B This story, which ends with mysterious happenings on the high seas, began in the old Gravestones' Chambers in the Law Courts, where I was making an application one Monday morning.
'Mr Rumpole', his Lordship looked pained when I had outlined my request, 'do I understand that you are applying to me for bail?' 'Yes, my Lord.' I don't know if he thought I'd )ust dropped in for a cosy chat.
121 'Bail having been refused,' he went on in sepulchral tones, 'in the Magistrates Court and by my brother judge, Mr Justice Entwhistle. Is this a frivolous application?' 'Only if it's frivolous to keep the innocert at liberty, my Lord.' I liked the phrase myself, but the Judge reminded me that he was not a jury (worse luck, I thought) and that emotional appeals would carry very little weight with him. He then looked down at his papers and said, 'When you use the word "innocent", I assume you are referring to your client?' 'I am referring to all of us, my Lord.' I couldn't resist a speech. 'We are all innocent until found guilty by a jury of our peers. Or has that golden thread of British justice become a little tarnished of late?' 'Mr Rumpole', the Judge was clearly unmoved, 'I see your client's name is Timson.' 'So it is, my Lord. But I should use precisely the same argument were it Horace Rumpole. Or even Mr Justice Graves.' At which his Lordship protested, 'Mr Rumpole, this is intolerable!' 'Absolutely intolerable, my Lord,' I agreed 'Conditions for prisoners on remand are far worse now than they were a hundred years ago.' 'I mean, Mr Rumpole,' the Graveyard explained, with a superhuman effort at patience, as though to a half-wit, 'it's intolerable that you should address me in such a manner. I cannot imagine any circumstances in which I should need your so-called eloquence to be exercised on my behalf.' You never know, I thought, you never know, old darling. But the mournful voice of judicial authority carried on. 'No doubt the Prosecution opposes bail. Do you oppose bail, Mr Harvey Wimple?' Thus addressed, the eager, sandy-haired youth from the Crown Prosecution Service, who spoke very fast, as though he wanted to get the whole painful ordeal over as quickly as possible, jabbered, 'Oppose it? Oh, yes, my Lord. Absolutely.
Utterly and entirely opposed. Utterly.' He looked startled * when the Judge asked, 'On what precise grounds do you oppose bail, Mr Wimple?' But he managed the quick-fire answer, 'Grounds that, if left at liberty, another offence might be committed. Or other offences. By the defendant Timson, my Lord. By him, you see?' 'Do you hear that, Mr Rumpole?' The Judge re-orchestrated the piece for more solemn music. 'If he is set at liberty, your client might commit another offence or, quite possibly, offences.' And then, losing my patience, I said what I had been longing to say on some similar bail application for years. 'Of course, he might,' I began. 'Every man, woman and child in England might commit an offence. Is your Lordship suggesting we keep them all permanently banged up on the off-chance? It's just not on, that's all.' 'Mr Rumpole. What is not "on", as you so curiously put it?' The Judge spoke with controlled fury. It was a good speech, but I had picked the wrong audience. 'Banging up the innocent, my Lord.' I let him have the full might of the Rumpole eloquent outrage. 'With a couple of psychopaths and their own chamber-pots. For an indefinite period while the wheels of justice grind to a halt in a traffic jam of cases.' 'Do try to control yourself, Mr Rumpole. Conditions in prisons are a matter for the Home Office.' 'Oh, my Lord, I'm so sorry. I forgot they're of no interest to judges who refuse bail and have never spent a single night locked up without the benefit of a water closet.' At which point. Graves decided to terminate the proceedings and, to no one's surprise, he announced that bail was refused and that the unfortunate Tony Timson, who had never committed a violent crime, should languish in Brixton until his trial. I was making for the fresh air and a small and soothing cigar when the Judge called me back with 'Just one moment, Mr Rumpole. I think I should add that I find the way that this matter has been argued before me quite lamentable, and very far from being in the best traditions of the Bar. I may have to report the personal and improper nature of your argument to Proper authorities.' At which point he smiled in a nauseating manner at the young man from the Crown Prosecution Service d said, 'Thank you for your able assistance, Mr Harvey simple.' * 123 'Had a good day, Rumpole?' She Who Must Be Obeyed asked me on my return to the mansion flat.
'Thank God, Hilda,' I told her as I poured a glass of Pommeroy's Very Ordinary, 'for your wonderful sense of humour!' 'Rumpole, look at your face!' She appeared to be smiling brightly at my distress.
'I prefer not to. I have no doubt it is marked with tragedy.' I raised a glass and tried to drown at least a few of my sorrows.
'Whatever's happened?' She Who Must Be Obeyed was unusually sympathetic, from which I should have guessed that she had formulated some master plan. I refilled my glass and told her: 'I could a tale unfold', Hilda, 'whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, ; Thy knotted and combined locks to part, / And each particular hair to stand on end, / Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:...' ' 'Oh come on, I bet it wouldn't.' My wife was sceptical.
'What you need, Rumpole, is a change!' 'I need a change from Mr Justice Graves.' And then I played into her hands, for she looked exceptionally pleased when I added, 'For two pins I'd get on a banana boat and sail away into the sunset.' 'Oh, Rumpole! I'm so glad that's what you'd do. For two pins. You know what I've been thinking? We need a second honeymoon.' 'The first one was bad enough.' You see I was still gloomy.
'It wouldn't've been, Rumpole, if you hadn't thought we could manage two weeks in the South of France on your fees from one short robbery.' 'It was all I had about me at the time,' I reminded her.
'Anyway, you shouldn't've ordered lobster.' 'What's the point of a honeymoon,' Hilda asked, 'if you can't order lobster?' 124 'Of course, you can order it. Nothing to stop you ordering,' I conceded. 'You just shouldn't complain when we have to leave three days early and sit up all night in the train from Marseilles.
With a couple of soldiers asleep on top of us.' 'On our second honeymoon I shall order lobster.' And then she added the fatal words, 'When we're on the cruise.' 'On the whatT I hoped that I couldn't believe my ears.
'The cruise! There's still a bit of Aunt Tedda's money left.' As I have pointed out, Hilda's relations are constantly interfering in our married lives. 'I've booked up for it.' 'No, Hilda. Absolutely not!' I was firm as only I know how to be. 'I know exactly what it'd be like. Bingo on the boat deck!' 'We need to get away, Rumpole. To look at ourselves.' 'Do you honestly think that's wise?' It seemed a rash project.
'Moonlight on the Med.' She Who Must became lyrical.
'The sound of music across the water. Stars. You and I by the rail. Finding each other, after a long time.' 'But you can find me quite easily,' I pointed out. 'You just shout "Rumpole!" and there I am.' 'You said you'd sail away into the sunset. For two pins,' she reminded me.
'A figure of speech, Hilda. A pure figure of speech! Let me make this perfectly clear. There is no power on this earth that's going to get me on a cruise.' During the course of a long and memorable career at the Bar, I have fought many doughty opponents and won many famous victories, but I have never, when all the evidence has been [heard and the arguments are over, secured a verdict against She Who Must Be Obeyed. It's true that I have, from time to tune, been able to mitigate her stricter sentences. I have argued successfully for alternatives to custody or time to pay. But I have never had an outright win against her and, from the moment she suggested we sail away, until the time when I round myself in our cabin on the fairly good ship S.S. Boadicea, steaming out from Southampton, I knew, with a sickening 125 certainty, that I was on to a loser. Hilda reviewed her application for a cruise every hour of the days that we were together, and at most hours of the night, until I finally threw in the towel on the grounds that the sooner we put out to sea the sooner we should be back on dry land.
The Boadicea was part of a small cruise line and, instead of flying its passengers to some southern port, it sailed from England to Gibraltar and thence to several
Mediterranean destinations before returning home. The result was that some of the first days were to be spent sailing through grey and troubled waters. Picture us then in our cabin as we left harbour.
I was looking out of a porthole at a small area of open deck which terminated in a rail and the sea. Hilda, tricked out in white ducks, took a yachting cap out of her hat box and tried it on in front of the mirror. 'What on earth did you bring that for?' I asked her. 'Are you expecting to steer the thing?' 'I expect to enter into the spirit of life on shipboard, Rumpole,' she told me briskly. 'And you'd be well advised to do the same. I'm sure we'll make heaps of friends. Such nice people go on cruises. Haven't you been watching them?' 'Yes.' And I turned, not very cheerfully, back to the porthole.
As I did so, a terrible vision met my eyes. The stretch of deck was no longer empty. A grey-haired man in a blue blazer was standing by the rail and, as I watched, Mr Justice Graves turned in my direction and all doubts about our fellow passengers, and all hopes for a carefree cruise, were laid to rest. ' "Angels and ministers of grace defend us!" It can't be. But it!' 'What is, Rumpole? Do pull yourself together.' 'If you knew what I'd seen, you wouldn't babble of pulling myself together, Hilda. It's him} The ghastly old Gravestone in person.' At which I dragged out my suitcase and started to throw my possessions back into it. 'He's come on the cruise with us!' t, 'Courage, Rumpole', Hilda watched me with a certain contempt, 'I remember you telling me, is the first essential in an advocate.' 'Courage, yes, but not total lunacy. Not self-destruction.
Life at the Bar may have its risks, but no legal duty compels me to spend two weeks shut up in a floating hotel with Mr justice Deathshead.' 'I don't know what you think you're going to do about it.' She was calmly hanging up her clothes whilst I repacked mine.
'It's perfectly simple, Hilda,' I told her, 'I shall abandon ship!' When I got up on the deck, there was, fortunately, no further sign of Graves, but a ship's officer, whom I later discovered to be the Purser, was standing by the rail and I approached him, doing my best to control my panic.
'I've just discovered,' I told him, 'I'm allergic to graves. I mean, I'm allergic to boats. It would be quite unsafe for me to travel. A dose of sea-sickness could prove fatal!' 'But, sir,' the purser protested. 'We're only just out of port.' 'I know. So you could let me off, couldn't you? I've just had terrible news.' 'You're welcome to telephone, sir.' 'No, I'm afraid that wouldn't help.' 'And if it's really serious we could fly you back from our next stop.' And he added the terrible words, 'We'll be at Gibraltar in three days.' Gibraltar in three days! Three days banged up on shipboard with the most unappetizing High Court judge since Jeffreys hung up his wig! I lay on my bed in our cabin as the land slid away from us and Hilda read out the treats on offer: '"Daily sweepstake on the ship's position. Constant video entertainment and films twice nightly. Steam-bath, massage and beauty treatment. Exercise rooms and fully equipped gymnasium", I think I'll have a steam-bath, Rumpole, "First fancy-dress ball immediately before landfall at Gib. Live it up in an evening of ocean fantasy. Lecture by Howard Swainton, world-famous, best-selling mystery novelist, on 'How I Think Up My Plots'.'"
Could he think up one on how to drown a judge?' Oh, do cheer up, Rumpole. Don't be so morbid. At five Ainy this evening it's Captain Orde's Welcome Aboard Folks rocktail party, followed by a dinner dance at eight forty-five. I can wear my little black dress.' 127 'The Captain's cocktail party?' I was by no means cheered up. 'To exchange small talk and Twiglets with Mr Justice Deathshead. No, thank you very much. I shall lie doggo in the cabin until Gibraltar.' 'You can't possibly do that,' She told me. 'What am I going to tell everyone?' 'Tell them I've gone down with a nasty infection. No, the Judge might take it into his head to visit the sick. He might want to come and gloat over me with grapes. Tell them I'm dead. Or say a last-minute case kept me in England.' 'Rumpole, aren't you being just the tiniest bit silly about this?' But I stuck desperately to my guns. 'Remember, Hilda,' I begged her, 'if anyone asks, say you're here entirely on your own.' I had not forgotten that Graves and She had met at the Sam Ballard-Marguerite Plumstead wedding, and if the Judge caught sight of her, he might suspect that where Hilda was could Rumpole be far behind? I was prepared to take every precaution against discovery.
During many of the ensuing events I was, as I have said, lying doggo. I therefore have to rely on Mrs Rumpole's account of many of the matters that transpired on board the good ship Boadicea, and I have reconstructed the following pages from her evidence which was, as always, completely reliable. (I wish, sometimes, that She Who Must Be Obeyed would indulge in something as friendly as a lie. As, for instance, 'I do think you're marvellous, Rumpole,' or 'Please don't lose any weight, I like you so much as you are!') Proceedings opened at the Captain's cocktail party when Hilda found herself part of a group consisting of the world-famed mystery writer, Howard Swainton, whom she described vividly as 'a rather bouncy and yappy little Yorkshire terrier of a man', a willowy American named Linda Milsom, whom he modestly referred to as his secretary, a tall, balding, fresh-complexioned, owlish-looking a cleric wearing gold-rimmed glasses, a dog-collar and an old tweed suit, who introduced himself as Bill Britwell, and his wife. Mavis, a rotund grey-haired lady with a face which 128 might once have been pretty and was now friendly and cheerful.
These people were in the act of getting to know each other when the Reverend Bill made the serious mistake of asking Howard Swainton what he did for a living.
'You mean you don't know what Howard does?' Linda, the secretary, said, as her boss was recovering from shock. 'You ought to walk into the gift shop. The shelves are just groaning with his best-sellers. Rows and rows of them, aren't there, Howard?' 'They seem to know what goes with the public,' Swainton agreed. 'My motto is keep 'em guessing and give 'em a bit of sex and a spot of mayhem every half-dozen pages. I'm here to research a new story about a mysterious disappearance on a cruise. I call it Absence of Body. Rather a neat title that, don't you think?' ? 'Howard's won two Golden Daggers,' Linda explained. 'And Time magazine called him "The Genius of Evil".' 'Let's say, I'm a writer with a taste for a mystery.' Swainton was ostentatiously modest.
'I suppose', Bill Britwell beamed round at the company 'that since I've been concerned with the greatest mystery of all, I've lost interest in detective stories. I do apologize.' 'Oh, really?' Swainton asked. 'And what's the greatest mystery?' 'I think Bill means,' his wife explained, 'since he's gone into the Church.' 'What I've always wanted,' the Reverend Bill told them, 'after a lifetime in insurance.' 'So you've joined the awkward squad, have you?' Swainton was a fervent supporter of the Conservative Party on television chat shows, and as such regarded the Church of England as a kind of Communist cell.
'I'm sorry?' Bill blinked, looking genuinely puzzled.
'The Archbishop's army of Reverend Pinkos', Swainton warmed to his subject, 'always preaching morality to the Government. I can't think why you chaps can't mind your own business.' Morality is my business now, isn't it?' Bill was still looking 129 irrepressibly cheerful. 'Of course, it used to be insurance. I came to all the best things late in life. The Church and Mavis.' At which he put an arm round his wife's comfortable shoulder.
'We're on our honeymoon.' Hilda told me that the elderly Mrs Britwell sounded quite girlish as she said this.
'Pleasure combined with business,' her husband explained.
'We're only going as far as Malta, where I've landed a job as padre to the Anglican community.' And then Hilda, intoxicated by a glass of champagne and the prospect of foreign travel, confessed that she was also on a honeymoon, although it was a second one in her case.
'Oh, really?' Swainton asked with a smile which Hilda found patronizing. 'And which is your husband, Mrs,? 'Rumpole. Hilda Rumpole. My husband is an extremely well-known barrister. You may have read his name in the papers?' 'I don't spend much time reading,' Swainton told her. 'I'm really too busy writing. And where is your Mr Rumbold?' 'Oh, well,' Hilda had to confess, 'he's not here.' 'You mean?', Swainton was smi
ling and inviting the group to enjoy the joke, 'you're having a second honeymoon with a husband who isn't here?' 'No. Well. You see something rather unexpected came up.' 'So, now', and Swainton could barely conceal his mirth 'you're having a second honeymoon on your own?' But Hilda had to excuse herself and hurry away, as she had seen, through the window of the saloon in which the Captain's cocktail party was taking place, stationed on a small patch of windy and rain-beaten deck, Rumpole signalling urgently for supplies.
What had happened was that, being greatly in need of sustenance and a nerve-cooling drink in my Ducal Class dugout (second only to the real luxury of Sovereign Class), I had rung repeatedly for a steward with absolutely no result. When I telephoned, I was told there would be a considerable delay as the staff were very busy with the Captain's cocktail party.
'The Captain's cock up, you mean,' I said harshly, and made my way to the outskirts of the port (or perhaps the starboard) 130 deck, where it took me considerable time to attract Hilda's attention through the window. 'Make your mind up, Rumpole,' She said when she came out. 'Are you in hiding or aren't you?' and 'Why don't you come in and meet a famous author?' 'Are you mad? He's in there.' I could see the skeletal figure of Graves in the privileged party around Captain Order. He was no doubt entertaining them with an account of the Rumpole clientele he had kept under lock and key.
John Mortimer - Rumpole A La Carte Page 14