‘This Alderman LaUncelot Pertwee,’ he told me, ‘Chairman of the Watch Committee, member of the Festival of Light, President of the Clean-Up-Grimble Society, walks into my Sowerby Street shop when I’m out at golf.’
‘Mr Meacher here owns the Adult Reading Mart with twenty branches in the north of England.’ My former clerk Albert Handyside provided the information. Twenty dubious bookshops sounded to me a veritable Eldorado, a promise of briefs beyond price.
‘And my damn fool of an assistant, Dobbs,’ Meacher went on, ‘only sells Pertwee two hundred quid’s worth of adult reading, films and visual aids. Of course, Peeping Pertwee’s round to the Chief Constable with them in five minutes.’
It was then that I gave Meacher the value of my advice on his particular class of criminal trial. ‘Mr Meacher,’ I said. ‘I have been thinking hard about the nature of your defence. I’ve read all the numbers of Schoolgirl Capers… I seem to have lost Vol. 1, number 4… It doesn’t matter.’
‘Mr Rumpole’ll have your defence well worked out, Mr Meacher.’ Dear old Albert Handyside was always a great support to me.
‘I’d like to go for Prying Pertwee.’ Meacher was clearly longing for revenge. ‘The man’s a hypocrite. There’s been some very nasty rumours about the Alderman.’
I lit a small cigar and returned my client to the realm of pure law. ‘My first thought was that the prosecution’s barking up the wrong tree. They should have done you under the Trade Descriptions Act.’
‘What do you mean exactly, Mr Rumpole?’ I could see poor old Albert looking puzzled. I did my best to explain.
‘Adult reading material, Mr Meacher. Isn’t it put forward as something likely to stimulate the senses, to send a young man’s fancy wild with unsatisfied desire, to promote venery and to conjure up, for the lonely and unfulfilled citizens of Grimble, all the abandoned delights of the bedchamber?’
‘Well, to be quite honest with you, Mr Rumpole,’ Meacher admitted, ‘yes.’
‘Let’s be really honest,’ I replied. ‘No! I have looked, swiftly I must confess, through this material. There is only one word for it. “Off-putting”.’
‘I’m not quite with you.’ Meacher’s expression was pained.
‘I have been thinking to myself…’ I blew out smoke, enjoying the philosophical argument. ‘What are the least aphrodisiac conceptions, the things most deadening to lust? Income Tax? V.A.T.? String vests? Chest protectors? Cardigans? Woollen socks worn with sandals? Fish fingers? Party Political Broadcasts? As deterrents to the tender passion, I would say they all come a bad second to Schoolgirl Capers Vols. 1 to 6 and Double Dating in the Tower of Terror, and you can throw in Manacle me, Darling as an additional extra!’
‘Mr Rumpole.’ Meacher appeared to be about to protest; but I wasn’t accepting questions yet.
‘Schoolgirl Capers! There can’t be a schoolgirl in there under forty!’ I paused and relit the wilting cigar. ‘However, attractive as it would be to point out that this material is merely a boring waste of money, I shan’t in fact take that line.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Mr Meacher looked distinctly relieved. ‘This is a serious case, Mr Rumpole.’
‘Yes, of course,’ I agreed with him, ‘far more serious than the tripe removed by Alderman Pert wee.’
‘Stock valued at at least two hundred pounds,’ Meacher protested, and I stood to give him what I still believe was one of my finest speeches in the law.
‘Stock valued beyond gold, Mr Meacher! Our priceless liberties. Free speech, Mr Meacher! That’s how we’re going to win this one. The birthright of the Briton, to read and write just as the fancy takes him.’ The time had come to call on Wordsworth and I gave Mr Meacher, for the price of his con, a few lines from the old darling.
‘It is not to be thought of that the flood
Of British Freedom, which, to the open sea
Of the world’s praise, from dark antiquity
Hath flowed, with pomp of waters, unwithstood,
Should perish!’
As I recited I paced, and as I passed the door it opened and there was Ken Cracknell, standing there eagerly, his arms full of papers and other tools of his trade. ‘Some other time, Cracknell!’ I hissed at him. ‘Can’t you see I’ve got a conference?’
‘This is my room!’ Cracknell sounded outraged.
‘Some other time.’ And I promised him, by way of compensation, ‘I’ll want to see you about that little murder of yours. I’ve had some ideas, as it so happens. Run along now.’ At which I shut the door on Cracknell and walked back to my desk, still addressing the North-country bookseller in ringing tones. ‘Words, we shall tell the jury, Mr Meacher, must be free, for freedom is indivisible! Man has the right to read the boldest speculations, the most dazzling philosophy, to question God, to explore the universe, to follow poetry into the most exquisite sensuality or the finest religious ecstasy. So he must be granted the freedom to blunt his brains on Schoolgirl Capers. I utterly deplore the rubbish you are selling, but I’ll defend to the death anyone’s right to read it!’ I concluded, giving him Voltaire, the Rumpole version.
There was a long pause. My oratory was having an effect; something was stirring in what remained of Mr Meacher’s mind after a prolonged course of adult reading. ‘Free speech, eh?’ he said, blinking.
‘In a nutshell,’ I told him.
‘I like it, Mr Rumpole.’ A slow smile spread over Mr Meacher’s florid features. ‘I really like it. As a defence, I would say, it has a certain amount of class.’
A day or so later I was chewing a piece of breakfast toast and reading the daily paper when up spoke She Who Must Be Obeyed, whom I had noticed eyeing me curiously of late.
‘What are you reading now, Rumpole?’
‘The Obituaries in The Times,’ I told her.
‘Well, that makes a change!’ Hilda gave me one of her small, disapproving clicks as she poured the tea.
‘I always read the Obituaries in The Times,’ I explained to her. ‘They make me bloody glad to be alive.’ I gave her a quotation from a particularly pleasing obituary. ‘ “Sir Frederick Foxgrove was known and respected as a wise judge and just sentencer. His behaviour in Court was always a model of dignity.” In other words, old Foxy was Judge Jeffries without the laughs.’
‘Is that really lively enough reading for you, Rumpole?’ I saw She looking at me with a kind of sadness, and I answered, puzzled.
‘The Obituaries can never be lively reading, exactly. Are you feeling quite all right, Hilda?’
‘I’m not sure, Rumpole,’ she sighed. ‘Are you?’
‘What?’
‘Feeling quite all right.’ She took a sad swig of tea and then went on to speak as though there were death in the family. ‘Because if you’re not, for any reason, I asked Dr MacClintock to drop in for a glass of sherry this evening. He’ll be passing us on his rounds.’
‘Damned expensive sherry, won’t it be?’ I could see no possible point in our pouring drink down the medical profession.
‘Oh no, Rumpole. He’s dropping in purely as a friend. I thought you could discuss with him any little worries you may have… about anything… at all.’
I didn’t see how Dr MacClintock could possibly help me to get hold of the brief in R. v. Simpson, or indeed in any important matter. I rolled up The Times and prepared to go off to work. ‘I’m catching an early train to Grimble tomorrow,’ I warned Hilda. ‘I may have to stay up there for a night or two.’
‘Grimble? What on earth are you going to Grimble for?’ My wife looked totally fogged. I suppose the answer I gave her was somewhat oblique.
‘Sex! Some would say sex. Some would say the freedom of speech.’
And as I left to go about my business, I heard Hilda click her tongue again, sigh and say, ‘Oh dear! I really think you’d better speak to Dr MacClintock about it.’
When I came, at last, to the end of a not very busy day (briefs were hardly showering in on Rumpole’s return), I decided to give my
favourite watering-hole, Pommeroy’s Wine Bar, a miss, mainly for hard financial reasons, and I went straight back to Casa Rumpole. There I was sitting with a bottle of take-away claret (sadly I seemed to be down to the last couple of dozen) with my shoes and jacket off, reading with envy and disgust the Evening Standard’s account of a particularly asinine cross-examination, part of a nice libel action in which Guthrie Featherstone was undeservedly appearing, when She pushed open the door and ushered in the gloomy medico who had us on his panel.
‘Here’s Dr MacClintock,’ she said. ‘Come for his sherry.’
Come for my sherry might have put it more accurately; but I thought I might as well cheer the old darling up with a glass of the nauseous and liverish brew Hilda’s friend Dodo had sent us for Christmas, and which I never drink anyway.
‘Sit down, Doctor,’ I said. ‘We run a little charitable bar here, for depressed quacks.’ And added, when I saw the look on Hilda’s face, ‘Take no notice of me. I was only joking.’
‘Well, I’d better leave you two men to get on with it,’ said Hilda, about to depart. ‘Rumpole, you’d do very well to listen to every word that Dr MacClintock has to say.’
So, as rare things will, she vanished. I looked at the Doctor, who seemed to be going through some kind of terminal embarrassment. I poured him a sherry, for which he seemed unreasonably grateful.
‘Excellent sherry, Rumpole. Amontillado?’
‘Pommeroy’s pale plonk.’ It seemed a shame to disillusion him. ‘Look, Dr MacClintock. What are you doing, dropping in like this? Other than mopping up the Spanish-style gut-rot?’
‘Rumpole, your wife Hilda came to see me…’
‘Feeling seedy, was she? I told her she should never have come back to England. Climate in Florida suited her far better.’
The Doctor gulped more sherry, which gave him the strength to murmur, ‘She was concerned about you, Rumpole.’
‘You really like that stuff?’ I looked at the iron-stomached Doctor. Then I further cheered him by giving us each a refill of our respective stimulants.
‘As I explained to Hilda,’ the Doctor spoke in a kind of sepulchral whisper. ‘It’s nothing for you to be ashamed of.’
‘I can’t say that I’ve ever felt ashamed of drinking a glass of claret.’ The man didn’t seem to be making a great deal of sense to me.
‘Everyone has their little kinks,’ the Doctor suddenly informed me. ‘Their little peculiarities. Sometimes a doctor wonders if there’s any such thing as a normal man.’
‘Do you, Doctor?’ I sat and lit a small cigar. The medic was failing to hold my attention.
‘I have been married to Marcia, as you know, for going on twenty years.’ Was this the time for a confession? I didn’t want to probe the good Doctor’s private grief.
I confined myself to asking politely, ‘How is your good lady?’
‘And I can’t say that I’ve never been tempted’ - the Doctor was now gaining his flow - ‘sorely tempted, even to throw it up, well, I won’t say for a gymslip and a pair of pigtails…’
I looked sadly at the wretched MacClintock. ‘You, Doctor?’ I didn’t, of course, withhold my pity. ‘Even you} Sometimes I think the whole world’s going mad!’
‘Hilda told me what you’re doing. Try and see it in proportion, Rumpole. It’s nothing to be guilty about.’ He was now smiling at me in a sickly and reassuring way. I began to wonder if the man had been overworking.
‘I don’t feel particularly guilty about going to the north of England.’ I did my best to reassure him.
‘Of course not! That’s probably a good idea. Bit of a winter break. Marcia and I went to Malta last year.’ He then frowned as though an appalling thought had occurred to him. ‘I say, Rumpole. You’re not going to the north with anyone, are you?’
‘No, of course not. What do you mean?’
‘I shall be able to reassure Hilda. I told her I didn’t think there was anyone who’d be interested in going to the north of England with you, Rumpole.’
‘Is that what you came here to say?’ My mind was starting to boggle.
‘Yes. Yes, it is. I hope it’s made you feel better.’
‘As a matter of fact,’ I had to be honest with him, ‘it’s made me feel considerably worse.’
‘You’re not to worry, Rumpole. We all have our own little guilty secret…’
Then the Doctor, with the air of a man who has completed a painful duty, leant back and began to discus the plans he had for insulating his loft. I imagine a lifetime of peering down various human orifices does, in the end, soften the brain; but I couldn’t really understand why our neighbourhood G.P. had to work out his problems on our sherry.
Chapter Eleven
The next day I travelled up north to put up at the Majestic Hotel, Grimble (how well I remember that icy, marmoreal dining-room, the deaf waiters and the mattresses apparently stuffed with firewood), and to my struggle against censorship in the Grimble Crown Court. And Kenneth Cracknell, Esq., weary after a hard day at the Old Bailey, roared down to Brixton Prison on the Honda and there met his old friend and instructing solicitor Mike Mowbray and his client Percival Simpson, who looked at them, as Mowbray told me later, as if their visit had been a perfectly useless kindness and a complete waste of time.
‘I can’t fight against them.’ Simpson sat at the table in the interview room and looked at them hopelessly. ‘Not the miracle workers.’
‘Now, Mr Simpson.’ Young Mike Mowbray was trying his best. ‘You’ve certainly got a difficult case. But Mr Cracknell’s a barrister who’s had a lot of success lately.’
‘They can change the blood on a piece of paper. How can I fight against that?’ Simpson smiled at them gently and then looked out of the window as if the case no longer held his full attention.
‘Mr Cracknell has a whole lot of successful defences to his credit,’ Mike went on gently.
‘I have sinned. I appreciate that. What can I do?’ Simpson gave another of his watery smiles.
‘Mr Simpson. Who had the knife?’ Cracknell felt he had to take some sort of command of this drifting conference, and came out with a pugnacious question.
‘He gave me the knife. So I could kill myself. That’s thecunning of them, you see,’ Simpson said patiently, but apparently without any real hope of being understood.
‘You had the knife, Mr Simpson. Now why did you use it? Why?’ Ken was cross-examining his client, ever an unwise thing to do (you run the extreme risk of the old darling telling you he did the crime, which is hardly welcome information or helpful to the defence). At this point Mowbray was sure that he saw their client casually smother a yawn.
‘I’m so tired,’ Simpson admitted.
‘Was it sex, Mr Simpson? Had he come down there to make sexual advances? Were you trying to fight him off ?’ Cracknell had, in his extreme lack of experience, hit on a somewhat trite defence.
‘I must say, that was the line that appealed to me,’ Mike Mowbray admitted, showing his prejudices. ‘He was that sort of bloke, wasn’t he? Eton and the Guards. That sort of character. Your Class A gay.’
‘I don’t know what sort of person he was, but he was one of them,’ Simpson agreed.
‘Well, exactly!’ Mike Mowbray was delighted.
‘I can’t say any more really.’ Simpson stood up to end the meeting. ‘I’m tired of fighting… Excuse me now, please. I can’t say any more…’
So it was a despondent Cracknell and Mowbray, counsel and instructing solicitor, who made their way out past the Alsatians and the trusty prisoners weeding the dusty plants in the black flowerbeds under the prison walls. As they approached freedom and the gate, Mike comforted his friend.
‘You’ll pull off something, Ken,’ he said. ‘You’ve always done that up till now.’
‘On my own?’ Ken sounded unexpectedly incredulous.
Mike was puzzled. He knew his friend was an ambitious young barrister, who wouldn’t want to share the limelight which would shine on him in
an important murder. ‘You don’t want a silk, do you?’ he asked.
‘Not a silk, no.’ Ken Cracknell was thoughtful. ‘But perhaps… a very experienced member of the Junior Bar to lead me. You know, Mike. If you’ve got to insult an aristocratic corpse, grey hair might be a help.’
‘An experienced junior?’ Mike thought the suggestion over. ‘Like who? You got any ideas?’
‘Well, yes,’ Ken Cracknell said, and I was amazed when I heard of it. ‘I think I have.’
‘Alderman Pertwee, did you visit the Adult Book Mart, Sowerby Street, on March 12th last?’
I was at home again, crowned by my old grey horsehair wig (bought second-hand from an ex-Attorney-General of Fiji in the 1930s) with the gown slipping off my shoulders and a collar like a blunt execution. In my sights, just alighted in the witness box, was a plump bird called Alderman Pertwee. He had a large stomach decorated with a gold watch and chain, ginger hair and moustache; he was small of stature and he had a beady and inquisitive eye. Our defence didn’t in the least depend on the jury disliking Alderman Pertwee, but I thought that if Rumpole were ever to let him have it with both barrels, they might well be prepared to turn against him. Prosecuting counsel, a tall, skinny, young man named Mackwood, who was clearly horrified by Schoolgirl Capers, was leading the Alderman through his evidence-in-chief.
‘I did visit the Adult Book Mart, your Honour.’ The Alderman gave a small, corpulent and horribly ingratiating bow to the Judge before he answered the question. To his eternal credit the Judge rewarded him with a glassy stare of non-recognition. Pertwee then continued with his so-called evidence. ‘I did, your Honour. And I found books and magazines of the most flagrant immorality on display.’
Now was the time to haul myself to my hind legs as in the days of yore. I spoke my first words in Court since my return. ‘Your Honour, I object.’
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