The Second Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  ‘I have one or two questions for Mr Vanberry,’ I told him.

  ‘Oh’ – his Lordship seemed surprised – ‘is there any dispute that your client, Timson, had this gentleman’s wine in his possession?’

  ‘No dispute about that, my Lord.’

  ‘Then to what issue in this case can your questions possibly be directed?’

  I was tempted to tell the old darling that if he sat very quietly and paid close attention he might, just possibly, find out. Instead, I said that my questions would concern my client’s guilt or innocence, a matter which might be of some interest to the Jury. And then, before the Bull could get his breath to bellow, I asked Mr Vanberry if the wine he lost was insured.

  ‘Of course. I had it fully insured.’

  ‘As a prudent businessman?’

  ‘I hope I am that, my Lord,’ Vanberry appealed to the Judge, who gave his ghastly smile and murmured as unctuously as possible, ‘I’m sure you are, Mr Vanberry. I am perfectly sure you are.’

  ‘And how long have you been trading as a wine merchant in Prentice Alley in the City of London?’ I went on hacking away.

  ‘Just three years, my Lord.’

  ‘And done extremely well! In such a short time.’ The Bull was still smirking.

  ‘We have been lucky, my Lord, and I think we’ve been dependable.’

  ‘Before that, where were you trading?’ I interrupted the love duet between the witness and the Bench.

  ‘I was selling pictures. As a matter of fact I had a shop in Chelsea; we specialized in nineteenth-century watercolours, my Lord.’

  ‘The name of the business?’

  ‘Vanberry Fine Arts.’

  ‘Manage to find any insurance claims for Vanberry Fine Arts…?’ I turned to whisper to Bernard, but it seemed he was still making inquiries. Only one thing to do then, pick up a blank sheet of paper, study it closely and ask the next question looking as though you had all the answers in your hands. Sometimes, it was to be admitted, the old-fashioned ways are best.

  ‘I must put it to you that Vanberry Fine Arts made a substantial insurance claim in respect of the King’s Road premises.’

  ‘We had a serious break-in and most of our stock was stolen. Of course I had to make a claim, my Lord.’ Vanberry still preferred to talk to his friend, the Bull, but at least he had been forced by the information he thought I had to come out with some part of the truth.

  ‘You seem to be somewhat prone to serious break-ins, Mr Vanberry,’ I suggested, whereupon the Bull came in dead on cue with, ‘It’s the rising tide of lawlessness that is threatening to engulf us all. You should know that better than anyone, Mr Rumpole!’

  I thought it best to ignore this, so I then called on the Usher to produce Exhibit 34, which was, in fact, one of the bottles of allegedly stolen wine.

  ‘You’re not proposing to sample it, I hope, Mr Rumpole?’ The Bull tried heavy sarcasm and the Jury and the prosecution counsel laughed obediently.

  ‘I’m making no application to do so at the moment,’ I reassured him. ‘Mr Vanberry. You say this bottle contains vintage claret of a high quality?’

  ‘It does, my Lord.’

  ‘Retailing at what price?’

  ‘I think around fifty pounds a bottle.’

  ‘And insured for…?’

  ‘I believe we insured it for the retail price. Such a wine would be hard to replace.’

  ‘Of course it would. It’s a particularly fine vintage of the… What did you say it was?’ The Bull charged into the arena.

  ‘Cheval Blanc, my Lord.’

  ‘And we all know what you have to pay for a really fine Burgundy nowadays, don’t we, Members of the Jury?’

  The Members of the Jury – an assortment of young unemployed blacks, puzzled old-age pensioners from Hackney and grey-haired cleaning ladies – looked at the Judge and seemed to find his question mystifying.

  ‘It’s a claret, my Lord. Not a Burgundy,’ Vanberry corrected the Judge, as I thought unwisely.

  ‘A claret. Yes, of course it is. Didn’t I say that? Yes, well. Let’s get on with it, Mr Rumpole.’ Bullingham was not pleased.

  ‘You lost some fifty cases. It was insured for six hundred pounds a case, you say?’

  ‘That is so.’

  ‘So you recovered some thirty thousand pounds from your insurers?’

  ‘There was a considerable loss…’

  ‘To your insurance company?’

  ‘And a considerable profit to whoever dealt with it illegally,’ the Bull couldn’t resist saying, so I thought it about time he was given a flutter of the cape: ‘My Lord. I have an application to make in respect of Exhibit 34.’

  ‘Oh, very well. Make it then.’ The Judge closed his eyes and prepared to be bored.

  ‘I wish to apply to the Court to open this bottle of alleged Cheval Blanc.’

  ‘You’re not serious?’ The Bull’s eyes opened.

  ‘Your Lordship seemed to have the possibility in mind…’

  ‘Mr Rumpole!’ – I watched the familiar sight of the deep purple falling on the Bullingham countenance – ‘from time to time the weight of these grave proceedings at the Old Bailey may be lifted when the Judge makes a joke. One doesn’t do it often. One seldom can. But one likes to do it whenever possible. I was making a joke, Mr Rumpole!’

  ‘I’m sure we’re all grateful for your Lordship’s levity,’ I assured him, ‘but I’m entirely serious. My learned pupil, Mizz Probert, has come equipped with a corkscrew.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole!’ – the Judge was exercising almost superhuman self-control – ‘may I get this quite clear. What would be your purpose in opening this bottle?’

  ‘The purpose of tasting it, my Lord.’

  It was then, of course, that the short Bullingham fuse set off the explosion. ‘This is a court of law, Mr Rumpole,’ he almost shouted. ‘This is not a bar-room! I have sat here for a long time, far too long in my opinion, listening to your cross-examination of this unfortunate gentleman who has, as the Jury may well find, suffered at the hands of your client. But I do not intend to sit here, Mr Rumpole, while you drink the exhibits!’

  ‘Not “drink” ’ – I tried to calm the Bull – ‘ “taste”, my Lord. And may I say this: if the Defence is to be denied the opportunity of tasting a vital exhibit, that would be a breach of our fundamental liberties! The principles we have fought for ever since the days of Magna Carta. In that event I would have to make an immediate application to the Court of Appeal.’

  ‘The Court of Appeal, did you say?’ I had mentioned the only institution which can bring the Bull to heel – he dreads criticism by the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary which might well get reported in The Times. ‘You would take the matter up to the Court of Appeal?’ he repeated, somewhat aghast.

  ‘This afternoon, my Lord.’

  ‘That’s what you’d do?’

  ‘Without hesitation, my Lord.’

  ‘What do you say about this, Mr Tristram Paulet?’ The Judge turned for help to the Prosecution.

  ‘My Lord. I’m sure the Court would not wish my learned friend to have any cause for complaint, however frivolous. And it might be better not to delay matters by an application to the Court of Appeal.’ Paulet is one of Nature’s old Etonians, but I blessed him for his words which were also welcomed by the Bull. ‘Exactly what was in my mind, Mr Tristram Paulet!’ the Judge discovered. ‘Very well, Mr Rumpole. In the quite exceptional circumstances of this case, the Court is prepared to give you leave to taste…’

  So, in a sense, the party was on. Mizz Probert produced a corkscrew from her handbag. I opened the bottle, a matter in which I have had some practice, and asked the Judge and my learned friend, Mr Paulet, to join me. The Usher brought three of the thick tumblers which are used to carry water to hoarse barristers or fainting witnesses. While this operation was being carried out, my eye lighted on Martyn Vanberry in the witness-box – he looked suddenly older, his expensive tan had turned sallow, and I saw his forehea
d shining with sweat. He opened his mouth, but no sound of any particular significance emerged. And so, in the ensuing silence, Tristram Paulet sniffed doubtfully at his glass, the Bull took a short swig and looked enigmatic, and I tasted and held the wine long enough in my mouth to be certain. It was with considerable relief that I realized that the label on the bottle was an unreliable witness, for the taste was all too familiar – that of Château Thames Embankment 1985, a particularly brutal year.

  ‘Rumpole’s got a pupil.’

  ‘I hope he’s an apt pupil.’

  ‘It’s not a he. It’s a she.’

  ‘A she. Oh, really, Rumpole?’ Dodo Mackintosh clicked her knitting needles and looked at me with deep suspicion.

  ‘A Mizz Liz Probert…’

  ‘You call her Liz?’ The cross-examination continued.

  ‘No. I call her Mizz.’

  ‘Is she a middle-aged person?’

  ‘About twenty-three. Is that middle-aged nowadays?’

  ‘And is Hilda quite happy about that, do you think?’ Dodo asked me, and not my wife, the question.

  ‘Hilda doesn’t look for happiness.’

  ‘Oh. What does she look for?’

  ‘The responsibilities of command.’ I raised a respectful glass of Château Fleet Street at She Who Must Be Obeyed. There was a brief silence broken only by the clicking of needles, and then Dodo said, ‘Don’t you want to know what this Liz Probert is like, Hilda?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  It was at this moment that the telephone rang and I picked it up to hear the voice of a young man called Ken Eastham, who worked at Vanberry’s. He wanted, it seemed, to ask my legal advice. I spoke to him whilst Hilda and her old friend, Dodo Mackintosh, speculated on the subject of my new pupil. When the call was over, I put down the telephone after thanking Mr Eastham from the bottom of my heart. It’s rare, in any experience, for anyone to care enormously for justice.

  ‘Well, Rumpole, you look extremely full of yourself,’ Hilda said as I dialled Mr Bernard’s number to warn him that we might be calling another witness.

  ‘No doubt he is full of himself’ – Dodo put in her two penn’orth – ‘having a young pupil to trot around with.’

  ‘Dodo’s coming down to the Old Bailey tomorrow, Rumpole,’ Hilda warned me. ‘She’s tremendously keen to see you in action.’

  In fact Dodo Mackintosh’s view of Rumpole in action was fairly short-lived. She arrived early at my Chambers, extremely early, and Henry told her that I was still breakfasting at the Taste-Ee-Bite in Fleet Street. Indeed I was then tucking into the full British with Mizz Probert, to whom I was explaining the position of the vagal nerve in the neck, which can be so pressed during a domestic fracas that death may ensue unintentionally. (I secured an acquittal for Gimlett, a Kilburn grocer, armed with this knowledge – the matter is described later in this very volume.) At any rate I had one hand placed casually about Mizz Probert’s neck explaining the medical aspect of the matter when Dodo Mackintosh entered the Taste-Ee-Bite, took in the scene, put the worst possible construction on the events, uttered the words ‘Rumpole in action! Poor Hilda’ in a tragic and piercing whisper and made a hasty exit. This was, of course, a matter which would be referred to later.

  I did not, as I think wisely, put Snakelegs Timson in the witness-box, but I had told Mr Bernard to get a witness summons delivered to the wine correspondent of the Sunday Mercury and took the considerable risk of calling her. When she was in the box I got the Bull’s permission to allow her to taste a glass of the wine which the Prosecution claimed was stolen Château Cheval Blanc, although I had it presented to her in an anonymous tumbler. She held it up to the light, squinted at it through her monocle and then took a mouthful, which I told her she would have to swallow, however painful she found it, as we had no ‘expectoration corner’. At which point Tristram Paulet muttered a warning not to lead the witness.

  ‘Certainly not! In your own words, would you describe the wine you have just tasted?’

  ‘Is it worth describing?’ Miss Bird asked, having swallowed with distaste.

  ‘My client’s liberty may depend on it,’ I looked meaningfully at the Jury.

  ‘It’s a rough and, I would say, crude Bordeaux-type of mixed origins. It may well contain some product of North Africa. It’s too young and drinking it would amount to infanticide had its quality not made such considerations irrelevant.’

  ‘Have you met such a wine before?’

  ‘I believe it is served in certain bars in this part of London to the more poorly paid members of the legal profession.’

  ‘Would you price it at fifty pounds a bottle?’ this poorly paid member asked.

  ‘You’re joking!’

  ‘It is not I that made the joke, Miss Bird.’

  ‘I could see Vanberry, who was looking even more depressed and anxious than he had the day before, pass a note to the prosecuting solicitor. Meanwhile, Birdie gave me her answer. ‘It would be daylight robbery to charge more than two pounds.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you, Miss Bird. Just wait there, will you?’ I sat down and Tristram Paulet rose to cross-examine, armed with Vanberry’s note.

  ‘Miss Bird. The wine you have tasted came from a bottle labelled Cheval Blanc 1971. I take it you don’t think that is its correct description.’

  ‘Certainly not!’ The admirable Birdie would have none of it.

  ‘At a blind tasting which took place at Mr Vanberry’s shop, did you not identify a Cheval Blanc 1971?’ There was a considerable pause after this question, during which Miss Bird looked understandably uncomfortable.

  ‘I had my doubts about it,’ she explained at last.

  ‘But did you not identify it?’

  ‘Yes. I did.’ The witness was reluctant, but Paulet had got all he wanted. He sat down with a ‘thank you, Miss Bird’, and I climbed to my hindlegs to repair the damage in re-examination.

  ‘Miss Bird, on that occasion, were you competing against a Mr Monty Mantis, a garage owner of Luton, in the blind-tasting contest?’

  ‘Yes. I was.’

  ‘Did he express a poor opinion of the alleged Cheval Blanc?’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘But were you encouraged by Mr Martyn Vanberry to identify it as a fine claret by a number of hints and clues?’

  ‘Yes. He was trying to help me a little.’ Miss Bird looked doubtfully at the anxious wine merchant sitting in the well of the Court.

  ‘To help you to call it Cheval Blanc?’ I suggested.

  ‘I suppose so. Yes.’

  ‘Miss Bird. What was your opinion of Mr Monty Mantis?’

  ‘I thought him a very vulgar little man who probably had no real knowledge of wine.’ She had no doubt about it.

  ‘And, thinking that about him, were you particularly anxious to disagree with his opinion?’

  There was a pause while the lady faced up to the question and then said with some candour, ‘I suppose I may have been.’

  ‘And you were anxious to win the contest?’ Paulet rose to make an objection, but I ploughed on before the Bull could interrupt. ‘As Mr Vanberry was clearly helping you to do?’

  ‘I may have wanted to win. Yes,’ Miss Bird admitted, and Paulet subsided, discouraged by her answer.

  ‘Looking back on that occasion, do you think you were tasting genuine Cheval Blanc?’ It was the only important question in the case and Bullingham and Martyn Vanberry were both staring at the expert, waiting for her answer. When it came it was entirely honest.

  ‘Looking back on it, my Lord, I don’t think I was.’

  ‘And today you have told us the truth?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Honoria Bird.’ And I sat down, with considerable relief.

  With Honoria Bird’s evidence we had turned the corner. Young Ken Eastham, who had rung me at home, went into the witness-box. He told the Court that Vanberry had a few dozen of the Cheval Blanc, and then a large new consignment arrived from a source he had not heard
of before. Martyn Vanberry asked him to set the new bottles apart from the old, but he had already unpacked some of the later consignment, and put a few bottles with the wine already there. Later, almost all the recently delivered ‘Cheval Blanc’ was stolen, and Martyn Vanberry seemed quite unconcerned at the loss. Subsequently, and by mistake he thought, one of the new bottles of ‘Cheval Blanc’ must have been used for the blind tasting. When I asked Mr Eastham why he had agreed to give this evidence he said, ‘I’ve done a long training in wine, and I suppose I love the subject. Well, there’s not much point in that is there, if there’s going to be lies told on the labels.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole’ – his Honour Judge Bullingham was now interested, but somewhat puzzled – ‘I’m not absolutely sure I follow the effect of this evidence. If Mr Vanberry were in the business of selling the inferior stuff we have tasted, and Miss Honoria Bird has tasted, as highly expensive claret surely the deceit would be obvious to anyone drinking…?’

  ‘I’m not suggesting that the wine was in Mr Vanberry’s possession for drinking, my Lord.’ I was doing my best to help the Bull grasp the situation.

  ‘Well, what on earth did he have it for?’

  Of course Vanberry had fixed the burglary at his wine shop just as he had fixed the stealing of his alleged Victorian watercolours, so that he could claim the insurance money on the value of expensive Cheval Blanc, which he never had. No doubt, whoever was asked to remove the swag was instructed to dispose of it on some rubbish tip. Instead it got sold round the pubs in Bromley, where Snakelegs bought it, and was tricked, without his knowledge, into a completely honest transaction, because it was never, in any real sense of the word, stolen property. So I was able to enlighten Bullingham in the presence of the chief prosecution witness, who was soon to become the defendant, in a case of insurance fraud: ‘Mr Vanberry didn’t ever have this wine for anyone to drink, my Lord. He had it there for someone to steal.’