The Second Rumpole Omnibus

by John Mortimer

  ‘The deceased was a well-nourished man, forty-five years old, with no signs of disease,’ Lieutenant-Colonel Borders told us. ‘There were indications of a fairly recent high consumption of alcohol and a heavy meal. Death had been caused by a stab wound, with a flat, sharp object such as a knife which entered the abdomen and penetrated the abdominal aorta.’

  I will not weary the reader with an account of the Army Pathologist’s evidence-in-chief. It followed the lines of his statement and was thorough, painstaking and predictable. I opened my cross-examination with a dramatic performance which Captain Sandy had suggested and now staged with relish. He stood up with his back to me as I put an arm about his neck and appeared to stab him from behind with my pencil.

  ‘One arm across the windpipe to stop the victim crying out and an upward stab from the back, penetrating the heart. Isn’t that the accepted military manner of using a knife, Doctor?’ I asked as I acted the commando role.

  ‘That is the method taught in commando training.’ Borders was clearly distressed by our courtroom histrionics.

  ‘But the Sergeant had a knife jabbed into the stomach?’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  ‘So inexpertly that it might not even have been fatal?’

  ‘It might not have been.’

  ‘If it hadn’t happened to penetrate the aorta?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘It looks far more like a civilian than a military job, doesn’t it, Doctor?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ was as far as the witness would go, but Sandy whispered, ‘Oh, I like it,’ as he resumed his seat, his great moment over. I just hoped he would enjoy the rest of my cross-examination as much.

  ‘And the knife – there’s nothing to indicate that it was a bayonet?’ I asked the Pathologist.

  ‘As I have said, I believe the blade was flat.’

  ‘Not a bayonet or any sort of army knife?’

  ‘There is no particular indication of that,’ Borders agreed.

  ‘It could’ve been the sort of sharp, pointed carving-knife available in any kitchen?’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’ He was finding the cross-examination easier than he had expected and was relaxed and smiling round the court. No one, I noticed, smiled back.

  ‘Available to any civilian?’

  ‘Available to Helmut!’ the irrepressible Captain Sandy whispered as the witness answered, ‘Yes.’

  ‘So far so good but I knew I was coming to an area of likely disagreement. I decided to lull the witness into a feeling of false security, hoping he would be taken by surprise when the attack was launched. I leant forward, spoke in a silken voice and poured out a double dose of flattery: ‘Lieutenant-Colonel Borders, you are a very distinguished and experienced patholigist and no doubt you carried out a most thorough post-mortem examination.’

  ‘Thank you.’ The witness preened himself visibly. ‘Indeed I did.’

  ‘And we are all most grateful for the enormous trouble you have clearly taken in this matter.’ George joined in the smiles now and the witness was even more grateful. ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘Rarely have I heard such absolutely expert evidence!’ Well, I wasn’t on oath.

  ‘You’re very kind.’

  ‘Just one small detail. What were your conclusions about the frock?’

  ‘The frock?’ He looked puzzled and I knew I was on to something.

  ‘There is a cut in the scarlet frock the Sergeant was wearing and a good deal of staining. Of course you fitted the hole in the dress to the hole in the body?’ I assumed politely.

  ‘I don’t think I did.’ The Lieutenant-Colonel looked at the Court as though it were a point of no importance, and I looked at him with rising and incredulous outrage. Finally, I managed a gasp of amazement on the word ‘Indeed?’

  ‘The dress was a matter for the Scientific Officer. I don’t believe I examined it at all.’

  ‘Lieutenant-Colonel Borders!’ I called the man to order. ‘Are you representing yourself as an expert witness?’

  ‘I am.’ There was a flush now, rising to the roots of the ginger hair.

  ‘A person capable of carrying out a post-mortem examination in a reasonably intelligent way?’

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘And you can’t even tell this Court’ – I spoke with rising fury – ‘if the Sergeant was wearing the frock when he was stabbed, or if it was cut and put on him after his death?’

  ‘No, I can’t tell you that, I’m afraid.’ Again he did his best to make it sound as irrelevant as the weather in Manchester.

  ‘You’re afraid?’ I gave my best performance of contemptuous anger. ‘Then I’m afraid you’re unlikely to have sufficient expertise to be of much assistance to the Court on another vital matter.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole…’ George was trying to call a halt to this mayhem, but I had done with the cape and was moving in with the sword and not to be interrupted. ‘I refer to the time of death. Have you any useful contribution to make on that matter?’

  ‘Mr Rumpole.’ George could contain himself no longer. ‘I know that you are in the habit of conducting murder cases at the Old Bailey with all the lack of inhibition of, shall we say, a commando raid.’

  ‘Oh, sir.’ I smiled at the old darling. ‘You’re too kind.’

  ‘I think I should make it clear that the Army expects far more peaceful proceedings.’ George spoke as severely as he knew how. ‘The Military Court is accustomed to seeing all witnesses treated with quiet courtesy. I hope you’ll find yourself able to fall into our way of doing things.’

  ‘I’m extremely grateful, sir.’ I thought it best to apologize. ‘The Court will excuse me if I showed myself, for a moment, to be as clumsy and inexpert in my profession as this officer clearly is in his…’

  ‘Mr Rumpole!’ George was about to launch another missile in my direction, but I turned to the witness. ‘Lieutenant-Colonel. Tell me, is that higher than a colonel?’

  ‘No, lower.’ Borders was not pleased.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sure you’ll soon earn promotion. You came from England to do this post-mortem?’

  ‘Yes. I was flown out from the U.K.’

  ‘And were you told the brief facts of the case?’

  ‘I was told that the suspect had been in a disco where the Sergeant had been seen by witnesses around 01.00 hours.’

  ‘And a telephone call about the stabbing had been received by the Police at 03.45 hours. So when the Army Doctor arrived at 04.15 hours the Sergeant could only have been dead, say, about three hours?’

  ‘That is so.’

  ‘And yet there was a definite progress of rigor mortis?’

  ‘Yes. That was found.’ Borders was wary of another attack, and this was the vital part of my case. I pressed on quickly: ‘Which you would not normally expect in the first three hours after death?’

  ‘Rigor has been known to occur within thirty minutes,’ he told me, who had won the Penge Bungalow case on rigor, among other factors.

  ‘In very exceptional cases,’ I told him.

  ‘Well, yes…’

  ‘And the temperature of the body had dropped by some six degrees.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I have here Professor Ackerman’s work The Times of Death in which he deals with falling temperatures.’ In fact this volume, together with my old Oxford Book of English Verse, had been my constant bedtime reading in Germany. ‘Let me put this to you. Normally wouldn’t that indicate death at least six hours before?’

  ‘It was a cold night in November, if you remember.’

  ‘That is your answer?’ I hope I sounded as though I couldn’t believe it.

  ‘Yes.’ Borders looked at the faces of the Court members for comfort and received none. ‘Hypostasis,’ I gave him the word as though I thought he might not have heard it before. ‘The staining caused by blood settling down to the lower parts of the body after death. Were there not large areas of staining when the body was found? Just look at the photographs.’ Borders op
ened the volume of post-mortem photographs on the witness table in front of him and I thought that he did so somewhat reluctantly. ‘Isn’t that degree of staining consistent with death, let’s say, some six hours earlier?’

  ‘It might be consistent with that, yes,’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘Hypostasis is subject to many variations.’

  ‘In fact everything in those photographs is consistent with death having occurred around nine o’clock on the previous evening!’

  ‘Mr Rumpole…’ George was now looking genuinely puzzled.

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Aren’t you forgetting your own client’s statement? And the statements of Troopers Finch and…’

  ‘Goldsmith, sir,’ I helped him.

  ‘Goldsmith. Exactly so. They saw the Sergeant in the disco at 1 a.m. He could hardly have died at nine the previous evening.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Isn’t there some sort of biblical parallel?’ This was all the help I’d give old George. I said to the witness, ‘One other little matter on the photographs. Are there not a number of pale patches on the stains?’

  ‘Yes, there are.’ He was looking at the pictures as though he hated them.

  ‘Representing places where the body rested. Doesn’t that indicate one thing clearly to you?’

  ‘What do you mean exactly?’

  ‘What do I mean? Exactly? I mean that the body had been moved after death. That’s what I mean.’

  There was a long pause, and then another reluctant admission from the witness who said, ‘I think that may very well be so.’

  It was over. A bit of a triumph, as I hope you will agree. I awarded myself two ears and a tail as I said, ‘Thank you very much, Lieutenant Borders,’ extremely politely and sat down.

  Modestly satisfied as I had been with my cross-examination of the Army Pathologist, it had in no way delighted Captain Sandy Ransom, who sank lower in his seat during the course of it. As we came out of Court at the end of the day he was grumbling, ‘Died by nine o’clock. He couldn’t have! By nine o’clock he hadn’t even met Helmut.’

  ‘Helmut, of course.’ I did my best to sound apologetic. ‘Why do I always seem to forget about Helmut?’

  ‘We thought we were getting an ordinary barrister. Do ordinary barristers try so damned hard to get their clients convicted?’ Sandy was very angry. ‘Someone’s got to do something for that boy!’ And he moved off to liberate his lurcher.

  Then I heard the soft voice of a young woman who had clearly learnt to speak English with a Glasgow Irish accent.

  ‘Mr Rumpole! About the blood on Danny’s cuff…’ I turned to her and it was impossible, in spite of Mrs Wilson’s evidence, to think of her as English or German – she was just an extremely beautiful girl in very great distress. ‘Yes, I am Hanni Boyne. It was the old shirt,’ she told me. ‘He wore it when he had the fight. I hadn’t washed it, you see. Then he wore it again that night. He didn’t remember. I will say all that to them.’

  I bet you will, I thought. What lies love makes people tell, for I couldn’t imagine Hanni failing to wash Danny Boy’s shirts. ‘I really shouldn’t be talking to you about your evidence,’ I told her. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Lieutenant-Colonel Mike Watford coming out of Court.

  ‘You will do your best for Danny, sir. We have been so happy, so awfully happy. The three of us.’ I knew she was telling the truth then, but all I could do was mutter something about the case going reasonably well – nothing of any real use to her when she was sick for certainties – and take Mike Watford’s arm and steer him to a quiet end of a marble-paved corridor and under the ponderous stone arches.

  ‘Soft you, a word or two before you go, Mike,’ I started, doing my best to cash in on the past. ‘We used to get on moderately well, didn’t we, when you were an articled clerk with Butchers & Stringfellow.’

  ‘I always enjoyed our cases,’ Mike admitted.

  ‘Went after the evidence, didn’t we, and got at the truth on more than one occasion?’

  ‘You always had a nose for the evidence, Mr Rumpole.’

  ‘So did you, as a young lad, Mike.’

  ‘All this flattery means you’re after something.’ Lieutenant-Colonel Watford was not born yesterday.

  ‘Oh, young Mike, as astute as ever. Be honest, you’re not happy about the evidence on the time of death are you?’

  There was a silence then. Mike Watford stopped walking and looked at me. I knew it would not be his style to tell me anything less than the truth. ‘To be honest, not particularly.’ And then he asked me. ‘When do you think it was?’

  ‘The time? Around 21.00 hours, as you would say,’ I told him. ‘The place, the bottom of the iron staircase outside the Sergeant’s married quarters. Looked for any blood traces round there, have you?’

  ‘No. As a matter of fact.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, young Mike Watford! What do you want to do? Win your case or discover the truth?’

  ‘I think the Army would want us to discover the truth.’ He had no doubt about it.

  ‘Then, old darling, may I make a suggestion?’ And I walked on with him, giving him a list of things to do as I had when we had worked together so happily down the Old Bailey.

  When I got back to the barracks I sought an appointment with the Colonel. After I had seen him, I went back to my quarters and soaked for a long time in the excellently hot water provided by the British Army. I wondered how many times I had washed away the exhaustion of a day in Court, and the invisible grime which comes from a long association with criminal behaviour, in an early evening bath-tub. Then I put on a clean shirt and walked across the darkened barracks square to the Mess.

  My journey was interrupted by the roar and rattle of a jeep which drew up beside me. Captain Sandy Ransom and his lurcher jumped out, and I saw, with some sinking of the heart, that he was holding a rather muddy black leather jacket. ‘Triumph!’ he shouted at me. ‘I’ve found it. I’ve found the evidence.’

  It seemed that he had gone for a walk by the old Badweisheim canal after what he regarded as an extremely unsatisfactory day in Court. The lurcher had started to sniff around in a pile of loose earth, and there, by chance, someone had tried to bury the clear indication of their guilt. ‘It’s Helmut’s jacket.’ Sandy had no doubt about it.

  ‘Of course it is,’ I agreed, and went on to a more important matter. ‘I’ve spoken to your colonel and he’s dining in the Mess tonight. I hope you can join us.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to ring Watford?’ For a moment Sandy looked like a schoolboy deprived of a treat. ‘Aren’t you going to tell the Prosecution about the new evidence?’

  ‘I really think that can wait until after dinner.’

  We were once again a small gathering in the Mess: Colonel Undershaft, Major Sykes, Captain Ransom, Lieutenant Hammick and Ross, who was that night’s Duty Officer. When the port was on the table I sat back and addressed them, having refused to answer any questions during the service of the usual excellent dinner. I felt that I was speaking to them as though I were in Court, and they formed the tribunal who would finally have to decide the strange case of the murder of Sergeant Jumbo Wilson. First I filled my glass and sent the decanter on round the table.

  ‘I know you don’t usually toast the Regiment after dinner,’ I started, ‘except on formal evenings in the Mess. But it’s such a power over you all, isn’t it, the Regiment? Blenheim, Malplaquet, Waterloo, Balaclava, El Alamein,’ I intoned, looked round at them and raised my glass:

  ‘This seraph-band…

  It was a heavenly sight!

  They stood as signals to the land,

  Each one a lovely light.

  And the Regiment always rallies round a seraph in trouble. You told me that, didn’t you, Sandy?’

  ‘Of course we do.’ Sandy was opposite me, nodding through the candlesticks. ‘That’s why we got you out here. Not that you’ve done much for the boy so far.’

  ‘So when Sergeant Wilson was stab
bed to death,’ I went on with my final speech, ‘you couldn’t have it said that it was done by a seraph, could you? Not by one of the heavenly band. Far better that the crime should have been committed by an unknown German called Helmut with a black leather jacket and a punk hairdo. Who better to take the blame, after all, than one of the old enemy? An enemy from the war you’re all too young to remember.’

  ‘Are you suggesting that the officers of this regiment…?’ The Colonel had never looked more deeply disturbed.

  ‘Not the officers, Colonel,’ I hastened to answer him. ‘One officer, the joker in the pack. Of course, pinning the crime on the mysterious Helmut took a lot of organization and a good many risks. But perhaps that was part of the attraction. It took the place of war.’

  The Mess was very quiet; Borrow had left us. Old generals and defunct colonels on their rearing chargers looked down on us. Behind the flickering candles, Sandy was smiling. Hugh Undershaft asked me exactly what I knew.

  ‘I’m not sure what I know, Colonel. Not for certain. But I’ll tell you what I think. I think Danny Boy and his mates met by the dustbins at the foot of the Sergeant’s staircase and found him there. Dead. I think they told an officer. An officer who was there. With a jeep – his usual method of transport. Danny helped this officer move the body, hence the blood on his cuff. It was the Sergeant’s blood not the blood of another mysterious German. Then the lads, the young seraphs, went into Der Rosenkavalier so they could lie and say they’d seen the Sergeant there after midnight. Meanwhile, the Captain of the Seraphs was unloading a body in a dark alley…’