The First Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  ‘I suppose it could, sir.’

  ‘By the true murderer, whoever it was, when he was running away?’

  The usher was beside me, handing me the fruit of Mr Justice Prestcold’s labours; a note to counsel which read, ‘Dear Rum-pole. Your bands are falling down and showing your collar-stud. No doubt you would wish to adjust accordingly.’ What was this, a murder trial, or a bloody fashion parade? I crumpled the note, gave the bands a quick shove in a northerly direction, and went back to work.

  ‘Detective Inspector. We’ve heard Tosher MacBride described as a rent collector.’

  ‘Is there to be an attack on the dead man’s character, Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘I don’t know, my Lord. I suppose there are charming rent collectors, just as there are absolute darlings from the Income Tax.’

  Laughter in Court, from which the judge remained aloof.

  ‘Where did he collect rents?’

  ‘Business premises.’ The officer was non-committal.

  ‘What sort of business premises?’

  ‘Cafés, my Lord. Pubs. Minicab offices.’

  ‘And if the rent wasn’t paid, do you know what remedies were taken?’

  ‘I assume proceedings were taken in the County Court.’ The judge sounded totally bored by this line of cross-examination.

  ‘Alas, my Lord, some people have no legal training. If the rents weren’t paid, sometimes those minicab offices caught on fire, didn’t they Detective Inspector?’

  ‘Sometimes they did.’ I told you, he was a very fair officer.

  ‘To put it bluntly, that “good man” Tosher MacBride was a collector for a protection racket.’

  ‘Well, officer, was he?’ said Prestcold, more in sorrow than in anger.

  ‘Yes, my Lord. I think he was.’

  For the first time I felt I was forcing the judge to look in a different direction, and see the case from a new angle. I rubbed in the point. ‘And if he’d been sticking to the money he’d collected, that might have provided a strong motive for murder by someone other than my client? Stronger than a few unkind words about an impediment in his speech?’

  ‘Mr Rumpole, isn’t that a question for the jury?’ I looked at the jury then, they were all alive and even listening, and I con gratulated the old darling on the bench.

  ‘You’re right! It is, my Lord. And for no one else in this Court!’

  I thought it was effective, perhaps too effective for Leslie Delgardo, who stood up and left Court with a clatter. The swing doors banged to after him.

  By precipitously leaving Court, Leslie Delgardo had missed the best turn on the bill, my double act with Mr Entwhistle, the forensic expert, an old friend and a foeman worthy of my steel. ‘Mr Entwhistle, as a scientific officer I think you’ve lived with bloodstains as long as I have?’

  ‘Almost.’

  The jury smiled, they were warming to Rumpole.

  ‘And you have all the clothes my client was wearing that night. Have you examined the pockets?’

  ‘I have, my Lord.’ Entwhistle bowed to the judge over a heap of Petey’s clothing.

  ‘And there are no bloodstains in any of the pockets?’

  ‘There are none.’

  ‘So there can be no question of a bloodstained knife having been hidden in a pocket whilst my client cradled the deceased in his arms?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Entwhistle smiled discreetly.

  ‘You find that a funny suggestion?’

  ‘Yes I do. The idea’s ridiculous.’

  ‘You may be interested to know that it’s on that ridiculous idea the prosecution are basing their case.’

  Painswick was on his feet with a well-justified moan. ‘My Lord…’

  ‘Yes. That was a quite improper observation, Mr Rumpole.’

  ‘Then I pass from it rapidly, my Lord.’ No point in wasting time with him, my business was with Entwhistle. ‘Had Mr Del-gardo stabbed the deceased, you would expect a spray of blood over a wide area of clothing?’

  ‘You might have found that.’

  ‘With small drops spattered from a forceful blow?’

  ‘I should have expected so.’

  ‘But you found nothing like it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you might have expected blood near the area of the cuff of the coat or the shirt?’

  ‘Most probably.’

  ‘In fact, all we have is a smear or soaked patch in the crook of the arm.’

  Mr Entwhistle picked up the overcoat, looked and, of course, admitted it.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Totally consistent with my client having merely put an arm round the deceased when he lay bleeding on the pavement.’

  ‘Not inconsistent.’

  ‘A double negative! The last refuge of an expert witness who doesn’t want to commit himself. Does “not inconsistent” translated into plain English mean consistent, Mr Entwhistle?’

  I could have kissed old Entwhistle on the rimless specs when he turned to the jury and said, ‘Yes, it does.’

  So when I got outside and saw Leslie Delgardo sitting on a bench chewing the end of a cigar, I thought he would wish to congratulate me. I didn’t think of a gold watch, or a crinkly fiver, but at least a few warm words of encouragement. So I was surprised when he said, in a tone of deep hostility, ‘What’re you playing at, Mr Rumpole? Why didn’t you use Bernie’s conviction?’

  ‘You really want to know?’ Other members of the family were thronging about us, Basil and a matronly person in a mink coat, dabbing her eye make-up with a minute lace hanky.

  ‘We all want to know,’ said Basil, ‘all the family.’

  ‘I know I’m only the boy’s mother,’ sobbed the lady in mink.

  ‘Don’t underestimate yourself madam,’ I reassured her. ‘You’ve bred three sons who have given employment to the legal profession.’ Then I started to explain. ‘Point one. I spent all this trial trying to keep your brother’s record out. If I put in the convictions of a prosecution witness the jury’ll get to know about Peter’s stretch for unlawful wounding, back in 1970. You want that?’

  ‘We thought it was helpful,’ Basil grumbled.

  ‘Did you?’ I looked at him. ‘I’m sure you did. Well, point two, the perjury was forging a passport application. I’ve already checked it. And point three.’

  ‘Point three, Mr Rumpole. You’re sacked.’ Leslie’s voice was high with anger. I felt grateful we weren’t in a turning off Stepney High Street on a dark night.

  ‘May I ask why?’

  ‘You got that judge’s back up proper. He’ll do for Petey. Good afternoon, Mr Rumpole. I’m taking you off the case.’

  ‘I don’t think you can do that.’ He’d started to walk away, but now turned back with a look of extreme hostility.

  ‘Oh don’t you?’

  ‘The only person who can take me off this case is my client, Mr Peter Delgardo. Come along Nooks, we’d better go down to the cells.’

  ‘Your brother wants to sack me.’

  Petey looked at me with his usual lack of understanding. Nooks acted as a smooth interpreter.

  ‘The position is, Mr Leslie Delgardo is a little perturbed at the course this case is taking.’

  ‘Mr Leslie Delgardo isn’t my client,’ I reminded Peter.

  ‘He thinks we’ve got on the wrong side of the judge.’

  I was growing impatient. ‘Would he like to point out to me, strictly for my information, the right side of Mr Justice Prest-cold? What does that judge imagine he is? Court correspondent for The Tailor and Cutter? I stamped out my small cigar. ‘Look, Peter, dear old sweetheart. I’ve abandoned the judge. He’ll sum up dead against you. That’s obvious. So let the jury think he’s nothing but a personal anti-pollution programme who shoves air-wick up his nostrils every time he so much as smells a human being and we might have got somewhere.’

  ‘Mr Leslie Delgardo is definitely dissatisfied. This puts me in a very embarrassing position.’ Nooks looked suitably embarrassed.
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  ‘Cheer up, Nooks!’ I smiled at him. ‘Your position’s nothing like so embarrassing as Peter’s.’ Then I concentrated on my client. ‘Well. What’s it going to be? Do I go or stay?’

  Peter began to stammer an answer. It took a long time to come but, when it did, it meant that just one week later, on the day of the Scales of Justice ball, I was making a final speech to the jury in the case of the Queen against Delgardo. I may say that I never saw Leslie, or Basil, or their dear old Mum again.

  ‘Members of the jury, may I call your attention to a man we haven’t seen. He isn’t in the dock. He has never gone into that witness box. I don’t know where he is now. Perhaps he’s tasting the delights of the Costa Brava. Perhaps he’s very near this Court waiting for news. I’ll call him Mr X. Did Mr X employ that “good man” Tosher MacBride to collect money in one of his protection rackets? Had Tosher MacBride betrayed his trust and was he to die for it? So that rainy night, outside the Old Justice pub in Stepney, Mr X waited for Tosher, waited with this knife and, when he saw his unfaithful servant come out of the shadows, he stabbed. Not once. Not twice. But you have heard the evidence. Three times in the neck.’

  The jury was listening enrapt to my final speech; I was stabbing violently downwards with my prop when Prestcold cleared his throat and pointed to his own collar meaningfully. No doubt my stud was winking at him malevolently, so he said, ‘Hm!… Mr Rumpole.’

  I ignored this, no judge alive was going to spoil the climax of my speech, and I could tell that the jury were flattered, not to say delighted, to hear me tell them,

  ‘Of course you are the only judges of fact in this case. But if you find Peter Delgardo guilty, then Mr X will smile, and order up champagne. Because, wherever he is, he will know… he’s safe at last!’

  Frank Prestcold summed up, as I knew he would, dead against Petey. He called the prosecution evidence ‘overwhelming’ and the jury listened politely. They went out just after lunch, and were still out at 6.30 when I telephoned Hilda and told her that I’d change in Chambers, and meet her at the Savoy, and I wanted it clearly understood that I wasn’t dancing. I was just saying this when the usher came out and told me that the jury were back with a verdict.

  After it was all over, I looked round in vain for Nooks. He had apparently gone to join the rest of the Delgardos in the great unknown. So I went down to say ‘good-bye’ to Peter in the cells. He was sitting inert, and staring into the middle distance.

  ‘Cheer up, Peter.’ I sat down beside him. ‘Don’t look so bloody miserable. My God. I don’t know how you’d take it if you’d lost.’

  Peter shook his head, and then said something I didn’t wholly understand. ‘I was… meant to l… l… lose.’

  ‘Who meant you to? The prosecution? Of course. Mr Justice Prestcold? Undoubtedly, Fate. Destiny. The Spirit of the Universe? Not as it turned out. It was written in the stars. “Not Guilty of Murder. And is that the verdict of you all?”.’

  ‘That’s why they ch… chose you. I was meant to lose.’

  What the man said puzzled me. I admit it I found enigmatic. I said, ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘Bloke in the cell while I was w… w… waiting. Used to be a mate of Bernie “Four-Eyes”. He told me why me brothers chose you to defend me.’

  Well I thought I knew why I had been chosen for this important case. I stood up and paced the room.

  ‘No doubt I have a certain reputation around the Temple, although my crown may be a little tarnished; done rather too much indecent assault lately.’

  ‘He heard them round the P… P… Paradise Rooms. Talking about this old feller Rumpole.’ Peter seemed to be pursuing another line of thought.

  ‘The “Penge Bungalow Murder” is in Notable British Trials. I may have become a bit of a household name, at least in criminal circles.’

  ‘They was I… looking for a barrister who’d be sure to lose.’

  ‘After this, I suppose, I may get back to better quality crime.’ The full force of what Peter had said struck me. I looked at him and checked carefully. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘They wanted me defended by someone they could c… count on for a guilty verdict. That’s why they p… p… picked you for it.’

  It was, appallingly, what I thought he’d said.

  ‘They wanted to fit me up with doing Tosher,’ Peter Delgardo went on remorselessly.

  ‘Let me get this clear. Your brothers selected me to nobble your defence?’

  ‘That’s it! You w… was to be the jockey like.’ That pulled me back.

  ‘How did they light on me exactly? Me… Rumpole of the Bailey?’

  My entire life, Sherlock Holmes stories, Law degree, knockabout apprenticeship at Bow Street and Hackney, days of triumph in murder and forgery, down to that day’s swayed jury and notable victory, seemed to be blown away like autumn leaves by what he said. Then, the words came quickly now, tumbling out of him, ‘They heard of an old bloke. Got p… past it. Down to little bits of cases… round the M… M… Magistrates Courts. Bit of a muddler, they heard. With a funny old broken-down hat on him.’

  ‘The hat! Again.’ At least I had bought a bowler.

  ‘So they r… reckoned. You was just the bloke to lose this murder, like.’

  ‘And dear old Nooks. “Shady” Nooks. Did he help them to choose me?’ I suspected it.

  ‘I d… don’t know. I’m n… n… not saying he didn’t.’

  ‘So that’s my reputation!’ I tried to take stock of the situation, and failed abysmally.

  ‘I shouldn’t’ve told you.’ He sounded genuinely apologetic.

  ‘Get Rumpole for the defence - and be sure of a conviction.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s all lies.’ Was he trying to cheer me up? He went on. ‘You hear lots of s… s… stories. In the cells under the Bailey.’

  ‘And in the Bar Mess too. They rubbish your reputation. Small cigar?’ I found a packet and offered him one.

  ‘All right.’

  We lit up. After all, one had to think of the future.

  ‘So where does this leave you, Peter?’ I asked him.

  ‘I’d say, Mr Rumpole, none too s… safe. What about you?’

  I blew out smoke, wondering exactly what I had left.

  ‘Perhaps not all that safe either.’

  I had brought my old dinner jacket up to Chambers and I changed into it there. I had a bottle of rum in the cupboard, and I gave myself a strong drink out of a dusty glass. As I shut the cupboard door, I noticed my old hat, it was on a shelf, gathering dust and seemed to have about it a look of mild reproach. I put it on, and noticed how comfortably it fitted. I dropped the new, hard bowler into the wastepaper basket and went on to the Savoy.

  ‘You look charming, my dear.’ Hilda, resplendent in a long dress, her shoulders dusted with powder, smiled delightedly at Mrs Marigold Featherstone, who was nibbling delicately at an after-dinner mint.

  ‘Really, Rumpole.’ Hilda looked at me, gently rebuking.

  ‘She!’

  ‘She?’ Marigold was mystified, but anxious to join in any joke that might be going.

  ‘Oh “She”,’ I said casually. ‘A woman of fabulous beauty. Written up by H. Rider Haggard.’ A waiter passed and I created a diversion by calling his attention to the fact that the tide had gone out in my glass. Around us prominent members of the legal profession pushed their bulky wives about the parquet like a number of fresh-faced gardeners executing elaborate manoeuvres with wheelbarrows. There were some young persons among them, and I noticed Erskine-Brown, jigging about in solitary rapture somewhere in the vicinity of Miss Phillida Trant. She saw me and gave a quick smile and then she was off circling Erskine-Brown like an obedient planet, which I didn’t consider a fitting occupation for any girl of Miss Trant’s undoubted abilities.

  ‘Your husband’s had a good win.’ Guthrie Featherstone was chatting to Hilda.

  ‘He hasn’t had a “good win”, Guthrie.’ She put the man right. ‘He’s had a triumph!’

/>   ‘Entirely thanks… to my old hat.’Iraised my glass.’Here’stoit!’

  ‘What?’ Little of what Rumpole said made much sense to Marigold.

  ‘My triumph, indeed, my great opportunity, is to be attributed solely to my hat!’ I explained to her, but She couldn’t agree.

  ‘Nonsense!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re talking nonsense,’ She explained to our hosts. ‘He does, you know, from time to time. Rumpole won because he knows so much about blood.’

  ‘Really?’ Featherstone looked at the dancers, no doubt wondering how soon he could steer his beautiful wife off into the throng. But Hilda fixed him with her glittering eye, and went on, much like the ancient mariner.

  ‘You remember Daddy, of course. He used to be your Head of Chambers. Daddy told me. “Rumpole,” Daddy told me. In fact, he told me that on the occasion of the Inns of Court summer ball, which is practically the last dance we went to.’

  ‘Hilda!’ I tried, unsuccessfully, to stem the flow.

  ‘No. I’m going to say this, Horace. Don’t interrupt! “Horace Rumpole,” Daddy told me, “knows more about bloodstains than anyone we’ve got in Chambers.”‘

  I noticed that Marigold had gone a little pale.

  ‘Do stop it, Hilda. You’re putting Marigold off.’

  ‘Don’t you find it,’ Marigold turned to me, ‘well, sordid sometimes?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Crime. Don’t you find it terribly sordid?’

  There was a silence. The music had stopped, and the legal fraternity on the floor clapped sporadically. I saw Erskine-Brown take Miss Trant’s hand.

  ‘Oh, do be careful, Marigold!’ I said. ‘Don’t knock it.’

  ‘I think it must be sordid.’ Marigold patted her lips with her table napkin, removing the last possible trace of after-dinner mint.

  ‘Abolish crime,’ I warned her, ‘and you abolish the very basis of our existence!’

  ‘Oh, come now, Horace!’ Featherstone was smiling at me tolerantly.

  ‘He’s right,’ Hilda told him. ‘Rumpole knows about bloodstains.’

  ‘Abolish crime and we should all vanish.’ I felt a rush of words to the head. ‘All the barristers and solicitors and dock officers and the dear old matron down the Old Bailey who gives aspirins away with sentences of life imprisonment. There’d be no judges, no Lord Chancellor. The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police would have to go out selling encyclopaedias.’ I leant back, grabbed the wine from the bucket, and started to refill all our glasses. ‘Why are we here? Why’ve we got prawn cocktail and duck à I’orange and selections from dear old Oklahoma? All because a few villains down the East End are kind enough to keep us in a regular supply of crime.’