The First Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  ‘A foot high! We haven’t got the room for it.’ Erskine-Brown was still sulking, and George looked up from the corner of the desk he was occupying as though he’d just noticed me.

  ‘Hello, Rumpole. Haven’t seen you about lately.’

  ‘I’ve been dying.’

  ‘I say, don’t do that. I should miss your help with the crossword.’

  Thinking uneasily that the sole justification of my existence seemed to be helping George Frobisher with the crossword, I went into the clerk’s room and Henry presented me with the brief in the ‘Dartford Post Office Robbery’.

  ‘You’ve got plenty of time, Mr Rumpole. They don’t want the two of you down there till three o’clock now.’

  ‘The two of us?’ I was puzzled.

  ‘The defendant Wheeler’s got a certificate for two counsel.’

  ‘Excellent! Giving me a junior, are they? Someone to take a note?’

  ‘Well, not exactly, Mr Rumpole.’ Henry had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘You’re being led. They’re briefing a silk. You can take it easy for once.’

  I was being led! I was a junior barrister, in the 67th year of my life.

  ‘Easy! I don’t want to take it easy!’ I’m afraid I exploded at Henry. ‘Haven’t they heard? I’m out of rompers! I’m off the bloody leading rein. I managed the “Penge Bungalow Murder” alone and without a leader.’

  I came out of the clerk’s room clutching my junior brief and was met with a whiff of after-shave as the tall, elegant figure of Guthrie Featherstone, Q.c, appeared through the front door in his gent’s natty velvet-collared overcoat and bowler hat, slumming down in Chambers after a triumph in the House.

  ‘Hullo, Rumpole.’ He greeted me affably. ‘I’m afraid you’re going to see a lot of my back this week.’

  ‘Your back? What do you mean, your back?

  ‘I’m leading you. In the “Dartford Post Office Robbery”.’ He smiled in a damnably friendly fashion and went into the clerk’s room.

  ‘You’re leading me, Featherstone?’ I called after him, but he affected not to hear. I went on towards my room but, as I passed her open door, I looked in once more on that tireless worker Miss Phyllida Trant.

  ‘You were perfectly right, Miss Trant. I ought to have stayed in bed.’

  I don’t expect you’ve noticed Brixton Prison as you’ve driven down to Brighton on a sunny Sunday morning. The prison gates are down a long, extremely dreary street off the main road; you pass little knots of visitors, girl friends, black mums with their babies, and large screws going or coming from their time off. Being a screw has become something of a growth industry; I met one who gave up school teaching for wardering, the pay’s so much better and you get free golf. No matter what the weather is like in other parts of London, a fine rain always seems to be falling on the long walk down to Brixton. That day Featherstone had parked his well-manicured Rover up in the main road and leader and junior walked together up to the gates of the prison house.

  Our client was a well-known minor South London villain named Charlie Wheeler, a professional safe blower with a string of convictions going back to his childhood days, when Charlie forced the Dr Barnardo’s box in the local church, and which included many notable exploits with safes. The evidence against him wasn’t much, just Charlie’s fingerprints found on a fragment of gelignite left beside the blown safe in the post office. It wasn’t much; but it was quite satisfactory evidence provided you were appearing for the prosecution. If you were for the defence, well, you’d have to improvise. I explained this to Featherstone, but he looked gloomy and said,

  ‘If you ask me this case is as dead as a doornail.’

  ‘So are we all, eventually.’ I tried to cheer him up.

  ‘Two men in stocking masks hold up the post office, one has a shotgun and our friend Wheeler’s fingerprints are on a lump of explosive!’

  ‘I know. I know.’

  We’d reached the prison doors and rang the visitors’ bell. Featherstone smiled faintly.

  ‘I wonder why he didn’t leave his visiting card?’

  ‘I’ll tell you, old sweetheart.’ I was serious. ‘Old cons like Charlie Wheeler don’t have visiting cards.’

  The small hole in the huge wooden doors rattled open. I waved Featherstone in.

  ‘After you, my learned friend. Leaders always go into prison first.’

  As soon as I get into a prison I become moody and depressed and have a strong desire to scream and fight my way out. If this is how a visitor feels, treated with respect, even deference, by the screws, I don’t know how I could stand a five-year sentence, and yet I’ve had clients who greet five years rather like a pound from the poor box. I have also been entirely convinced, since my seventh year, that I would land up in the nick sooner or later, for some trivial reason or other, and fear it constantly. That wet afternoon in the inner courtyard at Brixton, with the killer Airedales sniffing around at the end of their leads, and the trusty boys planting out chrysanths in the sooty flower beds, the feeling came over me more strongly than ever, stronger than the fear of death. When they put me inside, I said to myself, I’ll volunteer to be one of those trusties that plant out the chrysanths, at least I’ll get to learn about horticulture. But before I could plan further we were in the neat, glass-panelled interview room. You could see through the walls to where, in a succession of similar rooms, cons were having meetings with their briefs. In the centre of the complex the screws sat by a table on which cacti grew in pots, among stones, providing half a dozen elegant and miniature Japanese gardens. I can tell you, it’s really very cosy in Brixton.

  So we all sat round, Charlie Wheeler’s advisers, Featherstone the Q.C., Rumpole the junior, Bernard the solicitor and Joyce, his secretary, a jolly, fair-haired girl in jeans and a mac, dressed more for a wet weekend in Haslemere than the Nick, who clutched the file and was inclined to giggle disconcertingly during serious passages of the evidence. I once had her in Court in a murder, and she laughed so audibly at the pathologist’s report that she had to be led out. Well, we were both younger then; now she seemed moderately composed as Charlie Wheeler held out his hand to me, as though we were alone in the room.

  ‘I’m glad to see you, Mr Rumpole. It’d amaze you. The reputation you got in E Wing.’

  I felt a dry cough coming on, and my head still swam a little. ‘They can inscribe that on my tombstone. “He had an amazing reputation round E Wing”.’

  ‘You’re not going to die, are you, Mr Rumpole?’ Charlie seemed genuinely concerned.

  ‘I was considering the possibility.’

  ‘I’m that glad you’re doing my case.’

  ‘I’m not exactly doing your case, Charlie.’ I hated to disappoint him. ‘Your case is being conducted by Mr Guthrie Featherstone, Q.C, M.P.His name is constantly mentioned, Charlie, in the corridors of power!’

  ‘I haven’t heard much of you,’ Charlie looked doubtfully at the Q.C, M.P. ‘Not from the blokes in E Wing.’

  ‘Rumpole. If I may…’ Featherstone was apparently about to gather up the reins.

  ‘Of course, of course, my learned leader. You want to conduct this conference? Well, it’s your right.’

  ‘Now then, Wheeler.’

  ‘He means you, Charlie,’ I translated.

  ‘Rumpole… please!’

  ‘I shall make a note of all your words of wisdom from now on.’ I got out a note book and pen. Featherstone went on with admirable calm.

  ‘What I wanted to say, Wheeler, was…’

  ‘Not too fast, if you don’t mind.’ I was putting him down at dictation speed.

  ‘We’re here to fight this case. We’re going to leave no stone unturned to fight it. To the best of my poor ability!’

  ‘My poor ability.’ I repeated what seemed to me to be a key phrase as I wrote.

  ‘But Mr Bernard’s no doubt told you who our judge is,’ Featherstone went on, ignoring the interruption.

  ‘I know.’ Charlie sounded deeply depressed. �
�Judge Bull-ingham.’

  ‘So any sort of attack on the honesty of the police…’ Featherstone went on, and Bernard raised a voice in warning:

  ‘I told you, Charlie!’

  ‘Would act like a red rag to a Bullingham. I suppose you told him that?’ I supplied the thought for Charlie to chew over.

  ‘Look, Mr Bernard’s explained it to me. I don’t want to lay into “Dirty” Dickerson.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ Featherstone looked puzzled and I enlightened him from my memory of the brief.

  ‘I imagine that is a reference to Detective Inspector Dickerson, the officer in charge of the case.’

  ‘I mean, there ain’t a whole lot of point…’ Charlie seemed resigned, for which Featherstone was extremely grateful.

  ‘Well, exactly! The evidence against you is undisputable. So what’s the point of annoying the judge with a whole lot of questions?’

  ‘I told you, Charlie.’ Bernard nodded wisely.

  ‘I mean, if I don’t say nothing against Dickerson. If I keep quiet, like. Well… How much, Mr Rumpole? I were hoping for… an eight.’

  ‘Hope springs eternal in the human breast!’ I could tell him no more.

  ‘In my experience…’

  ‘Listen. To the wise words of the learned leader!’

  When they came the leader’s words were by no means filled with original thought. ‘Any sort of attack on the police, in a case like this, will add considerably to your sentence. So let’s be sensible. I must warn you, Wheeler, the time may very well come when I have to throw in my hand.’

  ‘You mean Charlie’s hand, don’t you?’ I said and Featherstone looked at me as if he wished he’d been lumbered with any other junior counsel in the Temple, however old and near to death.

  As we walked back to the main road and the parked Rover, Featherstone put his problem in a nutshell.

  ‘I can’t make bricks without straw, Rumpole.’

  ‘Down the Bailey you have to make bricks without bricks. You never get the luxury of straw…’

  ‘Of course I’ll mitigate,’ Featherstone said sportingly.

  I tried to point out the hopelessness of this course. ‘What could you say in mitigation? “My client only called in for a 7p stamp, my Lord, but as he was kept waiting behind ten old ladies with pension books, and a lunatic arguing over a dog licence, he lost his patience and blew the safe”?’

  ‘Well, Rumpole. Hardly.’

  We were standing on each side of the Rover, eyeing each other in an unfriendly fashion across the polished roof, as Featherstone unlocked the driver’s door.

  ‘Forget mitigation for a moment!’ I told him. ‘What’s the use of spending your life in an attitude of perpetual apology? Do you think Charlie Wheeler’s going to blow a safe without gloves – even in a sub post office in Dartford? Do you think he’s going to leave a bit of spare gelignite around – with his trade mark on it? Is that the mark of a professional?’

  Featherstone slid into the driver’s seat and opened the passenger door.

  ‘Think about it, Featherstone.’ I bundled myself into the car beside him. ‘It would be like you standing up in Court and mitigating in your pyjamas!’

  I decided that evening to drown all uneasy thoughts as to the conduct of Wheeler’s defence in three or four glasses of Chateau Fleet Street in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar. I went there with my old friend George Frobisher and saw that the watering hole was well filled, barristers at one end of the bar, including Erskine-Brown, Miss Trant and Guthrie Featherstone going walkabout among his loyal subjects, journalists at the other, and myself and George at one of the crowded tables in the snug.

  ‘They say Uncle Tom’s not too well,’ George told me about our oldest, no longer practising, member of Chambers.

  ‘Who is nowadays?’

  ‘They say old T. C. Rowley is distinctly seedy. Well, he’s a good age. He’s over 80.’

  ‘What’s good about being over 80?’

  I really would have liked an answer to this question. Does the pain of hopeless frustration in which we all live become, at such an age, a dull and bearable ache of resignation? Is the loss of hearing and eyesight compensated for by a palate more than ever sensible to the thin warmth of Chateau Fleet Street? Before I could press George further on the subject, however, a young man in a tweed suit with horn-rimmed glasses and a falling lock of fair hair, detached himself from the journalists’ group and approached our table.

  ‘Mr Rumpole?’

  I admitted it.

  ‘Philbeam. I write the “In Depth” column, in the Sunday . . .’

  George stood. I don’t believe he trusts journalists. ‘Forgive me, Rumpole. I thought I’d call in on old Tom, on my way back to the hotel. Any messages?’

  ‘Give him my love. Oh, and tell him we’ll all be joining him eventually.’

  ‘Really Rumpole!’ George sounded shocked and he went, whereupon Philbeam sat opposite me and fixed me with his glittering horn-rims.

  I made him welcome and ordered further clarets. ‘A gentleman of the press! I’ll always be grateful for the space you gave me, during the “Penge Bungalow Murder”!’

  ‘I think that was before my time.’

  ‘I rather think it was. Probably reported by your grandfather.’ Philbeam, I could see by looking at him, had a point.

  ‘I was in Court when you defended Ken Aspen. The rape case with the Member of Parliament.’

  ‘Hardly one of my major triumphs.’

  ‘Admired the way you cross-examined that girl.’ I was just wondering where all this chat with the smooth-talking Philbeam was getting us, when he leaned forward and said, ‘What I wanted to ask you, Mr Rumpole, was…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Have you ever run up against a Detective Inspector Dickerson round Dartford somewhere?’

  ‘ “Dirty” Dickerson?’ I was interested.

  ‘Have you heard that too?’ Philbeam smiled. ‘You know how he got his name?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’ve no idea.’

  So he started to tell me. Up by the bar I heard Featherstone say ‘Sante’ as he raised his glass to Erskine-Brown. I discovered later that Erskine-Brown had been picked to make one of his comparatively rare appearances at the Bailey in the role of prosecuting counsel in the Dartford post office case, and that Featherstone was drinking to what promised to be a most civilized occasion, with both sides being of the greatest possible assistance to each other, and prosecution and defence collaborating in seeing Charlie Wheeler put gently away for a very long time indeed. Whilst this was going on Philbeam was telling me of an investigation his paper was carrying out on Dickerson. There were the usual sort of allegations, villains verballed unless they paid up, money taken for not opposing bail and such like police procedure.

  ‘I once did an interview with a man called Harris,’ Philbeam told me. ‘Minor sort of South London villain. Loads of convictions…’

  ‘Sounds like my kind of criminal.’

  ‘Never printed it, of course. But Harry Harris told me D.I. Dickerson once handed him a stolen cigarette case. Got his finger-prints all over it. Then he made Harris pay him 300 quid not to be prosecuted for the theft.’

  ‘Glory Hallelujah!’ I had my first hint then of how dangerously Charlie Wheeler might be defended. ‘You are a blessing, Philbeam, in an excellent disguise. I trust this is not an isolated incident?’

  ‘I’ve got a whole file on Dickerson. Of course, I can’t use it. Yet. The Leading Lady likes to win his libel actions.’

  ‘Leading Lady?’

  ‘That’s what we call our editor.’

  I let that pass. I had an urgent mission for Philbeam. ‘Can you find us Harris?’

  ‘I know the pubs he goes to. Shouldn’t be difficult.’

  ‘Oh, please, I beg you, Philbeam. Find him! Leave no pub unturned! He sounds like a small straw, we might just make a brick or two with him.’

  Until Harris was found I had really nothing to go on, nothing that I could m
ake Featherstone use as ammunition in a fight. Even if I had Harris and a pile of similar cannon-balls I was beginning to doubt if I could ever get Guthrie to fire a shot. I looked across to my learned leader at the bar, and saw him get out a large silk handkerchief and sneeze. It was not, I feared, a signal to charge, rather a trumpet call to retreat.

  Lacking Harris, or any other tangible defence, I had to fall back on the flu as ammunition for my learned leader. Accordingly I brought to Court a throat spray, a pile of clean handkerchiefs, and a packet of cough drops which could be opened and noisily consumed during vital parts of the prosecution evidence. I ranged these weapons out in front of me on the first, remarkably uneventful, day in Court.

  It was so uneventful, in fact, and so little was said on behalf of the defence, that his Honour Judge BuUingham became positively benign. One of the unsolved mysteries of the universe, and a matter I find it harder to speculate upon than such relatively straightforward problems as Free Will or Life after Death, is why on earth Ronnie BuUingham was ever made an Old Bailey judge. It’s not his fault that he has a thick, heavily veined neck and the complexion of a beetroot past it first youth; his personal habits such as picking his teeth and searching in his ear with his little finger while on the bench I can forgive, and his unreasoning prejudice against all black persons, defence lawyers and probation officers I can mercifully attribute to some deep psychological cause. Perhaps the Bull’s mother, if such a person can be imagined, was assaulted by a black probation officer who was on his way to give evidence for the defence. What I cannot forgive is his Honour’s appalling treatment of the English language. His summing-ups have to be translated by the Court of Appeal like pages of Urdu, and all the jury get is a vague impression of a man so shaken with rage that some dreadful crime must have caused it. The only kind of sentence in which Bull-ingham never falters is one of seven years and up.

  So there we were before this appalling tribunal, Charlie Wheeler resigned, Bernard tremendously anxious, his nice secretary blushing as the judge stared with undisguised hostility at her trousers, and Erskine-Brown taking Mr Fingleton, the fingerprint expert, through his predictably damaging evidence. It was a rare occasion, peace and tranquillity in Bullingham’s Court.