The First Rumpole Omnibus
Page 58
‘Did you think anyone was following you, or watching you, on that evening of Thursday March the 13th?’
‘I had an uneasy feeling. Nothing definite. Not until the man spoke to me on the platform.’
‘The man?’
‘Mr… Canter.’
‘Just tell the jury about that, will you, in your own words.’
He was out on his own; but I had no fear for him. The jury were listening attentively, and he told them, quietly and clearly, how that Sun Child, Rory Canter, tried to kill him, and how he fought with an unexpected passion for life, and how the knife was turned on his attacker.
When he had finished, I said, ‘Mr Simpson. Why didn’t you tell this story to the police when you were arrested?’
‘I thought the power of the Master had changed the blood on the letter. I thought it was a miracle.’
‘How do you feel, now you know it wasn’t a miracle?’
‘In a way, disappointed.’
‘No miracle,’ I told the jury in my final speech. ‘Perhaps we are a little disappointed also, members of the jury, to discover that this is just another case about human violence and human greed. Or perhaps it is a case in which, after all, the Powers of Darkness had their terrible part to play.’
I was holding the knife, as a prop for the jury’s attention, but I didn’t need it. The old darlings were all listening intently as I went on. ‘Mr Simpson discovered the secrets of a fraud practised upon the gullible and the lonely. Mr Simpson was to be killed, and a faithful servant of the Master, a young fanatic who had been trained in war, named Rory Canter, a man who’d just presented his own large property to this bogus Messiah, was to be the agent of death. What happened? Canter no doubt followed Simpson that night, and waited for him on the platform of the underground station. He accosted him and pulled the knife. He started the attack. You’ve heard from my client how those two men fought for this knife… on which were the fingerprints of both of them. You’ve heard how my client’s hands were wounded in the struggle and his clothes cut and, finally, forcing Canter’s arm away from him, the point of the knife entered his attacker’s body between the third and fourth rib. It was a desperate fight, members of the jury, because Canter was a man more dangerous than any thief or sexual molester; he was a man who believed he had God on his side…’
The day the trial ended happened to coincide with the visit by Claude Erskine-Brown and young Tristan, attended by the large and glum Miss Reykjavik, to the Erskine-Brown grandparents for the few days’ holiday Miss Trant’s husband was taking from his never-increasing legal practice. According to plan, Ken Cracknell and Phiilida shared their long delayed hamburger together in the All American Bun Fight in Covent Garden, and, although the minced meat was plentiful, the buns huge and the salad crisp, although they drank powerful vodka martinis and pursued them with bottles of icy Lowenbrau, and although Miss Trant held Ken’s hand between mouthfuls and her eyes were full of promise, he remained inexplicably glum and apparently much cast-down by the result.
Determined to cheer the handsome radical barrister, Miss Trant returned with him, not without some misgivings, to the ‘community’ near King’s Cross. This proved to be a comfortable and elegant Victorian house in a pleasant square behind the Gray’s Inn Road, which young Cracknell shared with a group of friends whose ‘communal living’ didn’t go beyond sharing the kitchen and occasional meetings to ‘talk through’ problems in the ‘interface of domestic group relationships’. In this community Ken Cracknell was undoubtedly the leader: he it was who organized applications to the Rent Tribunal and composed the notices urging consideration for others in the communal loo.
Fortunately most of his cohabitees were out when Ken brought Miss Trant home. She passed the sitting-room door (half-open to emit the sounds of a middle-aged female voice reading some play she had written to an invisible audience) with some trepidation, and she didn’t relax until they were in Ken’s comfortable and brightly furnished bedroom. He had thoughtfully removed the bedspread and turned back the sheets before he went to Court that morning. She looked at the bed, smiled and kissed him. Then, as he drew the curtains and adjusted the lighting effects she took off her jacket, hung it neatly on the back of a chair and started to undo her shirt.
‘Happy?’ she asked Ken Cracknell. For an answer he returned to kiss her. ‘Are you happy, Ken?’
‘Well…’ She was taking off her shirt and he was offering her, apparently, every assistance. ‘Happy about you being here.’
‘You should be happy about everything. You had a marvellous
win!
‘Did I?’ Ken Cracknell paused discontentedly in the act of disrobing Miss Trant.
‘Of course Rumpole did it. But I’m sure you were a terrific help.’
‘Rumpole!’ Ken appeared unexpectedly angry and his fingers stopped working at the clips and buttons. Miss Trant looked up at him in surprise. ‘Yes,’ he muttered. ‘Blast the man! Rumpole pulled it off.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’ Miss Trant looked up at him puzzled.
At which Ken Cracknell burst out with thoughts which he had had to keep to himself for too long. ‘What’s wrong with it? Don’t you see? It means he’ll never go. He’ll be round my neck forever! Swamping the desk with his papers and dropping ash like a bloody volcano. That’s not why I got him the job!’
‘Why? Why did you get him the job, Ken?’ She was moving away from him, looking at him with sudden suspicion.
‘Well…’ He seemed, as he looked at her, to have some doubt about answering, but she insisted.
‘Why did you get Rumpole to lead you?’
‘It… it seemed a hopeless case, anyway.’ He was almost apologetic, and his apology gave her the answer.
‘You wanted him to lose!’ Now she was working hard, doing up all the clips and buttons that Ken had so eagerly, if awkwardly, unloosed. ‘You thought he’d vanish back into the sunset if he lost another case. That’s why you did it, isn’t it? You wanted him to lose! So you could have him out of your room!’
‘Philly…” Ken’s protest was ineffective. She continued to button, with determination.
‘Well, let me tell you something.’ Her eyes were no longer soft, but shining with the power of her sudden eloquence. ‘You’re wrong. Wrong about Rumpole. He’s the radical! You’re not. You’ll grow up to be a prosecutor, or a Circuit Judge! But Rumpole never will, because he says what he thinks, and because he doesn’t give a damn what anybody thinks about him. And because he can win the cases you’re afraid even to do on your own.’
‘Philly! Don’t talk to me like that. Don’t I mean anything to you?’ Ken Cracknell moved towards her, pleading.
She looked at him and said, almost with regret, ‘Oh yes. You’re a pretty face around Chambers. A little bit of fluff! A reasonably good spot of crumpet. But don’t ever get the idea I’d risk a good husband, who knows how to cook, for you, Ken Cracknell!’
Christmas came with its usual alarming rapidity. The season of God’s birth was celebrated by cards and bits of tinsel appearing in the screws’ office in Brixton Prison, and Hilda Rumpole and Marigold Featherstone sang an elaborate version of ‘Come All Ye Faithful’ with the Bar Choral Society in the Temple Church, to which the faithful, in the shape of their husbands Guthrie and Horace, dutifully came. I prepared for the occasion by buying what Hilda told me later was her fortieth bottle of lavender water, and she got me the usual gift-wrapped box of small cigars. She posted off innumerable articles of knitwear to Florida in time for Christmas, against the eventual birth of the next generation of Rumpoles. (In due course a boy arrived who was given the name Sam. I laid down a dozen bottles of Pom-meroy’s best claret for Sam on the top of the bookshelves in Froxbury Mansions. From what I hear the infant, although of tender years, is argumentative by nature and may make something of a career at the Bar.) I sent Nick my old copy of The Oxford Book of English Verse (the Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch edition) suitably inscribed. I know the poems I like best in it by heart, and
doubt if I shall add many more to my repertoire.
A week or so before Christmas, cases of drink arrived at our Chambers. Dianne helped Henry put up tinsel and paper streamers in Guthrie Featherstone’s room. They hung mistletoe from the central light and promptly kissed under it. On the night of our Chambers party, our members arrived with their wives and girl-friends. Henry’s wife, a tall schoolmistress, came and put an end to his philandering under the mistletoe. Mr and Mrs Erskine-Brown came together and that small smiling Celt, Owen Glendour-Owen, came with a grey-haired wife who might have been his twin and was also smiling broadly. Uncle Tom brought his sister, who suffered hot flushes after a couple of glasses of sherry. My old friend Judge George Frobisher left his Court to come to our jollification, and Ken Cracknell arrived late by motorbike. The room was crowded when Guthrie Featherstone started to clear his throat, bang his glass against the desk and give every sign of a Head of Chambers who is about to make a ceremonial address.
‘Quiet, everyone!’ called out Henry, our self-appointed Master of Ceremonies.
‘Pray silence’ - I added my voice, after I had given myself a generous refill of Chateau Fleet Street - ‘for our learned Head of Chambers.’
‘Thank you, Horace.’ Guthrie smiled graciously in my direction and then he was off. ‘Christmas has put gifts in several of our stockings this year. Horace Rumpole had a very good win in an interesting murder down at the Old Bailey.’
‘Did that surprise anybody?’ I asked the world at large.
‘It surprised Ken,’ said Mrs Phillida Erskine-Brown, nee Trant. Ken Cracknell glowered at her, whereupon she raised her glass to her husband Claude and said, ‘Happy Christmas, darling.’
‘And Owen Glendour-Owen,’ Featherstone continued with our roll of honour or list of legal triumphs, ‘has been appointed by the Lord Chancellor to the Circuit Bench. Our loss is mid-Wales’s gain!’
‘That’s splendid news!’ I raised my glass to the small Celtic couple. ‘Absolutely splendid!’
I had done nothing but good to ‘Knock-for-Knock’ Owen, although I meant to take care to avoid Welsh Crown Courts in the future. When the cries of ‘Splendid!’, ‘Yes, of course’, ‘Well done, Owen’ and ‘Good show, Judge’ had died away, I quickly pointed out the full consequences of the joyful news. ‘Which leaves an empty space in my old room,’ I said, and looked hard at Featherstone. After all, he had made a private promise, and I wanted it publicly confirmed.
‘Yes. Well, we’ll consider that, of course. At a Chambers meeting.’ It was typical of Featherstone to seek to put off the final, fatal decision. I wasn’t letting him get away with it.
‘We’ll consider it now,’ I insisted.
‘I’m sure it’s a matter you’ll want to discuss with your family, Horace.’ Featherstone tried to sound conciliatory. ‘No one wants to force you back from your retirement, just because we happen to have a gap in Chambers. I’m sure Hilda has views.’
‘Views?’ No doubt Hilda had, she had about most things, but I didn’t think she would feel called upon to speak at what was rapidly becoming a Chambers meeting. I was wrong.
‘Yes, as a matter of fact I have,’ she said, in a profound and doom-laden voice.
‘Mrs Rumpole. Hilda. All in good time.’ Featherstone clearly didn’t want my wife’s views to mar the festivities, but she overruled him.
‘Since we got back from our holiday in the States…’ Hilda began.
‘Holiday? Did she say holiday?’ Uncle Tom was puzzled. ‘I thought they’d gone out to grass. For good.’
‘With our son, who, as you may know, is now the youngest Professor of Applied Sociology in the history of his university.’
‘Oh, I say. Awfully well done him!’ Marigold Featherstone gave a half-hearted clap and Guthrie smiled tolerantly.
‘Since Rumpole’s been back in harness’ - Hilda was now in full flow - ‘he has, of course, had an enormous success in a most important murder trial, and I am quite convinced that his real love is Judge Bullingham.’
‘Really, Hilda!’ I didn’t know what she’d come out with next, but she looked at me and appeared to be smiling. ‘I’m joking, of course,’ she said.
‘Oh, yes of course.’ I was glad to hear it.
‘Frightfully funny!’ said Marigold Featherstone, and brought her hands together again.
‘Most amusing speaker, your wife.’ Featherstone’s smile was slightly less tolerant.
‘And I’m more convinced than ever that my duty is here, at Rumpole’s side,’ Hilda went on. My heart sank, I must admit it.
‘Are you sure?’ I asked hopelessly, but it seemed she had come to a firm decision.
‘So I shall stay in England,’ she said, ‘to look after Rumpole.’ She Who Must Be Obeyed had spoken and she only had one sentence to add. ‘And we are so glad to be back in this happy family of Chambers.’
I thought the smiles were a little forced, and Ken Cracknell wasn’t smiling at all. Only Mrs Erskine-Brown, our Portia, raised her glass to me, and I thought I noticed a tremor of one eyelid, as though she were about to wink.
‘How long will you be staying this time, Rumpole?’ Uncle Tom asked, and as I felt an old legal anecdote coming over me, I gave him his answer.
‘How long?’ I said. ‘Who knows how long? I well remember that terrible old Lord Chief when I was first at the Bar. He gave an 86-year-old man fifteen years for persistent theft. At Bodmin Assizes. “But my Lord,” the old man quavered, “I shall never do fifteen years.” “Well then, my man,” the Lord Chief encouraged him, “you must do as much of it as you can.” ‘
I looked round the room at them all. There was a sudden, rather chill silence. And no one laughed.
‘That’s all I can say,’ I told them. ‘I shall do as much of it as I can. And a very happy Christmas to you all.’
*See ‘Rumpole and the Married Lady’, pp. 105-33.
†See ‘Rumpole and the Younger Generation’, pp. 9-48.
*See ‘Rumpole and the Younger Generation’, pp. 9-48.
* See ‘Rumpole and the Man of God,’ pp. 205–37.
* See ‘Rumpole and the Married Lady’, pp. 105–33.
* See ‘Rumpole and the Case of Identity’, pp. 296–328.
* Rumpole and the Younger Generation’, pp. 9-48.
* See ‘Rumpole and the Younger Generation’, pp. 9-48.
* See ‘Rumpole and the Course of True Love’, pp. 329-62.
*See ‘Rumpole and the Case of Identity’, pp. 296–328.
† See ‘Rumpole and the Fascist Beast’, pp. 273–95.
Table of Contents
Cover
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
The First Rumpole Omnibus
Rumpole of the Bailey
Rumpole and the Younger Generation
Rumpole and the Alternative Society
Rumpole and the Honourable Member
Rumpole and the Married Lady
Rumpole and the Learned Friends
Rumpole and the Heavy Brigade
The Trials of Rumpole
Rumpole and the Man of God
Rumpole and the Showfolk
Rumpole and the Fascist Beast
Rumpole and the Case of Identity
Rumpole and the Course of True Love
Rumpole and the Age for Retirement
Rumpole’s Return
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
<
br /> Footnotes
Rumpole and the Man of God
Page 232
Rumpole and the Case of Identity
Page 318
Rumpole and the Course of True Love
Page 337
Page 339
Page 340
Rumpole and the Age for Retirement
Page 368
Page 385
Page 393
Chapter Two
Page 416