Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders

by John Mortimer

  During his evidence, I was looking, from time to time, at the door of the court, afraid that my leader might return and impose his silence on the proceedings. I was also terrified I would forget what I had to ask on that most public of stages, lose my thread and make a complete fool of myself. I was lost in a dream of disaster when I heard Winterbourne rumble a grateful, ‘Thank you, Dr Philimore,’ and I saw the great man turn to leave the witness box.

  Then I stood up, and miraculously the mists cleared, and I was able to say, ‘Just a moment, Doctor. I have a few questions for you,’ almost as calmly as if I were ordering a glass of Château Thames Embankment in Pommeroy’s.

  ‘Mr um, er . . .’ The judge was searching through his papers in the hope that somewhere he might have made a note of my name. He found it and looked at it as though he couldn’t believe his eyes. ‘Er, Mr Rumpole. We understood from your learned leader that you agreed with the medical evidence.’

  ‘Of course, My Lord. We have just a few questions.’

  ‘Are you asking me to wait for Mr Wystan to return?’

  ‘Oh, certainly not, My Lord. I cannot possibly ask you to delay the trial. That wouldn’t be in the public interest, and we have agreed not to attack the doctor’s evidence.’ This, at least, was true. ‘I’m merely putting a few points for clarification. And so we may have the benefit of Dr Philimore’s enormous knowledge and experience.’ I was, as a youth, capable of being quite intolerable.

  The judge screwed up his eyes and gave me his quizzical look, probably asking himself, ‘Who is this whipper-snapper, this young white wig who talks to me as though he’s been knocking round the Old Bailey for the last thirty years?’ Then, after a preparatory pinch of snuff, he muttered a reluctant, ‘Oh, very well then,’ before making use of the silk handkerchief.

  ‘Doctor, death after being shot through the heart isn’t necessarily instant, is it?’ Here a page from Philimore’s own book on the subject flashed before my eyes. ‘I’m sure you’ve written about victims who may have walked at least several yards.’

  ‘That is so, yes.’ The great man looked a little wary, as though I was about to lead him into a trap.

  ‘So we’re agreed. Now, might the witness be given the photograph of the room with the dead man in the armchair?’ The relevant photograph was handed up to him and again the doctor glanced at it as though it was an impertinent and unnecessary addition to his evidence. I waited for the jury to find the photograph in their folders and then continued, with a calm I felt almost alarming, ‘You see the dead man is on the left of the fireplace?’

  ‘Yes, I see that, thank you,’ the Doctor added, exaggerating the tolerance due to a white wig.

  ‘Behind him is an open door that leads to a short hallway and the front door of the bungalow.’

  ‘I see that too.’

  ‘You will also see that the bloodstains have been circled.’

  ‘Yes, they have.’

  ‘And is there not a bloodstain, which we are all agreed is of the same group as the deceased’s blood, on the wall of the hallway?’

  ‘I see that, yes.’

  ‘So, is it not possible that the deceased may have been shot, got up from his chair and moved at least that distance into the hallway?’

  ‘Yes, that is possible.’ The doctor seemed a little surprised that he had to admit it.

  ‘Or might not this be possible, that he was in the hall, opening the door to someone who shot him, he bled in the hallway and he returned to his chair to die?’

  It was the first of the two points I had to make. The fear returned. If I got the wrong answer, I had done nothing but further damage an already hopeless case, bored the jury, irritated the judge and might well be thrown out of chambers for insubordination. The clock ticked, the judge sat motionless with his pencil raised, the jury were looking at the photograph and time stood still. And then, at long last, it came - Dr Philimore’s answer, now given a little reluctantly.

  ‘I couldn’t rule out that possibility either.’

  I came back to my senses. The fear gurgled away like dirty bathwater. I had more questions for the great oracle, but I felt surprisingly calm about the result. ‘Dr Philimore, you’ve made a study of the path of bullets in a body?’

  ‘Yes, that is so.’ He spoke as though everybody knew about his book The Causes of Death.

  ‘If the gun were held higher than the wound and so shot downwards, there would be a downward trajectory?’

  ‘There would, obviously.’

  ‘But if the assailant and the victim were both standing at about the same height, the trajectory would be straight, as it is in this case?’

  ‘That is what I found, yes.’ He said it with a small sigh, as though the fact should be self-evident.

  ‘So can we rule out the theory that the assailant here was standing and shooting downwards at a man seated in the chair?’

  ‘I think we can, yes.’

  ‘Let me just remind the court, and you of course, Dr Philimore, of my friend Mr Winterbourne’s opening speech.’ I picked up my underlined notebook and took longer than necessary to find the quotation, hoping to increase the expectation of a bombshell. ‘Ah, here it is,’ I said some time after I’d found it, and then I quoted the rumbler: “‘Seeing his father still sitting at the fireside, he stood over him and shot him through the heart as he sat . . .”’ Then I asked for Prosecution Exhibit One. So, for the first, but certainly not the last, time, I had a weapon in my hand in the Old Bailey. I stood holding it and pointed it downwards in the direction of Reggie Proudfoot, seated beside me. This provoked one of the many rebukes I have since received from judges.

  ‘I think you have made your point, Mr um . . . Rumpole. We can do without the pantomime.’

  ‘With the greatest respect to Your Lordship, this is no pantomime. This is a vital part of the prosecution case. It couldn’t have happened like that, could it, Dr Philimore? In view of the trajectory of the bullet?’ I stood amazed at my courage in arguing with the Lord Chief Justice.

  There was a pause and then the great expert said, ‘No. I don’t think it could.’

  ‘Now, if we could turn to the case of Charlie Weston.’

  ‘In view of the fact that the man is no longer alive,’ the judge sounded displeased, ‘I think it would be more appropriate, Mr Rumpole, if you called him Charles.’

  ‘I’m much obliged to Your Lordship.’ I was in a high mood after Dr Philimore’s last answer and ready to be obliging. ‘To Charles Weston.’ I flipped through the volume of photographs and there was ‘Tail-End’ Charlie, a small wiry man, the cheeky grin I imagined he once wore relaxed in death. ‘Would I be right in saying that you found the same sort of trajectory of the bullet as in the case of Jerry Jerold?’

  ‘That is right.’

  ‘So he was probably shot by someone standing up as he was standing.’

  ‘I would say so.’

  ‘Now we know from Mr Winterbourne’s opening that Charles Weston wasn’t found until the cleaning lady, who had a key, arrived at nine-thirty the next morning.’

  ‘I believe that is so.’

  ‘And so we can assume he was alone in his bungalow when he died.’

  ‘If you say so.’ The great man sighed as though this was taking far too long and he was anxious to get off to Australia.

  ‘Not if I say so, Doctor. If anyone else was with him, it will be for the prosecution to prove it. It seems likely that someone rang the front door bell, Charles Weston went to the hall to open it to whoever it was who shot him and he fell dead in the hallway.’

  ‘That seems the most likely explanation.’

  ‘I’m much obliged.’ I was in fact truly grateful. ‘So if we accept that, we can’t rule out that both of these men died in exactly the same way, opening their front doors to an unknown caller.’

  ‘As I have said, we can’t rule out that possibility.’

  ‘Thank you, Dr Philimore.’ I sat down with all the satisfaction of a trainee lion tame
r who has emerged from the cage of the most ferocious of the big cats with not one single scratch. Of course, Winterbourne did his best to retrieve the situation with such questions as ‘Whatever positions the two men had taken up, you agree that the father was shot by that pistol?’ And having got the answer, ‘Yes,’ he reminded the jury that Simon had picked up the gun earlier in the evening with a threat to kill. After he’d sat down, with my new-found confidence undiminished I made an application. ‘My Lord, Your Lordship asked that the witness Mr Wardle might be here this morning in case we had any questions.’

  ‘In case your learned leader had any questions, Mr Rumpole.’ The judge now seemed, rather to his regret, able to remember my name.

  ‘And in my leader’s absence I am asking to put a question to Mr Wardle.’

  Here the judge sighed; again it was only the first of many sighs of discontented resignation I was to hear from judges over the years at the Old Bailey. ‘I don’t suppose you can object to that, Mr Winterbourne.’ Unhappily for the judge, the prosecutor couldn’t and the chubby and cherubic ex-pilot officer, now double-glazing salesman, re-entered the witness box.

  ‘Mr Wardle, you told us yesterday that you saw Simon Jerold pick up the Luger pistol and talk about killing . . .’

  ‘“You’re so keen on teaching people to kill people. I promise you I’ll kill the first of you that touches me. So you’d better watch out.”’ The judge supplied the threatening words from his notebook, for which I thanked him profusely.

  ‘I’m much obliged for your help, My Lord. Now, Mr Wardle, Simon Jerold will say that the magazine with bullets in it was kept separate from the gun. It was somewhere else on that mantelpiece.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that.’

  ‘You’re not sure?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But it may have been so?’

  ‘It may well have been.’

  Now there was a small disturbance. The door swung open and Hilda’s daddy returned to court. Seeing me on my feet and asking questions, he gave me a look of something like horror. This didn’t deter me. ‘Did you see Simon load the magazine into the pistol after he had picked it up?’

  ‘No.’ The witness was clear. ‘I didn’t see him doing anything like that.’

  ‘You’re sure you didn’t?’

  ‘Quite sure.’

  ‘So, for all you know, Simon may have been holding an unloaded gun when he made those threats?’

  ‘He may have been.’

  This was a cause for more gratitude. ‘Thank you very much, Mr Wardle,’ I said. And then I turned before I sat down to look at my client in the dock and I saw, for the first time in the pale face of this young man facing death, the flicker of a smile.

  There was no smile, however, on the face of my learned leader when we broke off for the lunchtime adjournment. He was, on the whole, a gentle person and he looked at me more in sorrow than in anger. ‘I gave you strict instructions, Rumpole,’ he said, ‘not to ask any questions.’

  ‘Quite right.’ I couldn’t keep a note of triumph out of my voice. ‘But I thought of one or two points that might help us. I’ll give you a full note.’

  ‘I shall read it, of course, but I give you fair warning, Rumpole, I don’t intend to leave you alone again. This is a case which calls for tact, Rumpole, and the guidance of a leading counsel the judge will trust.’

  ‘Trust to lose politely?’ was what I felt like saying, but I was silenced by the clear, bell-like tones of my leader’s daughter, who had descended from the public gallery to greet us. To her father’s surprise and disappointment, she gave me a hearty hug. ‘Well done, Rumpole!’ And after suggesting we all had lunch at the little Italian place opposite, she added, ‘Rumpole scored a couple of direct hits in his cross-examination, Daddy.’ At which my leader looked more sorrowful than ever. He might have said more, and we might have had that lunch in the little Italian place opposite the Old Bailey, but our solicitor, Barnsley Gough, with young Bonny Bernard in attendance, joined us with some news. Our client had sent him a message: he wanted a conference urgently in the cells beneath our feet. Lunch with Hilda was postponed indefinitely.

  14

  ‘I have thought about it. And I’ve made up my mind. No matter what you tell me!’

  We had gone down from the courtroom level and passed the old door of Newgate Prison, with names carved on it by long-gone customers on their way to the gallows. We had seen the screws consuming doorstepsized sandwiches and gone into the small interview room to which they brought our client. As he sat down, he asked Bonny Bernard for ‘one of those Capstan full-strengths’. He was no longer listless and silenced by terror. It was then he said something extraordinary. ‘I want Mr Rumpole to do my case.’

  ‘Have you really thought about it? It won’t look good in the eyes of the Lord Chief, not good at all.’ It was Barnsley Gough who said it, and then our client replied in the words I’ve quoted at the start of this chapter.

  ‘But Mr Rumpole is doing your case, Jerold.’ Hilda’s daddy started off in the appeasing voice of a lawyer trying to reach an agreement, a way out which would satisfy everyone. ‘He is helping me, as I said, by taking a careful note, and of course we shall discuss your case together. Mr Rumpole is an important part of your defence team.’

  ‘But I don’t want you on my defence team, Mr C. H. Wystan. I only want Mr Rumpole.’

  ‘Mr Barnsley Gough, had you any idea about this?’ Wystan seemed to be crying for help.

  ‘The client did mention it. I told him it was out of the question.’

  ‘Quite out of the question, for whatever reason . . .’ This was Wystan speaking.

  ‘I’ll tell you the reason.’ Simon broke into the lawyers’ conversation with a new confidence. ‘Because you are not going to do a thing for me. You said you wouldn’t ask any questions and, what’s more, you didn’t, did you, Mr Wystan? You just sat there like a pudding.’

  ‘A pudding?’ My leader couldn’t believe his ears and he called on our solicitor for confirmation. ‘Did he say “pudding”?’

  ‘I believe he did,’ Barnsley Gough had to admit. ‘The young man’s not quite himself, of course.’

  ‘I am quite myself,’ Simon told us all. ‘In fact, I feel much more like myself again. Mr Rumpole wanted you to ask about the magazine, didn’t he? I could hear him from the dock. He’s got a loud whisper, has Mr Rumpole. “Ask about the magazine,” he was saying. “It’s in my notes.” And what did you do, Mr C. H. Wystan? Sat there like a pudding and did nothing for me. Mr Rumpole asked the questions and got a good answer. I never loaded the gun.’

  ‘“Like a pudding” again.’ Wystan turned once more to Barnsley Gough as though he couldn’t believe his ears.

  ‘And then who got the doctor to admit I couldn’t have shot Dad in the way they said? Mr Rumpole! When you were away on other business.’

  This outburst seemed to have exhausted Simon. He had felt the surge of anger which no doubt overcame him when the ex-RAF officers attacked him for having missed the war. He sat in silence, smoking his Capstan full-strength, which he now held delicately between his fingers. From then on my leader ignored him, only addressing himself to Mr Barnsley Gough. ‘It’s clear, isn’t it, Mr Gough? Our client has lost faith in his appointed counsel.’

  ‘I’m afraid that would seem to be the case, Mr Wystan.’

  ‘And he used unpleasant, insulting language.’ The pudding had clearly stuck in my leader’s gullet.

  ‘He is under some strain, of course,’ Barnsley Gough was fair enough to say again.

  ‘Of course he is. We all understand that. But he must realize I can’t continue to represent him if he has no confidence in me.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure he doesn’t want that . . .’ Barnsley Gough tried to say, but he was interrupted by Simon.

  ‘Yes, I do want that. I want it very much indeed.’

  ‘Then, with that further clear indication of the client’s wishes, I shall withdraw from the case. Rumpole, you wi
ll no doubt withdraw with me.’

  But Simon repeated, ‘I want Mr Rumpole to stay.’

  I looked at my leader and I have to admit I felt sorry for him. He had given me my first important job and done nothing worse than adopt a course of masterly inactivity which he thought of as the most tactful way of living through a hopeless case. And yet there were more important things in life than feeling sorry for Hilda’s daddy. Simon helped me by repeating his instructions: ‘I want Mr Rumpole to stay and do my case!’

  ‘Rumpole,’ Wystan spoke to me as though he had never heard a word from Simon, ‘when a leading counsel withdraws from a case, his junior naturally withdraws also.’

  ‘Is there a law about that?’ I was doubtful enough to ask.

  ‘No law. It’s just one of the finest traditions of the great profession of the bar.’

  Wystan was reluctant to speak of such matters in the presence of a solicitor, so I spoke rapidly, and in a low voice, ‘The finest traditions of our great profession,’ I told him, I hoped quietly, ‘may not be so important as saving Simon’s life.’

  ‘If you think that,’ Wystan looked as though I had said something deeply shocking, ‘then all I can say is you’d better ask to see the judge.’

  With his wig off and finishing a fat cigar, the Lord Chief Justice seemed smaller, almost insignificant. He sat in his room, which was decorated with photographs of the prize pigs he reared on his farm on the Berkshire Downs, and listened with half a smile to Wystan’s long complaint in which the word ‘pudding’ was to be heard and often repeated. He cut short the tale of woe, when it was, I suppose, about three-quarters of the way through. ‘I understand completely, Wystan,’ he said. ‘I believe your position has become untenable and you’re entitled to withdraw and Mr . . .’ there followed the inevitable ‘umm . . . Rumpole.’