The Collected Stories of Rumpole

by John Mortimer

  ‘I’m always your instructing solicitor in a Timson case, Mr Rumpole.’ Mr Bernard beamed and Fred Timson, a kindly man and most innocent robber, stepped out of the ranks to do the honours.

  ‘Nothing but the best for the Timsons, best solicitor and best barrister going. You know my wife Vi?’

  Young Jim’s mother seemed full of confidence. As I took her hand, I remembered I had got Vi off on a handling charge after the Croydon bank raid. Well, there was really no evidence.

  ‘Uncle Cyril.’ Fred introduced the plumpish uncle with the small moustache whom I was sure I remembered. What was his last outing exactly? Carrying housebreaking instruments by night?

  ‘Uncle Dennis. You remember Den, surely, Mr Rumpole?’

  I did. Den’s last little matter was an alleged conspiracy to forge log-books.

  ‘And Den’s Doris.’

  Aunty Doris came at me in a blur of hennaed hair and darkish perfume. What was Doris’s last indiscretion? Could it have been receiving a vast quantity of stolen scampi? Acquitted by a majority, at least I was sure of that.

  ‘And yours truly. Frederick Timson. The boy’s father.’

  Regrettable, but we had a slip-up with Fred’s last spot of bother. I was away with flu, George Frobisher took it over and he got three years. He must’ve only just got out.

  ‘So, Mr Rumpole. You know the whole family.’

  A family to breed from, the Timsons. Must almost keep the Old Bailey going single-handed.

  ‘You’re going to do your best for our young Jim, I’m sure, Mr Rumpole.’

  I didn’t find the simple faith of the Timsons that I could secure acquittals in the most unlikely circumstances especially encouraging. But then Jim’s mother said something which I was to long remember.

  ‘He’s a good boy. He was ever so good to me while Dad was away.’

  So that was Jimbo’s life. Head of the family at fourteen, when Dad was off on one of his regular visits to Her Majesty.

  ‘It’s young Jim’s first appearance, like. At the Old Bailey.’ Fred couldn’t conceal a note of pride. It was Jim boy’s Bar Mitzvah, his first Communion.

  So we chatted a little about how all the other boys got clean away, which I told them was a bit of luck as none of them would go into the witness-box and implicate Jim, and Bernard pointed out that the identification by the butchers was pretty hopeless. Well, what did he expect? Would you have a photographic impression of the young hopeful who struck you a smart blow on the back of the head with a cricket stump? We talked with that curious suppressed excitement there always is before a trial, however disastrous the outcome may be, and I told them the only thing we had to worry about, as if that were not enough, was Jim’s confession to the boy in the Remand Centre, a youth who rejoiced in the name of Peanuts Molloy.

  ‘Peanuts Molloy! Little grass.’ Fred Timson spoke with a deep contempt.

  ‘Old “Persil” White fitted him up with that one, didn’t he?’ Uncle Cyril said it as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and only to be expected.

  ‘Chief Detective Inspector White,’ Bernard explained.

  ‘Why should the Chief Inspector want to fit up your Jimbo?’ It was a question to which I should have known what their answer would be.

  ‘Because he’s a Timson, that’s why!’ said Fred.

  ‘Because he’s the apple of our eye, like,’ Uncle Den told me, and the boy’s mother added:

  ‘Being as he’s the baby of the family.’

  ‘Old Persil’d fit up his mother if it’d get him a smile from his Super.’ As Fred said this the Chief Inspector himself, grey-haired and avuncular, walked by in plain clothes, with a plain-clothes sergeant.

  ‘Morning, Chief Inspector,’ Fred carried on without drawing breath.

  ‘Morning, Fred. Morning, Mrs Timson.’ The Chief Inspector greeted the family with casual politeness, after all they were part of his daily work, and Vi sniffed back a ‘Good morning, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘Mr Timson. We’ll shift our ground. Remove, good friends.’

  Like Hamlet, after seeing the ghost, I thought it was better to continue our conference in private. So we went and sat round a table in the canteen, and, when we had sorted out who took how many lumps, and which of them could do with a choc roll or a cheese sandwich, the family gave me the lowdown on the chief prosecution witness.

  ‘The Chief Inspector put that little grass Peanuts Molloy into Jim’s painting class at the Remand Centre.’ Fred had no doubt about it.

  ‘Jim apparently poured out his soul to Peanuts.’ The evidence sounded, to my old ears, completely convincing, and Bernard read us a snatch from his file.

  ‘We planned to do the old blokes from the butcher’s and grab the wages …’

  ‘That,’ I reminded the assembled company, ‘is what Peanuts will say Jim told him.’

  ‘You think I’d bring Jim up to talk in the nick like that? The Timsons ain’t stupid!’ Fred was outraged, and Vi, pursing her lips in a sour gesture of wounded respectability, added, ‘His Dad’s always told him. Never say a word to anyone you’re banged up with – bound to be a grass.’

  One by one, Aunty Doris, Uncle Den and Uncle Cyril added their support.

  ‘That’s right. Fred’s always brought the boy up proper. Like the way he should be. He’d never speak about the crime, not to anyone he was banged up with.’

  ‘Specially not to one of the Molloys!’

  ‘The Molloys!’ Vi spoke for the Timsons, and with deep hatred. ‘Noted grasses. That family always has been.’

  ‘The Molloys is beyond the pale. Well known for it.’ Aunty Doris nodded her hennaed topknot wisely.

  ‘Peanuts’s Grandad shopped my old father in the “Streatham Co-op Robbery”. Pre-war, that was.’

  I had a vague memory then of what Fred Timson was talking about. The Streatham Co-op case, one of my better briefs – a long case with not much honour shown among thieves, as far as I could remember.

  ‘Then you can understand, Mr Rumpole. No Timson would ever speak to a Molloy.’

  ‘So you’re sure Jimbo never said anything to Peanuts?’ I was wondering exactly how I could explain the deep, but not particularly creditable, origins of this family hostility to the jury.

  ‘I give you my word, Mr Rumpole. Ain’t that enough for you? No Timson would ever speak to a Molloy. Not under any circumstances.’

  There were not many matters on which I would take Fred Timson’s word, but the history of the Streatham Co-op case came back to me, and this was one of them.

  It’s part of the life of an Old Bailey Hack to spend a good deal of his time down in the cells, in the basement area, where they keep the old door of Newgate, kicked and scarred, through which generations of villains were sent to the treadmill, the gallows or the whip. You pass this venerable door and ring a bell, you’re let in and your name’s taken by one of the warders who bring the prisoners from Brixton. There’s a perpetual smell of cooking and the warders are snatching odd snacks of six inches of cheese butties and a gallon of tea. Lunch is being got ready, and the cells under the Bailey have a high reputation as one of the best caffs in London. By the door the screws have their pin-ups and comic cartoons of judges. You are taken to a waiting-room, three steel chairs and a table, and you meet the client. Perhaps he is a novice, making his first appearance, like Jim Timson. Perhaps he’s an old hand asking anxiously which judge he’s got, knowing their form as accurately as a betting-shop proprietor. Whoever he is, the client will be nervously excited, keyed up for his great day, full of absurd hope.

  The worst part of a barrister’s life at the Old Bailey is going back to the cells after a guilty verdict to say ‘goodbye’. There’s no purpose in it, but, as a point of honour, it has to be done. Even then the barrister probably gets the best reaction, and almost never any blame. The client is stunned, knocked out by his sentence. Only in a couple of weeks’ time, when the reality of being banged up with the sour smell of stone walls and his own chambe
r pot for company becomes apparent, does the convict start to weep. He is then drugged with sedatives, and Agatha Christies from the prison library.

  When I saw the youngest Timson before his trial that morning, I couldn’t help noticing how much smaller, and how much more experienced, he looked than my Nick. In his clean sports jacket and carefully knotted tie he was well dressed for the dock, and he showed all the carefully suppressed excitement of a young lad about to step into the limelight of Number 1 with an old judge, twelve jurors and a mixed bag of lawyers waiting to give him their undivided attention.

  ‘Me speak to Peanuts? No Timson don’t ever speak to a Molloy. It’s a point of honour, like,’ Jim added his voice to the family chorus.

  ‘Since the raid on the Streatham Co-op. Your grandfather?’

  ‘Dad told you about that, did he?’

  ‘Yes. Dad told me.’

  ‘Well, Dad wouldn’t let me speak to no Molloy. He wouldn’t put up with it, like.’

  I stood up, grinding out the stub end of my small cigar in the old Oxo tin thoughtfully provided by HM’s government. It was, I thought, about time I called the meeting to order.

  ‘So Jim,’ I asked him, ‘what’s the defence?’

  Little Jim knitted his brows and came out with his contribution. ‘Well. I didn’t do it.’

  ‘That’s an interesting defence. Somewhat novel – so far as the Timsons are concerned.’

  ‘I’ve got my alibi, ain’t I?’

  Jim looked at me accusingly, as at an insensitive visitor to a garden who has failed to notice the remarkable display of gladioli.

  ‘Oh, yes. Your alibi.’ I’m afraid I didn’t sound overwhelmed with enthusiasm.

  ‘Dad reckoned it was pretty good.’

  Mr Bernard had his invaluable file open and was reading from that less-than-inspiring document, our Notice of Alibi.

  ‘Straight from school on that Friday September 2nd, I went up to tea at my Aunty Doris’s and arrived there at exactly 5.30. At 6 p.m. my Uncle Den came home from work accompanied by my Uncle Cyril. At 7 p.m. when this alleged crime was taking place I was sat round the television with my Aunty and two Uncles. I well remember we was watching “The Newcomers”.’

  All very neat and workmanlike. Well, that was it. The family gave young Jim an alibi, clubbed together for it, like a new bicycle. However, I had to disappoint Mr Bernard about the bright shining alibi as we went through the swing doors on our way into Court.

  ‘We can’t use that alibi.’

  ‘We can’t?’ Mr Bernard look wounded, as if I’d just insulted his favourite child.

  ‘Think about it, Bernard. Don’t be blinded by the glamour of the criminal classes. Call the Uncles and the Aunties? Let them all be cross-examined about their records? The jury’ll realize our Jimbo comes from a family of villains who keep a cupboard full of alibis for all occasions.’

  Mr Bernard was forced to agree, but I went into my old place in Court (nearest to the jury, furthest from the witness-box) thinking that the devilish thing about that impossible alibi was that it might even be true.

  So there I was, sitting in my favourite seat in Court, down in the firing line, and there was Jim boy, undersized for a prisoner, just peeping over the edge of the dock, guarded in case he ran amok and started attacking the Judge, by a huge Dock Officer. There was the jury, solid and grey, listening impassionately as Guthrie Featherstone spread out his glittering mass of incriminating facts before them. I don’t know why it is that juries all look the same; take twelve good men and women off the street and they all look middle-aged, anonymous, slightly stunned, an average jury, of average people trying an average case. Perhaps being a jury has become a special profession for specially average people. ‘What do you want to do when you grow up my boy?’ ‘Be a juryman, Daddy.’ ‘Well done, my boy. You can work a five-hour day for reasonable expenses and occasionally send people to chokey.’

  So, as the carefully chosen words of Guthrie Featherstone passed over our heads like expensive hair oil, and as the enthusiastic young MacLay noted it all down, and the Rumpole Supporters Club, the Timsons, sat and pursed their lips and now and then whispered, ‘Lies. All lies’ to each other, I sat watching the Judge rather as a noted toreador watches the bull from the barrier during the preliminary stages of the corrida, and remembered what I knew of Mr Justice Everglade, known to his few friends as ‘Florrie’. Everglade’s father was Lord Chancellor about the time when Jim’s grandfather was doing over the Streatham Co-op. Educated at Winchester and Balliol, he always cracked The Times crossword in the opening of an egg. He was most happy with International Trust companies suing each other on nice points of law, and was only there for a fortnight’s slumming down the Old Bailey. I wondered exactly what he was going to make of Peanuts Molloy.

  ‘Members of the jury, it’s right that you should know that it is alleged that Timson took part in this attack with a number of other youths, none of whom have been arrested,’ Featherstone was purring to a halt.

  ‘The boy stood on the burning deck/whence all but he had fled,’ I muttered, but the Judge was busy congratulating learned Counsel for Her Majesty the Queen who was engaged that morning in prosecuting the pride of the Timsons.

  ‘It is quite right you should tell the jury that, Mr Featherstone. Perfectly right and proper.’

  ‘If your Lordship pleases.’ Featherstone was now bowing slightly, and my hackles began to rise. What was this? The old chums’ league? Fellow members of the Athenaeum?

  ‘I am most grateful to your Lordship for that indication.’ Featherstone did his well-known butler passing the sherry act again. I wondered why the old darling didn’t crawl up on the bench with Mr Justice Everglade and black his boots for him.

  ‘So I imagine this young man’s defence is – he wasn’t ejusdem generis with the other lads?’ The Judge was now holding a private conversation, a mutual admiration society with my learned friend. I decided to break it up, and levered myself to my feet.

  ‘I’m sorry. Your Lordship was asking about the defence?’

  The Judge turned an unfriendly eye on me and fumbled for my name. I told you he was a stranger to the Old Bailey, where the name of Rumpole is, I think, tolerably well known.

  ‘Yes, Mr … er …’ The clerk of the Court handed him up a note on which the defender’s name was inscribed. ‘Rumpole.’

  ‘I am reluctant to intrude on your Lordship’s confidential conversation with my learned friend. But your Lordship was asking about the defence.’

  ‘You are appearing for the young man … Timson?’

  ‘I have that honour.’

  At which point the doors of the Court swung open and Albert came in with Nick, a boy in a blazer and a school-tie who passed the boy in the dock with only a glance of curiosity. I always thank God, when I consider the remote politeness with which I was treated by the Reverend Wilfred Rumpole, that I get on extremely well with Nick. We understand each other, my boy and I, and have, when he’s at home, formed a strong but silent alliance against the almost invincible rule of She Who Must Be Obeyed. He is as fond as I am of the Sherlock Holmes tales, and when we walked together in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, young Nick often played the part of Holmes whilst I trudged beside him as Watson, trying to deduce the secret lives of those we passed by the way they shined their shoes, or kept their handkerchiefs in their sleeves. So I gave a particularly welcoming smile to Nick before I gave my attention back to Florrie.

  ‘And, as Jim Timson’s Counsel,’ I told his Lordship, ‘I might know a little more about his case than Counsel for the prosecution.’

  To which Mr Justice Everglade trotted out his favourite bit of Latin. ‘I imagine,’ he said loftily, ‘your client says he was not ejusdem generis with the other lads.’

  ‘Ejusdem generis? Oh yes, my Lord. He’s always saying that. Ejusdem generis is a phrase in constant use in his particular part of Brixton.’

  I had hit a minor jackpot, and was rewarded with a tinkle of laugh
ter from the Timsons, and a smile of genuine congratulation from Nick.

  Mr Justice Everglade was inexperienced down the Bailey, he gave us a bare hour for lunch and Nick and I had it in the canteen. There is one thing you can say against crime, the catering facilities aren’t up to much. Nick told me about school, and freely confessed, as I’m sure he wouldn’t have done to his mother, that he’d been in some sort of trouble that term. There was an old deserted vicarage opposite Schoolhouse (my old House and Nick’s) and he and his friends had apparently broken in the scullery window and assembled there for poker parties and the consumption of cherry brandy. I was horrified as I drew up the indictment which seemed to me to contain charges of burglary at common law, housebreaking under the Forcible Entries Act, contravening the Betting, Gaming, Lotteries Act and Serving Alcohol on Unlicensed Premises.

  ‘Crabtree actually invited a couple of girls from the village,’ Nick continued his confession. ‘But Bagnold never got to hear of that.’

  Bagnold was Nick’s headmaster, the school equivalent of ‘Persil’ White. I cheered up a little at the last piece of information.

  ‘Then there’s no evidence of girls. As far as your case goes there’s no reason to suppose the girls ever existed. As for the other charges, which are serious …’

  ‘Yes, yes, I suppose they are rather.’

  ‘I imagine you were walking past the house on Sunday evening and, attracted by the noise … You went to investigate?’

  ‘Dad. Bagnold came in and found us – playing poker.’

  Nick wasn’t exactly being helpful. I tried another line.

  ‘I know, “My Lord. My client was only playing poker in order not to look too pious whilst he lectured his fellow sixth-formers on the evils of gambling and cherry brandy.” ’

  ‘Dad. Be serious.’

  ‘I am serious. Don’t you want me to defend you?’

  ‘No. Bagnold’s not going to tell the police or anything like that.’

  I was amazed. ‘He isn’t? What’s he going to do?’

  ‘Well … I’ll miss next term’s exeat. Do extra work. I thought I should tell you before you got a letter.’