The First Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  I was also wondering, as I read the papers in R. v. Anstey, how many seconds Tosher had really had to see his attacker’s face; and I was brooding on the horrible difficulty, and total unreliability, of trials decided on identification evidence. Do all the middle-aged ladies who write to ‘Any Answers’ calling for the return of hanging understand that the fallibility of human memory would ensure that we hanged at least a few of the wrong people, or is that a risk we are bound to take in the pursuit of their favourite sport? I was thinking of all these things, and of the greater difficulty in our case: Tosher O’Neil had picked David Anstey out at an identification parade when my unfortunate client wasn’t wearing a cap at all. As I turned back to compare the identikit picture with the undoubted face of the said Anstey there was a brisk knock at my door and the anxious face of Claude Erskine-Brown peered into my room.

  ‘Rumpole… you’re burning the midnight oil?’

  ‘Ah, Erskine-Brown, Claude.’ I decided to use him as a test for man’s power of identification. ‘How would you describe me, exactly?’

  ‘You? Why on earth…?’

  ‘Let’s say I’m getting unsure of my own identity. Describe Rumpole as you saw him go into Chambers this morning. Are you sure you did see me go into Chambers this morning? Can you swear you’re not mistaken?’

  ‘Ofcourse I saw you coming into Chambers. Look, Rumpole…’

  ‘Yes, but how did you know it was me?’ I pressed him.

  ‘Well, it looked like you,’ he answered rudely, ‘short and fat.’

  ‘You mean well filled out. Generously proportioned. Comfortable?’

  ‘No. Fat. Look. There’s something going on down the passage and I don’t like the look of it…’ He moved closer to me in a conspiratorial fashion.

  ‘Are you sure it was me?’ I returned to the subject which was starting to become an obession.

  ‘Of course it was you. It had your muffler. And your dreadful old hat on!’

  ‘My old hat on! Exactly. You recognized the hat!’ I felt that I had hit on a vital clue to David Anstey’s defence.

  ‘Rumpole. Will you come and look at this? It’s a question of Chambers security!’

  Erskine-Brown had become so insistent that I had to humour him. So off we set to the room of our learned Head of Chambers, Guthrie Featherstone, Q.c, m.p. There was a light on, showing a bright streak under the door, so that it seemed that he too was burning the midnight oil. However, Claude Erskine-Brown assured me, the door was locked, and by way of evidence he turned the handle and failed to gain admittance. There did seem to be a small sound, only a whisper like the intake of breath, or perhaps my old ears deceived me and it was the sigh of some building sinking into the ground or the distant thunder of traffic on the Embankment.

  ‘Well, what’s wrong?’ I asked him, for some reason we both seemed to be whispering. ‘Featherstone always locks his door. He’s afraid people’ll come in and read his “All England Re- ports”, and pinch his paper clips.’

  At which I thought I heard another sound from behind the door, less a distant whisper than a suppressed giggle.

  ‘What on earth’s that?’ Erskine-Brown looked seriously alarmed.

  ‘Mice!’ I reassured him. ‘These old places are overrun by mice.’

  ‘It was a sound… more like giggling.’

  ‘Even mice – can enjoy a joke occasionally.’ I put a comforting hand on Claude’s shoulder. ‘You’re working too hard.’

  ‘I have been snowed under lately,’ the distraught man admitted.

  ‘Pack it in, Erskine-Brown. Abandon the affidavits… Come and have a nightcap at Pommeroy’s Wine Bar.’ I steered him away down the passage. ‘You ought to watch out you know. A man’s got to be very careful when he starts to hear mice giggling in the night.’

  It was some weeks prior to this night of adventure that a second typist had joined our clerk’s room staff, a fairly person- able brown-haired young lady named Angela who wore jeans and an American combat shirt of the sort that might have been bought secondhand from some Vietnam veteran. I can’t imagine that this apparition would have produced in old C. H. Wystan (my late father-in-law and our one-time Head of Chambers) any result less dramatic than a heart attack, but Guthrie Featherstone made no protest, Henry appeared to tolerate her and Uncle Tom seemed positively charmed by her; although I did catch in Erskine-Brown’s eye, when he noticed her, the gleam of an early New England settler who’s brought face to face with a young, attractive and particularly burnable witch. I came into the clerk’s room one lunch-time, the jury at London Sessions having convicted three cannabis dealers of mine, and told the bad news to Henry. My clients had got three years apiece.

  ‘I suppose the judge went off and drank his large whisky and soda!’ Angela spoke indignantly from behind her typewriter.

  ‘Yes. I suppose he did.’ The judge had in fact been old Bull-ingham, so the young lady’s instinct was undoubtedly correct.

  ‘Still, it wasn’t your fault. You did your best. You were defending, weren’t you?’ She gave me a warm smile of approval, at which point Erskine-Brown came in with some document and asked Angela to type it. She ran a quick eye over the pleading and gave us a quotation. ‘ “The Plaintiffs, the Gargantua Trust Property Company Ltd, are landlords of the said premises.” ‘

  ‘Brilliant! You can read it,’ Erskine-Brown said with more than a hint of irony.

  ‘ “And the defendant, Mrs Parfitt, is in default of rent to the extent of £208.13. Notice to quit having been given.” ‘ Angela read with considerable disapproval and then exploded, ‘Whose side are we on?’

  ‘We are on the side, Angela, that sends us the work,’ Erskine-Brown told her coldly.

  ‘She got notice to quit. For a measly £208.13! Gargantua Trust Property Company Ltd! Well, I don’t imagine they’re short of a bob or two…’

  I was observing this scene, which I was starting to enjoy as Erskine-Brown became irate.

  ‘Angela! You’re not required to judge the case. That can be left in the safe hands of the judge of the Marylebone County Court.’

  ‘I bet Mrs Parfitt’s an elderly widow,’ said Angela with some considerable satisfaction.

  ‘Of course. With twenty-three starving children. It doesn’t matter what she is, Angela. Just you type it out.’

  I had thought nothing of the mysterious incident of the light in the locked room (it’s easy enough to forget to switch the light off when you lock a door) but I was a little worried, at this time, by the appearance and behaviour of our Head of Chambers, Guthrie Featherstone, Q.c, m.p. He came into Chambers very late, he looked pale and somewhat seedy, and he showed a marked lack of enthusiasm for his practice at the Bar. I put all this down to the burden of governing England, seeing us through inflation, settling Rhodesia etc. which he had assumed; but, as I sat over an early evening claret with him and Erskine-Brown in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar I couldn’t help feeling that Claude’s incessant complaints were adding considerably to the burdens of office. When the matter of the petty cash and Dianne’s salary had been brought up the Head of Chambers gave a world-weary sigh.

  ‘All-night sitting,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how long the old frame’ll stand it.’

  ‘Really. What great affair of State were you discussing?’ I asked.

  ‘Some earth-shaking measure for the protection of cod in Scottish waters…’ Guthrie told us.

  ‘I want to raise the matter of security in Chambers.’ Poor Featherstone groaned slightly. Erskine-Brown went on remorselessly. ‘The other night there were lights left on. After you’d locked up…’

  ‘I must have forgotten…’

  ‘And we distinctly heard a sound. Coming from your room!’

  ‘How extraordinarily odd!’ Featherstone seemed puzzled.

  ‘Rumpole thought it might have been mice.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ The Q.C, M.P. looked at me, I thought, gratefully.

  ‘And there’s another matter I wanted to raise.’

&
nbsp; ‘Another?’ Here was a camel, I felt, whose back was about to be broken.

  ‘That new girl, Angela. The one who does the typing now…’

  ‘Henry says she’s a bit of an asset. I know nothing about her, of course.’ Featherstone sounded casual. ‘But it seems that Dianne just couldn’t cope single-handed…’

  ‘The girl objects to typing a landlord’s statement of claim. She only wants to type on behalf of the tenant. It really adds a new horror to life at the Bar, if one is going to have all one’s cases decided in the typing pool.’ Erskine-Brown completed the indictment and Featherstone gave him another uneasy smile.

  ‘I really don’t see how you can dignify those two girls, Dianne and “Angela”, did you say her name was? with the title of “typing pool”. Anyway, Henry tells me she’s extremely good. It seems she’s pretty well indispensable. But perhaps you’ll head a small committee, Claude, to deal with the question of mice in Chambers.’

  Shortly after this Erskine-Brown went off to some musical evening with Miss Phillida Trant, and Henry called in for a quick Cinzano Bianco and a complaint to his Head of Chambers.

  ‘It’s that new girl, Angela, Mr Featherstone. Quite frankly she’s getting on my wick.’

  At which I was amazed to hear Guthrie Featherstone say,

  ‘Really, Henry? Mr Erskine-Brown was just saying what an enormous help she is, typing his pleadings.’

  Henry turned to me for support.

  ‘She wants to turn our clerk’s room into a co-operative, sir. She thinks the girls should chip in to my percentage of Chambers’ fees.’

  ‘Workers’ participation, Henry,’ Featherstone closed his eyes wearily, ‘it’s bound to come.’

  At which Henry gave me a look which said more clearly than words, ‘not in these Chambers it bloody isn’t’, and I was left to brood on the strange duplicity of Guthrie Featherstone, Q.c,

  M.P.

  ‘Would I wear me cap, Squire? Would I? Not if I was going to cut up some geezer in an off-licence. That’d be like leaving me visiting card.’ I was with my client, young David Anstey, and Jennifer, a pleasant and hard-working solicitor’s clerk, in the interview room at Brixton Prison.

  ‘Mr Anstey,’ I told him. ‘If I ever get you out of this hotel, you might consider reading for the Bar. Because, old darling, you have put your finger on the bull point of the defence! Why would anyone wear a comical cap when out on an errand of mayhem and malicious wounding? Unless…’

  ‘Unless they wanted to be recognized!’ Jennifer suggested.

  ‘Unless they wanted someone to be recognized…’ I lit a small cigar. Outside the glass box of the interview room I could see other barristers interviewing other clients in other glass boxes, until the series ended in the screws’ office, with its pleasant collection of cacti in pots. Outside in the yard other screws were exercising malignant Airedales.

  ‘I’m not worried, Squire,’ Dave Anstey sounded unhealthily optimistic. ‘I’m just not worried at all. I’m in the clear.’

  ‘No one in Brixton’s in the clear, old darling,’ I told him. ‘Not till they hear the magical words “Not Guilty”.’ I sat down, for the purpose of reading my brief. ‘Now, this little alibi of yours… It entirely depends on the evidence of your guv’nor?’

  ‘He’s very good to me, Mr Rumpole. And to the wife, since we got married. He bought all our home for us. Very generous-minded individual. “Freddy Allbright will see you right.” That’s his motto. Biggest mini-cab owner in London.’

  ‘You were with him all the evening of Tuesday, March the fourth?’ The stabbing in the off-licence had taken place at about a quarter to nine.

  ‘I come back from a trip to Wembley at 8. Then Freddy took me for a curry. We was together until 10.30. Then I went home to the wife.’

  Alibis always sound so delightfully healthy, but they crack up dreadfully easily. I asked Dave how his kindly employer could possibly fix the date of one out of a long line of curries.

  ‘It was the evening before his wife’s birthday. He’d got Mrs Allbright a gift.’

  ‘What exactly?’

  ‘It was an evening bag. Highly tasteful. For his Ladies’ Night down at the Masons. He even showed it to me. Look, Mr Rumpole, it’s cast iron, my alibi.’

  Whatever the truth about his defence, Dave Anstey it seemed had total faith in it. As for me, I’m not sure that I like cast iron alibis. They’re the sort that sink quickest, to the bottom of the sea.

  To wash away the sour taste of Brixton Nick I went for a glass of Chateau Fleet Street (as a matter of fact the metallic flavour of this particular claret gives it a slight prison flavour, as if the grape had been grown on the sunless side of Wormwood Scrubs: I exaggerate, of course; this is a libel on Pommeroy’s Wine Bar, whose budget Bordeaux has elevated my evenings and kept me astonishingly regular for years). As I arrived in the bar I was greeted by Erskine-Brown who was waving a crumpled copy of The Times newspaper, and by Miss Phillida Trant, who had been booked as junior to ‘Soapy Joe’ Truscott of Treasury Council, to appear on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen in the case of David Anstey. No sooner had I drawn up a stool and ordered a bottle of the cooking claret and three glasses than Erskine-Brown shoved his newspaper under my nose, open at the uninspiring account of yesterday’s debates in Parliament.

  ‘Just take a look at the end. I’ve marked it in red.’ Erskine-Brown was almost too excited for coherent speech.

  ‘After the defeat of the motion to Preserve the Ancient Grasslands, the House rose at 10.30,’ I read aloud. ‘Earth-shattering news, is it, Claude? What, am I meant to flee the country? Put myself out to pasture in some newly preserved grasslands?’

  ‘Guthrie Featherstone clearly told me that last night he was at an all-night sitting on the Cod Fisheries (Scotland) Bill.’ Erskine-Brown had apparently reached the punch-line.

  ‘Well, I don’t see what’s peculiar about that…” I gave him a blankish look.

  ‘It sounds to me like the collapse of an alibi.’ Miss Trant, our Portia, seemed to have sniffed a prima facie case.

  ‘Exactly!’ Erskine-Brown chimed in. I did my best to give their excitement a douche of cold water.

  ‘Not at all. My God, I can see where you’re headed, Miss Trant. The Portia of the Prosecution! Suspicious of everyone.’ The claret arrived, I gave them each a glass and some soothing words. ‘It’s perfectly natural for Q.C., M.P.s to forget which day it is. Poor devils, they must be constantly under the delusion that they’ve been discussing cod in Scotland until the small hours. If you take my advice, Miss Trant, you’ll keep your mind on the off-licence stabbing. I was meaning to ask the prosecution. Who owns that off-licence, by the way?’ I was looking for a motive for the Wandsworth stabbing, so I casually asked the question which was almost fatal to the defence.

  ‘Who owns it?’ Miss Trant frowned. ‘I don’t know. I could find out for you.’

  ‘Oh, do do that, Miss Trant. It might be so much more important than the busy life of our learned Head of Chambers.’

  That evening an event of unearthly, not to say spooky significance occurred in Casa Rumpole, 25B Froxbury Court in the Gloucester Road. I was sitting by the electric fire, reading the depositions in a promising little indecent assault and taking a bedtime bracer of the old and Tawney, when the house was riven by the sound of a rich contralto voice raised in what seemed to be some devout ditty.

  ‘The Lord God Omnipotent…

  The Lord God Omnipotent…

  The Lord God Omnipotent…

  sang what I first took for the ghost of some member of the Bach Choir, justifiably murdered long ago in Froxbury Court. Then I remembered that my wife was in the kitchen, the apparent source of the sound. Had She Who Must Be Obeyed taken leave of her senses?

  ‘Hilda! What on earth’s going on?’

  ‘I’m doing the Messiah,’ Hilda said enigmatically, making a non-singing entrance with two cups of steaming Nescafe.

  ‘What the hell for?’

 
; ‘The Bar Choral Society.’ She put down the coffee as though I should have known all about it. ‘Marigold Featherstone rang me up and asked if I’d be interested. They take on wives.’

  ‘An assembly of barrister’s wives. Giving tongue. How perfectly ghastly!’ I lapped up port, this was no moment for coffee.

  ‘In praise of God, Rumpole. It is going to be Christmas.’ Hilda installed herself on the other side of the electric fire.

  ‘Sometimes I wonder if God enjoys Christmas all that much.’

  At which Hilda put down her cup and saucer and leant forward to say, extremely seriously, ‘Marigold Featherstone’s not a happy woman.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s the Messiah getting her down. It’s been known to have that effect on people.’

  ‘It’s Guthrie Featherstone.’ Hilda shook her head sadly. ‘If you ask my opinion, that marriage is dying for lack of attention.’

  ‘Hilda! You shock me. You don’t stand there at choir practice when you should be giving praise to the Lord, gossiping away about Featherstone’s marriage?’

  it’s not gossip, Rumpole. I told you. She’s not a happy woman. Of course, it’s enormously difficult being married to a politician…’

  Or a part-time contralto… That was what I felt like saying. Actually I remained mute of malice.