The First Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  ‘Their marriage is cracking up, Rumpole. And it’s all your fault.’

  ‘My fault?’ I was astonished. I had only met Marigold Featherstone occasionally at a Chambers ‘do’. An ex-nurse who had once played tennis for Roedean, she was not exactly Rumpole’s bottle of claret.

  ‘Guthrie’s out late. Of course he has his all-night sittings. But even when he hasn’t… it seems you keep him in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar for hours. Boozing.’

  ‘I do?’ I only rarely took a glass with Guthrie, and, whenever I did, he was in and out of the bar like a rabbit in a hurry.

  ‘Marigold asks him where he’s been and he says, “Old Rumpole kept me talking about Chambers business in Pommeroy’s. I simply couldn’t get away from him.”’

  ‘Old Rumpole? Is that what he calls me?’ If our learned Head of Chambers was going to use me as n alibi he might at least have been polite about me.

  ‘I suppose that’s what you were getting up to tonight.’

  I had, it was true, whiled away a couple of hours in Pom- meroy’s, a place notable for the absence of Guthrie Featherstone, Q.C, M.P.

  ‘Well, there wouldn’t have been much point in coming back here, would there? Not while you were hitting high notes with Marigold Featherstone.’

  ‘You want to be very careful, Rumpole. You want to be careful you don’t break up two marriages.’ On which line She returned to the kitchen to keep an urgent appointment with the washing-up. As the plates clattered I heard her, over again, carolling:

  ‘The Lord God Omnipotent…

  The Lord God Omnipotent…

  The Lord God Omnipotent… e… e… e… ent

  Reigneth!’

  Oh well, I thought, thank God He’s doing something at last.

  In due course we assembled, myself, ‘Soapy Joe’ leading for the prosecution, Miss Trant, junior for the prosecution, Dave Anstey and Jennifer my solicitors’ managing clerk, before Mr Justice Vosper, a pale and sarcastic judge who has never learnt to sit quietly, but always wants to take part in the proceedings, usually as a super-leader for the prosecution. Tosher O’Neil, scarred down one side of his face, a living piece of evidence for the sympathetic jury, was in the witness-box, concluding his examination-in-chief by Miss Trant.

  ‘Can you describe the man who attacked you?’

  ‘He had this red cap on…”

  ‘Apart from the red cap?’

  ‘Yes. Apart from the red cap. Come on, Portia,’ I muttered at her. It didn’t put her off.

  ‘Well, he was tall. Big-built.’ The witness gave the man in the dock a meaningful look.

  ‘Like about twenty million others,’ I muttered, and found the judge staring in my direction, with some distaste.

  ‘Did you say something, Mr Rumpole?’ his Lordship asked.

  ‘Nothing at all, my Lord.’

  ‘What about his hair? What you could see of it.’ Miss Trant asked.

  ‘He had long sideburns. Sort of brown colour. What I could see of it.’

  Miss Trant whispered to her leader to check she had asked all the relevant questions, and I heaved myself to my hind legs to cross-examine.

  ‘If you look at my client, Mr O’Neil, you can see quite clearly. He has no sideburns at all.’

  ‘No. No, he hasn’t.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole. I’m sure you don’t need reminding. We live in the age of the electric razor.’ Mr Justice Vosper was really the worst sort of judge; the judge who makes jokes.

  ‘My Lord?’

  ‘Sideburns can be shaved off. If it’s convenient to do so.’ Vosper J. didn’t actually wink at the jury, but they gave him a conspiratorial smile.

  I re-attacked the witness O’Neil.

  ‘You told us his sideburns were sort of brown. Sort of ginger-brown? Greyish-brown? Blackish-brown? Or just brown-brown?’

  Tosher didn’t answer, so I pressed on.

  ‘You know, we have heard the evidence of Mr Smith who was waiting for a bus outside the off-licence. He told us about a man with a red tartan cap and black sideburns.’

  ‘I… didn’t have a lot of time to notice him. It was that quick.’

  ‘That quick! You only saw him, didn’t you, for a matter of seconds?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So my client stands on trial for a couple of seconds…’

  ‘It will no doubt be considerably longer, by the time you’re finished, Mr Rumpole.’ Vosper could never resist that sort of remark; the jury gave him an obedient titter, and I said, ‘if your Lordship pleases’ as coldly as possible, then I asked the witness, ‘You’ve never met Dave Anstey?’ ‘Never in my life.’

  ‘So far as you knew he had absolutely no motive for attacking you?’

  ‘Not as far as I know.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole. As you know perfectly well, motive is quite irrelevant in a criminal prosecution.’ Mr Justice Vosper was giving me a rough ride. I began to long for a ‘Not Guilty’ verdict, if only to see his Lordship’s look of bemused disappointment.

  Outside the Court, when we broke for lunch, a large man smelling of Havana cigars, wearing a camel-hair overcoat and several obtrusive rings came to me smiling cheerfully. He was accompanied by a blonde and extremely personable young woman, lapped in an expensive fur coat.

  ‘How’re we doing, Mr Rumpole?’ the man asked, and the lady announced herself as ‘Dave’s wife. Betty Anstey’.

  ‘Betty’s only been married to Dave six months,’ the man said. ‘Lovely girl, isn’t she, Mr Rumpole? Particularly lovely girl…’

  ‘You are…?’

  ‘Freddie Allbright. “Allbright will see you right.” That’s my motto, Mr Rumpole. In mini-cars as in everything else.’

  ‘Our alibi witness?’ I asked Jennifer.

  ‘I’ve got the alibi ready, Mr Rumpole. Ready to go whenever you want it.’ Freddie Allbright smiled, ready, it seemed, to see us right at any time.

  ‘Can’t talk to witnesses, you know.’ It silenced him. ‘I expect we’ll call you on Monday.’ I asked Mrs Anstey if she’d been in Court. She shook her head tearfully.

  ‘I can’t go in there, Mr Rumpole. I really can’t. Not to have everyone staring at me because of David. Dave’s all right, is he?’

  ‘As well as can be expected,’ I told her. ‘I’m sure he’d ap- preciate a visit, down the cells.’

  ‘I promised the young lady a lunch, Mr Rumpole,’ Freddie told me. ‘Better get our skates on, Betty love. Don’t want some lawyer snitching our table at the Savoy, do we, Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘No. No, I’m sure you don’t.’

  I watched Betty put her arm in Freddie’s and they walked away. I was trying to think of the implications of this vision when Miss Trant came alongside with some rather odd news.

  ‘I’ve got that information for you,’ she said helpfully. ‘The landlord of the off-licence. It’s a company called “Allbright Motors”.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Trant.’ I wished I hadn’t asked.

  I didn’t myself have lunch in the Savoy that day. In fact I didn’t even have a slice of cold pie in the pub opposite. I went straight down to the cells with Jennifer and voiced my anxieties to our client Dave Anstey.

  ‘If an alibi comes unstuck, everything comes unstuck.’ I looked at him thoughtfully and lit a small cigar. ‘They may not believe you, just because they don’t believe your alibi…’

  ‘They’ll believe Freddie, Squire. Freddie’s got no axe to grind.’ Dave seemed imperturbably cheerful.

  ‘Hasn’t he?’

  ‘Has he, Mr Rumpole?’ Jennifer frowned.

  ‘Freddie Allbright owns the off-licence where Tosher was cut.’

  ‘Never!’ Dave seemed genuinely surprised to hear it.

  ‘You didn’t know that?’

  ‘Straight up, Squire, I didn’t… Does it make any difference?’

  ‘I don’t know. Tosher picked you out at the I.D. parade. You’d never seen him before.’

  ‘Never in my life. Straight up.’

  ‘Someone
must have told him… about you and your remarkable head-gear. You trust Freddie Allbright?’ Dave’s answer was so enthusiastic that I almost began to doubt my own doubts.

  ‘You must be joking. The things the Guvnor’s done for me! Big bonus when we married. Canteen of cutlery, must have cost him two hundred nicker…’

  ‘And a fur coat?’ I asked him. But Dave Anstey didn’t know anything about his wife’s fur coat. And Jennifer seemed worried at my apparent distrust of our case on the alibi.

  ‘If we don’t call the alibi evidence,’ she wondered, ‘won’t the prosecution comment? They’ve got Mr Allbright’s statement.’ She’s a thoughtful girl Jennifer, with more sense of a trial than her employers who were no doubt lunching in the West End at length, setting up launderettes and discos: I gave her the benefit of my learned opinion.

  ‘Let Soapy Joe comment till he’s blue in the face. He’ll be left with a weak case of identification.’

  However any thought of giving our alibi a miss was clearly repugnant to our client.

  ‘I want the Guvnor called,’ he said. ‘Freddie’s been like a father to me.’

  ‘Think about it, Dave. Then I’ll need your written instructions before I call Mr Freddie Allbright.’ I moved to the door. Dave looked up at me, he was frowning:

  ‘What sort of coat exactly?’

  ‘God knows! No doubt some rare animal gave up its life for it.’

  ‘My Betty works, don’t she? She saved up for it.’ Dave had apparently convinced himself. ‘You got to call the Guvnor, Mr Rumpole.’

  ‘Please. Think about it, Dave.’

  I was also thinking about it; and I was starting to get a glimmer of what later turned out to be the truth about the Anstey case as I called into Chambers the next morning to collect my brief, and a fresh supply of small cigars, on my way to the Bailey. When I got into my room I sniffed a female perfume and saw a familiar well-turned-out figure sitting in my client’s chair. Although familiar I couldn’t place my visitor at first, but the look of a rather attractive horse matched with the brisk tone of a ward sister left me in no doubt.

  ‘I’m Marigold Featherstone. You remember me?’

  ‘Of course. I’m just on my way down to the Bailey,’ I dived for the brief and cheroots. ‘Guthrie’s room’s along the passage.’

  ‘He’s not in. Whenever I ring up Chambers he’s not in.’

  ‘Perhaps, if I could give him some sort of message…’ I went to the door in a meaningful manner. At which point Marigold, wife of our Head of Chambers, dropped her bombshell.

  ‘Mr Rumpole. Do you handle divorce?’

  ‘Only rarely. And with a strong pair of tongs. Look, I must rush, I’m…’

  ‘I want you to act for me. If it should come to that.’

  ‘Come to what, Mrs… Marigold?’ I paused, somewhat weakly.

  ‘Divorce! Guthrie’s behaving extremely oddly. He’s never there.’

  I could see that the woman was outraged, and I tried to cheer her up.

  ‘Well, that can be an advantage, I suppose. In married life. Speaking for myself, I’m married to someone who’s always there. Now, if you’ll excuse me…’

  However Mrs Marigold Featherstone wouldn’t let me go until she had given evidence.

  ‘I saw Guthrie in Sloane Square. I saw him from the top of a bus. He was arm-in-arm with a girl. They were looking into Peter Jones’s window. When I tackled him, he denied it.’

  ‘Well now. How can you be sure it was Guthrie?’ Instinctively I started to test the evidence. ‘I mean from a bus what did you see? The top of his head… For how long… a couple of seconds?’

  ‘I’m sure it was Guthrie.’ The witness was almost too positive. ‘He had his black jacket on, and striped trousers.’

  I renewed the cross-examination. ‘Ah, Mrs Feather… Ah, Marigold. Now that’s where mistakes are so easily made. You see, just because he had a black jacket on, you thought it was your husband! It’s so easy to put a black jacket on, isn’t it, or a red-and-yellow tartan cap. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Not in the least.* Marigold frowned.

  ‘Anyway. I’m a friend of Guthrie’s. We stay out together late, boozing in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar. That’s where he is, a lot of the time.’ I was beginning to feel anxious for the fate of the wretched Q.C., M.P.

  ‘So he tells me.’ Marigold did not sound friendly.

  ‘And I’m in his Chambers. So I couldn’t possibly act for you if it comes to divorce. It’d be extremely embarrassing,’ I assured her.

  Marigold’s answer sounded like a brisk rebuke to a probationer nurse on the subject of bed-pans.

  ‘If it comes to a divorce, Mr Rumpole,’ she said, ‘I want it to be as embarrassing as possible.’

  Marigold’s fell purpose was not, I was later to discover, the only trouble into which our Head of Chambers had been getting himself. It appeared that he had reached the stage of life when men are said to get hot flushes (I can’t remember going through it myself) and suffer from the delusion that they embody the least admirable qualities of Don Juan and the late Rudolf Valentino. I heard that when Miss Phillida Trant, who is in fact, beneath a business-like exterior, extremely personable, went into Featherstone’s room to borrow a book he invited her to lunch in Soho. When she told him, as was the case, that she was going out with Erskine-Brown (a contemporary phrase which I take to mean ‘staying in’ with Erskine-Brown) the rogue Guthrie said that Erskine-Brown never took her anywhere interesting, and asked if she had, in fact, ever been taken to ‘Fridays’, a dark cellar off Covent Garden where he said the B.P.s (Featherstone’s appalling phrase, apparently it means Beautiful People) met nightly to jig about to loud music in the dark. This painful interview ended by Guthrie trying to remove Miss Trant’s spectacles, in the way he said James Stewart always did, to reveal the full beauty of girl librarians in the films of the thirties.

  It is a matter of history that, one night after a prolonged experience of Rigoletto at the Royal Opera House, Miss Trant did persuade her escort Erskine-Brown to take her down the inky entrance of ‘Fridays’. There they saw, or thought they saw, a disturbing spectacle which was only described to me later. At that time I had no thoughts in my head except for those concerning the defence of Dave Anstey, and the perils we might face when we tried to prove his alibi.

  When I got down to the Old Bailey I saw Betty Anstey, proudly wrapped in the fur in which I was beginning to suspect she slept, waiting outside our Court. I drew the usher aside and asked him as a particular favour to call her into Court when I tipped him the wink, and on no account give her the chance of taking off her coat. I then went into the ring and, having had firm instructions from Dave to do so, breathed a silent prayer, fastened my seat belt, and called Freddie Allbright Esq. in support of our alibi. Freddie walked confidently into the witness-box, large and neat in a blue suit, with a spotted blue tie and matching handkerchief, and smiled towards the dock (which smile was returned by Dave with a simple faith in good things to come).

  At first we were rolling fairly smoothly. I established a curry dinner sometime in March, and then I asked an apparently helpful Freddie Allbright about the time.

  ‘8.45. ‘Course I was with Dave at 8.45.1 took him for a meal at 8, and we was together till 9.30.’ So far so good, I moved stealthily towards the clincher.

  ‘Now, can you fix the date?’

  ‘ ’Course I can. My wife’s birthday…’ Well, nothing to worry about as yet.

  ‘What’s the date of that?’

  ‘March the fifth. Same every year. I’d got her an evening bag, and I told Dave about it when I met him the next day.’ Freddie was still smiling as he said it, but I felt as if I’d stepped into a liftshaft some moments after the lift had gone. Was there a chance that we misunderstood each other?

  ‘The next day?’ I asked, apparently unconcerned.

  ‘Right. The next day when we went for the curry.’ There was no chance. Dave was looking stricken and incredulous—and the judg
e was making a careful note. He looked up, and asked with casual pleasure.

  ‘That would be March the sixth?’

  ‘That’s right, my Lord.’ Freddie agreed eagerly.

  ‘I wanted to ask you about the day before your wife’s birthday.’ I felt like a surgeon trying to sew up an ever-expanding wound.

  ‘March the fourth? Oh, I don’t know what Dave was doing then. No. I tell a lie.’

  ‘Do you, Mr Allbright?’ I asked him. I hoped I sounded dan- erous. Freddie only asked me an innocent question.

  ‘Was that the Tuesday, March the fourth?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then Dave had that night off.’ Freddie hammered the last ail in our coffin. ‘I remember he’d been off a couple of nights efore we went for the curry.’

  Dave seemed about to shout from the dock. Wise Jennifer sshed him. The judge leant forward to emphasize the hope- essness of our position. He addressed our broken reed of a

  witness.

  ‘So you don’t know what Mr Anstey was doing on the night of the fourth?’

  ‘Haven’t a clue, my Lord.’ Freddie smiled charmingly.

  The judge turned to me and put the boot in, gently but with deadly accuracy.

  ‘You may like to remind the jury, Mr Rumpole, that the stabbing in the off-licence took place on the fourth of March.’

  ‘I leave that to you, old darling. You’re obviously loving it,’ was what I thought of saying. Instead I asked the usher to present Mr Allbright (of ‘Allbright’s will see you right’, not in Court they won’t) with his signed statement in support of our alibi.

  ‘Mr Allbright!’ I put it to him. ‘Did you not sign that document making it clear that you were with Mr Anstey on the evening of the fourth of March?’

  ‘I may have done. Yes.’

  At which Soapy Joe arose, his hands clasped together, his voice humble and low, and made a typically Soapy interjection.

  ‘My Lord, is my learned friend entitled to cross-question his own witness?’

  If the witness is hostile. Yes.’ I argued the law.

  ‘Does my learned friend suggest that the witness is hostile to him?’ said his Soapiness.