The Second Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  When I was a young man, just starting at the bar, the old Judges used to scare the living daylights out of me. Terrible old darlings they were, who went back to their Clubs and ordered double muffins after death sentences. They used to be bright purple with rage, or white as paper with voices like ice cracking as they put the boot in. All the same, you could work on those old Judges. You could divert their rage on to the opposition, or move them to tears about an old lag’s army record. ‘I agree, he has his faults, my Lord, but he did extremely well on the Somme.’ Mr Justice Bates was a newer type of Judge, a civil servant, with not a tear in him. I could never get on terms with Bates. There he was, at the start of R. v. Gladstone, giving me a look of vague disgust, as if he were Queen Victoria with a bad period. There was nothing for it, however, but to join battle, and at first R. v. Gladstone proceeded uneventfully.

  Detective Inspector Arthur had just finished giving evidence at the end of the prosecution case when I rose to cross-examine, and I was aware that the judicial atmosphere was somewhat chilly. Perhaps the old darling on the bench was a member of the M.C.C. All the same, I launched cheerfully into the first question.

  ‘Mr Arthur. You would agree the only real evidence against my client is this statement he is alleged to have signed at the police station?’

  ‘Isn’t that evidence real enough for you, Mr Rumpole?’ said the learned Judge. You see what I mean by the judicial atmosphere.

  ‘We shall see, shan’t we?’ I could see Bates, J., looking displeased as I said that. ‘Have you the alleged statement there, Inspector?’

  ‘I have, my Lord.’ Mr Arthur addressed the Judge respectfully, and the Judge looked respectfully back. I intruded on this mutual respect with another question.

  ‘Did you read that document through to my client, Mr Gladstone, before he signed it?’

  ‘As I remember, he read it himself.’

  ‘You’re sure of that?’ I challenged him. A memory of something young Oswald had said in the interview room had given me an idea.

  ‘Yes. Quite sure. As a matter of fact he read it aloud to me.’

  ‘He read it all through out loud?’ I thought that was unusual, and decided to pin the Inspector to his story.

  ‘Yes, he did, my Lord.’ Mr Arthur again got a glance of approval from the bench.

  ‘And you didn’t read it back to him?’

  ‘No. I don’t believe so.’

  ‘You swear you did not?’ The Judge looked as if he didn’t care for my doubting the words of a police officer, but the Inspector gave me his answer.

  ‘I swear I didn’t read it to him. Mr Gladstone read it to himself.’ I picked up the document in question and looked at it with mild distaste.

  ‘And this is a statement alleged to have been made by a West Indian teenager?’

  ‘It was made by your client.’

  ‘Every word his?’

  ‘Every word.’

  ‘Oh dear me, Inspector, don’t you think you officers ought to brush up on your Jamaican?’ There was a slight stir of laughter in Court in which the Judge didn’t participate. After the usher had called, ‘Silence,’ the Inspector looked vaguely hurt and said, ‘I don’t know what you mean sir.’

  ‘Neither do I, Mr Rumpole,’ the Judge grumbled. I continued to address the witness. ‘Just that you’ve composed this piece of sparkling prose in the dead language of dear old Edgar Wallace.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole,’ the Judge answered for the witness. ‘Are you suggesting that your client’s statement was composed by this officer?’ So then I had to explain to the judicial old darling, as to a child, ‘I am simply suggesting, my Lord, that the whole shooting match comes out of the old police book of verbals. No self-respecting young criminal talks like that nowadays, does he?’

  It was then that my son Nick walked into Court, as he had done in his schooldays to listen to my old murders. Although this was only an ‘attempt’, I was determined to put on a good show for Nick. I beckoned to him to come and sit beside Mr Winter and Jo in the seat behind me. I whispered my apologies for not turning up in the Army and Navy, and he whispered that he’d telephoned my Chambers and discovered where I was to be found. And then His Lordship asked if he could have a few moments of my valuable time.

  ‘My Lord, by all means.’ I gave Mr Justice Bates my full attention.

  ‘You were suggesting to the Detective Inspector that this statement was not couched in the language of “a self-respecting young criminal”.’

  ‘Of course it isn’t. It’s the language of a middle-aged Detective Inspector.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole, the jury may not be as expert as you are on the way “self-respecting” criminals talk.’ I ignored the somewhat snide innuendo and said with a smile, ‘Then let me demonstrate, my Lord. Let’s read it together, Detective Inspector.’

  ‘Very well, sir.’ He was always cooperative, the dear old chrysanthemum grower. I started to read from Oswald’s statement. ‘ “I know you found the dagger so I better come clean, guv’nor.” You left something out, didn’t you? What about “it’s a fair cop” and “you’ve got me bang to rights”?’

  There was a louder laugh. The usher called, ‘Silence,’ again, and the Judge’s voice was icy. ‘Mr Rumpole, is this cross-examination meant to be taken seriously?’

  ‘Only if this bit of paper is meant to be taken seriously, my Lord,’ I said, and went on reading before he had time to interrupt again. ‘ “If you nab Ginger he’ll grass on me.” Do you know, Inspector? Had Mr Gladstone been going to evening classes in old-time cockney? Had he written a thesis on the argot of the Artful Dodger?’

  ‘Not that I know of, sir.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole!’ It was the Judge again, sounding a warning note which I ignored. I kept on at the Inspector. ‘Or did these quaint phrases drift up from your memories of happier times when all confession statements taken by the police started “It’s a fair cop” just as a formality?’

  ‘Mr Rumpole!’ The Judge took the words out of Mr Arthur’s mouth. ‘I sincerely hope there’ll be some evidence to support this attack on the officer’s integrity.’

  ‘At the moment, my Lord, I’m simply attacking his prose style.’ Not bad, I hope you’ll agree; and I wanted Nick to see me at my best.

  ‘You’re suggesting the Inspector is lying?’ The Judge seemed slow to follow my drift.

  ‘Oh, my Lord, certainly. No doubt the same suggestion will be made to my client. The compliments are mutual.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole, you have some experience in these Courts.’ Now the Judge was trying the effect of being menacingly polite.

  ‘A little, my Lord. Just a little.’

  ‘Over a long period of years?’

  ‘You might say, my Lord, from time immemorial.’

  ‘And you know perfectly well the limits to which defending counsel may go?’

  ‘I’ve often been reminded of them, my Lord.’

  ‘I imagine you have. If the cross-examination we have just heard is typical of you, Mr Rumpole, I imagine you have had to be reminded often. One does not expect to have to repeat such reminders to counsel of your advanced age and seniority. Now have you any other questions to ask this officer? I mean, proper questions.’

  ‘Oh, a great many. I was anxious not to interrupt the flow of Your Lordship’s rebuke.’ I was delighted Nick was hearing this, and I turned to attack the Inspector with renewed strength.

  ‘Wouldn’t you agree, Inspector Arthur? This is really a Golden Oldie of a confession statement?’ There was more laughter, another call for ‘silence’ and a long sigh from the Judge who said, wearily, ‘The jury may have some idea what the question means. I have none.’

  Inspector Arthur, I knew, understood the question perfectly well.

  ‘What’s the answer, Inspector?’

  ‘As your client knows full well, that is his own confession, Mr Rumpole. His own confession of guilt.’

  This clearly appealed to the Judge as a curtain line. He turned apologetically to t
he jury. ‘This case is obviously going to detain us a considerable time. We have yet to learn the nature of the defence. Shall we say, two o’clock, members of the jury?’

  The Judge had risen and vanished before I could say certainly not two o’clock, what about half past two, which would give me a decent chance of a farewell lunch with Nick? As it was, Simpsons in the Strand was out of the question, there were no tables to be had in the Newgate Street Wine Bar, and we ended up in a pub round the corner, where the cold beef was off, and all they had left was a cheese sandwich, which was no particular good even as a cheese sandwich, and no pickle! Nick had a half of lager, and I took refuge in a large rum, washed down with a pint of Guinness.

  ‘What time’s your plane, Nick?’

  ‘Six o’clock. It’s one of those charters.’

  ‘You’re having tea with your mother?’

  ‘She wants me to.’

  ‘Then don’t try and cut it, eh?’ I gave my son a conspiratorial wink. ‘Watch out for She Who Must Be Obeyed.’

  Nick didn’t laugh at that, as he used to in the old days. Perhaps he was hungry and missing the roast at Simpsons. After the disappointments of the morning, I thought a little financial support might be in order, and I pulled out the cheque book accordingly. ‘Got all you need in the way of money, Nick?’

  ‘I’ve got enough. I worked all last August.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course.’ He seemed to mean it so I put the cheque book away.

  ‘Dirty sort of work, wasn’t it? I take my hat off to you. I could never dig up the Underground!’ I saw Nick look at me then, and somehow it wasn’t the look of unqualified admiration which I had been used to when he came home from school and dropped in on my murders. ‘I don’t think I could do your job either,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, come on Nick. The Old Bailey’s not so bad. You can have quite a lot of good, clean fun down the Bailey.’

  ‘Is that what you were having this morning?’ I’d had enough of the cheese sandwich and felt for the box of small cigars.

  ‘I forget. Do you smoke these things?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No. Of course not.’ I prodded one between my lips, lit it and gave a resounding cough. ‘Filthy habit.’

  ‘No, but were you having fun?’ For once I saw my son looking genuinely puzzled.

  ‘Well, now. Yes! Yes, perhaps I was. In my own quiet way.’

  ‘That Judge!’ Nick seemed appalled by what he had seen in Court. ‘That Judge,’ I told Nick, ‘was defending bad cases of non-renewed dog licence when I was doing the Penge Bungalow Murders – alone and without a leader!’ I was not, as you may have gathered, over-impressed by Mr Justice Bates.

  ‘I don’t know how you could go on when that Judge said those things to you, Dad.’

  ‘Bless you, Nick. I’ll tell you how you deal with judicial insults. You smile a sweet smile of Chinese inscrutability and say, “If your Lordship pleases”. You take the rough with the smooth. In a dozen oysters there’s always one that gives you the collywobbles. It’s just bad luck that of all the Judges available I had to pick the one who looks as if he’s got woman trouble.’ I might have added, ‘and of all the women available for matrimony I had to pick your mother,’ but I looked at Nick and suspected that this thought might not, at that particular lunch-time, get an entirely sympathetic reception.

  ‘I suppose the Judge thought you were wasting his time,’ Nick went on.

  ‘His time? How long should it take to rob a boy’s life of five years?’ I looked at my watch, I’d soon have to be back in Court. This is no proper farewell, I thought, to my son Nick. ‘I had hoped the case might be a shortie.’

  ‘And the Judge didn’t like you pretending.’

  ‘Pretending what, Nick?’ For once I wasn’t following my son’s drift.

  ‘Pretending your mugger’s innocent. I mean Judges must get sick and tired of all those phoney defences. Looking at the policeman’s notebook and all that sort of nonsense, when surely everyone knows.’

  ‘What do they know?’

  ‘Well. That boy actually admitted…’

  ‘So they say. No one knows anything until it’s proved. And even then you may have a nagging doubt.’

  Nick was laughing then, imitating one of my stock court-room phrases, ‘ “Members of the jury, while there remains a particle of doubt.” I remember you practising that speech in front of the bathroom mirror, while I put my rubber duck’s head under the water, so he wouldn’t be embarrassed. Doubt’s your stock in trade, isn’t it?’

  ‘Better than being a cleric and dealing in improbable beliefs.’ I swallowed about a quarter of a pint of Guinness and tried a final apology. ‘Nick, I’m sorry I was busy…’

  ‘I didn’t mind. Not till I saw what you were busy at.’

  ‘Do you find it so disreputable?’ I looked at him, in some sorrow, and not much anger.

  ‘If that boy’s guilty, which he obviously is…’

  ‘They’re all guilty of something, my dear old thing. Everyone’s guilty of something. If anyone gets off it’s a plus.’

  ‘A plus for who?’

  ‘For them, of course. It’s a strange quality of human nature, Nick.’ I signalled for a refill of our glasses. ‘People show an almost comic relief at not being locked up. They actually enjoy not having to share one chamber-pot through endless nights with vindictive, frightened and sexually frustrated strangers. Do you find that so very odd?’ There was silence as the barmaid gave us our drinks. Nick didn’t answer my unanswerable question. I raised my glass to him and said, ‘My clients relish a good win as much as I do.’

  ‘What about society?’ Nick still looked worried. ‘I mean, all that getting people off – is it much good to society at large?’

  ‘Society can open a door at night and go to the lavatory.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you see it’s protected occasionally?’

  ‘Just at the moment I’ve got my hands full protecting young Ossie Gladstone.’

  ‘By telling lies?’

  ‘By telling his story for him, as well as I can. What do you think I am, Nick? I’m nothing but a ventriloquist’s doll, perched on Mr Gladstone’s knee.’

  ‘You think that’s a very dignified position?’

  ‘Oh, Nick, you can’t be born or die in a dignified position. How the hell can you live in one, my old darling?’ I drank the Guinness, and remembered something about Mr Gladstone. ‘You know about that boy. His mother sent him away, when he was four. Sent him away from home, I mean.’

  Curiously enough, Nick didn’t seem to be thinking about Oswald Gladstone. He was putting me, for some reason, in the dock.

  ‘But today, when I saw you standing there, saying things you really didn’t mean…’

  ‘That’s not what I was doing.’

  ‘I suddenly knew why, well, why you’ve never said much you meant to me, have you?’

  ‘Nick! I’m sorry we couldn’t manage Simpsons. It’d’ve been so much pleasanter.’

  ‘Yes. We’d’ve had steak and kidney pud and you’d’ve been in a good mood and told me a string of funny stories about your favourite murders. But you wouldn’t have actually said anything. Not something of your own. I suppose it’s all that ventriloquist business. You must forget your own voice sometimes.’

  That, at last, was an allegation I could rebut. ‘Now, my voice. It’s a good voice. I do flatter myself.’ I tried it out on a snatch of Wordsworth. ‘ “There was a boy; you knew him well ye cliffs And islands of Winander…” ’

  ‘I think that’s what Mother finds so difficult,’ Nick said, and now I was beginning to lose my patience. ‘She finds difficult? And what does the Leader of the Opposition find difficult exactly?’

  ‘Knowing exactly who you are,’ Nick said, and I felt little sympathy for She’s problem. ‘Well, we’ve been married thirty years,’ I said. ‘If She doesn’t know that by now…’

  ‘It’s just that she’s not very happy actually. I wanted to talk to you about it bef
ore I left,’ Nick said.

  ‘It’s not easy to talk here.’ Indeed the bar was full of noisy jurors and solicitors’ clerks, villains and even noisier coppers. I felt helpless and apologized again. ‘If only he’d pleaded.’

  ‘No. But I know what she means now. Now, I’ve seen you in action. Is that what you call it?’

  ‘In action. Yes, I suppose it is.’ I drained my glass and Nick went on. ‘She says you’re always arguing, but she doesn’t know if it’s an argument or just a game, like the game you were playing in Court this morning. She says you seem to hate her sometimes, but she can’t tell if you mean it. In a way, she says, she’d rather you really hated her than pretended to.’

  ‘But I say wonderful things to her. Very often! Wonderful, complimentary things.’ I protested at a manifest injustice.

  ‘Of course, she doesn’t believe those either.’

  ‘She’s not very happy. She’s not. What do you think I feel, Nick? What do you think?’

  But he could give no answer to my question. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what you feel, Dad.’

  And I don’t know what else we might have said to each other if we hadn’t been interrupted at that precise moment by my instructing solicitor, Mr Winter, and his side-kick, Jo. The unwelcome Winter announced that he had got a message, through the prison officer, that our client Mr Gladstone required our immediate presence down the cells. He had, it seemed, new instructions to give us. I reminded him that my son Nick was just off to America, but Mr Gladstone, it appeared, would brook no delay.

  ‘My Master’s Voice,’ I said regretfully. ‘Have a good trip then, Nick. I mean, it’s not for ever, is it? You’ll be back soon, I’m sure. On holidays.’

  ‘I expect so.’

  ‘I’m sorry about the lunch being so scrappy.’

  ‘That’s all right.’ And Nick smiled.

  ‘Damn it. We haven’t had a talk yet even.’

  ‘No. No, we haven’t.’

  Mr Oswald Gladstone, when we got to the interview room, had plenty of time to talk. He was another young man who seemed not altogether pleased with Rumpole.

  ‘That Judge, dad,’ he said in a tone of rebuke. ‘He sure don’t like you…’