Rumpole and the Primrose Path

by John Mortimer

  ‘What about the girlfriend? And her father’s Videos R Us?’

  ‘She hasn’t bothered to wait for him. That’s what I heard in the chat round here. Of course, Chirpy doesn’t know that yet. He’ll be the last to know. So I doubt the job’s still open. He’ll drift back to the Molloys and you know what that means.’

  ‘I’m not sure that I do know exactly.’

  ‘I’m afraid he’ll be looking for a house where the milk’s been cancelled because they’ve all gone on holiday.’

  ‘You think Chirpy Molloy’s incapable of redemption?’

  ‘We can hope for the best.’ Brian put on the serious expression he had used for his speech. ‘We can always hope. But we’ve got to face the facts, Mr Rumpole. This is it. The facts have to be faced.’

  I moved on then, towards freedom and, in the fullness of time, a glass with better stuff than tepid water in it. Archie Prosser joined me at the prison gates. ‘Who the hell was Applethorpe?’ I asked him.

  ‘Poor chap.’ Archie looked serious. ‘I was at school with him. In here waiting to be sentenced for thirty-two cases of indecent exposure. Come to think of it, he was Head Boy.’

  Since my abandonment of the stationary bicycle, and Hilda’s discovery of the fraudulent entries in the Lysander Club’s records, home life in Gloucester Road began to feel like an extended visit to the Worsfield nick. No cries of welcome greeted me when I returned to the mansion flat, no sighs of regret when I left it after a hurried breakfast. Archie had made me a member of the Bunyan Society and I took refuge in some of its meetings, where I got to know the committee and was greeted warmly by the reformed Brian Skidmore. He told me that Chirpy Molloy had been released, but there was no news as yet of his having slid back into a life of crime.

  I was in my Chambers room, wondering when, if ever, a brief in a sensational new case would arrive, when Claude Erskine-Brown stole in, looked down the passage as though he feared listeners, and carefully closed the door.

  ‘Rumpole, I don’t know if you’ve heard any rumours?’

  ‘Rumours? Of course I’ve heard rumours. Where do you think life in Chambers would be without rumours?’

  ‘Well, if you’ve heard any, don’t believe them.’

  ‘Why ever not? I usually believe rumours. But so far as politicians are concerned, I never believe anything until it’s been officially denied.’

  ‘Politicians?’ Claude looked startled and afraid. ‘Did you say politicians, Rumpole?’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘So then you’ve heard.’ He sat down in my client’s chair in an attitude of despondent resignation.

  ‘Heard what, exactly, Erskine-Brown?’

  ‘About me and - well - her. I knew it would leak out eventually.’

  Here, I thought, we go again. Claude Erskine-Brown, unlike the blessed Brian Skidmore, appeared irredeemable. Love provided as irresistible a temptation to him as crime did to such weak-minded characters as Chirpy Molloy. The only difference was that Erskine-Brown’s infidelities, unlike Chirpy’s burglaries, tended to remain in the world of dreams. As I was taught by my old, blind law tutor at Keeble College, a crime requires a guilty act with a guilty intent. Dear old Claude had the guilty intent most of the time; it was the guilty act he found hard to pull off.

  ‘There’s only one thing I do beg of you, Rumpole. And I know I can count on you, because of our long friendship over the years.’

  ‘You want a bit of free Legal Aid?’

  ‘Not that. No. It hasn’t come to that. It’s just if you hear my name mentioned in connection with a well-known politician ...’

  I began to run them over in my mind. The Prime Minister?

  Leader of the Opposition? What on earth had come over poor old Claude? He couldn’t resist, of course, supplying the answer. ‘If you hear my name mentioned in connection with, for instance, the Home Secretary, just say you know there’s absolutely nothing in it.’

  ‘Erskine-Brown! Not the Home Secretary?’ I couldn’t believe it.

  ‘You don’t know her, Rumpole?’

  ‘Indeed I do. She’s a woman who believes that we shouldn’t blame countries who stone women to death and she’s very keen on cracking down on people. You want to be careful she doesn’t crack down on you, Claude.’

  The man in my armchair assumed a far-away ‘if only’ expression. Then came a low murmur. ‘I had the privilege of sitting next to her at a dinner in the Law Society. We really hit it off. She told me she found me a witty and sympathetic companion.’

  ‘Mrs Justice Erskine-Brown - that is to say Lady Phillida - she was at this dinner party, was she?’

  ‘Oh no. Philly was away on circuit somewhere.’

  ‘So the Home Secretary had you to herself?’

  ‘Almost entirely. She talked to the man on the other side, of course, but not for very long. I walked her to her car and she kissed me, Rumpole. I was kissed by a Secretary of State. And I kissed her back!’

  ‘I suppose I ought to congratulate you.’

  ‘It’s the power, I suppose. There’s a sort of potent sexuality about her.’

  ‘I can’t honestly say I noticed.’

  ‘I’ve always thought she was terribly attractive in photographs, of course. But in the flesh! Well, now it’s happened, we might meet at the Opera. Or a quiet dinner in a restaurant.’

  ‘The possibilities are endless.’

  ‘That’s right, Rumpole! Of course, we’ll have to be extremely careful. So do, please, just remember, this conversation never happened.’ At which Claude left my client’s chair and slunk off, on whatever business he had in hand.

  It was a few days after this that an unfortunate event occurred at the home of Adele Alexander, the well-known actress, near Sloane Square. While she was away on a holiday in Majorca, her house, Number 5 Granville Road, was broken into and valuable jewellery was stolen. The remarkable thing, according to the police, was that the thief had enjoyed all the benefits of the bathroom: wet towels were left on the floor and a prodigious amount of bath salts and various lotions had been made use of.

  I heard no rumours of Erskine-Brown’s burgeoning love affair with the Home Secretary; but the member of the Timson family I was defending for dangerous driving told me that, as I had suspected, Chirpy Molloy had been arrested exactly a month after his release from Worsfield. ‘It’s the bath he can’t resist,’ young Les Timson told me. ‘That’s what’s his undoing. That and the toilet requisites.’ Clearly the doctrine of redemption didn’t apply to Chirpy Molloy.

  The period which followed the arrest of Chirpy Molloy for serial burglary and stolen jewellery was not, as I have already indicated, a golden age in the life of Rumpole. The sentence passed on me at home was clearly a long one and there was no hope of parole, or indeed any clear indication of when, or even if, I might expect a release. It would be an exaggeration to say that Hilda was silent when we were alone together, but she was, for most of the time, monosyllabic. Her longest speech, often repeated to the accompaniment of heavy sighs and upward glances, as though calling on the gods to witness her patience in the face of such outrageous persecution, was ‘Of course, if you’re looking for an early death, Rumpole, and can’t be bothered to look after your health in any way, that’s entirely up to you. Just don’t expect me to do anything about it. That’s all.’ Having said this, she would leave to look after little Tom Fletcher, a child who no doubt exercised obediently, performing hand stands and vaulting over the furniture, so insuring many long and healthy years to come. My dinner, as often as not, had not been left in the oven.

  I tried various ploys. I attempted washing up, but She examined the plates and glasses critically, under a strong light, and then washed them up all over again. I tried a legal joke or two, but got an even heavier sigh and ‘Please, Rumpole, not that one again.’ I brought her the latest gossip, the strange misunderstanding over Judge Bullingham’s wig, the unfortunate e-mail Soapy Sam Ballard sent to our Director of Marketing, but failed to
capture Hilda’s interest. The only thing I felt unable to concede was to return to the misery of the exercise bicycle in the Lysander Health Club. The day of the treadmill was, I had made up my mind, over. So I opted for what almost amounted to solitary confinement in Froxbury Mansions.

  To make matters worse, briefs, which in happier times had fallen as thick as autumn leaves in my space on the clerks’ room mantelpiece, were still as rare as swallows in winter. Every morning, when I strolled into Chambers and asked Henry if there was anything much in the diary, he would say, ‘Very little on at the moment, Mr Rumpole. I expect you’ll be glad of the rest.’ So I would retreat to my room to light a small cigar, struggle with The Times crossword or consider the possibility of writing my memoirs.

  On one eventful morning, however, as I wandered into the clerks’ room and glanced at the mantelpiece, I saw a brief clearly marked by the firm of Bernard and Tillbury of Cold-harbour Lane, Camberwell. I knew that Bonny Bernard wouldn’t think of briefing anyone else in Chambers and I was interested to see whom the Queen, as the prosecuting party in all criminal trials, was after this time. The title of the case was none other than R. v. Molloy. Henry was out of the room on some mission of his own, so I grabbed the brief and carried it off to study at my leisure.

  An hour later, I had not only read it but made a note of all the facts, together with a list of questions to be asked when we saw our client, no doubt a great deal less chirpy. After this welcome work, I lit a small cigar, leant back and blew what I flatter myself was a perfect smoke ring at the ceiling. The case seemed so obvious, the violation of the victim’s bathroom so completely in character, that it was going to be difficult to think of a defence. And yet, I thought, and yet ... I was lost in the sessions of sweet silent thought when the door burst open and I was rudely interrupted.

  ‘So, Rumpole!’ Archie Prosser seemed full of righteous indignation, as though he’d caught me red-handed pinching the small change for the coffee contributions. ‘You’ve got the brief!’

  ‘Yes, Archie,’ I told him politely. ‘Thanks to you.’

  ‘What do you mean, “thanks to me”?’

  ‘You took me to that ghastly lunch. That’s when I met Chirpy Molloy. He said he’d remember me the next time he was in trouble. Well, it seems he’s back in trouble extremely soon.’

  ‘I have no idea what the defendant Molloy may or may not have said to you. All I know is that what you have there is my brief.’

  ‘Your what?’

  ‘Brief.’

  ‘Don’t babble, Archie. This case comes from my old friend Bonny Bernard.’

  ‘My instructing solicitor.’

  ‘Yours?’ I couldn’t believe it.

  ‘You might take the trouble to look at the name on the front of those papers.’

  I turned them over. It was true. I had read the name of the case and the solicitors, but now I saw in the small print the inexcusable name of the learned friend, Mr Archibald Prosser.

  ‘Bonny Bernard,’ I was struggling with the enormity of the idea, ‘is briefing you?’

  ‘He thought perhaps he should cast his net a little wider.’

  ‘And pick up some rather odd fish,’ was what I didn’t say.

  ‘Anyway, it’s a pretty hopeless case.’ Archie sat down in a more forgiving mood. ‘Absolutely no defence, so far as I can see. Fellow couldn’t resist using the bathroom. So he left his signature.’

  ‘He told me he was going straight this time.’

  ‘They all say that, don’t they?’

  ‘You don’t believe in the possibility of redemption?’

  ‘For people like Molloy, with a string of convictions as long as your arm? Hardly.’

  I was putting back the papers, having decided to surrender them with as much gallantry as possible. ‘I’ll leave you my note. There are one or two things you might consider. Was it pretty widely known, for instance, that this actress was in the habit of leaving jewellery around when she went on holiday?’

  ‘Presumably it was. That’s why Molloy picked the place.’

  ‘Isn’t it odd that he should be so well informed? He’d only just got out of prison.’

  ‘They learn a lot in those places, don’t they?’

  ‘Perhaps. Still it’s worth a thought. Oh, and there’s a witness statement in there, from the woman in the house that backs on to Number 5.’

  ‘The Judge’s wife?’ It was indeed Lady Sloper, the wife of the well-known Mr Justice ‘Beetle’ Sloper, who had got up in the small hours to close a bedroom window. Looking down the moonlit garden of Number 5, she could see, in the clear moonlight, a man come out of the back door. He must have heard her close the window, because he looked up and she got a view of his face. Then she saw him walk away, into the shadows by the garden wall.

  ‘It’s a prosecution statement,’ Archie explained. ‘Freddy Maresfield, who’s prosecuting, was good enough to let me see it. They’re not calling her, and I shan’t be calling her either.’

  ‘Why not? The description she gives doesn’t sound in the least like Chirpy Molloy.’

  ‘It was night time ...’

  ‘Bright moonlight.’

  ‘All the same, she never got a clear view. Freddy would make mincemeat of her in cross-examination. And one doesn’t really like to trouble a Judge’s wife unless it’s absolutely necessary.’

  ‘When it comes to a criminal defence,’ I thought it worthwhile to tell Archie Prosser his business, ‘it usually pays to trouble everyone as much as possible.’

  I had one more question. ‘By the way,’ I said as Archie reached the door, ‘did you ever get round to proposing Bonny Bernard for the Sheridan Club?’

  ‘Oh yes, I did.’ Archie clearly didn’t get the full implications of my question. ‘And he was extremely grateful.’

  ‘Obviously!’ My tone was bitter and my brow furrowed with rage, but I let Archie go.

  ‘Just for a handful of silver he left us

  Just for a riband to stick in his coat ...’

  He was sitting there, Bonny Bernard, in. Pommeroy’s Wine Bar, drinking with his partner in the law and, no doubt, in this instance, in crime, the almost anonymous Tillbury; drinking and eating cheese biscuits as though he hadn’t been guilty of one of the most appalling acts of treachery in the history of the Bar.

  ‘Oh, hello, Mr Rumpole, you’re really looking well.’ Bonny Bernard spoke as though all was well with the world and he had nothing on his conscience. The unnecessary Tillbury chipped in with ‘Very well indeed, Mr Rumpole. Still at it, are you?’

  ‘I am still at it!’ I told them. ‘I am still carrying on a practice to the best of my poor ability in Equity Court. All briefs received there marked Mr H. Rumpole will be attended to swiftly and to my usual high standard. But as for you, Bonny Bernard, I’m sorry to have wasted on you the lines written by the poet Browning to the Great Wordsworth, whom he thought a traitor to the cause of human freedom when he sold out and became a civil servant.’

  ‘Really? I didn’t know that.’ Bernard didn’t seem to understand the relevance of the lines to his own conduct. I pointed it out.

  ‘I’m not suggesting you did it for a handful of silver,

  Bernard. Perhaps it had more to do with being put up as a member of the Sheridan Club.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Bernard persisted in behaving as though he had nothing to be ashamed of. ‘Your Mr Prosser was kind enough to propose me.’

  ‘So you were kind enough to slip him a brief by way of returning the favour? Do I need to tell you how the poet Browning went on? “He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!” A slave, I am suggesting, Bernard, to the magnificent prize of becoming a member of a dusty old club. I tell you what. I’ll get you into the Bunyan Society. You’ll probably recognize Hypocrisy, born in the land of Vainglory.’

  ‘Why don’t you sit down, Mr Rumpole?’ The unremarkable Tillbury seemed anxious to make peace. ‘Can I offer you a drop of the red?’

  I sat then, not yet placated,
but my outburst had left me thirsty. ‘When I think,’ I said to Bernard as Tillbury trotted off to the bar, ‘of all we’ve been through together- the business of the Tap End of the Bath murder, the case I called “The Angel of Death”. And what about “The Children of the Devil”, or “The Puzzling Murder in the Case of Toby Johnson” ... ?’

  ‘Please, Mr Rumpole, don’t go on ...’ Bonny Bernard was, I was glad to see, visibly moved, but I couldn’t resist a final turn of the screw. ‘And how am I rewarded? My work is transferred to Archie Prosser!’

  ‘Quite honestly, Mr Rumpole, we didn’t think you’d want to be bothered.’

  Tillbury had arrived with my wine. I downed it and, as usual, the Château Thames Embankment had a calming effect on me. ‘I met Chirpy Molloy in prison. His girlfriend’s devoted. He means to take up a life of honest toil in her Dad’s Videos R Us shop in Lewisham. He instructs you that he never went near Sloane Square on the night in question and his girlfriend Lorraine Hickson provides him with an alibi. If all that’s true, Chirpy Molloy is a candidate for redemption. Do you really think I wouldn’t be bothered about his case?’

  ‘It seems so open and shut. Nothing much to be done except go through the motions.’

  ‘Seems, Bonny Bernard? I know not seems.’ I had given him Browning and John Bunyan. I gave him Hamlet, and all he had given me was a glass of Pommeroy’s Very Ordinary in return for a lost brief. ‘There are one or two things I might do to help.’

  ‘Things, Mr Rumpole?’ Bernard looked vaguely alarmed.

  ‘What sort of things, exactly?’

  ‘Oh, important things. I’m sure Mr Prosser will find them extremely helpful.’

  With that I downed a second glass of wine and left Bonny Bernard, who looked as though he were afraid that the trial he’d thought of as ‘open and shut’ might, with Rumpole on the case, be unexpectedly worrying.

  My visit to Worsfield Jail had other results, apart from my meeting with Chirpy Molloy, the prisoner who might or might not have reached a state of redemption. I got a taxi - a sudden, unexpected call to do a plea at London Sessions - and found it to be driven by Vince Timson, one member of the extended family who had, at least for most of the time, a legitimate occupation.