The First Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  She was standing in her cell, totally calm.

  ‘This is the bad part, isn’t it? Like waiting for the notices.’

  I sat down at the table with my notebook, unscrewed my fountain pen.

  ‘I had better think of what to say if they find you guilty of manslaughter. I think I’ve got the facts for mitigation, but I’d just like to get the history clear. You’d started this theatrical company together?’

  ‘It was my money. Every bloody penny of it.’ I looked up in some surprise. The hard, tough note was there in her voice; her face was set in a look which was something like hatred.

  ‘I don’t think we need go into the financial side.’ I tried to stop her, but she went on:

  ‘Do you know what that idiotic manager we had then did? He gave G.P. a contract worth fifty per cent of the profits: for an investment of nothing and a talent which stopped short of being able to pour out a drink and say a line at the same time. Anyway I never paid his percentage.’ She smiled then, it was quite humourless. ‘Won’t need to say that, will we?’

  ‘No.’ I said firmly.

  ‘Fifty per cent of ten years’ work! He reckoned he was owed around twenty thousand pounds. He was going to sue us and bankrupt the company…’

  ‘I don’t think you need to tell me any more.’ I screwed the top back on my fountain pen. Perhaps she had told me too much already.

  ‘So don’t feel too badly, will you? If we’re not a hit.’

  I stood up and pulled out my watch. Suddenly I felt an urgent need to get out of the cell.

  ‘They should be back soon now.’

  ‘It’s all a game to you, isn’t it?’ She sounded unaccountably bitter. ‘All a wonderful game of “let’s pretend”. The costume. The bows. The little jokes. The onion at the end.’

  ‘The onion?’

  ‘An old music-hall expression. For what makes the audience cry. Oh, I was quite prepared to go along with it. To wear the make-up.’

  ‘You didn’t wear any make-up.’

  ‘I know, that was brilliant of you. You’re a marvellous performer, Mr Rumpole. Don’t let anyone tell you different.’

  ‘It’s not a question of performance.’ I couldn’t have that.

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course it isn’t! The jury are now weighing the facts. Doing their best to discover where the truth lies.’ I looked at her. Her face gave nothing away.

  ‘Or at least deciding if the prosecution has proved its case.’

  Suddenly, quite unexpectedly, she yawned, she moved away from me, as though I bored her.

  ‘Oh, I’m tired. Worn out. With so much acting. I tell you, in the theatre we haven’t got time for all that. We’ve got our livings to get.’

  The woman prison officer came in.

  ‘I think they want you upstairs now. Ready, dear?’

  When Maggie spoke again her voice was low, gentle and wonderfully polite.

  ‘Yes thanks, Elsie. I’m quite ready now.’

  ‘Will your foreman please stand? Mr Foreman. Have you reached a verdict on which you are all agreed?’

  ‘Not guilty, my Lord.’

  Four words that usually set the Rumpole ears tingling with delight and the chest to swell with pleasure. Why was it, that at the end of what was no doubt a remarkable win, a famous victory even, I felt such doubt and depression? I told myself that I was not the judge of fact, that the jury had clearly not been satisfied and that the prosecution had not proved its case. I did the well-known shift of responsibility which is the advocate’s perpetual comfort, but I went out of Court unelated. In the entrance hall I saw Maggie leaving, she didn’t turn back to speak to me, and I saw that she was holding the hand of Mr Alan Copeland. Such congratulations as I received came from the diminutive Derwent.

  ‘Triumph. My dear, a total triumph.’

  ‘You told me she was truthful…’ I looked at him.

  ‘I meant her acting. That’s quite truthful. Not to be faulted. That’s all I meant.’

  At which he made his exit and my Learned Friend for the Prosecution came sailing up, beaming with the joy of reconciliation.

  ‘Well. Congratulations, Rumpole. That was a bloody good win!’

  ‘Was it? I hope so.’

  ‘Coming to the Circuit dinner tonight?’

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘You’ll enjoy it! We’ve got some pretty decent claret in the mess.’

  If my judgement hadn’t been weakened by exhaustion I would never have agreed to the Circuit dinner which took place, as I feared, in a private room at the Majestic Hotel. All the gang were there, Skelton J., Pierce, Roach and my one-time leader Jarvis Allen, Q.c. The food was indifferent, the claret was bad, and when the port was passed an elderly silk who they called ‘Mr Senior’ in deference to his position as Leader of the Circuit, banged the table with the handle of his knife and addressed young Roach at the other end of the table.

  ‘Mr Junior, in the matter of Rumpole.’

  ‘Mr Senior,’ Roach produced a scribble on a menu. ‘I will read the indictment.’

  I realized then that I had been tricked, ambushed, made to give myself up to the tender mercies of this savage Northerly Circuit. Rumpole was on trial, there was nothing to do but drink all the available port and put up with it.

  ‘Count One,’ Roach read it out. ‘Deserting his learned leader in his hour of need. That is to say on the occasion of his leader having been given the sack. Particulars of Offence…’

  ‘Mr Senior. Have five minutes elapsed?’ Allen asked.

  ‘Five minutes having elapsed since the loyal toast, you may now smoke.’

  Tommy Pierce lit a large cigar. I lit a small one. Mr Junior Roach continued to intone.

  ‘The said Rumpole did add considerably to the seriousness of the offence by proceeding to win in the absence of his learned leader.’

  ‘Mr Junior. Has Rumpole anything to say by way of mitigation?’

  ‘Rumpole.’ Roach took out his watch, clearly there was a time limit in speeches. I rose to express my deepest thoughts, loosened by the gentle action of the port.

  ‘The show had to go on!’

  ‘What? What did Rumpole say?’ Mr Justice Skelton seemed to have some difficulty in hearing.

  ‘Sometimes. I must admit, sometimes… I wonder why.’ I went on, ‘What sort of show is it exactly? Have you considered what we are doing to our clients?’

  ‘Has that port got stuck to the table?’ Allen sounded plaintive and the port moved towards him.

  ‘What are we doing to them?’ I warmed to my work. ‘Seeing they wear ties, and hats, keep their hands out of their pockets, keep their voices up, call the judge “my Lord”. Generally behave like grocers at a funeral. Whoever they may be.’

  ‘One minute,’ said Roach, the time-keeper.

  ‘What do we tell them? Look respectable! Look suitably serious! Swear on the Bible! Say nothing which might upset a jury of lay-preachers, look enormously grateful for the trouble everyone’s taking before they bang you up in the nick! What do we find out about our clients in all these trials, do we ever get a fleeting glimpse of the truth? Do we…? Or do we put a hat on the truth. And a tie. And a serious expression. To please the jury and My Lord the Judge?’ I looked round the table. ‘Do you ever worry about that at all? Do you ever?’

  ‘Time’s up!’ said Roach, and I sat down heavily.

  ‘All right. Quite all right. The performance is over.’

  Mr Senior swigged down port and proceeded to judgement.

  ‘Rumpole’s mitigation has, of course, merely added to the gravity of the offence. Rumpole, at your age and with your experience at the Bar you should have been proud to get the sack, and your further conduct in winning shows a total disregard for the feelings of an extremely sensitive silk. The least sentence I can pass is a fine of twelve bottles of claret. Have you a chequebook on you?’

  So I had no choice but to pull out a chequebook and start to write. The penalty, apparently, was w
orth thirty-six quid.

  ‘Members of the Mess will now entertain the company in song,’ Roach announced to a rattle of applause.

  ‘Tommy!’ Allen shouted.

  ‘No. Really…’ The learned prosecutor was modest but was prevailed upon by cries of ‘Come along, Tommy! Let’s have it. “The Road to Mandalay”… etc. etc’

  ‘I’m looking forward to this,’ said Mr Justice Skelton, who was apparently easily entertained. As I gave my cheque to young Roach, the stout leading Counsel for the Crown rose and started in a light baritone.

  ‘On the Road to Mandalay…

  Where the old Flotilla lay…

  And the dawn came up like thunder

  Out of China ‘cross the Bay!’

  Or words to the like effect. I was not really listening. I’d had quite enough of show business.

  Rumpole and the Fascist Beast

  ‘This is where I came in,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen it all before.’

  I was sitting one Sunday in front of the gas fire at Casa Rumpole (2.5B Froxbury Court, Gloucester Road). I was wearing a comfortable old cardigan and carpet slippers, and sipping a G and T but the news in the paper wasn’t comforting, moreover it was unpleasantly familiar to anyone who made a tentative entrance into life before the First World War, and was therefore in time to hear Hitler screeching on the wireless and see newsreels of jackboots marching into Czechoslovakia in preparation for the next.

  ‘ “BRITAIN FIRST” Rally in Brixton. Clashes with New Socialist Party. Candidate arrested.’ As I said to She Who Must Be Obeyed as she came in through the front door with her mackintosh and shopping string-bag weighed down with a few unappetizing-looking goodies, it was all exactly like the bad old days.

  ‘Rumpole! It’s good news,’ said Hilda. ‘I’ve got a tin of mulligatawny soup.’

  ‘Congratulations.’ I went on reading the paper. ‘Fascist marches in London. I know exactly what happens next.’

  My wife took her string-bag into the kitchen, and left the door open as she unpacked her shopping. I shouted my predictions through to her.

  ‘Next comes gas masks. Call-up. The R.A.F. groundstaff.’ Surely I was getting a bit old for the R.A.F. groundstaff.

  ‘And I managed to find some frozen beefburgers!’ She seemed very proud of her Sunday shopping.

  ‘Then they’ll give us dried eggs. Whale steak. J. B. Priestley on the wireless. Songs by Dame Vera Lynn.’ It was an appallingprospect. I dropped the paper and wandered into the kitchen to search out another bottle of gin.

  ‘I had to go all the way down to the tube station.’ Hilda was pouring tinned mulligatawny soup into a saucepan. I lit a paper spill in the gas and applied it to the end of a small cigar.

  ‘I couldn’t stand the whole damn programme round again.’ I puffed out smoke. ‘I suppose they’ve got a gramophone record of Churchill’s speeches.’

  ‘Hardly a white face to be seen. Down by the tube station.’ Oh dear. ‘She’ does come out with these embarrassing remarks occasionally.

  ‘Were you looking for one? I thought you were looking for mulligatawny soup.’

  ‘My Aunt Fran would turn in her grave if she could see London nowadays.’ My wife accepted a large G and T to help her through stirring the tin of soup.

  ‘As I recall it, your Aunt Fran was married to your Uncle Percy Wystan, late Deputy Controller of the Punjabi Railway,’ I reminded her.

  ‘That is exactly what I mean!’

  ‘She spent her life running up curries and kedgerees, supervising the punka-wallah, organizing tea parties on the backs of elephants. Your Aunt Fran would have been totally at home round our tube station.’ I looked at Hilda and started to cross-examine her, a daring thing to do to She Who Must Be Obeyed. ‘You didn’t get the supper at Chatterjee’s General Stores by any chance?’

  ‘Everywhere else was shut.’ The witness was on the defensive.

  ‘You don’t grudge Mr Chatterjee a little hospitality, do you? I mean in return for a couple of centuries, putting up with your Aunt Fran?’

  Cornered, the witness had to resort to ‘Don’t be so silly Rum-pole’, a sure sign of defeat. I reckoned the score was fifteen-love to me in the first set of the evening.

  I had for some time considered taking a pupil, someone to look up law whenever that commodity was needed, or to run round and adjourn things. Perhaps I felt the need of someone to talk to since my old friend George Frobisher had accepted a minor judgeship, and gone off to a Circus Bench somewhere in the general direction of Luton. Our Inn sent us round a list of names of those anxious to secure a pupillage, together with their life stories (Grimsby Grammar, Captain of Debates, or Eton and Oriel, doesn’t wish to be connected with divorce or crime, warmly recommended by the Master of the Rolls). I passed by various candidates until I came to the name of Mr Lutaf Ali Khan. I rang the Inn and we arranged an appointment at my Chambers for 9.30 one morning. If Mr Ali Khan was to turn out to be anything like Mr Chatterjee, Hilda’s useful grocer, he would be inclined, I thought, to work industriously, Sunday afternoons included.

  When Mr Khan duly arrived at Chambers I was in conference. He went into the clerk’s room and found the usual scene of chaos and overcrowding. Erskine-Brown was collecting papers and grumbling to our clerk Henry about the slow arrival of his fees, and Hoskins, the middle-aged father of four hungry daughters, was having a quick look at a ‘break and enter’ before rushing off to Inner London. Uncle Tom was looking through the obituaries in the Daily Telegraph. Dianne and Angela, our new assistant typist, were clattering away and Miss Trant, our budding Portia, was having a glance at a matrimonial. I rely on her account for the reception of Mr Khan in our clerk’s room. He announced himself as Mr Lutaf Ali Khan and said he had an urgent appointment with my learned self. When Henry promised to ring through to my room Mr Khan beamed at them. He was eager and rather young.

  ‘Thrilling! This is thrilling to have a chance of pupillage in the Chambers of Horace Rumpole, the legend of the Criminal Bar of England.’ Uncle Tom caught his eye.

  ‘And you, of course, sir. I will have a lot to learn from a person of your age and seniority. I expect to pick up hundreds of red-hot tips, from the whole lot of you!’

  ‘We’ll do our best to help.’ Miss Trant didn’t notice a particularly warm welcome from the rest of Chambers, so she advanced on him with a compensating smile.

  ‘Thank you. You are on the secretarial side?’

  ‘Miss Trant is a very rising young barrister,’ Uncle Tom told him.

  ‘The great fraternity of the Bar! Truly it embraces all sorts and conditions of men… and women also,’ Mr Khan said enthusiastically and then Henry rose from his desk to lead him into the presence. When he had gone Uncle Tom spoke to Miss Trant in a tone of some bewilderment.

  ‘I don’t see very clearly. It gets dark in the morning, but was that fellow some sort of Babu?’

  ‘Indian, I’d say.’ Hoskins gave his expert opinion.

  ‘I suppose he’ll pick our brains here and then go out and become Prime Minister of somewhere. Do very nicely out of it.’ Uncle Tom sniffed behind the Daily Telegraph.

  ‘What on earth does Rumpole think he’s up to?’ Erskine-Brown wondered, and Miss Trant gave him a look of stern disapproval.

  ‘My old Uncle Jarvis had that fellow Gandhi in his Chambers as a pupil.’ Uncle Tom was off on one of his reminiscences. ‘He wore a bowler hat in those days apparently, not a loin cloth. I mean Gandhi didn’t wear a loin cloth, not my Uncle Jarvis, of course.’

  ‘What do you mean? What’s Rumpole up to?’ Miss Trant asked Erskine-Brown in a challenging manner.

  ‘Taking a pupil without going through the pupillage committee in Chambers.’

  ‘You mean taking that pupil, don’t you?’

  At which moment, Miss Trant told me, she slammed out of the clerk’s room and started off down the passage. Erskine-Brown set off in pursuit, he was after all, as you may remember, her fiancé.

  ‘For all I know wha
tever-his-name-is Khan may be a perfectly sound fellow… but…’

  ‘But! But?’

  ‘I mean…’

  ‘I know perfectly well what you mean,’ said Miss Trant, with an anger that did her the greatest credit.

  ‘Don’t forget Un Ballo In Maschera.’ Claude Erskine-Brown was an Opera Buff who intended, that night, to take his inamorata to Covent Garden. ‘It’s curtain-up at 7.30.’

  ‘Stuff Un Ballo In MascheraV said the admirable Miss Trant and slammed into her room.

  All this while I was in conference on a matter which was new to me, an alleged offence under the Race Relations Act, arising out of those very political events which had, on Sunday afternoon, made me feel that they were winding back the film of history so that we should find ourselves, in the fullness of time, reliving World War Two. My client, Captain Rex Parkin, late of the Pay Corps, was a prospective ‘Britain First’ parliamentary candidate, one, I profoundly hoped, whose deposit was no way safe. He had appeared at his party’s rally in Brixton and made a regrettable speech in which, so ran the police evidence, he had recommended repatriation of all migrants (‘We want our tinted brothers to be thoroughly at home. In their homes, my friends, not in ours’) and he ended his speech with the gnomic utterance, ‘The answer, my friends, is… Blood.’

  Someone at the meeting broke the window of an Indian grocer’s shop and the gallant Captain was arrested before he, in his turn, was attacked by the New Socialists, who had armed themselves with chairs, sticks and other mementoes from a nearby building site for the occasion.

  Captain Parkin was a middle-aged humourless man who wore a neat blue suit, a Pay Corps tie, a sparse sandy moustache and the expression of someone prepared to die for his cause. He sat bolt upright on a hard chair whilst young Sim-monds, an articled clerk from Parkin’s solicitors’ office, wallowed in my client’s armchair, looked puzzled and lost documents. When Mr Lutaf AH Khan was shown into the room by Henry there was such a sharp disapproving intake of breath from Captain Parkin that I couldn’t resist taking the eager young Pakistani there and then.