The Collected Stories of Rumpole

by John Mortimer

  ‘A mashie niblick!’ the other barristers sang.

  ‘Well, that was as good a training as any for life at the Bar,’ Uncle Tom told them.

  I filled George’s glass. ‘Drink up, George. There may be other ladies … turning up at the Royal Borough Hotel.’

  ‘I very much doubt it. Every night when I sit at the table for one, I shall think – if only I’d never taken her to dinner at Rumpole’s! Then I might never have known, don’t you see? We could have been perfectly happy together.’

  ‘Of course, C. H. Wystan never ever took silk. But now we have a QC, MP and dear old George Frobisher, a Circus, beg his pardon, a Circuit Judge!’ Uncle Tom was raising his glass to George, his hand was trembling and he was spilling a good deal on his cuff.

  ‘Sometimes I feel it will be difficult to forgive you, Rumpole,’ George said, very quietly.

  ‘But I do recall when dear old Willoughby Grime was appointed to Basutoland, we celebrated the matter in song.’

  ‘George, what did I do?’ I protested. ‘I didn’t say anything.’ But it wasn’t true. My mere existence had been enough to deny George his happiness.

  At which point the other barristers raised their glasses to George and started to sing ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’. I left them, and went out into the silence of the Temple, where I could still hear them singing.

  Next Saturday morning I was acting the part of the native bearer with the Vim basket, following She Who Must Be Obeyed on our ritual shopping expedition.

  ‘They’ve never made George Frobisher a Judge!’ My wife seemed to feel it an occasion for ridicule and contempt.

  ‘In my view an excellent appointment. I shall expect to have a good record of acquittals. In the Luton Crown Court.’

  ‘When are they going to make you a judge, Rumpole?’

  ‘Don’t ask silly questions … I’d start every Sentence with “There but for the Grace of God goes Horace Rumpole.” ’

  ‘I can imagine what she’s feeling like.’ Hilda sniffed.

  ‘She …?’

  ‘The cat-that-swallowed-the-cream! Her Honour Mrs Judge. Mrs Ida Tempest’ll think she’s quite the thing, I’ll be bound.’

  ‘No. She’s gone.’

  ‘Gone, Rumpole? What did George say about that?’

  ‘Cried, and the world cried too, “Our’s the Treasure”.

  Suddenly, as rare things will, she vanished.’

  We climbed on a bus, heavily laden, back to Casa Rumpole.

  ‘George is well out of it, if he wants my opinion.’

  ‘I don’t think he does.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Want your Opinion.’

  Later, in our kitchen, as she stored the Vim away under the sink and I prepared our Saturday morning G and T, a thought occurred to me. ‘Do you know? I’m not sure I should’ve taken up as a lawyer.’

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’

  ‘Perhaps I should have taken up as a vicar.’

  ‘Rumpole. Have you been getting at the gin already?’

  ‘Faith not facts, is what we need, do you think?’

  Hilda was busy unpacking the saucepan scourers. Perhaps she didn’t quite get my drift.

  ‘George Frobisher has always been a bad influence, keeping you out drinking,’ she said. ‘Let’s hope I’ll be seeing more of you, now he’s been made a Judge.’

  ‘I’d never have got to know all these facts about people if I hadn’t set up as a lawyer.’

  ‘Of course you should have been a lawyer, Rumpole!’

  ‘Why exactly?’

  ‘If you hadn’t set up as a lawyer, if you hadn’t gone into Daddy’s Chambers, you’d never have met me, Rumpole!’

  I looked at her, suddenly seeing great vistas of what my life might have been.

  ‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘Dammit, that’s very true.’

  ‘Put the Gumption away for me, will you, Rumpole?’

  She Who Must Be Obeyed. Of course I did.

  Rumpole and the Showfolk

  I have written elsewhere of my old clerk Albert Handyside who served me very well for a long term of years, being adept at flattering solicitors’ clerks, buying them glasses of Guinness and inquiring tenderly after their tomato plants, with the result that the old darlings were inclined to come across with the odd Dangerous and Careless, Indecent Assault, or Take and Drive Away which Albert was inclined to slip in Rumpole’s direction. All this led to higher things such as Robbery, Unlawful Wounding and even Murder; and in general for that body of assorted crimes on which my reputation is founded. I first knew Albert when he was a nervous office boy in the Chambers of C. H. Wystan, my learned father-in-law; and when he grew to be a head clerk of magisterial dimensions we remained firm friends and often had a jar together in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar in the evenings, on which relaxed occasions I would tell Albert my celebrated anecdotes of Bench and Bar and, unlike She Who Must Be Obeyed, he was always kind enough to laugh no matter how often he had heard them before.

  Dear old Albert had one slight failing, a weakness which occurs among the healthiest of constitutions. He was apt to get into a terrible flurry over the petty cash. I never inquired into his book-keeping system; but I believe it might have been improved by the invention of the Abacus, or a monthly check-up by a Primary School child well versed in simple addition. It is also indubitably true that you can’t pour drink down the throats of solicitors’ managing clerks without some form of subsidy, and I’m sure Albert dipped liberally into the petty cash for this purpose as well as to keep himself in the large Bells and sodas, two or three of which sufficed for his simple lunch. Personally I never begrudged Albert any of this grant-in-aid, but ugly words such as embezzlement were uttered by Erskine-Brown and others, and, spurred on by our second clerk Harry who clearly thirsted for promotion, my learned friends were induced to part with Albert Handyside. I missed him very much. Our new clerk Henry goes to Pommeroy’s with our typist Dianne, and tells her about his exploits when on holiday with the Club Mediterannée in Corfu. I do not think either of them would laugh at my legal anecdotes.

  After he left us Albert shook the dust of London from his shoes and went up North, to some God-lost place called Grimble, and there joined a firm of solicitors as managing clerk. No doubt Northerly barristers’ clerks bought him Guinness and either he had no control of the petty cash or the matter was not subjected to too close an inspection. From time to time he sent me a Christmas card on which was inscribed among the bells and holly, ‘Compliments of the Season, Mr Rumpole, sir. And I’m going to bring you up here for a nice little murder just as soon as I get the opportunity. Yours respectfully, A. Handyside.’ At long last a brief did arrive. Mr Rumpole was asked to appear at the Grimble Assizes, to be held before Mr Justice Skelton in the Law Courts, Grimble: the title of the piece being the Queen (she does keep enormously busy prosecuting people) versus Margaret Hartley. The only item on the programme was ‘Wilful Murder’.

  Now you may have noticed that certain theatrical phrases have crept into the foregoing paragraph. This is not as inappropriate as it may sound, for the brief I was going up to Grimble for on the Inter-City train (a journey about as costly as a trip across the Atlantic) concerned a murder which took place in the Theatre Royal, East Grimble, a place of entertainment leased by the ‘Frere-Hartley Players’: the victim was one G. P. Frere, the leading actor, and my client was his wife known as ‘Maggie Hartley’, co-star and joint director of the company. And as I read on into R. v. Hartley it became clear that the case was like too many of Rumpole’s, a born loser: that is to say that unless we drew a drunken prosecutor or a jury of anarchists there seemed no reasonable way in which it might be won.

  One night after the performance, Albert’s instructions told me, the stage-door keeper, a Mr Croft, heard the sound of raised voices and quarrelling from the dressing-room shared by G. P. Frere and his wife Maggie Hartley. Mr Croft was having a late cup of tea in his cubbyhole with a Miss Christine Hope, a young actress i
n the company, and they heard two shots fired in quick succession. Mr Croft went along the passage to investigate and opened the dressing-room door. The scene that met his eyes was, to say the least, dramatic.

  It appeared from Mr Croft’s evidence that the dressing-room was in a state of considerable confusion. Clothes were scattered round the room, and chairs overturned. The long mirror which ran down the length of the wall was shattered at the end furthest from the door. Near the door Mr G. P. Frere, wearing a silk dressing-gown, was sitting slumped in a chair, bleeding profusely and already dead. My client was standing halfway down the room still wearing the long white evening-dress she had worn on the stage that night. Her make-up was smudged and in her right hand she held a well-oiled service revolver. A bullet had left this weapon and entered Mr Frere’s body between the third and fourth metacarpal. In order to make quite sure that her learned Counsel didn’t have things too easy, Maggie Hartley had then opened her mouth and spoken, so said Croft, the following unforgettable words, here transcribed without punctuation.

  ‘I killed him what could I do with him help me.’

  In all subsequent interviews the actress said that she remembered nothing about the quarrel in the dressing-room, the dreadful climax had been blotted from her mind. She was no doubt, and still remained, in a state of shock.

  I was brooding on this hopeless defence when an elderly guard acting the part of an air hostess whispered excitedly into the intercom, ‘We are now arriving at Grimble Central. Grimble Central. Please collect your hand baggage.’ I merged into a place which seemed to be nestling somewhere within the Arctic Circle, the air bit sharply, it was bloody cold and a blue-nosed Albert was there to meet me.

  ‘After I left your Chambers in disgrace, Mr Rumpole …’

  ‘After a misunderstanding, shall we say.’

  ‘My then wife told me she was disgusted with me. She packed her bags and went to live with her married sister in Enfield.’

  Albert was smiling contentedly, and that was something I could understand. I had just had, à coté de Chez Albert Handyside, a meal which his handsome, still youngish second wife referred to as tea, but which had all the appurtenances of an excellent cold luncheon with the addition of hot scones, Dundee cake and strawberry jam.

  ‘Bit of luck then really, you getting the petty cash so “confused”.’

  ‘All the same. I do miss the old days clerking for you in the Temple, sir. How are things down South, Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘Down South? Much as usual. Barristers lounging about in the sun. Munching grapes to the lazy sounds of plucked guitars.’

  Mrs Handyside the Second returned to the room with another huge pot of dark-brown Indian tea. She replenished the Rumpole cup and Albert and I fell to discussing the tea-table subject of murder and sudden death.

  ‘Of course it’s not the Penge Bungalow Job.’ Albert was referring to my most notable murder and greatest triumph, a case I did at Lewes Assizes alone and without the so-called aid of leading Counsel. ‘But it’s quite a decent little case, sir, in its way. A murder among the showfolk, as they terms them.’

  ‘The showfolk, yes. Definitely worth the detour. There is, of course, one little fly in the otherwise interesting ointment.’

  Albert, knowing me as he did, knew quite well what manner of insect I was referring to. I have never taken silk. I remain, at my advanced age, a ‘junior’ barrister. The brief in R. v. Hartley had only one drawback, it announced that I was to be ‘led’ by a local silk, Mr Jarvis Allen, QC. I hated the prospect of this obscure North Country Queen’s Counsel getting all the fun.

  ‘I told my senior partner, sir. I told him straight. Mr Rumpole’s quite capable of doing this one on his own.’ Albert was suitably apologetic.

  ‘Reminded him, did you? I did the Penge Bungalow Murders alone and without a leader.’

  ‘The senior partner did seem to feel …’

  ‘I know. I’m not on the Lord Chancellor’s guest list. I never get invited to breakfast in knee breeches. It’s not Rumpole, QC. Just Rumpole, Queer Customer …’

  ‘Oo, I’m sure you’re not,’ Mrs Handyside the Second poured me another comforting cup of concentrated tannin.

  ‘It’s a murder, sir. That’s attracted quite a lot of local attention.’

  ‘And silks go with murder like steak goes with kidney! This Jarvis Allen, QC … Pretty competent sort of man, is he?’

  ‘I’ve only seen him on the Bench …’

  ‘On the what?’

  The Bench seemed no sort of a place to see dedicated defenders.

  ‘Sits as Recorder here. Gave a young tearaway in our office three years for a punch-up at the Grimble United Ground.’

  ‘There’s no particular art involved in getting people into prison, Albert,’ I said severely. ‘How is he at keeping them out?’

  After tea we had a conference fixed up with my leader and client in prison. There was no women’s prison at Grimble, so our client was lodged in a room converted from an unused dispensary in the Hospital Wing of the masculine nick. She seemed older than I had expected as she sat looking composed, almost detached, surrounded by her legal advisers. It was, at that first conference, as though the case concerned someone else, and had not yet engaged her full attention.

  ‘Mrs Frere.’ Jarvis Allen, the learned QC started off. He was a thin, methodical man with rimless glasses and a general rimless appearance. He had made a voluminous note in red, green and blue Biro: it didn’t seem to have given him much cause for hope.

  ‘Our client is known as Maggie Hartley, sir,’ Albert reminded him. ‘In the profession.’

  ‘I think she’d better be known as Mrs Frere. In Court,’ Allen said firmly. ‘Now, Mrs Frere. Tommy Pierce is prosecuting and of course I know him well … and if we went to see the Judge, Skelton’s a perfectly reasonable fellow. I think there’s a sporting chance … I’m making no promises, mind you, there’s a sporting chance they might let us plead to manslaughter!’

  He brought the last sentence out triumphantly, like a Christmas present. Jarvis Allen was exercising his remarkable talent for getting people locked up. I lit a small cigar, and said nothing.

  ‘Of course, we’d have to accept manslaughter. I’m sure Mr Rumpole agrees. You agree, don’t you, Rumpole?’ My leader turned to me for support. I gave him little comfort.

  ‘Much more agreeable doing ten years for manslaughter than ten years for murder,’ I said. ‘Is that the choice you’re offering?’

  ‘I don’t know if you’ve read the evidence … Our client was found with the gun in her hand.’ Allen was beginning to get tetchy.

  I thought this over and said, ‘Stupid place to have it. If she’d actually planned a murder.’

  ‘All the same. It leaves us without a defence.’

  ‘Really? Do you think so? I was looking at the statement of Alan Copeland. He is …’ I ferreted among the depositions.

  ‘What they call the “juvenile”, I believe, Mr Rumpole,’ Albert reminded me.

  ‘The “juvenile”, yes.’ I read from Mr Copeland’s statement. ‘I’ve worked with G. P. Frere for three seasons … G. P. drank a good deal. Always interested in some girl in the cast. A new one every year …’

  ‘Jealousy might be a powerful motive, for our client. That’s a two-edged sword, Rumpole.’ Allen was determined to look on the dreary side.

  ‘Two-edged, yes. Most swords are.’ I went on reading. ‘He quarrelled violently with his wife Maggie Hartley. On one occasion, after the dress rehearsal of The Master Builder, he threw a glass of milk stout in her face in front of the entire company …’

  ‘She had a good deal of provocation, we can put that to the Judge. That merely reduces it to manslaughter.’ I was getting bored with my leader’s chatter of manslaughter.

  I gave my bundle of depositions to Albert and stood up, looking at our client to see if she would fit the part I had in mind.

  ‘What you need in a murder is an unlikeable corpse … Then if you can fin
d a likeable defendant … you’re off to the races! Who knows? We might even reduce the crime to innocence.’

  ‘Rumpole.’ Allen had clearly had enough of my hopeless optimism. ‘As I’ve had to tell Mrs Frere very frankly. There is a clear admission of guilt – which is not disputed.’

  ‘What she said to the stage-door man, Mr …’

  ‘Croft.’ Albert supplied the name.

  ‘I killed him, what could I do with him? Help me.’ Allen repeated the most damning evidence with great satisfaction. ‘You’ve read that, at least?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve read it. That’s the trouble.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, the trouble is, I read it. I didn’t hear it. None of us did. And I don’t suppose Mr Croft had it spelled out to him, with all the punctuation.’

  ‘Really, Rumpole. I suppose they make jokes about murder cases in London.’

  I ignored this bit of impertinence and went on to give the QC some unmerited assistance. ‘Suppose she said … Suppose our client said, “I killed him” and then,’ I paused for breath, ‘ “What could I do with him? Help me!”?’

  I saw our client look at me, for the first time. When she spoke her voice, like Desdemona’s, was ever soft, gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman.

  ‘That’s the reading,’ she said. I must admit I was puzzled, and asked for an explanation.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The reading of the line. You can tell them. That’s exactly how I said it.’

  At last, it seemed, we had found something she remembered. I thought it an encouraging sign; but it wasn’t really my business.

  ‘I’m afraid, dear lady,’ I gave her a small bow, ‘I shan’t be able to tell them anything. Who am I, after all, but the ageing juvenile? The reading of the line, as you call it, will have to come from your QC, Mr Jarvis Allen, who is playing the lead at the moment.’

  After the conference I gave Albert strict instructions as to how our client was to dress for her starring appearance in the Grimble Assize Court (plain black suit, white blouse, no make-up, hair neat, voice gentle but audible to any OAP with a National Health deaf-aid sitting in the back row of the jury, absolutely no reaction during the prosecution case except for a well-controlled sigh of grief at the mention of her deceased husband) and then I suggested we met later for a visit to the scene of the crime. Her Majesty’s Counsel for the defence had to rush home to write an urgent, and no doubt profitable, opinion on the planning of the new Grimble Gas Works and so was unfortunately unable to join us.