The First Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  ‘No. I suggest that the witness is hostile to the truthV I looked at the jury who were beginning to sense a Scene in Court and stirred with modified excitement.

  ‘If the witness has signed a previous inconsistent statement you may cross-examine him,’ said Vosper J. judicially and added I thought maliciously, ‘if you think that’s a wise course, Mr Rumpole.’ The jury smiled at what they felt might have been a joke. Soapy Joe subsided, and I said I was obliged to his Lordship and began to attack the traitor in the witness-box. The time for half-measures was over. Now it was all or nothing.

  ‘Mr Allbright. Is your company the landlord of the off-licence where Tosher was stabbed?’

  ‘It might be.’ My first shot had ruffled the Allbright feathers a little.

  ‘What do you mean by that? Is your business empire so vast you can’t be sure where your boundaries lie?’

  ‘We’ve got the lease on the off-licence. Yes.’

  ‘So Tosher was working for you.’

  ‘He might have been.’

  ‘And what was he doing? Putting his hand in the till. Not paying his dues? Did you have to send someone to teach him a lesson?’

  Now the jury was interested. Freddie played a safe delaying shot. He looked puzzled.

  ‘Someone?’

  ‘Who are you suggesting someone might be, Mr Rumpole?’ Mr Justice Vosper was weighing in on behalf of the witness. I ignored him and spoke directly to Allbright.

  ‘Someone you sent in a cap like that worn by my client Dave Anstey.’

  Even Vosper J. was quiet at that. I saw Dave looking lost in the dock and Freddie Allbright attempting a disarming smile.

  ‘Now why would I do a thing like that, Mr Rumpole?’

  I didn’t answer him straight away. I was whispering a word of instruction to the usher who left the Court. I then turned again to the witness.

  ‘Mr Allbright. Are you friendly with my client’s wife, Betty?’

  ‘I’m like a father to both of them. Yes.’ Freddie smiled at the jury. They didn’t smile back.

  ‘Whilst my client’s been in custody, have you been seeing Betty Anstey regularly?’

  ‘I’ve tried to take her out of herself, yes,’ Freddie admitted after a helpful pause.

  ‘Has taking her out of herself included buying her an expensive fur coat? The one she’s wearing now?’

  The usher opened the door. Betty came in, nestling in her slaughtered article of wild life. Dave looked at her from the dock. She avoided his eye. Freddie improved the effect of this scene on the jury by saying:

  ‘I may have lent her a bob or two, to tide her over.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you, Mrs Anstey.’ I let Betty go with the bob or two of fur on her back, and some nasty looks from the ladies in the jury following her. When the Court was quiet again I unloosened the broadside.

  ‘Mr Allbright,’ I thundered. ‘Has your object in this case always been to have Dave Anstey convicted?’

  Freddie gave another answer which, from his point of view, could only be described as a bad error of judgement. ‘No. I wanted to help Dave.’

  ‘Is that why you’ve gone back on your alibi statement? Because you wanted to help him?’

  ‘Or have you gone back on it because you are trying to tell us the truth?’ The judge was doing his best in a tricky situation.

  ‘Look. I put March the fourth first because Dave asked me to,’ Freddie explained.

  ‘Mr Anstey asked you to?’ the judge was delighted.

  ‘He said that was the date of the stabbing, like. Look, I’m sorry I can’t help you, Mr Rumpole…’

  ‘I’m sorry I can’t help you, Allbright. In your attempt to get your mistress’s husband put inside for a long period of years…’

  ‘Mr Rumpole. Is there any basis for that suggestion?’ Justice Vosper was losing what I believe is known nowadays as ‘his cool’.

  ‘If there isn’t perhaps my learned friend will call the lady to rebut it. She’s still outside Court.’ I let the jury notice the lack of enthusiasm from Soapy Joe and went on, ‘You sent your hireling, wearing that entirely recognizable cap, to teach Tosher a lesson. So Tosher identified him…’

  ‘May I remind you, Mr Rumpole,’ the judge sighed wearily, ‘when your client was picked out at the identification parade, he wasn’t wearing a cap.’

  ‘Of course not, my Lord.’ I turned on the witness.

  ‘Perhaps you’d care to tell us, Allbright… who was it gave Tosher his instructions?’

  Freddie looked in silence at the unsympathetic jury. I went on, more in sorrow than in anger, to pry into this wretched conspiracy.

  ‘Didn’t Tosher know who you wanted fitted up with this little enterprise in the off-licence?’

  ‘ “Fitted-up” is hardly a legal term, Mr Rumpole,’ the judge tried the flippant approach. ‘It makes it sound like a cupboard.’

  I thought I’d teach Vosper J. to make jokes in Court.

  ‘Then shall we say “framed”, Allbright?’ I said. ‘It sounds like a picture. In this case the wrong picture entirely!’

  The cross-examination of a hostile Allbright was, of course, only the beginning of a long and hot struggle with the judge which ended after two more days, with Rumpole suggesting to the jury that they had the alternative explanation of the events in the off-licence and they could not be certain that the case put forward by Soapy Joe on behalf of Her Majesty was certain to be correct.

  ‘If you find Dave Anstey guilty,’ I told them, ‘the other man, the other man in the tartan cap sent by Freddie Allbright to enforce his dominion over the garages and off-licences of his part of Wandsworth, that “other man” will not go away or disappear, but he will return to haunt our dreams with the terrible possibility of injustice… It is your choice, members of the jury. Your choice entirely.’

  After a nerve-wracking absence of five hours, and by a majority of ten to two, the jury opted for unhaunted dreams and decided to give Dave the benefit of the doubt and spring him from the dock. When I said ‘goodbye’ to him he was looking lost.

  ‘Where do I go now, Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘Not to Brixton at least.’

  ‘I got no marriage, Squire. I got no job. I can’t believe in anyone no more.’

  ‘You’ll get a job, Dave. You’ll find another girl.’

  ‘Not in Wandsworth I won’t. Freddie’ll see to that. He’s got Wandsworth sewn up, has Fred Allbright. He’s highly respected in this area.’

  I was surprised by the tone in which he still spoke of his former employer.

  ‘Cheer up, Dave. There is a world outside Wandsworth.’

  Mr Anstey shook his head and went away looking as if he rather doubted that. I knew what I needed then, and went to find it in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar, where I also saw the members of our clerk’s room, Henry, Dianne and Angela in a corner and, at the bar, Erskine-Brown and Miss Trant. My former pros- ecutor gave me a smile of congratulation.

  ‘We thought we had you chained up, padlocked into a tin trunk and sunk in the bottom of the sea,’ she said. ‘But with one leap Houdini was free.’

  ‘Out five hours. It was a damned-close-run thing.’

  ‘It was a smashing cross-examination, a lesson to us all,’ Miss Trant told her fiancé.

  ‘It’s high time,’ said Erskine-Brown, ‘that a little justice was done to you, Rumpole.’

  ‘Justice?’

  ‘It’s a rotten shame. You should have been Head of Chambers long ago. It was yours as the senior man. Everybody thought so.’

  It was true that there had been a time when I was expected to be Head of Chambers; but Guthrie Featherstone, the newly arrived Q.C., M.P., put in for knee breeches and pair of silk stockings and so got the blessing of my old Dad-in-law C. H. Wystan as the most desirable successor.*

  ‘I can’t remember you voting for me at the time, Erskine- Brown,’ I reminded him.

  ‘Well, Guthrie Featherstone arrived. And he took silk and…’

  ‘Popped in bet
wixt the election and my hopes.’

  ‘It was a rotten shame, actually!’ Miss Trant agreed.

  ‘Of course, in those days… we didn’t know the truth about Guthrie Featherstone…’ Erskine-Brown said darkly.

  ‘Oh, no? And what is the truth about Guthrie Featherstone, Q.c, m.p.?’ I challenged him.

  ‘Claude quite honestly thinks he’s lost his marbles.’ Miss Trant shook her head sadly.

  ‘He made a pass at Philly!’ Erskine-Brown sounded incredulous.

  ‘Well, actually, he simply asked me out to lunch.’

  But Erskine-Brown looked darkly across at Angela and almost whispered. ‘And he’s quite simply having it off with that female Communist in the typing pool.’

  ‘Young Angela? You astonish me!’ I raised an unbelieving eyebrow.

  ‘We must have a reliable Head of Chambers,’ Erskine-Brown insisted. ‘Not someone who’s about to be involved in an unsavoury scandal!’ I wondered what a savoury scandal would be: a scandal fried on toast, perhaps, with an anchovy and a dash of Worcester Sauce?

  ‘Everyone’s noticed things about Guthrie,’ Miss Trant said.

  ‘Things?’

  ‘Definite signs of unreliability. The point is… We’ll ask Guthrie Featherstone to resign and make way for you, Rumpole, as Head of Chambers.’ Erskine-Brown the kingmaker was, it seemed, about to make me a definite offer.

  ‘I do think you’d make an absolutely super Head!’ Miss Trant seconded the motion with flattering enthusiasm. At which moment Featherstone looked into the bar, waved at us and left immediately for an unknown destination. When he had gone I gave my learned friend Erskine-Brown a warning.

  ‘Guthrie Featherstone, Q.c, m.p. isn’t an experienced Labour-Conservative M.P. for nothing. He hogs the middle of the road just in case anyone’s trying to pass him. Perhaps he’s not the resigning kind.’

  ‘Then we simply move out from under him. To one of the new sets of Chambers in Lincoln’s Inn,’ Erskine-Brown smiled. ‘I’ve sounded out Henry… and Hoskins, and Owen Glendour-Jones.’

  ‘Tell me, Erskine-Brown. Have you had any time for your practice with all this sounding?’

  ‘No one’s going to work with a Head of Chambers who’s having it off with a revolutionary from the typing pool.’

  At which point Miss Angela Trotsky got up and left the bar. Was it at a signal from our Head of Chambers?

  ‘I’d just like to know why you’re making this extraordinary allegation?’ I asked Erskine-Brown for further and better particulars.

  ‘Claude and I saw Guthrie Feathemone dancing. In “Fridays”,’ Miss Trant came out with a surprising piece of news.

  ‘The Q.C., M.P. dancing? What’s your evidence for that?’

  ‘The evidence of my own eyes!’ Erskine-Brown said proudly.

  ‘The evidence of people’s own eyes can, as Miss Trant knows, be extremely unconvincing. Did you see his face? What about the sideburns?’

  ‘We didn’t see his face exactly…’ Miss Trant said.

  ‘He had his back to us. But she was there!’ said Erskine-Brown.

  ‘The Communist menace of the clerk’s room?’

  ‘And Guthrie was wearing some sort of multi-coloured green-and-yellow shirt. With flowers on it.’ Erskine-Brown brought out the full horror of the offence.

  ‘Then it couldn’t have been Guthrie Featherstone!’ I assured him.

  ‘Of course it was!’

  ‘Mistaken identity. Guthrie Featherstone simply doesn’t wear multi-coloured shirts with flowers on them.’ I drained the blushing beaker of Chateau Fleet Street. ‘As for the other matter. I’ll think about it.’ At which point I left Counsel for the prosecution of Guthrie Featherstone.

  After Court the next evening I was in Guthrie Featherstone’s room, awaiting an interview with our Head of Chambers. A cupboard door was squeaking, swinging open. I got up to shut it and looked into the cupboard. All I saw was Guthrie Featherstone, q.c.’s gear hanging on hangers. On another hanger I blinked at the sight of a ghastly green-and-yellow shirt, with a floral pattern. I shut the cupboard door quickly as Featherstone entered the presence.

  ‘Henry said you wanted to see me…’ he started.

  ‘Don’t you want to see meV

  ‘Not particularly.’ He looked extremely tired.

  ‘I would say, you needed a little help.’

  ‘I’m perfectly all right. Thank you, Rumpole.’

  ‘Are you? They’re closing in! Your wife Marigold wants to start a divorce. She consulted me.’

  ‘You! Whatever did she consult you for?’ Featherstone sounded shaken.

  ‘No doubt to cause the maximum havoc. Young Erskine-Brown alleges he saw you dancing.’

  The extraordinary thing was that Featherstone then smiled, apparently delighted with the accusation.

  ‘With Angela?’

  ‘Claude Erskine-Brown suspects you of having a Red in the bed, so far as I can gather.’

  The accused Featherstone went to sit at his desk. He seemed perfectly relaxed as he made a full verbal confession.

  ‘All right. It’s all true. It’s all perfectly true, Rumpole.’

  ‘You plead guilty?’ I must say I was surprised.

  ‘As a matter of fact it’s all terribly innocent,’ he rambled on. ‘Jumping about in “Fridays” till two O’clock in the morning. Then back for an hour or two in Angela’s ridiculously narrow bed in Oakley Street. Then off to breakfast in the House oi Commons.’

  ‘That must be the worst part about it!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Breakfast in the House of Commons.’ I gave him a critical look-over. ‘You’re obviously not cut out for that type of existence.’

  ‘The physical strain is exhausting.’ Guthrie sighed.

  ‘I imagine so. It must come as a terrible shock to a man only used to somnolent parliamentary debates and a little golf.’

  ‘Golf! It happened when I was playing with Mr Justice Vosper. You know him?’

  ‘Only in Court. Never on the green.’

  ‘He was talking about the Death Penalty.’

  ‘With nostalgia, I assume.’

  ‘I sliced a drive into the rough,’ Featherstone reminisced. ‘I went behind a patch of low scrub and there were a boy and girl making love, not undressed, you understand. No great white bottoms waving in the air. Just kissing each other, and laughing. I felt there was an entire world I had totally missed. I told the judge I’d been taken ill, and left the course.’

  ‘Taken ill? Of course you had.’ I had no illusions about Guthrie’s complaint.

  ‘I spent the afternoon just wandering about Richmond. In search of adventure.’

  ‘You drew a blank, I should imagine.’

  ‘Next morning I came into Chambers and saw Angela. She’s twenty-one, Rumpole, can you imagine it?’

  ‘With difficulty. Tell me. What is that military uniform she affects?’

  ‘An American combat shirt. It’s a sort of joke. To show her pacifist convictions.’

  ‘Most amusing! So you set out, quite deliberately, to destroy your position in Chambers?’

  ‘Deliberately?’

  ‘Of course. Locking yourself in this room. What on earth was that for?’

  ‘We couldn’t go back to Oakley Street. Her flatmate was entertaining a man from the B.B.C. World Service…’

  I remembered, with some humiliation, the night I’d played the unlovely role of eavesdropper with Erskine-Brown.

  ‘Barristers’ Chambers have been put to many uses, Feather-stone, but only rarely as a setting for French farce! Oh, you were very determined, weren’t you? Telling Marigold the most transparent lies. Carefully informing Miss Trant and therefore Erskine-Brown of the disco or Palais de Hop where you are apparently to be found nightly, tripping the light fantastic!’ (I went to the cupboard and threw it open, dramatically displaying the incriminating evidence.) ‘Keeping your dancing apparel in the cupboard.’

  ‘Angela gave me that for my
birthday,’ Featherstone looked at the shirt with a tired affection. ‘I couldn’t take it home to Marigold.’

  ‘What do you intend to do with it?’ I asked with some contempt. ‘Send Henry round to the launderette?’

  ‘I don’t know, Rumpole. What do you suggest?’

  ‘I suggest you give it to the deserving poor. Look, Feather-stone. My dear Guthrie.’ I tried to bring some common sense to bear on the subject. ‘You can’t do it!’

  ‘Do what, exactly?’

  ‘Escape! You came to us as the ready-made figure of respectability. Q.C., M.P. Pipped me to the post as I remember it, for Head of Chambers – and remarkably gratified to get it. What are you going to do now? Abandon us, like a lot of ageing wives, leave us to rot on Bingo and National Assistance, while you go prancing off down Oakley Street in a remarkably lurid Paisley blouse! You can’t do it. It’s quite impossible. Out of the question!’

  ‘Why can’t I?’ Featherstone was sitting behind his desk, smiling up at me.

  ‘Because it was decided differently for you! When your mother gave proud birth to another Featherstone. When you became the youngest prefect at Marlborough. When you humbly asked the Lord Chancellor for a pair of knee breeches and took Marigold’s advice on a suspender belt for your silk stockings. And when you got yourself elected Head of Chambers! It’s all mapped out for you, Guthrie! The tram-lines are leading to Solicitor General in the next middle-of-the-road Conservative-Labour government, and the High Court Bench, and death of Sir Guthrie Featherstone, a judge of courteous severity, and flags fluttering at halfmast over the Benchers’ dining hall…’

  ‘I don’t have to do all that,’ Guthrie stood up, defiant.

  ‘What’s the alternative? Hanging round the Pier Hotel, waiting for the man from the B.B.C. to go on the night duty. Scratching a living writing “Advice from a Barrister” in the Sunday papers. Come off it, that’s someone else entirely. That’s not our Guthrie Featherstone.’

  He took all this quietly, and stood looking at me. Finally he made the most extraordinary counter-accusation.

  ‘You’re jealous!’

  ‘Am I?’ I was, I confess, puzzled.

  ‘Just because you can’t escape…’

  ‘Can’t I? Of course I can. I am a free soul.’ I resented the accusation. ‘A free soul entirely.’