The Second Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  ‘No one tampered with her brakes,’ I was able to reassure him.

  ‘She hasn’t been questioned, has she? Not… not arrested?’

  ‘There’s no statement from Mrs Gleason among the prosecution documents.’

  ‘They’re not going to arrest her?’

  ‘Not… as far as we know.’

  ‘Can’t we find out?’

  ‘I suppose Mr Driscoll could have a word with the prosecution solicitor,’ I suggested. ‘Just in an idle chat on the phone, couldn’t you, Driscoll? See if there’s any intention of proceeding against Mrs Gleason for any offence…’

  ‘I can’t decide anything until I know about Amanda,’ Hugo Lutterworth told us, and I wondered, idly but aloud, what offence he thought she might be charged with.

  ‘I’d rather not say anything’ – my client looked nobly resolute – ‘not till I’m sure Amanda’s safe. Do you understand?’

  ‘No, Mr Lutterworth’ – I was beginning to lose patience with all this nobility – ‘I’m not at all sure that I do understand. This isn’t Gardeners’ Question Time, you know. I didn’t come all this way for a nice chat about the herbaceous border. We’re here to discuss matters of life and death.’

  And then he gave me an answer which struck a kind of chill into the air of the over-centrally-heated cell. ‘Gardening is really a matter of life and death,’ he told us. ‘Things either do well, or you just have to pull them up and throw them on the bonfire. There’s no room for mercy in gardening.’ When we left our client he was going to consider taking us into his confidence once he had established that his precious Amanda Gleason was in the clear; but I thought that if he talked as ruthlessly about Captain Gleason’s ‘accident’ as he had about gardening I might be saying goodbye to Sir Lancelot for about five years.

  While we were in Worsfield I asked Mr Driscoll to show me the scene of the crime. The Garden Centre was surprisingly large and seemed well cared for. The slope in front of the gates was fairly steep, and led down to the busy junction where heavy lorries were frequently passing. My instructing solicitor took in all these facts and said, ‘It’s so out of Lutterworth’s character.’

  ‘Know him well, do you?’

  ‘Oh, for years. And his father too. You know I always thought Hugo was almost painfully honest. That’s why he needed a bit of protection in the partnership agreement.’

  ‘Old Sir Lancelot was probably pretty honest,’ I told him, ‘until he started messing around with Queen Guinevere.’

  ‘I suppose if Hugo gets sent away, Gleason’ll have to sell this place.’ We had wandered into the gates of the Garden Centre and were standing in the Cheap and Cheerful Shrub Department. ‘One of those horrible great supermarkets has been after this site for years. Hugo was dead against selling. He’d built up the business, really. And he lived for his flowers. I say, we had better go, this is rather embarrassing.’

  Mr Driscoll was looking out towards the hardy perennials. I saw an elderly, ill-tempered-looking man, walking with a stick. Beside him was a red-haired beauty, pale and with that rather self-conscious air of spirituality which makes Pre-Raphaelite pictures so irritating. She walked with her arm in his; Queen Guinevere was making a fuss of King Arnold. Domestic harmony seemed to have been restored.

  I am running ahead of myself. My pre-trial visit to Worsfield Gaol occurred after my separation from Mrs Horace Rumpole. I had walked away from the taxi across the park with a lightness of step and a curious feeling of elation which I hadn’t felt, perhaps, since the Jury brought in their not guilty verdict in the Penge Bungalow Murders. As I walked past the sleeping pelicans and towards Big Ben and shivered slightly in the night air, I began to consider the question of lodgings for the night. At first, in my enthusiasm, I considered the Savoy, but I soon remembered that very few people are able to stay at that inn on legal aid. So I turned my footsteps towards what I now regarded as my real home, Equity Court in the Temple, London E.C.4.

  I had no doubt that my separation from Hilda was then permanent. What is a man, after all, but his old jokes, and to be matched with a wife who spurned them seemed to me a fate considerably worse than death. As I walked I repeated some lines by Percy Bysshe Shelley not, for some reason, known to Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch or included in my old India-paper edition of The Oxford Book of English Verse. Rather an irritating young man in many ways, Percy Bysshe, and unable to hold a candle to the Great Wordsworth, but he had some telling phrases on the subject of marriage, the ‘beaten road’ he called it:

  Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread,

  Who travel to their home among the dead

  By the broad highway of the world, and so

  With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe,

  The dreariest and the longest journey go.

  My own journey was to freedom and Equity Court, and then I remembered a few minor drawbacks about the place. Our Head of Chambers, Soapy Sam Ballard, Q.C., was intent on declaring the place a smoke-free zone, banning all cheroots, panatellas, whiffs and fags, so that our Chambers might, as he put it, stand shoulder to shoulder with the Clean Air Brigade. He was also constantly reminding us that the lease specified that our home from home should be used ‘for business purposes only’, and not for any form of domestic life. A fellow named Jeffrey Mungo had recently been evicted from his Chambers in Lincoln’s Inn for using them as a bedsitter. Despite this terrible warning, I thought I could probably settle fairly comfortably into my room at Equity Court, and Ballard would be none the wiser.

  It cannot be said, however, that the suspicions of our Head of Chambers were not aroused. At our next Chambers meeting when we assembled to discuss the vital questions of the hour (Dianne’s request for a rise in salary to keep up with the increased cost of nail varnish and women’s magazines, or the escalating consumption of Nescafé), Ballard’s desk was littered with a number of exhibits: Item One, a yellowish shaving-brush, still damp; Item Two, one tub of shaving soap; Item Three, one safety-razor (Gillette) and a slightly rusted blade. As those present gazed upon these articles in some bewilderment, Ballard opened the proceedings on a solemn note.

  ‘Standards in Chambers,’ he told us, ‘must be kept up. We must give the impression of a tight and happy ship to the solicitors who visit us…’

  ‘Aye, aye, Cap’n!’ I felt it was appropriate to mutter.

  ‘I was hearing of a set in Lincoln’s Inn, where they had trouble with a tenant cooking in his room.’ Ballard ignored my interruption and then Uncle Tom (T. C. Rowley, our oldest and briefless inhabitant) gave us a passage from his memoirs: ‘Old Maurice MacKay had a pupil from Persia, I recollect. This fellow gave a birthday party and roasted half a sheep in the middle of Maurice’s Turkey carpet.’ Whereupon Ballard, feeling perhaps, that the case might be diverted into other channels, called our attention to the exhibits. ‘These things’ – he glanced at them with distaste –‘were found in the upstairs lavatory when the cleaning lady arrived this morning. The discovery was immediately reported to our clerk, Henry, who took them into his custody. Does anyone lay claim to them? They seem to be articles of antique shaving-tackle.’

  ‘Well, they’re certainly not mine,’ Portia assured us.

  ‘Of course they didn’t have takeaway dinners in those days…’ Uncle Tom rambled on. ‘He ended up as a Prime Minister somewhere.’

  ‘Who did?’ Erskine-Brown asked.

  ‘Old Maurice MacKay’s pupil. The one who cooked the sheep…’

  ‘Rumpole’ – Ballard reasserted his command – ‘do you know anything about these objects?’

  ‘Oh, I never plead guilty, my Lord. Sorry I can’t join in the fun, got to get down to a little place in the country.’ I rose to leave the meeting.

  ‘Your weekend cottage, Rumpole?’ Uncle Tom asked.

  ‘No. Worsfield Gaol.’

  I had been summoned to a second conference with Hugo Lutterworth, who had, it seemed, something to impart. Mr Driscoll had been assured there was no prosec
ution of Mrs Amanda Gleason intended, but she had, a fact we didn’t know at the time, visited Lutterworth in prison. When I called on him, he immediately told me that he had no further need of my services. As you can see, it was not a period of unmitigated success in the Rumpole career.

  ‘You’re giving me the sack?’ I couldn’t help it, my spirits were a little dashed.

  ‘It’s just I don’t see what you can do for me. It was my fault, you see. Entirely my fault. I know that perfectly well.’

  ‘Couldn’t you think of me as an endangered species?’

  ‘What?’ Lutterworth was puzzled.

  ‘Avocatus minimus volubilis, the lesser-booming barrister.’ I lit a comforting small cigar. ‘We’re being flushed out of our natural habitats in Crown Courts and before the Magistrates. Batty bureaucrats are going to take away our right to juries and shift the burden of proof and leave us defenceless. Soon we’ll be replaced by a couple of chartered accountants and a good computer. If you care for conservation at all, Mr Lutterworth, help save the barrister.’ My client looked seriously concerned – not much of a sense of humour in Sir Lancelot. ‘Do one thing for me. Let me cross-examine the prosecution witnesses. Let’s just see if they’ve got a case.’

  ‘No harm in that, Hugo.’ Mr Driscoll advised him.

  ‘All right.’ Hugo Lutterworth thought it over and appeared to be prepared to do something to save the Rumpole from extinction. ‘But I can’t go into the witness-box and give evidence. I can’t say anything that might implicate Amanda.’

  So I would be fighting a hopeless battle with one hand tied behind my back. Things did not go entirely smoothly either, in my stay at Equity Court. I had settled down moderately comfortably, and, much to my surprise, there was no message or telephone call from Mrs Hilda Rumpole, and I certainly did not lift the telephone to her. Well, I had little enough time on my hands, what with visits to Worsfield and fending off the unwelcome attentions of our Head of Chambers.

  Soapy Sam Ballard, strolling down Fetter Lane, happened to glance into the window of Sam Firkin’s barber-shop, where he saw Rumpole well-lathered, reclining in a chair and receiving the attention of Sam’s cut-throat razor, to be followed by a hot towel and a dash of astringent lotion. From this glimpse he deduced, as Erskine-Brown told me much later, that I must either be in funds to enjoy the luxury of having myself shaved, or, and this seemed to him the more likely explanation, I had lost my shaving-tackle when our cleaning lady, Mrs Slammery, found it apparently abandoned in Chambers’ upstairs lavatory.

  Resolved to make further inquiries, Ballard called late at Chambers and was rewarded, again my informant is my learned friend, Claude Erskine-Brown, with a glimpse of a bedroom slipper and, above it, a portion of flannel-pyjama’d leg disappearing up a darkened stairway. He went in hot pursuit and beat on Rumpole’s locked door, calling out my name repeatedly but answer came there none. One morning he arrived at Chambers early and asked Mrs Slammery, who was sweeping the doorstep, if she had seen me, but she was unable to help in his inquiries. I then turned up, full of bacon and eggs from the Taste-Ee-Bite.

  ‘Rumpole,’ Ballard pounced on me. ‘What on earth are you doing?’

  ‘Arriving at work,’ I assured him, ‘as I have been these last forty years.’ Not satisfied with this answer he pursued me up to my room and began a minute examination of the broken-springed couch in the corner under the bookcase.

  ‘I see you make yourself quite at home here, Rumpole.’ He did his best to sound sarcastic. ‘A person could easily sleep on that old Chesterfield.’

  ‘Of course. Care for forty winks?’

  ‘Filthy ash-tray.’ He examined the object in question.

  ‘Mrs Slammery hasn’t flipped her magic duster yet.’

  ‘I think I’d better warn you. I’m proposing that Chambers becomes a smoke-free zone, in accordance with present-day medical advice.’

  ‘You’re what?’ I assumed surprise, although, of course, I had wind of Ballard’s great plan from Erskine-Brown.

  ‘It’s not enough to abstain oneself. It’s the other fellows’ poison getting up your nostrils.’

  ‘You want to ban smoking in Chambers?’ I had to be sure of the prosecution case.

  ‘That is my intention.’

  ‘You can’t do that!’

  ‘I imagine the proposal will command pretty general support.’

  ‘It’s entirely illegal…’ I peered back into the distant days at Keble when I had been up on Constitutional Law in a Nutshell.

  ‘What?’ Ballard appeared somewhat taken aback.

  ‘It would be against our ancient rights of freedom, those great principles of justice our fathers fought and bled for. It would be clean contrary to Magna Carta.’

  ‘I bow to your superior knowledge of history, Rumpole. Could you just remind me which clause in Magna Carta deals with smoking?’

  ‘No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or destrained on or exiled or denied the comfort of the occasional cheroot… unless by the lawful judgement of his peers!’ I gave him the sonorous quotation he asked for. ‘I know you’re remarkably ignorant of the common law of England, Bollard… however encyclopedic your knowledge of the Rent Laws and the Factory Acts.’

  ‘Ah! Talking of which…’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘The Factory Acts.’

  ‘Do we have to?’

  ‘I think we do. These Chambers, Rumpole…’

  ‘To which you are a comparative newcomer,’ I was at pains to remind him.

  ‘… are designated as a place of work. This is not a doss-house. As your Head, I’m not in the business of running a hotel or some sort of Salvation Army hostel!’

  ‘What are you suggesting?’ I appeared not to follow his drift.

  ‘I’m simply suggesting that you’ve been living in here, Rumpole. Sleeping rough.’ He darted to a cupboard and pulled the door open, finding nothing but a few books and an umbrella. ‘Last night I saw a pyjama leg!’

  ‘I expect you did – on retiring for the night.’

  ‘When I came in here. Late. After dining in Hall with Mr Justice Gwent-Evans. I called into Chambers and I distinctly saw a leg in pyjamas… beating a hasty retreat towards your room, Rumpole!’

  He ended triumphantly, but I only looked at him in a sorrowful and pitying fashion. ‘Lay off it, Bollard,’ I said.

  ‘It’s a matter I intend to pursue, for the benefit of the other tenants.’

  ‘Please! Lay off the booze. That’s what I mean. Keep off the sauce. Cut down on the quaffing! I know what you Benchers get up to at the High Table in Hall. No wonder you’ve started seeing things!’

  ‘Things?’ Now he was struggling to follow my drift.

  ‘Pyjama legs now’ – I ostentatiously lit a small cigar – ‘in a little while it will be elephants. And pink mice crawling up the curtains. Look, why don’t you lie down quietly, sleep it off before you go blundering across the road and make a complete pig’s breakfast of a Planning Appeal?’

  At this Ballard coughed, equally ostentatiously, and moved towards the door.

  ‘I’m absolutely firm on my principles,’ he said. ‘This is not the end of the inquiry. Remember Mungo.’

  ‘Mungo?’ I pretended ignorance of the Lincoln’s Inn squatter.

  ‘He tried to save money by moving into his Chambers. He was found heating tins of Spaghetti Bolognese on the electric fire. Jeffrey Mungo has been given three months’ notice to quit!’

  ‘Cut down on the port, Bollard.’ I looked at him sadly. ‘May you find the strength to kick the habit. I shall pray for you.’

  So the first attack by our Head of Chambers was repelled. Some nights later I was seated at my desk by the roaring electric fire as usual of an evening, dining on Château Fleet Street and a takeaway curry, tastefully served on a silver-paper dish from the Star of India, half-way up Chancery Lane. I was reading The Oxford Book of English Verse, and had reached what to my mind is one of the old sheep of the Lake District’s
finest, a sonnet I really had no need to read, as I had its inspiring lines by heart.

  It is not to be thought of that the Flood

  Of Rumpole’s freedom, which, to the open sea

  Of the world’s praise, from dark antiquity

  Hath flowed, ‘with pomp of waters unwithstood’…

  should perish.

  Then there was a knock on the door; I hastily covered my oriental dinner and The Oxford Book with a brief, and Mrs Phillida Erskine-Brown marched in. She had been working late and was wearing her glasses. ‘Ballard knows all about it,’ she said, coming to the point at once.

  ‘Ballard knows all about what?’

  Phillida lifted the statement of evidence and exposed my half-eaten dinner. ‘You. Eating these takeaway curries in Chambers.’

  ‘How on earth?…’

  ‘Really, Rumpole. After nearly half a century of mixing with criminals you might have picked up a few tips. At least don’t leave the evidence scattered around your waste-paper basket. Mrs Slammery’s been finding Star of India placky bags around the place for days.’

  ‘I don’t see that it proves a thing. Is there anything wrong with a fellow, exhausted after a long case, taking a mouthful of Chicken Bindaloo on his way home?’

  ‘But you’re not.’

  ‘Not what?’

  ‘Not on your way home.’

  ‘Perhaps… not exactly.’ There was no doubt she had hit upon a weak spot in my defence, and our Portia was now staring at me over the top of her glasses, barking questions in the way I had, long ago, taught her to deal with a hostile witness. My lessons had clearly been well learnt.

  ‘What do you mean, not exactly? You’re either on your way home or you’re not. Or do you make a vague shot at Froxbury Court and sometimes miss?’

  ‘Not exactly…’

  ‘Rumpole, do try and answer the question.’ She sighed with that weary patience I often adopt in Court. ‘I put it to you, you’re living in Chambers!’

  ‘Not exactly living…’

  ‘The Oxford Book of English Verse – isn’t it your regular bedside reading?’ And when I merely shrugged my shoulders, she pressed the point home. ‘Why don’t you answer? Are you afraid you might be incriminated?’