The First Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  ‘Mr Fingleton,’ said Erskine-Brown. ‘Do you produce enlarged photographs of the first, second and third fingers of the defendant, Wheeler?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I carefully unfolded the first of my pile of hankies and loudly blew the Rumpole nose, diverting the attention of some of the jury.

  ‘Does the defence admit them?’ The Bull glared towards us. Featherstone rose and bowed as if he’d been addressing the House of Lords.

  ‘Those are admitted, my Lord.’

  ‘Well, thank you,’ said the judge in an unprecedented burst of good manners. ‘I’m very much obliged to you, Mr Feather-stone.’

  ‘I bet you are, old darling!’ I muttered as Featherstone sank gracefully back into his seat.

  ‘And do you also produce enlarged photographs of the fingerprints on the small piece of gelignite taken by Detective Inspector Dickerson from the scene of the crime?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I could see it was time to use the throat spray. I lifted it to the open mouth.

  ‘Now what do you say about those two sets of fingerprints?’

  I puffed the throat spray, regrettably I couldn’t drown the answer.

  ‘I have found 32 distinct points of similarity.’

  ‘And by points of similarity you mean…?’ The Bull wanted it spelt out for the jury.

  ‘The break in the first whorl on the index finger, for instance, my Lord, is exactly the same in both cases.’

  The photographs were handed round twelve good jury-persons, who were flattered into becoming experts.

  ‘Yes, I think the members of the jury can see that quite clearly. You can, can’t you?’ Bullingham’s manner to the jury was a nice mixture of a creep and a crow.

  ‘And so, Mr Fingleton, what is your conclusion? Just tell the jury.’ Erskine-Brown’s approach was more subtle, he simply wanted the witness to tell us his views, provided, of course, they were the views of the prosecution.

  ‘My conclusion is…’ Fingleton was an experienced witness. He turned politely to the jury. But Rumpole was an experienced defender. He worked at the throat spray producing a cloud of medicated mist and created a genuine diversion. Even Fingleton paused and turned to look.

  ‘This is not a hospital!’ The judge’s remark seemed painfully obvious. ‘I would stress that. For the benefit of junior counsel for the defence. Yes, Mr Fingleton?’

  In the enforced silence that followed Fingleton struck. ‘The fingerprints are identical, my Lord.’

  ‘Thank you very much, Mr Fingleton.’ Erskine-Brown sat down with great pleasure. I don’t know what I expected of the rustling silk in front of me. An attack on the whole theory of the fingerprint as first promulgated by Professor Purkinje of the University of Breslau? The classification into whorls, loops, arches and composites pioneered by Sir E. R. Henry of the Bengal Police? Something, anything, to puzzle the jury and infuriate the Bull. As it was the Q.C. rose in all his glory to deliver himself of his single bon mot:

  ‘No questions, my Lord.’ ‘I can’t do anything with this evidence,’ Featherstone whispered to me as he sat down.

  ‘No. You can’t,’ I told him. I gave out a final fusillade of coughs, the only effect of which was to drown the judge as he thanked my leader, with every appearance of delight, for his brilliant contribution to the trial.

  That evening I was re-reading my brief in the living-room at Froxbury Court with a still slightly feverish eye. I came again to something in Charlie Wheeler’s proof of evidence that had always puzzled me, a conversation he had had with D.I. Dick-erson at about two in the morning in a police cell. Charlie’s recollection of the event hadn’t been particularly clear but it seemed there had been an offer of bail in exchange for a confession and it had ended in some sort of temporary agreement, because the officer had shaken Charlie’s hand before leaving him for the rest of the night. I read the short, unilluminating paragraph through several times before something which could hardly be called an idea, more a vague hint of the possibility of some future thought, floated into my mind. I lit a small cigar, which considerably improved the quality of my cough, and gazed at the rising smoke.

  Then the telephone rang, a most unexpected caller, none other than Mrs Marigold Featherstone speaking directly from the sick bed. She was heart-broken to tell me, but poor Guthrie had a temperature of 102. It had come at the worst possible time, what with the Foreign Office dinner next week and his speech on Devolution. She really couldn’t let Guthrie risk all that by coming down to the Old Bailey…

  ‘Of course not! Don’t dream of it! You keep the old darling tucked up in bed.’ Rumpole was extremely solicitous. ‘And keep the hot-water-bottles going, and beef tea constantly simmering on the hob. The Old Bailey’s a nasty draughty place.’

  Marigold sounded grateful and passed the phone to her husband who croaked an apology and said did I mind holding the fort, and he was sure I agreed there was nothing to do but to mitigate in view of the evidence we had heard.

  ‘Quite right, Guthrie,’ I assured him. ‘Of course we’ll have to plead. No, I won’t attack the officer in charge of the case. I’ll adopt your technique. I admired it so much. “No questions, my Lord.” That really endeared you to the old Bull. You had the old sweetheart purring. Now you stay in bed, Guthrie. Twenty-four hours at least. Don’t you dream of moving.’

  I was putting down the phone with a grin of pure pleasure when Hilda came in, flushed from the washing up, and asked who was on the phone. I stood and greeted her with words of delight.

  ‘Oh frabjous day!, Hilda,’ I said. ‘Callooh! Callay! He chortled in his joy!’

  ‘What on earth’s the matter with you, Rumpole?’

  ‘The matter? Nothing’s the matter! It’s an occasion for rejoicing. I’ve given my learned leader the flu!’

  Then I phoned the night editor of that prestigious Sunday paper which examines our lives in depth, and left a message for the industrious Philbeam.

  I got up early the next morning and was down at Ludgate Circus, as the all-night printers came off work, and indulged myself in the treat of breakfast in Jock’s Cafe opposite the Old Bailey, a place patronized by the discerning coppers, reporters, and meat porters of Smithfield, where the two eggs, rashers and fried slice are the best in London, and where I have roughed out, over a third cup of coffee, some of my most devastating cross-examinations and most moving speeches for the defence. I was joined at breakfast by Philbeam, to whom I gave the glad tidings that the world’s greatest mitigator was docked in bed for the remainder of the trial. My spirits were only a little dashed by the fact that Philbeam had, so far, failed in his search for Harris.

  ‘I’ve been round twenty pubs,’ he told me. ‘No joy. But I’ve got a number to phone. Place where his sister works.’ He looked at his watch. ‘They won’t be open till 9.30.’

  ‘Oh, find him, Philbeam, old darling. We may be all set for the unmasking of “Dirty” Dickerson.’

  I sent Philbeam about his business and went over to the Palais de Justice. The dear old place was as I liked it best, quiet and peaceful with only a few tired cleaning ladies and sleepy attendants to greet me. I got changed into my working clobber, wig, gown and so on, at my leisure and went down to the lower ground floor. I had rung Bernard the night before and asked him to meet me for an early conference with the client. But when I got to the old battered Newgate door, which divides the safe sheep from the imperilled goats, I found only the secretary Joyce, looking harassed and with her arms full of files.

  ‘Oh, Mr Rumpole,’ she panted at me, ‘Mr Bernard won’t be with you this morning. A funeral.’

  ‘Not his?’

  ‘A client’s.’

  ‘That’s all right then. I’m just going down the cells to see Charlie.’

  ‘Oh. Oh, well. I’m with Mr Hoskins on a fraud in the West Court. We’ve got a conference over there and…’

  ‘You run along, my dear,’ I reassured her. ‘I believe I can cope with a conference alone and without
a leader.’

  At which she went off gratefully and I went up to the iron gate to do what no sensible barrister ever does, see a client alone before a trial. Perhaps I was too full of my sudden freedom from the leading rein to be sensible at that moment, and I was still in a cheerful mood when the screw left his mug of tea and jam sandwich to open the door to me.

  ‘Got Wheeler, have you?’ I asked him. ‘Charlie Wheeler?’

  ‘Well, I don’t think he’s gone out anywhere.’ This screw was a wit. ‘He don’t get many invitations.’

  ‘Not many invitations! That’s rich, that is. Exceeding rich!’ I laughed appreciatively.

  You know what being an Old Bailey Hack over the years blunts? It blunts the sensitivity. The sensitivity comes out like hair on the comb, and when you go down the cells you’re prepared to laugh at anything.

  ‘You ever paid Dickerson money, Charlie?’ Wheeler and I were à deux in the interview room, both smoking away at my small cigars.

  ‘I’d never entertain it! Oh, I know some as paid him.’

  ‘Including Harry Harris?’

  ‘You knows a lot, don’t you?’ Charlie looked at me with some admiration.

  ‘I try to keep abreast of the underworld. So you were known to the Detective Inspector as a dedicated non-payer?’

  ‘You could say that.’ There was a pause as I searched for Charlie’s statement in the brief. Then he said, ‘Mr Featherstone not here today?’

  ‘We had a bit of luck with the flu. It says somewhere here that the D.I. was on the point of offering you bail…’

  ‘That seemed funny to me, like.’

  ‘Very funny. With your record.’

  ‘Of course, he wanted something for it. He was asking me to put my hands up, like.’

  ‘Sign a confession? You weren’t going to?’

  ‘I never done that, Mr Rumpole. It’s not the way I work. All the same…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I strung him along a bit. I let him think we might do a deal. We even shook hands on it like.’

  ‘Yes. Tell me more about that.’

  ‘Shook hands on the deal, like. Well, he put out his hand, like… and took mine.’

  ‘You ever had your hand taken by a police officer before?’ This was the part that interested me.

  ‘No! Only me collar.’

  ‘Show me, how he shook hands with you. You be the Detective Inspector.’

  Charlie took my hand, but only for a moment. ‘It was all over in a second. And I never made no statement. It ain’t in me character.’

  ‘How did Dickerson look when he shook hands with you? Did he look pleased – triumphant?’

  ‘I couldn’t hardly see him.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It was in my cell. In the Dartford Nick. I don’t know… about two o’clock of a morning. I was half asleep… well, he was in the dark, like. He did seem that little bit nervous.’

  ‘Nervous?’

  ‘Well. You know what you expect from a man of his build. Good firm grip. Well, that hand of his felt a bit clammy and soft.’

  I stood up, the vague thought had not only become an idea but a plan of attack, a series of questions for cross-examination.

  ‘How do you feel about this case, Mr Rumpole?’ Charlie looked up at me doubtfully.

  ‘Feel? Like stout Cortez.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘When with the eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific – and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise.’

  ‘You got me there, Mr Rumpole.’

  ‘Keats! It’s been an autumn of Keats. “To cease upon the midnight with no pain.” Quite enough of that! We’re recovered now. Rumpole resurrected!’

  ‘You reckon we’ve got a chance, Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘A tiny chance perhaps. Like a small electric light bulb in a dark cell. More chance than mitigating.’

  I sat down again at the table and started to explain the position as clearly as I could to Charlie. ‘I can’t tell you, understand that? can’t put you in the box and let the jury have your excellent ecord as a safe blower read out to them. But I want your express instructions…’

  ‘You ‘ave them, Mr Rumpole. What you got in mind?’

  ‘I think I ought to ask Inspector “Dirty” Dickerson a few mpertinent questions. So this is what I’m going to ask him, ith your kind permission…’

  It was then that I got Charlie Wheeler’s instructions to do xactly as I did in his trial. I think, in view of the following isastrous happenings, I should make that perfectly clear.

  D.I. Dickerson was a large, smiling man with greying hair which covered the top of his ears and a bright and expensive silk tie and matching handkerchief. He looked the sort of man who would be the life and soul of the office party, or the man on the package holiday to Ibiza you would be most careful to move away from. He was holding his prized possession, a small plastic bag containing a minute quantity of gelignite, labelled ‘Exhibit i’, as Erskine-Brown came to the end of his questions.

  ‘We have heard from the expert that Wheeler’s fingerprints are on that small piece of gelignite. Where did you find it?’

  ‘Beside the safe at the scene of the crime, my Lord,’ Dickerson said respectfully.

  ‘In the Dartford post office?’ the Bull weighed in.

  ‘Yes, my Lord.’

  ‘Thank you, Detective Inspector.’ Erskine-Brown sat down, his duty done.

  ‘Have you any questions to ask the Detective Inspector?’ the judge dared me.

  ‘Just a few, my Lord.’ Rumpole rose slowly to his feet.

  ‘Well then, get on with it.’ The judge was treating the defence with his usual courtesy.

  ‘Do you know a man named Harris, Harry Harris?’

  There are two ways to cross-examine, depending on the witness and your mood. You either start off politely, asking a series of questions to which the answer will be ‘Yes’, gaining the subject’s confidence and agreement, leading him gently up the garden path to a carefully planned booby trap, or you go in like an old warship, with all guns blazing. I had decided that the Bull’s Court at the Bailey was no place for subtlety and I went in for the broadside approach. The D.I. looked somewhat taken aback, but answered with his usual bonhomie.

  ‘I know a Harry Harris.’

  ‘A friend of Charlie Wheeler’s?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How would you describe him?’

  ‘You want me to describe him?’

  ‘Mr Rumpole has asked the questions. The risk is on his head.’ The Bull’s image was imprecise but his knowing leer at the jury made his meaning plain.

  ‘Harris is a minor villain, sir. Round the Dartford area.’

  ‘You asked for it, Mr Rumpole,’ the judge was delighted and the jury smiled. I battled on, ignoring the barracking from the bench.

  ‘Have you had any financial dealings with Harris?’

  ‘My Lord.’ As if I hadn’t got enough opponents, Erskine-Brown rose to interrupt.

  ‘Erskine-Brown,’ I muttered, ‘Will you not interrupt my cross-examination!’

  ‘Can I ask how questions about this man Harris are in any way relevant to the case of Wheeler?’ Erskine-Brown persisted, with a glare of judicial encouragement.

  ‘Quite right,’ the judge challenged me. ‘What’s this man Harris got to do with this case?’

  ‘Not this case, my Lord, but…’

  ‘Then your question is entirely irrelevant.’ A simple mind, that of the Bull.

  ‘My Lord, when the character of this officer is called into question…’

  ‘Oh, really? Are you attacking this officer’s character?’ The judge tried a voice of dangerous courtesy, but only succeeded in sounding ordinarily rude.

  ‘I wasn’t offering him a gold medal.’ At this the jury laughed. Bullingham let that one go and then said:

  ‘I can only assume you’re making this attack on instructions.’

  ‘I take full responsibility, my Lord.’
/>   ‘I see your learned leader isn’t in Court.’

  ‘Unfortunately, my Lord, he is struck down by the flu.’ I tried to sound depressed. Bullingham came insultingly to my aid:

  ‘Perhaps you’d like me to adjourn this cross-examination. So it can be done properly. By learned leading counsel?’

  ‘Thank you, my Lord. I am quite happy to proceed.’ I had no time to lose, for God’s sake! Guthrie’s flu might be better by the next day. The judge tried a last attack.

  ‘I hope you are not making this suggestion without being in a position to call Harris?’

  I looked round the Court, and, at this moment my good angel Philbeam came bursting in through the swing doors. I put my stake on an even chance and said, ‘Certainly I can call him.’

  At this point the witness nobly volunteered to answer my questions, however objectionable they might be, and I beckoned Philbeam to my side. The news was not good. Harris’s sister had been contacted, but hadn’t heard of her brother for two years. Philbeam whispered:

  ‘Shall I keep trying?’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ I whispered back, and then straightened to hear D.I. Dickerson tell the judge that he never had any financial dealings of any sort with Harris. The Bull wrote this down carefully and said:

  ‘Very well. Mr Rumpole has his answer, although it probably wasn’t the one he wanted.’ With this judge the rapier was always replaced by the bludgeon. ‘Do you want to try your luck with any more questions, Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘Just one or two, my Lord. Detective Inspector. When Charlie Wheeler was in the Dartford Nick…’

  ‘Where?’ the judge frowned.

  ‘In the police cells. At Dartford Police Station,’ I translated politely.

  ‘There is such a thing as plain English, Mr Rumpole. Just as well to use it.’ Bullingham said that to me. I had no time to lose my temper with him and I was off in pursuit of the D.I.

  ‘Did you ever on any occasion at Dartford Police Station shake hands with Charlie Wheeler?’

  There was a moment’s hesitation, and the witness put his big hands in his jacket pockets.

  ‘Is my English plain enough for you?’