The First Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  When we came out for lunch I saw Norman waiting outside the Court. He had a brand new armoured car with flashing lights, a mounted machine gun and detachable soldiers in battle dress. Someone was doing well from this case; apart from Rum-pole and George Frobisher.

  In the afternoon I cross-examined the respondent, Thripp. Miss Trant, sitting beside me in her virginal wig, waited with baited breath for my first question.

  ‘Mr Thripp. Is there anything in your conduct to your wife of which you are thoroughly ashamed?’ In the pause while Thripp examined this poser I whispered to Miss Trant, my eager apprentice, ‘Good question that. If he says “yes” he’s made a damaging admission. If he says “no”, he’s a self-satisfied idiot.’

  At which point Thripp said ‘No’, proving himself a self-satisfied idiot.

  ‘Really, Mr Thripp. You have behaved absolutely perfectly?’ Her Ladyship had the point. I made that fifteen love to Rumpole, in the second set.

  ‘ “I’m going out to my Masonic Ladies’ Night. It’s a pity I haven’t got a lady to take with me.’ ” I was quoting from the Thripp correspondence. ‘Is that the way a perfect husband writes to his wife?’

  ‘Perhaps not, but… I was… annoyed with her, you see. I had asked her to the Ladies’ Night.’

  ‘Asked her?’

  ‘I left a note for her, naturally. She didn’t reply.’

  ‘Tell me, Mr Thripp, did you actually want your wife to accompany you to your Masonic Ladies’ Night?’

  ‘Oh yes, indeed.’

  ‘This inhuman monster who drains away your bath water and refuses to wash your shirts… you were looking forward to spending a pleasant evening with her?’

  ‘I had no one else to go with.’

  ‘And would rather go with her than no one?’

  ‘Of course I would. She’s my wife, isn’t she?’

  ‘Mr Thripp, I suggest all your charges against her are quite untrue.’

  ‘They’re not untrue.’

  ‘But you wanted her with you! You wanted to flaunt her on your arm, at the Cafe Royal. Why? Come, Mr Thripp. Will you answer that question? It can hardly have been because you love her.’

  There was a long pause, and I began to have an uneasy suspicion that I had asked one question too many. Then I knew I had because Mr Thripp said in the sort of matter-of-fact tone he might have used to announce the annual audit, ‘Yes I do. I love her.’

  I looked across at Mrs Thripp. She was sighing with a sort of satisfaction, as if she had achieved her object at last.

  ‘Mr Rumpole,’ Mrs Justice Appelby’s voice, like a cold shower, woke me from my reverie. ‘Is it really too late for commonsense to prevail?’

  ‘Commonsense, my Lady?’

  ‘Could there not be one final attempt at a reconciliation?’

  I felt a sinking in the pit of the stomach. Could it be that even divorce was slipping away from us, and George and I would both have to go back to the crossword puzzle?

  ‘I have no power to order this.’ The judge did her best to look pleasant, it was not a wild success. ‘But it does seem to me that Mr and Mrs Thripp might meet perhaps in counsel’s Chambers? Simply to explore the possibilities of a reconciliation. There is one very important consideration, of course, and I refer to young Norman Thripp. The child of the family. I shall adjourn now until tomorrow morning.’

  At which her Ladyship rose smartly and we were all upstanding in Court. Obedient to Mrs Justice Appelby’s orders, the Thripps met in my room that afternoon. George Frobisher and I, our differences now sunk in the face of the new menace from the judge, shared my small cigars and our anxieties.

  ‘They’ve been there a long time,’ George was looking nervously at my closed door. ‘I’m afraid it doesn’t look too healthy.’

  Just then the clerk’s room door opened for Henry to come out about some business. I had a brief glimpse of Norman Thripp, the child of the family, seated at Dianne’s desk. He was banging the keys of our old standard Imperial, no doubt playing at ‘secretaries’.

  ‘In my opinion,’ George was still grumbling, ‘they shouldn’t allow women on the bench. That Mrs Justice Appelby! What does she think she’s doing, depriving us of our refreshers?’

  Before I could agree wholeheartedly, the door of my room opened to let out a beaming Thripp.

  ‘Well, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I think we’ll be withdrawing the case tomorrow. We still have one or two things to talk over.’

  ‘Talk over! Well, that’ll be a change,’ said Mrs Thripp following him out. Then they collected Norman, who was still happily playing with Dianne’s typewriter, and took him home, leaving George and I in a state of gloomy suspense.

  The next morning I got to the Law Courts early, climbed into the fancy dress and found Mrs Thripp and young Norman waiting for me outside Mrs Justice Appelby’s forum in the Family Division.

  ‘Well, Mrs Thripp. I suppose we come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.’

  ‘What do you mean Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘You’re dropping the case?’

  Mrs Thripp, to my surprise, was shaking her head and opening her handbag. She brought out a piece of paper and handed it to me, her voice tremulous with indignation. ‘No, Mr Rumpole,’ she said. ‘I’m going on with the case. I got this this morning. Leaning up against the cornflakes packet at breakfast.’

  I took the note from her.

  ‘The old barrister you dug up’s going to lose this case. I’ll have you and your so-called son out of here in a week. Your so-called husband.’ I read the typewritten document, and then studied it with more care.

  ‘He’s mad! That’s what he is. I can’t live with a maniac, Mr Rumpole!’ As far as my client was concerned, the reconciliation was clearly off.

  ‘Mrs Thripp.’

  ‘We’ve got to beat him! I’ve got to think of Norman - caged up with a man like that!’

  ‘Yes. Norman.’ I pulled out my watch. ‘We’ve got a quarter of an hour. I feel the need of a coffee. Do you think Norman would like a doughnut?’

  ‘I’m sure we’d be glad to.’

  ‘Not “we”, Mrs Thripp. In this instance I’d like to see young Norman on his own.’

  So I took Norman down to the cafe in the crypt of the Law Courts, and, as he tucked into a doughnut and fizzy orangeade, I brought the conversation round to the business in hand.

  ‘Rum business marriage… You’ve never been married, have you Norman?’ I lit a small cigar and gazed at the young hopeful through the smoke.

  ‘Of course not.’ Norman found the idea amusing.

  ‘No seriously. Married people have odd ways of showing their love and affection.’

  ‘Have they?’

  ‘Some whisper endearments. Some send each other abusive notes. Some even have to get as far as the Divorce Court to prove they can’t do without each other. A rum business! Care for another doughnut?’

  ‘No. No, I’m all right, thanks.’

  He was eating industriously with sugar on the end of his nose as I moved in to the attack.

  ‘All right? You were all right, weren’t you, Norman? When they really looked like separating?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘When they were both trying to win you over to their side. When you got a present a week from Mum and a rival present from Dad? Tanks, planes, guns, it’s been a sort of arms race between them, hasn’t it, Norman?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr Rumpole,’ Norman repeated, with rather less conviction.

  ‘This mad impulse of your parents to get together again doesn’t show much consideration for you, or for me either, come to that.’

  ‘I don’t mind if they get together. It’s their business, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, Norman. Their business.’

  ‘I’m not stopping them.’

  I ordered the child another doughnut, he was going to need it.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Course I’m not!’

&n
bsp; The second doughnut came and I gave Norman a fragment of my autobiography. ‘I don’t do much divorce, you know. Crime mainly. I was in the “Great Brighton Benefit Club Forgery”.’

  ‘What’s forgery?’ The child was round-eyed with innocence. You had to admire the act.

  ‘Oh, you’re good Norman! You’ll come out wonderfully in your interviews with the police! The genuine voice of innocence. What’s forgery?’ I whipped out the latest item in the Thripp correspondence. ‘This is! Inspect it carefully, Norman! All the other notes were typewritten.’

  ‘So’s this.’ Norman kept his head.

  ‘The others were done on the old Olivetti your parents keep in Muswell Hill. This morning’s note was typed on a standard Imperial with a small gap in the capital “S”.’

  I got out my folding pocket glass and offered it to him.

  ‘Here. Borrow my glass.’

  Norman dared to do so and examined the evidence.

  ‘Typed on the Imperial on which Dianne in my Chambers hammers out my so-called learned opinions. The typewriter you were playing with so innocently yesterday in the clerk’s room. I put it to you, Norman - you typed that last note! In a desperate effort to keep this highly profitable divorce case going.’

  Norman looked up from my magnifying glass and said, ‘I didn’t see any gap in the capital “S”.’

  ‘Didn’t you, Norman? The judge will.’

  ‘What judge?’ For the first time he sounded rattled.

  ‘The judge who tries you for forgery, a word you understand perfectly. I’ll take the evidence now.’ I retrieved the last incriminating note. ‘Four years they gave the chief villain in the Brighton case.’

  ‘They wouldn’t?’ Norman looked at me. I felt almost sorry for him, as if he were my client.

  ‘As your lawyer, Norman, I can only see one way out for you. A full confession to your Muni and Dad.’

  He bit hard into the second doughnut, seriously considering the possibility.

  ‘And one more word of advice, Norman. Settle for being a chartered accountant. You’ve got absolutely no talent for crime.’

  My old friend George was extremely angry with me when Norman confessed and the Thripps were re-united. We lost all our refreshers, he told me, just because I had to behave like a damned detective. I explained to him that I couldn’t resist using the skills I had learnt in the great Brighton fraud case, and he told me to stick to crime in the future.

  ‘You Rumpole,’ said George severely, ‘have absolutely buggered up the work in the Family Division.’

  Further surprises were in store. When I got back to the mansions in search of the poached egg and the lonely bed, I found Hilda’s case in the hall and She, apparently just arrived and still in her overcoat, installed wearily in her chair by the simulated coals of our electric fire.

  ‘Rumpole!’

  ‘What’s the matter? Fallen out with Dodo? Had a bit of a scene over a drop scone?’

  ‘You’re home early. Daddy was never back home at three o’clock in the afternoon. He always stayed in Chambers till six o’clock. Regular as clockwork. Every day of his life.’

  ‘My divorce collapsed under me.’ I lit a small cigar. Hilda rose and started to make the room shipshape, a long-neglected task.

  ‘You’re going to seed, Rumpole. You hang about at home in the mornings.’

  ‘And you know why my divorce collapsed?’ I thought I should tell her.

  ‘If I’m not here to keep an eye on you, you’ll go to seed completely.’

  I blew out smoke, and warmed my knees at the electric fire.

  ‘The clients were reconciled. Because, however awful it is, however silent and unendurable, however much they may hate each other’s guts and quarrel over the use of the geyser, they don’t want to be alone! Isn’t that strange, Hilda? They’d rather have war together than a lonely peace.’

  ‘If I’d stayed away any longer you’d have gone to seed completely.’ She was throwing away The Times for a couple of weeks.

  ‘O Woman! in our hours of ease.’ I got to my feet and gave her the snatch of Walter Scott again. ‘Uncertain, coy and hard to please!’

  ‘You’d have stayed home from Chambers all day. Doing the crossword and delving into the gin bottle.’

  ‘And variable as the shade By the light of quivering aspens made.’ I moved to the door.

  ‘If you’re going to the loo, Rumpole, try to remember to switch the light off.’

  ‘When pain and anguish ring the brow, A ministering angel thou.’

  I was half way down the passage when I heard She calling after me.

  ‘It’s for your own good, Rumpole. I’m telling you for your own good!’

  Rumpole and the Learned Friends

  ‘Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain.’

  ‘Doctor Hanson told you, Rumpole. You’re not dying. You’ve got flu.’

  I was lying on my back, in a pair of flannel pyjamas, my brow with anguish moist and fever dew, and Hilda, most efficiently playing the part of Matey, or Ward Sister, was pouring out the linctus into a spoon and keeping my mind from wandering. Whatever Doctor Hanson, who in my humble opinion would be quite unable to recognize a case of death when he saw it, might say, I felt a curious and trance-like sense of detachment, not at all unpleasant, and seriously wondered if Rumpole were not about to drop off the twig.

  ‘Fade far away, dissolve and quite forget ‘What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever and the fret.’

  As I recited to her Hilda took advantage of the open mouth to slide in the spoonful of linctus. I didn’t relish the taste of artificially sweetened hair oil. All the same little Johnny Keats, Lord Byron’s piss-a-bed poet, had put the matter rather well. Then more than ever, seemed it rich to get away from it all. No more judges. No more bowing and saying ‘If your Lordship pleases.’ No more hopelessly challenging the verbals. No more listening to endless turgid speeches from my learned friends for the prosecution. ‘To cease upon the midnight. With no pain.’ From my position between two worlds I heard the telephone beside the bed ringing distantly. Hilda picked it up and told whoever it was that they couldn’t speak to Mr Rumpole.

  ‘Who? Who can’t speak to me?’

  ‘Well, he’s busy at the moment.’ Hilda lied to the telephone. In fact I had done absolutely nothing for the last three days.

  ‘Busy? I’m not busy.’

  ‘Busy dying.’ Hilda laughed, I thought a trifle flippantly. ‘That’s what he says anyway. No, Henry. Well, not this week, certainly…’

  ‘It’s my clerk. My clerk Henry!’ I returned to earth and grabbed the telephone from She.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear you’re dying, sir.’ Henry, as always, sounded perfectly serious, and not tremendously interested.

  ‘Dying, Henry? Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration.’

  ‘There was a con for you, sir. At Brixton Prison. 2.30. The “Dartford Post Office Robbery”. Mr Bernard’s got the safe blower…’

  A safe blowing in Dartford! I felt my head clear and swung my legs out of bed and feet to the floor. There’s nothing like the prospect of the Old Bailey for curing all other diseases.

  ‘I’ll tell Mr Bernard you can’t be there.’

  ‘Tell him nothing of the sort, Henry. I’ll be there. No trouble at all. I’ll just fling on a few togs.’

  As I made for the wardrobe Hilda looked at me as if my recent flirtation with the Unknown had been some sort of a charade.

  ‘I thought you were dying,’ she said.

  Dying, as I explained to her, would have to be postponed. Safe blowing came first.

  When I was dressed, wrapped in a muffler and buttoned into an overcoat by Matey, I set out for Chambers. And there I made two unpleasant discoveries, the first being that there were those who would not have regretted Rumpole’s continued absence from Chambers by reason of death. At that time we were suffering from a good deal of overcrowding and Erskine-B
rown’s small room, which opened into the entrance hall, had to accommodate not only Erskine-Brown himself, but his ex-pupil Miss Phyllida Trant, and his two new pupils who sometimes dived into my room to borrow books and then shot out again like frightened rabbits. Also my old friend George Frobisher took refuge there whenever his old friend Hoskins, with whom George shared a room, was having an intimate conference with a divorcée.

  As I passed Erskine-Brown’s open door I could see his room was bursting at the seams, and, as I hung up my hat and coat in the hallway, I heard the voice of the Erskine-Brown say he supposed they’d have to hang on in that Black Hole of Calcutta a little longer. ‘But,’ he added, ‘At least he can’t be with us forever.’

  ‘Who can’t be with us forever?’ It was Miss Trant’s voice.

  ‘Rumpole, of course. I mean, he’s bound to retire sometime. He’s a good age and Henry’s been telling me he’s not all that well.’

  I chose that moment to stick my nose into the Black Hole.

  ‘Morning, Erskine-Brown. Nose to the grindstone, Miss Trant?’

  Miss Trant looked up from the brief she was reading and gave me a smile. She really has decidedly pretty teeth; ever since I deceived her so heartlessly I have become almost fond of Miss Trant.

  ‘Oh, hello, Rumpole. I thought you were off sick.’ Erskine-Brown was trying to move George’s particulars of nuisance off his statement of claim.

  ‘Recovered now.’ I sneezed loudly. ‘Rumpole Resurrected. Sorry to disappoint you.’

  ‘That’s a nasty cold you’ve got. Oughtn’t you to be in bed?’ Miss Trant was solicitous. I looked at her brief, neatly underlined in red and green, points for and against.

  ‘Women are such industrious creatures! Who’s your client?’

  ‘Oh, just a thief. He’ll have to plead guilty. He’s said such ridiculous things to the police.’

  ‘You twist his arm, Philly. Judges don’t like you wasting the Court’s time with hopeless cases.’ Erskine-Brown was one of nature’s pleaders. I decided that the stage of her career had come when Miss Trant might benefit from some proper advice.

  ‘Never plead guilty!’ I told her. ‘That should be written up in letters a foot high. In every room in Chambers.’