The Second Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  ‘Cerebral haemorrhage? No doubt about that. But it’s the other findings that are the difficulty.’

  ‘Which are?’

  ‘Multiple bruising on the body, particularly the legs, back and buttocks, and the wound on the head where the deceased girl fell and knocked the edge of the coffee table.’

  ‘Which caused the haemorrhage to the brain?’ I frowned. The evidence of bruising was hardly encouraging.

  ‘No doubt about it,’ Dr Harry assured me. ‘The trouble is the pathologist says the bruising was inflicted before death; the implication being that my son beat his wife up.’

  ‘Is that likely?’ It sounded rather unlike the home life of a young professional couple in Hunter’s Hill.

  ‘I told you Sally was a spoilt and highly strung girl, Mr Rumpole.’ Dr Harry shrugged. ‘Her father was old Peter Gaveston of Gaveston Electronics. She always had everything she wanted. Of course she and Ned quarrelled. Don’t all married couples?’

  Not all married couples, of course, include She Who Must Be Obeyed, but I had reason to believe that the good doctor was right in his diagnosis.

  ‘But Ned would never beat his wife up like that,’ Ned’s father assured me. ‘Not beat her up to kill her.’

  It sounded as if I would have to do battle with another pathologist, and I was anxious to find out who my opponent would be.

  ‘Tell me, who’s the Miracle of the Morgues, the Prosecution Prince of the Post Mortems? Who’s the great brain on the other side?’

  ‘It’s a local pathologist. Does all the work in this part of the country.’

  ‘Would I have heard of him?’ I asked casually.

  ‘It’s not a “him”. It’s a Dr Pamela Gorle. And the irony is, Ned knows her extremely well. They were at Barts together, before he met Sally, of course. He brought her home for the weekend once or twice, and I almost thought they might make a go of it.’

  ‘You mean, get married?’

  ‘Yes.’ Dr Harry seemed to think that the lady with the formaldehyde might have been a better bet than Sally.

  By this time I was beginning to feel some sympathy for Dr Ned. It’s enough to be put on trial for murder without having your ex-girlfriend examine your deceased wife’s body, and provide what turns out to be the only real evidence for the prosecution.

  ‘I just don’t understand! I simply don’t understand it.’

  Friendly young Dr Ned sat in the unfriendly surroundings of the prison interview room. He looked concerned but curiously detached, as though he had just hit on a mysterious tropical disease which had no known cure.

  ‘Doctor,’ I said, ‘did you and your wife Sally get on moderately well together?’

  ‘We had our quarrels, of course. Like all married couples.’

  It was the second time I had heard that. But, I thought, all married couples don’t end up with one dead and the other one in the nick awaiting trial on a charge of wilful murder.

  I looked at Dr Ned. He was better-looking than his father had been at his age; but Dr Harry, as I remembered his appearance in the Penge Bungalow Murders trial, had seemed the stronger character and more determined. As I looked at the charming, but rather weak younger doctor (after all, he hadn’t had to struggle to build up a practice, but had picked up his father’s well-warmed stethoscope and married an extremely wealthy young woman) I found it hard to imagine him brutally beating his wife and so killing her. Of course I might have been mistaken; the most savage murder I was ever mixed up in was the axeing of a huge Regimental Sergeant-Major by a five-foot-nothing Sunday school teacher from East Finchley.

  ‘Your father told me that Mrs Sally Dacre was depressed from time to time. Was she depressed about anything in particular?’

  ‘No. In fact I always thought Sally had everything she wanted.’

  ‘But did she suffer from depression?’

  ‘I think so. Yes.’

  ‘And took nothing for it?’

  ‘She didn’t approve of pills. She’d heard too many stories about people getting hooked. Doctors and their wives.’

  ‘So she took nothing?’ I wanted to get the facts established.

  ‘My father was her doctor. I thought that was more professional. I’m not sure if he prescribed her anything, but I don’t think he did. There was nothing found in the stomach.’

  He said it casually and seemed only politely concerned. I don’t know why I felt a sudden chill at discussing the contents of his dead wife’s stomach with the doctor.

  ‘No pills,’ I agreed with him. ‘The medical evidence tells us that.’

  ‘Dr Pamela Gorle’s report,’ Dr Ned went on, still quite dispassionately. I fished out the document in question.

  ‘Yes. It talks of the remains of a meal, and a good deal of alcohol in the blood.’

  ‘We had a bottle of Chianti. And a soufflé. We were alone that night. We ate our supper in front of the television.’

  ‘Your wife cooked?’ I asked, not that there was any question of the food being anything but harmless.

  ‘Oh no.’ Dr Ned smiled at me. ‘I may not be an absolutely brilliant doctor, but my soufflés are nothing short of miraculous.’

  ‘Did you quarrel that evening?’ I asked him. ‘I mean, like all married couples?’

  ‘Not at all. We had a discussion about where we’d go for our holiday, and settled on Crete. Sally had never been there, and I had only once. Before we met, actually.’

  Had that been, I wondered, a romantic packaged fortnight with the pathologist for the Crown? Mine not to reason who with, so I kept him at the job of telling me the story of that last night with his wife.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then Sally complained of a headache. I thought it was perhaps due to watching the television for too long, so I switched it off. She was standing up to get herself a brandy.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She stumbled and fell forwards.’

  ‘Face forwards? Are you sure of that?’

  ‘Yes, I’m certain. It was then that her forehead hit the corner of the coffee table.’

  ‘And caused the cerebral haemorrhage?’

  Dr Ned paused, frowning slightly. He seemed to be giving the matter his detached and entirely professional opinion. At last, he said cautiously,

  ‘I can only think so.’

  ‘Doctor, your friend, the pathologist…’

  ‘Hardly my friend any longer.’ Dr Ned smiled again, ruefully this time, as though he appreciated the irony of having an old colleague and fiancée giving evidence against him on a charge of wilful murder.

  ‘No,’ I agreed with him. ‘She isn’t your friend, is she? She says she found extensive bruising on your wife’s back, her buttocks and the back of her legs.’

  ‘That’s what I can’t understand.’ My client looked genuinely puzzled.

  ‘You’re quite sure she didn’t fall backwards?’ I asked after a careful silence. Dr Ned and his wife were quite alone. Who would quarrel with the description of her falling backwards and bruising herself? I had given him his chance. A professional villain, any member of the Timson family for instance, would have taken that hint and agreed with me. But not Dr Ned.

  ‘No, I told you. She fell forwards.’ He was either being totally honest or wilfully obtuse.

  ‘And you can’t account for the alleged bruises on her back?’

  ‘No.’ That was all he had to say about it. But then he frowned, in some embarrassment, and said,

  ‘There is one thing perhaps I ought to tell you.’

  ‘About your wife?’

  ‘No. About Dr Pamela Gorle.’ Again, he hesitated. ‘We were at Barts together, you know.’

  ‘And went to Crete together once, on a packaged holiday.’

  ‘How did you know that?’ He looked at me, puzzled. It was an inspired guess, so I didn’t answer his question. As I am a perpetual optimist, I asked, ‘Do you think the Crown’s expert witness might be a little helpful to us in the witness-box?’

  ‘No
t at all. In fact, I’m afraid she’ll do everything she can to get me convicted.’

  As I have said, I am an incorrigible optimist, and for the first time in my conference with Dr Ned I began to sniff the faint, far-away odour of a defence.

  ‘Pamela was an extraordinarily possessive girl,’ the doctor told me. ‘She was always unreasonably and abnormally jealous.’

  ‘When you married Sally?’

  ‘When I met Sally. I suppose, well, after that holiday in Crete Pam thought we might get married. Then I didn’t ring her and I began to get the most awful letters and phone calls from her. She was threatening…’

  ‘Threatening what?’

  ‘It was all very vague. To tell my father, or my patients, or the G.M.C., that she was pregnant.’

  ‘Would any of those august bodies have cared?’

  ‘Not in the least. It wasn’t true anyway. Then she seemed to calm down for a while, but I still got letters – on my wedding anniversary and on some date which Pamela seemed to think was important.’

  ‘Perhaps the day your affair started, or ended?’

  ‘Probably. I really can’t remember. She’d got her job with the Home Office, retained as a pathologist for this part of the county. I hoped she might settle down and get married, and forget.’

  ‘She never did? Get married, I mean?’

  ‘Or forget. I had a dreadful letter from her about a month ago. She said I’d ruined her life by marrying a hopeless drunk, and that she’d tell Sally we were still meeting unless…’

  ‘Yes?’ I prompted him, he seemed reluctant to go on.

  ‘Well. Unless we still met. And continued our affair.’

  ‘Did your wife see the letter?’

  ‘No. I always get up early and opened the post.’

  ‘You’ve kept the letter, of course?’

  ‘No. I tore it up at once.’

  If only people had the sense to realize that they might be facing a murder trial at any moment, they might keep important documents.

  ‘And what did the letter say?’

  ‘That she’d find some way of ruining my life, however long it took her.’

  Hell, I supposed, hath no fury like a lady pathologist scorned. But Dr Pamela Gorle’s personal interest in the Dacre murder seemed to provide the only faint hope of a cure for Dr Ned’s somewhat desperate situation. I didn’t know if a murder case had ever been won by attacking the medical evidence on the grounds of a romantic bias, but I supposed there had to be a first time for everything.

  Everything about the Dacre murder trial was thoroughly pleasant. The old, red brick, local Georgian courtroom, an object of beauty among the supermarkets and boutiques and the wine bar and television and radio stores of the little Surrey town, was so damned pleasant that you expected nice girls with Roedean accents to pass round the Court serving coffee and rock cakes whenever there was a lull in the proceedings. The jury looked as though they had dropped in for a rather gentle session of ‘Gardeners’ Question Time’, and Owen Munroe, Q.C., was a pleasant prosecutor who seemed thoroughly distressed at having to press such a nasty charge as wilful murder against the nice young doctor who sat in the dock wearing his well-pressed suit and old Barts tie.

  Worst of all, Nick McManus was a tremendously pleasant judge. He was out to be thoroughly fair and show every courtesy to the defence, ploys which frequently lead to a conviction. It is amazing how many villains owe their freedom to the fact that some old sweetheart on the Bench seemed to be determined to get the jury to pot them.

  We went quickly, and without argument, through the formal evidence of photographs, fingerprints and the finding of the body, and then my learned friend announced that he intended to call the pathologist.

  ‘Will that be convenient to you, Mr Rumpole?’ The Judge, as I have said, was a perfect gent.

  ‘Certainly, my Lord. That will be quite convenient.’ I made myself perfectly pleasant in return.

  ‘I wish to make quite sure, Mr Rumpole, that you have every opportunity to prepare yourself to cross-examine the expert witness.’

  You see what I mean? Old McManus was making sure I would have no alibi if I didn’t succeed in cracking Dr Pamela. I’d’ve been far better off with someone like the mad Judge Bullingham, charging head-on at the defence. In this very pleasant trial, Rumpole would have no excuses. However, there was no help for it, so I bowed and said,

  ‘I’m quite prepared, my Lord. Thank you.’

  ‘Very well. Mr Munroe, as you are about to call the pathologist…’

  ‘Yes, my Lord.’ My opponent was on his feet.

  ‘I suppose the jury will have to look at the photographs of the dead lady?’

  ‘Yes, my Lord. It is Bundle No. 4.’

  Pictures of a good-looking young woman, naked, bruised, battered and laid on a mortuary slab, are always harrowing and never helpful to the defence. McManus, j., introduced them to the jury quietly, but effectively.

  ‘Members of the jury,’ said the Judge. ‘I’m afraid you will find these photographs extremely distressing. It is necessary for you to see them so you may understand the medical evidence fully, but I’m sure counsel will take the matter as shortly as possible. These things are never pleasant.’

  Death isn’t pleasant, nor is murder. In the nicest possible way, the Judge was pointing out the horrific nature of the crime of which Dr Ned was charged. It was something you just didn’t do in that part of Surrey.

  ‘I swear by Almighty God that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’

  I was aroused from my thoughts by the sound of the pathologist taking her Bible oath. Owen Munroe hitched up his gown, sorted out his papers and started his examination in chief.

  ‘Dr Pamela Gorle?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you examine the body of the late Sally Dacre, the deceased in this case?’

  ‘I did. Yes.’

  ‘Just tell us what you found.’

  ‘I found a well-nourished, healthy woman of thirty-five years of age who had died from a cerebral haemorrhage. There was evidence of a recent meal.’ The demure pathologist had a voice ever gentle and low, an excellent thing in a woman, but a bit of a drawback in the witness-box. I had to strain my ears to follow her drift. And unlike the well-nourished and healthy deceased, Dr Pamela was pale and even uninteresting to look at. Her hair was thin and mousy, she wore a black suit and National Health spectacles behind which her eyes glowed with some obsession. I couldn’t be sure whether it was love of her gloomy work or hatred of Dr Ned.

  ‘You say that you found widespread bruising on the deceased’s back and buttocks. What was that consistent with?’

  ‘I thought it was consistent with a violent attack from behind. I thought Mrs Dacre had probably been struck and kicked by… well, it appeared that she was alone that evening with her husband.’

  ‘I object!’ I had risen to protest, but the perfect gent on the Bench was ahead of me.

  ‘Yes, Mr Rumpole. And you are perfectly right to do so. Dr Gorle, it is not for you to say who beat this lady and kicked her. That is entirely a matter for the jury. That is why Mr Rumpole has quite rightly objected.’

  I wished his Lordship would stop being so lethally pleasant. ‘But I understand,’ the Judge continued, ‘that your evidence is that she was kicked and beaten – by someone.’ McManus, j., made it clear that Sally Dacre had been attacked brutally, and the jury could have the undoubted pleasure of saying who did it.

  ‘Yes, my Lord.’

  ‘Kicked and beaten!’ His Lordship repeated the words for good measure, and after he’d written them down and underlined them with his red pencil, Munroe wound up his examination in chief.

  ‘The immediate cause of death was?’

  ‘A cerebral haemorrhage, as I said!’

  ‘Could you form any opinion as to how that came about?’ Munroe asked.

  ‘Just a moment.’ McManus, j., gave me one of his charming smile
s from the Bench. ‘Have you any objection to her opinion, Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘My Lord, I wouldn’t seek to prevent this witness saying anything she wishes in her effort to implicate my client in his wife’s tragic death.’

  McManus, J., looked slightly puzzled at that, and seemed to wonder if it was an entirely gentlemanly remark. However, he only said, ‘Very well. Do please answer the question, Dr Gorle.’

  ‘My opinion, my Lord, is that the deceased had received a blow to the head in the course of the attack.’

  ‘The attack you have already described?’

  ‘That is so, my Lord.’

  ‘Thank you, Dr Gorle,’ said Owen Munroe, and sat down with a quietly satisfied air and left the witness to me.

  I stood up, horribly conscious that the next quarter of an hour would decide the future of my client. Would Dr Ned Dacre go back to his pleasant house and practice, or was he fated to vanish into some distant prison only to emerge, pale and unemployable, after ten or more long years? If I couldn’t break down the medical evidence our case was hopeless. I stood in the silent Court, shuffling the photographs and the doctor’s notes, wondering whether to lead up to my charge of bias gently laying what traps I could on the way, or go in with all my guns blazing. I seemed to stand for a long time undecided, with moist hands and a curious feeling of dread at the responsibility I had undertaken in the pit of my stomach, and then I made a decision. I would start with my best point.

  ‘Dr Gorle. Just help me. You knew Dr Ned Dacre well, didn’t you?’

  The first question had been asked. We’d very soon find out if it were the right one.

  ‘We were at Barts together.’ Dr Gorle showed no sign of having been hit amidships.

  ‘And went out together, as the saying is?’ I said sweetly.

  ‘Occasionally, yes.’

  ‘ “Going out” as so often nowadays meaning “staying in” together?’ I used a slightly louder voice, and was gratified to see that the witness looked distinctly narked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Yes. I think you should make that a little clearer, Mr Rumpole,’ the Judge intervened, in the pleasantest possible way.