The First Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  ‘He didn’t get on it. No, sir.’

  ‘Although the doors were open, and the train was waiting for him?’

  ‘Yes, it was.’

  ‘So he was clearly waiting for something else.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole. How can the witness tell that?’ The Judge came back into the arena.

  ‘He stood there, waiting to accost my client, Mr Simpson, didn’t he?’ I put the question to the witness, but the Bull growled back.

  ‘I supposed by “accost” you mean “sex”, Mr Rumpole.’

  ‘Your Lordship mustn’t jump to conclusions, however sensational,’ I said politely, although I knew from past experience that the Bull had a resolutely filthy mind.

  ‘Oh, really? I thought we were to be treated to the “Guardsman’s Defence”.’ Bullingham smiled at Colefax this time, with overacted cynicism.

  ‘Your Lordship has the better of me. Is that a legal or a military expression?’ I asked innocently, and played straight into the Judge’s hands.

  ‘You should know, Mr Rumpole. I’ve no doubt you’ve made use of it in a number of cases, when you were practising regularly in this Court.’

  When I was practising regularly? What did the old darling think I was doing now? Playing tiddly-winks? I hoped for a normal and uninterrupted cross-examination and turned again to the witness. ‘Mr MacDonald, you did see Mr Canter move forward and speak to Mr Simpson, my client?’

  ‘I think I did see that, yes.’

  That was something, and at least the Bull was quiet. I had another fact to establish.

  ‘And tell me, Mr MacDonald. How long would it be before the next train arrived?’

  ‘I think about five minutes.’

  ‘My last question. You never saw my client produce any sort of a knife?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He never saw any knives at all, because his train had left the station!’ Bullingham reminded the jury triumphantly.

  And then, as I sat down with my work on Mr Byron Mac-Donald completed, the judge sighed with relief and asked More-ton Colefax the name of his next witness.

  ‘Revere, my Lord. Miss Dianna Revere.’

  If any members of the jury had found their attention wandering during my cross-examination of Byron MacDonald, they were clearly riveted by Miss Dianna ‘Smokey’ Revere. She came into the witness box wearing tight black leather with her orange hair stuck out like the quills of a hedgehog, her eyes were shadowed black and her lipstick and fingernails a shade of mauve. She was chewing gum and as she walked she rattled, from the chains she wore round her neck, like a spectre. The Bull looked at her with his eyes bulging, as though years of whisky had finally destroyed the last of his brain cells and he was gently hallucinating.

  ‘Are you Miss Dianna Revere?’ Moreton Colefax seemed to have some difficulty in bringing himself to speak to her. She was, in fact, a beautiful although strangely dressed eighteen-year-old girl, who would never have crossed the path of the prosecution Q.C. except in a courtroom.

  ‘They calls me Smokey.’ Miss Revere was actually smiling at the Bull, but he looked severely shaken and said, ‘Well, never mind about that. Let’s get on with it.’

  ‘Miss Revere, were you going down Notting Hill Gate underground station on the night of Thursday, March the 13th?’

  ‘Yeah. With my friends. We were on our way to see the “Public Execution” at Watford.’

  ‘Do they still have those at Watford?’ the Bull asked, and the jury laughed obediently.

  ‘No. The “Public Execution”. It’s a group, innit? Great sound,’ Dianna explained patiently, as though to a child.

  ‘Did you notice anything on the platform?’

  ‘Yeah, I saw the two geezers.’

  Moreton Colefax, who had noticed that Smokey’s evidence seemed to be fighting its way past some impediment, said, ‘Miss Revere. Are you eating something?’

  ‘Sorry, my Lord.’ Smokey smiled politely, removed her chewing gum with a slender finger and stuck it under the ledge of the witness box.

  ‘What were the two men doing?’

  ‘Well. One was sat on the seat. The other, him what had the bag from the take-away…’

  ‘Which one had the bag from the Delectable Drumstick chicken shop?’

  ‘My Lord, there’s no dispute that that was my client, Mr Simpson,’ I said, I thought helpfully.

  ‘No, Mr Rumpole! I imagine there can be no possible dispute about that.’ The Bull growled; he was a person who was incapable of simple gratitude.

  ‘Yes, Miss Revere. We can take it that the man with the bag from the chicken shop was Mr Simpson. What happened then?’ Moreton Colefax asked.

  ‘Well, we all got into the train. The boys was kicking a tin and they kicked it into the carriage. We saw the geezer with the carrier bag get in the carriage too.’

  ‘You saw Simpson?’

  ‘He sat down the other end. On his own, like.’

  ‘But it was the same carriage?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Miss Revere. Let me ask you this.’ An important question was coming, and Moreton Colefax brought himself to smile at the ornate girl in the witness box. ‘Did you notice the man on the seat as your train was pulling out of the station?’

  ‘I saw him, yes. On the platform. I was looking out through the glass of the door, I reckon it was. And I saw him topple over.’

  ‘He toppled over?’ Colefax repeated, and the jury were listening interestedly.

  ‘Sort of slid sideways, like. Went all limp and boneless.’

  ‘Why did you think that was?’ the Bull asked her.

  ‘I thought maybe he was pissed, or had a bit of the needle. You get a lot of those, round Notting Hill tube.’

  ‘You mean he was drunk?’ Moreton Colefax translated.

  ‘How did you guess?’ Miss Revere said, and the usher called ‘Silence!’ before the jury could laugh.

  ‘Did you happen to notice Mr Simpson sitting at the end of your carriage?’

  ‘I just remember him. He was looking in his plastic bag, like. And then I looked away and I think he dropped something into it. I don’t know what it was. I heard it drop in. Something heavy, and metal, I think.’

  “What did he do then?’

  ‘He closed his eyes and leant back. It looked like he wanted to go to sleep.’

  The strange-looking girl and her dramatic evidence had a powerful effect on the jury. I rose to try and neutralize the damage.

  ‘Miss Revere. When you got down to the platform, a train was just coming in?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So that it must have been about five minutes after the previous train left.’

  ‘I don’t know about that.’

  ‘How can she know?’ the Bull grumbled.

  ‘Very well. Miss Revere, I don’t suppose you noticed my client particularly at this time?’

  ‘Not particularly, no.’

  ‘So you can’t be certain about what you saw him do.’

  ‘I heard about the murder the next day. It came on the telly. Then I remembered what I’d seen.’

  ‘You say you saw my client close his eyes, as though he were tired.’

  ‘He looked like it. Yes.’

  ‘You may know that it’s a common reaction to be exhausted after you’ve made a violent attack?’ Bullingham asked Smokey. He was absolutely ruthless.

  ‘I suppose so.’ Smokey looked suddenly bored, anxious to end her time in the witness box. I had no reason to keep her there except to ask, ‘And you may also know that people are frequently exhausted and in a state of violent shock after they’ve been attacked?’

  ‘Yeah. I think so.’

  ‘And you didn’t see him writing at all?’ I asked very loudly and before the Bull could get a word in edgeways. ‘You didn’t see my client writing on any sort of scrap of paper?’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Revere,’ I said, and sat down and stared with mysterious triumph at the jury.

&
nbsp; After the excitement provided by Dianna Smokey Revere, there came a dullish afternoon of agreed evidence, police photographers, map-drawers, fingerprint experts, ambulance men and the like, and after Court Ken Cracknell met Miss Trant for a drink in Pommeroy’s and a discussion of Rumpole’s first day on the murder.

  ‘The Judge is firing all his guns at the defence, and the prosecution witnesses are lethal,’ Ken told Phillida, and she smiled and said, ‘Then Rumpole must be in his element.’

  ‘I’m not so sure. He was looking a bit grey round the edges at the end of the day.’

  ‘No, he’s enjoying it,’ Miss Trant was certain, and on the whole she was right. ‘As for you, Ken’ - she looked at her radical admirer with soft-eyed devotion and put her hand on his across their plonk-stained table at Pommeroy’s - ‘you’re angelic to have wangled this brief for Rumpole. It’s just what he needs.’

  ‘I hope so,’ Ken said and smiled a little. ‘I very much hope it’ll do the trick.’

  ‘Claude’s going away to stay with his parents next week. He’s taking the baby. I can’t get away with them. It’s this long robbery I’m in.’

  ‘What a pity.’ Ken was smiling.

  ‘Yes, isn’t it. We might have that hamburger you’re always on about.’

  ‘And you might see where I live. It’s actually perfectly comfortable.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ said Miss Trant and her eyes were, I believe, full of promise. ‘I’m absolutely sure it is.’

  And much later I was in my shirt sleeves working out a way to cross-examine Detective Inspector Wargrave, the officer in charge of the case, and Hilda was knitting some kind of balaclava helmet or other comfort for the new generation of Rumpoles, when she suddenly asked me, most unusually, how I had got on at Court.

  ‘Bloody badly,’ I told her frankly. ‘The client won’t talk to me and the Bull’s madder than ever. I wonder what I’d get, for doing a judge grievous bodily harm?’

  Hilda clicked her tongue, worked with her knitting needles and then said, ‘That’s what you came back to, Rumpole!’

  ‘Don’t tell me.’

  ‘I will tell you. I know now. It wasn’t even another woman! You came back because you care more for Judge Bullingham than you do for me.’ She looked at me in an accusing manner, and I smiled and answered, as I thought, reasonably.

  ‘If you think that, Hilda, wouldn’t you really be happier back on the other side of the Atlantic?’

  She looked at me in silence for a while, and then she said enigmatically, ‘I’m really not sure, Rumpole. But I shall have to think about it.’

  I looked at her then, with a sort of vague stirring of hope that perhaps in the not too distant future my freedom would return.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The first witness the next morning was the Honourable Rory Canter’s elder brother, Lord Freith. He was a man in his early forties, quite at his ease in the witness box, and he and Moreton Colefax talked to each other as if they were members of the same club, which indeed they were. The learned judge listened obsequiously, as though he were the slightly comic butler, and the jury and defence counsel were also allowed to overhear.

  ‘Lord Freith,’ Moreton Colefax allowed himself to touch an unpleasant subject, ‘had your younger brother, to your knowledge, any homosexual tendencies?’

  ‘I can honestly say, my Lord,’ Lord Freith included the Bull in the chat, in a truly democratic manner, ‘that he had absolutely none.’

  ‘Absolutely none.’ Bullingham wrote the words down obediently.

  ‘I think he was of a serious, indeed a religious disposition.’

  ‘He was extremely religious. And, I’m sure, sincerely so.’

  ‘Your brother Roderick, I think,’ Colefax continued, ‘had a fiancee and was engaged to be married?’

  ‘Oh yes. They’d both dined with me that night at my club. There was absolutely none of the Oscar Wildes about Rory.’

  ‘Thank you, Lord Freith.’ Colefax sat down gracefully, with every sign of satisfaction.

  I got a dirty look from the judge. ‘I suppose you’ve got some questions Mr Rumpole?’ he said.

  ‘Just a few. Lord Freith,’ I said, rising to my feet, ‘your club is where?’

  ‘In St James’s.’

  ‘And after dinner did Rory drive his fiancee home?’

  ‘To her flat in Chelsea,’ Lord Freith agreed.

  ‘And he lived in Eaton Square?’

  ‘Eaton Place, actually.’

  ‘Another address in south-west London?’

  ‘Yes…’ Lord Freith frowned as if wondering where these questions were leading.

  ‘Have you any idea what he was doing north-west? In Notting Hill Gate?’

  ‘No. As a matter of fact,’ Lord Freith agreed, ‘I’ve wondered about that.’

  ‘So have I. So may the jury. It was nowhere near his route, was it, from St James’s to Chelsea?’

  ‘No,’ Lord Freith admitted.

  ‘Or from Chelsea to Eaton Place?’

  ‘No…’

  Things were going too well for the Bull not to intervene. Accordingly he bared his teeth and said menacingly, ‘Mr Rum-pole. If you’re suggesting that this gentleman’s brother went to Notting Hill Gate for immoral purposes, I think you should put it fair and square.’

  I decided to put an instant stop to this line of judicial offence and I decided to say, ‘My Lord, although I’m well aware that a dirty mind is a perpetual feast, I’m making absolutely no such suggestion.’

  It was a minor hit. There was laughter in Court, in which Judge Bullingham did not join. He merely grumbled, ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ being, in fact, quite clearly disappointed.

  I turned to Lord Freith and another topic. ‘You’ve told us that your late brother was of a sincerely religious disposition.’

  ‘He’s told us that,’ the Bull grumbled and only just forgot to add, ‘Let’s get on with it.’

  ‘And you didn’t entirely approve of his religious views, did you, Lord Freith?’

  ‘I didn’t approve of all he did, no,’ the witness answered carefully.

  ‘Had he made over his farm in Hampshire, by way of a gift, to the particular religious sect he favoured?’

  Lord Freith hesitated and then answered frankly, ‘He had. He was merely staying on as a manager.’

  ‘Had he also given them a great deal of money?’

  ‘I believe he had.’

  ‘All the money he inherited from your father?’

  ‘I think most of it.’

  ‘And was his fiancee of the same religious persuasion?’

  ‘Yes. They’d met when Rory was in Florida, playing polo. I believe she converted him.’

  ‘So he gave all he had to the poor?’

  ‘We have pretty good authority for that, Mr Rumpole.’ Bull-ingham, that great man of religion, was looking wisely at the jury, and some of them even did me the disservice of nodding solemnly and assuming serious and devout expressions.

  When I asked my next rude question it was a bit like belching in church. ‘Except that you thought he’d given all he had to the rich. You believed it was an extremely rich organization, didn’t you, Lord Freith?’

  To my great relief the witness seemed to agree with me. ‘I thought perhaps they were exploiting Rory,’ he said, choosing his words with care.

  At the moment when it appeared that I was winning the witness over to my still obscure purposes, Moreton Colefax rose to make a gentlemanly interruption. ‘Perhaps my learned friend would be good enough to tell us the name of this alleged organization…’

  ‘Oh, doesn’t my learned friend know it?’ I carefully simulated amazement. ‘The name is to be found on that blood-stained scrap of paper, the prosecution’s Exhibit One.’ I held out my hand and the usher got it for me. ‘Thank you, usher. It reads “Sunlight Children of Sun”. They call themselves “The Children of Sun”, don’t they, Lord Freith?’

  We had the jury’s undoubted interest as he answere
d, ‘I believe that’s what they’re called.’

  ‘And they offer “Blood to Children of Dark”.’

  ‘We’ve been told that the document was written by your client in the deceased’s blood, Mr Rumpole.’ Bullingham was beginning to feel out of his depth and so, as usual, he attacked the defence.

  ‘My Lord, there hasn’t been a scrap of evidence about it,’ I told him, feeling the jury watching me closely.

  ‘Mr Moreton Colefax has told us that he’s calling Professor Ackerman. No one knows more about blood stains than Professor Andrew Ackerman.’ Bullingham gave the jury a glowing trailer for a prosecution witness.

  ‘I think your Lordship may find that somebody does,’ I said, with a certain amount of quiet confidence.

  ‘That would surprise me, Mr Rumpole.’

  ‘Life in your Lordship’s Court is full of surprises. I suppose that’s why some of us find it so enormously enjoyable.’

  Some of the jury appeared to enjoy this, so Bullingham resumed his impatient growl. ‘Have you got any more questions for Lord Freith? This must be a painful experience for him.’

  It wasn’t exactly a Sunday School treat for my client either, I thought. And then I asked the usher for Exhibit Two. I was handed, carefully labelled and wrapped in plastic, the long commando-type sheath knife that had been found inside Simpson’s bag of fried chicken. I unwrapped it and examined it carefully in full view of the jury. Then, after a pause long enough to create a suitable tension and feeling of expectancy, I turned to the witness.

  ‘Lord Freith. Your brother went to Sandhurst, I think?’

  ‘Yes, he did.’

  ‘And spent some five years in the army?’

  ‘Yes. Until my father died and left him the farm.’

  Lord Freith received the knife from the usher, gave it a cursory glance and put it down on the front of the witness box.

  ‘Do you know that is a regulation army knife, of the sort issued to officers and men undergoing special commando training?’

  ‘I didn’t know. But I accept that from you, of course.’ Lord Freith was never less than courteous.

  ‘And did your brother, the Honourable Rory Canter, tell you that he had enjoyed such training during his time in the army?’

  There was a long pause before the elder brother answered, as casually as possible, ‘I believe he told me something of the sort. Yes.’