The Collected Stories of Rumpole

by John Mortimer

  He was pulling feebly at his winged collar and bands. I managed to get them undone and then he rose to his feet and stood swaying. He looked absolutely ghastly. Mr Myers was supporting him under one arm. ‘Just a breath of air … Want to smell Ludgate Circus … Your little runabout, Fiona … Is it outside? Can’t spend my last moments outside Bullingham’s Court.’

  I suppose I shouldn’t have done it, but he looked so pathetic. He whispered to me about not being taken to some hospital full of bedpans and piped Capital Radio, and promised that his wife would send for their own doctor – he could at least die with dignity. Myers and I helped him out to my battered Deux Chevaux and I drove Rumpole to his home.

  It took a long time to help him up the stairs and into his flat, but he seemed happy to be home and managed a sort of fleeting smile. His wife wasn’t there but he muttered something about her having only just slipped out – said that she’d be back in a moment from the shops and that Dr MacClintock would look after him – for so long, he murmured, as anything could be done. At least, I told him, I’d help him into bed. So we moved towards the bedroom, but at the door he seemed to have second thoughts.

  ‘Perhaps … Better not. She Who Must Be Obeyed … Bound to stalk in … Just when I’ve lowered the garments … Gets some … funny ideas … does She.’

  All the same, I helped him as he staggered into the bedroom and I hung his wig and gown, which I was carrying, over the bedrail as he lay down, still dressed. It was very cold in the mansion flat and I thought that the old couple must be extremely hardy. I covered Rumpole with the eiderdown and he was babbling, apparently delirious.

  ‘Ever thought about … the hereafter, Fiona?’ I heard him say. ‘Hereafter’s all right. Until Bollard gets there … He’s bound to make it … Have to spend all eternity listening to Bollard … on the subject of “Lawyers for the Faith” … Difficult to make an excuse … and slip away. He’ll have me buttonholed … in the hereafter. Go along now …’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I hated to leave him but I knew that our wretched client had been taken down to the cells when the trial was interrupted.

  Someone would have to go and get him released until he was needed again.

  ‘And bail,’ Rumpole was muttering very faintly, echoing my thoughts. ‘Ask bail … from the dotty Bull. For Frank. Suppose Bullingham’ll be turning up there too … in the hereafter. Apply for bail … Fiona.’

  ‘I’ll ring you later,’ I promised as I moved to the door.

  ‘Later … Not too late …’ Rumpole closed his eyes as I went out of the door; he was quite motionless, apparently asleep.

  Judge Bullingham was looking at me, smiling, apparently deeply sympathetic, when I applied for bail. Mr Mason, the Court clerk, later told me that the Judge had taken something of a ‘shine’ to me and was considering sending me a box of chocolates. Life at the Bar can be absolute hell for a girl sometimes.

  ‘Bail? Yes, of course, Miss Allways. By all means,’ said the Judge. ‘On the same terms. And what is the latest news of Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘He is resting peacefully, my Lord,’ I told him truthfully.

  ‘Peacefully.’ The Judge sounded very solemn. ‘Yes, of course. Well, that comes to all of us in time. Nothing else for this afternoon, is there, Mason?’

  The Judge went home early. But in the Old Bailey, round the other London Courts and in the Temple the news spread like wildfire. Rumpole had collapsed, the stories went, it was all over and the old boy had gone home at last. I heard that in the cells villains, with their trials due to come up, cursed because they wouldn’t have Rumpole to defend them.

  Some said he’d died with his wig on, others told how he’d been suddenly taken away before the matron could get at him. Quite a lot of people, from Detective Inspectors to safe-blowers, said that, if he had to go, Rumpole would have wanted it to come as it did, when he was on his feet and in the middle of a legal argument.

  When I got back to Chambers I found a crowd gathered in our clerk’s room. Henry had been trying the phone in Rumpole’s flat over and over again and getting no reply.

  ‘No reply from Rumpole’s flat!’ said Hoskins, a rather dreary sort of barrister who’s always talking about his daughters.

  ‘Probably no one at home,’ Uncle Tom, our oldest inhabitant, hazarded a guess.

  ‘That would appear to be the natural assumption, Uncle Tom.’ Erskine-Brown was as sarcastic as usual.

  ‘Surely, we’ve got absolutely no reason to think …’ Hoskins said.

  ‘I agree. All we know is that Rumpole suffered some sort of a stroke or a seizure,’ Ballard told them.

  ‘Rumpole often said Judge Bullingham had that effect on him,’ Uncle Tom said.

  ‘And that he’s clearly been taken somewhere,’ Erskine-Brown added.

  ‘ “Taken somewhere” expresses it rather well.’ Uncle Tom shook his head. ‘ “Taken somewhere” is about the long and short of it.’

  Then I told them I’d taken Rumpole home where his wife would be able to get their own doctor to look after him. In the pause that followed Henry gave me the good news that he had got me a porn job in Manchester and I’d have to travel up overnight.

  ‘A porn job!’ Our Head of Chambers looked shocked. ‘I’d’ve thought this was hardly the moment for that sort of thing.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole would want Chambers to carry on, sir, I’m sure. As usual,’ Henry said solemnly.

  ‘Poor old fellow. Yes,’ Uncle Tom agreed. ‘Well. One thing to be said for him. He went in harness.’

  ‘I don’t really think it’s the sort of subject we should be discussing in the clerk’s room,’ Ballard decided. ‘No doubt I shall be calling a Chambers meeting, when we have rather more detailed information.’

  As they went, I lingered long enough to hear Dianne, our rather hit-and-miss typist, give a little sob as she pounded her machine.

  ‘Oh, please, Dianne,’ Henry protested. ‘Didn’t you hear what I said to Mr Ballard? Chambers must go on. That would have been his wishes.’

  So I went to Manchester and read a lot of jolly embarrassing magazines in a dark corner of the railway carriage. Meanwhile Mr Newton, the inquiry agent, was still keeping a watch on the offices of Sun-Sand Holidays every night. Of course, I saw his reports eventually and it seemed that the office was visited, late at night and in a highly suspicious manner, by our client’s brother Fred, who spent a long time working on the computers.

  And there were other developments. Archie Featherstone, the Judge’s nephew, was still very anxious to get into our Chambers and, when there was no news of Rumpole’s recovery, I suppose the poor chap felt a bit encouraged in a horrible sort of way.

  Perhaps I can understand how he felt because, although I never liked Archie Featherstone much (he’d danced with me at some pretty gruesome ball and his way of dancing was to close his eyes, suck in his teeth and bob up and down in the hope that he looked like Mick Jagger, which he didn’t), I knew jolly well what it was like to be desperate to get a seat in Number 3 Equity Court.

  It was while I was still in Manchester that Henry received a telemessage about Rumpole and immediately took it up to our Head of Chambers. Sometime later, when I bought him his usual Cinzano Bianco in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar, Henry gave me a full account of how his meeting with Ballard went. First of all our Head read the message out aloud very carefully and slowly, Henry told me.

  ‘ “Please let firm of Blythe, Winterbottom and Paisley know sad news. Deeply regret Rumpole gone up to a Higher Tribunal. Signed Rumpole.” ’ Ballard apparently looked puzzled. ‘What is it, Henry?’

  ‘It’s a telemessage, sir. Telegrams having been abolished, per se,’ Henry explained.

  ‘Yes, I know it’s a telemessage. But the wording. Doesn’t it strike you as somewhat strange?’

  ‘Mr Rumpole was always one for his joke. It caused us a good deal of embarrassment at times.’

  ‘But presumably this can’t be signed by Rumpole. Not in the circumstances.’ Ballard
was working on the problem. ‘On any reasonable interpretation, the word “Rumpole”, being silent so far as sex is concerned, must surely be construed as referring to Mrs Rumpole?’ He was being very legal, Henry told me, and behaving like a Chancery barrister.

  ‘That’s what I assumed, sir,’ said Henry. ‘Unfortunately I can’t get through to the Gloucester Road flat on the telephone. It seems there’s a “fault on the line”.’

  ‘Have you tried calling round?’

  ‘I have, sir. No answer to my ring.’

  ‘Well, of course, it’s a busy time in any family. A busy and distressing time.’ But Ballard was clearly worried. ‘Does it strike you as rather odd, Henry?’

  ‘Well, just a bit, sir.’

  ‘As Head of Chambers I surely should be the first to be informed of any decease among members. Am I not entitled to that?’

  ‘In the normal course of events, yes.’ Henry told me he agreed to save any argument.

  ‘In the normal course. But this message doesn’t refer to me, or to his fellow members, or even to the Court where he was appearing when he was stricken down. This Blythe, Sidebottom and …’

  ‘Winterbottom, sir. And Paisley.’

  ‘Was it a firm to which old Rumpole was particularly attached?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Mr Ballard. They owed him money,’ Henry said he told him frankly.

  ‘They owed him money! Strange. Very strange.’ Ballard was thoughtful, it seems. ‘From the way he was talking the other day, I think the old fellow had a queer sort of premonition that the end was pretty close.’ And then our Head of Chambers went back to the document Henry had given him. ‘All the same, Henry. There is something hopeful in this telemessage.’

  ‘Is there, sir?’

  ‘I mean the reference to a “Higher Tribunal”. You know, I’m afraid I’d always found Rumpole a bit of a scoffer. I couldn’t get him interested in “Lawyers As Churchgoers”. He wouldn’t even come along to one meeting of L.A.C.! But his wife’s message says he was thinking in terms of a “Higher Tribunal”. It suggests he found faith in the end, Henry. It must have been a great comfort to him.’

  As I say, Henry told me this after I got back from Manchester, when I was buying him a drink in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar. As we were talking I noticed that the frumpy sort of woman in glasses, the one who’d been listening to the Armstrong trial, was doing her best to overhear our conversation. She carried on listening when Jack Pommeroy slid his counter cloth up to us and said to Henry,

  ‘I say. Has old Rumpole really had it? I’ve got about twenty-three of his cheques!’

  ‘My clerk’s fees aren’t exactly up to date either,’ Henry said. ‘You’ll miss him round here, won’t you, Jack?’

  ‘Well, he did use to pass some pretty insulting remarks about our claret. Called it Château Thames Embankment!’ Jack Pommeroy looked pained. ‘Didn’t exactly help our business. And when he wasn’t paying cash …’

  I wasn’t really listening to him then. I was watching the woman in glasses. She was talking into the telephone on the wall and I distinctly heard her say, ‘True? Yes, of course it’s true.’

  Mr Newton, the inquiry agent, later pointed her out to me as Blythe’s secretary, whom he had once seen dancing in Soho wearing, incredibly enough, pink satin trousers.

  Oddly enough I won my case in Manchester. My solicitor told me that an elderly man on the jury had been heard to say that if a nice girl like me read those sort of magazines there couldn’t be much harm in them. It seems I’m to get a lot more dirty books from Manchester! Anyway, I was back in time for the Chambers meeting and all of us, except for Mrs Erskine-Brown who was apparently doing something extremely important in Wales, assembled in Ballard’s room. I was taking the minutes so I can tell you more or less exactly what happened. It started when Ballard read out the telemessage again in a very sad and solemn sort of way.

  ‘Bit rum, isn’t it? What’s he mean exactly, “Higher Tribunal”?’ Uncle Tom said.

  ‘I have no doubt he means that Great Court of Appeal before which we shall all have to appear eventually, Uncle Tom,’ Ballard explained.

  ‘I never got to the Court of Appeal. Never had a brief to go there, as a matter of fact. Probably just as well. I wouldn’t’ve been up to it.’ Uncle Tom smiled round at us all.

  ‘Knowing Rumpole,’ said Erskine-Brown, ‘there must be a joke there somewhere.’

  ‘It must have been sent by Mrs Rumpole. Poor Rumpole is clearly not in a position to send “telemessages”,’ our Head of Chambers told us.

  ‘Not in a position? Oh. See what you mean. Quite so. Exactly.’ Uncle Tom got the point.

  ‘Now, of course, this sad event will mean consequent changes in Chambers.’ Ballard moved the discussion on.

  ‘So far as the furniture is concerned. Yes.’ Erskine-Brown opened a favourite subject. ‘I don’t suppose anyone will have any particular use for the old hatstand which stood in Rumpole’s room.’

  ‘His hatstand, Erskine-Brown?’ Ballard was surprised.

  ‘I happen to have conferences, from time to time, with a number of solicitors. Naturally they have hats. Well, if no one else wants it …’

  ‘I don’t think there’ll be a stampede for Rumpole’s old hatstand,’ Uncle Tom assured him.

  ‘I was thinking that there ought to be a bit more work about,’ Hoskins said. ‘I mean, I suppose Henry can hang on to some of Rumpole’s solicitors. Myers and people like that. Now the work may get spread around a bit.’

  ‘I’m not sure I agree with Hoskins.’ Erskine-Brown was doubtful. ‘There’s some part of Rumpole’s work which we might be glad to lose. I mean the sort of thing you were doing in Manchester, Allways.’

  ‘You mean porn?’ I asked him brightly.

  ‘Obscenity! That’s exactly what I do mean. Or rape. Or indecent assault. Or possessing housebreaking instruments by night. I mean, this may be our opportunity, sad as the occasion is, of course, to improve the image of Chambers. I mean, do we want dirty-book merchants hanging about the clerk’s room?’

  ‘Speaking for myself,’ Ballard agreed, ‘I think there’s a great deal in what Erskine-Brown says. If you’re not for these moral degenerates, in my view, you should be against them. I’d like to see a great deal more prosecution work in Chambers.’

  ‘Well, you are certain of the money, with prosecutions.’ Hoskins was with him. ‘Speaking as a man with daughters.’

  ‘There is a young fellow who’s a certainty for the Yard’s list of prosecutors,’ Ballard said. ‘I think I’ve mentioned young Archie Featherstone to you, Erskine-Brown?’

  ‘Of course. The Judge’s nephew.’

  ‘It may be, in the changed circumstances, we shall have a room to offer young Archie Featherstone.’

  ‘He won’t be taking work from us?’ Hoskins was more than a bit nervous at the prospect.

  ‘In my opinion he’ll be bringing it in,’ Ballard reassured him, ‘in the shape of prosecutions. Now, there are a few arrangements to be discussed.’

  ‘I hope “arrangements” doesn’t mean a crematorium,’ Uncle Tom said mournfully. ‘I always think there’s something terribly depressing about those little railway lines, passing out through the velvet curtain.’

  ‘Of course, it is something of an event. I wonder if we’d get the Temple Church?’ Hoskins seemed almost excited.

  ‘Oh, I imagine not.’ Erskine-Brown was discouraging. ‘And, of course, we’ve seen nothing in The Times Obituaries. I’m afraid Rumpole never got the cases which made legal history.’

  ‘I suppose they might hold some sort of memorial service in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar,’ Uncle Tom said thoughtfully. Our Head of Chambers looked a bit disapproving at that, as it didn’t seem to be quite the right thing to say on a solemn occasion.

  ‘I think we should send a modest floral tribute,’ he suggested. ‘Henry can arrange for that, out of Chambers expenses. Everyone agreed?’ They all did, and Ballard went on, ‘In view of the fact that at the
eleventh hour he appeared to be reconciled to the deeper realities of our brief life on earth, you might all care to stand for a few minutes’ silence, in memory of Horace Rumpole.’

  So we all stood up, just a bit sheepishly, and bowed our heads. The silence seemed to last a long time, like it used to in Poppy Day services at school.

  As I have been writing up this account for the completion of Rumpole’s papers, I have got to know Mrs Rumpole and, in the course of a few teas, come to get on with her jolly well. As we all knew in Chambers, Rumpole used to call her She Who Must Be Obeyed and always seemed to be in tremendous awe of her, but I didn’t find her all that alarming. In fact she always seemed grateful for someone to talk to. She told me a lot about the old days, when her father, C. H. Wystan, was Head of Chambers, and of how Rumpole always criticized him for not knowing enough about bloodstains; and she described how Rumpole proposed to her at a ball in the Temple, when he’d had, as she described it, ‘quite enough claret cup to be going on with’. During one of our teas (she took me, which was very decent of her, to Fortnum’s) she described the visit she had received at her flat in the Gloucester Road shortly before Mr Myers restored R. v. Armstrong for a further hearing before Judge Bullingham.

  One afternoon there came a ring, so it seemed, at the doorbell of the Rumpole mansion flat. Mrs Rumpole – I’ll call her ‘Hilda’ from now on since we’ve really become quite friendly – opened the door to see a small, fat, elderly man (Hilda described him to me as toad-like), who had a bald head, gold-rimmed spectacles and the cheek to put on a crêpe armband and a black tie. As he sort of oozed past her into her living room, he looked, Hilda told me, like a commercial traveller for a firm of undertakers. She wasn’t entirely unprepared for this visit, however. The man had rung her earlier and explained that he was Mr Perivale Blythe, a solicitor of the Supreme Court and anxious to pay his respects to the Widow Rumpole.

  When he had penetrated the living room, Mr Blythe sat on a sofa with his briefcase on his knee and began to talk in hushed, respectful tones, Hilda told me.