Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders

by John Mortimer

  ‘No, I don’t think she’s particularly keen.’

  ‘Then you did well to propose to me.’

  She was in the jolliest of moods, with a broad grin, shining eyes and a voice full of enthusiasm. I didn’t want to spoil the moment for her, but I felt I had to ask her to remind me, ‘When did I propose exactly?’

  ‘When we were having breakfast. Don’t you remember? And you told me we shouldn’t use those things until we were married.’

  ‘I said that?’ I was still puzzled.

  ‘I think winning R. v. Jerold has been too much for you.’ Hilda looked at me judicially. ‘I think the excitement has blotted out bits of your memory. Of course you said that. Anyway, I understood exactly what you meant when you said it.’

  ‘Did you, Hilda?’

  ‘And I gave it a lot of serious thought. Of course I realized you’re young and inexperienced and you could probably be quite irritating. But then I remembered all the time and trouble I’d invested in you.’

  ‘Time and trouble?’

  ‘Of course. Who got the junior brief for you in R. v. Jerold ? Who cheered you up from the public gallery? Who praised your talent for cross-examination? And who told Daddy to keep you in chambers because I knew I could make something of you? Daddy said you were now one of the family. He wasn’t wrong, was he, Rumpole?’ I was still in a high mood after Simon’s acquittal and I felt the world was open to me. Hilda was quite right, she had supported me all along and she was unaccountably anxious to spend her life with Rumpole. There seemed to be no particular reason why a brave new world shouldn’t have a marriage in it.

  ‘Well, Rumpole?’ The young Hilda looked as if, at that moment, she was about to have a fit of the giggles. ‘I ask you again. What’ve you got to say for yourself?’

  ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men,’ I told her, ‘which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Rumpole! Talk sense! Don’t just show me you know your Keats.’

  ‘It’s not Keats. It’s Julius Caesar.’

  ‘Well, whatever it is, tell me what you think?’

  ‘I think we might as well get married,’ was what I didn’t say. ‘Well, yes, Hilda. Of course.’

  ‘Oh, Rumpole! I’m sure I can make something of you.’

  And with that, she threw her arms around me and gave me the sort of approving but not yet sensual kiss of those, at that time, who were now officially engaged.

  ‘Now we come to number six on the agenda.’ Luci Gribble, the person responsible for our chambers’ image and administration, read it out at another chambers meeting. ‘The question of the use of chambers rooms to deal with accessing accommodation in the workplace outwith its legitimate usage for targeting a successful, money-wise profession at the bar.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to speak to that, Rumpole?’ Soapy Sam Ballard was once again in charge of the meeting, during which Luci Gribble frequently referred to him as ‘Chair’. Indeed, he had all the charisma and sense of fun of an article of furniture.

  ‘What do you want me to say to it, Ballard? Except for the fact that it’s a complete insult to the tongue that Shakespeare spake.’

  ‘That item was put on the agenda because it came to my attention that you were using your room in chambers, and the heating and light provided -’

  ‘Not to mention the coffee,’ Claude butted in, unnecessarily I thought.

  ‘Not to mention the coffee provided, very reasonably at cost. Thank you, Erskine-Brown. You were using the room, Rumpole, for a private purpose, completely unconnected with your practice at the bar.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean by a private purpose? I haven’t been using my room for a strip show, or devil worship or calling up the spirits of long-dead barristers. I’ve been writing an important chapter of legal history. You’re only annoyed because you thought I hadn’t written about you. I told you there was a reference to you.’

  ‘You said a passing reference, Rumpole.’

  ‘That was what annoyed you, wasn’t it? Well, let me tell you, I compared you to none other than the famous C. H. Wystan, our Head of Chambers in the days gone by.’

  ‘You compared me to him?’ Ballard seemed somewhat mollified.

  ‘He was also my father-in-law during the course of his long and not unhappy life. His conduct at the bar put me in the way of my greatest success.’

  ‘You mean you learned from him, Rumpole?’

  ‘Several important lessons.’

  ‘And you’ve learned from me, I hope.’

  ‘As my Head of Chambers, you are almost exactly like C. H. Wystan.’

  ‘And you made that clear in your writing?’

  ‘Crystal clear. Anyway, my memoirs are now completed.’

  ‘In that case,’ Sam Ballard gave me a particularly soapy smile, ‘I think we might pass on to item number seven on the agenda.’

  ‘Pass on to it,’ I gave him permission, ‘and let the world know exactly what happened at the Penge bungalows on that extraordinary and fatal night.’

  After the chambers meeting, Erskine-Brown came up to me in the corridor to apologize. ‘Was it a bit mean of me to mention about the coffee?’

  ‘You have a mean streak, Erskine-Brown,’ was what I felt I had to tell him.

  ‘I’m sorry, Rumpole. I’m not quite myself today. Lala Ingolsby spoke to me.’

  ‘Amazing!’ I agreed. ‘What did she have to say?’

  ‘That she’s marrying a fellow called Gunnersbury who practises in the Chancery Division.’

  ‘Cheer up. They’re not all bad in the Chancery Division.’

  ‘No, but it was the sad way she said it, Rumpole, and the sad look she gave me. No doubt at all she had still hoped we could somehow get together. But it couldn’t be, Rumpole. It could never, ever be!’

  So he mooned off and I went back to the mansion flat in the Gloucester Road, knowing it would be empty because it was the night when Hilda and her schoolfriends had planned their visit to the theatre.

  It was almost eleven o’clock, just as I was contemplating sleep, when they came back and filled the kitchen. Dodo Mackintosh transferred her talent for preparing cheesy bits to scrambled eggs and I opened bottles from my private store of Château Thames Embankment. Once again the conversation turned to the question of who had been guilty of starting the rumours about Miss Bigsby, the mistress in charge of science and biology, and the school janitor, known as ‘Dunc the hunk’.

  ‘I’m sure it was Hilda who spread that story around.’ One of the Gage twins made the accusation and I challenged her, on Hilda’s behalf, to prove the charge beyond reasonable doubt.

  ‘Rumpole has finished his memoirs,’ Hilda told them by way of causing a diversion.

  ‘I have,’ I assured them. ‘The world can now learn the truth about the Penge Bungalow Murders.’

  ‘Learn the truth?’ I think it was Sandy Butterworth who asked the question.

  ‘Who knows?’ I wondered. ‘After any trial, who knows what the whole truth was exactly. All I know is that I won it. Alone and without a leader.’

  ‘And did it make you famous?’ This from Dodo Mackintosh.

  ‘Not really. I sat in chambers and didn’t get another brief for about a month. And then it was one of the Timsons receiving stolen fish.’

  ‘You should have gone into commercial law, Rumpole.’ Hilda shook her head sadly. ‘Turned your talents to big companies suing each other. I could have made something of you if you’d been a commercial barrister.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I had to confess that I’d devoted myself to a life of crime and was now beyond redemption. Then I filled a glass and lifted it. ‘I would like to propose a toast,’ I raised my voice against the gossip from the schooldays, ‘to the person who supported me during the Penge Bungalow trial, who encouraged me from the public gallery and who stopped her learned daddy from kicking me out of my room in chambers. So
, will you all charge your glasses and drink to She Who Must.’

  ‘To whom?’ My wife looked puzzled.

  ‘To you, Hilda.’

  ‘I thought you might want to drink to that dreadful Daisy Sampson.’

  ‘Don’t you remember? She married Reggie Proudfoot. No, I was drinking to you, Hilda. Entirely to you.’