The First Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  I didn’t dispute it. It was a case which I always knew should have been mine.

  ‘I mean, I don’t want some smooth leader like Guthrie Featherstone who’ll twist Simpson’s arm and make him plead guilty.’

  ‘Plead guilty?’ I almost exploded, i never plead guilty!’ At which I grasped the proffered brief before Ken had any chance of changing his mind.

  ‘It’s not an easy case, Rumpole.’ Ken looked genuinely worried, bless his heart. ‘I really don’t know what the answer is.’

  ‘Worry not, old darling. My dear Ken, your days of anxiety are over. The answer lies in the blood.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  I had a murder. I even had a suspected carrying of house-breaking implements by night. It’s true that after our singular evening with Richard Tauber a certain amount of cold air had been blowing between myself and She Who Must Be Obeyed. I didn’t feel I was forgiven for the sudden dash to freedom, nor was it likely to be forgotten in a hurry. As a consequence, there was a good deal of silence about the matrimonial home, broken, from time to time, only by the clicking of Hilda’s tongue.

  Once outside the confines of Froxbury Mansions, however, my spirits rose, my step was lighter and I could be heard to hum tunelessly as I emerged from the Temple tube station with the light of approaching battle in my eye. God was in his heaven and I had the brief in R. v. Simpson, and so there was nothing much wrong with the world outside Froxbury Mansions.

  It was therefore with a feeling of exhilaration and excitement that I returned to that favourite rendezvous of mine, the interview rooms at Brixton Prison. Ken made his own way by bike and young Mowbray had walked down from his nearby office. However, a few minutes with our client Percival Simpson served to lower my spirits. He sat very quiet in his grey clothes, staring through the glass partition at the screws’ collection of cactus plants, and he seemed so utterly uninterested in the work at hand, so entirely resigned to his defeat and eventual conviction, that it was, I must confess, a little disappointing.

  ‘It’s a miracle,’ he said at the outset, and seemed to find the thought depressing.

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that, Mr Simpson. It may seem miraculous to you…’ I started modestly.

  ‘What?’ Simpson turned to me then, but without any particular interest.

  ‘My being here!’ That, I was sure, was the miracle he meant. ‘A gift from heaven! Is that how it strikes you? Rumpole, who many believed was tucked away in some sunshine home, is back in the land of the living.’ I lit a small cigar and continued. ‘I have news for you, Simpson, old darling. You see, I received a letter about this little murder of yours, which has, I’m bound to admit, some fairly attractive features. And I came back in nothing more miraculous than the cut-price Gaelic Airlines Budget Special, which is a little like being shot across the Atlantic in a rather unclean corner of the tea bar at King’s Cross…’

  ‘About the blood.’ Simpson didn’t seem to be following me. ‘That must be a miracle.’

  ‘If you have one fault, Mr Simpson,’ I told him reluctantly, ‘it is that you are a touch too ready to assume the miraculous.’

  ‘I can’t fight it.’ He shook his head in resignation.

  ‘Oh yes, Mr Simpson, you can fight it and you will fight it.’ It was going to be an uphill task putting a little spirit into this Simpson.

  ‘You’re going to ask me about what happened in the tube station…?’ he sounded anxious.

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘I can’t tell you about that. They’d never let me go if I told you that. They can work miracles, you see. They always told me they could.’

  ‘They, Mr Simpson?’ I was beginning to lose his drift. ‘Who are “They”?’

  ‘I can’t say. I really… can’t say.’ This time he shook his head and spoke with considerable decision.

  ‘Never mind. All in good time. I’m sure you’ll be able to.’ I thought it best to gain his confidence by starting as far as possible from the unfortunate incident on the underground station. ‘I was going to ask you a little about yourself. You work, don’t you, in the office of the Inspector of Taxes, Bayswater Division?’

  ‘Yes.’ Simpson seemed this time, perhaps understandably, reluctant to admit it.

  ‘That’s not a criminal offence,’ I reassured him. ‘Although it’ll hardly endear you to the jury.’

  ‘I’ve always been good at figures. Since I was a child. Figures hold no mystery for me.’

  ‘Keen on your work, are you?’ As a constant victim of the Revenue’s little brown envelopes, I found it hard to restrain a shudder.

  ‘Oh, very keen.’ Simpson began to look almost lively. ‘Every Thursday evening after work I go to evening classes in Advanced Accountancy.’

  I glanced at the brief, checked the day of the murder. ‘You went regularly to your evening classes, by tube?’

  ‘Well, I don’t run to a car, Mr Rumpole.’ Simpson continued to react almost like a living being.

  ‘What about supper?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What about your supper, when you went to evening classes?’

  ‘I’d always buy a take-away chicken, and then I’d take the tube on to my bed-sit.’

  ‘In Alexander Herzen Road?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that was your regular routine on Thursdays?’

  ‘Yes, it was.’

  It was important information, which I filed away in the back of my mind; but I was getting uncomfortably near the incident which I knew would sting Simpson to silence, so I asked a safer question. ‘Who’ll talk about your good character? Friends at work?’

  ‘I don’t know many people. They call me “The Duchess” in the Inland Revenue.’

  ‘They what?’

  ‘It’s a bit of a joke on my name, I suppose. Mrs Simpson, you see. The Duchess. I suppose it’s a bit of a funny joke…’

  ‘I see. Richly entertaining.’ I smiled obligingly. ‘You’ve always been in the tax-gathering business?’

  ‘Since I left school at sixteen. I came in as tea boy in the Pay-As-You-Earn. Now I’m Number Two Accountant in the Schedule D.’

  ‘A meteoric rise. And your spare time… holidays? All that sort of thing?’

  ‘Spare time? Well, it’s television. And I bring work home.’

  ‘Speaking as a taxpayer, Mr Simpson… Duchess. Couldn’t you manage to be a little less dedicated to your calling?’ I said hopefully, and when he didn’t answer I asked, ‘What about holidays?’

  ‘Holidays? I used to stay with my mother in Worthing, until she was gathered.’ I managed to look suitably sympathetic, and then Simpson said, ‘Only this year I managed a holiday abroad. I went to the Sunshine, on a package.’

  ‘Sunshine?’ I tried to keep the renewed hope and excitement out of my voice and said, as casually as possible, ‘Not the Sunshine State, Duchess? That’s not where they sent you on a package?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Florida.’ Simpson seemed to be losing interest again.

  ‘Florida! Of course. You took your annual leave in Florida. Just when did it happen? Duchess… just when and where did it happen?’ Simpson didn’t answer me, but he shook his head. ‘All right. All right. You can tell me later,’ I reassured him and then I stubbed out my small cigar and stood. I said the words I remembered. ‘We shall meet and talk, friend and brother. As sure as the seed grows in the sunlight. We shall meet and talk.’

  The effect was extraordinary. Simpson looked straight at me, his voice seemed forced and his eyes were full of fear. ‘They sent you! They sent you… to betray me!’

  ‘Of course they didn’t. Do get your mind off miracles, Mr Simpson. I told you…’ I was tying up my brief with its pink tape. ‘I came on a “See the World” Budget Special of Gaelic Airlines. I came entirely of my own accord.’

  Simpson didn’t look reassured, but I thought there was nothing more I could say to convince him at that moment and that I had learnt all he was prepared to tell me.

  Ken
and Mowbray and I were sprung from Brixton. As we walked up the long, wet street that leads to the main road, past the little groups of mums and babies and girl-friends come to visit their men in the nick, Ken asked if I thought our client was nsane.

  Oh, really, Ken. Who’s sane? You or I or the learned judge? Or

  the screws who’ve condemned themselves to life imprisonment?’

  ‘All right, then. Is he fit to plead?’

  ‘Of course he is. And he’s fit to be acquitted.’ I looked at Ken nd thought that, in spite of my everlasting gratitude to him for ringing me in as his leader, the time had come for a little gentle riticism. ‘I see by your brilliant cross-examination in the agistrates Court that you were suggesting that Simpson did it hile protecting his honour against a homosexual attack.’

  It seemed about the only line.’ Ken was unusually modest.

  ‘The Guardsman’s Defence, eh? Seems a rather old-fashioned ambit for a bright young radical barrister.’

  ‘You don’t think it’ll work, sir?’ Michael Mowbray was respectful.

  ‘I don’t think a Guardsman’s Defence works particularly well, if you happen to have a client whose nickname is The Duchess.’ We had reached the car park by the main road, and Ken’s Honda was waiting for him. ‘Want a lift…?’

  ‘No, thank you. I had enough excitement on Gaelic Airlines.’

  Ken armed himself in the huge helmet, strode the motor bi- cycle and thundered away. Young Mowbray gave me a sympa- thetic smile. ‘Bit of a hopeless case, Mr Rumpole? Beginning to wish you were back across the Atlantic?’

  ‘No, old darling. I don’t wish that at all. Oh, you might start making a few tactful inquiries about the Hon. Rory Canter

  deceased.’

  ‘About his sexual habits?’ my young instructing solicitor asked eagerly, and looked quite disappointed when I said, ‘Oh, dear boy, no. About his religion.’

  There was only one thing to do now in the defence of Percival Simpson, and that was to telephone my son Nick on the other side of the Atlantic. So when I got back to Chambers, I sent instructions down to Henry to place the call, and he received them in a clerk’s room crowded with Uncle Tom and Ken and Miss Phillida Trant. According to Miss Trant, this audience received the news from Henry that I was calling my son in America with a good deal of fascination and a certain amount of hope.

  ‘Do you think Rumpole’s contemplating doing the vanishing trick again?’ Uncle Tom asked. ‘Back into the sunset? I wonder if we’ll have to give him another clock.’

  He was referring, with some bitterness, to the occasion when Chambers had chipped in to buy me a clock against an earlier proposed retirement which never came off. ‘Or is this another positively last appearance, like the ageing opera singer?’ Uncle Tom went on, talking to no one in particular.

  ‘It’s working,’ Ken said to Miss Trant, with a good deal of quiet satisfaction.

  ‘What’s working?’ She wasn’t sure if she followed him.

  ‘Just an idea of mine,’ said the young radical as he led her down to the Old Bailey and the endless fraud. ‘Don’t you worry your pretty head about it.’

  ‘Dad. Yes, of course it’s me. No… I’m not at work. Because it’s four o’clock in the morning. Well, no… I haven’t had your letter.’

  I suppose I should have had more consideration for my daughter-in-law Erica, lying in the warm sleep of pregnancy, who was aroused at an ungodly hour to hear her husband Nick talking, in a bewildered sort of way, to the telephone.

  ‘Street corner?’ Nick was saying. ‘What street? Handing out leaflets} And flowers? Yes. Yes, of course I’ll try… It’s all… all in your letter, is it? Well, anyway, you sound happy. Yes… Yes… Love to Mum.’

  As Nick put down the phone Erica asked him, in some dread, ‘He doesn’t want to come back here, does he?’

  ‘No,’ said my son, and he sounded puzzled. ‘No. He wants me to find Tiffany Jones.’

  My Nick is a good lad, and indulgent to the whims of his no doubt trying father. Accordingly he was to be found, when the academic day finally began, in a corner of the tree-lined, bicycle-ridden campus, having a quiet talk with Paul Gilpin from the English Department.

  ‘That last day you saw Tiffany, Paul. Did you notice anything unusual about her?’

  ‘How do you mean, unusual?’

  ‘She wasn’t ill or anything?’

  ‘No. She seemed well. Happier than ever. Only one thing. I noticed she’d cut her arm. She was wearing a band-aid. I did ask her about it and she wouldn’t tell me.’

  ‘You don’t think it was a rusty needle?’ Nick had had many unhappy examples of this among his students.

  ‘Oh, come on, Nick. You know Tiffany wasn’t like that.’

  ‘And you haven’t heard from her since then?’

  ‘Not a single word.’ Paul Gilpin was depressed, as anyone would be who is suddenly and mysteriously deprived of a life with a girl like Tiffany Jones.

  ‘She never left a note, no message?’

  ‘Not a thing.’

  ‘It’s worrying for you…’

  ‘I went mad to start with. Rang round the hospitals and the police, of course. But at least now I know she’s alive.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Someone came round for her things.’

  ‘They did?’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you? About three weeks ago, I guess. A guy called and said Tiffany wanted her things.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘The guy who came?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Pretty young. In his twenties, I guess. Nice-looking boy, but nothing you’d notice. Clean jeans and a clean white shirt. That sort of style.’

  ‘He didn’t tell you his name?’

  ‘He didn’t tell me a damned thing. Said he had strict instructions not to answer questions. Instructions from Tiffany, I guess. I found that very hurtful. Also I thought it was a little strange. The things that she wanted.’

  ‘What did she want?’

  ‘Well, certainly not clothes, make-up, none of the things you’d think a girl might need. He just took her books on math, slide- rule, pocket calculator. Just the things she uses for her work in statistics and economic forecasts.’

  ‘The tools of her trade?’

  ‘Exactly that.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Whilst Nick was pursuing his researches into the strange disappearance of Tiffany Jones, and I was hanging round our clerk’s room in the hope of picking up any crumbs in the shape of discarded dangerous drivings or superfluous solicitings, Miss Trant kept her luncheon appointment with our somewhat flustered and over-excited Head of Chambers Guthrie Featherstone in the Trattoria Gallactica in the Fulham Road. I owe the following account of this meeting to her subsequent description of it to me over a glass of Pommeroy’s plonk.

  Featherstone was wearing a new silk tie and had obviously been waiting some considerable time. He was nervously snapping breadsticks between his fingers when Miss Trant arrived the regulation fifteen minutes late. As she sat down, she noticed a brimming campari soda and a gift-wrapped package by her plate. Gulping the one and tearing at the sellotape with inquisitive fingernails at the other, she asked, ‘Is this for me?’

  ‘I bought it for you. Yes,’ Featherstone admitted.

  ‘What an enormous bottle!’ Miss Trant had succeeded in unshrouding what seemed to be a pint or two of ‘Ma Ten-dresse’.

  ‘Well. It’s only the toilet water, I’m afraid. I mean, who wants to spend twenty pounds on a bottle of the perfume? I mean, when you get so much more… with the toilet water.’ Featherstone was struggling, ill-advisedly, with the economics of the situation.

  ‘Exactly. Well, I’ll slosh it around,’ Miss Trant said cheerfully. ‘It’ll probably absolutely slay them down at the London Sessions.’

  ‘I bought it for you especially. “Ma Tendresse”, from Har-rods. Claude won’t mind you wearing it?’

  ‘Claude’s not terribly into perfume,�
� Miss Trant admitted, and then went into the subject which was uppermost in her mind. ‘Now, about the girl you’re thinking of taking into Chambers.’

  ‘Marriage!’ Featherstone’s mind was on other things. ‘It’s a funny thing about marriage. Marigold and I, we have our different interests. Marigold’s taken up choral singing. They’re doing the Saint Matthew Passion.’

  ‘Oh yes. And what passion are you doing, Featherstone?’ Miss Trant looked at her host with some suspicion.

  Featherstone, thinking he was being treated like a dangerous Don Juan, was flattered. ‘I say, you are sharp, aren’t you? But look here, Phyllis. Do call me Guthrie.’

  ‘Phillida.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My name’s Phillida. You see, I’ve been making inquiries about this Elizabeth Chandler person, and I’m not at all sure she’s the type that would really muck in at Chambers. Also, there are only a certain number of matrimonial disputes where solicitors want women. I mean, are there enough for two?’

  ‘Matrimonal disputes,’ Featherstone said gloomily. ‘Well, there are quite enough of those, God knows. But Marigold and I, we just face facts.’

  ‘What facts?’ Miss Trant asked without interest.

  ‘Well, we may fancy other people. And well, other people might fancy us.’

  ‘Might they?’ Miss Trant’s neutral tones didn’t betray her incredulity.

  ‘We only stick together, of course, for the sake of the children.’

  ‘Oh. I hadn’t heard about the children.’

  ‘Hadn’t you really?’ Featherstone suddenly became a great deal more relaxed. They had got on to a subject on which he felt thoroughly at home. ‘Well, there’s Arabella. She goes to this funny little school in Kensington. I mean, she’s eight, but she’s already got this extraordinary talent for dancing. And little Luke, well, he’s only just three, but I’ve got him down for Marlbor-ough. I imagine he might want to come to the Bar some day.’

  ‘You don’t want to fill the Chambers up with Elizabeth Chandler, then?’ Miss Trant was quite uncertain as to whether she had scored a victory.

  ‘Look. If you’ve never actually seen the children, I just happen to have a couple of photographs about me. Only snaps, of course. We took them in Portofino last long vacation. It wasn’t frightfully sunny weather. That’s Bella on the terrace of our hotel.’ Featherstone had produced his wallet, from which he proudly drew a number of creased and faded snaps from the space between his credit cards and his cheque book.