Rumpole Rests His Case

by John Mortimer

  But when we got to the Thrales’, it wasn't like that at all.

  *

  The front door of the sedate Victorian house in Maida Vale opened on to a purple and highly scented darkness. You might have walked from bright sunlight into the shadows of the kasbah. Tony Thrale greeted us. A burly, grey-haired man in his late fifties, he was dressed for dinner in a pair of faded jeans, backless slippers and a shirt which seemed to have once been dyed in various colours that had run into each other.

  ‘Mr Rumpole.’ He greeted me, not with the handshake he would no doubt have offered had we met in the course of business, but with a kind of bear-like hug which brought me into close contact with the tie-dyed shirt and some sort of medallion nestling among the grey hairs immediately below his neck. ‘I salute you, Mr Rumpole. The only truly free spirit at the Bar. Glenda can't wait to meet you. I told her I was sure you'd be one of us. Vegetarian.’

  The heart, I have to confess, sank. Was this what I'd come out for? I remembered, longingly, the remains of a steak and kidney pie waiting for me in the fridge in Froxbury Mansions. Were not free spirits carnivores? I shot an appealing look at Bernard, who was walking, apparently untroubled, towards the pulses.

  If Glenda Thrale was anxious to see me, she managed to keep her impatience well under control. Wearing a kaftan, adorned with beads, squatting on what, I believe, during the heyday of such articles was known as a bean bag, she turned on us a look of minimal interest. This was accompanied, certainly, by a faint smile, but then she smiled without interruption during most of our visit. This smile was in no way connected with anything in the smallest degree comic. Indeed, when after what they eccentrically described as ‘dinner' was over and I told some of my better courtroom anecdotes, the smile faded on every punch line.

  We had been led by Tony Thrale into a kind of cavern, a huge and shadowy open-plan area. At one end of it, illuminated by spotlights, there was a large Aga cooker at which Tony was now boiling up some kind of vegetable matter. The rest of the cave was sporadically illuminated by lamps muffled with heavy shades or, in some cases, swathed in paisley shawls. The smell which had loitered in the hall now intensified and seemed to be compounded of ecclesiastical incense, smouldering carpets and simmering lentils. Music with a loud and insistent beat poured relentlessly out of a ‘music centre’.

  I had taken my seat next to a purple-fringed shawl and an uncased guitar in the corner of the sofa, while Bernard was balanced, a little unsteadily, on another bean bag. Looking round the room, sniffing the exotic odours, I thought we were in a museum, a careful reproduction of the past, like the Victorian dining-rooms or eighteenth-century boudoirs that might be constructed to educate the public on the way we lived then. Or did Tony Thrale, by all accounts a conventional solicitor by day, come home each evening to life in a time warp?

  ‘Mr Rumpole, Glenda Thrale was speaking to me in a voice that was curiously high and seemed to come from a long way off, ‘don't you adore the Beach Boys?’

  Was she casting serious doubt at my sexual orientation? I must say I bridled a little and answered, in an aloof sort of way, ‘I'm afraid I don't spend much time on beaches.’

  At this Glenda fell into a prolonged silence, and my spirits sank to a new low when Tony offered us, by way of a pre-dinner sharpener, a temperance beverage, a curiously unattractive mixture of lime and mango juices, said to be rich in vitamins but sadly deficient in alcohol.

  *

  I had pushed the lentils round my plate, hidden some under the untouched couscous, and, in describing the repast as ‘delicious’, committed perjury. Now we were about to get what we'd come for – Tony Thrale's reminiscences of swinging Perivale. ‘Jo was very beautiful. Clear blue eyes and a lot of blonde curls.’

  ‘With flowers in them?’ I remembered the photograph.

  ‘Flowers in them quite often.’

  ‘And her husband?’

  ‘He was a surprise. I could never quite make out why she'd married him. He was very good looking, of course, and I think they'd been childhood sweethearts. She was the girl next door to his parents' house in Perivale. They went to school together, he carried her books, all that sort of that sort of thing…’

  ‘Did you get to know him?’

  ‘Hardly at all.’

  ‘What was his job?’

  ‘Something in the building trade – I believe he did rather well. Moved off the sites and into the office. She said he practically ran the business.’

  I remembered the statements of the semi-detached neighbours. At about the time Jo vanished, her husband had got in building materials. They heard sounds at night and he explained he was dealing with a damp wall in the kitchen.

  ‘Did they go out together?’

  ‘Never. So far as I remember. I think she said he was seriously religious and spent a lot of his spare time doing things for a particular church. He wouldn't have enjoyed the Karma Club, or The Age of Aquarius in Alperton. That's where the cool people went.’

  ‘Was it cool for you,’ I wondered, ‘being an articled clerk in a solicitors' office?’

  ‘I wrote a column for an underground magazine. It was called “Kill All Lawyers”. I showed it round the Aquarius so I kept my credibility.’

  ‘What did your law firm think about that?’

  ‘It was printed in green ink on green paper, so it was more or less illegible. Anyway, I don't think the partners subscribed to Peeping Tom.’

  ‘Did the Twinehams quarrel about her going out, do you remember?’

  ‘I'm not sure she told him everything. I mean, she always said she loved him and it would have been hard for anyone not to love her. I don't think she told him about all the clubs and bars we went to – she had some story about evening classes and study groups. Exams she had to prepare for. I got the feeling that he didn't ask too many questions, and our life was something she didn't take home with her.’

  ‘Your life?’ I asked him the question direct.

  Tony Thrale smiled, less with embarrassment than a sort of pride. ‘You know what we believed in then. “Make love not war.”’

  ‘Was war an available alternative?’

  ‘Well, of course it wasn't. So we just made love.’

  Glenda Thrale had been busy with a pouch and packet of cigarette papers. She had rolled a fairly fat cigarette which she now lit and inhaled deeply. Having got the thing alight, she handed it to her husband.

  ‘You mean,’ I thought this had to be asked, ‘you and Josephine Twineham made love?’

  ‘It's hard to describe her.’ Tony Thrale was now drawing heavily on the joint, a habit which seemed to have a strong following among the over-fifties. ‘When she walked into the club, or even if you bumped into her in the street, you'd feel somehow better, happier, more optimistic, as though the sun had just come out from behind a cloud and was shining brightly. She was beautiful, yes, and kind and interested in everybody. But it wasn't just that. She made people feel it was better to be alive.’ He passed the joint back to his wife.

  ‘She was a little tart.’ Glenda, after inhaling again, came out with this verdict, a condemnation quite out of fashion in the sixties.

  ‘She gave generously of herself.’ Tony gently brought the language into the Age of Aquarius.

  ‘Do you think Will Twineham ever found out, about you and Jo, I mean?’

  ‘I don't think she ever told him. She didn't tell him everything.’

  ‘Or very much. Could he have found out?’

  ‘There was one time… I'd got an afternoon off. I can't remember why. And we went to the cinema together… What was the film?… Blow up. I'm sure I can remember. Well, we'd done pretty much everything you can do in the double seats at the back of the old Regal and we came out still interested in each other and we… well, we kissed. For a long time and pretty thoroughly. In the street. And then she said, “Don't look now”. But I turned and saw her husband. He'd just walked out of a shop across the road. I'm not sure if he saw us. I don't think he did.
’

  At this point, Glenda handed me the wet-ended stub. Feeling that the information might peter out if I rejected it, I put the object between my lips, drew in a mouthful, choked slightly and blew two columns of smoke out of my nose, producing a small, mirthless laugh from Glenda. Tony took the dank object from me and handled it more expertly.

  ‘Did she tell you if he ever tackled her about having seen you?’

  ‘No. She'd left.’

  ‘Left?’

  ‘Shortly after that we heard she'd left him. No one ever knew where she'd gone.’

  ‘Not with you?’

  ‘I'm afraid not.’

  ‘Or anyone else from the Age of Aquarius?’

  ‘We were all mystified. There must have been someone else, we thought, someone we didn't know anything about.’

  ‘Now you know what happened.’

  ‘Of course. He killed her, didn't he? Will murdered her.’

  ‘Is that what you think?’

  ‘Don't you? Who else did they dig up, if he didn't?’

  ‘I don't know.’

  There was a silence then. No one spoke and the tape on the sound system was over. All the trappings of the past, the incense and the dope, the voices of Glenda's favourites, the Incredible String Band and Van Morrison (she had announced the performers' names as the music changed) had died away. Tony gave a little shiver, as though shaking off the past and doing his best to face the realities of the present.

  ‘Of course, he said firmly, ‘there's no way you'll get me to come to Court to tell them any of this.’

  ‘We realize that, Tony.’ Bonny Bernard was conciliatory. ‘This is mere background information. That's all Mr Rumpole wanted from you.’

  ‘It doesn't help you anyway, does it?’ Tony was looking at me. He was a man making, in a determined fashion, for the way out. ‘I mean, the fact she had other lovers would only give him a motive for… doing what he did.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Isn't it obvious?’

  And isn't it obvious, I might have added, that you, Tony Thrale, ex-swinger and survivor from the Age of Aquarius, might have been, partly at least, the cause of her death. Instead I thanked him. ‘You've been a great help, telling us about Jo. One more thing – how was her health?’

  ‘She had enormous energy.’

  ‘Never ill?’

  ‘She did acid, of course. Acid was what we did then. Gave her some funny dreams at times, she told me.’

  ‘No other problems?’

  ‘She got breathless sometimes. She became quite faint, as though she couldn't breathe. I thought it was the way she lived. Trying to cram everything in while there was still time.’

  ‘Did she go to a doctor? About the breathlessness, I mean?’

  ‘I think she did once. She told me something about an enlarged muscle to her heart.’ He smiled. ‘I told her her heart was absolutely perfect.’

  ‘Did she get any treatment?’

  ‘I think she forgot about it. That would have been her way.’

  Not long after that, Bernard and I were out in the street, breathing in air free from incense and the smell of exotic cheroots. I asked my solicitor to find out who Jo Twineham's doctor was and see if any notes survived.

  ‘I'm afraid they weren't much help.’ Bernard was apologetic.

  ‘Well, at least we know a good deal more about the Twinehams.’

  ‘None of it's much help to the defence, is it? You've got to admit that. All we know just explains why he did it.’

  ‘I wouldn't agree with that… entirely. Oh, and if we have to meet Tony again, let's do it in Pommeroy's, shall we? At least somewhere he's living in the present.’

  On my way into Chambers a few days later, I stopped at Cameras R Us and took delivery of several copies of the photograph Owen Oswald, the helpful ex-drummer, had thoughtfully sent me.

  ‘Who was that group, the Pithead Stompers?’ the girl who slid the vital evidence into a large envelope asked me. ‘I've never heard of them.’

  ‘No,’ I told her, ‘I don't imagine many people have. But they will now.’

  I was at my desk in the smoke-free zone, idly turning the pages of Ackerman's Forensic Medicine to check on what the Master of the Morgues had to say on the information available from skeletons, when Soapy Sam again intruded on my life.

  ‘Rumpole,’ he said, ‘I've been thinking about that case of yours. The chap who buried his wife under the floorboards.’

  ‘Who is alleged to have buried her. We haven't had the trial yet.’

  ‘I did offer to lead you in that case, Rumpole.’

  ‘I thought I said “Thanks, but no thanks”.’

  ‘Of course, I would have done my best for your client.’

  I didn't tell him what I thought of his best. Instead I raised a more immediate subject. ‘Ballard, you and I have a vital matter to discuss.’

  ‘But I have come to the conclusion not to take a brief in R. v. Twineham,’ Ballard ploughed on. ‘Your man has no possible defence.’

  ‘This is a formal request to you, Ballard, to return my room to its status as a refuge for the peaceful enjoyment of a small cigar.’

  ‘Rumpole, neither of us has anything to gain by taking up impossible causes.’

  ‘I don't regard my cause as impossible. I understand you may have certain formalities to go through. Chambers meetings, getting the formal agreement of such puritanical spirits as Mizz Liz Probert, so I'll give you – well let's say three weeks. But you can do it, Ballard. You're entitled to do it as Head of Chambers. And I have to give you fair warning. If I'm still smoking in the street by the end of the month, the consequences to you may be dire.’

  ‘Rumpole, I have absolutely no idea what you mean.’

  It was the moment to produce Exhibit A, the prosecution's trump card. I produced it, handing a copy to the accused.

  There was a silence during which I took Soapy Sam to be slowly appreciating the damning nature of the evidence. When he spoke, it was, I have to admit, with considerable self-control.

  ‘That's me at Uni,’ is what he said.

  ‘True,’ I told him. ‘That central figure with its hair down to the shoulders, holding a guitar in a horribly suggestive fashion, is indeed you, Bonzo Ballard.’

  The man attempted a brave smile and merely said, ‘Fancy you having that.’

  ‘A present from a well-wisher,’ I told him. ‘Look at the drummer.’

  ‘Owen Oswald gave it to you?’

  ‘Indeed he did.’

  Rising from his seat, Ballard said, ‘May I keep it?’

  ‘Do what you like with it. Burn it. Tear it into small pieces and flush it down the clerks' room facility. I have copies. And one goes up on the Chambers notice-board if my reasonable request isn't granted by the end of the month.’

  Ballard was on his way out, looking at the photograph and smiling, as I thought, bravely.

  ‘The old Pithead Stompers,’ he was muttering. ‘How young we were then. How terribly young!’

  Then he was gone, and I couldn't help feeling a moment's pity for the chap. I stifled the feeling. There is a tide in the affairs of men when you have to be completely ruthless.

  The approach of a serious criminal trial has different effects on customers who are about to step into the dock, whose names appear in the title and who are to take on the starring role in the proceedings. Older pros, such as the senior members of the Timson clan, that famous family of South London villains, take such trials philosophically, as a necessary risk in the pursuit of a career. Younger suspects become cocky and show off, over-excited by their day in Court, and play the somewhat corny character study of a cheerful and, if possible, likeable cockney sparrow.

  As his day in Court approached, Will Twineham seemed to withdraw into some inner life which had more significance for him than the prison interview room, the dock and the prospect of an unfriendly verdict. But he began to answer questions more sensibly, as though, in a detached sort of way,
he was willing to help me through a difficult, if not impossible period of my life.

  ‘It's kind of you. It's very kind of you to visit me.’

  ‘Not kind at all. It's my job.’

  ‘Kind of you. To take an interest.’

  ‘I wanted to ask about your wife. Happy marriage, was it?’

  ‘I was happy. I've never been happy since she… left me.’

  ‘From her photograph… she must have been beautiful.’

  ‘The photograph doesn't tell the whole story.’

  ‘I just wonder. Did she go out much? I mean, was she at home in the evenings?’

  ‘Sometimes she was – we lived our own lives, of course. I had the church and she was studying.’

  ‘Studying what exactly?’

  ‘She'd left school early and she wanted a degree in English. She went to classes. Discussion groups. She had friends in the discussion groups. I never begrudged her that.’

  ‘Did you ever meet her friends?’

  ‘I told you,’ he looked only slightly impatient with my curiosity, ‘she had her own life to lead. I never questioned her. She was as loving to me as ever she was. And we became closer, when she had her religious experience.’

  ‘Religious?’

  ‘She dreamed dreams and saw visions.’

  ‘Visions?’

  ‘She saw what I had only read about in our church. Visions that had never appeared to me. She saw the serpent and the four beasts full of eyes before and behind.’

  I remembered the Age of Aquarius club and all that Tony Thrale had told me about the days of acid. Had a small tablet sent Jo off to join her husband in visions of strange phantoms and terrifying apparitions? They spoke of things I could never dream of, let alone understand… and I felt an intruder into the strange world inhabited by Will and Jo Twineham. But I had to go on looking for explanations.

  ‘The bones under the floor. Are you telling us you don't know who was buried there?’

  ‘Jo was.’ He said it as casually as he had thanked me for visiting him.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because I buried her there.’ I looked at Bernard, but he avoided my gaze. We had travelled through the world of the serpents and the beasts full of eyes to something as flat and final as a plea of guilty to murder. We had lost our case, but I had to plod on, in search of further and better particulars.