‘This man, Blewitt,’ I said, ‘appears to be a considerable blot on the landscape.’
‘You’re not joking, Mr Rumpole.’
‘One that must be removed for the general health of Chambers.’
‘And of me in particular, Mr Rumpole, as your long-serving and faithful clerk.’
‘Then all I can tell you, Henry, is that a way must be found.’
‘Agreed, Mr Rumpole, but who is to find it?’
It seemed to me a somewhat dimwitted question, and one that Henry would never have asked had he been entirely sober. ‘Who else?’ I asked, purely rhetorically, ‘but the learned Counsel who found a defence in the Penge Bungalow affair, which looked, at first sight, even blacker than the case of the blot Blewitt – or even the predicament of Dr Betty Ireton.’
‘Then I’ll leave it to you, Mr Rumpole.’
‘Many doubtful characters have said those very words, Henry, and not been disappointed.’
‘And I could do with another gin-and-Dubonnet, sir. Seeing as you’re in the chair.’
So Jack Pommeroy added to the figure on the slate and Henry seemed to cheer up considerably. ‘I just heard a really ripe one in here, Mr Rumpole, from old Jo Castor who clerks Mr Digby Tappit in Crown Office Row. Do you know, sir, the one about the sleeveless woman?’
‘I do not know it, Henry. But I suppose I very soon shall.’
As a matter of fact I never did. My much-threatened clerk began to tell me this ripe anecdote which had an extremely lengthy build-up. Long before the delayed climax I shut off, being lost in my own thoughts. Did old Chippy Chippenham die in the course of nature or was he pushed? If he had been, would he have felt as merciful to Dr Betty as he had to my rustic client who shot his sick wife?
Had one long, confused afternoon arrived when Chippy muttered to himself, ‘I have been half in love with easeful Death’? The sound of the words gave me a lift only otherwise to be had from Pommeroy’s plonk and I intoned privately and without interrupting Henry’s flow:
‘Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!’
Then Henry laughed loudly; his story had apparently reached its triumphant and no doubt obscene conclusion. I joined in for the sake of manners, but now I was thinking that I had to win the case of Blewitt as well as that of Dr Betty, and I had no idea how I was to emerge triumphant from either.
‘We don’t call this a memorial service. We call it a joyful thanksgiving for the life of his Honour Judge Chippenham.’ So said the Reverend Edgedale, the Temple’s resident cleric. Sitting at the back of the congregation, I thought that old Chippy wasn’t in a position to mind much what we called it, and wondered if some of the villains he’d felt it necessary to send away to chokey would call it a joyful thanksgiving for his death. Chippy was dead, a word we all shy away from nowadays when almost anything else goes. What would Mizz Liz Probert have said? Old Chippy had become a non-living person. And
then I thought how glowingly Dr Betty had talked about Chippy’s present position, happily unaware of the length of the sermon – ‘Chippy was the name he rejoiced in since his first term at Charterhouse, but you and I can hardly think of anyone with less of a chip on his shoulder’ – and the increasing hardness of the pews. I looked around at the assembled mourners, Mr Injustice Graves, and various circuit judges and practising hacks who were no doubt wondering how soon they might expect a joyful thanksgiving for their own lives. I peered up at the stained-glass windows in the old round church built for the Knights Templar, who had gone off to die in the Crusades without the benefit of a memorial service, and then I fell into a light doze.
I was woken up by a peal on the organ and old persons stumbling across my knees, anxious to get out of the place which gave rise to uncomfortable thoughts of mortality. And, when we joined in the general rush for the light of day, I heard a gentle voice, ‘Mr Rumpole, how delighted Uncle Chippy would have been that you could join us.’
I focused on a pleasant-looking, youngish woman, pushing back loose hair which strayed across her forehead. Beside her stood an equally pleasant, tall man in his forties. Both of them smiled as though their natural cheerfulness could survive even this sad occasion.
‘Dick and Ursula Chippenham,’ the tall man bent down considerately to inform me. ‘Uncle Chippy was always talking about you. Said you could be a devilish tricky customer in Court but he always enjoyed having you in for a jar when the battle was over.’
‘Chippy was so fond of his jar. What he wanted was to ask all his real friends back to toast his memory,’ Ursula told me. ‘Do say you’ll come!’
‘I honestly don’t think . . .’ What I meant to say was that I already felt a little guilty for slipping in to the memorial service of a man when I was defending his possible murderer. Could I, in all conscience, accept even one jar from his bereaved family?
‘It’s thirty-one Dettingen Road, Holland Park.’ Dick Chippenham smiled down on me from a great height. ‘Chippy would have been so delighted if you were there to say goodbye.’
As I say, I felt guilty but I also had a strong desire to see what we old-fashioned hacks call the locus in quo – the scene of the crime.
It was an English spring, that is to say, dark clouds pressed down on London and produced a doleful weeping of rain. I splurged out on a taxi from the Temple to Dettingen Road and spent some time in it while the approach to number thirty-one was blocked by a huge, masticating rubbish lorry which gave out strangled cries such as ‘This vehicle is reversing!’ as it tried to extricate itself from a jam of parked cars. Whistling dustmen were collecting bins from the front entrance of sedate, white- stuccoed houses, pouring their contents into the jaws of the curiously articulate lorry and then returning the empty bins, together with a small pile of black plastic bags, given, by courtesy of the council, to their owners. I paid the immobile taxi off and took a brisk walk in the sifting rain towards number thirty-one. As I did so, I saw a solemn boy come down the steps of the house and, in a sudden, furtive motion, collect the black plastic bags from the top of the dustbin, stuff them under his school blazer and disappear into a side entrance of the house. I climbed up the front steps, rang the bell and was admitted by a butler-like person who I thought must have been specially hired for Chippy’s send-off. Sounds of the usual high cocktail-party chatter with no particular note of grief in it were emerging from the sitting-room. The wake seemed to be a great deal more cheerful than the weather.
Ursula Chippenham bore down on me with a welcome glass of champagne. ‘We’re so glad you came.’ She moved me into a corner and spoke confidentially, much more in sorrow than in anger. ‘Dr Betty got on so terribly well with Chippy. We never thought for a moment that she’d do anything like that.’
‘Perhaps she didn’t.’
‘Of course, Dick and I don’t want anything terrible to happen to her.’
‘Neither do I.’
‘We know you’ll do your very best for her. Chippy always said you were quite brilliant with a jury on a good day, when you didn’t go over the top and start spouting bits of poetry at them.’
‘That was very civil of him.’
‘And, of course, Dr Betty and Chippy became best friends. Towards the end, that was.’
‘I suppose you know that she was against . . . Well, prolonging life?’ Or in favour of killing people, I suppose I would have said, if I were appearing for the Prosecution.
‘Of course. But I never dreamt she’d do anything . . . Well, without discussing it with the family. She seemed so utterly trustworthy! Of course we hadn’t known her all that long. She only came to us when Chippy took against poor Dr Eames.’
‘When was that exactly?’
‘There are certain rules, Mr Rumpole. Certain traditions of the Bar which you might find it convenient to remember.’ Chippy had said that to me in Court when I asked a witness
who happened to work in advertising if that didn’t mean he’d taken up lying as a career. In his room afterwards he’d said, ‘Horace, sometimes I wish you’d stop being such an original barrister.’
‘Is trying to squeeze information out of a prosecution witness while consuming her champagne at a family wake in the best traditions of the Bar?’ he would have asked. ‘Probably not, my Lord,’ I would have told Chippy, ‘but aren’t you curious to know exactly how you met your death?’
‘Only about six months ago.’ Ursula answered my question willingly. ‘Eames is a bit politically correct, as a matter of fact. He kept telling Chippy that at least his illness meant that his place on the Bench was available to a member of an ethnic minority.’
‘Not much of a bedside manner, this quack Eames?’
‘Oh, I don’t think Chippy minded that so much. It was when Eames said, “No more claret and no more whisky to help you to go to sleep, for the rest of your life”, that the poor chap had to go.’
‘Understandable.’
‘Dick thought so too.’
‘And how did you happen to hear of Dr Betty Ireton?’
‘Some friends of mine in Cambridge Terrace said she was an absolute angel. Oh, there you are, Pargey! This is Nurse Pargeter, Mr Rumpole. Pargey was an angel to Chippy too.’ The nurse who was wandering by had reddish hair, a long equine face and suddenly startled eyes. She wasn’t in uniform, but was solemnly dressed in a plain black frock and white collar. I had already seen her, standing alone, taking care not to look at the other guests in case they turned and noticed her loneliness.
Ursula Chippenham drifted off to greet some late arrivals. ‘Are you family?’ the nurse asked in a surprisingly deep and unyielding voice, with a trace of a Scottish accent.
‘No, I’m a barrister. An old friend of Chippy’s . . . ’
‘Mr Rumpole? I think I’ve heard him mention you.’
‘I’m glad. And then, of course, I have the unenviable task of defending Dr Betty Ireton. Mrs Chippenham says she got on rather well with the old boy.’
‘Defend her?’ Nurse Pargeter suddenly looked as relentless as John Knox about to denounce the monstrous regiment of women. ‘She cannot be defended. I warned the Chippenhams against her. They can’t say I didn’t warn them. I told them all about that dreadful Lethe.’
‘Everyone can be defended,’ I corrected her as gently as possible. ‘Of course whether the Defence is successful is entirely another matter.’
‘I prefer to remember the Ten Commandments on the subject. ’ Pargey was clearly of a religious persuasion.
Those nicknames, I thought – Pargey and Chippy – you might as well be in a school dormitory or at a gathering of very old actors.
‘Oh, the Ten Commandments.’ I tried not to sound dismissive of this ancient code of desert law. ‘Not too closely observed nowadays, are they? I mean adultery’s about the only subject that seems to interest the newspapers, and coveting other people’s oxen and asses is called leaving everything to market forces. And, as for worshipping graven images, think of the prices some of them fetch at Sotheby’s. As for Thou shalt not kill – well, some people think that the terminally ill should be helped out of their misery.’
‘And some people happen to believe in the sanctity of life.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, Mr Rumpole, I have an important meeting to go to.’
As I watched her leave, I thought that I hadn’t been a conspicuous success with Nurse Pargeter. Then a small boy piped up at my elbow, ‘Would you like one of these, sir? I don’t know what they are actually.’ It was young Andrew Chippenham, with a plate of small brown envelope arrangements made of brittle pastry. I took one, bit into it and found, hardly to my delight, goat’s cheese and some green, seaweedlike substance.
‘You must be Andrew,’ I said. The only genuine schoolboy around wasn’t called Andy or Drew, or even Chippy, but kept his whole name, uncorrupted. ‘And you go to Boling- broke House?’ I recognized the purple blazer with brass buttons. Bolingbroke was an expensive prep school in Kensington, which I thought must be so over-subscribed that the classrooms were used in a rota system and the unaccommodated pupils were sent out for walks in a crocodile formation, under the care of some bothered and junior teacher, round the streets of London. I had seen regiments of purple blazers marching dolefully as far as Gloucester Road; the exit from Bolingbroke House had a distinct look of the retreat from Moscow.
‘How do you like being a waiter?’ I asked Andrew, thinking it must be better than the daily urban trudge.
‘Not much. I’d like to get back to my painting.’
‘You’re an artist?’
‘Of course not.’ He looked extremely serious. ‘I mean painting my model aeroplanes.’
‘How fascinating.’ And then I lied as manfully as any unreliable witness. ‘I was absolutely crazy about model aeroplanes when I was your age. Of course, that was a bit before Concorde.’
‘Did you ever go in a Spitfire?’ Andrew looked at me as though I had taken part in the Charge of the Light Brigade or was some old warrior from the dawn of time.
‘Spitfires? I know all about Spitfires from my time in the R.A.F.’ I forgot to tell him I was ground staff only. And then I said, ‘I say, Andrew, I’d love to see your collection.’ So he put down his plate of goat’s cheese envelopes and we escaped from the party.
Andrew’s room was on the third floor, at the back of the house. In the front, a door was open and I got a glimpse of a big, airy room with a bed stripped and the windows open. When I asked who slept there, he answered casually and without any particular emotion, ‘That was Great-uncle Chippy’s room. He’s the one who died, you know.’
‘I know. I suppose your parents’ bedroom’s on the floor below?’ It wasn’t the subtlest way of getting information.
‘Oh, yes. I’m all alone up here now.’ Andrew opened the door of his room which smelled strongly of glue and, I thought for a moment, was full of brightly coloured birds which, as I focused on them, became model aeroplanes swinging in the breeze from an open window. From what seemed to be every inch of the ceiling, a thread had been tied or tacked to hold up a fighter or an old-fashioned seaplane in full flight.
‘That’s the sort of Spitfire you piloted,’ Andrew said, to my silent embarrassment. ‘And that’s a Wellington bomber like you had in the war.’ I did remember the planes returning, when they were lucky, with a rear-gunner dead or wounded and the stink of blood and fear when the doors were opened. I had been young then, unbearably young, and I banished the memory for more immediate concerns.
‘Are these all the models you’ve made?’ I asked Andrew. ‘Or have you got lots more packed away in black bin bags?’
‘Bin bags?’ He was fiddling with a half-painted Concorde on his desk. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘You know, the plastic bags the dustmen leave after they’ve taken away the rubbish. Don’t you collect them? A lot of boys do.’
‘Collect plastic bags? What a funny thing to do.’ Andrew had his head down and was still fiddling with his model. ‘That wouldn’t interest me, I’m afraid. I haven’t got any plastic bags at all.’
Back in Chambers that afternoon I found Dot Clapton alone in front of her typewriter, frowning as she looked over a brightly coloured brochure, on the cover of which a bikinied blonde was to be seen playing leapfrog with a younger, fitter version of Vincent Blewitt on a stretch of golden sand.
‘I’m afraid Henry’s just slipped out, Mr Rumpole. I don’t know what it is. His heart doesn’t seem to be in his work nowadays.’ She looked up at me in genuine distress and I saw the perfectly oval face, sculptured eyelids and blonde curls that might have been painted by some such artistic old darling as Sandro Botticelli, and heard the accent which might have been learnt from the Timson family somewhere south of Brixton. I didn’t tell her that not only Henry’s heart, but our learned clerk himself, might not be in his work very soon. Instead I asked, ‘Thinking of going on holiday, Dot?’
She handed me the brochure in silence. On the front of it was emblazoned THE FIVE S HOLIDAYS: SEA, SUN, SAND, SINGLES AND SEX ON THE COSTA DEL SOL. WHY NOT GO FOR IT? ‘Quite honestly, is that your idea of a holiday, Mr Rumpole?’
‘It sounds,’ I had to tell her, ‘like my idea of hell.’
‘I’ve got to agree with you. I mean, if I want burger and chips with a pint of lager, I might as well stay in Streatham.’
‘Very sensible.’
‘If I’m going to be on holiday, I want something a bit romantic.’
‘I understand. Sand and sex are as unappealing as sand in the sandwiches?’
‘My boyfriend’s planning to take me to the castles down the Rhine. Of course, I don’t want to upset him.’
‘Upset your boyfriend?’
‘No. Upset Mr Blewitt.’
‘Upsetting Mr Blewitt – I have to say this, Dot – is my idea of a perfect summer holiday.’
‘Oh, don’t say that, Mr Rumpole.’ Dot Clapton looked nervously round the room as though the blot might be concealed behind the arras. ‘He is my boss now, isn’t he?’
‘Not my boss, Dot. No one’s my boss, and particularly not Blewitt.’
‘He’s mine then. And he told me these singles holidays are a whole lot of fun.’
‘Did he now?’ I felt that there was something in this fragment of information which might be of great value.
‘I don’t know, though. Vince . . . Well, he asked me to call him Vince.’
‘And you agreed?’
‘I didn’t have much choice. Does he honestly think I haven’t got a boyfriend?’
‘If he thinks that, Dot, he can’t be capable of organizing a piss-up in a brewery, let alone a barristers’ Chambers.’
‘Piss-up in a brewery!’ Dot covered her mouth with her hand and giggled. ‘How do you think of these things, Mr Rumpole?’
I didn’t tell her that they’d been thought of and forgotten long before she was born, but took my leave of her, saying I was on my way to see Mr Ballard.
Rumpole and the Angel of Death Page 26