Rumpole Rests His Case

by John Mortimer

  ‘Not in a million years.’ I resisted the temptation to say ‘yes’.

  ‘So how could this ridiculous Fig person get me so wrong? Hasn't he got eyes in his head?’

  ‘You can't mean –’ a wonderful prospect opened before me, ‘that it was you having dinner with Phillida in the Ivy?’

  ‘Of course it was. She rang me up last week. Out of the blue. She said something had happened to change her mind. So we made a date for dinner. It went amazingly well. Quite like old times. In fact…’

  ‘Of course, the Sheridan Club! I ought to have realized.’

  ‘This Fig Newton, Rumpole – what am I going to do? He wants me to pay him two hundred pounds for telling me that I had dinner and slept with my wife!’

  ‘Take my advice,’ I told him. ‘Count it cheap at the price.’

  ‘Oh, all right.’ Claude looked temporarily depressed at the prospect, but soon cheered up. ‘I want to thank you, Rumpole, for all you've done to bring me and Philly together again. I brought you a small gift.’

  He walked away with an unusual spring in his step; a man, I thought, who had recovered, at last, a little of the snap in his celery. He had left me a packet of my favourite small cigars. I lit one, and blew a perfect smoke-ring at the ceiling of my room.

  Rumpole and the Actor Laddie

  ‘Mr Rumpole! Your timing! My dear, it's something to die for. And the hand gestures! So telling. That wonderful sniff of contempt, just the way Larry used to do in The Merchant. Of course, I've only had the opportunity of seeing your perf from the gods at the Old Bailey. And I don't believe you saw the last thing I did. My Adam the gardener in As You with the Clitheroe Mummers. A small part, of course, but I think I made a little jewel of it. That was in '84, or was it '85? It's difficult to get cast when you're not young, and definitely not prepared to take your clothes off. That's why I'm thrilled that we're working together at last. I've dreamed and dreamed, I promise you, my dear, of playing opposite the great Rumpole of the Bailey!’

  Was my timing so good? Quite honestly, I had never thought about it. And yet I was half-pleased to get a tribute from the client who had told me at the outset that he was ‘in the business’, and when I asked what business that might be, he had given a light laugh and said, ‘A poor player, an honour I share with Garrick and Irving and the late great Sir Donald Wolfit. My crown is a little tarnished now, but some old theatre-goers won't easily forget my Benvolio, my French Ambassador – above all my Rosencrantz in the Danish play. I have, it's true, been resting for, well to be honest with you, getting on for quite a while, which is why I'm so looking forward to our forthcoming engagement. I know I haven't lost the trick of holding an audience. I just hope I won't have trouble remembering the lines. I fear I'm no longer the “quick study” I was.’

  The elderly man talking with the volubility of someone emerging from years of silence had a pink face, a monkish fringe of grey hair and the appearance of an elderly cherub run to fat. He wore a light-grey suit, strained at the buttons, suede shoes and a bright-pink tie. A voluminous silk handkerchief billowed from his breast pocket and he smelt of some pungently seductive eau de toilette. His name, inscribed on my brief, was Percival Delabere, and the venue in which we were to perform together was, I am sorry to say, the London Sessions, where Percival was engaged to play the lead in a fairly ordinary charge of theft.

  When he was no longer, as he would say, ‘in demand' as an actor, Percy Delabere (‘Call me Percy, dear boy. Johnny G. and Dame Edith always did’) eked out his living on a small income left to him by an aunt and occasional speech lessons to puzzled West Indians or Spanish waiters who wanted to talk in the singsong tones of long-dead actor-managers. He was able to afford a bedsitting room on the top floor of a crumbling Victorian house in Talbot Square, near Paddington Station. This undesirable residence was the property of a Miss Hunter, a large, untidy woman, a solitary gin drinker whose quarters and financial affairs were in a perpetual muddle. She fussed over her younger, more attractive tenants and took only a perfunctory interest in the fading career of the old actor on the top floor.

  The circumstances which led to our meeting, and his complimentary remarks about my perf, in the conference room at the London Sessions were unfortunate. During his long rests it was Percy's practice to wander about the house, going into other people's rooms in order to bore them with reminiscences of Larry, John G. and the great Sir Donald Wolfit. On the afternoon in question, Miss Hunter had pottered round to the off-licence and left her door open. It was agreed that Percy had popped into her room to pay his rent and, apparently for want of anything better to do, had examined some items of the landlady's jewellery which she had left in a jumble of possessions on a marble-topped table under a tarnished mirror. A Mr Crookshank, a retired insurance salesman, had passed Miss Hunter's open door and seen Percy slip her most valued possession, a diamond and emerald ring, on to one podgy finger and stand admiring the effect of it in the looking glass. Later Miss Hunter announced that the ring was missing, and Percy made a considerable investment in new pink shirts, a silk dressing-gown and a purple, spotted bow tie from a posh shop in Jermyn Street.

  ‘How did you afford all that?’ I asked Percival.

  ‘Poor as I am, Mr Rumpole, I had made savings. And one must keep up appearances. That is very important. You never get offered anything if you don't keep up appearances.’

  I thought that producers would hardly be hurrying to Percival's door at the hot news that he had bought a new dressing-gown, but I didn't say so. Instead I came to the very heart, the nub of the matter. ‘I suppose you'd better tell me now. Did you take the landlady's ring?’

  ‘Mr Rumpole.’ There followed a long pause, which, although no doubt meant to be dramatic, soon became tedious. And then, ‘Do you really have such a low view of my profession?’

  Ignoring the fact that he seemed to find no appreciable difference between the Bar and the stage, I did my best to focus the man's attention. ‘That's a question you'll have to answer “Yes” or “No” to soon.’

  ‘Not now, Mr Rumpole.’ He held up a warning hand. ‘I shall tell the full story when I enter the witness box.’

  ‘You'd better not enter it until I know what you're going to say.’

  ‘My dear! Would you deny me the witness box? Am I to be a mere extra, a super, a spear-carrier with no lines? My crown may be a little tarnished now, but I think you can rely on me to play the lead. I promise I shall not disappoint.’

  ‘You'll go into the witness box over my dead body,’ was what I should have said, but I weakly agreed to call him. How could I deny the old actor laddie the only leading role he was likely to get?

  I did say, ‘I assume you'd deny keeping the ring?’

  ‘Mr Rumpole. It's for you to make assumptions. It's for me to play the lead. To the best of my poor ability.’ And that, of course, is exactly what he did.

  ‘Mr Rumpole, can't you control your client?’

  ‘I'm afraid, Your Honour, that is quite impossible.’

  Why had I ever allowed Percival to take centre stage? We were a quarter of an hour into his evidence, he was in full flow and his Honour Judge Archibald – ‘Artful Archie' to his many detractors, owing to his many ingenious ways of persuading Juries to convict – was clearly in the throes of terminal irritation.

  The trial had started quietly. Miss Hunter, voluminous and somewhat confused, told the story of the missing ring which Mr Crookshank had last seen on Percy's finger. And then Percy had gone into the witness box and taken the oath in the hushed tones of the Prince of Denmark addressing his father's ghost. After a few routine questions, he ignored me and became Mark Antony, orating to the Roman plebs.

  ‘My friends and fellow countrymen on the Jury,’ his voice was low and throbbing, ‘may I take a moment of your time to speak of my humble self? I am a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage – in my case this witness box – and then, perhaps to your relief, will be heard no more… I have lived for my
art. I have done my poor best to dedicate myself to that perpetual challenge which is the theatre. I have sung with Shakespeare and argued with Shaw and, yes, I am not ashamed to confess it, on occasions lost my trousers with Ray Cooney.’ Here he waited for a laugh which never came. ‘Such a career teaches passion. It teaches love of the language. What it cannot teach is sensible behaviour and self-restraint…’

  After a good deal more in the same vein, Artful Archie made his irritated interjection, so I attempted to drag the wandering thespian back to the point at issue, and I put the question to him bluntly. ‘Mr Delabere, do you agree that you put Miss Hunter's ring on your own finger and surveyed the effect in the mirror?’

  ‘Members of the Jury. You will remember the line in the Moorish play – I speak of Othello – about the base Indian who threw a pearl away, richer than all his tribe?’

  ‘Mr Delabere!’ I have to confess that the Rumpole patience, never my strongest asset, was wearing extremely thin. ‘Let's forget the Moorish play, the Danish play, or indeed the Scottish play for a moment and concentrate on one simple fact. Did you put Miss Hunter's ring upon your finger?’

  ‘I imagined, for a moment, that I was playing the Doge in the Venetian play. I remembered that they wore rich jewellery.’

  ‘For the last time. Did you put on the ring or not?’

  ‘I did.’

  The relief at actually getting an answer gave me confidence to move on to the next, most dangerous question. ‘And did you take it away with you, Mr Delabere? Did you steal it?’

  Percy treated us to one of his famous pauses, during which I held my breath and Archie sat with his pencil poised to take a note. When Percy spoke again it was to treat us to yet another oration.

  ‘Members of the Jury. I have taken the liberty of calling myself a poor player, and poor I am. It has been a constant worry to keep myself in those few necessities – a good suit, a few decent shirts, an attractive tie – which are vital if you wish to keep in the swim, to be seen and thought of as a character actor, now my juvenile days are over, who is constantly “available”. Those who devote themselves to their art do not expect to be richly rewarded. We don't ask for yachts, Members of the Jury, or Old Master paintings, or a Rolls-Royce motor car. What we, perhaps, have the right to expect is a decent standard of living, which would leave us free to dream, to create, to study and, when in work, do our job without the haunting fear of future poverty. So what am I saying? Did I steal the ring? Yes. I stole the ring. I announce it publicly! I announce it proudly. Miss Hunter has boxes of jewellery, most of which she never wears. You have seen her – her fingers are glittering, her neck is loaded, with semi-precious trinkets. That ring, Members of the Jury, is the tribute the property owner pays to the artist. Judge me if you will. Call me guilty if you must. But don't deny me your understanding or your mercy, which, like the blessing of the Almighty, transcends all human laws!’

  At which point, I promise you, Percy Delabere clung to the front of the witness box and bowed as though acknowledging the wildest applause after the most exhausting performance. The Jury sat in stolid silence and the only voice heard was that of Artful Archie, who sounded content that the old actor had convicted himself without needing any assistance from the learned Judge.

  ‘Mr Rumpole, I imagine you will now advise your client to change his plea.’

  ‘I see it's nearly one o'clock.’ I decided to play for time. ‘Perhaps I might take his instructions during the lunch-time adjournment?’

  ‘Very well. But in view of what he has now told us, I must cancel his bail. Delabere will be taken down to the cells. Back here at two o'clock, Members of the Jury.’

  Confronting the actor laddie in the cells before having a drink would have been like having an operation without an anaesthetic and I decided against it. I ordered a pint of Guinness in the pub across the road and was about to consume it with a slice of pork pie and pickle when ‘Spider' Wilkinson, the counsel for the prosecution, so-called because of his thin arms and legs which seemed to stretch out in all directions and his solemn, bespectacled face, came in and greeted me with, ‘Rumpole! You lucky bastard!’

  ‘Lucky? To have a client who is so clean off his head that he makes a totally unnecessary confession to the Jury in a performance of such unutterable ham that I blushed to hear it? Do you know, that idiotic thespian complimented me on my timing! His timing was perfectly judged to get him a long rest in Wormwood Scrubs.’

  ‘Did you think you could get him off?’

  ‘We had a chance. There was no evidence he actually sold the ring, or even kept it.’

  ‘He didn't.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just that dear old Miss Hunter searched through her handbag, apparently a lengthy undertaking, late this morning and found a receipt from a jeweller. She'd taken the ring in to be repaired long after your client tried it on. We rang the shop and it's still there. When we go back I'll have to tell Archie. He's not going to like it.’

  Strangely enough, when I brought the good news to Percy, he also seemed disappointed. When I asked him why on earth he'd shopped himself to the Jury, I could make no sense of his reply.

  ‘It seemed right somehow, Mr Rumpole. The perfect dramatic ending to what I flatter myself was a moving speech, powerfully performed. I stood before them, I thought, a heroic victim and not a foolish old actor who tried rings on for fun. I think it was my finest performance.’

  I left Percy Delabere then, having resolved never, under any circumstances, to work with him again.

  Rumpole and the Teenage Werewolf

  ‘We've tried, Mr Rumpole. No one can say we haven't tried. His own telly, his own telephone number.’

  ‘He's on line, Mr Rumpole. He can access the world from his own bedroom.’

  ‘Trainers. And Puffa jackets. You can't imagine the amount he's cost us in trainers.’

  ‘And we've always done our best to be fair to him. Not judgemental.’

  ‘Chris is always so fair-minded. He tries to reason with him.’

  ‘It's very hard, Mr Rumpole, to reason with a slammed door.’

  ‘Chris understands young people. He gives his time freely to a youth club in Worsefield. He helps them to become computer literate.’

  ‘It's the struggle, Mr Rumpole. Every day's a struggle. Will there be a row? Has he gone missing? It's a nightmare for his mother. She's losing weight over it.’

  The couple who sat in my clients' chairs were what She Who Must Be Obeyed would have called ‘thoroughly nice people’. They might qualify to represent the best of Middle England, modest and intelligent, capable of serious concern but also able to make jokes at their own expense. They were, I thought, the type of people who supported the local Oxfam shop, gave generously to hospices, read to the blind, whipped round for funds to help the victims of floods and earthquakes in distant parts of the world and organized free trips to the seaside for the poor and elderly.

  They had come with their local solicitor, an amiable old bird named Beazely who looked as if he'd be more at home shooting pheasants than fighting a prosecution for assault and offences under the Prevention of Harassment Act. Notably absent was the sixteen-year-old they had been talking about with such weary resignation. Ben was Hermione Swithin's son and her husband Christopher's stepson. He was due to make his criminal debut before Hartscombe Crown Court.

  The family history was also typical of Middle England. Hermione had met Martin Cutler at University and given birth to Ben when she was twenty-three. Cutler, apparently a part-time journalist and full-time drunk, had disappeared to America with Hermione's best friend and little or nothing had been heard from him since. Hermione's first job was as Christopher Swithin's secretary and they were soon in love. ‘Ben was four when Chris took him on, Mr Rumpole. He's treated him just as though he was his own son. Our Caroline's different from him in every way.’

  ‘We call Ben the teenage werewolf,’ Chris explained and they both laughed gently, apparently comfort
ed by this description.

  ‘Not to his face, of course. To his face we always try to build him up – give him confidence.’

  ‘Caroline's such a sweet character.’ Hermione looked gratefully at Chris, as though congratulating him on not having brought any of her first husband's destructive genes to infect the character of their daughter. ‘She's always smiling. She's only ten but you can tell she's going to grow up as a thoroughly adorable person.’

  ‘She just wants everyone to like her, that's our Caroline.’

  ‘The teenage werewolf doesn't care if no one likes him at all.’

  ‘When we moved into Merrivale and Chris could do all his work from home we thought Ben'd be so happy. All of us together in one place.’

  Was all the family being together in one place a perfect recipe for happiness, I wondered? Not, perhaps, for the Macbeths or the Agamemnons in their houses of doom, but Merrivale sounded, from the Swithins' account of it, a highly desirable residence. It was an old brick and flint farmhouse with magnificent barns from which the sheep and cows had long gone, and the hay moved out to make way for Christopher's computers and office equipment, installed so he could run his particular dot.com business from a part of what was left of rural England. Both the children went to state schools in Hartscombe, the nearest town, some ten miles from Merrivale (‘If people like us don't support the state system it'll never get any better,’ Hermione had told me). At sixteen, Ben was facing his A-levels and had been booked into Hartscombe College, where his attendance was sporadic and the lectures were occasions when he found it convenient to catch up with his sleep.

  ‘That's par for the course with teenagers, Mr Rumpole.’ Chris was at his most tolerant. ‘That's what we'd been told to expect. We thought he'd grow out of it. We could see sometimes – when he bought Hermione a birthday present with his own money, for instance – a light at the end of the tunnel. We could live through all that. This is something quite different. We never thought he'd take to serious crime.’