John Mortimer - Rumpole A La Carte

by Rumpole A La Carte(lit)

  The next day, after the police had been called and made their preliminary inquiries. Detective Inspector Wallace and Detective Sergeant Rose, both of the local force, called on Professor Clive Clympton and asked him to account for his movements at around ten o'clock the previous evening. The Professor, who must have remembered what I had told him about the right to silence, said he had no intention of answering 85 their questions. From then on, in all matters of importance concerning the Gunster case, he shut up like an oyster.

  It wasn't only among those accused of crime that silence appeared to be golden. Shortly after the news of Hayden Charles's death had appeared in the papers, I was in my room in Chambers, preparing for an extremely tedious Post Office fraud due in the next day, when Soapy Sam Ballard, Q.c., the sanctimonious leader of our group of legal hacks in Equity Court, put his head round my door and said, 'You're working late.' 'Oh, no,' I told him. 'I'm just arranging my large collection of foreign postage stamps.' 'Are you, really?' 'No, of course not!' The fellow does ask the most idiotic questions. Undeterred by the coolness of my welcome, he made his way into the room, carrying, I couldn't help noticing, a moderate-sized zipper-bag covered in some tartan, and no doubt plastic, material.

  'I just called in to put this away in my room,' Ballard said, as though it explained everything.

  'This what?' 'This bag.' 'Oh, that.' Ballard clearly had more in mind than introducing me to his bag, for he sat in my client's chair and prepared to unburden himself.

  'I wanted to talk to you some time. I mean, Rumpole, how do you find marriage?' 'In my experience, you usually don't. It finds you. It comes creeping up unexpectedly and grabs you by the collar. How's Matey?' I was referring, of course, to Mrs Ballard for whom Soapy Sam had fallen whilst she was the Old Bailey matron, administering first aid to both sides of the law. 'You mean my wife, I assume?' Ballard guessed right. 'You remember the wonderful work she did at the Central Criminal Court?' 'She was a dab hand with the Elastoplast from what I can remember,' I assured him.

  'Much loved, wasn't she, by all you fellows?' 86'Well, let's say, hghly respected.' 'Highly respected Yes!' When we had reached this accord, Ballard seemed stumped for words. He straightened his tie, crossed and recrossed his legs, pulled at his fingers until he seemed in danger of wrenching them off, and finally came out with, 'Rumpole, what's your opinion of seciets? In married life?' 'Absolutely essential.' I had no doubt about it.

  'Is one entitled 10 keep things from one's spouse, for instance?' He asked the question after a good deal of finger pulling and, out of consideration for his joints, I was able to reassure him, 'As rrany things as possible. Everything you tell the other side just pves them material for cross-examination.

  That's the first lessai in advocacy. Bollard.' 'I wanted your opinion because of the slight, well, difference, that has arisen between Marguerite and myself.' 'Who the hell's Marguerite?' I was no longer following the fellow's drift.

  'Marguerite, Runpole, is my wife. The person you call Matey.' 'Oh, yes, of coirse.' My memory was now jogged. 'Why didn't you say so?'But here Ballard drew a deep breath and took me into his corfidence. 'She called into Chambers, having been at her refresler course in sprains and fractures. She doesn't work now, (f course, but she likes to keep her hand in.

  And Henry told her I'd already left. At five o'clock. And he thoughtlessly addec that he imagined I'd gone home because I was carrying my "tirtan bag". He meant this very bag, Rumpole.

  This one!' Ani to remove all doubt, he slapped the small item of luggage on he floor beside him. 'It's most unfortunate that Henry should lave mentioned this bag at all,' he went on mysteriously, 'becaise I never take it home!' 'Oh, naturally rot.' I had no idea what the fellow was talking about.

  'And Marguerite keeps on asking where I was going with this particular bag, he told me. 'I think, quite honestly, she's curious to know aboit what's inside it.' 'I'll look up some of the defences to a charge of carrying 87 house-breaking instruments.' I tried to comfort him with a helpful suggestion. 'Let's say you're doing evening-classes in locksmithery?' 'I've told her that there are certain things, even in married life, which a man is entitled to keep to himself.' He ignored my attempt to treat him like one of my more villainous clients and asked, 'Am I within my rights, Rumpole?' 'Your right to silence,' I reminded him, I hope, correctly, 'it's been yours since Magna Carta!' 'I'm glad you said that.' Soapy Sam seemed enormously relieved. 'I'm very glad to hear you say that, as a married man.' 'Of course, you can't stop the other side thinking the worst,' I warned him.

  'Just at the moment,' Ballard admitted, 'that's exactly what she thinks. Really she needs something to take her mind off it.

  It would make a great deal of difference to Marguerite's happiness if she saw more of you fellows in Chambers.' 'She can see us at any time,' I told him. 'Not that we're much to look at.' 'No. I mean, I think it might be a terrific help if you and Hilda invited her to dinner at your place.' 'Is that what she'd like?' I was greatly taken aback.

  'Well. Yes.' 'You're telling me in confidence that Matey would like to be asked to dinner in Froxbury Mansions?' I was still incredulous.

  'Well, yes. She would.' 'Don't worry,' I promised him, 'I won't breathe a word to Hilda about it.' 'Rumpole!' Ballard gave a plaintive sort of bleat.

  'Oh, well. Come if you want to!' I decided to humour the man. 'Dinner with She Who Must? Your Matey's got a curious idea of fun.' And then I could restrain my curiosity no longer and had to ask, 'What on earth have you got in that bag?' 'I think, Rumpole', Ballard was standing firmly on his rights, 'that's a question I prefer not to answer.' When I got back to the mansion flat I broke the news to Hilda.

  'Ballard's invited himself and Matey to dinner,' I said. 'I fear for the man's sanity. He's carrying round a sort of tartan holdall, the contents of which he refuses to divulge. It makes him look like a Scottish pox-doctor.' But She Who Must Be Obeyed had other news to impart. 'Do stop prattling, Rumpole,' she said. 'Just come along in and listen to what she's got to say.' 'Who's got to say?' 'Audrey, of course. She's got nobody but us to turn to.' I found Audrey Wystan in the living-room. She was one of the apple-cheeked, dark-haired girls with the bright-eyed, enthusiastic appearance of those Russian dolls which come in various sizes. If you can imagine an apple-cheeked Russian doll on the verge of tears, that's how Audrey looked as I joined her.

  'Thank God you've come. Uncle Horace,' she said in a shaky voice to me. 'They've arrested Clive.' 'Clive?' 'Professor Clympton. You remember?' 'Of course. The academic revolutionary.' v 'He wants you to appear at his trial.' At that moment I had only read about Hayden Charles's death in the paper and knew nothing of the questioning of the English Professor or of his possible involvement in the matter.

  So I said he had made a wise choice and asked, 'What sort of trial? Driving whilst tiddly?' 'They say it's murder. He thinks you'll understand.' 'About murder? Well, yes. A little...' 'No!' Audrey said with particular emphasis, as though delivering a message. 'He says you'll understand about keeping silent.' So, accompanied by Mizz Liz Probert, as note-taker and general amanuensis, and Mr Beazley, a small, puzzled Gunster solicitor, who had probably up till then spent a blameless life conveying houses and drafting wills, I turned up in the interview room at Brixton prison to take instructions from the captive Professor. I was surprised by his presence there, as the crime had taken place in the North, but the trial was fixed at the Old Bailey. However, we started by discussing what seemed to be Clympton's principal concern. 'The right to silence,' he said, 'they haven't abolished it yet?' 89 'Not here, old darling,' I reassured him. 'Only in Northern Ireland, where we've handed the forces of evil a famous victory by allowing them to rob us of one of our priceless freedoms.

  Sorry, I'll save that for the Jury. You can still keep your mouth shut, if that's what we think you ought to do. Silence can't be evidence of guilt.' 'Audrey Wystan says you've won a lot of cases,' Clympton began doubtfully.

  'I've won more murders than you've had degrees, Professor.'
'And you've got people off who refused to answer questions?' he asked, anxiously.

  'When I thought it was right for them to do so. Yes.' 'It's right now.' His mouth closed firmly, his beard jutted.

  He seemed to have made up his mind.

  'I'll consider that,' I told him, 'when I know a little more about your case.' 'I've decided already.' In the ensuing quiet I pulled out my watch, lit a small cigar and told him that he had an hour of my time and if he wouldn't discuss the case perhaps he'd rather we talked about Wordsworth.

  'If you like.' He shrugged his broad shoulders and looked sullen. I wondered why young Audrey, and perhaps Mrs Charles, found him so attractive, but men never know that about other men. Then I had second thoughts about the topic for the day. 'No, we shan't agree about Wordsworth. Let's discuss your Vice-Chancellor, Hay den Charles. A slightly built man who crashed through some worm-eaten banisters to his death on a marble floor. Pushed, no doubt, by a stronger opponent. You didn't like him?' 'I didn't like his money-mad politics, or his way of running the University.' 'And Mrs Charles?' 'She was a good friend.' The Professor sounded cautious.

  H, 'As a matter of fact, she reads a lot of poetry.' 'Read it together, do you?' I made so bold as to ask.

  'Sometimes. Mercy's very bright, for an ex-model.' 90'And I'm very bright for an Old Bailey hack. I can see a motive rearing its ugly head.' 'I don't understand.' I think he understood perfectly well, but I spelled it out all the same. 'Husband finds out about his beautiful wife's infidelity. Has it out with the lover in his study on the first floor of his house. A row develops and continues on the stairs. It becomes violent. The lover's bigger than the husband. He takes him by the throat, that's where there were bruises, finger marks but no finger-prints. The lover pushes the husband into the banisters. They're not built of reinforced concrete like the rest of Gunster University and they collapse.

  End of outraged husband. The lover runs out into the night.

  And that, my Lord, is the case of the Prosecution.' I ground out the remains of my small cigar in the top of the cocoa tin provided as an ashtray.

  'The Prosecution can believe that if they want to,' the Professor said at last, with an unconvincing sort of defiance.

  'And if the Jury believes it?' 'They won't have any evidence!' He was making the mistake of quarrelling with his defender, so I decided to confront him with the reality of the matter. 'I'll ask my learned junior to read us the statement of Mrs O'Leary, the housekeeper,' I said. Mizz Probert was quick to find the document in her bundle of papers and recited, 'Statement of Mrs Kathleen O'Leary. "I have been housekeeper at the Vice-Chancellor's house for ten years, and before that I worked for Mr and Mrs Charles in Oxford." Blah, blah, blah. "I have observed an intimate friendship develop between Mrs Charles and Professor Clympton." Blah, blah. "I heard quarrelling on the stairs shortly before 10 p.m. I heard Mr Charles's voice and another man's. All I heard the other man say clearly was something about 'licking the Chancellor's boots'.

  I am quite sure I recognized Professor Clympton's voice."' 'DojyoM think I said that, then?' the Professor challenged me snd again I let him have the uncomfortable truth. 'It seems probable. That's exactly what I heard you say in the hearing of half a dozen other people that afternoon over tea and sandwiches.

  Don't worry, old darling. I'm not going to give evidence for the Prosecution. Someone else might, though.' 9i 'Who?' 'Young Audrey Wystan, for one.' 'She won't.' 'You're very sure of her.' 'Oh, yes. Quite sure.' The Professor, I decided, was behind the door when modesty was handed out.

  'The Professor of Classics?' 'Martin Wayfield's an old friend...' he began but I interrupted him.

  'You were seen earlier by a young man called, What was his name? Peters?' Terkins. He'd just got a degree, ' Mizz Probert found the statement with her customary efficiency and Clympton told us, with a good deal of contempt ', in business studies. He was one of Hay den Charles's favourites.' 'Christopher Perkins saw Professor Clympton at about 9.15 p.m. He seemed to be in a hurry,' Liz reminded us and I reminded the Professor, 'Mrs O'Leary heard the front-door bell ring at twenty to ten. Charles called out that he was going to answer it, so she didn't see whoever arrived. Was it you?' 'No,' Clympton said after a long silence.

  'Then you have to tell us exactly where you went and what you did between nine thirty and just after ten, when Mrs O'Leary found the Vice-Chancellor dead.' But there was no answer. 'Say something to us. Professor,' I begged him. 'Even if it's only goodbye.' After another long silence the Professor took refuge in literature.

  'The sentimental approach to nature in Wordsworth's early poetry,' he told me, 'is his excuse for ignoring the conditions of the urban poor.' 'Say something sensible,' I warned him. 'Because if you don't, the Jury are going to find their own reasons for your silence, however much the Judge warns them not to.' 'Compare and contrast the deeper social message in George Eliot,' was all that Clympton had to say. " 'Where were you that night. Professor?' I tried for the last time, and as he still didn't answer, I stood up to go. 'All right, then. Keep quiet. You're entitled to. But there's one line of 92 :SSWordsworth it might pay you to remember, "All silent and all damn'd!'"

  I can't help experiencing a strong feeling of relief when I walk out of the gates of Brixton prison. It's a case of 'There, but for the Grace of God, stay I.' As we emerged that morning Mizz Probert said, 'What's he got to hide, do you reckon?

  Guilt?' 'Or he was tucked up somewhere with that ex-model girl you were talking about and he doesn't want to give her away,' Mr Beazley suggested.

  'You soliciting gentlemen have got incurably romantic natures,' I told him. 'But there is one thing I can't understand about this case.' 'The silence of the Professor?' 'Not just that. The crime, if it were a crime, occurred up in Gunster, in the wilds of the North, your neck of the woods, Mr Beazley. All the witnesses are up there. But the Prosecution get him committed here in London and sent for trial at the Old Bailey. What's their exquisite reason for that?' 'Search me, Mr Rumpole.' My instructing solicitor was of no assistance.

  'Shall we ever know, my Bonny Beazley?' I wondered. 'Shall we ever know?' It was a time when everyone in Chambers seemed to be coming to me for advice, so that I felt I ought to start charging them for it. I was busily engaged in trying to think out some reasonable line of defence in the Gunster murder when my learned friend, 1 Claude Erskine-Brown, put his head round the door to announce that his wife, Phillida, the Portia of our Chambers, was back from doing a corrupt policeman in Hong Kong..

  'Then she can buy us a bottle of Pommeroy's bubbly on the ( oriental constabulary,' I suggested. 'We can celebrate!' 'Absolutely nothing to celebrate. In view of what she found when she got back.' Claude sat disconsolately in my client's chair and told me his troubles, as a non-fee-paying client. 'I'm "raid I had carelessly left two programmes for Tristan and Isolde at Covent Garden on the kitchen table.' 93 'Pretty scurrilous reading.' I understood the problem at once. 'Was our Portia shocked?' 'She asked whom I'd taken to the Opera.' 'Your wife can always get to the heart of a case, however complicated. She can put her finger on the nub!' 'Of course, I'd been with Liz Probert, as you remember,' Erskine-Brown confessed. 'We had a talk about the future of Chambers in the crush bar at Co vent Garden.' 'And I'm sure that when your wife heard that, Claude, she decided not to press charges.' 'That's exactly the trouble, Rumpole. She didn't hear that.

  In fact, to be perfectly honest with you, I didn't tell her that. I told her I'd taken Uncle Tom.' 'You what?' 'I said I took Uncle Tom with me to the Opera.' 'Uncle Tom?' I couldn't believe my ears.

  'Exactly.' 'To five hours of unmitigated Wagner?' It was incredible.

  'I'm afraid so.' 'You must have eaten on the insane root,' I told the chap, 'That takes the reason prisoner.' 'Well, this is the point, Rumpole.' Claude suddenly became voluble in his own defence. 'I knew Phillida wouldn't have taken well to the idea of Lizzie and me drinking champagne in the crush bar. Although absolutely nothing happened. I mean, Liz bolted off down the undergrou
nd almost as soon as the curtain fell. She even left me with her programme, which is why I had two. But on our way from Chambers earlier, we'd met Uncle Tom and he said it was his birthday, so he was off to buy himself a chop at Simpson's in the Strand, and Lizzie said what a pity we didn't have a spare ticket, so we could take him to the Opera as a treat. Of course we hadn't. But when Phillida asked me for an explanation... Well, Uncle Tom sprang to mind.' I, 'Erskine-Brown', sometimes I despaired of the man ever , becoming a proper, grown-up barrister, 'have you learnt nothing from your long years at the Criminal Bar? If you're going to invent a defence at least make it credible.' 94'The point is', he looked desperate, 'I'm terrified Philly's go ing to ask him.' 'Ask who?' 'Uncle Tom!' 'To another opera?' I was, frankly, puzzled.

  'No, of course not. Ask him if he went with me. And if she does that...' ;.

  'You'll be in the soup. Up to the ears.' The situation was now crystal clear to me.

  'Exactly. Unless he says he did.' 'You're not going to ask Uncle Tom to commit perjury?' 'I've got no influence over Uncle Tom,' Claude admitted, 'but you have, Rumpole. You've known the old boy forever.