‘When we started off, I was a young man. All I wanted to do was to get up early, go to Smithfield and Billingsgate, feel the lobsters and smell the fresh scallops, create new dishes and dream of sauces. Simone was the one with the business sense. Well, she’s French, so she insisted on us getting married in France.’
‘Was that wrong?’
‘Oh, no. It was absolutely right, for Simone. Because they have a damned thing there called “community of property”. I had to agree to give her half of everything if we ever broke up. You know about the law, of course.’
‘Well, not everything about it.’ Community of property, I must confess, came as news to me. ‘I always found knowing the law a bit of a handicap for a barrister.’
‘Simone knew all about it. She had her beady eye on the future.’ He emptied his glass and then looked at me pleadingly. ‘You’re going to get us out of this little trouble, aren’t you, Mr Rumpole? This affair of the mouse?’
‘Oh, the mouse!’ I did my best to reassure him. ‘The mouse seems to be the least of your worries.’
Soon Jean-Pierre had to go back to his kitchen. On his way, he stopped at the cash desk and said something to the girl, Mary. She looked up at him with, I thought, unqualified adoration. He patted her arm and went back to his sauces, having reassured her, I suppose, about the quarrel that had been going on in her honour.
I did justice to the rest of the champagne and pâté de foie and started off for home. In the restaurant entrance hall I saw the lady who minded the cloaks take a suitcase from Gaston Leblanc, who had just arrived out of breath and wearing a mackintosh. Although large, the suitcase seemed very light and he asked her to look after it.
Several evenings later I was lying on my couch in the living-room of the mansion flat, a small cigar between my fingers and a glass of Château Fleet Street on the floor beside me. I was in vacant or in pensive mood as I heard a ring at the front doorbell. I started up, afraid that the delights of haute cuisine had palled for Hilda, and then I remembered that She would undoubtedly have come armed with a latchkey. I approached the front door, puzzled at the sound of young and excited voices without, combined with loud music. I got the door open and found myself face to face with Liz Probert, Dave Inchcape and five or six other junior hacks, all wearing sweatshirts with a picture of a wig and YOUNG RADICAL LAWYERS written on them. Dianne was also there in trousers and a glittery top, escorted by my clerk, Henry, wearing jeans and doing his best to appear young and swinging. The party was carrying various bottles and an article we know well down the Bailey (because it so often appears in lists of stolen property) as a ghetto blaster. It was from this contraption that the loud music emerged.
‘It’s a surprise party!’ Mizz Liz Probert announced with considerable pride. ‘We’ve come to cheer you up in your great loneliness.’
Nothing I could say would stem the well-meaning invasion. Within minutes the staid precincts of Froxbury Mansions were transformed into the sort of disco which is patronized by under-thirties on a package to the Costa del Sol. Bizarre drinks, such as rum and blackcurrant juice or advocaat and lemonade, were being mixed in what remained of our tumblers, supplemented by toothmugs from the bathroom. Scarves dimmed the lights, the ghetto blaster blasted ceaselessly and dancers gyrated in a self-absorbed manner, apparently oblivious of each other. Only Henry and Dianne, practising a more old-fashioned ritual, clung together, almost motionless, and carried on a lively conversation with me as I stood on the outskirts of the revelry, drinking the best of the wine they had brought and trying to look tolerantly convivial.
‘We heard as how Mrs Rumpole has done a bunk, sir.’ Dianne looked sympathetic, to which Henry added sourly, ‘Some people have all the luck!’
‘Why? Where’s your wife tonight, Henry?’ I asked my clerk. The cross he has to bear is that his spouse has pursued an ambitious career in local government so that, whereas she is now the Mayor of Bexleyheath, he is officially her Mayoress.
‘My wife’s at a dinner of South London mayors in the Mansion House, Mr Rumpole. No consorts allowed, thank God!’ Henry told me.
‘Which is why we’re both on the loose tonight. Makes you feel young again, doesn’t it, Mr Rumpole?’ Dianne asked me as she danced minimally.
‘Well, not particularly young, as a matter of fact.’ The music yawned between me and my guests as an unbridgeable generation gap. And then one of the more intense of the young lady radicals approached me, as a senior member of the Bar, to ask what the hell the Lord Chief Justice knew about being pregnant and on probation at the moment your boyfriend’s arrested for dope. ‘Very little, I should imagine,’ I had to tell her, and then, as the telephone was bleating pathetically beneath the din, I excused myself and moved to answer it. As I went, a YRL sweatshirt whirled past me; Liz, dancing energetically, had pulled it off and was gyrating in what appeared to be an ancient string-vest and a pair of jeans.
‘Rumpole!’ the voice of She Who Must Be Obeyed called to me, no doubt from the banks of Duddon. ‘What on earth’s going on there?’
‘Oh, Hilda. Is it you?’
‘Of course it’s me.’
‘Having a good time, are you? And did Cousin Everard enjoy his sliver of whatever it was?’
‘Rumpole. What’s that incredible noise?’
‘Noise? Is there a noise? Oh, yes. I think I do hear music. Well …’ Here I improvised, as I thought brilliantly. ‘It’s a play, that’s what it is, a play on television. It’s all about young people, hopping about in a curious fashion.’
‘Don’t talk rubbish!’ Hilda, as you may guess, sounded far from convinced. ‘You know you never watch plays on television.’
‘Not usually, I grant you,’ I admitted. ‘But what else have I got to do when my wife has left me?’
Much later, it seemed a lifetime later, when the party was over, I settled down to read the latest addition to my brief in the O’Higgins case. It was a report from Fig Newton, who had been keeping observation on the workers at La Maison. One afternoon he followed Gaston Leblanc, who left his home in Ruislip with a large suitcase, with which he travelled to a smart address at Egerton Crescent in Knightsbridge. This house, which had a bunch of brightly coloured balloons tied to its front door, Fig kept under surveillance for some time. A number of small children arrived, escorted by nannies, and were let in by a manservant. Later, when all the children had been received, Fig, wrapped in his Burberry with his collar turned up against the rain, was able to move so he got a clear view into the sitting-room.
What he saw interested me greatly. The children were seated on the floor watching breathlessly as Gaston Leblanc, station waiter and part-time conjuror, dressed in a black robe ornamented with stars, entertained them by slowly extricating a live and kicking rabbit from a top hat.
For the trial of Jean-Pierre O’Higgins we drew the short straw in the shape of an Old Bailey judge aptly named Gerald Graves. Judge Graves and I have never exactly hit it off. He is a pale, long-faced, unsmiling fellow who probably lives on a diet of organic bran and carrot juice. He heard Ballard open the proceedings against La Maison with a pained expression, and looked at me over his half-glasses as though I were a saucepan that hadn’t been washed up properly. He was the last person in the world to laugh a case out of court and I would have to manage that trick without him.
Soapy Sam Ballard began by describing the minor blemishes in the restaurant’s kitchen. ‘In this highly expensive, allegedly three-star establishment, the environmental health officer discovered cracked tiles, open waste-bins and gravy stains on the ceiling.’
‘The ceiling, Mr Ballard?’ the judge repeated in sepulchral tones.
‘Alas, yes, my Lord. The ceiling.’
‘Probably rather a tall cook,’ I suggested, and was rewarded with a freezing look from the Bench.
‘And there was a complete absence of nail-brushes in the kitchen handbasins.’ Ballard touched on a subject dear to his heart. ‘But wait, Members of the Jury, until you get to the
–’
‘Main course?’ I suggested in another ill-received whisper and Ballard surged on ‘– the very heart of this most serious case. On the night of May the eighteenth, a common house mouse was served up at a customer’s dinner table.’
‘We are no doubt dealing here, Mr Ballard,’ the judge intoned solemnly, ‘with a defunct mouse?’
‘Again, alas, no, my Lord. The mouse in question was alive.’
‘And kicking,’ I muttered. Staring vaguely round the court, my eye lit on the public gallery where I saw Mary Skelton, the quiet restaurant clerk, watching the proceedings attentively.
‘Members of the Jury’ – Ballard had reached his peroration – ‘need one ask if a kitchen is in breach of the Food and Hygiene Regulations if it serves up a living mouse? As proprietor of the restaurant, Mr O’Higgins is, say the prosecution, absolutely responsible. Whomsoever in his employ he seeks to blame, Members of the Jury, he must take the consequences. I will now call my first witness.’
‘Who’s that pompous imbecile?’ Jean-Pierre O’Higgins was adding his two pennyworth, but I told him he wasn’t in his restaurant now and to leave the insults to me. I was watching a fearful and embarrassed Claude Erskine-Brown climb into the witness-box and take the oath as though it were the last rites. When asked to give his full names he appealed to the judge.
‘My Lord. May I write them down? There may be some publicity about this case.’ He looked nervously at the assembled reporters.
‘Aren’t you a member of the Bar?’ Judge Graves squinted at the witness over his half-glasses.
‘Well, yes, my Lord,’ Claude admitted reluctantly.
‘That’s nothing to be ashamed of – in most cases.’ At which the judge aimed a look of distaste in my direction and then turned back to the witness. ‘I think you’d better tell the jury who you are, in the usual way.’
‘Claude …’ The unfortunate fellow tried a husky whisper, only to get a testy ‘Oh, do speak up!’ from his Lordship. Whereupon, turning up the volume a couple of notches, the witness answered, ‘Claude Leonard Erskine-Brown.’ I hadn’t known about the Leonard.
‘On May the eighteenth were you dining at La Maison Jean-Pierre?’ Ballard began his examination.
‘Well, yes. Yes. I did just drop in.’
‘For dinner?’
‘Yes,’ Claude had to admit.
‘In the company of a young lady named Patricia Benbow?’
‘Well. That is … Er … er.’
‘Mr Erskine-Brown’ – Judge Graves had no sympathy with this sudden speech impediment – ‘it seems a fairly simple question to answer, even for a member of the Bar.’
‘I was in Miss Benbow’s company, my Lord,’ Claude answered in despair.
‘And when the main course was served were the plates covered?’
‘Yes. They were.’
‘And when the covers were lifted what happened?’
Into the expectant silence, Erskine-Brown said in a still, small voice, ‘A mouse ran out.’
‘Oh, do speak up!’ Graves was running out of patience with the witness, who almost shouted back, ‘A mouse ran out, my Lord!’
At this point Ballard said, ‘Thank you, Mr Erskine-Brown,’ and sat down, no doubt confident that the case was in the bag – or perhaps the trap. Then I rose to cross-examine.
‘Mr Claude Leonard Erskine-Brown,’ I weighed in, ‘is Miss Benbow a solicitor?’
‘Well. Yes …’ Claude looked at me sadly, as though wanting to say, ‘Et tu, Rumpole?’
‘And is your wife a well-known and highly regarded Queen’s Counsel?’
Graves’s face lit up at the mention of our delightful Portia. ‘Mrs Erskine-Brown has sat here as a Recorder, Members of the Jury.’ He smiled sickeningly at the twelve honest citizens.
‘I’m obliged to your Lordship.’ I bowed slightly and turned back to the witness. ‘And is Miss Benbow instructed in an important forthcoming case, that is the Balham Mini-Cab Murder, in which she is intending to brief Mrs Erskine-Brown, QC?’
‘Is – is she?’ Never quick off the mark, Claude didn’t yet realize that help was at hand.
‘And were you taking her out to dinner so you might discuss the defence in that case, your wife being unfortunately detained in Cardiff?’ I hoped that made my good intentions clear, even to a barrister.
‘Was I?’ Erskine-Brown was still not with me.
‘Well, weren’t you?’ I was losing patience with the fellow.
‘Oh, yes.’ At last the penny dropped. ‘Of course I was! I do remember now. Naturally. And I did it all to help Philly. To help my wife. Is that what you mean?’ He ended up looking at me anxiously.
‘Exactly.’
‘Thank you, Mr Rumpole. Thank you very much.’ Erskine-Brown’s gratitude was pathetic. But the judge couldn’t wait to get on to the exciting bits.
‘Mr Rumpole,’ he boomed mournfully, ‘when are we coming to the mouse?’
‘Oh, yes. I’m grateful to your Lordship for reminding me. Well. What sort of animal was it?’
‘Oh, a very small mouse indeed.’ Claude was now desperately anxious to help me. ‘Hardly noticeable.’
‘A very small mouse and hardly noticeable,’ Graves repeated as he wrote it down and then raised his eyebrows, as though, when it came to mice, smallness was no excuse.
‘And the first you saw of it was when it emerged from under a silver dish-cover? You couldn’t swear it got there in the kitchen?’
‘No, I couldn’t.’ Erskine-Brown was still eager to cooperate.
‘Or if it was inserted in the dining-room by someone with access to the serving-table?’
‘Oh, no, Mr Rumpole. You’re perfectly right. Of course it might have been!’ The witness’s cooperation was almost embarrassing, so the judge chipped in with ‘I take it you’re not suggesting that this creature appeared from a dish of duck breast by some sort of miracle, are you, Mr Rumpole?’
‘Not a miracle, my Lord. Perhaps a trick.’
‘Isn’t Mr Ballard perfectly right?’ Graves, as was his wont, had joined the prosecution team. ‘For the purposes of this offence it doesn’t matter how it got there. A properly run restaurant should not serve up a mouse for dinner! The thing speaks for itself.’
‘A talking mouse, my Lord? What an interesting conception!’ I got a loud laugh from my client and even the jury joined in with a few friendly titters. I also got, of course, a stern rebuke from the Bench.
‘Mr Rumpole!’ – his Lordship’s seriousness was particularly deadly – ‘this is not a place of entertainment! You would do well to remember that this is a most serious case from your client’s point of view. And I’m sure the jury will wish to give it the most weighty consideration. We will continue with it after luncheon. Shall we say, five past two, Members of the Jury?’
Mr Bernard and I went down to the pub, and after a light snack of shepherd’s pie, washed down with a pint or two of Guinness, we hurried back into the palais de justice and there I found what I had hoped for. Mary Skelton was sitting quietly outside the court, waiting for the proceedings to resume. I lit a small cigar and took a seat with my instructing solicitor not far away from the girl. I raised my voice a little and said, ‘You know what’s always struck me about this case, Mr Bernard? There’s no evidence of droppings or signs of mice in the kitchen. So someone put the mouse under the cover deliberately. Someone who wanted to ruin La Maison’s business.’
‘Mrs O’Higgins?’ Bernard suggested.
‘Certainly not! She’d want the place to be as prosperous as possible because she owned half of it. The guilty party is someone who wanted Simone to get nothing but half a failed eatery with a ruined reputation. So what did this someone do?’
‘You tell me, Mr Rumpole.’ Mr Bernard was an excellent straight man.
‘Oh, broke a lot of little rules. Took away the nail-brushes and the lids of the tidy-bins. But a sensation was needed, something that’d hit the headlines. Luckily this someone knew a waiter w
ho had a talent for sleight of hand and a spare-time job producing livestock out of hats.’
‘Gaston Leblanc?’ Bernard was with me.
‘Exactly! He got the animal under the lid and gave it to Alphonse to present to the unfortunate Miss Tricia Benbow. Consequence: ruin for the restaurant and a rotten investment for the vengeful Simone. No doubt someone paid Gaston well to do it.’
I was silent then. I didn’t look at the waiting girl, but I was sure she was looking at me. And then Bernard asked, ‘Just who are we talking about, Mr Rumpole?’
‘Well, now. Who had the best possible reason for hating Simone, and wanting her to get away with as little as possible?’
‘Who?’
‘Who but our client?’ I told him. ‘The great maître de cuisine, Jean-Pierre O’Higgins himself.’
‘No!’ I had never heard Mary Skelton speaking before. Her voice was clear and determined, with a slight North Country accent. ‘Excuse me.’ I turned to look at her as she stood up and came over to us. ‘No, it’s not true. Jean-Pierre knew nothing about it. It was my idea entirely. Why did she deserve to get anything out of us?’
I stood up, looked at my watch, and put on the wig that had been resting on the seat beside me. ‘Well, back to court. Mr Bernard, take a statement from the lady, why don’t you? We’ll call her as a witness.’
While these events were going on down the Bailey, another kind of drama was being enacted in Froxbury Mansions. She Who Must Be Obeyed had returned from her trip with Cousin Everard, put on the kettle and surveyed the general disorder left by my surprise party with deep disapproval. In the sitting-room she fanned away the bar-room smell, drew the curtains, opened the windows and clicked her tongue at the sight of half-empty glasses and lipstick-stained fag ends. Then she noticed something white nestling under the sofa, pulled it out and saw that it was a Young Radical Lawyers sweatshirt, redolent of Mizz Liz Probert’s understated yet feminine perfume.
Later in the day, when I was still on my hind legs performing before Mr Justice Graves and the jury, Liz Probert called at the mansion flat to collect the missing garment. Hilda had met Liz at occasional chambers parties but when she opened the door she was, I’m sure, stony-faced, and remained so as she led Mizz Probert into the sitting-room and restored to her the sweatshirt which the Young Radical Lawyer admitted she had taken off and left behind the night before. I have done my best to reconstruct the following dialogue, from the accounts given to me by the principal performers. I can’t vouch for its total accuracy, but this is the gist, the meat, you understand. It began when Liz explained she had taken the sweatshirt off because she was dancing and it was quite hot.
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