John Mortimer - Rumpole On Trial

by Rumpole On Trial(lit)

  The hard-hearted Marigold later told Hilda what her answer was. 'I'm sorry, Guthrie. You've lost your appeal.' She then put down the telephone.

  The operator of the E.S.D.A. machine gave evidence as to the results of the test and now the man I had been waiting for, Chief Superintendent Belmont, stood in the witness-box and answered Miles Crudgington's questions more in sorrow than in anger. He said he had always regarded Roy Gannon as a competent and honest officer until the E.S.D.A. test proved otherwise. He had arranged the test because of questions that were being asked about Morgan's competence to make a confession.

  He had hoped that the result would exonerate his force and was deeply disappointed when it did not do so. There was no question of 'ganging up' on Mr Gannon, but he wanted to test the recollection of the other officers without any prompting from their superior. He would be pleased to stay in the box and answer any questions Mr Rumpole might care to ask.

  'You took a pile of blank confession forms out of Superintendent Gannon's office for the purpose of your test.

  Did you do that surreptitiously?' 'I don't think he knew about it. He was on holiday.' 'And was he on holiday when you demonstrated what you assumed to be his guilt to Inspector Farraday and Sergeant Chesney Lane?' 'I don't think so.' 'But you didn't tell him what you were doing behind his back?' 'At that stage I didn't trust Mr Gannon altogether.' The deadly answer was given with a smile to the Judge, who nodded back his total understanding of the position. I pressed on, undiscouraged, 'So what did you do?' 'I made a report about the information I'd obtained. That was communicated to the Director of Public Prosecutions and then to Mr Morgan's solicitors.' 'So he was set free by the Court of Appeal?' 'Yes.' 'And Superintendent Gannon's left to face the music?' 'If he orchestrated it, yes.' 'You had another officer, didn't you, convicted for perverting the course of justice? Superintendent Pertwee?' 'You do get the occasional rotten apple, Mr Rumpole.' 'Your particular barrel seems to be unusually full of rotten apples, doesn't it, Chief Superintendent? May I suggest where the corruption starts?' 'Where?' 'At the top. With you.' The Chief Superintendent didn't seem in the least startled.

  He went on smiling politely and said, 'That's a very interesting suggestion.' 'Mr Rumpole, I'm sure you understand you're taking a great risk in making these accusations against the Chief Superintendent.' Guthrie was affecting deep concern, as though trying to save the mad old Rumpole from committing forensic suicide.

  'A risk? Oh, we all have to live dangerously from time to time, don't we, my Lord?' And I continued my attack on the charming Belmont. 'I don't know what you were up to exactly,' I told him. 'I don't suppose many of the C.I.D. officers knew either, but Superintendent Pertwee rumbled you. So he had to be persecuted, accused of associating with criminals, and then have a false charge of planting dope trumped up against him.' Tertwee was convicted after a trial by jury.' Belmont's voice was only a little harsher, only slightly less reasonable.

  'Oh, yes, Chief Superintendent. And so was Pinhead Morgan. Did my client, Mr Gannon, come to you and say he thought Pertwee might have been framed?' 'I don't remember that.' 'And was that why you had to get rid of Gannon also? And was that why you had to make it look as though he'd forged a confession?' 'So far as I was concerned, he had forged a confession.' 'So far as you were concerned? It may interest the Jury to know just how far that was. Just look at that document, will you?' By now the usher had reached Chief Superintendent Belmont with my trump card and prize exhibit. He glanced at it with an apparent lack of interest. 'Is that a photostat copy of page two of Morgan's confession?' I asked.

  'His alleged confession.' 'We won't argue about that for the moment. The handwriting is Mr Gannon's?' 'It would seem to be.' 'Peel it with your finger. Chief Superintendent. Look at it very closely. Has someone gone over every letter with a pencil, pressing down hard?' Belmont went through the operation half-heartedly and then, in a silent courtroom, he said, 'I can't tell.' 'Oh, yes, you can! I suggest someone did that so the impression of the letters would appear on the blank pages under it.

  Then it would look to the machine as if that page had been written later. You're not suggesting that Mr Gannon manufactured this evidence against himself, are you?' At last the witness was at a loss for words, but his Lordship asked me where the document in question had come from.

  'From the Chief Superintendent's office,' I was able to tell him.

  I suppose I hadn't totally obliterated the once entirely confident Belmont. He hadn't fainted, or burst into tears, or begged the Judge to release my client without a stain on his character, or confessed to perverting the course of justice.

  But, as cross-examinations go, I felt it rated at least nine out of ten and I went down to the cells, with the attendant Bernard, expecting a word or two of gratitude. What I got was something entirely different. I might have been an uncooperative murder suspect Gannon had to interview as he greeted me with, 'What the hell are you doing, Mr Rumpole?' 'Defending you, and rather well, though I say it myself.' 'All that you put to the Chief Superintendent. What's the public going to think?' 'What's the Jury going to think? That's what interests me.' But Roy Gannon was thinking of wider issues, and they clearly worried him. 'If that's going on at Chief Superintendent level, who've they going to trust?' 'Come on, Mr Gannon', I tried to bring him back to the business in hand, 'you had your suspicions about Pertwee's conviction. That was why Belmont was out to get you.' 'You can't prove that.' 'We've got a witness, Roy,' Bernard told him.

  'Who?' 'Chesney Lane. We weren't certain he'd come out with it in the witness-box. They've been trying to shut him up, apparently.'

  'I don't blame them,' Roy Gannon nodded, understanding his enemies. 'Let young Chesney blow the whole division, the Chief Superintendent and Geoff Farraday? That's really going to take the tin lid off it!' 'I imagine he's going to tell the truth.' I had never had a less self-interested client.

  'Do you think that's going to make it any better?' The Detective Superintendent looked doubtful.

  'Better for you. We might even get you off.' 'I mean, better for the police?' It was time, I realized, to make my position clear, so I gave him half a minute of the Rumpole creed. 'Listen to me, Mr Gannon. Listen. The police, the Judges, the public interest, the interests of justice, all those big words, those big ideas they're too much for me, altogether too much. I've got a job to do. Maybe it's a small job, but to me it seems important.

  I'm here to see that no one gets banged up for a crime they probably didn't do. That's quite likely to happen to you, unless you help me.' But Gannon still looked doubtful and shook his head. 'I don't want young Chesney saying all that out in public.' 'Think about it, Roy,' Mr Bernard told him. 'You've got until tomorrow to think about it.' The next morning Miles Crudgington was in a particularly confident mood. He no doubt thought that I'd shot my bolt with Belmont and had no evidence to support the attack. So he told the Judge that Detective Sergeant Lane could corroborate D.I. Farraday's evidence. He would therefore tender him as a witness in case Mr Rumpole had any questions.

  Mr Rumpole had plenty of questions but would his client let them be asked? I turned to take instructions and saw Mr Bernard standing by the dock muttering to our client.

  'Have I any questions?' I asked in a resonant whisper. To my relief it seemed that good sense and Bernard had prevailed so I turned, in the friendliest manner, towards the witness.

  'Detective Sergeant Lane, since you made your original statement, have you thought further about the matter?' 'Yes, I have.' 109 'And now?' 'Now I want to tell the truth.' The answer riveted the attention of the Jury and took the Judge by surprise. My opponent seemed about to rise and object but then thought better of it. So I ploughed on steadily.

  'When you and Detective Inspector Farraday were alone with Pinhead, did Mr Farraday say something to him?' 'He said he'd get Ted Yeomans's mate to do him over.' 'Did Mr Gannon know anything about that threat?' 'Not that I know of.' 'But the next day Pinhead Morgan made a confession to the Superintendent?' 'Yes,
he did. He said, "I'm sorry I cut the copper. I was all excited, what with the car racing and that."' 'You heard Pinhead say that?' 'Yes, I did.' 'Can you tell whether he said it because D. I. Farraday had threatened him or because it was true?' 'How can he possibly answer that?' My opponent could no longer keep still.

  'Thank you, Mr Crudgington. I'm grateful to my learned friend for giving the answer I wanted.' Having disposed of the interruption I turned back to the witness. 'Mr Lane, is that a photostat of page two of the confession Mr Gannon wrote out?' Once again the usher took the trump card back to the witness-box.

  'Yes, it is.' 'What can you tell us about it?' Chesney Lane picked up the page and felt it with his finger, and discovered the secret of the case like a blind man reading Braille. 'Someone's gone over every letter with a pencil pressed hard down on the paper. I imagine that was done to show indentations on the sheets under it.' 'Don't let's have what he imagines!' The radical lawyer was up again.

  I quite agree. Let's only have what he knows to be true.

  Where did you find that document?' And then Detective Sergeant Lane told us. 'It was in a file I brought from Chief Superintendent Belmont's office. It no looked as though someone was trying to frame Roy Gannon.

  So I decided to keep hold of it.' 1 'Thank you very much, Mr Chesney Lane.' And I was, in fact, exceedingly grateful. 'Just wait there, will you? In case my learned friend can now think of something to ask you.' After this evidence, despite Miles Crudgington's heroic efforts to discredit another copper, the Jury's verdict was a foregone conclusion. When it had been delivered, I parted with my client, who still looked saddened by the way I'd won his case, at the Old Bailey entrance. 'It's a funny thing,' he said. 'When Pinhead was found innocent, there was cameras and crowds and cheering supporters. It's very quiet now, isn't it?' I thought, on the whole, this was how he wanted it.

  In spite of my client's doubts and reservations I had had what I thought of modestly as a bit of a triumph in court, and before I got back to my Chambers in Equity Court I was able to solve another mystery. Coming up Fleet Street I saw our new secretary, Miss Dot Clapton, coming out of the Take-aBreak sandwich bar with her lunch in a paper bag. She was clearly hungry as she withdrew a sandwich, took a furtive bite and then popped it back into the bag as she heard me call, 'Dot! Just a word, if you'd be so kind. Been buying your sandwiches, have you?' 'Is that what you wanted to ask me?' 'No, not exactly. Been dancing with any more judges lately?' 'You heard about that?' Dot smiled engagingly. 'Poor old chap, he was looking that miserable. And he danced so funny!

  The way my dad used to.' 'So you danced. Well, I can understand that. Even judges may feel the need to dance occasionally. But Dot, ' And then I tried to frame a question as difficult as any I'd had to ask in even the most delicate case. 'You'll have to help me. After the ball was over. Was there anything? Any sort of-?' Dot was quick to come to my assistance. 'Did we knock it off? Is that what you mean?' in 'Yes. Well, it probably is.' 'Do me a favour, Mr Rumpole. You have to be joking!' 'Yes. Well, yes. I probably am.' Dot Clapton was still laughing as I left her to her sandwiches. She was, if anyone ever was, a reliable witness.

  I don't often play bridge, but when I heard that Hilda was going to sit down to cards with Marigold Featherstone and a woman called Josephine Tasker, who 'couldn't count her points', I decided, in the absence of any more serious crime, to join them. I partnered Hilda and, at the end of one game, She Who Must Be Obeyed and I were six down. When She accused me of overbidding in the most ridiculous manner, I had to agree. 'I was boasting,' I told them, and when Josephine Tasker left the table to order tea, I repeated, 'Boasting.

  Without a word of truth. Just like poor old Guthrie.' 'Guthrie?' Marigold Featherstone pricked up her ears.

  'Why do you say "like poor old Guthrie"?' 'He had no points but he bid high. He'd only gone for a drink with our clerk and the amateur actors, but he boasted of some great amorous conquest. Of course, no one could ever be foolish enough to believe him.' 'You mean, nothing happened?' Marigold seemed never to have considered the possibility.

  'Nothing whatsoever. When I inquired of the young lady concerned she burst into laughter at the mere idea.' 'Laughter? I really don't see that Guthrie's as funny as all that.' Lady Featherstone looked a little miffed.

  'I think what so upset Marigold, Rumpole,' Hilda explained, 'was that Guthrie should have discussed it in the Sheridan Club.' 'Yes,' Marigold agreed. 'Why on earth should he do that?' 'Don't you know?' I asked them both. 'Because the poor chap was terribly unhappy.' Unhappy?' Marigold was incredulous. 'What on earth's Guthrie got to be unhappy about?' 'Well, he'd been pissed on from a great height.' 'Rumpole!' Hilda warned me. 'You are in my bridge club!'

  'Sorry, Hilda. I mean, he's had a considerable amount of dirty water thrown over him by the Court of Appeal. And then the one woman he's ever really loved was far away and he was missing her dreadfully. So he tried to cheer himself up. Perhaps he danced a step out of time to the music. Nothing more.' 'But he confessed.' 'There's no evidence more unreliable than a confession.

  Don't imagine people tell the truth about themselves. They'll say all sorts of things because they're afraid, or vain, or want to boast about things they never did and to impress a few chaps in the Club. Guthrie's confession would never have got past the Court of Appeal.' 'Really? Is that what you think, quite honestly?' 'Sure of it.' 'And who's this only woman he's ever really loved, in your opinion?' 'Someone not a million miles away from this table, Marigold.' Only one other thing. Marigold had been sleeping behind a locked door in the matrimonial bedroom while Guthrie passed unhappy nights in the spare room. After our afternoon's bridge, she later told Hilda, she at last opened the door to his Lordship's tentative knock. 'You may come in now, Guthrie,' his wife told him, 'but for heaven's sake, don't boast about it in the Sheridan Club.' My daily round doesn't often bring me into contact with the upper crust, those who figure in Debrett and fill the gossip columns. I don't imagine they are any more law-abiding than the rest of society, but their crimes, drug abuse for the young hopefuls and city frauds for the dads, seldom come Rumpole's way as they tend to hire the most expensive, and not necessarily the best, legal hacks available. In Froxbury Mansions the blue-blooded didn't appear, nor were they much discussed until She Who Must Be Obeyed began to take in Coronet magazine, a glossy publication given to chronicling the goings-on in stately homes.

  We were seated at breakfast one morning and I was reading the papers in a committal I was doing in Thames Magistrates Court when Hilda suddenly said, 'How extraordinary! The french-Uffingtons are together again. His romance with Lady Fiona Armstead is apparently over.' As I could make nothing of this, I gave her even more startling news from my brief. 'Walter "The Wally" Wilkinson walked into Beddoes Road nick uninvited and confessed to the Southwark triple murder. Isn't that even more extraordinary?' Totally uninterested in this curious event, Hilda continued to read the news from her copy of Coronet. 'And here's Harry ffrench-Uffington enjoying a joke with his lovely wife, Myrtle, during the Save the Starving Ball at the Dorchester Hotel.' 'A sixty-year-old man of no fixed address. The Old Bill washed him down, thanked him very much and locked him up!' I interrupted her and then let her into the past life of The Wally. 'Form: drunk in charge, numerous; theft, numerous also, fraud on the social services. Pretty downmarket stuff for a triple murderer.' 'Lord Luxter's put on weight', was Hilda's news. 'Don't you remember him when he was so slim and handsome on the polo field?' 'Please, Hilda. Do you know any of these people?' 'You can read all about them in Debby's Diary in Coronet magazine.' ' You can read all about them. I've never heard of them.' 'Well, you should, Rumpole. Then you might learn about gracious living. You might get out of the habit of blowing on your tea to cool it down.' 'I'm in a hurry!' I explained. 'What do you expect me to do, fan it with my hat?' 'Ah. There it is!' Hilda turned a page and cried triumphantly, 'That's what I was looking for! Sackbut Castle.' 'What're you going to do with it, Hilda, now you've found it?' 'Seat of the Sackbut fami
ly since the fourteenth century,' She read out. 'Romantic setting near Welldyke on the Yorkshire Moors. The iyth Baron Sackbut occupies the private wing with his young second wife, Rosemary, nee Wystan. You see, Rumpole, it's not all about people you've never heard of.' 'You mean this Rosemary Sackbut, whatever?' 'Nee Vystan, Rumpole!' 'It doesn't ring a bell,' I had to confess.

  'Oh, really. What's my name, Rumpole?' 'She Who Must, I mean Hilda,' I corrected myself hastily.

  'Hilda what 'Hilda Rumpole, of course.' During the above exchange I was darting into the hall and back to the kitchen and collecting the hat and mac while polishing off the remnants of my breakfast.

  'Oh, well done!' She congratulated me ironically. 'Now, then. Hilda Rumpole, nee whaty 'Oh, I see! Nee Wystan!' 'Uncle Freddie's son was Hungerford Wystan, who went into Assorted Chemicals, and Rosemary's his youngest. She's my first cousin once removed,' Hilda explained.

  'Once removed to a castle?' 'So that's why I take in Coronet. I knew Rosemary'd turn up in it sooner or later.' 'Section 62 committal,' I muttered as I packed the brief away in my bag. 'We'll try and get The Wally's conviction chucked out in the Magistrates Court.' 'Oh, Rumpole!' Hilda was looking at me with disapproval.