The First Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  Now you may have noticed that certain theatrical phrases have crept into the foregoing paragraphs. This is not as inappropriate as it may sound, for the brief I was going up to Grimble for on the Inter-City train (a journey about as costly as a trip across the Atlantic) concerned a murder which took place in the Theatre Royal, East Grimble, a place of entertainment leased by the ‘Frere-Hartley Players’: the victim was one G. P. Frere, the leading actor, and my client was his wife known as ‘Maggie Hartley’, co-star and joint director of the company. And as I read on into R. v. Hartley it became clear that the case was like too many of Rumpole’s, a born loser: that is to say that unless we drew a drunken prosecutor or a jury of anarch- ists there seemed no reasonable way in which it might be won.

  One night after the performance, Albert’s instructions told me, the stage-door keeper, a Mr Croft, heard the sound of raised voices and quarrelling from the dressing-room shared by G. P. Frere and his wife Maggie Hartley. Mr Croft was having a late cup of tea in his cubby-hole with a Miss Catherine Hope, a young actress in the company, and they heard two shots fired in quick succession. Mr Croft went along the passage to investigate and opened the dressing-room door. The scene that met his eyes was, to say the least, dramatic.

  It appeared from Mr Croft’s evidence that the dressing-room was in a state of considerable confusion. Clothes were scattered round the room, and chairs overturned. The long mirror which ran down the length of the wall was shattered at the end furthest from the door. Near the door Mr G. P. Frere, wearing a silk dressing-gown, was sitting slumped in a chair, bleeding profusely and already dead. My client was standing half-way down the room still wearing the long white evening-dress she had worn on the stage that night. Her make-up was smudged and in her right hand she held a well-oiled service revolver. A bullet had left this weapon and entered Mr Frere’s body between the third and fourth metacar-pal. In order to make quite sure that her learned Counsel didn’t have things too easy, Maggie Hartley had then opened her mouth and spoken, so said Croft, the following unforgettable words, here transcribed without punctuation.

  ‘I killed him what could I do with him help me.’

  In all subsequent interviews the actress said that she remembered nothing about the quarrel in the dressing-room, the dreadful climax had been blotted from her mind. She was no doubt, and still remained, in a state of shock.

  I was brooding on this hopeless defence when an elderly guard acting the part of an air hostess whispered excitedly into the intercom. ‘We are now arriving at Grimble Central. Grimble Central. Please collect your hand baggage.’ I merged into a place which seemed to be nestling somewhere within the Arctic Circle, the air bit sharply, it was bloody cold, and a blue-nosed Albert was there to meet me.

  *

  ‘After I left your Chambers in disgrace, Mr Rumpole…’

  ‘After a misunderstanding, shall we say.’

  ‘My then wife told me she was disgusted with me. She packed her bags and went to live with her married sister in Enfield.’

  Albert was smiling contentedly, and that was something I could understand. I had just had, h cote de Chez Albert Handy-side, a meal which his handsome, still youngish second wife referred to as tea, but which had all the appurtenances of an excellent cold luncheon with the addition of hot scones, Dundee cake and strawberry jam.

  ‘Bit of luck then really, you getting the petty cash so “confused”.’

  ‘All the same. I do miss the old days clerking for you in the Temple, sir. How are things down South, Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘Down South? Much as usual. Barristers lounging about in the sun. Munching grapes to the lazy sounds of plucked guitars.’

  Mrs Handyside the Second returned to the room with another huge pot of dark brown Indian tea. She replenished the Rumpole cup and Albert and I fell to discussing the tea-table subject of murder and sudden death.

  ‘Of course it’s not the Penge Bungalow Job.’ Albert was referring to my most notable murder and greatest triumph, a case I did at Lewes Assizes alone and without the so-called aid of leading Counsel. ‘But it’s quite a decent little case, sir, in its way. A murder among the showfolk, as they terms them.’

  ‘The showfolk, yes. Definitely worth the detour. There is, of course, one little fly in the otherwise interesting ointment.’

  Albert, knowing me as he did, knew quite well what manner of insect I was referring to. I have never taken silk. I remain, at my advanced age, a ‘junior’ barrister. The brief in R. v. Hartley had only one drawback, it announced that I was to be ‘led’ by a local silk, Mr Jarvis Allen, Q.c. I hated the prospect of this obscure North Country Queen’s Counsel getting all the fun.

  ‘I told my senior partner, sir. I told him straight. Mr Rum-pole’s quite capable of doing this one on his own.’ Albert was suitably apologetic.

  ‘Reminded him, did you? I did the Penge Bungalow Murders alone and without a leader.’

  ‘The senior partner did seem to feel…’

  ‘I know. I’m not on the Lord Chancellor’s guest list. I never get invited to breakfast in knee breeches. It’s not Rumpole, Q.c. Just Rumpole, Queer Customer…’

  ‘Oo I’m sure you’re not,’ Mrs Handyside the Second poured me another comforting cup of concentrated tannin.

  ‘It’s a murder, sir. That’s attracted quite a lot of local attention.’

  ‘And silks go with murder like steak goes with kidney! This Jarvis Allen, Q.C…. Pretty competent sort of man, is he?’

  ‘I’ve only seen him on the Bench…’

  ‘On the what?’

  The Bench seemed no sort of a place to see dedicated defenders.

  ‘Sits as Recorder here. Gave a young tearaway in our office three years for a punch-up at the Grimble United Ground.’

  ‘There’s no particular art involved in getting people into prison, Albert,’ I said severely. ‘How is he at keeping them out?’

  After tea we had a conference fixed up with my leader and client in prison. There was no women’s prison at Grimble, so our client was lodged in a room converted from an unused dispensary in the Hospital Wing of the masculine nick. She seemed older than I had expected as she sat looking composed, almost detached, surrounded by her legal advisers. It was, at that first conference, as though the case concerned someone else, and had not yet engaged her full attention.

  ‘Mrs Frere.’ Jarvis Allen, the learned Q.C. started off. He was a thin, methodical man with rimless glasses and a general rimless appearance. He had made a voluminous note in red, green and blue Biro: it didn’t seem to have given him much cause for hope.

  ‘Our client is known as Maggie Hartley, sir,’ Albert reminded him. ‘In the profession.’

  ‘I think she’d better be known as Mrs Frere. In Court,’ Allen said firmly. ‘Now, Mrs Frere. Tommy Pierce is prosecuting and of course I know him well… and if we went to see the judge, Skelton’s a perfectly reasonable fellow. I think there’s a sporting chance… I’m making no promises, mind you, there’s a sporting chance they might let us plead to manslaughter!’

  He brought the last sentence out triumphantly, like a Christmas present. Jarvis Allen was exercising his remarkable talent for getting people locked up. I lit a small cigar, and said nothing.

  ‘Of course, we’d have to accept manslaughter. I’m sure Mr Rumpole agrees. You agree, don’t you, Rumpole?’ My leader turned to me for support. I gave him little comfort.

  ‘Much more agreeable doing ten years for manslaughter than ten years for murder,’ I said. ‘Is that the choice you’re offering?’

  ‘I don’t know if you’ve read the evidence… Our client was found with the gun in her hand.’ Allen was beginning to get tetchy.

  I thought this over and said, ‘Stupid place to have it. If she’d actually planned a murder.’

  ‘All the same. It leaves us without a defence.’

  ‘Really? Do you think so? I was looking at the statement of Alan Copeland. He is…” I ferreted among the depositions.

  ‘Wha
t they call the “juvenile”, I believe, Mr Rumpole,’ Albert reminded me.

  ‘The “juvenile”, yes.’ I read from Mr Copeland’s statement. ‘I’ve worked with G. P. Frere for three seasons… G.P. drank a good deal. Always interested in some girl in the cast. A new one every year…’

  ‘Jealousy might be a powerful motive, for our client. That’s a two-edged sword, Rumpole.’ Allen was determined to look on the dreary side.

  ‘Two-edged, yes. Most swords are.’ I went on reading. ‘He quarrelled violently with his wife, Maggie Hartley. On one occasion, after the dress rehearsal of The Master Builder, he threw a glass of milk stout in her face in front of the entire company…’

  ‘She had a good deal of provocation, we can put that to the judge. That merely reduces it to manslaughter.’ I was getting bored with my leader’s chatter of manslaughter.

  I gave my bundle of depositions to Albert and stood up, looking at our client to see if she would fit the part I had in mind.

  ‘What you need in a murder is an unlikeable corpse… Then if you can find a likeable defendant… you’re off to the races! Who knows? We might even reduce the crime to innocence.’

  ‘Rumpole.’ Allen had clearly had enough of my hopeless optimism. ‘As I’ve had to tell Mrs Frere very frankly. There is a clear admission of guilt – which is not disputed.’

  ‘What she said to the stage-door man, Mr…’

  ‘Croft.’ Albert supplied the name.

  ‘I killed him, what could I do with him? Help me.’ Allen repeated the most damning evidence with great satisfaction. ‘You’ve read that, at least?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve read it. That’s the trouble.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, the trouble is, I read it. I didn’t hear it. None of us did. And I don’t suppose Mr Croft had it spelled out to him, with all the punctuation.’

  ‘Really, Rumpole. I suppose they make jokes about murder cases in London.’

  I ignored this bit of impertinence and went on to give the Q.C. some unmerited assistance. ‘Suppose she said… Suppose our client said, “I killed him” and then,’ I paused for breath, ‘ “What could I do with him? Help me!”?’

  I saw our client look at me, for the first time. When she spoke her voice, like Cordelia’s, was ever soft, gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman.

  ‘That’s the reading,’ she said. I must admit I was puzzled, and asked for an explanation.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The reading of the line. You can tell them. That’s exactly how I said it.’

  At last, it seemed, we had found something she remembered. I thought it an encouraging sign; but it wasn’t really my business.

  ‘I’m afraid, dear lady,’ I gave her a small bow, ‘I shan’t be able to tell them anything. Who am I, after all, but the ageing juvenile? The reading of the line, as you call it, will have to come from your Q.C, Mr Jarvis Allen, who is playing the lead at the moment.’

  After the conference I gave Albert strict instructions as to how our client was to dress for her starring appearance in the Grimble Assize Court (plain black suit, white blouse, no makeup,ir neat, voice gentle but audible to any O.A.P. with a National Health deaf-aid sitting in the back row of the jury, absolutely no reaction during the prosecution case except for a well-controlled sigh of grief at the mention of her deceased husband) and then I suggested we met later for a visit to the scene of the crime. Her Majesty’s Counsel for the defence had to rush home to write an urgent, and no doubt profitable, opinion on the planning of the new Grimble Gas Works and so was unfortunately unable to join us.

  ‘You go if you like, Rumpole,’ he said as he vanished into a funereal Austin Princess. ‘I can’t see how it’s going to be of the slightest assistance.’

  The Theatre Royal, an ornate but crumbling Edwardian Music Hall, which might once have housed George Formby and Rob Wilton, was bolted and barred. Albert and I stood in the rain and read a torn poster.

  A cat was rubbing itself against the poster. We heard the North Country voice of an elderly man calling ‘Puss… Puss… Bedtime, pussy.’

  The cat went and we followed, round to the corner where the stage-door man, Mr Croft, no doubt, was opening his door and offering a saucer of milk. We made ourselves known as a couple of lawyers and asked for a look at the scene.

  ‘Mr Derwent’s round the front of the house. First door on the right.’

  I moved up the corridor to a door and, opening it, had the unnerving experience of standing on a dimly lit stage. Behind me flapped a canvas balcony, and a view of the Mediterranean. As I wandered forward a voice called me out of the gloom.

  ‘Who is it? Down here, I’m in the Stalls Bar.’

  There was a light somewhere, a long way off. I went down some steps that led to the stalls and felt my way towards the light with Albert blundering after me. At last we reached the open glass door of a small bar, its dark-red walls hung with photographs of the company, and we were in the presence of a little gnome-like man, wearing a bow tie and a double-breasted suit, and that cheerily smiling but really quite expressionless apple-cheeked sort of face you see on some ventriloquist’s dolls. His boot-black hair looked as if it had been dyed. He admitted to Albert that he was Daniel Derwent and at the moment in charge of the Frere-Hartley Players.

  ‘Or what’s left of them. Decimated, that’s what we’ve been! If you’ve come with a two-hander for a couple of rather untalented juveniles, I’d be delighted to put it on. I suppose you are in the business.’

  ‘The business?’ I wondered what business he meant. But I didn’t wonder long.

  ‘Show business. The profession.’

  ‘No… Another… profession altogether.’

  I saw he had been working at a table in the empty bar, which was smothered with papers, bills and receipts.

  ‘Our old manager left us in a state of total confusion,’ Derwent said. ‘And my ear’s out to here answering the telephone.

  ‘The vultures can’t hear of an actor shot in East Grimble but half the Character Men in Spotlight are after me for the job. Well, I’ve told everyone. Nothing’s going to be decided till after Maggie’s trial. We’re not re-opening till then. It wouldn’t seem right, somehow. What other profession?’

  ‘We’re lawyers, Mr Derwent,’ Albert told him. ‘Defending.’

  ‘Maggie’s case?’ Derwent didn’t stop smiling.

  ‘My name’s Handyside of Instructing Solicitors. This is Mr Rumpole from London, junior Counsel for the defence.’

  ‘A London barrister. In the Sticks!’ The little Thespian seemed to find it amusing. ‘Well, Grimble’s hardly a number-one touring date. All the same, I suppose murder’s a draw. Anywhere… Care for a tiny rum?’

  ‘That’s very kind.’ It was bitter cold, the unused theatre seemed to be saving on central heating and I was somewhat sick at heart at the prospect of our defence. A rum would do me no harm at all.

  ‘Drop of orange in it? Or as she comes?’

  ‘As she comes, thank you.’

  ‘I always take a tiny rum, for the chords. Well, we depend on the chords, don’t we, in our professions.’

  Apart from a taste for rum, I didn’t see then what I had in common, professionally or otherwise, with Mr Derwent. I wandered off with my drink in my hand to look at the photographs of the Frere-Hartley Players. As I did so I could hear the theatre-manager chattering to Albert.

  ‘We could have done a bomb tonight. The money we’ve turned away. You couldn’t buy publicity like it.’ Derwent was saying.

  ‘No… No, I don’t suppose you could.’

  ‘Week after week all we get in the Grimble Argus is a little para. “Maggie Hartley took her part well.” And now we’re all over the front page. And we can’t play. It breaks your heart. It does really.’ I heard him freshen his rum with another slug from the bottle. ‘Poor old G.P. could have drawn more money dead than he ever could when he was alive. Well, at least he’s sober tonight, wherever he is.’ />
  ‘The late Mr G. P. Frere was fond of a drink occasionally?’ Albert made use of the probing understatement.

  ‘Not that his performance suffered. He didn’t act any worse when he was drunk.’

  I was looking at a glossy photograph of the late Mr G. P. Frere, taken about ten years ago I should imagine: it showed a man with grey sideburns and an open-necked shirt with a silk scarf round his neck and eyes that were self-consciously quizzical. A man who, despite the passage of the years, was still determined to go on saying ‘Who’s for tennis?’

  ‘What I admired about old G.P.,’ I heard Derwent say, ‘was his selfless concern for others! Never left you with the sole responsibility of entertaining the audience. He’d try to help by upstaging you. Or moving on your laugh line. He once tore up a newspaper all through my long speech in Waiting for Godot… Now you wouldn’t do that, would you, Mr Rumpole? Not in anyone’s long speech. Well, of course not.’

  He had moved, for his last remarks, to a point rather below, but still too close to, my left ear. I was looking at the photographs of a moderately pretty young girl, wearing a seafaring sweater, whose lips were parted as if to suck in a quick draft of ozone when out for a day with the local dinghy club.

  ‘Miss Christine Hope?’ I asked.

  ‘Miss Christine Hopeless I called her.’ This Derwent didn’t seem to have a particularly high opinion of his troupe. ‘God knows what G.P. saw in her. She did that audition speech from St Joan. All breathless and excited… as if she’d just run up four flights of stairs because the angel voices were calling her about a little part in Crossroads. “We could do something with her,” G.P. said. “I know what,” I told him. “Burn her at the stake.’ ”