Arengo-Smythe turned out to be a large man, but his bulk, as he sat in my client's chair, was curiously ill-defined and he seemed blurred at the edges. He looked ageless and his plump features were drained of colour, as if he had already, as Hilda would say, dropped off the twig. His hands were large, damp and looked soft, as though his fingers were made of putty. He spoke in a high, piercing North Country accent, as though he were playing the Dame in a principal pantomime, standing with his hands clasped over his stomach and calling, 'Where's that naughty boy Aladdin now?' This was the customer to whom it was my clear duty to put the indictment. When he had heard the charge against him, his voice rose to a raucous protest.
'Fraud and false deception, Mr Rumpole. Do you honestly think my spirit people would descend to that?' 'Well. Some of them might, I suppose. I mean, they're not all saints, are they? There must be quite a few villains among dead people. Con men, forgers, three-card tricksters. There's no reason to suppose that they're not all kicking about the other side, as you call it.' 'They may be there, Mr Rumpole. But White Owl would spot them a mile away. He can separate the wheat from the chaff can White Owl. He would never allow three-card tricksters in my front room.' 'Even dead ones?' 'Particularly dead ones.' 'Just remind me...' I searched through the open brief on my desk. 'Who is White Owl?' 'An ancient chief of the Sioux Indians, Mr Rumpole.' Mr Bernard, my instructing solicitor, was used to repeating impossible defences in a dead-pan manner. 'He copped it, apparently, at the battle of Little Big Horn.' 'Not copped it, Mr Bernard, if you don't mind. The spirit people do not cop it. They pass over.' 'What is alleged is a perfectly simple con trick.' I brought the meeting back to reality. 'You charged your customers no less than 50 pounds a session.' 'Summoning up the spirit people can be very draining.' 'You persuaded the punters that they were hearing the voice of this fellow White Fowl.' 'White Owl, please, Mr Rumpole. The Sioux people are extremely sensitive.' 'I beg his pardon. White Owl, you said, could foretell the future?' 'All the spirit people can, Mr Rumpole. You'll be able to as well, when you've passed over.' 'Really? I can't wait. It's further suggested', I refreshed my memory from the Prosecution statements, 'that Woman Police Constable Battley, who attended a seance, pretending to be a member of the public...' 'I could tell her sort at once, Mr Rumpole. Blood red, that was the colour of her aura.' 'All the same you took her fifty quid and allowed her a punt at the passed over. White Owl apparently came through, after a good deal of delay.' 'White Owl can be a naughty boy on occasions, Mr Rumpole. He doesn't always want to come when he's sent for.' 'Later she left the room under the protest of needing the lavatory.' 'Lying bitch! You'll trip her up on that one, won't you?
When it comes to my day in court?' 'She went into the door of the next room and discovered your sister Harriet crouched over a microphone.' 'Harriet's hobby is electricity, Mr Rumpole. It always has been, ever since we were nippers together.' 'The W.P.C. immediately summoned the help of Detective-Sergeant Webster, who was waiting outside the front door, armed with a search-warrant. On entering your flat he found the microphone connected to a small and unobtrusive speaker taped under the table where your seance was going on.' 'Are they suggesting that my sister and I were cheating, Mr Rumpole? Be quiet now, White Owl.' He said this to some unseen presence, apparently hovering near his left shoulder, and flapped at it with a large, white hand in the manner of a man trying to deter a mosquito. 'Don't interrupt when I'm trying to talk to Mr Rumpole. White Owl is getting a bit aerated, sir. He feels this case is a personal insult to him, quite honestly.' 'Don't worry about White Owl. He's safely outside the jurisdiction. It's you, Mr Arengo-Smith, they might put in the slammer.' 'Arengo-Smythe.' My client looked pained.
'Whichever. Was your sister Harriet connected to your living-room?' 'Yes, of course. She rigged that up so we could chat when we were working in different rooms. We're working on a history of the occult. We carry on a great tradition, Mr Rumpole, which goes back to Merlin, and he was By Appointment at the Court of King Arthur.' 'A fellow who ended up entangled in a thorn bush, from what I can remember. Well now, what's your defence, Mr ArengoSmythe?' Understandably my client was at a loss for an answer. Then he said, 'You know Mr Samuel Ballard, don't you? He will vouch for me.' 'That may not, of itself, be enough to establish your innocence.' And then I looked at him, filled with curiosity.
'What exactly did you tell my not-so-learned Head of Chambers?' 'I told him what White Owl had seen when he came for a sitting with his wife.' 'And what was that?' 'A terrible black cloud hanging over the i4th of December.
A day of extraordinary danger. What will you be doing on that precise date yourself, Mr Rumpole?' 'Defending you down the Old Bailey!' I tried to say it as cheerfully as possible. 'By the way, when you're next chatting to White Owl, ask him to have a few words with the late Sir Edward Marshall-Hall. It will need a brilliant stroke of advocacy to save you, old darling.' As I walked down Fleet Street to Ludgate Circus to start, with no especial enthusiasm or hope of success, the case of R. v. Arengo-Smythe, I happened to catch up with Soapy Sam on his way to one of the lengthy tax prosecutions in which he is used to lulling the Jury to sleep. I hailed the man and told him I was defending his soothsayer.
'I know you are, Rumpole. I recommended you to him. By the way, I was very impressed by Arengo-Smythe and so was Marguerite. He seemed to have an uncanny power of seeing into the future. You'll get him off, won't you?' 'Perhaps. If the Judge and the Jury have all passed over.
He gets on extremely well with the dead.' Ballard digested this and then asked what I thought was a somewhat naive question.
'He's not bent, is he?' 'Of course not. Straight as a corkscrew. Oh, I forgot. He no doubt brought you tidings of great joy about your future as Mr Justice Ballard, the terror of the Queen's Bench.' 'He told me something in confidence, Rumpole. That was why I didn't think it would be proper to act for him myself. I told him that, for some reason, you had a remarkable record in securing acquittals.' 'Didn't he also tell you to beware the i4th of December?' 'He did say he saw a black cloud hanging over that date, yes. That's why I thought it unwise to get the workmen into Chambers.' 'Particularly as we've got a remarkably superstitious downstairs loo.' When I was robed and wigged and ready for the fray, I glanced at the date on the Old Bailey notice-board announcing our case as that day's attraction. It was 13 December and it was set down for two days.
Our Trial Judge was Mr Justice Teasdale: a small, highly opinionated and usually bumptious person who was unmarried, lived in Surbiton with a Persian cat, and had once achieved the considerable feat of standing as a Conservative candidate for Weston-super-Mare North and losing. The trial, turning as it did on matters arcane and communication with the dead, seemed to affect his nerves. He looked jumpy and seemed anxious to find a simple, scientific explanation for Arengo-Smythe's alleged gift of second-sight.
His Lordship was therefore greatly relieved at the police evidence, and the description of the wire which stretched from a microphone in one room to the little speaker taped under the table next door. Sister Harriet, who was found with this device, had conveniently taken refuge in a complete nervous breakdown before the trial and a doctor had certified that she was quite unfit to give evidence for either the defence or the prosecution. However, the W.P.C. told us what she had seen and Detective Sergeant Webster produced the, mechanism, a microphone and a speaker connected by yards of discreet, darkly coated wire.
'Did you take this electrical equipment from my client's flat straight to the police station?' I asked the Detective Sergeant, more to kill time than because I had hit upon any brilliant line of defence.
'Yes, sir, I did.' 'And has anyone made any alteration or adjustments to it since you took it?' 'I'm sure they haven't, sir.' 'Just let me look at it, will you?' The usher came round with the exhibit in a plastic bag. I took the microphone out and looked at it, trying to seem knowledgeable on the subject of sound systems. I undid the long coil of flex and started to follow it to its connection with the small speaker. And
then I saw something which seemed to offer Arengo-Smythe an unexpected, and perhaps undeserved, escape from his troubles.
The wire divided at the speaker. It looked old and rusted and one of the small screws had dropped out and only one strand was connected. With no talent for science even I knew that this was a serious fault. When the contraption was handed round the Jury, a collection of amateur electricians and Do It Yourself enthusiasts, it was clear that on the night of the visit of W.P.C. Battley, the date of the charge against my client, the hotline to Harriet Arengo-Smythe couldn't possibly have been working.
'The device was out of order. Well, of course, I knew that. It hadn't worked for years.' Arengo-Smythe was in the witnessbox answering my questions.
'Did your sister know it too?' 'Oh, no. I let her carry on. She thought she was helping the spirits come through, you see. She'd done that since we started our work with the occult. That was before we charged for sittings, of course.' He was familiar enough with worldly matters to add the last sentence, calculated to save him from the charge of attempted fraud.
'So when the Woman Police Constable came to your seance, there was no voice coming down the wire?' 'Certainly not.' 'Then where was it coming from?' the Judge asked with considerable trepidation.
My client, his large head turned as he looked over his shoulder, carried on an inaudible conversation with someone unseen.
'Mr Arengo-Smythe!' The Judge was becoming testy. 'Who on earth do you think you're talking to?' 'No one on earth, my Lord. It's White Owl. He always wants to have his say. There's no keeping him quiet.' 'Who is this White Owl?' The Judge glared accusingly at me from behind his rimless spectacles. 'Do you know, Mr Rumpole?' 'Oh, yes, my Lord. White Owl is a Sioux Indian who, unhappily, lost his life at the battle of Little Big Horn.' 'Well, tell your client to get rid of him at once. I'm not having him here. This is a court of law, Mr Rumpole. Not a darkened sitting-room in Earl's Court. Now, then. What's your case? Where do you say the voice came from?' Ever ready with a familiar quotation, I was able to intone: 'There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy.' This thought made his Lordship extremely uneasy.
'Members of the Jury, the question you have to answer is: did Mr Arengo-Smythe have the intention to deceive? It's clear now that the Prosecution case of deception has broken down like that old and useless line between the two rooms. My client has told you that he knew it was broken. But the voice of the deceased White Owl was coming from somewhere. From where. Members of the Jury? That is the question you have to ask yourselves.
Is it just possible that the restless and talkative Sioux had entered that little sitting-room? Or is it possible that my client genuinely believed that he had? Either way. Members of the Jury, the Prosecution wouldn't have proved its case and Mr Arengo-Smythe would be entitled to be acquitted.' I made the best speech possible in the circumstances and, the Judge summed up nervously, as though half expecting an outraged and uncontrollable interruption from White Owl.
Someone, he pointed out, had spoken in the darkened sittingroom.
If it was not the microphone, as now seemed certain, was it the defendant disguising his voice or performing some act of ventriloquism? If it were his voice, did he honestly believe that he was possessed by some spirit who had died many years ago in Montana Territory? Or was it possible that some sort of paranormal manifestation had indeed taken place?
The Jury must remember that even Mr Rumpole had not suggested that any of White Owl's predictions had proved correct. His Lordship then left the matter in their hands, with some relief, and popped out of court for a cup of tea and a breath of fresh air.
Whether the credit should go to me or White Owl, our day was crowned with success. After a long retirement, the Jury, having tussled with the mystery, were not convinced of my client's guilt. Sometimes a thousand (wangling instruments Will hum about thine ears; and sometime voices That, if I then had waked after long sleep, Will make me sleep again...
Let's hope.' Hilda was silenced by Shakespeare, but a few seconds later She was at it again. 'You know who it is, don't you?' 'How would I know who it is?' 'So you admit it's someone.' A great cross-examiner was lost when Hilda didn't take to the Bar. 'No doubt it's one of your business associates.' 'What on earth do you mean?' 'It's some burglar or other.' I tried to reason with her. I asked her why any halfway intelligent burglar would break into our flat for the sake of a few bottles of Pommeroy's plonk, a rented television set and her old friend Dodo Mackintosh's watercolour of a rainy afternoon in Lamorna Cove.
'I don't know, Rumpole.' Hilda thought the matter over.
'Why don't you go and see?' The bed was warm, I'd had a hard day in front of the Recorder at the Bailey and was due for a harder one in the morning. I opted for the line of least resistance and said, unwisely, 'No need to make trouble for the fellow.' 'So you admit it's someone.' She spotted the weakness of my defence. 'Are you afraid to find out who it is?' 'Don't be ridiculous!' 'But are you?' 'I'm well known as an entirely fearless advocate. I don't mind what I say to judges.' 'I don't believe it's a judge in there, Rumpole, poking about among our things. The point is, are you afraid of burglars?' 'It's not a burglar, Hilda.' I shut my eyes and yawned as positively as I could. 'It's a figment of your imagination.' 'All right, then, prove it.' 'I can't, I'm asleep.' 'Or is that another job you'd rather leave to a woman?' If it hadn't been dark I would have seen, I'm sure, that Hilda's glance was withering. She climbed out of bed and went off to battle.
Well, there are limits even to the Rumpole reluctance to interrupt burglars about their business. I was shamed into putting on a dressing-gown and, when I entered our sitting-room, I found Hilda, armed with an umbrella, prepared to repel invaders.
The room seemed to be burglar-free, the television set was still with us and Dodo's view of Lamorna Cove had found no takers. However, the window was open and the night air was stirring the curtain above the table where I had left a brief.
'You see, Rumpole, the window's open.' She thought it proved her case.
'Didn't we leave it open?' 'I'm not sure.' 'We'd make the most terrible witnesses. But this is rather odd.' I was looking at my brief in the case of the Queen against Joby Jonson, accused of the robbery with violence of a seventy-five-year-old lady in the Euston area. Working on the papers before we went to bed I had left them, as I usually do, scattered over the table and in no particular order. Now they had been put together and neatly tied up. I undid the pink tape and started to check. Meanwhile, Hilda was going through the drawers in the bureau. 'Money. Chequebook.
Mrs O'Thingummy's wages still in her envelope,' She said.
'Nothing's missing.' 'Something is.' 'What?' I'll 'The proof of evidence of Joby Jonson, the sixteen-year-old robber of old-age pensioners. His defence, such as it is, has melted into air, into thin air.' 'So somebody was here.' Hilda was triumphant. She was also right. She usually is.
At that period, when the rising wave of crime finally engulfed Froxbury Mansions, Claude Erskine-Brown was waiting, poised unhappily between elation and despair, to discover whether the Lord Chancellor had awarded him a silk gown and permitted him to write the letters Q.C. ('Queer Customer' is what I always say they stand for) after his name. If you want to become of Her Majesty's Counsel learned in the law you have to apply, with the support of a few judges, and await the outcome with bated breath.
So on the morning after our burglary, the Erskine-Browns were at breakfast in their tarted-up Islington house. As Phillida, the Portia of our Chambers, was reading The Times the conversation, I should guess from my knowledge of subsequent events, went something like this.
'Any sort of news in the paper today, Philly?' Claude would have asked as he poured skimmed milk on his muesli.
'Some sort of news, yes,' his wife told him. 'Danger of war in Bulgaria. Earthquakes in South America. Renewed threat of global warming.' 'No, I mean important news. The list of the new Q.C.s, for instance.' 'Look for yourself.' Phillida offered him The Time
s, but sudden fear overcame him. 'No, Philly, I'm not brave enough to look for myself. I don't think I could put up with another disappointment.' The truth of the matter is that the unfortunate Claude had applied for Silk five years running, and his name had not yet appeared on the magic list. Now Phillida read out some slightly more relevant news. 'The list of Queen's Counsel will be announced by the Lord Chancellor next month. It's expected to include Tabitha Merryweather, the brilliant Ghanaian woman civil-rights lawyer from Miles Crudgington's radical Chambers in the Edgware Road.' 'Nothing to say I'll get it?' Claude was downcast.
'Nothing to say you won't. I mean, you've asked often enough. They'll probably give it to you for persistence.' 'We all know you got it first time.' His tone may have become somewhat bitter.
'Rather a fluke, actually.' 'It wasn't a fluke.' Claude gave voice to a long-held grievance.
John Mortimer - Rumpole On Trial Page 17