The Collected Stories of Rumpole

by John Mortimer

  ‘I felt I had to intrude,’ he said softly. ‘Even at this sad, sad moment, Mrs Rumpole. I do not come as myself, not even as Blythe, Winterbottom and Paisley, but I come as a representative, if I may say so, of the entire legal profession. Your husband was a great gentleman, Mrs Rumpole. And a fine lawyer.’

  ‘A fine lawyer?’ Hilda was puzzled. ‘He never told me.’

  ‘And, of course, a most persuasive advocate.’

  ‘Oh, yes. He told me that,’ Hilda agreed.

  ‘We all join you in your grief, Mrs Rumpole. And I have to tell you this! There are no smiling faces today in the firm of Blythe, Winterbottom and Paisley!’

  ‘Thank you.’ Hilda did her best to sound grateful.

  ‘Nor anywhere, I suppose, from Inner London to Acton Magistrates. He will be sorely missed.’

  ‘I have to tell you what will be sorely missed, Mr Blythe,’ Hilda said then, and said it in a meaningful kind of way.

  ‘What, Mrs Rumpole?’

  I think she said she stood up then and looked down on her visitor’s large, pale, bald head, ‘All those fees you owe him. Since the indecency case, I believe, in 1973.’

  Blythe was clearly taken aback. He cleared his throat and began to fiddle nervously with the catch on his briefcase. ‘You have heard a little about that?’

  ‘I’ve heard a lot about it!’

  ‘Well, of course, a great deal of that money hasn’t been completely recovered from the clients. Not in full. But I’m here to settle up,’ he assured her. ‘I imagine you’re the late Mr Rumpole’s executor?’

  He opened his briefcase; Hilda looked into it and noticed a chequebook. Blythe got out a document and shut the briefcase quickly.

  ‘Of course I’m his executor,’ Hilda told him.

  ‘Then no doubt you’re fully empowered to enter into what I think you’ll agree is a perfectly fair compromise. Now, the sum involved is …’

  ‘Two thousand, seven hundred and sixty-five pounds, ninety-three pence,’ Hilda said quickly. She has a jolly good memory.

  ‘Quite the businesswoman, Mrs Rumpole.’ The beastly Blythe smiled in a patronizing manner. ‘Now, would an immediate payment of … let’s say ten per cent, be a nice little arrangement? Then it’ll be over and done with.’

  ‘Mr Blythe. I have to face the butcher!’ Hilda told him.

  ‘Yes, of course, but …’ Blythe didn’t seem to understand.

  ‘And the water rates. And the London Electricity Board. And the telephone has actually been cut off during my visit to the Lake District. I can’t offer them a nice little arrangement, can I?’

  ‘Well. Possibly not,’ Blythe admitted.

  ‘But I will offer you one, Mr Perivale Blythe,’ Hilda said firmly.

  ‘Well, that’s extremely obliging of you …’ Blythe took out his fountain pen.

  And then Hilda spoke to him along the following lines. It was undoubtedly her finest hour. ‘I will offer you this,’ she said. ‘I won’t report this conversation to the Law Society, although this year’s President’s father was a close personal friend of my father, C. H. Wystan. I will not take immediate steps to have you struck off, Mr Blythe, just provided you sit down and write out a cheque for two thousand, seven hundred and sixty-five pounds, ninety-three pence, in favour of Hilda Rumpole.’

  The effect of this on the little creep on the sofa was apparently astonishing. For a moment his mouth sagged open. Then, in desperation, he patted his pockets. ‘Unfortunately forgot my chequebook,’ he lied. ‘I’ll slip one in the post.’

  ‘Look in your briefcase, Mr Blythe. I think you’ll find your chequebook there.’ Hilda’s words of command were interrupted by the sound of a ring at the door. As she went to open it she said, ‘Excuse me. And don’t try the window, Mr Blythe. It’s really a great deal too far for you to jump.’

  No doubt about it, she was a woman born to command. When she was out of the room, Blythe, with moist and trembling fingers, wrote out a cheque for the full amount. She returned with a tall, lugubrious figure who was scrubbing the end of his nose with a crushed pocket handkerchief.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Blythe,’ Hilda said politely as she took the cheque. ‘And now there’s a gentleman to see you.’

  At which the new arrival whisked a paper out of his pocket and put it into the hand of the demoralized Perivale Blythe.

  ‘ “Fig” Newton!’ he said. ‘Whatever’s this?’

  ‘It’s a subpoena, Mr Blythe,’ Mr Newton explained patiently. ‘They want you to give evidence in a case down the Old Bailey.’

  The case was, of course, R. v. Armstrong. On the morning when it started again I sat in Rumpole’s place, the only defending barrister. When the jury was reassembled the usher called for silence and his Honour Judge Bullingham came into Court, looked towards me, noticed the gap that used to be Rumpole and clearly decided that it would be in order to say a few words of tribute to the departed. They took the form of a speech to the jury in which his Lordship sounded confidential and really jolly sincere. ‘Members of the jury,’ he said, and they all turned their faces solemnly towards him. ‘Before we start this case, there is something I have to say. In our Courts, warm friendships spring up between judges and counsel, between Bench and Bar. We’re not superior beings as judges; we don’t put on “side”. We are the barristers’ friends. And one of my oldest friends, over the years, was Horace Rumpole.’ Both Ward-Webster for the prosecution and I looked piously up to the ceiling. We carefully hid our feelings of amazement.

  ‘During the time he appeared before me, in many cases, I can truthfully say that there was never a cross word between us, although we may have had trivial disagreements over points of law,’ Bullingham went on. ‘We are all part of that great happy family, members of the jury, which is the Criminal Court.’

  It was at that moment that I heard a sound beside me and smelt the familiar shaving soap and small cigar. The Judge and the jury were too busy with each other to notice, but Ward-Webster and almost everyone else in Court were looking towards us in silent stupefaction. Rumpole was, I must say, looking in astonishingly fine condition, pinker than usual and well rested. He was obviously enjoying the Judge’s speech.

  ‘Mr Horace Rumpole was one of the old brigade.’ By now Judge Bullingham was clearly deeply moved. ‘Not a leader, perhaps, not a general, but a reliable, hard-working and great-hearted old soldier of the line.’

  Of course, Rumpole could resist it no longer. He got slowly to his feet and bowed deeply, saying, ‘My Lord.’ The jury’s faces swivelled towards him. Bullingham looked away from the jury-box and into the Court. If people who see ghosts go dark purple, well, that’s how Bullingham looked.

  ‘My Lord,’ Rumpole repeated, ‘I am deeply touched by your Lordship’s remarks.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole … Mr Rumpole … ?’ The Judge’s voice rose incredulously. ‘I heard …’

  ‘Greatly exaggerated, my Lord, I do assure you.’ Of course, Rumpole had to say it. ‘May I say what a pleasure it is to be continuing this case before your Lordship.’

  ‘Mason. What’s this mean?’ Bullingham leant forward and whispered hoarsely to the Clerk of the Court. We heard Mr Mason whisper back, ‘Quite honestly, Judge, I haven’t a clue.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole. Have you some application?’ The Judge was looking at Rumpole with something like fear. Perhaps he thought he was about to call someone from the spirit world.

  ‘No application.’ Rumpole smiled charmingly. ‘Your Lordship kindly adjourned this case, if you remember. It’s now been restored to your list. Our inquiries are complete and I will call Mr Perivale Blythe.’

  After the sensation of Rumpole’s return from the tomb, where Bullingham quite obviously thought he’d been, I’m afraid to say that the rest of R. v. Armstrong was a bit of an anticlimax. Perivale Blythe padded into the witness-box, took the oath in a plummy sort of voice, and I have the notes of Rumpole’s examination-in-chief.

  ‘Mr Blythe,’ the resurrected old barrister asked. ‘A
fter their father’s death, did you act for the two Armstrong brothers, my client Frank and his brother Frederick?’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ Blythe agreed.

  ‘And did Fred supply the computers set up in the offices of Sun-Sand Holidays, my client Frank Armstrong’s firm?’

  ‘I believe he did.’ Blythe sounded uninterested.

  ‘Mr Blythe, would you take the photograph of the Cornish holiday site?’

  As the usher took the photograph to the witness-box, Bullingham staged a bit of a comeback and said, ‘The industrial area, Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘Exactly, my Lord.’ Rumpole bowed politely. ‘Do you know what that industry is, Mr Blythe?’

  ‘Tin mines, my Lord. I rather think.’ Once again, Blythe sounded deliberately unconcerned.

  ‘You know, don’t you? Didn’t you visit that site on behalf of your client Mr Frederick Armstrong?’

  ‘I did. He was anxious to buy his brother Frank’s site.’

  ‘Because he knew tin would also be discovered there.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ And then Blythe forgot his lack of interest. ‘I don’t believe he told his brother that.’

  ‘I don’t believe he did.’ Rumpole was after him now. ‘And when his brother refused, didn’t Fred take every possible step to ruin his brother Frank’s business, no doubt by interfering with the computers that he’d installed so that they constantly gave misleading information, booked non-existent holiday homes and gave false instructions for caravans to be towed away?’

  ‘I never approved of that, my Lord. I am an officer of the Court. I wouldn’t have any part of it.’ Perivale Blythe was sweating. He patted his bald head with a handkerchief and protested his innocence. I’d say he made a pretty unattractive figure in the witness-box.

  ‘Although you knew about it. Come, Mr Blythe. You must have known about it to disapprove.’ Rumpole pressed his advantage but the Judge, back to his old form, was getting restless. ‘Mr Rumpole! I take the gravest objection to this in examination-in-chief. It is quite outrageous!’

  ‘A trivial objection, surely?’ Rumpole gave a sweet smile. ‘Your Lordship has told the jury we only have trivial disagreements.’

  ‘You are putting an entirely new case to this witness, so far as I can see, on no evidence.’

  ‘Oh, there will be evidence, my Lord.’

  ‘I hope that my learned friend doesn’t wish to conceal from the jury the fact that Detective Inspector Limmeridge arrested Frederick Armstrong when he had entered his brother’s office by night and was reprogramming the computers. There has been a charge of Perverting the Course of Justice,’ Rumpole said, looking hard at the jury. ‘In fact, Mr Newton has given the results of all his observations to the Officer-in-Charge of the case.’

  ‘Is that right, Mr Ward-Webster?’ Bullingham asked incredulously.

  ‘So I understand, my Lord.’ Ward-Webster subsided.

  ‘I shall be recalling the Detective Inspector, my Lord,’ Rumpole said triumphantly, ‘as a witness for the defence.’

  Well in the end, of course, the jury saw the point. Brother Fred had set out to ruin brother Frank’s business by interfering with the computers so that they sold non-existent holidays, or removed existing caravans. With Frank in prison Fred could have got hold of the Cornish mobile homes site and a great deal of tin. It wasn’t one of Rumpole’s greatest cases, but a jolly satisfying win. Horace Rumpole has taught me a lot about criminal procedure, but I don’t think I’d ever dare try his way of getting an adjournment.

  Well, I’ve written my bit. I hope it’s all right and that someone will check it through for grammar. It tells what happened so far as I knew it at the time, or almost as far as I knew it.

  (Signed) Fiona Patience Allways, barrister-at-law.

  3 Equity Court

  Temple

  London, EC4

  I’m extremely grateful to my learned friend, Miss Fiona Allways, for dealing with that part of the story. It had been necessary, as I expect you have guessed, to take her into my confidence (a little earlier than she divulges in her account) when I decided to lie doggo, to feign death and lure the wretched Perivale Blythe out of hiding. Of course I saw Hilda as soon as she got back from her ‘bachelor holiday’ in the Lake District and I had to let her in on the scheme. But I must say, She was something of a sport about the whole business and the way she dealt with the appalling Blythe, much of which I heard from a point of vantage near our bedroom door, seemed to me masterly. When She Who Must Be Obeyed is on form, no lawyer can possibly stand up to her.

  On the whole the incident gave me enormous pleasure. One of the many drawbacks of actually snuffing it will be that you can’t hear the things people say about you when they think you’re safe in your box. I enormously enjoyed Fiona’s account of the Chambers meeting and the silent prayer which marked my passing – just as I will never let Judge Bullingham forget his funeral oration.

  Oh, and one other marvellous moment: Hilda and I were sitting at tea one afternoon when I was out of circulation and a ring came at the doorbell. Some boy was delivering Hilda a socking great wreath from Chambers, compliments of Sam Ballard and all the learned friends. The deeply respectful note to Hilda explained that the tribute was sent to her home as they didn’t quite know when the interment was due to take place.

  After I had won Frank Armstrong’s case I walked up to Chambers and called on our learned Head. For some reason my appearance in the flesh seemed to irritate the man almost beyond endurance.

  ‘Rumpole,’ he said, ‘I think you’ve behaved disgracefully.’

  ‘I don’t know why you should say that,’ I told him. ‘Isn’t there a Biblical precedent for this sort of thing?’

  ‘I suppose you’re very proud of yourself,’ Ballard boomed on.

  ‘Well, it wasn’t a bad win.’ I lit a small cigar. ‘Got the Sun-Sand Mobile Homes owner away and clear. Made the world safe for a few more ghastly holidays.’

  ‘I am not referring to your case, Rumpole. You caused us all … You caused me personally … a great deal of unnecessary grief!’

  ‘Oh, come off it, Bollard. I understand you couldn’t wait to relet my room to young Archie Featherstone.

  ‘A little month; or ere those shoes were old

  With which you follow’d poor old Rumpole’s body,

  Like Niobe, all tears …’

  I gave him a slice of Hamlet which he didn’t appreciate.

  ‘We had to plan for the future, Rumpole. Deeply distressed as we all were …’

  ‘Deeply distressed indeed! I hear that Uncle Tom suggested a memorial service in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar.’

  Ballard had the decency to look a little embarrassed. ‘I never approved of that,’ he said.

  ‘Well, it’s not a bad idea. And I happen to be in funds at the moment. Why don’t I invite you all to a piss-up at Pommeroy’s?’

  Ballard looked at me sadly. ‘And I thought you had finally found faith!’ he said. ‘That’s what I can never forgive.’

  In due course the learned friends assembled in Pommeroy’s at the end of a working day. I had invited Hilda to join us. We were on friendly terms at the time and, as a result of Blythe’s cheque, her bank balance was in a considerably more healthy state than mine. So I got Jack Pommeroy to dispense the plonk with a liberal hand and during the celebrations I heard She Who Must Be Obeyed talking to our Head of Chambers.

  ‘It was very naughty of Rumpole, of course,’ She said, ‘but there was just no other way of getting his fees from that appalling man, Perivale Blythe.’

  ‘Mrs Rumpole. Can I get this clear? You were a knowing party to this extraordinary conspiracy?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ And Hilda sounded proud of it.

  ‘I’ll have you after my job, Mrs Rumpole,’ Henry said. ‘I couldn’t get Mr Blythe to pay up. Not till we got this idea.’

  ‘Henry! You’re not saying you knew?’

  ‘I’m not saying anything, Mr Ballard,’ Henry answered with a true clerk’s diplomac
y. ‘But perhaps I had an inkling.’

  ‘Allways! You took Rumpole home. You must have thought …’ Ballard clearly guessed that he was on to an appalling conspiracy.

  ‘That he’d died?’ Fiona smiled at him. ‘Oh, I can’t see how anyone could think that. He’d never die in the middle of a case, would he?’

  ‘It was exactly the same when we believed he’d retired,’ Uncle Tom told the world in general. ‘Rumpole kept popping back, like a bloody opera singer!’

  At which point I felt moved to address them and banged a glass on the bar for silence.

  ‘Well, my learned friends!’ I said in my final speech. ‘Since no one else seems inclined to, it falls on me to say a few words. After the distressing news you have heard, it comes as a great pleasure to welcome Horace Rumpole back to the land of the living. When he was deceased he was constantly in your thoughts. Some of you wanted his room. Some of you wanted his work. Some, I know, couldn’t wait to get their fingers on the old boy’s hatstand. You are all nonetheless welcome to drink to his long life and continued success in a glass of Château Thames Embankment!’

  I must say that they all raised their glasses and drank with every appearance of enjoyment. Then I went over to Jack Pommeroy and asked him to bring out, from behind the bar, the tribute from Ballard which I had concealed there before the party began.

  ‘Bollard,’ I said as I handed it to him, ‘this came to my home address. I’m afraid you went to some expense over the thing. Never mind. As I shan’t be needing it now, keep it for one of your friends.’

  So, at the end of the day, Sam Ballard was left holding the wreath.

  Rumpole and the Blind Tasting

  ‘Rumpole! How could you drink that stuff?’

  ‘Perfectly easy, Erskine-Brown. Raise the glass to the lips, incline the head slightly backwards and let the liquid flow gently past the tonsils.’ I gave the man a practical demonstration. ‘I admit I’ve had a good deal of practice, but even you may come to it in time.’

  ‘Of course you can drink it, Rumpole. Presumably it’s possible to drink methylated spirits shaken up with a little ice and a dash of Angostura bitters.’ Erskine-Brown smiled at me from over the edge of the glass of Côte de Nuits Villages ’79, which he had been ordering in his newly acquired wine-buff’s voice from Jack Pommeroy, before he settled himself at the bar; I couldn’t help noticing that his dialogue was showing some unaccustomed vivacity. ‘I fully appreciate that you can drink Pommeroy’s Very Ordinary. But the point is, Rumpole, why should you want to?’