The Second Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  ‘Painful? Oh, no!’ Nancy looked at him and smiled. ‘It’s a pure pleasure, my dear, to see that picture again and to remember what I looked like, when I was nineteen and happy.’

  The next morning I addressed the jury, and I was able to offer them the solution to the mystery of Harold Brittling and the disputed Septimus Cragg. I started by reminding them of one of Nancy’s answers: ‘ “… he kept hold of it until he wanted to pretend he’d painted it himself.” Harold Brittling, you may think, ladies and gentlemen of the jury,’ I said, ‘had one driving passion in his life – his almost insane jealousy of Septimus Cragg. Cragg became his young wife’s lover. But worse than that in Brittling’s eyes, Cragg was a great painter and Brittling was second rate, with no style of his own. So now, years after Cragg’s death, Brittling planned his revenge. He was going to prove that he could paint a better Cragg than Cragg ever painted. He would prove that this fine picture was his work and not Cragg’s. That was his revenge for a weekend in Dieppe, and a lifetime’s humiliation. To achieve that revenge Brittling was prepared to sell his Cragg in a devious way that would be bound to attract suspicion. He was prepared to get a friend of his named Blanco Basnet to telephone Mrs De Moyne and claim that the picture was not a genuine Cragg, but something a great deal better. He was prepared to face a charge of forgery. He was prepared to go to prison. He was prepared to give his evidence to you in such a way as to lead you to believe that he was the true painter of a work of genius. Don’t be deceived, members of the jury, Brittling is no forger. He is a fake criminal and not a real one. He is not guilty of the crime he is charged with. He is guilty only of the bitterness felt for men of genius by the merely talented. You may think, members of the jury, as you bring in your verdict of “Not Guilty”, that that is an understandable emotion. You may even feel pity for a poor painter who could not even produce a forgery of his own.’

  As I sat down, the ginger beer bottle in the dock finally exploded and Brittling shouted, in an unmannerly way, at his defending counsel, ‘You bastard, Rumpole!’ he yelled, ‘you’ve joined the con-o-sewers!’

  ‘Good win, Horace. Of course, I always thought your client was innocent.’

  ‘Did you now?’

  The Judge had invited me in for a glass of very reasonable Amontillado after the jury brought in their verdict and, as the case was now over, we were alone in his room.

  ‘Oh yes. One gets a nose for these things. One can soon assess a witness and know if he’s telling the truth. Have to do that all the time in this job. Oh, and Horace…’

  ‘Yes, Judge?’

  His Lordship continued in some embarrassment. ‘That bit of a tizz I was in, about the great secret getting out. No need to mention that to anyone, eh?’

  ‘Oh, I rang the Lord Chancellor’s office about that. The day after we met in Pommeroy’s,’ I told him, and casually slipped my hands into my pockets.

  ‘You what?’ Featherstone looked at me in a wild surmise.

  ‘I assured them you hadn’t said a word to anyone and it was just a sort of silly joke put about by Claude Erskine-Brown. I mean, no one in the Temple ever dreamed that they’d make you a Judge.’

  ‘Horace! Did you say that?’

  ‘Of course I did.’ He took time to consider the matter and then pronounced judgement. ‘Then you got me out of a nasty spot! I was afraid Marigold had been a bit indiscreet. Horace, I owe you an immense debt of gratitude.’

  ‘Yes. You do,’ I agreed. His Lordship looked closely at me, and some doubt seemed to have crept into his voice as he said, ‘Horace. Did you ring the Lord Chancellor’s office? Are you telling me the truth?’

  I looked at him with the clear eyes of a reliable witness. ‘Can’t you tell, Judge? I thought you had such an infallible judicial eye for discovering if a witness is lying or not. Not slipping a bit, are you?’

  ‘What is it, Rumpole. Not flowers again?’

  ‘Bubbly! Non vintage. Pommeroy’s sparkling – on special offer. And I paid for it myself!’ I had brought Hilda a peace offering which I set about opening on the kitchen table as soon as I returned to the matrimonial home.

  ‘Where’s that girl now?’ she asked suspiciously.

  ‘God knows. Gone off into the sunset with the old chump. He’ll never forgive me for getting him acquitted, so I don’t suppose we’ll be seeing either of them again.’

  The cork came out with a satisfying pop, and I began to fill a couple of glasses with the health-giving bubbles.

  ‘I should have thought you’d had quite enough to drink with her last night!’ Hilda was only a little mortified.

  ‘Oh, forget her. She was a girl with soft eyes, and red hair, who passed through the Old Bailey and then was heard no more.’

  I handed Hilda a glass, and raised mine in a toast.

  ‘ “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” – that is all

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

  I looked at She Who Must Be Obeyed and then I said, ‘It isn’t, is it, though? We need to know a damn sight more than that!’

  Rumpole and the Golden Thread

  There is no doubt about it, life at the Bar can have stretches of the hum and the drum. A long succession of petty thefts, minor frauds and unsensational indecencies, prolonged by the tedious speeches of learned friends and the leisurely summings up of judges who seemed to have nothing much to say and all the time in the world in which to say it, produced, after a month or six, a feeling of pronounced discontent. There was no summer that year, and precious little spring. The rain fell regularly on the Inner London Sessions, and on Acton, and on the Uxbridge Magistrates Court. Most members of the jury seemed to have bad colds, their noses were pink and they sucked Zubes in their box. The courtrooms smelled of lozenges and resounded to hacking coughs. The pound was falling and my spirits with it. I began to dream of sandy deserts, the cool shade of a sparkling oasis, almond eyes behind latticed windows, the call of the muezzin in the dusty pink of the evening, things which I had never seen and were unlikely to be found between Snaresbrook and Reading Crown Court. I took to remembering a neglected piece of James Elroy Flecker which had enraptured me during my schooldays, describing, as it did, the journey of a number of persons of the Middle Eastern persuasion to a place romantically called ‘Samarkand’.

  These verses were running through my head as I joined She Who Must Be Obeyed at the sink after supper one night (lamb chops, frozen peas and a bottle of Pommeroy’s worst).

  ‘Have we not Indian carpets, dark as wine,

  Turbans and sashes, gowns and bows and veils,

  And broideries of intricate design,

  And printed hangings in enormous bales?’

  As a matter of fact we hadn’t. We were in the kitchen at 25B Froxbury Court (our alleged mansion flat in the Gloucester Road), my good self and She Who Must Be Obeyed, and far from being clad in turbans and sashes, sipping sherbet and sniffing oriental perfumes, we were dressed in a pair of aprons and doing the washing up; that is to say, I was up to my elbows in the Fairy Liquid and Hilda was wielding a doughty dishcloth. The words kept going round in my head, and I gave Hilda a snatch or two of the magical East.

  ‘ “We are the Pilgrims, master;” ‘ I told her,

  ‘we shall go

  Always a little further: it may be

  Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow,

  Across that angry or that glimmering sea,

  White on a throne or guarded in a cave

  There lives a prophet who can understand

  Why men were born…’

  ‘What are you talking about, Rumpole?’ Hilda asked. I gave her the best answer possible…

  ‘but surely we are brave,

  Who make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.’

  ‘Rumpole! This plate’s not washed up properly at all.’ Hilda had been staring critically at it, now she dropped it back into the suds for me to do again.

  ‘ “Away, for we are ready to a man!” ’ I told her,
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  ‘Our camels sniff the evening and are glad.

  Lead on, O Master of the Caravan:

  Lead on the Merchant-Princes of Bagdad.’

  ‘I don’t know why you always choose the washing. Why can’t you dry?’ said Hilda, who didn’t seem keen on crossing the desert.

  ‘Washing’s more fun.’ So it was, comparatively speaking.

  ‘It’s not much fun when you leave bits of gravy untouched by the mop, Rumpole!’

  ‘What’s it matter – a bit of yesterday’s gravy never did anyone any harm. “Is not Baghdad, the beautiful? O stay!” ’

  ‘If a thing’s worth doing it’s worth doing properly,’ said Hilda.

  ‘Not much chance of adventure round here in Gloucester Road, is there, Hilda? Unless you count the choice between drying up the dishes or sloshing them about in a mess of bottled soap suds.’

  ‘You’re getting a little too old for adventure, Rumpole.’ She was drying up a fork very thoroughly indeed.

  ‘Oh yes. You know what I spent the last three weeks doing? A serious case of unpaid V.A.T. on plastic egg timers – in Sydenham!’ Travels Rumpole East Away? Of course the answer was ‘no’, I realized, as I pulled out a coffee cup which seemed to have lost its handle in the stormy sink.

  ‘You’d better get a tea towel and help with the rest of the drying. You’ve done quite enough damage already.’

  At which point, and it is strange how things often happen in answer to some unspoken wish or silent prayer, the telephone on our kitchen wall gave urgent tongue. As Hilda answered it, I had no idea what sort of wish the genie of the telephone had come to answer, or how near to disaster its unseen voice would eventually bring me.

  ‘Hello, 4052, Hilda Rumpole.’ Hilda listened, then lowered the receiver with her hand over it and hissed at me in a voice pregnant with suspicion.

  ‘Justitia, Rumpole. Who’s she?’

  ‘She’s a sort of blind goddess, Hilda, who goes around lumbered with a sword and a blooming great pair of scales.’ I took the instrument from her, and Hilda heard me say, ‘Rumpole speaking… Yes, Justitia International. I know your organization. Yes… Who…? Oh yes. He remembers me? I taught him at the crammers. Criminal practice.’

  ‘Who is it, Rumpole?’ But I was still in close conversation with the unseen caller. ‘Well, yes. Just before the war, as a matter of fact. Down a sort of cellar in Fetter Lane… Oh… Well, I’ve read in The Times occasionally… Got into some sort of trouble over there, has he? Lunch with you tomorrow? La Venezia in Fleet Street? I don’t really see why not.’

  I put down the telephone, and when I turned to Hilda I was smiling as though I could smell, on the wind blowing up from Gloucester Road tube station, the spice-laden breezes of Africa.

  ‘What’s the matter with you, Rumpole? You look remarkably pleased with yourself!’ As she put away the plates Hilda was frowning suspiciously. I found an open bottle and poured out a couple of glasses of Pommeroy’s ordinary.

  ‘Dodo’s coming to stay next week, remember?’ As I showed no immediate reaction she repeated the information. ‘My old school friend, Dodo Mackintosh, will be here for a couple of days next week. You won’t forget that, will you, Rumpole?’

  I handed her a glass of wine. Life seemed to have improved for the better all round. ‘Dodo descending on us, eh? That makes it even better.’

  ‘Makes what better?’ Hilda asked. I raised my glass and turned towards the East as I said, ‘ “We take the Golden Road to Samarkand!” ’

  Justitia International, as you may know, is an organization which attempts to see that trials are fair and justice done in even further away places with stranger-sounding names than the Uxbridge Magistrates Court. It exists on hope, an overdraft, and donations from such public-spirited citizens as still care if a foreign politician is hanged, or a Third World writer imprisoned after some trial which has been about as predictable as a poker game with a card sharper. To lands which will still receive them (a small and ever-shrinking number), Justitia will send English barristers to defend the oppressed; to other parts of the world observers are sent, who write reports about the proceedings. Such reports are filed away. Protests are sent. Sometimes letters are written to The Times and occasionally a prisoner is released or an injustice remedied. As I say, Justitia has no vast sums of money, so I thought it very decent of Amanda Pinkerton, the International Secretary, to take me out to lunch at a small trattoria in Fleet Street, where we sat over the remains of our spaghetti bolognaise and Chianti, studying an illustrated folder entitled ‘Neranga Today’. I found Miss Pinkerton to be a large, energetic lady in her forties, given to wearing an assortment of coloured scarves and heavyweight costume jewellery, so she looked as if she had just returned from the bazaar.

  ‘ “Neranga,” ’ she read out to me, as though she were giving an elementary geography lesson to a class of backward and dyslexic ten-year-olds. ‘ “A lump of land carved out by the British, who called it New Somerset. Capital, Nova Lombaro. Deeply divided into two tribes, the Apu and the Matatu, who hate each other so much that if an Apu man marries a Matatu girl, both their families throw them out and they’re cursed forever.” ’

  ‘Same sort of thing that goes on in Surrey,’ I suggested.

  ‘Yes. Well…’ Miss Pinkerton turned a page and we were met with the face of an African with horn-rimmed glasses, a cotton cap and robe, standing in front of a microphone, apparently addressing a meeting of UNESCO. ‘The Prime Minister,’ Miss Pinkerton explained. ‘Dr Christopher Mabile, a member of the Matatu tribe, warriors and head hunters not so long ago. He’s a Marxist. Educated by the Jesuit Fathers, who sent him to Balliol. Got his medical degree in Moscow and postgrad in Cuba. When the country got independence, he had to have a token Apu in his Cabinet. So he made David Mazenze Minister of Home Affairs.’ She turned the page and showed me another photograph.

  ‘Looks older than I remember,’ I told her. ‘Well, I suppose it’s only to be expected.’

  ‘David’s one of the more peaceful Apus. The British locked him up for about ten years, but he never bore a grudge. Moderate socialist. Good friend to Justitia. Sound on land reform and contraception. Excellent Chairman of the Famine Programme. And…’ her eyes became somewhat misty, ‘he’s got an absolutely marvellous voice.’

  ‘But did he do it, do you think?’ I asked. It seemed important.

  Miss Pinkerton’s mind, however, was clearly on other matters. ‘It’s a sort of thrilling voice! Of course, the Apu people absolutely worship David.’

  The photograph was of an African with a noble head, short, grizzled hair, a strong neck and amused eyes. He was wearing an open-necked shirt and smoking a pipe. I thought back to a stuffy cellar off Fetter Lane, the offices of Pinchbeck and Swat-ling, legal crammers who could guarantee to force you through the Bar exams in about six months. It was there I had taught young David Mazenze the elements of our Criminal Law, which, together with Wordsworth, Shakespeare and Oxford marmalade, must be one of our most valuable exports.

  It was a shortage of briefs, in the years after my return to civilian life from a somewhat inglorious career in the R.A.F. Ground Staff, which led me to take on part-time work at the crammers. I may not have taught much law, in the strict sense of the word, but I gave young David Mazenze and his fellow students from India, Fiji, Singapore and Godalming the basic speech to the jury, which should always refer to the ‘Golden Thread’ which runs through our justice – the immutable principle that everyone is innocent unless twelve good men and women and true are certain that the only possible answer is that they must be guilty. I also gave my class a lecture on my pre-war triumph in the Penge Bungalow Murders, a case which careful readers of these reminiscences will remember I won after a two-week hearing alone and without a leader. David Mazenze may not have emerged from my lessons the greatest academic lawyer in the world, but he knew something about bloodstains and how to cross-examine a policeman on his notebook, and he knew almost all there is to be known about the
burden of proof.

  When he went back to his native Neranga, David practised law, took up politics, and had that essential training for all successful African politicians – a fairly long term of imprisonment by the British. Then he was released, Neranga got its independence, and David Mazenze became the Apu representative in Dr Mabile’s predominantly Matatu government. Each year he sent us a Christmas card, much decorated with snow and robins and holly, and best wishes to ‘My old Mentor, Horace Rumpole and his Good Lady’. For a number of years, I am ashamed to say, I had forgotten to send one back.

  I learned the basic facts of David Mazenze’s case from Miss Pinkerton at that luncheon. The road to the capital of Neranga, Nova Lombaro, leads through many miles of scrubland and bush. One rainy night the fat and self-important Bishop Kareele, himself a remarkably devious politician, was being driven by a clergyman in a Mercedes along this road. They were stopped by an unknown African who waved the car down. As soon as they stopped the Bishop was shot, the clergyman ran into the bush and would live to give evidence.

  Later the police raided David Mazenze’s bungalow and found him calmly smoking his pipe and listening to the Fauré Requiem. He was arrested and refused bail by Chief Justice Sir Worthington Banzana, who was, quite coincidentally, a member of the Matatu tribe. As he was dragged from his house by the brutal officers of the law, David shouted a short sentence to his distracted wife, Grace. It consisted of the simple words, ‘Horace Rumpole, Equity Court in the Temple.’

  ‘But what I want to know is,’ I told Miss Pinkerton, ‘did he do in the dear old Bish?’

  ‘We’ve had reports from reliable sources that Mabile’s got David locked up in the most ghastly conditions! There may have been torture.’