasn’t to be deterred.

  ‘Of course we should discuss the case.’ She’d have made an advocate, this Erica, she was dogged. ‘I mean, it’s the greatest act of aggression that any human being can inflict!’

  ‘Ricky! Dad’s just doing his job. I’m sorry we came.’ Nicky looked at his watch, no doubt hoping they had an appointment.

  ‘I’m glad! Oh sure I’m glad,’ Erica was smiling, quite mirthlessly. ‘He’s a field study in archaic attitudes!’

  ‘Look, old sweetheart. Is it archaic to believe in some sort of equality of the sexes?’

  She looked taken aback at that. ‘Equality! You’re into equality?’

  ‘For God’s sake, yes! Give you equal pay, certainly. Let you be all-in wrestlers and Lord Chancellor. By all means! I’ll even make the supreme sacrifice and give up giving my seat in the bus… But you’re asking for women witnesses to be more equal than any other witnesses!’

  ‘But in that sort of case,’ Erica wasn’t to be won over by any sort of irony, ‘a man forcing his masculinity…’

  ‘Or a woman getting her revenge?’ I suggested. ‘I mean, I don’t suppose I’ll ever have to actually choose between being raped and being put in the cooler for five years, banged up with a bar of soap and a chamber pot, but if I ever had…’

  ‘You’re being defensive again!’ Erica smiled at me, quite tolerantly.

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘The argument’s kind of painful so you make a little joke.’

  ‘Perhaps. But it’s not exactly a joke. I mean, have you considered the possibility of my client being innocent?’

  ‘Well, he’d better be. That’s all I can say. After what you did to that girl this afternoon, he’d better be!’

  Then Nick remembered they were due at the pictures and they left me, Erica with the warm feeling of having struck a blow for her sex, Nick perhaps a little torn between us, but holding Erica’s arm as he steered her out. I went over to the bar for a packet of small cigars and there were the learned friends poring over a pink slip of paper which Jack Pommeroy was showing them. As soon as I drew up beside the bar, Jack showed me the cheque; it was made out to me from a firm of solicitors called Sprout and Pennyweather and had my name
scrawled on the back. It was for the princely sum of nine pounds fifty, my remuneration for a conference. I looked at my purported signature and felt unaccountably depressed.

  ‘No need to tell us, Rumpole,’ said Guthrie Featherstone, Q.c, m.p. ‘It’s Albert’s signature.’

  ‘It’s peaceful down here. Extraordinarily peaceful.’

  The Honourable Member was eating spaghetti rings and drinking hot, sweet tea down in the cells; Sam Parkin had declined bail in the lunch hour. He seemed extraordinarily contented, a fact which worried me not a little.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s hardly a three rosettes in the Michelin, as far as the grub’s concerned,’ I apologized to Aspen.

  ‘It’s tasteless stodge. Like nursery tea. Sort of comforting.’

  ‘Really there are only two important things to remember. One. You saw the poster scribbled on as soon as you came into the room.’ I tried to wrench his attention back to the case. ‘And you believed she wanted it. That’s all! You just believed it.’

  ‘Did you have to ask her those questions?’ Aspen looked at me, more in sorrow than in anger.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Dragging out her life, for the vultures in the press box.’

  ‘I want you to win.’ This bizarre ambition of mine made the Honourable Member smile.

  ‘You sound like my wife. She wants me to win. Always. I’m so tired. It’s peaceful down here, isn’t it? Very peaceful.’

  ‘Look out, old darling. You’re not falling love with the Nick, are you?’ I had seen it before, that terrible look of resignation.

  ‘For years, oh, as long as I can remember, Anna’s worked so hard. On me winning.’ He seemed to be talking to himself; I felt strangely superfluous. ‘Sitting on platforms. Chatting up ministers. Keeping in with the press. Trying to convince the faithful that it all still meant something. My wife… Anna, you know. She wanted me in the cabinet. She’d like to have been - a minister’s wife.’

  ‘And what did you want?’ It was a long time before he answered me, and then he said, ‘I wanted it to stop!’

  Calling your own client is the worst part of a trial. You can’t attack him, or lead him, or do anything but stand with your palms sweating and hope to God the old nitwit tells the right story. Mrs Aspen was staring at her husband, as if to transfer to him a little of her indomitable will. He stood in the witness box, smiling gently, as though someone else was on trial and he was a not very interested spectator. I showed him the defaced poster and asked the five thousand dollar question, ‘Did you see that had been done when you went into the room?’