The Second Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’ – that is all

  Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

  ‘Then why this elaborate performance of selling the picture through Miss Price?’ Erskine-Brown raised his voice a little.

  ‘Just to tease them a bit. Pull their legs…’ The worst was happening. Brittling was chuckling again.

  ‘Pull whose legs, Mr Brittling?’

  ‘The art experts! The con-o-sewers. People like Teddy Gandolphini. I just wanted to twist their tails a little.’

  ‘So we have all been brought here, to this Court, for a sort of a joke?’ Erskine-Brown acted extreme amazement.

  ‘Oh no. Not just a joke. Something very serious is at stake.’ I didn’t know what else Brittling was going to say, but I suspected it would be nothing helpful.

  ‘What?’ Erskine-Brown asked.

  ‘My reputation.’

  ‘Your reputation as an honest man, Mr Brittling?’

  ‘Oh no. Far more important than that. My reputation as an artist! You see, if I did paint that picture, I must be a genius, mustn’t I?’

  Brittling beamed round the Court, but once again no one else was smiling. At the end of the day the Judge withdrew the defedant’s bail, a bad sign in any case. Harold Brittling, however, seemed to feel he had had a triumph in the witness-box, and departed, with only a moderate show of irritation, for the Nick.

  When I left Court – a little late, as we had the argument about bail after the jury had departed – I saw a lonely figure on a bench in the marble hall outside Number 1 Court. It was Pauline, shivering slightly, wrapped in her ethnic clothing, clutching her holdall, and her undoubtedly beautiful face was, I saw when she turned it in my direction, wet with tears. Checking a desire to suggest that the temporary absence of the appalling Brittling might come as something of a relief to his nearest and dearest, I tried to put a cheerful interpretation on recent events.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ I sat down beside her and groped for a small cigar. ‘Bail’s quite often stopped, once a defendant’s given his evidence. The jury won’t know about it. Personally, I think the Judge was just showing off. Well, he’s young, and a bit wet round the judicial ears.’ There was a silence. Young Pauline didn’t seem to be at all cheered up. Then she said, very quietly, ‘They’ll find Harold guilty, won’t they?’ She was too bright to be deceived and I exploded in irritation. ‘What the hell’s the matter with old Harold? He’s making his evidence as weak as possible. Does he want to lose this case?’

  And then she said something I hadn’t expected: ‘You know he does, don’t you?’ She put her hand on my arm in a way I found distinctly appealing.

  ‘Please,’ she said, ‘will you take me for a drink? I really need one. I’d love it if you would.’

  In all the circumstances it seemed a most reasonable request. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘We’ll go to Pommeroy’s Wine Bar. It’s only just over the road.’

  ‘No we won’t,’ Pauline decided. ‘We’ll go to the Old Monmouth in Greek Street. I want you to meet somebody.’

  The Old Monmouth, to which we travelled by taxi at Pauline’s suggestion, turned out to be a large, rather gloomy pub with a past which was considerably more interesting than its present. Behind the bar there were signed photographs, and even sketches by a number of notable artists who drank there before the war and in the forties and fifties. There were also photographs of boxers, dancers and music hall performers, and many caricatures of ‘Old Harry’, the former proprietor, with a huge handlebar moustache, whose son, ‘Young Harry’, with a smaller moustache, still appeared occasionally behind the bar.

  The habits of artists have changed. Perhaps they now spend their evenings sitting at home in Islington or Kew, drinking rare Burgundy and listening to Vivaldi on the music centre. The days when a painter started the evening with a couple of pints of Guinness and ended stumbling out into Soho with a bottle of whisky in his pocket and an art school model, wearing scarlet lipstick and a beret, on his arm have no doubt gone for ever. At the Old Monmouth pale young men with orange quiffs were engaged in computerized battles on various machines. There were some eager executives in three-piece suits buying drinks for their secretaries, and half a dozen large men loudly discussing the virtues of their motor cars. No one looked in the least like an artist.

  ‘They all used to come here,’ Pauline said, nostalgic for a past she never knew. ‘Augustus John, Sickert, Septimus Cragg. And their women. All their women…’

  ‘Wonder they found room for them all.’ I handed her the rum she had requested, and took a gulp of a glass of red wine which made the taste of Pommeroy’s plonk seem like Château-Lafite. I couldn’t quite imagine what I was doing, drinking in a Soho pub with an extraordinarily personable young woman, and I was thankful for the thought that the least likely person to come through the door was She Who Must Be Obeyed.

  So I tossed back the rest of the appalling Spanish-style vin ordinaire with the sort of gesture which I imagine Septimus Cragg might have used on a similar occasion.

  ‘It’s changed a bit now,’ Pauline said, looking round the bar regretfully. ‘Space Invaders!’ She gave a small smile, and then her smile faded. ‘Horace… Can I call you Horace?’

  ‘Please.’

  She put a hand on my arm. I didn’t avoid it.

  ‘You’ve been very kind to me. You and Hilda. But it’s time you knew the truth.’

  I moved a little away from her, somewhat nervously, I must confess. When someone offers to tell you the truth in the middle of a difficult criminal trial it’s rarely good news.

  ‘No,’ I said firmly.

  ‘What?’ She looked up at me, puzzled.

  ‘The time for me to know the truth is when this case is over. Too much of the truth now and I’d have to give up defending that offbeat little individual you go around with. Anyway,’ I pulled out my watch, ‘I’ve got to get back to Gloucester Road.’

  ‘Please! Please don’t leave me!’ Her hand was on my arm again, and her words came pouring out, as though she were afraid I’d go before she’d finished. ‘Harold said he loved Septimus Cragg. He didn’t. He hated him. You see, Septimus had everything Harold wanted – fame, money, women, and a style of his own. Harold can paint brilliantly, but always like other people. So he wanted to get his own back on Septimus, to get his revenge.’

  ‘Look. If you’re trying to prove to me my client’s guilty…’ I was doing my best to break off this dangerous dialogue, but she held my arm now and wouldn’t stop talking.

  ‘Don’t go. If you’ll wait here, just a little while, I’ll show you how to prove Harold’s completely innocent.’

  ‘Do you really think I care that much?’ I asked her.

  ‘Of course you do!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Patients and nurses. Septimus said that’s how the world is divided. We’re the nurses, aren’t we, you and I? We’ve got to care, that’s our business. Please!’

  I looked at her. Her eyes were full of tears again. I cursed her for having said something true, about both of us.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘But this time I’ll join you in a rum. No more Château Castanets. Oh, and I’d better make a telephone call.’

  I rang Hilda from a phone on the wall near the Space Invader machine. Although there was a good deal of noise in the vicinity, the voice of She Who Must Be Obeyed came over loud and clear.

  ‘Well, Rumpole,’ she said, ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me you were kept late working in Chambers.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m not going to tell you that.’

  ‘Well, what are you going to tell me?’

  ‘Guthrie Featherstone put Brittling back in the cooler and I’m with the girlfriend Pauline. Remember her? We’re drinking rum together in a bar in Soho and I really have no idea when I’ll be back, so don’t wait up for me.’

  ‘Don’t talk rubbish, Rumpole! You know I don’t believe a word of it!’ and my wife slammed down the receiver. If such
were the price of establishing my client’s innocence, I supposed it would have to be paid. I returned to the bar, where Pauline had already lined up a couple of large rums and was in the act of paying for them.

  ‘What did you tell your wife?’ she asked, having some feminine instinct, apparently, which told her the nature of my call.

  ‘The truth.’

  ‘I don’t suppose she believed it.’

  ‘No. Here, let me do that.’ I felt for my wallet.

  ‘It’s the least I can do.’ She was scooping up the change. ‘You were splendid in Court. You were, honestly. The way you handled that awful Gandolphini, and the Judge. You’ve got what Harold always wanted.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A voice of your own.’ We both drank and she swivelled round on her bar stool to survey the scene in the Old Monmouth pub, and smiled. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘It’s here.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘All you need to prove Harold’s innocent.’

  I looked to a corner of the bar, to where she was looking. An old woman, a shapeless bundle of clothes with a few bright cheap beads, had come in and was sitting at a table in the corner. She started to search in a chaotic handbag with the air of someone who has no real confidence that anything will be found. Pauline had slid off her stool and I followed her across to the new arrival. She didn’t seem to notice our existence until Pauline said, quite gently, ‘Hullo, Nancy.’ Then the woman looked up at me. She seemed enormously old, her face was as covered with lines as a map of the railways. Her grey hair was tousled and untidy, her hands, searching in her handbag, were not clean. But there was still a sort of brightness in her eye as she smiled at me and said, in a voice pickled during long years in the Old Monmouth pub, ‘Hullo, young man. I’ll have a large port and lemon.’

  It is, of course, quite improper for a barrister to talk to a potential witness, so I will draw a veil over the rest of the evening. It’s not so difficult to draw the aforesaid veil, as my recollection of events is somewhat hazy. I know that I paid for a good many rums and ports with lemon, and that I learnt more than I can now remember about the lives and loves of many British painters. I can remember walking with two ladies, one old and fragile, one young and beautiful, in the uncertain direction of Leicester Square tube station, and it may be that we linked arms and sang a chorus of the ‘Roses of Picardy’ together. I can’t swear that we didn’t.

  I had certainly left my companions when I got back to Gloucester Road, and then discovered that the bedroom door was obstructed by some sort of device, probably a lock.

  ‘Is that you, Rumpole?’ I heard a voice from within. ‘If you find her so fascinating, I wonder you bothered to come home at all.’

  ‘Hilda!’ I called, rattling at the handle. ‘Where on earth am I expected to sleep?’

  ‘I put your pyjamas on the sofa, Rumpole. Why don’t you join them?’

  Before I fell asleep in our sitting room, however, I made a telephone call to his home number and woke up our learned prosecutor, Claude Erskine-Brown, and chattered to him, remarkably brightly, along the following lines: ‘Oh, Erskine-Brown. Hope I haven’t woken you up. I have? Well, isn’t it time to feed the baby anyway? Oh, the baby’s four now. How time flies. Look. Check something for me, will you? That Mrs De Moyne. Yes. The purchaser. I don’t want to drag her back to Court but could your officer ask if the man who rang her was called Blanco Basnet? Yes. ‘Blanco’. It means white, you see. Sweet dreams, Erskine-Brown.’

  After which, I stretched out, dressed as I was, on the sofa and dreamed a vivid dream in which I was appearing before Mr Justice Featherstone wearing pyjamas, waving a paintbrush, and singing the ‘Roses of Picardy’ until he sent me to cool off in the cells.

  ‘You look tired, Rumpole.’ Erskine-Brown and I were sitting side by side in Court awaiting the arrival of Blind Justice in the shape of Featherstone, J. The sledgehammer inside my head was quietening a little, but I still had a remarkably dry mouth and a good deal of stiffness in the limbs after having slept rough in Froxbury Court.

  ‘Damn hard work, La Vie de Bohème,’ I told him. ‘By the way, Erskine-Brown, what’s the news from Mrs De Moyne?’

  ‘Oh, she remembered the name as soon as the Inspector put it to her. Blanco Basnet. Odd sort of name, isn’t it?’

  ‘Distinctly odd,’ I agreed. But before he could ask for any further explanation the Usher called, ‘Be upstanding’, and upstanding we all were, as the learned Judge manifested himself upon the Bench, was put in position by his learned Clerk, supplied with a notebook and sharpened pencils, and then leant forward to ask me, with a brief wince at the sight of the hands in the Rumpole pockets, ‘Is there another witness for the defence?’

  ‘Yes, my Lord,’ I said, as casually as possible. ‘I will now call Mrs Nancy Brittling.’

  As the Usher left the Court to fetch the witness in question I heard sounds, as of a ginger beer bottle exploding on a hot day, from the dock, to which Harold Brittling had summoned the obedient Myers.

  Then the courtroom door opened and the extremely old lady with whom I had sung around Goodge Street made her appearance, not much smartened up for the occasion, although she did wear, as a tribute to the learned Judge, a small straw hat perched inappropriately upon her tousled grey curls. As she took the oath, Myers was whispering to me. ‘The client doesn’t want this witness called, Mr Rumpole.’

  ‘Tell the client to belt up and draw a picture, Myersy. Leave me to do my work in peace.’ Then I turned to the witness-box. ‘Are you Mrs Nancy Brittling?’

  ‘Yes, dear. You know that.’ The old lady smiled at me and I went on in a voice of formal severity, to discourage any possible revelation about the night before.

  ‘Please address yourself to the learned Judge. Were you married to my client, Harold Reynolds Gainsborough Brittling?’

  ‘It seems a long time ago now, my Lordship.’ Nancy confided to Featherstone, J.

  ‘Did Mr Brittling introduce you to the painter Septimus Cragg at Rottingdean?’

  ‘I remember that.’ Nancy smiled happily. ‘It was my nineteenth birthday. I had red hair then, and lots of it. I remember he said I was a stunner.’

  ‘Who said you were a “stunner”,’ I asked for clarification, ‘your husband or…?’

  ‘Oh, Septimus said that, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And Septimus asked me to pop across to Dieppe with him the next weekend,’ Nancy said proudly.

  ‘What did you feel about that?’ The old lady turned to the jury and I could see them respond to a smile that still had in it, after more than half a century, some relic of the warmth of a nineteen-year-old girl.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I was thrilled to bits.’

  ‘And what was Harold Brittling’s reaction to the course of events?’

  ‘He was sick as a dog, my Lordship.’ It was an answer which found considerable favour with the jury, so naturally Erskine-Brown rose to protest.

  ‘My Lord, I don’t know what the relevance of this is. We seem to be wandering into some rather sordid divorce matter.’

  ‘Mr Erskine-Brown!’ I gave it to him between the eyebrows. ‘My client has already heard the cell door bang behind him as a result of this charge, of which he is wholly innocent. And when I am proving his innocence, I will not be interrupted!’

  ‘My Lord, it’s quite intolerable that Mr Rumpole should talk to the jury about cell doors banging!’

  ‘Is it really? I thought that was what this case is all about.’

  At which point the learned Judge came in to pour a little oil.

  ‘I think we must let Mr Rumpole take his own course, Mr Erskine-Brown,’ he said. ‘It may be quicker in the end.’

  ‘I am much obliged to your Lordship.’ I gave a servile little bow, and even took my hands out of my pockets. Then I turned to the witness. ‘Mrs Brittling, did you go to Dieppe with Septimus Cragg, and while you were there together, did he paint you in the bedroom of the Hôtel du
Vieux Port?’

  ‘He painted me in the nude, my Lordship. I tell you, I was a bit of something worth painting in those days.’

  Laughter from the jury, and a discreet smile from the learned Judge, were accompanied by a pained sigh from Erskine-Brown. I asked the Usher to take Exhibit One to the witness, and Nancy looked at the picture and smiled, happily lost, for a moment, in the remembrance of things past.

  ‘Will you look at Exhibit One, Mrs Brittling?’

  ‘Yes. That’s the picture. I saw Septimus paint that. In the bedroom at Dieppe.’

  ‘And the signature…?’ Erskine-Brown had told the jury that all forged pictures carried large signatures, as this one did. But Nancy Brittling was there to prove him wrong.

  ‘I saw Septimus paint his signature. And, we were so happy together, just for a bit of fun, he let me paint my name too.’

  ‘Let his Lordship see.’

  So the Usher trundled up to the learned Judge with the picture, and once again Guthrie raised his magnifying glass respectfully to it.

  ‘It’s a bit dark. I did it in sort of purple, at the edge of the carpet. I just wrote “Nancy”, that’s all.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole,’ Featherstone, J., said, and I blessed him for it. ‘I think she’s right about that.’

  ‘Yes, my Lord. I have looked and I think she is. Mrs Brittling, do you know how your husband got hold of that picture?’

  Once again, the evidence was accompanied by popping and fizzing noises from the dock as the prisoner’s wife explained, with some gentle amusement, ‘Oh yes. Septimus gave it to me, but when I brought it home to Harold he fussed so much that in the end I let him have the picture. Well, after a time Harold and I separated and I suppose he kept hold of it until he wanted to pretend he’d painted it himself.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Brittling.’ I sat down, happy in my work. The sledgehammer had quietened and I stretched out my legs, preparing to watch Erskine-Brown beat his head against the brick wall of a truthful witness.

  ‘Mrs Brittling,’ he began. ‘Why have you come here to give this evidence? It must be painful for you, to remember those rather sordid events.’