The First Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  ‘It’s a disorderly house. I mean it’s an open and shut case. I can’t think why Mrs Wainscott’s defending.’

  ‘The old trout’s probably got a weird taste for keeping out of Holloway.’ I blew out smoke, savouring a bit of fun in the offing. Fate had decreed that I should be prosecuted by Miss Phyllida Trant. I kept cunningly quiet about my interest in the case of the Police v. Wainscott and Erskine-Brown’s former pupil proceeded to deliver herself into my hands.

  ‘What I wanted to ask you was how much law should I…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Take? I mean, how many books will this magistrate want, on the prosecution case?’

  Miss Trant had asked for it. I stood and gave her my learned opinion.

  ‘My dear Miss Trant. Old Archie McFee is a legal beaver. Double First in Jurisprudence. Reads Russel on Crime in bed and the Appeal Cases on holiday. You want to pot the old bawdy-house keeper? Quote every case you can think of. Archie’ll love you for it. How many books do you need? My advice to you is, fill the taxi!’

  So we all gathered at Dock Street Magistrates Court. There was old Mother Wainscott, sitting beneath a pile of henna-ed hair in the dock, and there was old Archie McFee, looking desperately bored and gazing yearningly at the clock as Miss Trant with a huge pile of dusty law books in front of her and her glasses on the end of her nose, lectured him endlessly on the law relating to disorderly houses.

  ‘Section 8 of the 1751 Statute, sir. “Any person who acts or behaves him- or herself as Master or Mistress or as the person having the care, government, or managements of any bawdy house or other disorderly house shall be deemed to be the keeper thereof.” Now, if I might refer you to Singleton and Ellison, 1895, 1, Q.B. page 607…’

  ‘Do you have to refer me to it, Miss Trant?’ the learned magistrate sighed heavily.

  ‘Oh yes, sir. I’m sure you’ll find it most helpful.’

  I sat smiling quietly, like a happy spider as Miss Trant walked into the web. She had looked shocked when she discovered that I was defending. Now she would discover that I had deceived her. Archie McFee couldn’t stand law: his sole interests were rose growing, amateur dramatics and catching the 3.45 back to Esher. I was amazed she couldn’t see the fury rising to the level of his stiff collar as he watched the clock and longed for Victoria.

  ‘It is interesting to observe that in R. v. Jones it was held that all women under 21 years of age are “girls” although females may be “women” at the age of eighteen.’ Miss Trant was unstoppable.

  ‘I suppose it interests you, Miss Trant.’

  ‘Oh yes, indeed, sir. Turning now, if you please, sir, to the Sexual Offences Act, 1896…’

  A very long time later, when it came to my turn, and the prosecution had sunk under the dead weight of the law, I made a speech guaranteed to get old Archie off to the station in three minutes flat.

  ‘Sir. My learned friend has referred you to many books. I would only remind you of one: a well-known book in which it is written “Thou shalt not bear false witness.”‘ I glared at the young officer in charge of the case. ‘And I would apply that remark to the alleged observations of the police officer.’

  ‘Yes. I’m not satisfied this charge is made out. Summons dismissed.’ As Archie went, he fired his parting shot. ‘With costs, Miss Trant.’

  Mrs Thripp rang me at home again that evening and told me that her solicitor, Perfect, had fixed up a hearing in ten days’ time. She wondered how she could live until then and told me I was her only friend in the world. I was comforting her as best I could and stemming the threatened flow of tears over the wire by saying. ‘You’ll be free in a couple of weeks. Think of that old darling,’ when I noticed that Hilda had come into the room and was viewing me with a look of disapproval. I put down the phone: I suppose to a hostile observer the movement may have looked guilty. However, She Who Must Be Obeyed affected to ignore it and said casually, ‘I’m having tea with Dodo tomorrow.’

  ‘Dodo?’

  ‘Dodo Perkins and I were tremendously close at Wycombe Abbey,’ said Hilda coldly.

  ‘Oh, Dodo! Yes, of course. The live one.’

  ‘She’s living in Devon nowadays. She’s running her own tea shop.’

  ‘Well. Nice part, Devon. You won’t have seen her for some years.’

  ‘We correspond. I sent her a postcard and said, let’s meet when you’re next up in London.’ She gave me a look I can only describe as meaningful. ‘I want to ask her advice about something. We may do some shopping – and have tea at Harrods.’

  ‘Well, go easy on the chocolate gateaux.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know how much these teas at Harrods cost. I don’t want to see all my profit on the disorderly house vanishing down Dodo’s little red lane.’

  Hilda ignored this and merely gave me some quite gratuitous information. ‘Dodo never liked you. You know that, Rumpole?’

  She went, leaving me only vaguely disconcerted. When I went to the gin bottle, however, to prepare an evening Booths and tonic, I was astonished to notice a pencil mark on the label, apparently intended to record the drinking habits of Rumpole. I sloshed out the spirit, well past the plimsoll line. Our existence in Froxbury Court, I thought, was beginning to bear an uncomfortable resemblance to the way life was lived in Maison Thripp.

  My life in those days seemed inseparable from women and their troubles. When I got to Chambers the next morning I found Miss Phillida Trant in my room, her glasses off, her eyes red and her voice exceedingly doleful. She announced that, after careful thought, she had decided, in view of her disastrous appearance at the Dock Street Magistrates Court, to give up the Bar and take up some less demanding profession.

  ‘And after you’d been so helpful!’ Miss Trant’s undeserved gratitude gave me an unusual twinge of guilt.

  ‘Please! Don’t mention it.’ I wanted to get her off the subject of my unhelpful advice.

  ‘I know I’ll never make it! I mean, I know the law. I was top student of my year and…’

  I interrupted her and said, ‘Being a lawyer’s got almost nothing to do with knowing the law.’

  ‘An open and shut case! I had all the police observations! And I went and lost it.’

  ‘That wasn’t because you didn’t know all about the law. It was because you didn’t know enough about Archie McFee.’

  ‘You just made rings round me!’

  ‘Never underestimate the craftiness of Rumpole.’ Now I was giving her genuinely helpful advice.

  ‘It seems ungrateful. After you’d been so kind to me.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t go on saying that, Miss Trant.’

  ‘But I’ll have to give it up!’

  ‘You can’t! Once you’re a lawyer you’re addicted. It’s like smoking, or any other habit-forming drug. You get hooked on cross-examination, you get a taste for great gulps of fresh air from the cells. You’ll find out.’

  ‘No! No, I won’t ever.’

  I lit a small cigar and sat down at the desk opposite her. She looked surprisingly young and confused and I found myself warming to Miss Trant. For some reason I wanted her to continue her struggle against magistrates and judges and cunning opponents: even her appearance at Dock Street had shown some misguided courage.

  ‘You know, we all have our disappointments. I do.’

  ‘You?’ She looked incredulous.

  ‘One year I did the “Penge Bungalow Murder”. Without a leader. And the “Great Brighton Benefit Club Forgery” case, which is where I got my vast knowledge of typewriters. And what am I doing now? Playing around with disorderly houses. I have even sunk to a divorce!’ I looked at her, and saw a solution. ‘You know what your mistake is, in Court, I mean?’

  Miss Trant shook her head, she still had no idea of where she’d gone wrong.

  ‘I would suggest a little more of the feminine qualities. Ask anyone in the Temple. How does Rumpole carry on in Court? Answer. Rumpole woos, Rumpole insinuates, Rumpole winds his loving finge
rs round the jury box, or lies on his back purring, “If your Lordship pleases,” like old mother Wainscott from Dock Street.’

  I was rewarded with a small smile as she said, ‘That’s ridiculous!’

  ‘Lawyers and tarts,’ I told her, and I meant it, ‘are the two oldest professions in the world. And we always aim to please.’

  *

  If I had managed to cheer up Miss Trant, and even return her small nose to the legal grindstone, I had no-luck with She Who Must Be Obeyed. Relations, as they say, deteriorated and I got up one morning to find her suitcase packed and standing in the hall. Hilda was in the living-room, hatted, coated and ready for travel.

  ‘You can come home as late as you like now, Rumpole. And you can spend all the time you like with her.’

  ‘Her?’ Whoever could she be talking about?

  ‘I’ve heard her! Time and time again. On the telephone.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ I tried a light laugh. ‘That’s a client.’

  ‘Rumpole! I’ve lived with you for a good many years.’

  ‘Man and boy.’

  ‘And I’ve never known you to be telephoned by a client. At home!’

  ‘I usually have quiet, undemanding clients. Murderers don’t fuss. Robbers can usually guess the outcome, so that they’re calm and resigned. Divorcing ladies are different. They’re inclined to telephone constantly.’

  ‘So I’ve noticed!’

  ‘Also they’re always on bail. They’re not kept locked up in Brixton, pending the hearing.’

  ‘More’s the pity! I’m going to stay with Dodo. I’m going to stay with Dodo and help her out with her business.’

  ‘The tea shop?’ I tried hard to remember this Dodo, who was coming to play a major part in our lives.

  ‘It’s far better I leave you, Rumpole! To enjoy your harem!’

  ‘Listen, Hilda.’ I did my best to remain calm. ‘I have a client whose unhappy marriage may well provide you and Dodo with another tea in Harrods. That can’t be why you’re leaving.’

  There was one of those silences that had become so frequent between us, and then she said, ‘No. No, it isn’t.’

  ‘Then why?’

  ‘You’ve changed, Rumpole. You don’t go to work in the mornings. And as for the gin bottle!’

  ‘You marked it! That was unforgivable.’

  ‘Then don’t forgive me.’

  ‘An Englishman’s gin bottle is his castle.’

  At which point the phone rang. Hilda picked it up, apparently thinking it was a taxi she had ordered; but it was, of course, Mrs Thripp, the well-known married lady, who seemed to depend entirely on Rumpole. Hilda handed me the phone as though her worst suspicions were now thoroughly justified.

  Hilda went while I was still pacifying the client. In the days that followed, I stayed later at Pommeroy’s, got my own breakfast, had a poached egg in the evenings, and turned up alone and unaccompanied to have dinner with George Frobisher at the Royal Borough Hotel in Kensington. We sat in a draughty dining-room, surrounded by lonely persons whose tables were littered with their personal possessions, their own bottles of sauce, their half bottles of wine, their pills, their saccharin, and their medicines. It was the sort of place that encourages talking in whispers, so George and I muttered over the coffee, getting such warmth as we could from our thimblefuls of port.

  ‘I’m sorry it’s not Thursday,’ George told me sadly. ‘They give us the chicken on Thursday. Tonight it was the veal so it must be Monday. Soup of the day is exactly the same all through the week. Enjoy your pomtnes de terre a I’anglaise, did you?’

  ‘Boiled spuds? Excellent! Hilda’ll be sorry she missed this.’

  ‘Hilda cares for veal, does she? We always get veal on Mondays. So we know where we are.’ George suddenly remembered something. ‘Monday! Good God! I’ve got this divorce case tomorrow. The other side stole a march on us. They expedited the hearing!’

  ‘George.’

  ‘Yes, Rumpole?’

  ‘What’s your divorce about, exactly?’

  ‘I told you. I’m a husband tomorrow.’

  ‘It’s just that; well. I’ve got one too, you know,’ I confessed. ‘I’m a wife.’

  ‘Horrible case! I think I told you. We allege this monstrous female savaged my trousers. Furthermore, she hasn’t spoken to me for three years.’

  ‘She hasn’t spoken to you?

  ‘She started it!’

  ‘That’s a damned lie, George!’ I felt a sense of outrage on behalf of Mrs Thripp and raised my voice. A nearby diner looked up from his soup of the day.

  ‘Oh really? And is it a damned lie about the bath water?’

  ‘What about the bath water?’

  ‘You ran off all the hot water deliberately. You put a note on the geyser, “Out of Bounds”.’

  ‘I haven’t had a bath there for the last month. I have to go all the way to Ruislip, to my mother’s.’

  ‘Rumpole! You’re against me?’

  ‘Of course I’m against you. I’m the wife! You want to turn me out of the house - and my child!’

  ‘Your child! You’ve alienated Norman’s affections.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve turned him against me!’

  It’s no doubt a strange habit of barristers to identify them- selves so closely with their clients. But by now we had both raised our voices, and the other diners were listening but look- ing studiously away, as though they were overhearing a domestic quarrel.

  ‘That is the most pernicious rubbish I ever heard and if you dare to put that forward in Court I shall cut you in small pieces, George, and give you to the usher. I’ve behaved like a saint.’

  ‘Oh yes, you. Joan of Arc!’ George was becoming quite spirited.

  ‘And I suppose you’re Job himself.’

  ‘I’d have to be. To put up with you.’

  ‘You are nothing but a great big bully, George. Oh, you’re all very fine and brave when you’ve got someone weaker than yourself.’

  ‘You! Weaker than me! I told you… You’re a Jezebel!’

  ‘Bluebeard!’

  ‘Lady Macbeth!’

  ‘Let’s just see how you stand up in Court, George. Let’s just see how you stand up to cross-examination.’

  ‘Don’t rely on cross-examination. It’s the evidence that matters. By the way, I’m making my evening trousers an exhibit!’

  At this startling news the other diners had given up all pretence of not listening and were gazing at each other with a wild surmise. I wasn’t taking these allegations against my wronged client lying down.

  ‘Anyone, George, can lacerate their own evening trousers with a pair of nail scissors. It’s been done before! Thank you for the dinner!’

  ‘Rumpole!’

  ‘Perhaps in the long watches of the night, George. Perhaps as you are watching Match of the Day on your colour T.V. it may occur to you to do the decent thing and let this case go undefended. Hasn’t an unhappy woman suffered enough?’

  I left the dining-room then, with all the diners staring at me. When I got home, and poured myself an unlimited gin, I began to wonder exactly what they had thought of my relationship with my old friend George Frobisher.

  When I had rashly advised Mrs Thripp that there wasn’t a man sitting as a judge who wouldn’t be appalled at hearing of her treatment at the hands of Thripp, I had made a serious miscalculation. I had forgotten that Mrs Justice Appelby sat in the Family Division of the High Court of Justice, and her Ladyship was known as the only genuine male chauvinist pig in the building. They used to say that when she went out on circuit, to try murders, she used to put on a thin line of lipstick before summing up to the jury. That was the nearest Mrs Justice Appelby ever got to the art of seduction.

  If the judge was an unpleasant surprise, Mr F. Thripp was a disappointment. He was hardly ideal casting for the part of Bluebeard; in fact he looked decidedly meek and mild, a small man in rimless glasses and a nervous smile; we could have hop
ed for something about twice the size.

  The clerk called the case and we were off. I rose to open a tale whose lightest word would harrow up the soul and freeze the young blood. I weighed in on a high note.

  ‘This is one of the strangest cases this Court may ever have heard. The case of a Bluebeard who kept his wife a virtual prisoner in their flat in Muswell Hill. Who denied her the simple comforts of biscuits and bath water. Who never gave her the comfort of his conversation and communicated with her by means of brusque and insulting little notes.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole.’ Mrs Justice Appelby’s blood was no doubt frozen already. She looked unimpressed. ‘May I remind you of something? The jury box is empty. This is a trial by judge alone. I don’t require to be swayed by your oratory which no doubt is enormously effective in criminal cases. Just give me the relevant dates, will you?’

  I gave her the dates and then I called my client. She had dressed in black with a hat, an excellent costume for funerals or divorces. After a gentle introduction, I put her husband’s notes to her.

  ‘You and your so-called son can be off to your mother’s in Ruislip. Let her pay for the light you leave blazing in the toilet.’

  ‘That was pinned up on my kitchen cupboard.’

  ‘And what was the effect on you, Mrs Thripp, of that heartbreaking notice to quit?’

  ‘She stayed for more, apparently.’ It was Mrs Justice Appelby answering my question. She turned to the witness box with that cold disapproval women reserve especially for each other. ‘Well, you didn’t go, did you? Why not?’

  ‘I didn’t know what he would do if I left him.’ Mrs Thripp was looking at her husband. I was puzzled to see that the look wasn’t entirely hostile. But the judge was after her, like a terrier.

  ‘Mrs… Thripp. You put up with this intolerable conduct from your husband for three years. Why exactly?’

  ‘I suppose I was sorry for him.’

  ‘Sorry for him. Why?’

  ‘I thought he’d never manage on his own.’