The Anti-Social Behaviour of Horace Rumpole

by John Mortimer

  ‘I suppose I feel strongly about it,’ he said, ‘because I met her.’

  ‘You met Ludmilla Ravenskaya?’

  ‘Yes. She told me her name. And it was the same address, off Sussex Gardens.’

  ‘You went there,’ here I put it as delicately as I could, ‘as a client?’

  ‘Not really. My editor wanted me to write about the organization, whatever it was, which was importing these girls in the backs of lorries.’

  ‘Perhaps I judged your editor too harshly. That’s a subject I should love to have investigated.’

  ‘I saw her name up in a telephone box. “Exotic Russian beauty will show you that the Cold War is over”. There was a telephone number.’

  ‘So you went to Flyte Street?’

  ‘And met Ludmilla, yes. She thought I’d come for sex, of course, but I told her I’d come for information which would be far better paid.’

  ‘So she told you what exactly?’

  ‘Nothing then. She said she was far too busy with clients, but she told me to call her in a week or two and she’d give me the story. She wanted half the money in advance.’

  ‘Did she get it?’

  ‘No, but I gave her £100 as a retainer. That was on top of what I had to pay for the sex I didn’t have.’

  ‘And did you phone her?’

  ‘I decided to wait, but then the story was all over the papers. Your client Wetherby had shut her mouth forever.’

  ‘Did you see her maid? A woman called Anna McKinnan.’

  ‘I suppose so. There was a woman who showed me in and said goodbye to me when I left.’

  ‘Did you tell her what you’d asked Ludmilla?’

  ‘No. I simply said we’d had a nice chat. It’s no good you asking me these questions, Mr Rumpole. You’re going to get a blast from the Fortress. “Barristers who get fat and rich on defending hopeless cases”, that kind of thing.’

  ‘I resent that,’ I told him.

  ‘I’m sure you do. I’m just warning you what to expect.’

  ‘I may be fat, but I’m certainly not rich.’

  So he left me, and I poured out the remainder of the bottle. I thought of Lars, and then of Lars Porsena of Clusium, who, in the old poem,

  … bade his messengers ride forth,

  East and west and south and north,

  To summon his array.

  This Lars’s ‘messenger’ would go forth in every issue of the Daily Fortress to portray Rumpole as the man who throws public money away on nonexistent defences.

  And then I remembered a possibly valuable piece of evidence that Lars had brought to me, so I raised a glass to him in spite of everything, an absent friend.

  16

  ‘What time did you phone Flyte Street?’

  ‘About a quarter past twelve.’

  ‘You weren’t in the phone box?’

  ‘No. I’d already copied down her number.

  I made sure no one could hear me.’

  ‘So what time did you get to the flat?’

  ‘Just before one.’

  ‘And you’ve told us about your conversation with the maid, Anna McKinnan. Did she tell you anything else you can remember?’

  ‘She said they hadn’t had many customers so I could go straight in.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘She said she hoped I wasn’t a bloody journalist.’

  I felt a small thrill of pleasure. The god who looks after defending barristers was giving me a little bit of his help.

  ‘What time was it when you went into the bedroom and found Ludmilla dead?’

  ‘About one thirty. I was getting worried about being late back to work. Then the maid locked me in.’

  ‘And then the police arrived at about two thirty with a police doctor?’

  ‘I suppose so. I was arrested and taken down to the car before they examined the body.’ There was a silence and then my client looked at me and said quietly, ‘It’s hopeless, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not entirely.’

  ‘You think you’re going to work some bloody miracle?’

  ‘It has been known!’

  ‘If you were a miracle worker they’d’ve given it to you before now, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘Given me what?’

  ‘The QC. You haven’t got it, have you?’

  ‘Not as yet.’

  ‘It’s so humiliating. Everyone I meet at exercise. All those on serious charges like murder or rape or whatever. They’ve all got QCs to defend them.’

  ‘Have they ever been defended by me, these people?’

  ‘I don’t believe so.’

  ‘I thought as much. If they had been they probably wouldn’t be in a prison exercise yard. Anyway, a distinguished High Court judge, Leonard Bullingham, is backing my application.’

  ‘We live in hope then?’

  ‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘That’s the best way for us both to live.’

  ‘I don’t know why you wanted to see him again, Mr Rumpole. Every time we go down there it seems clearer that he’s got no defence. I’m afraid he’s wasting our time.’

  ‘Not mine, certainly.’ I had a disconsolate solicitor on my hands as we sought the comfort of Pommeroy’s on our return to the Temple. “‘Never plead guilty,” that’s my motto. You heard what Ackerman told us about the time of death?’

  ‘You think that’s going to get him off?’

  ‘Not in itself perhaps, although it might be enough before an intelligent jury. To be sure, we need to find out a lot more about Ludmilla. If our client didn’t kill her, who did? And why?’

  ‘We haven’t got an answer to the question.’

  ‘She was meant to report regularly to a police station in the Paddington area. Did she?’

  ‘I did ask. They’ve got no record of her reporting anywhere in Paddington.’

  ‘I thought not. So what would have happened if she hadn’t been discovered at Dover?’

  ‘She’d have gone on to a garage in some office block in the Canary Wharf area. Didn’t Scottie Thompson tell us that?’

  ‘Exactly. As I would expect, you have the facts of the case at your fingertips. But which garage, under precisely which office block?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘There may be stories going around. There can’t be many office blocks where girls get out of boxes. We need a detective. You can put it down to further inquiries. Send for Fig Newton.’

  Ferdinand Ian Gilmour Newton, clothed in the old mac he wore in all weathers, and with the cold that apparently afflicted him in all weathers, was just the man to pick up any rumours that might be going round about girls in boxes in the Canary Wharf area.

  17

  Shortly after these events I received an invitation from the corridors of power. Henry rang to say in a voice full of awe and wonder that the office of the Minister for Constitutional Affairs had rung. It seemed the Minister would like to share a drink with Mr Rumpole in his club.

  It was not until then that I remembered who the Minister for Constitutional Affairs was. He was none other than the Peter Plaistow, QC, MP, who had dangled the offer of a Circuit (I call them Circus) Judgeship to me during the case in which he was prosecuting the unfortunate Dr Khan, who was accused of terrorism, a case which I won, if you remember, satisfactorily alone and without a leader.

  So there we were, under the soft lights of the Sheridan Club, where drinks were asked for quietly and members and their friends murmured together, so the occasional loud welcome or braying laugh seemed as out of place as it would in a chapel of rest.

  Peter Plaistow looked aged by his time in government. His boyish charm had faded, to be replaced by what I could only call a look of grim determination. His eyes seemed tired and his eyelids swollen, but he nonetheless greeted me with enthusiasm and ordered champagne for both of us.

  When we were seated with our drinks and he had told me how pleased he was to see me, he said, ‘I see Leonard Bullingham is backing your application for silk. I thought you two
were sworn enemies. How did you manage that?’

  ‘I think my wife managed it.’

  ‘The remarkable Hilda? Well done her! Of course you have to go through a lot of tedious stuff before the new committee, but in the end the decision will come to me as Minister for Constitutional Affairs.’

  What was I meant to do precisely? Offer to buy the next round of drinks? Thank him profusely? I hadn’t thought that the process of sliding into a silk gown could be managed so easily. But then I was to discover the real purpose of our meeting in the Sheridan Club.

  ‘Immigration!’ The Minister for Constitutional Affairs almost spat out the word, as though it were some sort of incurable disease. ‘The curse of all governments.’

  ‘Is it as bad as that?’

  ‘Worse. They imagine we are letting in floods of foreigners who’ll take away their jobs, their houses, certainly their wives, probably their children if they get half a chance. And when it comes to letting in Russian prostitutes… I can just imagine the headlines in the Fortress.’ He had obviously been following my little Flyte Street murder case.

  ‘Someone decided to set the girl free to apply for permanent residence.’

  ‘We heard you’d been making inquiries.’

  There was a pause then while the Minister for Constitutional Affairs sipped thoughtfully at his champagne, then he said, ‘Of course that was all long before the murder. How or why she got into the country can’t be any part of your defence.’

  ‘I’m not entirely sure of that.’

  ‘Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?’

  ‘There’s a lot in this case which isn’t entirely obvious.’

  At this the Minister drained his glass and gave me a smile which I felt unusually chilly. ‘I hope your application for silk goes well, Rumpole,’ he said. ‘I can’t be sure what view the committee’ll take of you. They haven’t had many barristers who’ve been given an ASBO by the members of their own chambers. We’ll have to see how that works out.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’ve got to rush. Dinner at the Swedish Embassy. That’ll hardly be a laugh a minute.’

  Then he left me to think back on our conversation, which I hadn’t found particularly amusing either.

  18

  WELL-KNOWN CRIMINAL BARRISTER

  FACES JAIL FOR BREAK OF ASBO!

  Mr Horace Rumpole, famous for his defence tactics in some high-profile murder cases, is having to defend a new client in the magistrates’ court today – himself!

  The news was blasted to its readers by the Daily Fortress. And now I found myself what I had never thought to be, a defendant before a ‘district judge’ (stipendiary magistrates we used to call them), rising to make a final speech on behalf of that dangerous and determined criminal Horace Rumpole, BA (the letters added after a rather poor study of the law at Keble College).

  Of course I had not taken the ASBO seriously. Who could have? I kept a bottle or two of Pommeroy’s Very Ordinary in the filing cabinet and I lit up my small cigars without noticing any rise in the water level along the Thames Embankment.

  I did notice an embarrassed silence when I entered the client’s room. Mizz Liz Probert seemed too embarrassed to speak to me as I picked up some documents concerning my ASBO and filed them in the wastepaper basket, unread. But when I asked our clerk, Henry, if I was in court next week, he told me that I was, in order to attend my own trial.

  The prosecution was undertaken by a certain Lesley Perkins, a lady counsel who had to be corrected by me several times during her opening address. I had not even been paid the compliment of a competent prosecutor. No one from my chambers had the time to turn up at the proceedings. The press benches, however, were full of excited scribblers eager to join in the persecution of the Lion of the Old Bailey.

  What surprised me more was that Hilda had been particularly sympathetic as I left at breakfast time to face my final humiliation. She knew there were those in my chambers who were hellbent on destroying my reputation. ‘They won’t win, Rumpole,’ she said as we parted and after she had cooked me a couple of eggs on a fried slice to give me strength for the fight to come. ‘We’ll get you out of this somehow,’ she went on, in what I then thought was a vain promise, intended only to raise false hopes.

  I had helpfully admitted the truth of all the complaints brought before the court. Now the district judge, a pale figure with a long, inquisitive nose who had clearly enjoyed my prosecution more than his normal trade of drink-driving and soliciting in the streets, said, ‘Well, Mr Rumpole, what have you got to say for yourself?’

  ‘I don’t speak for myself, sir. I speak for all those unfortunate enough to be caught up in this new type of illegal procedure.’

  ‘Are you calling the ASBO rules “illegal”? You’d better go back to Parliament and tell them they made a mistake.’

  This unhappy attempt at a joke by the judge was aimed at the journalists, who rewarded it with suppressed titters.

  ‘No need for that,’ I told him. ‘But you must see the absurdity of this nonsensical and inept piece of legislation. What is my crime? I have looked through the statutes over and over again and nowhere do I find that eating at your desk is a criminal activity.

  ‘I keep a bottle or two of Pommeroy’s Very Ordinary claret in my filing cabinet drawer. This is not Pichon-Longueville perhaps, but drinking it if you have the courage and the stamina is surely not a criminal offence.

  ‘We live in an unhappy period when the government wants to use its legislative powers to tell us how to lead our lives. It wants to tell us what to eat and drink, what to smoke and how we cross the road. Children are not allowed to grow fat and if they do they are snatched from their families and put into a home. If you smoke cigarettes, you won’t be treated by the doctor.

  ‘There are plans afoot to turn us into a nation of vegans who drink carrot juice and go on hiking tours to the Lake District. This case is an object lesson in this form of tyranny. It’s geared to send a man to prison for eating a slice of pie.

  ‘In the great days of our history, magistrates such as you, sir, stood up against a tyrannical king who tried to enforce taxes not approved by Parliament.

  ‘Today you’re being asked to enforce laws against activities which have never been made crimes by our Parliament.

  ‘You have your chance today, sir, to reject these illegal and inappropriate proceedings. You can stand up for justice. You have a chance today, sir, to become the Pym or Hampden of the City Magistrates’ Court. You may be criticized by the thinking bureaucrats of Westminster, but you’ll be acclaimed by all those who cherish our ancient freedoms, our constitution and the proper rule of law.’

  I then sat down and saw the lonely figure on the bench look, I thought a little desperately, at the clock, from which he seemed to get some encouragement. ‘I’m looking at the time,’ he told us unnecessarily. ‘I’ll give my decision at two o’clock.’

  ‘It’s not too bad,’ I told Bonny Bernard, who had acted as my solicitor for the case. ‘I always wanted to know how it felt to appear in the dock, like my clients.’

  ‘We must keep hoping for the best,’ Bonny Bernard said without any particular conviction. ‘We must always go on hoping.’

  ‘I don’t think “Sir” wants to be a John Hampden of the City. When I go down I’ll get plenty of time for reading. I could read Milton. I’ve never really got on with him. Not many jokes in Paradise Lost, are there? Not too many laughs. Anyway, it’ll be interesting to find out what life’s like for your clients after you’ve lost their cases.’

  But when we were called back to court I wasn’t to be given the great opportunity of laughing away with Milton. I saw that Soapy Sam Ballard was in court, sitting beside the lady prosecutor, and as soon as ‘Sir’ was back in his seat she rose to say that my Head of Chambers, none other than the eminent Samuel Ballard, QC, had decided not to go on further with this case. He was anxious that any custodial sentence might prevent Mr Rumpole from practising, at least for a while, and he didn’t thin
k it was in the interests of his chambers, or the Bar in general, to proceed with a judgement against Rumpole.

  Thus Rumpole was dismissed, with few words given.

  What happened when we got back to court had been quite unexpected and so the shades of the prison-house vanished as ‘Sir’ reluctantly agreed.

  *

  ‘It must have been my final speech that did it,’ I told Hilda when I got home that afternoon. ‘That must have made them come to their senses.’

  ‘It wasn’t your final speech at all, Rumpole. It was all down to Leonard.’

  ‘Leonard Bullingham?’

  ‘Of course. He knows I want you to get your silk so I can pick up some of your future briefs. So he was going to ask your Head of Chambers not to go on with the case.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘He was away on circuit. I phoned to tell him that the case was on and he got hold of Sam Ballard in the lunchtime break. Apparently he told your Head of Chambers that he wouldn’t be considered for a judgeship if he dragged his chambers’ name through the courts.’

  ‘Soapy Sam Ballard’s being considered for a judgeship?’

  ‘I told you that, Rumpole.’

  ‘And your friend Leonard decided to help me?’

  ‘He did it for me, Rumpole.’

  ‘I’m sure he did.’

  So fortune brings its mysterious changes. I was entering my future years at the Bar by courtesy of the Mad Bull, to whom I must be particularly grateful.

  19

  ‘You set me impossible tasks, Mr Rumpole.’

  ‘Never mind. The impossible ones are often the easiest. They bring out the best in you. What’ve you got to report?’

  I was sharing a portion of Melton Mowbray pie at my desk with Fig Newton, the ingenious and reliable detective who seemed to suffer from a perpetual cold. Free from the ASBO, we ate lunch and drank Château Thames Embankment from tumblers at my desk.

  ‘It’s taken me a time, Mr Rumpole. But I think I might be on to something.’

  ‘I’m sure you are.’

  ‘I had a drink in a number of bars and public houses round the Canary Wharf area.’