The First Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  Someone in the jury started to laugh. I caught a glimpse of Captain Parkin’s furious face in the dock and bashed on regardless.

  ‘But Captain Rex Parkin, dreaming away amongst his pigeons and his old bound copies of the Boys’ Own Paper, fancies himself an officer of the British Raj. The Union Jack flies daily over his bungalow “Mandalay”, number izB Durbar Lane, and is solemnly lowered every evening at sunset. Hardly appropriate dreams, are they, for the world of today? When you can hardly call out the Bengal Lancers to subdue a spot of trouble on the Ealing frontier.’

  Now I was getting continuous snuffles of laughter from the jury, and behind me the prisoner at the bar was becoming increasingly restless.

  ‘Or ride out by elephant to accept the surrender of the Maharajah of Muswell Hill?’

  Captain Parkin struggled to his feet, but the Dock Officer put a hand on his arm and he subsided. He sat more or less quiet for my peroration.

  ‘Is this a free country, members of the jury? Is this a country where Captain Parkin and other eccentrics can flourish in all their dottiness? I may not agree with what Captain Parkin said… It’s very easy to believe in free speech for those who agree with… But someone, a wise French man, once gave us the answer… “I disagree with everything you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” ‘

  ‘I wish to say…’ My client was standing rigidly to attention, apparently about to make another speech repudiating the charge of dottiness made against him by his learned Counsel.

  ‘Sit down, Rex!’ The words were only whispered but they came quite clearly from ‘Cliff in the back of the Court.

  ‘I wish to say. I obey orders,’ said Captain Parkin, and sat down and kept his mouth shut from then on.

  Judge Jimmie Jamieson’s summing-up came in for a good deal of criticism in the press and on telly, so I’ll just give you the final, ill-considered, passage:

  ‘What the defendant is alleged to have said, members of the jury, is that most of us are happier in our own homes. You may have heard the old saying, “My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart isn’t here”. I myself am a native of another country, members of the jury. I was born in Kirkcudbrightshire. Often amid the bustle of London’s traffic I long for the peace of the little village I came from and where, I hope, in my retirement, to return. I don’t suppose I’d be in the least upset if anyone said that about me. Nor would I take offence if he said I have different blood in my veins. The blood of Clan Jamieson of the Glen! I don’t think I can help you any further, ladies and gentlemen. You will go out and consider your verdict.’

  As I have written elsewhere I regard the time when the jury is out as the worst part of a barrister’s life. Your mouth is dry, your hands sweat, and, whatever the case, all you’r life’s work seems to be on trial and waiting for a verdict. I went up to the Bar Mess on the top floor of the Old Bailey, and barristers in similar circumstances were playing draughts, or drinking coffee, or reading the Sun. I lit a small cigar and Miss Trant came up to me, clearly enraged.

  ‘What did you think of that jury?’

  ‘I thought they seemed moderately sympathetic’ In fact they seemed to be a middle-aged lot of solid citizens from the New Cross area. I saw them nod several times at the judge’s summingup.

  ‘Oh, did you really? Charmed, do you think they were, by

  your call to free speech?’

  ‘I think they saw the point,’ I told her. ‘In fairness.’

  ‘And Jimmie Jamieson wanted to pay his glowing tribute to

  Voltaire, too. For the first time in his life?’

  ‘Miss Trant. You’re becoming eloquent!’ I looked at her with approval. No doubt she had learned her art from me, but she might turn out to be a credit to our Chambers.

  ‘I’ll tell you about that jury,’ she went on remorselessly. ‘I was watching their faces. They just wanted the faintest excuse to let the Fascist beast off. That’s all they want.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Miss Trant. They’ll decide the whole thing perfectly fairly. If they acquit it’ll be because they believe in free speech.’

  ‘Or because they’re a bunch of Paki-bashers?’ I wished she wouldn’t say such things. I was beginning to find them curiously unsettling. I was further unsettled when the jury came back half an hour later with a unanimous verdict ‘Not Guilty’. I went over to congratulate my client, who was being ‘sprung’ from the dock. He looked at me with his strangely colourless eyes, standing like a ram-rod, in his parody of a military bearing, and said something to me which I shall not quickly forget.

  ‘May God forgive you, Mr Rumpole,’ he said. ‘I certainly shan’t.’

  It was some months later that I learned the end of the Captain Rex Parkin story. A plump, grey-haired lady came to see me with young Simmonds, it seemed she wanted to sue certain members of the South-Eastern Committee of the ‘Britain First’ Party for damages for the way they had treated her husband. She asked me if she had a case, and described a meeting of the committee which took place in the living-room of their bungalow ‘Mandalay’ soon after I had secured her husband’s acquittal. ‘Cliff Worseley was there, and Sydney Cox as chairman. I pictured the scene, the sullen faces seated round among the souvenirs of the Empire, the silent Captain Parkin sitting to attention on an upright chair, Mavis Parkin pouring coffee for the group and staying to listen to the debate. I can even imagine the offensive pomposity with which ‘Cliff put the motion.

  ‘In a pitiful attempt to save his own skin, Rex Parkin showed the yellow streak, gentlemen. He allowed his barrister, in a so-called Court of Law, to pour scorn on the party. To make us a laughing stock! At the Old Bailey and in the National Press! Therefore I beg to move, Sydney, as deputy-chairman, and gentlemen, that Rex Parkin having proved himself unworthy of the high office we have entrusted to him, be removed as a prospective candidate of the ‘Britain First’ Party.

  ‘Have you anything to say, Rex?’ the chairman asked him.

  ‘No. No. Nothing to say.’

  The motion it seemed was carried and ‘Cliff Worseley was chosen as the new candidate. He stood and made a short opening address.

  ‘Gentlemen, the need of the party is for more positive, dynamic leadership. The days of the British Raj are over. The gorgeous “Empah” on which the sun never set… is gone. We have work to do, gentlemen, more suited to the desperate needs of this particular moment in time… And in that work we must not be afraid of dirtying our hands in the interests of the party.’

  Mavis watched as her husband got up, stood to attention and left the room. It seemed that he kept his pigeons in an old shed at the bottom of the garden. What his wife didn’t know was that he also kept there an old army revolver and a certain amount of ammunition. She was washing up the coffee cups when she heard a shot, and saw the pigeons fly up in a white cloud. Captain Parkin, having been responsible, as he thought, for my ridiculing his party, had shot himself.

  ‘They always wanted to get rid of him, you see. So they used that as an excuse. And it was Rex’s whole life, his whole life entirely.’

  I had to advise her that, so far as I could see, she had no legal remedy.

  We were having one of our regular Chambers meetings, drinking tea out of Guthrie Featherstone’s bone china tea set in Guthrie Featherstone’s big room, and we were discussing the question of new tenants.

  ‘The departure of George Frobisher to the Circuit Court Bench has left something of a gap in Chambers. Clearly we need a new tenant,’ said the Q.C., M.P. ‘Erskine-Brown will remind us of the candidates. There seem to be two main contenders.’

  ‘Well, we have had an application from Owen Glendour-Owen. He wants to move up to London. He has a very sound practice in Wales. Apparently he’ll bring us a large number of Welsh solicitors.’

  ‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ I grumbled.

  ‘Really, Rumpole!’ I was rebuked.

  ‘I’m sorry. I forgot about the Race Relations Act.’

  ‘I have see
n Glendour-Owen. He seems to me to be an admirable candidate,’ Featherstone told us.

  ‘I do miss George. I can’t see myself revelling in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar with Glendour whatever-you-call-him.’

  ‘The other candidate is Rumpole’s pupil, Lutaf Ali Khan…’

  ‘Now Khan does represent something of a special case…’ Featherstone started innocently, but the eloquent Miss Trant was on her feet at once.

  ‘Oh yes! I was a special case, wasn’t I?’

  ‘Now Philly…’ Erskine-Brown tried vainly to calm her down.

  ‘No. No, I’m going to say this. I was a special case when I joined Chambers. No one wanted a woman. I had this extraordinary difficulty getting hold of the key to the loo. And Albert had to go through the embarrassment of explaining that the barrister he was sending out to the Hendon Court might turn out to be a woman… Now he’ll have to explain that he’s a… a… what do you want me to say… Gentleman from Pakistan…? It doesn’t matter how good we are. We start out with a built-in handicap. That’s what you mean by a special case, isn’t it?’

  ‘As a matter of fact what I meant was,’ Featherstone explained patiently, ‘we’re under a good deal of pressure from the Bar Council. I also happen to know the views of the Lord Chancellor’s office. Keith’s tremendously keen on places being found in Chambers for… overseas applicants.’

  ‘I wouldn’t, speaking for myself, be influenced by the wishes of the Bar Council, or even of the Chancellor’s department.’ Claude Erskine-Brown adopted his most judicial manner and Miss Trant barked at him.

  ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t.’

  ‘I have given a certain amount of paper-work to Khan,’ Erskine-Brown went on, ‘and I happened to be in Bow Street, waiting when I heard him do a prosecution, standing in for Hoskins.’

  ‘You were waiting in Bow Street?’ I was surprised.

  ‘I had a licensing application,’ Erskine-Brown said with dignity.

  ‘Don’t worry, old sweetheart. No one’s accusing you of having been nabbed for soliciting.’

  ‘In my opinion Lutaf Khan would make a useful and hard-working member of Chambers.’ Ignoring me Erskine-Brown concluded his judgement and Miss Trant looked at him, surprised and grateful.

  ‘He also has genuine if not particularly formed musical tastes. He can feel his way round Donizetti but I hope to help him towards Wagner. I’ve promised him an evening at Covent Garden, Philly.’

  ‘He’d probably rather have another afternoon at Bow Street,’ I told him.

  ‘Thank you, Erskine-Brown,’ Featherstone said. ‘Thanks for your contribution. Well now, suppose we take a vote. All those in favour of the candidacy of Owen Glendour-Jones?’

  ‘Is that the darkie?’ Uncle Tom whispered deafeningly.

  In the end we voted to invite my pupil to occupy a permanent seat in Chambers, and I went off to tell the news which I had no doubt, with the present shortage of places in decent sets, would overjoy him.

  When I got to my room, I found Khan working hard and a letter on my desk from the Lord Chancellor’s department. I opened it with somewhat mystified ringers to discover that old Keith Hopner, Guthrie’s friend, wanted to see me as soon as possible at the House of Lords. Was Rumpole tipped for High Office? I put the thought aside and turned to Khan.

  ‘We just had a discussion of your candidacy up at the Chambers meeting and I’m delighted to tell you… You’re in.’

  ‘No?…’ As I thought, the man was overwhelmed.

  ‘Difficult to believe? Not at all. There was just a short discussion… and of course you can go on sharing my room. Keep your desk over there and…’

  ‘This is terribly embarrassing.’

  ‘Not at all. Be glad to have you. Look, if you’d like to start making a note of the deps in this nice little murder…’ I offered him a pile of papers that had just come in.

  ‘The truth is… Oh gosh. I don’t want to offend Mr Feather-stone and I have enjoyed it here. But no. No, I don’t want to stay in these Chambers.’

  ‘You don’t what? I couldn’t believe my ears.

  ‘I am more interested in prosecuting, Mr Rumpole. As you know, I am most keen that some of those terrible fellows get their come-uppance.’

  ‘Yes, but Khan… You can get prosecution briefs here. I don’t do them but…”

  ‘Careless driving, Mr Rumpole. Take and drive away. Small potatoes. I am after the bigger fish.’

  By now I must admit I was feeling ever so slightly miffed.

  ‘Oh yes. And where exactly are you going to put down your nets?’

  ‘I am offered a place in a Treasury Counsel’s Chambers. We have a direct line there, to the Director of Public Prosecutions. With a great respect, it doesn’t seem to me that you fellows have too much contact… with the Powers That Be.’

  I looked at Khan amazed.

  ‘I am sorry, Mr Rumpole. I have admired your way of doing cases… It’s your technique to laugh at them, isn’t it? I suppose that’s what Captain Rex Parkin found a bit too much to bear.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d feel Captain Parkin was a great loss to society!’

  ‘It is what is coming after him. That’s what makes me more nervous.’

  I let that one go, and returned to the business of his future, rather than this country’s.

  ‘It’s your decision, Khan,’ I told him. ‘You must do exactly what you think best. But you’re quite wrong if you think this Chambers has no connection with the Powers That Be.’ I picked up the letter from my desk. ‘I have a letter here. An invitation to the Lord Chancellor’s office… for a little chat.’

  Walking down the Embankment towards the House of Lords, on a sunny day with the seagulls shrieking round Boadicea’s statue, I asked myself who on earth wanted to be a Circus Judge? Poor old George Frobisher did. I pitied him. I really pitied him. Working every day. Ten till four. Paying as you earn. Might as well be a bank manager. Besides which it was a lonely job, being a judge. No friends. No real mates. No companionable jars, at the end of the day, in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar. I also wondered who in hell wanted to judge people. I mean what would I say to them? ‘Mr Bloggs, you will go to prison for two years, and there, but for the Grace of God, Horace Rumpole goes with you’?

  But when I was being led down the red-carpeted corridors of that dream palace, the House of Lords, past the portraits of old Dukes and Marquesses, my thoughts, I must confess, took a somewhat different turn. On the other hand, well, on the other hand… It’s an easy life. I mean, you sit there, without any strain or worry. I mean, you don’t give a damn who wins. And of course there’s a bit of pension attached. Once you get your bottom on the Bench you’re in for a pension. Hilda and I would be glad of a pension, I thought.

  And I might even be able to do a bit of good, as a judge. Show appropriate mercy. ‘Madam, you are more sinned against than sinning. The sentence will be half an hour’s imprisonment which you have already served. You are free to go.’ Look of cold fury on the officer in charge of the case. Being a judge might even provide Rumpole with a certain amount of harmless fun…

  At which point I was shown into the presence of Sir Keith Hopner, o.b.e., a large pink vision in a black jacket and pinstriped trousers, who sat in a leather chair and looked at me smiling.

  ‘I have been thinking it over most carefully, Keith,’ I told him, ‘and I’m not totally opposed to the suggestion.’

  ‘Good. That’s very good. Judge Jamieson said you might be interested…’

  ‘He said that?’ I was surprised he had been discussing my elevation with the primitive Scot.

  ‘Yes. Pity about Jimmie. Pity he put his foot in it.’

  ‘Well, one does have to be rather careful,’ I sounded circumspect, ‘what one says on the Bench.’

  ‘I’m so glad you agree.’

  ‘I’ve thought a lot about it,’ I told him. ‘But the fact is, I get rather tired these days. Not quite so young as I was, of course. Slogging from the Sessions to
the Bailey and out to Chelmsford… Plays hell with the back.’

  ‘I hope you’ll have time for this job,’ Sir Keith was concerned.

  ‘Well, of course. Ten till four. No home-work! Wonderful.’

  ‘Well, it shouldn’t take as long as that.’

  ‘What won’t?’ I was puzzled.

  ‘The little job I have in mind… Let me explain.’

  ‘Well. Of course I can get used to it.’

  ‘I’m sure you can. After all, you were at “Linklater’s” weren’t you?’

  I couldn’t see what my old school had to do with it.

  ‘Yes. But is that a qualification?’

  ‘Didn’t Jimmy Jamieson make it clear?’ Sir Keith explained carefully. ‘We wanted you to take on as Secretary of the “Old Linklater’s” at the Bar society. The O.L.B.S. We dine once a year, you know. In the Connaught Rooms. Come on Rumpole! We old members of school have got to stick together!’

  My look of amazement turned suddenly to laughter. In fact I was still laughing as I walked back to the Temple, along the Embankment. It sounded as if the seagulls were laughing with me.

  Rumpole and the Case of Identity

  ‘Was this the face that launched a thousand ships

  And did the stabbing in the Wandsworth Off-Licence?’

  These lines passed through my mind as I sat working late in Chambers. My wife Mrs Hilda Rumpole, known to me as She Who Must Be Obeyed, had joined some dubious club called the Bar Choral Society and was out in the evenings at this time, indulging her fantasies in rehearsing Handel’s Messiah as Christmas was growing remorselessly near. On my desk was a police identikit photograph of a long-faced young man with bristling sideburns wearing, just in case no one noticed him, a loudly checked red-and-yellow tartan cap. This was the face, unreliably created from snatches of memory and a police artist’s pencil, of the man who entered an off-licence in Wandsworth and stabbed the licensee, a small Irishman named Tosher O’Neil, in the face and arm, making it necessary for repair work to be carried out to the tune of twenty-seven stitches. Also on my desk was a photograph of my client, a young man in his twenties named David Anstey, a driver in the well-known South London mini-cab firm ‘Allbright’s Cars’. Friends and fellow drivers had told the police that David’s sartorial taste ran to an unfortunate red-and-yellow tartan cap (I wondered how many thousand lunatics went to football matches each weekend in such headgear). If the prosecution could prove that this was the face Tosher remembered behind the descending knife, then David was due for a substantial visit to Her Majesty for Grievous Bodily Harm: which would be a pity as he had an excellent work record, was just married to a young wife, and his previous slips ran to driving off other people’s Ford Cortinas, so that knifing his fellow citizens would seem to be something of a new departure.