The Collected Stories of Rumpole

by John Mortimer

  At which point, gazing round the Court, I saw Daniel Derwent. He actually winked, and I realized that he thought he recognized my paper-tearing as an old ham actor’s trick. I stopped doing it immediately.

  ‘It were a mess. A right mess. Glass broken, blood. He was sprawled in the chair. I thought he were drunk for a moment, but he weren’t. And she had this pistol, like, in her hand.’ Mr Croft, the stage-door man was standing in the witness-box in his best blue suit. The jury clearly liked him, just as they disliked the picture he was painting.

  ‘Can you remember what she said?’ The learned prosecutor prompted him gently.

  ‘Not too fast …’ Mr Justice Skelton was, worse luck, preparing himself to write it all down.

  ‘Just follow his Lordship’s pencil …’ said Pierce, and the judicial pencil prepared to follow Mr Croft.

  ‘She said, “I killed him, what could I do with him?” ’

  ‘What did you understand that to mean?’

  I did hoist myself to my hind legs then, and registered a determined objection. ‘It isn’t what this witness understood it to mean. It’s what the jury understands it to mean …’

  ‘My learned friend’s quite wrong. The witness was there. He could form his own conclusion …’

  ‘Please, gentlemen. Let’s try and have no disagreements, at least not before luncheon,’ said the Judge sweetly, and added, less charmingly, ‘I think Mr Croft may answer the question.’

  ‘I understood her to say she was so fed up with him, she didn’t know what else to do …’

  ‘But to kill him … ?’ Only the Judge could have supplied that and he did it with another charming smile.

  ‘Yes, my Lord.’

  ‘Did she say anything else? That you remember?’

  ‘I think she said, “Help me.” ’

  ‘Yes. Just wait there, will you? In case Mr Rumpole has some questions.’

  ‘Just a few …’ I rose to my feet. Here was an extremely dangerous witness whom the jury liked. It was no good making a head-on attack. The only way was to lure Mr Croft politely into my parlour. I gave the matter some thought and then tried a line on which I thought we might reach agreement.

  ‘When you saw the deceased, Frere, slumped in the chair, your first thought was that he was drunk?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Had you seen him slumped in a chair drunk in his dressing-room on many occasions?’

  ‘A few.’ Mr Croft answered with a knowing smile, and I felt encouraged.

  ‘On most nights?’

  ‘Some nights.’

  ‘Were there some nights when he wasn’t the worse for drink? Did he ever celebrate, with an evening of sobriety?’

  I got my first smile from the jury, and the Joker for the prosecution arose in full solemnity.

  ‘My Lord …’

  Before Tommy Pierce could interrupt the proceedings with a speech I bowled the next question.

  ‘Mr Croft. When you came into the dressing-room, the deceased Frere was nearest the door …’

  ‘Yes. Only a couple of feet from me … I saw …’

  ‘You saw my client was standing halfway down the room?’ I asked, putting a stop to further painful details. ‘Holding the gun.’

  Pierce gave the jury a meaningful stare, emphasizing the evidence.

  ‘The dressing-room mirror stretches all the way along the wall. And it was broken at the far end, away from the door?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So to have fired the bullet that broke that end of the glass, my client would have had to turn away from the deceased and shoot behind her back …’ I swung round, by way of demonstration, and made a gesture, firing behind me. Of course I couldn’t do that without bringing the full might of the prosecution to its feet.

  ‘Surely that’s a question for the jury to decide.’

  ‘The witness was there. He can form his own conclusions,’ I quoted the wisdom of my learned friend. ‘What’s the answer?’

  ‘I suppose she would,’ Croft said thoughtfully and the jury looked interested.

  The Judge cleared his throat and leaned forward, smiling politely, and being as it turned out, surprisingly unhelpful.

  ‘Wouldn’t that depend, Mr Rumpole, on where the deceased was at the time that particular shot was fired … ?’

  Pierce glowed in triumph and muttered ‘Exactly!’ I did a polite bow and went quickly on to the next question.

  ‘Perhaps we could turn now to the little matter of what she said when you went into the room.’

  ‘I can remember that perfectly.’

  ‘The words, yes. It’s the reading that matters.’

  ‘The what, Mr Rumpole?’ said the Judge, betraying theatrical ignorance.

  ‘The stress, my Lord. The intonation … It’s an expression used in show business.’

  ‘Perhaps we should confine ourselves to expressions used in Law Courts, Mr Rumpole.’

  ‘Certainly, my Lord.’ I readdressed the witness. ‘She said she’d killed him. And then, after a pause, “What could I do with him. Help me.” ’

  Mr Croft frowned. ‘I … That is, yes.’

  ‘Meaning. What could I do with his dead body, and asking for your help … ?’

  ‘My Lord. That’s surely …’ Tommy Pierce was on his hind legs, and I gave him another quotation from himself.

  ‘He was there!’ I leant forward and smiled at Croft trying to make him feel that I was a friend he could trust.

  ‘She never meant that she had killed him because she didn’t know what to do with him?’

  There was a long silence. Counsel for the prosecution let out a deep breath and subsided like a balloon slowly settling. The Judge nudged the witness gently. ‘Well. What’s the answer, Mr Croft? Did she … ?’

  ‘I … I can’t be sure how she said it, my Lord.’

  And there, on a happy note of reasonable doubt, I left it. As I came out of Court and crossed the entrance hall on my way to the cells I was accosted by the beaming Mr Daniel Derwent, who was, it seemed, anxious to congratulate me.

  ‘What a performance, Mr Rumpole. Knock-out! You were wonderful! What I admired so was the timing. The pause, before you started the cross-examination.’

  ‘Pause?’

  ‘You took a beat of nine seconds. I counted.’

  ‘Did I really?’

  ‘Built-up tension, of course. I could see what you were after.’ He put a hand on my sleeve, a red hand with big rings and polished fingernails. ‘You really must let me know. If ever you want a job in Rep.’

  I dislodged my fan club and went down the narrow staircase to the cells. The time had clearly come for my client to start remembering.

  Maggie Hartley smiled at me over her untouched tray of vegetable pie. She even asked me how I was; but I had no time for small talk. It was zero hour, the last moment I had to get some reasonable instructions.

  ‘Listen to me. Whatever you do or don’t remember … it’s just impossible for you to have stood there and fired the first shot.’

  ‘The first shot?’ She frowned, as if at some distant memory.

  ‘The one that didn’t kill him. The one that went behind you. He must have fired that. He must …’

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded her head. That was encouraging. So far as it went.

  ‘Why the hell … why in the name of sanity didn’t you tell us that before?’

  ‘I waited. Until there was someone I could trust.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes. You, Mr Rumpole.’

  There’s nothing more flattering than to be trusted, even by a confirmed and hopeless villain (which is why I find it hard to dislike a client), and I was convinced Maggie Hartley wasn’t that. I sat down beside her in the cell and, with Albert taking notes, she started to talk. What she said was disjointed, sometimes incoherent, and God knows how it was going to sound in the witness-box, but given a few more breaks in the prosecution case, and a following wind I was beginning to get the sniff of a defence.

/>   One, two, three, four …

  Mr Alan Copeland, the juvenile lead, had just given his evidence-in-chief for the prosecution. He seemed a pleasant enough young man, wearing a tie and a dark suit (good witness-box clothing) and his evidence hadn’t done us any particular harm. All the same I was trying what the director Derwent had admired as the devastating pause.

  Seven … eight … nine …

  ‘Have you any questions, Mr Rumpole?’ The Judge sounded as if he was getting a little impatient with ‘the timing’. I launched the cross-examination.

  ‘Mr Alan … Copeland. You know the deceased man owned a Smith and Wesson revolver? Do you know where he got it?’

  ‘He was in a spy film and it was one of the props. He bought it.’

  ‘But it was more than a bit of scenery. It was a real revolver.’

  ‘Unfortunately, yes.’

  ‘And he had a licence for it … ?’

  ‘Oh yes. He joined the Grimble Rifle and Pistol Club and used to shoot at targets. I think he fancied himself as James Bond or something.’

  ‘As James who … ?’ I knew that Mr Justice Skelton wouldn’t be able to resist playing the part of a mystified judge, so I explained carefully.

  ‘A character in fiction, my Lord. A person licensed to kill. He also spends a great deal of his time sleeping with air hostesses.’ To Tommy Pierce’s irritation I got a little giggle out of the ladies and gentlemen of the jury.

  ‘Mr Rumpole. We have quite enough to do in this case dealing with questions of fact. I suggest we leave the world of fiction … outside the Court, with our overcoats.’

  The jury subsided into serious attention, and I addressed myself to the work in hand. ‘Where did Mr Frere keep his revolver?’

  ‘Usually in a locker. At the Rifle Club.’

  ‘Usually?’

  ‘A few weeks ago he asked me to bring it back to the theatre for him.’

  ‘He asked you?’

  ‘I’m a member of the Club myself.’

  ‘Really, Mr Copeland.’ The Judge was interested. ‘And what’s your weapon?’

  ‘A shotgun, my Lord. I do some clay pigeon shooting.’

  ‘Did Frere say why he wanted his gun brought back to the theatre?’ I gave the jury a puzzled look.

  ‘There’d been some burglaries. I imagine he wanted to scare any intruder …’

  I had established that it was Frere’s gun, and certainly not brought to the scene of the crime by Maggie. I broached another topic. ‘Now you have spoken of some quarrels between Frere and his wife.’

  ‘Yes, sir. He once threw a drink in her face.’

  ‘During their quarrels, did you see my client retaliate in any way?’

  ‘No. No, I never did. May I say something, my Lord …’

  ‘Certainly, Mr Copeland.’

  I held my breath. I didn’t like free-ranging witnesses, but at his answer I sat down gratefully.

  ‘Miss Hartley, as we knew her, was an exceptionally gentle person.’

  I saw the jury look at the dock, at the quiet almost motionless woman sitting there.

  ‘Mr Copeland. You’ve told us you shot clay pigeons at the Rifle Club.’ The prosecution was up and beaming.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Nothing much to eat on a clay pigeon, I suppose.’

  The jury greeted this alleged quip with total silence. The local comic had died the death in Grimble. Pierce went on and didn’t improve his case.

  ‘And Frere asked for this pistol to be brought back to the theatre. Did his wife know that, do you think … ?’

  ‘I certainly didn’t tell her.’

  ‘May I ask why not?’

  ‘I think it would have made her very nervous. I certainly was.’

  ‘Nervous of what, exactly?’

  Tommy Pierce had broken the first rule of advocacy. Never ask your witness a question unless you’re quite sure of the answer.

  ‘Well … I was always afraid G. P.’d get drunk and loose it off at someone …’

  The beauty of that answer was that it came from a witness for the prosecution, a detached observer who’d only been called to identify the gun as belonging to the late-lamented G. P. Frere. None too soon for the health of his case Tommy Pierce let Mr Copeland leave the box. I saw him cross the Court and sit next to Daniel Derwent, who gave him a little smile, as if of congratulation.

  In the course of my legal career I have had occasion to make some study of firearms; not so intensive, of course, as my researches into the subject of blood, but I certainly know more about revolvers than I do about the law of landlord and tenant. I held the fatal weapon in a fairly expert hand as I cross-examined the Inspector who had recovered it from the scene of the crime.

  ‘It’s clear, is it not, Inspector, that two chambers had been fired?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘One bullet was found in the corner of the mirror, and another in the body of the deceased, Frere?’

  ‘That is so.’

  ‘Now. If the person who fired the shot into the mirror pulled back this hammer,’ I pulled it back, ‘to fire a second shot … the gun is now in a condition to go off with a far lighter pressure on the trigger?’

  ‘That is so. Yes.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  I put down the gun and as I did so allowed my thumb to accidentally press the trigger. I looked at it, surprised, as it clicked. It was a moderately effective move, and I thought the score was fifteen-love to Rumpole. Tommy Pierce rose to serve.

  ‘Inspector. Whether the hammer was pulled back or not, a woman would have no difficulty in firing this pistol?’

  ‘Certainly not, my Lord.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you, Inspector.’ The prosecution sat down smiling. Fifteen-all.

  The last witness of the day was Miss Christine Hope who turned her large ingénue eyes on the jury and whispered her evidence at a sound level which must have made her unintelligible to the audiences at the Theatre Royal. I had decided to cross-examine her more in sorrow than in anger.

  ‘Miss Hope. Why were you waiting at the stage door?’

  ‘Somehow I can never bear to leave. After the show’s over … I can never bear to go.’ She gave the jury a ‘silly me’ look of girlish enthusiasm. ‘I suppose I’m just in love with The Theatre.’

  ‘And I suppose you were also “just in love with G. P. Frere”?’

  At which Miss Hope looked helplessly at the rail of the witness-box, and fiddled with the Holy Bible.

  ‘You waited for him every night, didn’t you? He left his wife at the stage door and took you home.’

  ‘Sometimes …’

  ‘You’re dropping your voice, Miss Hope.’ The Judge was leaning forward, straining to hear.

  ‘Sometimes, my Lord,’ she repeated a decibel louder.

  ‘Every night?’

  ‘Most nights. Yes.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Hope.’

  Pierce, wisely, didn’t re-examine and La Belle Christine left the box to looks of disapproval from certain ladies on the jury.

  I didn’t sleep well that night. Whether it was the Majestic mattress, which appeared to be stuffed with firewood, or the sounds, as of a giant suffering from indigestion, which reverberated from the central heating, or mere anxiety about the case, I don’t know. At any rate Albert and I were down in the cells as soon as they opened, taking a critical look at the client I was about to expose to the perils of the witness-box. As I had instructed her she was wearing no make-up, and a simple dark dress which struck exactly the right note.

  ‘I’m glad you like it,’ Maggie said. ‘I wore it in Time and the Conways.’

  ‘Listen to the questions, answer them as shortly as you can.’ I gave her her final orders. ‘Every word to the North Country comedian is giving him a present. Just stick to the facts. Not a word of criticism of the dear departed.’

  ‘You want them to like me?’

  ‘They shouldn’t find it too difficult.’ I looked at her, and lit a small cig
ar.

  ‘Do I have to swear on … the Bible?’

  ‘It’s customary.’

  ‘I’d rather affirm.’

  ‘You don’t believe in God?’ I didn’t want an obscure point of theology adding unnecessary difficulties to our case.

  ‘I suppose He’s a possibility. He just doesn’t seem to be a very frequent visitor to the East Grimble Rep.’

  ‘I know a Grimble jury,’ Albert clearly shared my fears. ‘If you could swear on the Bible?’

  ‘The audience might like it?’ Maggie smiled gently.

  ‘The jury,’ I corrected her firmly.

  ‘They’re not too keen on agnostic actresses. Is that your opinion?’

  ‘I suppose that puts it in a nutshell.’

  ‘All right for the West End, is that it? No good in Grimble.’

  ‘Of course I want you to be yourself …’ I really hoped she wasn’t going to be difficult about the oath.

  ‘No, you don’t. You don’t want me to be myself at all. You want me to be an ordinary North Country housewife. Spending just another ordinary day on trial for murder.’ For a moment her voice had hardened. I looked at her and tried to sound as calm as possible as I pulled out my watch. It was nearly time for the curtain to go up on the evidence for the defence.

  ‘Naturally you’re nervous. Time to go.’

  ‘Bloody sick to the stomach. Every time I go on.’ Her voice was gentle again, and she was smiling ruefully.

  ‘Good luck.’

  ‘We never say “good luck”. It’s bad luck to say “good luck”. We say “break a leg” …’

  ‘Break a leg!’ I smiled back at her and went upstairs to make my entrance.

  Calling your client, I always think, is the worst part of any case. When you’re cross-examining, or making a final speech, you’re in control. Put your client in the witness-box and there the old darling is, exposed to the world, out of your protection, and all you can do is ask the questions and hope to God the answers don’t blow up in your face.

  With Maggie everything was going well. We were like a couple of ballroom dancers, expertly gyrating to Victor Sylvester and certain to walk away with the cup. She seemed to sense my next question, and had her answer ready, but not too fast. She looked at the jury, made herself audible to the Judge and gave an impression, a small, dark figure in the witness-box, of courage in the face of adversity. The Court was so quiet and attentive that, as she started to describe that final quarrel, I felt we were alone, two old friends, talking intimately of some dreadful event that took place a long time ago.