The Collected Stories of Rumpole

by John Mortimer

  ‘I’m not a dab hand at the two-step?’ I’m afraid I sounded bitter.

  ‘I didn’t say that, Rumpole.’

  ‘Don’t do it, George! Marriage is like pleading guilty, for an indefinite sentence. Without parole.’ I poured more port.

  ‘You’re exaggerating!’

  ‘I’m not, George. I swear by Almighty God. I’m not.’ I gave him the facts. ‘Do you know what happens on Saturday mornings? When free men are lying in bed, or wandering contentedly towards a glass of breakfast Chablis and a slow read of the Obituaries? You’ll both set out with a list, and your lady wife will spend your hard-earned money on things you have no desire to own, like Vim, and saucepan scourers, and J-cloths … and Mansion polish! And on your way home, you’ll be asked to carry the shopping-basket … I beg of you, don’t do it!’

  This plea to the jury might have had some effect, but the door then opened to admit La Belle Tempest, George’s eyes glazed over and he clearly became deaf to reason. And then Hilda entered and gave me a brisk order to bring in the coffee tray.

  ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed!’ I whispered to George on my way out. ‘You see what I mean?’ I might as well have saved my breath. He wasn’t listening.

  Saturday morning saw self and She at the check-out point in the local Tesco, with the substantial fee for the Portsmouth Rape Trial being frittered away on such frivolous luxuries as sliced bread, Vim, cleaning materials and so on, and as the cash register clicked merrily up Hilda passed judgement on George’s fiancée.

  ‘Of course she won’t do for George.’

  I had an uneasy suspicion that she might be correct, but I asked for further and better particulars.

  ‘You think not? Why exactly?’

  ‘Noticing our glasses! It’s such bad form noticing people’s things. I thought she was going to ask how much they cost.’

  Which, so far as She was concerned seemed to adequately sum up the case of Mrs Ida Tempest. At which point, having loaded up and checked that the saucepan scourers were all present and correct, Hilda handed me the shopping-basket, which seemed to be filled with lead weights, and strode off unimpeded to the bus stop with Rumpole groaning in her wake.

  ‘What we do with all that Vim I can never understand.’ I questioned our whole way of life. ‘Do we eat Vim?’

  ‘You’d miss it, Rumpole, if it wasn’t there.’

  On the following Monday I went down to Dockside Magistrates’ Court to defend young Jim Timson on a charge of taking and driving away a Ford Cortina. I have acted for various members of the clan Timson, a noted breed of South London villain, for many years. They know the law, and their courtroom behaviour, I mean the way they stand to attention and call the magistrate ‘Sir’, is impeccable. I went into battle fiercely that afternoon, and it was a famous victory. We got the summons dismissed with costs against the police. I hoped I’d achieve the same happy result in the notable trial of the Reverend Mordred Skinner, but I very much doubted it.

  As soon as I was back in Chambers I opened a cupboard, sneezed in the resulting cloud of dust and burrowed in the archives. I resisted the temptation to linger among my memories and pushed aside the Penge Bungalow photographs, the revolver that was used in the killing at the East Grimble Rep and old Charles Monti’s will written on a blown ostrich egg. I only glanced at the drawing an elderly RA did, to while away his trial for soliciting in the Super Loo at Euston Station, of the Recorder of London. I lingered briefly on my book of old press cuttings from the News of the World (that fine Legal Textbook in the Criminal Jurisdiction), and merely glanced at the analysis of bloodstains from the old Brick Lane Billiard Hall Murder when I was locked in single-handed combat with a former Lord Chief Justice of England and secured an acquittal, and came at last, on what I was seeking.

  The blue folder of photographs was nestling under an old wig tin and an outdated work on forensic medicine. As I dug out my treasure and carried it to the light on my desk, I muttered a few lines of old William Wordsworth’s, the Sheep of the Lake District,

  ‘Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow

  For old, unhappy, far-off things,

  And battles long ago.’

  On the cover of the photographs I had stuck a yellowing cutting from the Ramsgate Times. ‘Couple Charged in Local Arson Case’ I read again. ‘The Unexplained Destruction of the Saracen’s Head Hotel!’ I opened the folder. There was a picture of a building on the seafront, and a number of people standing round. I took the strong glass off my desk to examine the figures in the photograph and saw the younger, but still roguishly smiling, face of Mrs Ida Tempest, my friend George’s intended.

  Having tucked the photographs back in the archive, I went straight to Pommeroy’s Wine Bar, nothing unusual about that, I rarely go anywhere else at six o’clock, after the day’s work is done; but George wasn’t in Chambers and I hoped he might drop in there for a strengthener before a night of dalliance with his inamorata in the Royal Borough Hotel. However when I got to Pommeroy’s the only recognizable figure, apart from a few mournful-looking journalists and the opera critic in residence, was our Portia, Miss Phillida Trant, drinking a lonely Cinzano Bianco with ice and lemon. She told me that she hadn’t seen George and said, rather enigmatically, that she was waiting for a person called Claude, who, on further inquiry, turned out to be none other than our elegant expert on the civil side, my learned antagonist Erskine-Brown.

  ‘Good God, is he Claude? Makes me feel quite fond of him. Why ever are you waiting for him? Do you want to pick his brains on the law of mortgages?’

  ‘We are by way of being engaged,’ Miss Trant said somewhat sharply.

  The infection seemed to be spreading in our Chambers, like gippy tummy. I looked at Miss Trant and asked, simply for information, ‘You’re sure you know enough about him?’

  ‘I’m afraid I do.’ She sounded resigned.

  ‘I mean, you’d naturally want to know everything, wouldn’t you – about anyone you’re going to commit matrimony with?’ I wanted her confirmation.

  ‘Go on, surprise me!’ Miss Trant, I had the feeling, was not being entirely serious. ‘He married a middle-aged Persian contortionist when he was up at Keble? I’d love to know that – and it’d make him far more exciting.’

  At which point the beloved Claude actually made his appearance in a bowler and overcoat with a velvet collar, and announced he had some treat in store for Miss Trant, such as Verdi’s Requiem in the Festival Hall, whilst she looked at him as though disappointed at the un-murkiness of the Erskine-Brown past. Then I saw George at the counter making a small purchase from Jack Pommeroy and I bore down on him. I had no doubt, at that stage, that my simple duty to my old friend was immediate disclosure. However when I reached George I found that he was investing in a bottle far removed from our usual Château Fleet Street.

  ‘1967. Pichon-Longueville? Celebrating, George?’

  ‘In a way. We have a glass or two in the room now. Can’t get anything decent in the restaurant.’ George was storing the nectar away in his briefcase with the air of a practised boulevardier.

  ‘George. Look. My dear fellow. Look … will you have a drink?’

  ‘It’s really much more comfortable, up in the room,’ George babbled on regardless. ‘And we listen to the BBC Overseas Service, old Victor Sylvester records requested from Nigeria. They only seem to care for ballroom dancing in the Third World nowadays.’ My old friend was moving away from me, although I did all I could to stop him.

  ‘Please, George. It’ll only take a minute. Something … you really ought to know.’

  ‘Sorry to desert you, Rumpole. It would never do to keep Ida waiting.’

  He was gone, as Jack Pommeroy with his purple face and the rosebud in his buttonhole asked what was my pleasure.

  ‘Red plonk,’ I told him. ‘Château Fleet Street. A large glass. I’ve got nothing to celebrate.’

  After that I found it increasingly difficult to break the news to George, although I knew I had to do so.
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  The Reverend Mordred Skinner was duly sent for trial at the Inner London Sessions, Newington Causeway in the South-east corner of London. Wherever civilization ends it is, I have always felt, somewhere just north of the Inner London Sessions. It is a strange thing but I always look forward with a certain eagerness to an appearance at the Old Bailey. I walk down Newgate Street, as often as not, with a spring in my stride and there it is, in all its glory, a stately Law Court, decreed by the City Fathers, an Edwardian palace with a modern extension to deal with the increase in human fallibility. Terrible things go on down the Bailey, horrifying things. Why is it I never go through its revolving door without a thrill of pleasure, a slight tremble of excitement? Why does it seem a much jollier place than my flat in Gloucester Road under the strict rule of She Who Must Be Obeyed?

  Such pleasurable sensations, I must confess, are never connected with my visits to the Inner London Sessions. While a hint of spring sunshine often touches the figure of Justice on the Dome of the Bailey, it always seems to be a wet Monday in November at Inner London. The Sessions House is stuck in a sort of urban desert down the Old Kent Road, with nowhere to go for a decent bit of steak-and-kidney pud during the lunch hour. It is a sad sort of Court, with all the cheeky Cockney sparrows turned into silent figures waiting for the burglary to come on in Court 2, and the juries there look as if they relied on the work to eke out their social security.

  I met the Reverend gentleman after I had donned the formal dress (yellowing wig bought second-hand from an ex-Attorney General of Tonga in 1932, somewhat frayed gown, collar like a blunt extension). He seemed unconcerned and was even smiling a little, although his sister Evelyn looked like one about to attend a burning at the stake; Mr Morse looked thoroughly uncomfortable and as if he’d like to get back to a nice discussion of the Almshouse charity in Chipping Sodbury.

  I tried to instil a suitable sense of the solemnity of the occasion in my clerical customer by telling him that God, with that wonderful talent for practical joking which has shown itself throughout recorded history, had dealt us his Honour Judge Bullingham.

  ‘Is he very dreadful?’ Mr Skinner asked almost hopefully.

  ‘Why he was ever made a Judge is one of the unsolved mysteries of the universe.’ I was determined not to sound reassuring. ‘I can only suppose that his unreasoning prejudice against all black persons, defence lawyers and probation officers, comes from some deep psychological cause. Perhaps his mother, if such a person can be imagined, was once assaulted by a black probation officer who was on his way to give evidence for the defence.’

  ‘I wonder how he feels about parsons.’ My client seemed not at all put out.

  ‘God knows. I rather doubt if he’s ever met one. The Bull’s leisure taste runs to strong drink and all-in wrestling. Come along, we might as well enter the corrida.’

  A couple of hours later, his Honour Judge Bullingham, with his thick neck and complexion of a beetroot past its first youth, was calmly exploring his inner ear with his little finger and tolerantly allowing me to cross-examine a large gentleman named Pratt, resident flatfoot at the Oxford Street Bazaar.

  ‘Mr Pratt? How long have you been a detective in this particular store?’

  ‘Ten years, sir.’

  ‘And before that?’

  ‘I was with the Metropolitan Police.’

  ‘Why did you leave?’

  ‘Pay and conditions, sir, were hardly satisfactory.’

  ‘Oh, really? You found it more profitable to keep your beady eye on the ladies’ lingerie counter than do battle in the streets with serious crime?’

  ‘Are you suggesting that this isn’t a serious crime, Mr Rumpole?’ The learned Judge, who pots villains with all the subtlety of his namesake animal charging a gate, growled this question at me with his face going a darker purple than ever, and his jowls trembling.

  ‘For many people, my Lord,’ I turned to the jury and gave them the message, ‘six shirts might be a mere triviality. For the Reverend Mordred Skinner, they represent the possibility of total ruin, disgrace and disaster. In this case my client’s whole life hangs in the balance.’ I turned a flattering gaze on the twelve honest citizens who had been chosen to pronounce on the sanctity or otherwise of the Reverend Mordred. ‘That is why we must cling to our most cherished institution, trial by jury. It is not the value of the property stolen, it is the priceless matter of a man’s good reputation.’

  ‘Mister Rumpole,’ the Bull lifted his head as if for the charge. ‘You should know your business by now. This is not the time for making speeches, you will have an opportunity at the end of the case.’

  ‘And as your Honour will have an opportunity after me to make a speech, I thought it as well to make clear who the judges of fact in this matter are.’ I continued to look at the jury with an expression of flattering devotion.

  ‘Yes. Very well. Let’s get on with it.’ The Bull retreated momentarily. I rubbed in the victory.

  ‘Certainly. That is what I was attempting to do.’ I turned to the witness. ‘Mr Pratt. When you were in the gents’ haberdashery …’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘You didn’t see my client remove the shirts from the counter and make off with them?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘If he had, no doubt he would have told us about it,’ Bullingham could not resist growling. I gave him a little bow.

  ‘Your Honour is always so quick to notice points in favour of the defence.’ I went back to work on the store detective. ‘So why did you follow my client?’

  ‘The Supervisor noticed a pile of shirts missing. She said there was a Reverend been turning them over, your Honour.’

  This titbit delighted the Bull, he snatched at it greedily. ‘He might not have told us that, if you hadn’t asked the wrong question, Mr Rumpole.’

  ‘No question is wrong, if it reveals the truth,’ I informed the jury, and then turned back to Pratt. I had an idea, an uncomfortable feeling that I might just have guessed the truth of this peculiar case. ‘So you don’t know if he was carrying the basket when he left the shirt department?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Was he carrying it when you first spotted him, on the moving staircase?’

  ‘I only saw his head and shoulders …’

  The pieces were fitting together. I would have to face my client with my growing notion of a defence as soon as possible. ‘So you first saw him with the basket in the Hall of Food?’

  ‘That’s right, sir.’

  At which point Bullingham stirred dangerously and raised the curtain of his top lip on some large yellowing teeth. He was about to make a joke. ‘Are you suggesting, Mr Rumpole, that a basket full of shirts mysteriously materialized in your client’s hand in the Tinned Meat Department?’

  At which the jury laughed obsequiously. Rumpole silenced them in a voice of enormous gravity.

  ‘Might I remind your Honour of what he said. This is a serious case.’

  ‘As you cross-examined, Mr Rumpole, I was beginning to wonder.’ Bullingham was still grinning.

  ‘The art of cross-examination, your Honour, is a little like walking a tightrope.’

  ‘Oh is it?’

  ‘One gets on so much better if one isn’t continually interrupted.’

  At which Bullingham relapsed into a sullen silence and I got on with the work in hand.

  ‘It would have been quite impossible for Mr Skinner to have paid at the shirt counter, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘No, sir. There were two assistants behind the counter.’

  ‘Young ladies?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘When you saw them, what were they doing?’

  ‘I … I can’t exactly recall.’

  ‘Well then, let me jog your memory.’ Here I made an informed guess at what any two young lady assistants would be doing at the height of business during the summer sales. ‘Were they not huddled together in an act of total recall of last night in the disco or Palais de Hop? Were they not bl
ind and deaf to the cries of shirt-buying clerics? Were they not utterly oblivious to the life around them?’

  The jury was looking at me and smiling, and some of the ladies nodded understandingly. I could feel that the old darlings knew all about young lady non-assistants in Oxford Street.

  ‘Well, Mr Pratt. Isn’t that exactly what they were doing?’

  ‘It may have been, your Honour.’

  ‘So is it surprising that my client took his purchase and went off in search of some more attentive assistance?’

  ‘But I followed him downstairs, to the Hall of Food.’

  ‘Have you any reason to suppose he wouldn’t have paid for his shirts there, given the slightest opportunity?’

  ‘I saw no sign of his attempting to do so.’

  ‘Just as you saw no sign of the salesladies attempting to take his money?’

  ‘No but …’

  ‘It’s a risky business entering your store, isn’t it, Pratt?’ I put it to him. ‘You can’t get served and no one speaks to you except to tell you that you’re under arrest.’

  I sat down to some smiles from the jury and a glance from the Bull. An eager young man named Ken Rydal was prosecuting. I had run up against this Rydal, a ginger-haired, spectacled wonder who might once have been a Senior Scout, and won the Duke of Edinburgh award for being left out on the mountainside for a week. ‘Ken’ felt a strong sense of team spirit and loyalty to the Metropolitan Police, and he was keen as mustard to add the Reverend Mordred Skinner to the notches on his woggle.

  ‘Did you see Mr Skinner make any attempt to pay for his shirts in the Hall of Food?’ Ken asked Pratt.

  I read a note from my client that had finally arrived by way of the usher.

  ‘No. No, I didn’t,’ said Pratt.

  Ken was smiling, about to make a little Scout-like funny. ‘He didn’t ask for them to be wrapped up with a pound of ham, for instance?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Pratt laughed and looked round the Court, to see that no one was laughing. And the Bull was glaring at Ken.

  ‘This is not a music hall, Mr Rydal. As Mr Rumpole has reminded us, this is an extremely serious case. The whole of the Reverend gentleman’s future is at stake.’ The Judge glanced at the clock, as if daring it not to be time for lunch. The clock co-operated, and the Bull rose, muttering ‘Ten past two, members of the jury.’