The First Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  ‘Do write if you can think of any sort of a cunning wheeze for Ken. Hope you’re enjoying the sunshine. I do envy you. Phillida (Trant as was) Erskine-Brown.’

  ‘No, nothing really. Just a postcard from my old clerk.’ I stuffed Miss Trant’s letter into my pocket; for some reason I felt guilty about it, as though I were already plotting the desperate course I was about to take.

  ‘Henry’s not wanting you back, is he?’ Hilda asked suspiciously about my clerk, at which moment Erica emerged from the house with an ethnic shopping-basket and saw me smiling through the mist of the sprinkler.

  ‘You look much happier today, Dad.’

  ‘Yes. Henry doesn’t want me back. There’s no mention of that,’ I told Hilda more or less truthfully.

  ‘Oh well.’ Hilda seemed relieved. ‘We’re just going down to the drug store.’

  ‘What’s the matter? Feeling seedy?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Rumpole. We’re going to get Erica’s cigarettes.’

  As they went off chattering together to Erica’s parked station-wagon, I began to wonder at the fact that Hilda, at her time of life, was starting to learn American.

  *

  The Importance of Blood Stains in Forensic Evidence by Professor Andrew Ackerman, M.R.C.P., F.C. path. The advantage of having a son who has done well in an academic career is that you can have your favourite books about you, even in Miami.

  I was in the long, pleasantly cool room of the University library; around me blonde and bronzed young people, dressed in jeans and T-shirts, chewed gum and read the letters of Henry James, or some twelve-volume commentary on the works of Trollope. I leafed rapidly through Ackerman’s familiar index. ‘Blood stains on clothing… On floors… On… On innocent bystanders…’ At first I couldn’t believe that the Great Ackerman hadn’t dealt with the problem, but then I became aware of the fact that Ken Cracknell’s murder had, apparently, broken ground untrodden even by the Great Prince of the Mortuaries himself.

  So felt I like some watcher of the skies

  When a new planet swam into his ken…

  Or a new blood stain I told myself with delight, and I was clutching Andrew Ackerman’s weighty volume and crossing the pleasant, tree-lined campus, threading my way among the bicycling and courting couples, when I came up to those former barbecue guests, Professor Blowfield of the Law Department and Paul Gilpin from English, together with that distinguished academic, young Nicholas Rumpole, Head of the Department of Sociology.

  ‘It’s the damnedest thing about Tiffany,’ Paul was saying as I came up to them. ‘She just vanished.’

  ‘Vanished?’ Professor Blowfield was saying. ‘She can’t have vanished. Why, here you are, Mr Rumpole. It seems we have a mystery on our hands.’

  ‘Mystery? What mystery?’ Fate seemed to have been unusually kind in the matter of handing out mysteries that day.

  ‘Tiffany Jones never showed up at the Department,’ Nick said. ‘Yet Paul says she left home same time as usual.’

  ‘And there’s a young guy on the campus says Tiffany sold him her car yesterday. He picked it up from the street outside our apartment block - with the key on the offside wheel. How the hell’s she going to go on living in Miami without a car?’

  ‘She didn’t say anything?’ Professor Blowfield asked.

  ‘Not that I can remember.’

  I spent only a moment lamenting Paul Gilpin’s loss of the handsome Tiffany; she had in any event seemed, as far as I clearly remembered, far too good for him, and then I approached Nick with the first stirrings of my Great Plan in mind.

  ‘Nick. I must talk to you.’

  ‘You remember Tiffany Jones, don’t you, Dad? The economic statistician. She came to the barbecue.’

  ‘Of course I remember her; but do statisticians ever disappear?’

  ‘She’ll call up, I guess. It can’t be anything.’ But Paul Gilpin didn’t sound convinced.

  ‘Perhaps she just melted away in the sunshine. Look, Nick. I’ll take you out to lunch. Not the canteen. I don’t think I could take another three-storey sandwich with a gherkin on a toothpick. Is there a quiet little chop-house somewhere? Where we could talk quietly?’

  Chapter Six

  We settled on the Magic Bamboo, a Chinese restaurant just off the campus. Clever little people, the Chinese, who would have made splendid Battle of Britain pilots, because they must be expert at seeing in the dark. The room, painted in black lacquer and gold, was plunged into a midnight gloom in which husbands no doubt lunched with their secretaries or other people’s wives, or went on what might have been aptly known as blind dates. Faint lights dotted the tables with the effulgence of glow-worms, and pretty young Chinese waitresses passed among them with table-heaters and bowls of oriental delicacies.

  ‘I’ve got to talk to you seriously, Nick,’ I began, and wondered when I had talked to him seriously before.

  ‘Look. If it’s about money, there’s absolutely no hurry. I know you’ll make a contribution when you sell the flat.’

  ‘It’s not about money, Nick. Anyway, I may not sell the flat. I’ve got an idea I may need a pied-a-terre in Froxbury Mansions…’

  ‘What are you up to, Dad?’ Nick looked at me with some suspicion, and I decided to approach my goal by a circuitous route.

  ‘Look, Nick,’ I said. ‘When you were a boy, we used to have an oath of secrecy. Remember? If I found you reading comics under the bedclothes or eating gobstoppers? Your mother thought there was something lower class about a gobstopper… Anyway, if I discovered any crime of that nature, the motto was N.A.W.T.S.W.M.B.O.’

  ‘What on earth did that mean?’ The young have short memories and Nick looked puzzled.

  ‘Not A Word To She Who Must Be Obeyed,’ I translated. ‘So you see, if I planned to do the vanishing trick… like what’s her name, the disappearing statistician? Miss Tiffany Jones?’

  ‘Dad. Is it about money?’ Nick still looked vaguely anxious.

  ‘No, dear boy. My dear Nick,’ I set his mind at rest, ‘it’s about blood.’

  ‘Blood?’ Nick seemed not at all reassured.

  ‘Listen, Nick. When I left England, I decided to plonk all my cards face down on the table. When I finally gave match point to His Honour Judge Bullingham and hung up my wig, I thought there were elements in my Chambers, deviously backed by our middle-of-the-road Q.C., M.P. Head of Chambers, who were quite pleased to see the back of old Rumpole. If I’m not mistaken, a certain sigh of relief went up from the clerks’ room, where they prefer a barrister who’s prepared to kiss his instructing solicitor’s backside! But it now seems perfectly clear, Nick. They want me back. They can’t do without me!’

  ‘Dad…’ Nick was attempting some sort of interruption, but I was now in full flow.

  ‘I’ve had a letter from Miss Phillida Trant, a girl whom I brought up in the law. She has written to me by airmail, Nick, sparing no expense. It seems they’ve got a murder which raises several nice questions of blood. So the cry has gone up from Equity Court in the Temple: Send for Rumpole!’

  ‘Dad, you’re not thinking of going back?’

  It was a direct question and I decided to put off answering it by swigging the red wine the Chinese waitress had thoughtfully delivered. ‘What’s this? More Californian claret? Chateau Deadwood Stage? Not bad, Nick. Not bad at all. Better than Pommeroy’s plonk, which in a bad year, if you remember, tasted as if they’d been treading toadstools and paddling in disinfectant.’

  ‘Look. If Erica and I haven’t shown we want you…’ Nick was not to be diverted.

  ‘Bless you, Nick,’ I hastily reassured him. ‘Of course you have! I remember when you were a boy, quite a young boy, you were always about the place. We used to go for walks on Hampstead Heath. We used to track Indian spoor and swear to be blood-brothers. You recall that, don’t you, Nick?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ For some reason those moments of past, childish excitement seemed to have slipped his memory.

  ‘Well
, that’s what happened.’ I had no doubt about it. ‘And then you went off to school and university and forgot about me. I had to let you go and after a while, well, it’s quite true, I

  hardly missed you. You’ll have to let me go now, Nick. It won’t be a great deprivation.’

  It seemed to take a while for him to catch my drift, and when he did he looked puzzled, but not as appalled as a fond father might have hoped. ‘I thought,’ my son said slowly, ‘Erica thought this too, that now we could really get to know one another.’

  This did seem to me unnecessary. I mean, when you’ve seen a man through nappies and paid his school fees, you’ve really got past the formal introduction stage. ‘We knew each other, Nick,’ I reminded him. ‘You knew me when I sat on the edge of the bath and told you about my murder cases. You don’t want to know an old man dying of boredom in the sunshine.’

  At which point a waitress passed with a tray loaded with small, steaming, cylindrical, white objects. With the aid of a pair of tongs she deposited one of these on each of our side plates.

  ‘What are you planning?’ Nick looked at me with deepening suspicion.

  I took another swig of Chateau Cherokee or whatever it was and told him, ‘Going home, Nick. Returning to base. Travel, you see, narrows the mind extraordinarily.’ Then I gave him some lines of Ben Jonson that seemed to sum the matter up. They are displayed in all their glory in old Arthur Quiller- Couch’s edition of The Oxford Book of English Verse, a battered India paper volume which travels always in my suitcase.

  ‘No, I do know that I was born

  To age, misfortune, sickness, grief:

  But I will bear these with that scorn

  As shall not need thy false relief.

  Nor for my peace will I go far,

  As wanderers do, that still do roam;

  But make my strengths, such as they are,

  Here in my bosom, and at home.’

  ‘Good!’ I peered through the blackout at the steaming shape on my side plate. ‘They’ve brought us something to eat at last. I rather like Egg Rolls.’ And before Nick could intervene I had seized the imagined delicacy and suddenly filled my mouth with what tasted like a mixture of warm scented soap and cotton fibres. The American passion for hygiene and dark restaurants had made me start my luncheon with an hors d’oeuvre of hot face-towel.

  However, I give myself the credit of taking into full account the feelings of She Who Must Be Obeyed. I decided to leave her behind.

  My wife Hilda had not, after all, throughout our long lives together, displayed any marked enthusiasm for the company of Rumpole. She frequently resented my presence, as well as my occasional absence at the end of the day in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar. She took exception to my old anecdotes and criticized my hat. Hilda, I decided entirely with her best interests at heart, would be far happier if she stayed in America with Nick, Erica and the forthcoming infant Rumpole. I decided, I think wisely, on the selfless course of ‘going it alone’ as a result of an ex parte motion and without notice to the other side. In fact I saw no possible point in an argument with She; her natural desire to win it might force her to come with me, a course which I was convinced was not in the best interests of either of us.

  So, with a growing sense of excitement and liberation, I laid my plans. I took time off from our hours at the beach to make a solitary visit to the headquarters of Gaelic Airlines, and secured a seat home in the steerage. As the great day approached I ordered a yellow taxi to call at the house at dawn, with a strict injunction against any sort of toot. When I left She’s bedroom she moved uneasily in her sleep and muttered, ‘Rumpole’. I was standing with my shoes in one hand and a packed suitcase in the other. I whispered, ‘So long, Hilda’ with all the cheerfulness of a schoolboy setting out to bicycle to the seaside on the first day of the summer holidays.

  Hours later I was hanging in mid air somewhere over the Atlantic and a stewardess was handing me a miniature bottle of rum with the aloof distaste of a girl who felt her rightful place was with the champagne passengers behind the First Class curtain. I knew how dear old Tolstoy felt when he decided, late in life, to give the joys of matrimony the slip and set out for the railway station. I raised my plastic glass to the memory of the old Russian darling: it’s never too late, after all, to strike a blow for freedom.

  The machine owned by Gaelic Airlines was a contraption which I suspected was kept together with chewing gum and harp strings. As this unconvincing craft shuddered across the world, the strapping wenches in green kilts slammed trays of inedible food in front of those passengers fortunate enough to have dropped into an uneasy doze, babies screamed and piped music relayed the ‘Londonderry Air’. It was a journey no one would be anxious to repeat, having all the glamour of a trip down Charing Cross tube station in the rush hour with the added element of fear.

  Why was it that I was so anxious to repeat the miserable experience of being trundled through the stratosphere by courtesy of Gaelic Airlines? Looking back on it I think I must have deceived myself. “When I got Miss Trant’s letter, it seemed to me that the dull sunshine world of my retirement was suddenly refilled with interest. I convinced myself that I was still needed, that in fact Chambers couldn’t do without me. What right had I, I wondered that morning, to deny my undoubted talents and lifetime’s experience of blood stains to the British legal system? What was I doing, I asked myself, boring myself to death among a lot of geriatrics and citrus fruits, when the London under- ground system was still capable of yielding such a fine vintage murder? After only a short while with these thoughts, I came to the clear conclusion that there was only one way for Rumpole to go; sitting on the beach queuing up for death was out; I would meet my end in the full flood of a final speech, and with my wig on.

  A confused number of hours, or perhaps days, later Ken Cracknell, the radical lawyer, and his chief fan and most vocal supporter, Miss Phillida Trant, were wending their weary way back to Chambers from Pommeroy’s Wine Bar, where they had been refreshing themselves after a hard day in their respective courts. Ever hopeful of prolonging such moments of pleasure and delight, Cracknell asked his companion if she’d join him for a hamburger.

  ‘Not tonight.’ Miss Trant was genuinely grateful.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Claude’s getting a baby-sitter. We’re going to the Festival Hall. I promise…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll turn you over in my mind, during the Verdi Requiem,’ Miss Trant smiled at him.

  ‘Oh, thanks very much.’ Cracknell appeared to find the prospect less than satisfying.

  ‘We’ll meet tomorrow anyway,’ Miss Trant comforted him. ‘We’re co-defending in that long firm fraud down the Bailey.’

  Cracknell sighed and accepted the crumb of comfort. They had now reached the doorway of our Chambers in Equity Court. ‘I suppose I’d better go up and get the brief.’

  ‘I suppose you had.’ Looking carefully about her and seeing no one, in the doorway of our Chambers (so she told me later over a confessional bottle of claret in Pommeroy’s) Mrs Erskine-Brown, nee Trant, kissed Ken Cracknell. It was a moderately lengthy kiss. Miss Trant at first closed her eyes, the better to savour the experience, but when she opened them she found herself looking up at the room occupied by the devoted Ken; and there she saw an unexpected sight.

  ‘Ken,’ she whispered, ‘isn’t that the window of your room?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course it is.’ Ken turned and looked up at what he now regarded as ‘his’ room. The light was on in the early evening and on the drawn blind could be seen the silhouette of a figure who has become, I flatter myself, pretty familiar around the Temple and the Courts of Law. It was the shape of a man not tall but comfortably built (Claude Erskine-Brown might say fat) wearing a bow tie and smoking a small cigar.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Miss Phillida Trant, staring at the clearly inhabited window, ‘what have I done? I only wrote him a letter!’

  Chapter Seven

  I had let myself int
o Chambers that evening with the key I had never abandoned, and had gone straight up, the clerk’s room being empty, to the room which I still considered to be mine. There I at once noted several changes: in place of my old ‘Spy’ caricatures of forgotten judges, there were posters for the North London Law Centre, for a rock concert in aid of Amnesty International, and for The Legal Ass, a new satirical magazine produced by the Hornsey Group of young and radical articled clerks. The space suit and the great globular plastic helmet hung on the back of the door; there were copies both of Time Out and of some periodical apparently written in the Welsh language with photographs of old men in dust-sheets singing in the open air. On the mantelpiece there were briefs marked Mr K. Crack- nell, and others bearing the inscription Mr Owen Glendour- Owen. Among these pending cases were the papers in R. v. Simpson, Cracknell’s first murder.

  I went over to my old desk. It was covered with an assort- ment of papers, some unwashed coffee cups with cigarette ends and, in one case, half a ginger biscuit, soaking in the saucers. The eye was immediately assaulted by some luridly covered copies of a magazine entitled Schoolgirl Capers in which the schoolgirls in question, none of whom could have been a day under thirty-five, were wearing pigtails and ab- breviated gymslips and getting up to no sort of good whatso- ever. I lit a small cigar, undid the tape which secured the brief in the Simpson murder and was standing by the window reading contentedly (delightedly conscious of the fact that there was no She Who Must Be Obeyed at home, awaiting my return) when the door burst open and a dark-browed and fiercely scowling young man appeared to make me instantly unwelcome.

  ‘What on earth…’ the young man started, but I interrupted him.

  ‘I don’t think we’ve met, have we?’

  ‘No, we haven’t. I’m Ken Cracknell.’