Rumpole Rests His Case

by John Mortimer

  ‘I was not one of his girlfriends.’

  ‘So he never kissed you?’

  ‘Not that I remember.’

  ‘Or try to?’

  ‘I don't think so, no.’

  ‘So when you were told that he'd written these e-mails, did it come as a complete surprise to you? Were you amazed?’

  ‘Yes.’ She gave a sudden smile, which did more for the defence than I'd managed to do all that day. ‘To be honest, I was gobsmacked.’

  I invited the friendly prosecutor to lunch at Il Paradiso, where we enjoyed a quick cutlet Milanese and a glass or two of Chianti red. ‘Terrible thing, the manageress told us as she poured the wine. ‘I can't imagine Ben doing a thing like that. You never know, do you?’

  ‘No,’ I agreed with her. ‘You never know.’

  When she had gone, I raised a glass to Adrian Hoddinot. ‘I've thought of a scheme, old darling,’ I told him. ‘It'll bring the case to a fairly quick conclusion so you can spend more time with your Great Dane.’

  ‘Good old Ophelia.’ Adrian seemed attracted to the idea. ‘She deserves a day out in the country.’

  ‘Very well. Here's what I plan to do. And I do need your cooperation…’ Then I told Adrian Hodinott all I knew.

  *

  It was mid-afternoon before I got round to opening my case. I reminded the Jury about the presumption of innocence and the burden of proof, giving such matters an importance which His Honour might seek to minimize. Then I announced that I would call young Ben's stepfather first, as he was a busy man and anxious to get away. To the Judge's disappointment, prosecuting counsel raised no objection and Chris Swithin made his way to the witness box. I thought he walked a little unsteadily, but there was only the slightest slur in his voice as he took the oath. I had noticed, when we sat in his study waiting for the werewolf's non-arrival, that he had shown such slight lack of focus after yet another large brandy, and came to the conclusion that he had lunched not wisely but too well. However that might have been, he turned respectfully to the Judge and answered my questions in clear, ringing tones. I got through the essential preliminaries, then asked him his view of Ben's character.

  ‘Difficult, I have to say. Extremely difficult. At times quite impossible.’

  It wasn't what you might expect from a character witness, but it delighted the Judge, who repeated ‘“At times impossible”’ in a loud voice before he wrote it down.

  ‘He's taken your name. He agreed to that, at least?’

  ‘His mother asked him. He never thanked me for it. Well, I've learned not to expect thanks from Ben.’

  ‘And I think he adopted your suggestion of calling himself “Chimes” on his e-mails. As in the chimes of Big Ben.’

  ‘I thought he might enjoy the joke.’

  ‘And apparently he did?’

  ‘He never said so.’

  ‘“He never said so.”’ The Judge gave utterance like a ventriloquist's doll worked from the witness box.

  ‘I want to ask you about his computer.’

  ‘I bought it for his sixteenth birthday.’

  ‘I bought it, for his birthday.’ Big Sir Echo was the learned Judge.

  ‘It is in his bedroom, which is, unusually, downstairs?’

  ‘He was making such a noise coming up to bed at all hours, we moved him down to what had been the farm office. We had it decorated nicely for him.'

  ‘“Decorated nicely.”’ The Judge again.

  ‘Does that room have windows opening on the back of the house? I mean, it's possible to see into it by standing behind the building?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Have you ever used Ben's computer yourself?’ I asked the question lightly, in all innocence, but it got an angry reply.

  ‘Never. I told you. I bought it for him. I have all my own IT equipment in the converted barn. That's where I run my business. To keep the family going.’

  ‘Let me ask you this. You know Prunella Haviland. I think you used to pick her up on the school run?’

  ‘I did, yes, before Ben caused all this trouble. I thought she was an extremely nice girl.’

  ‘I'm sure the Jury thought so too. Tell me, Mr Swithin, did you find her attractive?’

  ‘Mr Rumpole,’ the Judge looked like a referee who'd just been kicked on the shins by a delinquent player, ‘I'm sure Mr Hoddinot will object to that question.’

  ‘No objection, Your Honour.’ I had briefed Adrian the prosecutor well, and he earned the Judge's frown of displeasure. Chris, however, spoke up, full of confidence. ‘I'm perfectly prepared to answer the question. I think any man would find her extremely attractive.’

  ‘You say “any man”, Mr Swithin.’ The Judge leaned forward graciously to the witness. ‘Does that include any teenager?’

  ‘It certainly does, Your Honour,’ was the right answer. The Judge noted it down gleefully.

  ‘I want you to look at the e-mails.’ The bundle of print-outs was handed up to Chris Swithin. ‘First of all, you have sworn that you never used Ben's computer?’

  ‘He knew how to handle it before we got it. I never touched it, I've told you that on my oath, Mr Rumpole.’

  ‘He's told you that, Mr Rumpole.’ Judge Wintergreen was writing aloud.

  ‘Then let's look at them. The first is one he sent to my Chambers before a conference. Do you see that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you see that it's written in a sort of code? The words ‘see’, ‘to’, ‘you' and ‘be' are indicated by capital letters or numbers.’

  ‘That's the way young people send e-mails.’

  ‘And yet in all the obscene e-mails to young Prunella no such code is used. All the words are written out properly in full.’

  ‘I believe that is so.’

  ‘You can take it from me it is so. Is that the way middle-aged people write e-mails?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Do you use any of these abbreviations when you send e-mails?’

  ‘I don't personally, no.’

  ‘You spell and punctuate properly?’

  ‘I like to do so.’

  ‘You like to do so.’ I glanced at the Jury box. Did I notice a stirring of interest? ‘Let me turn to another subject. Were you pleased at Ben's fondness for poetry?’

  Chris gave a small, bitter smile. ‘Ben has no time for poetry whatever, I'm sorry to say.’

  ‘Doesn't he even know the names of the major poets?’

  ‘I don't think he does.’

  ‘You yourself have a fine collection of books of poetry in your study. All arranged in alphabetical order from Arnold to Yeats.’

  ‘I read English at Cambridge. I'm greatly moved by fine poetry.’

  ‘And you admire the great poets of the last century, T. S. Eliot and W. B. Yeats, of course?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole,’ the Judge put his oar in, ‘are you wasting the time of my Court with this literary excursion? I'm sure Mr Hoddinot would think so.’

  ‘I have no objection at all, my Lord.’ Adrian the prosecutor disappointed His Honour again.

  ‘So far as you know, the name Yeats would mean nothing to young Ben?’

  ‘He's said that your client has no interest in poetry, Mr Rumpole,’ Wintergreen reminded us.

  ‘I know he has. Such a pity. Ben missed that beautiful lyric, ‘Leda and the Swan’. I'm sure you have it well in mind, Mr Swithin.’ The witness, for once, was silent, and I thought I saw for the first time on that handsome, lightly suntanned face, a hint of fear.

  ‘Some of you may know the legend, Members of the Jury,’ I told them. ‘The girl Leda was raped by the King of the Gods, who disguised himself as a swan for the purpose. This is how Yeats described it.’ I opened a book which had nothing to do with the law and read aloud,

  ‘A sudden blow: the great wings beating still

  Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed

  By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,

&nb
sp; He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

  How can those terrified vague fingers push

  The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?

  And how can body, laid in that white rush,

  But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

  A shudder in the loins engenders there

  The broken wall, the burning roof and tower

  And Agamemnon dead.’

  The words rang and resonated in the stuffy courtroom. Then I asked the witness to read out the relevant e-mail. He seemed to have some difficulty finding the page, and further difficulty in reading it out; but, in the end, he had no choice but to do so.

  ‘How can your terrified vague fingers push my feathered glory from your loosening thighs? I will produce a shudder in your loins. Ours will be an historic moment when I, the great bird God, swoop down on you.’

  ‘Did you send that e-mail to Prunella, Mr Swithin? Were you Jupiter hoping, one day, she might be your shuddering girl?’

  The answer came back as a blustering question. ‘What on earth are you suggesting?’

  ‘I don't know whether it was just because you enjoyed sending erotic messages to a pretty young girl, or because you wanted revenge on a stepson you'd grown to hate. Perhaps it was for both reasons. But you sent these e-mails, didn't you, Mr Swithin?’

  ‘Mr Rumpole, the Judge was equally outraged at this suggestion, ‘you've called this witness as to character. You have no right to cross-examine him. I've been waiting for the prosecution to object.’

  ‘Perhaps my learned friend,’ I suggested as politely as possible, ‘thinks the Jury are entitled to an answer. Perhaps I should explain this to Your Honour. That last e-mail was sent only three weeks ago. Just before this trial.’

  ‘Which I regard as an act of gross contempt.’ The Judge clung to his brief authority.

  ‘That may be so. It's dated midnight on the seventeenth, a Friday night, when my client was enjoying a staff party in an Italian restaurant. I shall be calling a witness, a Mr Newton, an enquiry agent who observed Mr Swithin in my client's bedroom, operating young Ben's computer.’

  It was then Chris began to shout. ‘Ben! He's a pathological liar! He always has been! Werewolf! That's what we call him. He's an animal! No, worse than that! Animals have some dignity. He's evil! He's wrecked our marriage. He's…’

  ‘Mr Swithin.’ The Judge, at least, was calm. ‘I have to warn you that you needn't answer any question that's likely to incriminate you.’

  ‘Very well.’ I saw what Chris was like then. He was like a small child, caught out in an act of pointless destruction. ‘I won't answer.’

  ‘Then perhaps you'll tell us this,’ I said. ‘A simple question, about the delightful aftershave I saw in your bathroom. What's it called – some dashing masculine title, like, perhaps, Machismo Number Three For Men?’

  It was then that it happened, too quickly and far too unexpectedly for the Court usher dozing in his chair, or the officer in the dock, to give chase. Chris Swithin left the witness box with a turn of speed that recalled the days when he had won the hundred yards for his Cambridge college, and was out of the Town Hall and pushing his way through the crowd at the Craft Fair in the market square. No one recognized him when he grabbed the rail of a moving bus, or knew what happened when he got off at the next country stop. Were his business contacts clever enough to get him out of the country? Would he, some day, be extradited from southern Spain in a case of harassment? Perhaps not. All I know is that he was never seen again by his wife and family in Hartscombe.

  When, on the excellent Adrian Hoddinot's application, the teenage werewolf was released from the dock and the prosecution dropped, I said goodbye to him outside the Court. Hermione, in tears, had her arms around him, holding him tightly with a mother's love. But he was the one who was doing the comforting.

  I had a pub dinner that night (at the Trout Tickler beside the river) with Beazely and his wife Avril. She was a gentle, grey-haired woman with such a twinkle in her eyes that I wondered what, if any, new experiences she had been introduced to. It was late when I got home to the flat and as I went up the stairs I heard a noise, a cacophony of over-loud music. Was some new arrival in the building giving a party, a rare event in the tomb that was Froxbury Mansions? When I opened the front door, the noise enveloped me and rattled my brains.

  It was in the sitting-room that it was going on. I remembered whom I'd lent a key to while Hilda was in Cornwall, far away from the corruption of the e-mails. Owen Oswald from Wales was on drums, other Pithead Stompers were blowing and scraping hell out of a saxophone, a clarinet and a double bass. In the centre of it all, in his shirt sleeves and slapping a guitar, Bonzo Ballard was calling loudly on some unknown baby to light his fire.

  I went into the kitchen and opened a bottle of Château Thames Embankment. How long would it be, I wondered, before these middle-aged men grew up and forgot the girls they might have known in the past? Lacking Hilda's determination, I couldn't turn them out. I poured myself a large glass and hoped for sleep.

  Rumpole Rests His Case

  ‘Members of the Jury. This case has occupied only ten days of your lives. In a week or two you will have forgotten every detail about the dead budgerigar, the torn-up photograph of Sean Connery, the mouldering poached egg on toast behind the sitting-room curtain and the mysterious cry (was it a call for help, as the prosecution invite you to believe, or the delighted shriek produced by a moment of sexual ecstasy?) which could be heard issuing from 42B Mandela Buildings on that sultry and fatal night of July the twenty-third. All this has been but a part, a fleeting moment perhaps, of your lives, but for the woman I represent, the woman who has endured every scrap of innuendo, scandal and abuse the almighty Crown Prosecution Service can dredge up, with the vast resources of the State at their disposal, for her this case represents the whole of her future life. That and nothing less than that is at stake in this trial. And it is her life I now leave, Members of the Jury, in your hands, confident that she will hear from your foreman, in the fullness of time, the words that will give the remainder of her life back to her: “Not Guilty!” So I thank you for listening to me, Members of the Jury. I rest my case.’

  The sweetest moment of an advocate's life comes when he sits down after his final speech, legs tired of standing, shirt damp with honest sweat, mouth dried up with words. He sits back and a great weight slides off his shoulders. There's absolutely nothing more that he can do. All the decisions, the unanswered questions, the responsibility for banging up a fellow human being, have now shifted to the Judge and the Jury. The defence has rested and the Old Bailey hack can rest with it.

  As I sat, relaxed, and placed my neck comfortably against the wooden rail behind me, I removed the wig, scratched my head for comfort, and put it on again. As I rested, I looked for a moment at His Honour Judge Bullingham, an Old Bailey Judge now promoted to trying murders. To call them trials is perhaps to flatter the learned Judge, who conducts the proceedings as though the Old Bailey were a somewhat prejudiced and summary offshoot of the Spanish Inquisition. One of my first jobs as a defending counsel in the present case was to taunt and tempt, by many daring passes of the cape and neat side-steps in the sand, the bellowing and red-eyed bull to come out as such a tireless fighter on behalf of the prosecution that the Jury began to see him as I did. They might, perhaps, acquit my client because an ill-tempered Judge was making it so desperately clear that he wanted her convicted.

  But who had killed the budgerigar, a bird which, it seemed, had stood equally high in the regard of both the husband and the wife? It was as I toyed with this question, in an increasingly detached sort of way, that I closed my eyes and found not darkness but a sudden flood of bright golden light into which the familiar furnishings of Court Number One at the Old Bailey seemed to have melted away and vanished. Then I saw a small black dot which, rushing towards me like a shooting star, grew rapidly into the face of His Honour Judge Bullingham, who filled the landscape
wearing the complacent expression of a man about to pass a sentence of life imprisonment. Then I heard a voice, deeper and more alarming than that of any clerk of the Court I had ever heard before, saying, ‘Have you reached a verdict on which you all agree?’ ‘We have,’ some faint voice answered. ‘Do you find the defendant Rumpole guilty or not guilty?’ But before the answer could be given, the great light faded, and Bullingham's face melted away with it. There was a stab of pain in my chest, night fell and I became, I suppose, unconscious.

  Undoubtedly, this was a dramatic way of ending a closing speech. Mrs Ballard, known round the Bailey as Matey, was soon on the scene, as I understand it loosening my collar and pulling off my wig. The prosecutor rose to ask His Honour what steps he wished to take in view of the complete collapse of Mr Rumpole.

  ‘He's not dead. I'm sure of that.’ Bullingham declined to accept the evidence. ‘He's tried that one on me before.’ This was strictly true, when, many years before, the stubborn old Bull dug his heels in and refused an adjournment, so I had to feign death as the only legal loophole left if I wanted to delay the proceedings.* I put on, as I thought, a pretty good performance on that occasion. But this was no gesture of theatrical advocacy. Matey made the appropriate telephone call. An ambulance, howling with delight, was enjoying its usual dangerous driving round Ludgate Circus. Strong men in uniform, impeded by offers of incompetent help from the prosecution team no doubt thankful to see the back of me,

  rolled me out of my usual seat and on to a stretcher. So I left Court (was it for the last time?) feet first.

  ‘I know what this is,’ I thought as I looked upon the vision of hell. My chest was still crunching with pain. There was a freezing draught blowing scraps of torn-up and discarded paper across the lino, and a strong smell composed of equal parts rubber and disinfectant. I saw some shadowy figures, a mother with a child on her lap, a white-faced girl with staring eyes and a scarlet mouth, an old man, his tattered coat tied with string, who seemed to have abandoned all hope and was muttering to himself, a patient Chinese couple, the woman holding up a hand swathed in a bloodstained bandage. They all sat beneath a notice which read: ‘Warning. The average waiting time here is four and a half hours.’ It seemed a relatively short period measured against eternity. If this place wasn't hell, I thought, it was, at least, some purgatorial anteroom.