The First Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  I was sure he had. Mr Justice Vosper was a man who could well be capable of ordering muffins after a death sentence, if muffins and death sentences still existed, but he was a powerful figure in the judicial hierarchy and his influence on appointments, among many other factors, would ensure that there would never be a Mr Justice Rumpole known to history.

  ‘I’m playing golf with Vosper at the weekend, and with old Keith from the Lord Chancellor’s office,’ Guthrie answered proudly.

  It seems that Marigold Featherstone had driven her desperate spouse a long way down the Primrose Path that leads to the eternal isolation in the Judges’ Lodgings. However, I wanted to be helpful.

  ‘If you’re playing golf with Vosper J.,’ I said, ‘it might be as well not to win.’

  ‘That thought, Rumpole, had occurred to me.’

  Another thought had occurred to me also. It was a wheeze that I thought could be put to some good purpose in the defence of my client Higgins.

  ‘I suppose,’ I said casually, ‘that if you really want the High Court Bench, you have to start doing your cases in a different sort of way.’

  ‘What sort of way do you mean by that exactly, Rumpole?’ Guthrie asked anxiously.

  ‘Well. I mean, you have to stop being too much the advocate. Stop trying to win too hard. You’ll have to show yourself above the dust of the arena. You have to adopt the judicial attitude.

  ‘The judicial attitude, of course, yes. You think I should adopt it?’ Guthrie was swallowing the Rumpole plan, hook, line and sinker.

  ‘I don’t think you can start too soon,’ I told him.

  Shortly after that the judge (who was, of course, given Rum-pole’s usual run of bad luck, dear old Vosper J.) arrived and put his bottom on its accustomed place on the Bench, and Guthrie Featherstone rose to make his final speech for the prosecution which came out, to my great satisfaction, as a sterling attempt to adopt ‘the judicial attitude’.

  ‘Of course, members of the jury,’ said Guthrie, ‘as prosecuting counsel I adopt an attitude which is quite fair and, I hope, judicial. The prosecution has to prove its case, and if it doesn’t do so the defence is entitled to succeed.’ I saw my client Higgins look at Guthrie with a wild surmise. It was rather as if a heretic, dragged before the Inquisition, had been told he’d just won a holiday in the Bahamas. ‘If you think he might possibly have won the money in his bank account at the races, even if he has forgotten the name of the horse and even the track concerned, then you must acquit him! If you think he may have been taking those various animal masks to a children’s party at a Dr Bar-nardo’s Home, or if you think he possibly needed those heavy tools to put up the “Do-It-Yourself Shelving” to accommodate his Encylopaedia Britannica, then the prosecution will not have proved its case and the defendant Higgins is entitled to be acquitted. In all things we must be judicial, totally fair and keep a balanced view. We must keep ourselves calm, you know, and above the dust of the arena…’

  ‘What on earth was the matter with that brief what prosecuted me?’ asked a puzzled Mr Higgins as he later left the Court without a stain on his character. ‘Is he ill or something?’

  ‘Not ill,’ I assured him. ‘Just suffering the terrible consequences of love.’

  ‘The course of true love never did run smooth.’ I was talking, in a rare moment of conversational amity, to Mrs Hilda Rumpole. ‘And what’s more, there’s such a lot of it about these days.’

  ‘A lot of what about, Rumpole?’

  ‘Love. Miss Trant, the Portia of our Chambers, is apparently expecting offspring.’

  ‘She told you that} Whatever for?’

  ‘I think she was trying to explain why she couldn’t fancy two eggs and a fried slice.’

  ‘I suppose that man Claude Erskine-Brown’s responsible.’ Hilda referred, of course, to Miss Trant’s fiance, not one of Rumpole’s greatest fans.

  ‘I imagine so. The poor little thing’s probably lying in the womb boning up on the law of landlord and tenant. They’ll expect it to get a place in Chambers.’

  ‘Oh. And are they expecting to get married at any time? Or will she be too busy with the baby?’ Hilda seemed, most unjustly, to be somehow blaming me for the moments of passion which seemed to have transported Miss Trant and Erskine-Brown after some particularly hectic rendering of Lohengrin. I thought I would deflect her displeasure by feeding her another juicy gobbet of Chambers gossip.

  ‘And Marigold wants Featherstone to be a judge. Apparently she means to divorce him if he doesn’t get a red dressing-gown.’

  ‘Marigold Featherstone,’ said She judicially, ‘has had a lot to put up with.’

  ‘Poor Guthrie’s looking in a terrible way. He’s reduced to having to play golf with Vosper J. and old Keith from the Lord Chancellor’s office.’

  ‘Guthrie Featherstone will make a splendid judge.’ She came to a firm decision, ‘I’ll have to have a talk about this with Marigold. We’re meeting at choir practice tomorrow. You’ll be coming to the Elijah, won’t you, Rumpole?’

  It will be remembered that Hilda and Marigold had joined a dreaded group of lawyers’ wives who insisted on adding endless Oratorios to the other horrors of Yuletide. I fielded the invitation by neatly changing the subject.

  ‘And speaking of love…’

  ‘Were we, Rumpole?’

  ‘Of course we were. I’m doing an Unlawful Carnal Knowledge in Hertfordshire tomorrow. Before old George Frobisher. Who is now,’ I reminded her, ‘a Circuit Judge.’

  ‘Oh well, George Frobisher,’ Hilda sounded dismissive. ‘You’ll be able to wrap him round your little finger, won’t you, Rumpole?’

  Hilda had, with rare discernment, voiced my own opinion as to how a case before His Honour Judge Frobisher would go. As I saw it my client was prepared to plead guilty if there were no question of his being called upon to visit Her Majesty; so when we arrived at the local Court I requested an interview with His Honour, and roped Miss Trant, for the prosecution, into what I hoped would prove a fruitful and friendly meeting. The news came back that the learned judge would be delighted to receive us both, and we proceeded down a passage in the new Hertfordshire Palais de Justice, a place with a lot of glass, light-polished wood and a strong smell of rubber floor-covering, and were shown into the presence of my dear old friend and sweetest of men, George Frobisher, our late stable-mate at Number 3 Equity Court in the Temple.

  ‘George. My dear old friend. Judge George Frobisher,’ I greeted him.

  ‘Good to see you, Rumpole. I’ve been looking forward to the day when you came before me.’

  I’m sure you have, George. I’m sure you have. Of course, I may not be before you today for very long.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘I have had a word with my learned friend, with the opposition, who happens to be, by a happy coincidence, our old stable-mate. You remember Miss Trant? The Portia of our Chambers?’

  ‘Miss Trant. Glad, of course, to have you before me too.’

  ‘Thank you, Judge,’ said Miss Trant. So far all so very amiable.

  ‘And we’ve been able to put our heads together, well, we had breakfast together as it so happens. They do a pretty good egg and bacon and fried slice in that little cafe opposite the Old Bailey… And we’ve been able, Miss Trant and I, to come to a certain view about this case.’

  ‘Have you?’ George sounded curiously uninterested. ‘Of course, I’ve come to no sort of view at all. I find it far better in this job not to come to any sort of view before one has heard the evidence.’

  ‘And how do you enjoy it, George?’ I was going to play the whole business slowly, and in the friendliest possible way.

  ‘Enjoy what, Rumpole?’

  ‘The job.’

  ‘Lonely. It gets extremely lonely sometimes. Yes. Life is very lonely nowadays. I must say that it is.’

  ‘Give you a decent lunch here, do they?’ I tried to sound solicitous.

  ‘Sandwiches!’ George said sadly. ‘The usher brings in
sandwiches. It’s usually cheese and tomato, but on Fridays for some reason he always brings one sardine.’

  ‘Probably got a Catholic usher there, George,’ I suggested.

  ‘Perhaps he is,’ George gave a faint smile. ‘You know, that hadn’t occurred to me.’

  ‘Well, sandwiches are no good to you, George. No good to you at all. Bring you in a glass of plonk from the off-licence, does he?’

  ‘There’s a machine in the front hall that expels some sweet warm liquid in a plastic cup. I’m never quite sure whether my usher pushes the button marked Tea, Cocoa, Coffee, or Oxtail Soup.’

  ‘George. The conditions of your work sound squalid in the extreme.’

  ‘Not squalid, Rumpole. Not squalid really.’ George looked extremely depressed. ‘Just extremely lonely. Of course, I always led a lonely sort of life in the evenings in my diggings at the Royal Borough Hotel, Kensington. But I had the companionship of you fellows in Chambers during the day.’ He looked at Miss Trant. ‘Fellows’ clearly meant her as well.

  ‘And our drinks together in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar when the day’s work was done.’

  ‘Of course, Rumpole. I look back on those evenings with considerable nostalgia.’

  ‘The high spot, wouldn’t you say, George, of your life at the Bar?’ I established all he owed to Rumpole.

  ‘Well… Of course I won’t say that being awarded a Circuit Judgeship hasn’t struck me as something of an achievement,’ George said modestly.

  ‘But as nothing compared to those happy pints of plonk we downed at Pommeroy’s, eh George? As nothing compared to the bottles of Chateau Fleet Street we consumed together whilst battling with the powerful and anonymous brain behind The Times crossword.’

  ‘They were certainly good times, Rumpole.’

  ‘The best,’ I assured him. ‘I would certainly say the best. I miss you, George, now that they’ve fitted you up with a mauve dressing-gown.’

  ‘And of course, Rumpole, I miss you too. That goes without saying. It’s good to have you here. You said you didn’t expect to be here long?’

  ‘No. No, George. Not long at all.’

  ‘Pity.’

  ‘From my point of view, yes. But for my client…’

  ‘Rumpole says it’s going to be a plea,’ Miss Trant seemed anxious to press on with the meeting.

  ‘Really?’ George looked surprised. ‘That’s not like you, Rumpole.’

  ‘I know.’ Miss Trant smiled. ‘He always taught me never to plead guilty.’

  ‘I’m not saying it will be a plea. I’m saying it might be. Look here, George. My silly old client…’

  ‘The young schoolmaster?’ George’s tone was somewhat cold.

  ‘Yes. The schoolmaster.’

  ‘Of course, he was in loco parentis . ..’ George started to ramble. I cut him short.

  ‘Let’s cut out the Latin, George, and get down to some sort of reality. Ransom doesn’t want to put the girl through the ordeal of being cross-examined by me. Which I think is very decent of him. Particularly, as you may remember, as I do have some sort of skill, in the art of cross-examination.’

  ‘Indeed, Rumpole,’ George smiled politely, ‘we all admired it. Didn’t we, Miss Trant?’

  ‘Gosh, yes!’ Miss Trant agreed. ‘I had a client who once compared Rumpole’s cross-examination to being hit by a steamroller at ninety miles per hour.’

  ‘You’re all very kind. Well, my client is quite prepared to spare the girl that, which must earn him a considerably lower tariff.’

  ‘Must it?’ To my amazement George sounded unconvinced.

  ‘And bearing in mind that the girl no doubt consented, on her own evidence.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘That’s perfectly clear, Judge,’ Miss Trant supported me. ‘In fact, the prosecution will go so far as to say she led the man on. The first letter, you will see from the depositions, was the one she wrote to him and left in his locker in the staff-room. It contains the quotation from Romeo and Juliet.’

  ‘I wonder if there isn’t really too much poetry taught in schools nowadays,’ George frowned unhappily.

  ‘She was inciting him though. That’s Miss Trant’s point, George,’ I tried to point out patiently.

  ‘It’s one thing to be tempted, Rumpole. But you don’t have to give in to it.’

  ‘’Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus,

  Another thing to fall.’

  I helped him out. ‘Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. Is that what you’re trying to remember, George?’

  ‘Perhaps it is, Rumpole. Perhaps it is.’

  ‘But those lines were spoken by Angelo in the play. A dreadful judge of whom the author said that his urine was congealed ice. You’re not like that, are you, George?’ I wanted to shame my old friend into a quick decision.

  ‘I hope not, Rumpole. I sincerely hope not. Mind you, I have been having a little trouble with the water-works lately, pardon me, Miss Trant…’ He was clearly rambling again. I was determined to put an end to it.

  ‘Well then. Don’t let’s have this nonsense about “It’s one thing to be tempted”. The fact is, this young girl was never for a moment seduced.’

  George looked mildly at both of us and spoke most politely. ‘You two no doubt have all the law at your fingertips. But that’s absolutely no defence, is it?’

  ‘No, it’s not a defence. But it must be mitigation.’ Miss Trant was doing her best.

  ‘Thank you, Miss Trant,’ I smiled at her. ‘Of course it is, George. Powerful mitigation!’

  ‘Then no doubt you will raise it, Rumpole. At the proper time?’

  ‘The proper time?’ I was giving George the message loud and clear; but he didn’t seem to be getting it.

  ‘At the end of the case. If your client’s found guilty.’

  ‘George. The proper time is now.’ I tried to explain, as if to a child. ‘Look, my friend, my dear old friend…’ Then I lost patience. ‘Oh, pull yourself together, George. Look. The girl would have been sixteen in another month. She’s over sixteen now!’

  ‘Is that a defence? Remind me. What’s your client’s age?’ The man was being singularly obtuse. I chose an answer from literature. ‘Do you know how old Juliet was when she met Romeo?’

  ‘No, I don’t. But no doubt you’ll be making use of the fact in your speech to the jury.’

  ‘She was under fourteen! You remember her old Nurse?’ ‘Not personally.’ George smiled, I thought foolishly.

  ‘Even or odd, of all days of the year

  Come Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen,’

  I reminded him.

  ‘You remember so much more Shakespeare than I do, Rum-pole. I’ve always admired you for it.’

  ‘That was how old Juliet was, at the time she married Romeo and went to bed with him.’

  ‘And came to a rather unpleasant end, if I remember. What was it, locked up in a tomb and taking poison?’ If he was trying to catch me out on Shakespeare I could get the better of him.

  ‘All because of that idiotic monk. We don’t want you making any mistakes like that, George.’

  ‘I try not to make mistakes in this job, Rumpole. One can only do one’s best.’

  ‘When you spoke of locking up, of course nothing of that sort would be appropriate here.’ I tried to make the position clear.

  ‘Wouldn’t it, Rumpole?’

  ‘Of course it wouldn’t.’ I was trying to keep my temper.

  ‘The prosecution wouldn’t regard this as an offence that warrants a prison sentence.’ Miss Trant offered her help. I was grateful for it.

  ‘But then it’s really nothing to do with the prosecution, is it?’ George was smiling at her.

  ‘Well, not strictly

  ‘It’s my job to decide on sentence. I must say, I never find it at all easy. Particularly when it comes to prison.’ George was passing from the obtuse to the obnoxious.

  ‘That must come as a great comfort to those you bang up. To know it
caused you a little difficulty, George,’ I told him.

  ‘But I must say, if your client’s found guilty…’

  I tried to explain the situation for the last time. ‘I told you. He’s prepared to plead. And face a conditional discharge.’ George looked impassive. I went on, ‘Or at the most a suspended sentence. Damn it all, he’ll lose his job, George!’

  ‘It’s his job, I must confess, that’s worrying me, Rumpole.’ George frowned. ‘His job was to look after this girl.’

  ‘This young woman,’ I corrected him.

  ‘This minor. Not to fill her up with Vivaldi and cannelloni and take her to bed in some maisonette in Fitzjohn’s Avenue, borrowed from friends.’

  ‘They’re a couple from the B.B.C. Highly respectable people.’

  ‘They weren’t respectable if they knew what was going on.’

  ‘They didn’t.’

  ‘Then your client was abusing their hospitality, as well as his position as a school-teacher.’

  ‘George. Abelard was Éloise’s tutor.’

  ‘Éloise and Abelard aren’t on trial in this Court,’ George said firmly. ‘If they were I might have something rather unpleasant to say to them.’ George stood up unexpectedly. ‘Well, I’m sorry I can’t do more for you. And I’m sorry your visit won’t be a longer one, Rumpole.’

  ‘It may be longer,’ I told him. ‘I’m not pleading guilty unless

  ‘Rumpole,’ George interrupted me. ‘You know perfectly well I can’t come to any sort of bargain.’

  ‘Just tell me, George…’ I was almost pleading with him, ‘George, we know each other well enough!’

  ‘Well enough for me to tell you both this,’ George actually interrupted me, ‘I can’t possibly hold out any promises. If Ransom’s found guilty I’ll have to consider sentence, very carefully. I couldn’t rule out the possibility of prison. I couldn’t rule it out at all. Does that help you?’

  ‘You know bloody well it doesn’t!’ I wanted George to be in no doubt. ‘Come along, Miss Trant.’ At the door I turned to wish my old friend ill. ‘Enjoy your sandwiches!’

  ‘Sandwiches! I hope they choke him! Thank God it’s not Friday. He won’t even get sardine.’ I was reporting to Ransom and Grayson the solicitor in the corridor outside the Court.