John Mortimer - Rumpole A La Carte

by Rumpole A La Carte(lit)

  'What do you mean, he was honest and reliable?' 'Well. We got our place pretty cheaply, compared to the price Fabian & Winchelsea were asking for the other flats we saw. He never put up the price or let us be gazumped by other clients and he helped us fix up our mortgage. Oh, and he didn't conk me on the head with a Zulu knobkerrie.' •Yes. I can see that. What else about him? Did he have a wife, girlfriend, anything like that?' 226 'Hundreds of girlfriends, I should think. He's rather attractive.

  Tall, fair and handsome. So you see, I shan't be giving evidence for the Prosecution.' 'I imagine from what you said, you wouldn't come and take a note for me? Act as my junior?' 'You must be joking!' Mizz Liz took a gulp of the alleged organic brew and looked at me with contempt.

  'I'll have to ask your co-habitee.' T 'Save your breath. Tricia Benbow's already briefed Dave for the Defence. He knows I'd never speak to him again if he took part in a prosecution.' 'Christopher Jago's gone to La Belle Benbow?' 'Oh, yes. He asked me if I knew a brilliant solicitor and said he preferred women in his life, so I sent him off to her.' 'But Dave Inchcape's not doing the case alone? I mean no offence to him but he's still only a white-wig.' 'He's got a leader.' 'Who?' A foeman, I rather hoped, worthy of my steel. Liz looked at me in silence for a moment, as though she was relishing the news she had to impart.

  'Our Head of Chambers,' she told me.

  'Heavens above!' I nearly choked on my non-organic chemically produced Chateau Ordinaire. '"Thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges." Rumpole for the Prosecution and Ballard for the Defence. He'd better sit close to me. He might catch some passive advocacy.' On my way out, I had a message for Claude Erskine-Brown, who was still palely loitering. 'Come and help me in the "Mews Murder",' I said. 'Be my hard-working junior. Take your mind off your mother.' 'Rumpole!' The man looked pained and I hastened to comfort him. 'At least you'll find someone who's deeper in the manure than you are, old darling,' I said.

  Being in possession of two such contradictory views of Christopher Jago as those provided by the Fabians and Mizz Liz Probert, I decided that a little investigative work was necessary.

  I could hardly ask Francis Pyecraft to hang round such pubs and clubs as Jago might frequent, so I called in the services of my old friend and colleague, Ferdinand Isaac Gerald Newton, known as Fig Newton to the trade. You could pass through many bars and hardly notice the doleful, lanternjawed figure, sitting in a quiet corner, nursing half a pint of Guinness and apparently engrossed in The Times crossword puzzle which he solves, I am ashamed to say, in almost less time than it takes me to spot the quotations. But he hoovers up every scrap of gossip and information dropped within a surprisingly wide radius. You can't make bricks without straw and Fig is straw-purveyor to the best Old Bailey defenders. Now he would have a chance, as I had, of seeing life from the prosecution side.

  I met him a couple of weeks later in Pommeroy's. He was suffering, as usual, from a bad cold, having been up most of the night keeping watch on a block of flats in a matrimonial matter, but between some heavy work with the handkerchief he was able to tell me a good deal. Our quarry lived in a 1930s house near Shepherd's Bush Road, the ground floor of which served as his office. He drove an electric blue Alfa-Romeo, the car which had led to his arrest. He was well known in a number of pubs round Maida Vale and Netting Hill Gate, where many of the properties he dealt in were situated. He was unmarried but went out with a succession of girls, his taste running to young and pretty blonde secretaries and receptionists.

  None of them lasted very long and in the Benedict Arms, one of his favourite resorts near the Regent's Canal, the bar staff would lay bets on how soon any girl would go.

  There was one notable exception, however, to the stage army of desirable young women. On half a dozen occasions, the suspect had come into the Benedict Arms with a big, awkward, pale and rather unattractive girl. They had sat in a corner, away from the crowd, and appeared to have had a lot to say to each other. When Fig told me that, the penny dropped. I smote the table in my excitement, rattling the glasses and attracting the stares of the legal hacks busy drinking around us.

  I had just remembered what I knew about Arthur Morrison.

  On my way home I went to check the facts in the library, for Veronica Fabian had no doubt known a great deal more than I did about minor novelists in the last century. Arthur Morrison, a prolific author, was born in 1863 and lived on into the Second World War. His best-known book about life in the East End of London was published in 1896. It was called A Child of the Jago.

  I put the Companion to English Literature back on the library shelf with a feeling of relief. God was in his heaven: the widow Charmian, despite a pressing invitation to stay from Hilda, had gone back to Guildford, and the first prosecution I had ever undertaken seemed likely to be a winner. As I have said, I find it very difficult to embark on any case without being dead set on victory.

  'May it please you, my Lord, Members of the Jury. I appear in this case with my learned friend, Mr Claude Erskine-Brown, for the Prosecution. The Defence of Christopher Jago is in the hands of my learned friends, Mr Samuel Ballard and Mr David Inchcape.' As I uttered these unaccustomed words, I had the unusual experience of the scarlet Judge on the Bench welcoming me with the sort of ingratiating smile he usually reserved for visiting Supreme Court justices or extremely pretty lady plaintiffs entering the witness-box.

  'Did you say you were here to prosecuted 'That is so, my Lord.' 'Members of the Jury', Mr Justice Oliphant, as was his wont, spoke to the ladies and gents in the jury-box as though they were a group of educationally subnormal children with hearing defects, 'Mr Rumpole is going to outline the story of this case to you. In perfectly simple terms. Isn't that right, Mr Rumpole?' 'I hope so, my Lord.' 'So my advice to you is to sit quietly and give him your full attention. The Defence will have its chance later.' This reference caused Soapy Sam Ballard to lift his posterior from the bench and smile winsomely, an overture which Mr Justice Oilie' Oliphant completely ignored. Oilie comes from the 229 northern circuit and prides himself on being a rough diamond who uses his robust common sense. I hoped he wasn't going to try to help me too much. Most acquittals occur when the Judge sickens the Jury by over-egging the prosecution pudding.

  So we went to work in Number One Court. The two neat Fabians, father and son, sat in front of me. The man in the dock couldn't have been a greater contrast to them. He was tall, two or three inches over six feet, with a winter suntan that must have been kept going with a lamp, as well as visits to Marbella. His hair, clearly the victim of many hours' work with a blow-drier, was bouffant at the front and, at the back, swept almost down to his shoulders. His drooping moustache and the broad bracelet of his watch were the colour of old gold and his suit, like his car, might have been described as electric blue. He looked less like the cowboy Roger Fabian had called him than a professional footballer whose private and professional life is in a continual mess. He lounged between two officers in the dock, with his long legs stuck out in front of him, affecting alternate boredom and amusement. Underneath it all, I thought, he was probably terrified.

  So there I was, opening my case to the Jury in as neutral a way as I knew how. I described the little mews house as I remembered it when I went to inspect the scene of the crime: the cramped rooms, the chill feeling of the home unused, the African carvings and weapons on the wall. I asked the Jury to picture the girl from the estate agents' office, who was waiting in the hallway, with the front door left open, to greet the man who had telephoned her.

  Who was it? Was it Mr Morrison? Or was that a name she used to hide the identity of someone she knew quite well? I took the Jury through my theory that the literate Veronica had picked the name of the author of a book with Jago in the title.

  Then I waited for Ballard to shoot to his feet, as I would have done had I been defending, and denounce this as a vague and typical Rumpolean fantasy. I waited in vain. Ballard was inert, indeed there was an unusually contented smile on his face as he sat, perha
ps deriving a little passive sensual satisfaction 230 m. from the close and perfumed presence of his instructing solicitor, Miss Tricia Benbow.

  'The Defence will no doubt argue that there is a real Arthur Morrison who met Veronica Fabian in the mews and killed her before Jago arrived on the scene.' Once again Ballard replied with a deafening silence as he stared appreciatively at the back of his solicitor's neck. My instincts as a defender got the better of me. Jago may have been a crooked estate agent with a lamentable private life and an appalling taste in suits, but he deserved to have the points in his favour put as soon as possible. 'That's what you're going to argue, Ballard, isn't it?' I said in a sotto voce growl.

  'Ohyes.' Ballard shot obediently to his feet. 'If your Lordship pleases. It will be my duty to submit to your Lordship, in the fulness of time and entirely at your Lordship's convenience, of course, that the Jury will have to consider Morrison's part in this case very seriously, very seriously indeed.' 'If there is a Morrison, Mr Ballard. We have to use our common sense about that, don't we?' His Lordship intervened.

  'Yes, of course. If your Lordship pleases.' Ballard subsided without further struggle. The Judge's intervention had somewhat unnerved me. I felt like a tennis player, starting a friendly knock up, who suddenly sees the referee hurling bricks at his opponent.

  'Of course, I can concede that we may be wrong about the reasons Veronica Fabian used that name when entering her eight thirty appointment.' 'Use your common sense, Mr Rumpole. Please.' His Lordship's tone became distinctly less friendly. 'Mr Ballard hasn't asked you to concede to anything. Your job is to present the prosecution case. Let's get on with it.' The Fabians, father and son, were looking up at me, and it was their plea for justice, rather than the disapproval of Oliver Oliphant, which made me return to the attack. 'In any event, Members of the Jury, we intend to call evidence to prove that Jago was seeing the dead girl quite regularly, meeting her in a public house called the Benedict Arms and having long, 231 intimate conversations with her. There will also be evidence that he told the police...' 'That he'd never seen her before in his life!' Mr Justice Oliphant was like the helpful wife who always supplies the punchline to the end of her husband's best stories.

  'I was coming to that, my Lord.' 'Come to it then, Mr Rumpole. How long is this case expected to last?' My reaction to that sort of remark was instinctive. 'It will last, my Lord, for as long as it takes the Jury to consider every point both for and against the accused, and to decide if they can be sure of his guilt or not.' I felt happier now, at home in my old position of arguing with the Judge. Oilie opened his mouth, no doubt to deliver himself of a little more robust common sense, but I went on before he could utter.

  'The police decided not to charge Jago because there was no apparent motive for the crime. But if he knew Veronica Fabian, if they had some sort of relationship, they may have had to consider why he ran from that house, where Veronica was lying dead, and told no one what he had seen. Finally, Members of the Jury, it's for you to say why he lied to the police and said he never met her.' And then I repeated the sentence I had used so often from the other side of the Court. 'You won't convict him of anything unless you're certain sure that the only answer is he must be guilty. That's what we call the golden thread that runs through British justice.' So we began to call the evidence, produce the photographs and listen to the monotonous tones of police officers refreshing their memories from their notebooks. When I was defending, such witnesses presented a challenge, each to be lured in a different way, with charm, authority or lofty disdain, to produce some fragment of evidence which might help the customer in the dock. Now all I had to do was let them rattle on and so prosecuting seemed a dull business. Then we got the scene of the crime officer, who produced the fatal knobkerrie, its end heavily rounded, still blood-stained and protected by cellophane, as was the three-foot black handle. Ballard, who had sat 232 mum during this parade of prosecution evidence, showed no interest in examining this weapon and said he had no questions.

  'What about the finger-prints?' I could no longer restrain myself from hissing at my so-called opponent, a foeman who, at the moment, was hardly being worthy of my attention, let alone my steel.

  'What about them?' Ballard whispered back in a sudden panic. 'Jago's aren't there, are they?' 'Of course not!' By now my whisper had become entirely audible. 'There are no finger-prints at all.' 'Mr Rumpole,' the voice of robust common sense trumpeted from the Bench, 'I thought you told us you appeared for the Prosecution. If Mr Ballard wants to ask a question for the Defence no doubt he will get up on his hind legs and do so!' I rather doubted that but, in fact. Soapy Sam unwound himself, drew himself up to his full height and said, as though a brilliant idea had just occurred to him, 'Officer. Let me put this to you. There are absolutely no finger-prints of Christopher Jago's on the handle of that weapon, are there?' 'There are no finger-prints of any sort, my Lord.' 'I'm very much obliged. Thank you, officer.' Ballard bowed with great satisfaction and as he sat down I heard him tell his junior, Inchcape, 'I'm glad I managed to winkle that out of him.' Later we got the officer who had been in charge of the investigation. Detective Chief Inspector Brush, and even though he was, for the first time, in recorded history, my witness, I couldn't resist teasing him a little.

  'Tell me. Chief Inspector. After the body was found, you spent a good deal of time and trouble looking for Arthur Morrison.' 'We did, my Lord.' 'In fact Morrison was always your number one suspect.' 'He still is, my Lord.' 'You don't accept that Arthur Morrison and Jago were one and the same person?' There was a pause and then 'I suppose that may be a possibility.' 233 'And that Arthur Morrison is nothing but a dead author.' 'I don't know much about dead authors, Mr Rumpole.' There, at least the Detective Chief Inspector was telling the truth.

  'If you'd known that, whether or not Morrison existed, Jago had been meeting the dead girl regularly, would that have made any difference to the decision not to charge him?' There was a long silence and then Brush admitted, 'Well, yes, my Lord. I think it might.' 'Let's use our common sense about this, shall we? Don't let's beat about the bush,' Oilie intervened. 'Jago told you he'd never met the girl. If you'd known he was lying, you'd've charged him.' 'Yes, my Lord.' 'Well, there we are. Members of the Jury. We've got that clear at last, thanks to a little bit of down-to-earth common sense.' Mr Justice Oliphant had joined me as leader of the Prosecution.

  And that might have been that, but there was one other question someone had to ask and I couldn't rely on Ballard.

  'You first questioned Mr Jago because you had discovered that his car had been parked outside i3A Gissing Mews at the relevant time.' 'Yes.' 'You had no idea that he had been into the house and found the body?' 'At that time. No.' 'So he volunteered that information entirely of his own accord?' 'That's right.' 'Was that one of the reasons he wasn't charged?' 'That was one of the reasons we thought he was being honest with us, yes.' I sat down, having made Ballard's best point for him. Of course he had to totter to his feet and ruin it.

  'And, so far as that goes. Chief Inspector', Ballard stood, pleased with himself, rocking slightly on the balls of his feet 'do you still think he was being honest with you about the way he found the girl?' 234 'I'm not sure.' Brush paused and then gave it back to the poor old darling, right between the eyes. 'If he was lying to us about not knowing the girl, I can't be sure about any of his evidence, can I?' Mr Justice Oliphant wrote down that answer and underlined it with his red pencil. The Fabians looked as though they were slightly more pleased with the way Ballard was doing his case than with my performance, but no doubt they'd be too polite to say so.

  At the end of our evidence we called my old friend. Professor Andrew Ackerman, Ackerman of the Morgue, with whom I have spent many fascinating hours discussing bloodstains and gun-shot wounds. He testified that Veronica Fabian had died from a heavy blow to the frontal bone of the skull, consistent with an attack by the knobkerrie. Exhibit p.i. I asked him if this must have been a blow straight down on her head, and he ruled
out the possibility of it having been struck from either side. From the position of the wound it was clear to him that the club had been held by the end of the handle and swung in an upward trajectory. I felt that his evidence was important, but at the moment he gave it I didn't realize its full significance.

  'So you're defending? I expect you have Mizz Liz Probert's full approval?' I was disarming in the robing-room, taking off the wig and gown and running a comb through what remains of my hair, when I found myself sharing a mirror with young Dave Inchcape.

  'What do you mean?' 'Well, she thinks prosecuting's as bad as aiding merciless landlords evict their tenants.' 'I know she doesn't think you should be prosecuting.' 'And I rather think,' I told him as I got on the bow-tie and adjusted the silk handkerchief, 'that Mr Justice Oilie Oliphant would agree with her.' 'By the way, I think we're doing pretty well for Chris, don't you? He's promised us a great party if we get him off.' Dave Inchcape had fallen into the defender's habit of first-name familiarity with alleged criminals. I wondered if it were ever so 235 and the robing-room once rang with cries of 'I think we're going to get Hawley off-Hawley Crippin, of course.' I walked back to Chambers with the still despondent Erskine-Brown, who had just been cut dead by Ballard and La Belle Benbow as they were coming out of the Ludgate Circus Palais de Justice.