The First Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  I found my cigars and lit one. I was still searching for some- thing I had concealed in a drawer of the desk. ‘Oh, I am thinking of myself. You see, Hilda, with the insurance policy and what we’d get for this flat, we could get quite a decent cottage and a small-holding.’

  ‘A small-holding! Oh, George. Has he gone quite mad? You wouldn’t know what to do with a small-holding, Rumpole!’

  ‘Dig it and dung it! That’s what I’d do. And grow the stuff I’m rather keen on. Artichokes and marrows and parsnips and, after a few years, perhaps asparagus…’ I had found what I wanted, a seed catalogue, full of fine colour photographs of prize vegetables. ‘Look, Hilda. Do look at this. Please look at it.’

  I took the catalogue over to Hilda and held it open at a particularly succulent row of runner beans. ‘Don’t you think it all looks rather splendid?’

  She shook her head. Hilda Rumpole is incredibly urban, all her life has revolved round Law Courts and barristers’ Chambers; she could only see a row of runners, or even a picking of early peas, through a haze of tears.

  A man, under our system, is innocent until he’s proved guilty, and in the time that elapsed before my case was due to be heard in the Senate, by the tribunal that decides matters of discipline at the Bar, I continued business as usual, although the briefs didn’t exactly fall like summer rain onto the fertile soil of Rumpole’s Chambers. However, I left home earlier than usual, largely to escape the sorrowful and rebuking eyes of She Who Must Be Obeyed, often had breakfast on my own with The Times crossword at Jock’s Café, and lingered late in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar. I was sitting there at a lonely table with my head deep in the Evening Standard when I heard Erskine-Brown’s voice ringing from the bar.

  ‘Vegetables! Did you say Rumpole was going to grow vegetables?’

  ‘He actually bought a catalogue. A list of seeds. With illustrations.’ George sounded like a doctor, announcing the symptoms of a fatal disease.

  ‘How old is Rumpole? Do you think he might be going a bit screwy?’

  ‘Of course not!’ The female voice was quite positive. ‘The first thing I learned at the Bar was, never underestimate the cunning of Rumpole.’ It was the clear and dulcet tone of Miss Tram.

  For a while their voices were drowned in the general clatter of legal anecdotes, journalists’ attempted seductions and cries for claret, which make up the full orchestra of the sound of Pommeroy’s, and then I heard my old friend George booming sadly.

  ‘Obstinate! Rumpole’s incredibly obstinate. You know what he’s saying now? Even if they just suspend him - for a little while. Even if they censure him - he’ll leave the Bar, and he won’t apologize!’

  ‘Then surely one thing’s perfectly clear, George.’ It was Erskine-Brown again.

  What’s that?’

  ‘Rumpole has absolutely no one to blame but himself. I’m going back to Chambers. Come on, Philly. I’ve got to pick up a brief, and then we’re off to the Festival Hall!’

  ‘I’ll catch you up.’

  I sank my head deeper in the ‘Londoner’s Diary’ and then looked up as Miss Trant’s voice came again, from about three feet away. ‘You going to send us up some nice fresh vegetables?’

  As I lowered the paper Miss Trant sat down and joined me uninvited; it was amazing, the confidence she had developed since her baptism of fire in Dock Street. ‘Peas and carrots. New potatoes! Sounds delicious.’

  ‘I have been having doubts.’ I suppose I needed someone to talk to at that moment, life with Hilda being then on the silent side. ‘Looking back at my past life, hanging round Law Courts, I found absolutely no evidence for the proposition that I have green fingers.’

  ‘Neither have I.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My pot plants all go yellow.’

  ‘It’s only that, whenever I visit prisons and see the trusties planting out straight rows of chrysanths in the sooty soil, I think, yes. That’s the job I’ll choose when I’m in the Nick.’

  Then an extraordinary thing happened. Miss Trant actually seemed to lose her temper with me. ‘Really! You’re not going to the Nick. You told me never to underestimate your cunning ̫ like the time when I was prosecuting you and you got me to bore the magistrate with a load of law – and you won the case!’

  ‘Finally tumbled to that, did you?’ I smiled, remembering the occasion.

  ‘Well, if you can think of that in the Dock Street Mag’s Court can’t you deal with this little case of yours in the Senate?’

  ‘I shan’t apologize!’ I told her that quite firmly, and another surprise: she didn’t argue.

  ‘Of course you won’t. Why? Were you thinking of it?’

  ‘Was I?’

  ‘Creeping off to the country. To grow vegetables! It’s like pleading guilty. Well, stuff that for a lark!’ This slip of a girl had the spirit which was lacking in Featherstone, or Hilda, or even George; the courage of an advocate.

  ‘Miss Trant,’ I told her, ‘I remember when you first came to the Chambers, you were a somewhat straight-laced young woman, only interested in law reports.’

  ‘I’ve learned a lot since then.’

  ‘From your pupil master, Erskine-Brown?’

  ‘No, from you! What do you say we ought to have written up in Chambers, in letters a foot high? Never plead guilty!’

  ‘Bricks without bricks, Miss Trant… Bricks without the bloody shadow of a brick. Unless…’

  ‘Well, go on. Unless?’

  ‘Someone could lay their hands on a man called Harry Harris.’

  When she had gone I sat for a while alone. I thought of my hearing before the Senate of the Inns of Court. What would that august body do to me? Change me utterly? I might leave their presence as someone quite new, perhaps even as myself. It seemed to me that I had spent my whole life being other people, safe blowers, fraudsmen, a few rather gentle murderers. I’d had remarkably little time to be Rumpole. Would I have time now; and if I had time, hanging heavy on my hands forever, should I enjoy the experience of being my own, genuine, unadulterated Rumpole at last?

  Jack Pommeroy broke in on this uncomfortable reverie. There was a phone call for me, from Philbeam. He wanted me to stay where I was, he was bringing a man round for a drink, a man called Harry Harris.

  A few nights later Detective Inspector Dickerson was sitting in the corner of his favourite Chinese restaurant (The Garden of Delights, in Bromley) waiting. His eyes lit up when a tall, very thin man with grey hair came in, for had this man not arrived the Detective Inspector was in great danger of having to pay his own bill.

  ‘Harris!’ Dickerson waved a large hand at the empty chair at his table. ‘Where you been keeping yourself, Harry?’

  ‘I got word you wanted to see me, Dickerson.’

  ‘You want to buy me a Chinese, do you? The Ai combination with the sweet and sour lobster.’

  ‘I’d be glad to.’ Harris smiled patiently.

  ‘I thought you would. You been a bit late on your instalments, Harris.’

  ‘Sorry, Dickerson. I’ve been travelling.’ At this point Harris took a bulky envelope out of his breast pocket and handed it to the Detective Inspector, whose manner became, if possible, even more affable.

  ‘Well, leave a forwarding address then. We’ll get on much more nicely if I can bleed you regular. I think,’ Dickerson consulted the wine list, ‘a nice bottle of Chablis’d go well with the sweet and sour.’

  When Harris had ordered the Chablis from the Chinese waiter he broached an awkward subject. ‘Can we forget it now?’ he asked, and his voice had, for the first time, a whining tone.

  ‘Forget what, Harris?’

  ‘A couple of fingerprints on a gold case.’

  There was a long silence and then Dickerson said, ‘You’re so careless, Harris, where you put your fingers. You’re as bad as your friend Charlie Wheeler.’

  ‘I heard you fitted Charlie up nicely too.’

  ‘Fitted him up? Who told you I fitted Charlie up? The jury convicted him
, didn’t they?’ Dickerson sounded cautious, but Harris was laughing.

  ‘Such a nice friendly lad, Charlie. He’d shake hands with anyone!’

  It was a little while before Dickerson joined in the joke, but apparently he found it irresistible. ‘All right, Harris,’ he said through chuckles, ‘Very funny. Very funny indeed. But let it be a lesson to you… If you don’t bleed regular I’ll have your fingers round a lump of jelly. Just the way I did with Charlie.’

  There was an interruption then, when the waiter brought the Chablis. Dickerson turned his attention to the temperature of the bottle. If he hadn’t done so he might have noticed the tip of a small metallic object, hidden in the breast pocket of Harris’s jacket. The reason for that, and for my having a verbatim account of this conversation, is that it was being taken down for posterity, and the subsequent police inquiry, on a small but efficient tape recorder which was later delivered to Philbeam’s car, parked outside the Garden of Delights.

  Whilst I was explaining matters to the Senate the learned friends of No. i Equity Court were holding a Chambers meeting. I am grateful to George Frobisher for supplying me with a note of what was said during my enforced absence. The first item on the agenda was the question of accommodation in Chambers, and was raised by Erskine-Brown.

  ‘It seems likely,’ he began, ‘that we shall soon be having a vacancy in Chambers.’

  ‘What do you mean exactly?’ Miss Trant asked the question.

  ‘Well, Philly. After today’s hearing, Rumpole’s made it quite clear. He intends to leave the Bar and grow vegetables.’

  ‘Vegetables? I hadn’t heard about the vegetables.’ Feather-stone was understandably puzzled.

  ‘Shouldn’t we perhaps wait?’ George suggested, but Erskine-Brown was not to be stopped.

  ‘I think it’s important,’ he said, ‘that we should decide what the policy is. As you know, my own room is impossibly overcrowded. George Frobisher is sharing with Hoskins, which isn’t always convenient when it comes to conferences. I mean, do we take in another young man who could make himself useful and do a bit of paper work and so on?’

  The door was behind him and he didn’t stop immediately when I opened it. ‘Or do we use Rumpole’s room to relieve our acute accommodation problem?’

  ‘Do you want to take over my room, Erskine-Brown?’ I was back from my hearing, from Erskine-Brown’s point of view like bloody Banquo at the dinner party. He stopped in full flow and George said:

  ‘Rumpole! It can’t be over?’

  ‘Ah, Horace.’ Featherstone pulled up a chair for the ghost of Rumpole. ‘You can help us. We’ve just been discussing the possible future.’

  ‘So have I, old darling, and I’ll tell you what. The possible future is rather interesting.’ I lit a small cigar. ‘Remember Detective Inspector Dickerson? He’s suspended, a full inquiry. When he heard that in the Nick, Charlie suddenly remembered giving me instructions. So, we’re applying to the Court of Appeal, with fresh evidence. I was rather thinking of doing it alone - without a leader. I’m sorry, Erskine-Brown. The vegetables have been postponed indefinitely…’

  I left them then, the learned and astonished friends, to sort out their accommodation problems knowing that Rumpole’s room would not be available in the foreseeable future.

  When I got home to the mansions I found Hilda sitting inert by one bar of a sullen electric fire. She looked up as I came into the living room and said, ‘Rumpole. Is it over?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Oh, Rumpole. It’s over!’

  ‘I know, my dear. No peace. No quiet. No just being Rumpole. Above all, no vegetables. I’m doing rather a larky manslaughter tomorrow. At Chelmsford.’

  ‘They let you off?’ I couldn’t imagine why she sounded so surprised. I filled in the details.

  ‘Acquitted. By unanimous verdict. Left the dock without a stain on my character. In fact, I was commended for picking out one of the few rotten apples in that sweet-smelling barrow-load, the Metropolitan Police.’

  ‘Oh, Rumpole!’ It was an astonishing moment. She Who Must Be Obeyed actually had her arms round me, she was holding me tightly, rather as though I were some rare and precious object and not the old White Elephant that continually got in her way.

  ‘Hilda. Hilda, you’re not…?’ I looked down at her agitated head. ‘You weren’t worried, were you?’

  ‘Worried? Well, of course I was worried!’ She broke away and resumed the Royal Manner. ‘Having you at home all day would have been impossible!’

  ‘Yes. Yes. I suppose it would.’

  ‘Now we can go on. Just as before.’

  ‘Just as before. I suppose… it calls for a celebration.’ I went to the drinks table and poured two Booths, taking care not to ruin them with too much tonic.

  ‘Well, just a tiny one. I’ve got dinner to get and…’

  ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Hilda. You know your old Daddy, old C. H. Wystan, was quite wrong.’ I handed her a steadying G. and T.

  ‘Wrong? Why was Daddy wrong?’

  ‘Never plead guilty! Come on, old thing, bottoms up.’

  I raised my glass. Hilda raised hers and we drank to a future which was going to be, thanks to the wonders of tape recording and the fallibility of human nature, as indistinguishable as possible from our past.

  Rumpole and the Heavy Brigade

  The story of my most recent murder, and my defence of Petey Delgardo, the youngest, and perhaps the most appalling of the disagreeable Delgardo brothers, raises several matters which are painful, not to say embarrassing for me to recall. The tale begins with Rumpole’s reputation at its lowest, and although it has now risen somewhat, it has done so for rather curious and not entirely creditable reasons, as you shall hear.

  After the case of the ‘Dartford Post Office Robbery’, which I have recounted in the previous chapter, I noticed a distinct slump in the Rumpole practice. I had emerged, as I thought, triumphant from that encounter with the disciplinary authority; but I suppose I was marked, for a while, as a barrister who had been reported for professional misconduct. The quality of briefs which landed on the Rumpole corner of the mantelpiece in our clerk’s room were deteriorating and I spent a great deal more time pottering round Magistrates Courts or down at Sessions than I did in full flood round the marble halls of the Old Bailey.

  So last winter picture Rumpole in the November of his days, walking in the mists, under the black branches of bare trees to Chambers, and remembering Thomas Hood.

  ‘No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease, No comfortable feel in any member. No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees, No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds, – November!’

  As I walked, I hoped there might be some sort of trivial little brief waiting for me in Chambers. In November an old man’s fancy lightly turned to thoughts of indecent assault, which might bring briefs at London Sessions and before the Uxbridge Justices. (Oh God! Oh, Uxbridge Justices!) I had started forty years ago, defending a charge of unsolicited grope on the Northern Line. And that’s what I was back to. In my end is my beginning.

  I pushed open the door of my Chambers and went into the clerk’s room. There was a buzz of activity, very little of it, I was afraid, centring round the works of Rumpole, but Henry was actually smiling as he sat in his shirt-sleeves at his desk and called out, ‘Mr Rumpole.’

  ‘Stern daughter of the Voice of God! Oh, duty! Oh my learned clerk, what are the orders for today, Henry? Mine not to reason why. Mine but to do or die, before some Court of Summary Jurisdiction.’

  ‘There’s a con. Waiting for you, sir. In a new matter, from Maurice Nooks and Parsley.’

  Henry had mentioned one of the busiest firms of criminal solicitors, who had a reputation of being not too distant from some of their heavily villainous clients. In fact the most active partner was privately known to me as ‘Shady’ Nooks.

  ‘New matter?’

  ‘ “The Stepney Road Stabbing”. Mr Nooks says you�
�ll have read about it in the papers.’

  In fact I had read about it in that great source of legal knowledge, the News of the World. The Delgardo brothers, Leslie and Basil, were a legend in the East End; they gave copiously to charity, they had friends in ‘show business’ and went on holiday with a certain Police Superintendent and a well-known Member of Parliament. They hadn’t been convicted of any offence, although their young brother, Peter Delgardo, had occasionally been in trouble. They ran a club known as the Paradise Rooms, a number of protection rackets, and a seaside home for orphans. They were a devoted family and Leslie and Basil were said to be particularly concerned when their brother Peter was seen by several witnesses kneeling in the street outside a pub called the Old Justice beside the blood-stained body of an East End character known as Tosher MacBride. Later a knife, liberally smeared with blood of MacBride’s group, was found beside the driver’s seat of Peter Delgardo’s elderly Daimler. He was arrested in the Paradise Rooms to which he had apparently fled for protection after the death of Tosher. The case seemed hopeless but the name ‘Delgardo’ made sure it would hit the headlines. I greeted the news that it was coming Rumpole’s way with a low whistle of delight. I took the brief from Henry.

  ‘ “My heart leaps up when 1 behold… a rainbow in the sky.” Or a murder in the offing. I have to admit it.’

  I suddenly thought of the fly in the ointment.

  ‘I suppose they’re giving me a leader – in a murder?’

  ‘They haven’t mentioned a leader,’ Henry seemed puzzled.

  ‘I suppose it’ll be Featherstone. Well, at least it’ll get me back to the Bailey. My proper stamping ground.’

  I moved towards the door, and it was then my clerk Henry mentioned a topic which, as you will see, has a vital part to play in this particular narrative, my hat. Now I am not particularly self-conscious as far as headgear is concerned and the old black Anthony Eden has seen, it must be admitted, a good many years’ service. It has travelled to many far-flung courts in fair weather and foul, it once had a small glowing cigar end dropped in it as it lay under Rumpole’s seat in Pommeroy’s, it once blew off on a windy day in Newington Causeway and was run over by a bicycle. The hat is therefore, it must be admitted, like its owner, scarred and battered by life, no longer in its first youth and in a somewhat collapsed condition. All the same it fits me comfortably and keeps the rain out most of the time. I have grown used to my hat and, in view of our long association, I have a certain affection for it. I was therefore astonished when Henry followed me to the door and, in a lowered tone as if he were warning me that the coppers had called to arrest me, he said,