The Collected Stories of Rumpole

by John Mortimer

  ‘Rumpole’s got a pupil.’

  ‘I hope he’s an apt pupil.’

  ‘It’s not a he. It’s a she.’

  ‘A she. Oh, really, Rumpole?’ Dodo Mackintosh clicked her knitting needles and looked at me with deep suspicion.

  ‘A Mizz Liz Probert …’

  ‘You call her Liz?’ The cross-examination continued.

  ‘No. I call her Mizz.’

  ‘Is she a middle-aged person?’

  ‘About twenty-three. Is that middle-aged nowadays?’

  ‘And is Hilda quite happy about that, do you think?’ Dodo asked me, and not my wife, the question.

  ‘Hilda doesn’t look for happiness.’

  ‘Oh. What does she look for?’

  ‘The responsibilities of command.’ I raised a respectful glass of Château Fleet Street at She Who Must Be Obeyed. There was a brief silence broken only by the clicking of needles, and then Dodo said, ‘Don’t you want to know what this Liz Probert is like, Hilda?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  It was at this moment that the telephone rang and I picked it up to hear the voice of a young man called Ken Eastham, who worked at Vanberry’s. He wanted, it seemed, to ask my legal advice. I spoke to him whilst Hilda and her old friend, Dodo Mackintosh, speculated on the subject of my new pupil. When the call was over, I put down the telephone after thanking Mr Eastham from the bottom of my heart. It’s rare, in any experience, for anyone to care enormously for justice.

  ‘Well, Rumpole, you look extremely full of yourself,’ Hilda said as I dialled Mr Bernard’s number to warn him that we might be calling another witness.

  ‘No doubt he is full of himself’ – Dodo put in her two penn’orth – ‘having a young pupil to trot around with.’

  ‘Dodo’s coming down to the Old Bailey tomorrow, Rumpole,’ Hilda warned me. ‘She’s tremendously keen to see you in action.’

  In fact Dodo Mackintosh’s view of Rumpole in action was fairly short-lived. She arrived early at my Chambers, extremely early, and Henry told her that I was still breakfasting at the Taste-Ee-Bite in Fleet Street. Indeed I was then tucking into the full British with Mizz Probert, to whom I was explaining the position of the vagal nerve in the neck, which can be so pressed during a domestic fracas that death may ensue unintentionally. (I secured an acquittal for Gimlett, a Kilburn grocer, armed with this knowledge – the matter is described later in this very volume.) At any rate I had one hand placed casually about Mizz Probert’s neck explaining the medical aspect of the matter when Dodo Mackintosh entered the Taste-Ee-Bite, took in the scene, put the worst possible construction on the events, uttered the words ‘Rumpole in action! Poor Hilda’ in a tragic and piercing whisper and made a hasty exit. This was, of course, a matter which would be referred to later.

  I did not, as I think wisely, put Snakelegs Timson in the witness-box, but I had told Mr Bernard to get a witness summons delivered to the wine correspondent of the Sunday Mercury and took the considerable risk of calling her. When she was in the box I got the Bull’s permission to allow her to taste a glass of the wine which the prosecution claimed was stolen Château Cheval Blanc, although I had it presented to her in an anonymous tumbler. She held it up to the light, squinted at it through her monocle and then took a mouthful, which I told her she would have to swallow, however painful she found it, as we had no ‘expectoration corner’. At which point Tristram Paulet muttered a warning not to lead the witness.

  ‘Certainly not! In your own words, would you describe the wine you have just tasted?’

  ‘Is it worth describing?’ Miss Bird asked, having swallowed with distaste.

  ‘My client’s liberty may depend on it,’ I looked meaningfully at the jury.

  ‘It’s a rough and, I would say, crude Bordeaux-type of mixed origins. It may well contain some product of North Africa. It’s too young and drinking it would amount to infanticide had its quality not made such considerations irrelevant.’

  ‘Have you met such a wine before?’

  ‘I believe it is served in certain bars in this part of London to the more poorly paid members of the legal profession.’

  ‘Would you price it at fifty pounds a bottle?’ this poorly paid member asked.

  ‘You’re joking!’

  ‘It is not I that made the joke, Miss Bird.’

  I could see Vanberry, who was looking even more depressed and anxious than he had the day before, pass a note to the prosecuting solicitor. Meanwhile, Birdie gave me her answer. ‘It would be daylight robbery to charge more than two pounds.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you, Miss Bird. Just wait there, will you?’ I sat down and Tristram Paulet rose to cross-examine, armed with Vanberry’s note.

  ‘Miss Bird. The wine you have tasted came from a bottle labelled Cheval Blanc 1971. I take it you don’t think that is its correct description.’

  ‘Certainly not!’ The admirable Birdie would have none of it.

  ‘At a blind tasting which took place at Mr Vanberry’s shop, did you not identify a Cheval Blanc 1971?’ There was a considerable pause after this question, during which Miss Bird looked understandably uncomfortable.

  ‘I had my doubts about it,’ she explained at last.

  ‘But did you not identify it?’

  ‘Yes. I did.’ The witness was reluctant, but Paulet had got all he wanted. He sat down with a ‘thank you, Miss Bird’, and I climbed to my hindlegs to repair the damage in re-examination.

  ‘Miss Bird, on that occasion, were you competing against a Mr Monty Mantis, a garage owner of Luton, in the blind-tasting contest?’

  ‘Yes. I was.’

  ‘Did he express a poor opinion of the alleged Cheval Blanc?’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘But were you encouraged by Mr Martyn Vanberry to identify it as a fine claret by a number of hints and clues?’

  ‘Yes. He was trying to help me a little.’ Miss Bird looked doubtfully at the anxious wine merchant sitting in the well of the Court.

  ‘To help you to call it Cheval Blanc?’ I suggested.

  ‘I suppose so. Yes.’

  ‘Miss Bird. What was your opinion of Mr Monty Mantis?’

  ‘I thought him a very vulgar little man who probably had no real knowledge of wine.’ She had no doubt about it.

  ‘And, thinking that about him, were you particularly anxious to disagree with his opinion?’

  There was a pause while the lady faced up to the question and then said with some candour, ‘I suppose I may have been.’

  ‘And you were anxious to win the contest?’ Paulet rose to make an objection, but I ploughed on before the Bull could interrupt. ‘As Mr Vanberry was clearly helping you to do?’

  ‘I may have wanted to win. Yes,’ Miss Bird admitted, and Paulet subsided, discouraged by her answer.

  ‘Looking back on that occasion, do you think you were tasting genuine Cheval Blanc?’ It was the only important question in the case and Bullingham and Martyn Vanberry were both staring at the expert, waiting for her answer. When it came it was entirely honest.

  ‘Looking back on it, my Lord, I don’t think I was.’

  ‘And today you have told us the truth?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Honoria Bird.’ And I sat down, with considerable relief.

  With Honoria Bird’s evidence we had turned the corner. Young Ken Eastham, who had rung me at home, went into the witness-box. He told the Court that Vanberry had a few dozen of the Cheval Blanc, and then a large new consignment arrived from a source he had not heard of before. Martyn Vanberry asked him to set the new bottles apart from the old, but he had already unpacked some of the later consignment, and put a few bottles with the wine already there. Later, almost all the recently delivered ‘Cheval Blanc’ was stolen, and Martyn Vanberry seemed quite unconcerned at the loss. Subsequently, and by mistake he thought, one of the new bottles of ‘Cheval Blanc’ must have been used for the blind tasting. When I asked Mr Eastham why he had agreed to give this evide
nce he said, ‘I’ve done a long training in wine, and I suppose I love the subject. Well, there’s not much point in that is there, if there’s going to be lies told on the labels.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole’ – his Honour Judge Bullingham was now interested, but somewhat puzzled – ‘I’m not absolutely sure I follow the effect of this evidence. If Mr Vanberry were in the business of selling the inferior stuff we have tasted, and Miss Honoria Bird has tasted, as highly expensive claret surely the deceit would be obvious to anyone drinking …?’

  ‘I’m not suggesting that the wine was in Mr Vanberry’s possession for drinking, my Lord.’ I was doing my best to help the Bull grasp the situation.

  ‘Well, what on earth did he have it for?’

  Of course Vanberry had fixed the burglary at his wine shop just as he had fixed the stealing of his alleged Victorian watercolours, so that he could claim the insurance money on the value of expensive Cheval Blanc, which he never had. No doubt, whoever was asked to remove the swag was instructed to dispose of it on some rubbish tip. Instead it got sold round the pubs in Bromley, where Snakelegs bought it, and was tricked, without his knowledge, into a completely honest transaction, because it was never, in any real sense of the word, stolen property. So I was able to enlighten Bullingham in the presence of the chief prosecution witness, who was soon to become the defendant, in a case of insurance fraud: ‘Mr Vanberry didn’t ever have this wine for anyone to drink, my Lord. He had it there for someone to steal.’

  When the day’s work was done I called into the Taste-Ee-Bite again and retired behind the Standard with a pot of tea and a toasted bun. At the next table I heard the monotonous tones of Soapy Sam Bollard, QC, our Head of Chambers. ‘Your daughter’s really doing very well. She’s with Rumpole, a somewhat elderly member of our Chambers. Perhaps it’s mixing with the criminal classes, but Rumpole seems somewhat lacking in a sense of sin. A girl with your daughter’s background may well do him some good.’

  I could recognize the man he was talking to as Red Ron Probert, Labour Chairman of the South-east London Council. Ballard, who never watches the telly, was apparently unable to recognize Red Ron. Liz’s father, it seemed, had come to inquire as to his daughter’s progress and our Head of Chambers had invited him to tea.

  ‘I didn’t realize who you were at first,’ Ballard droned on. ‘Of course, you’re in mufti!’

  ‘What?’ Red Ron seemed surprised.

  ‘Your collar.’

  ‘What’s wrong with my collar?’

  ‘Nothing at all,’ Ballard hastened to reassure him. ‘I’m sure it’s very comfortable. I expect you want to look just like an ordinary bloke.’

  ‘Well, I am an ordinary bloke. And I represent thousands of ordinary blokes …’ Ron was about to deliver one of his well-loved speeches.

  ‘Of course you do! I must say, I’m a tremendous admirer of your work.’

  ‘Are you?’ Ron was surprised. ‘I thought you lawyers were always Right …’

  ‘Not always. Some of them are entirely wrong. But there are a few of us prepared to fight the good fight!’

  ‘On with the revolution!’ Ron slightly raised a clenched fist.

  ‘You think it needs that’ – Ballard was thoughtful – ‘to awaken a real sense of morality …?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘A revolution in our whole way of thinking? I fear so. I greatly fear so.’ Ballard shook his head wisely.

  ‘Fear not, Brother Ballard! We’re in this together!’ Red Ron rallied our Head of Chambers.

  ‘Of course.’ Ballard was puzzled. ‘Yes. Brother. Were you in some Anglican Monastic Order?’

  ‘Only the Clerical Workers’ Union.’ Red Ron laughed at what he took to be a Ballard witticism.

  ‘Clerical Workers? Yes, that, of course.’ Ballard joined in the joke. ‘Amusing way of putting it.’

  ‘And most of them weren’t exactly monastic!’

  ‘Oh dear, yes. There’s been a falling off, even among the clergy. I really must tell you …’

  ‘Yes, Brother.’ Red Ron was prepared to listen.

  ‘Brother! I can’t really … I should prefer to call you Father. It might be more appropriate.’

  ‘Have it your own way.’ Ron seemed to find the mode of address acceptable.

  ‘Father Probert,’ Ballard said, very sincerely, ‘you have been, for me at any rate, a source of great inspiration!’

  I folded my Standard then and crept away unnoticed. I felt no need to correct a misunderstanding which seemed to be so gratifying to both of them, and had had such a beneficial effect on Mizz Probert’s legal career.

  That night I carried home to Froxbury Court a not unusual treat, that is to say, a bottle of Pommeroy’s Château Thames Embankment. I was opening it with a feeling of modified satisfaction when Hilda said, ‘You look very full of yourself! I suppose you’ve won another case.’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’ I had the bottle open and was filling a couple of glasses: ‘Oh, for a draught of vintage! that hath been/Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth, …’ And then I tasted the wine and didn’t spit. ‘A crude Bordeaux-type of mixed origins. On sale to the more poorly paid members of the legal profession.’ I couldn’t help laughing.

  ‘What’ve you got to laugh about, Rumpole?’

  ‘Bollard!’

  ‘Your Head of Chambers.’

  ‘He met Mizz Probert’s father. Red Ron. And he still thought he was some Anglican Divine. He went entirely by the name on the label …’ I lowered my nose once more to the glass. ‘Tasting of Flora and the country green … Isn’t it remarkably quiet around here? I don’t seem to hear the fluting tones of your old childhood chum, Dodo Mackintosh.’

  ‘Dodo’s gone home.’

  ‘Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth.’

  ‘She’s disgusted with you, Rumpole. As a matter of fact, I told her she’d better go.’

  ‘You told Dodo that?’ She Who Must Be Obeyed was usually clay in Miss Mackintosh’s hands.

  ‘She said she’d seen you making up to some girl, in a tea-room.’

  ‘That’s what she said?’

  ‘I told her it was absolutely ridiculous. I really couldn’t imagine a young girl wanting to be made up to by you, Rumpole!’

  ‘Well. Thank you very much.’ I refilled the glass which had mysteriously emptied:

  ‘O for a beaker full of the warm South,

  Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,

  With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

  And purple-stained mouth…’

  ‘She said you were in some sort of embrace. I told her she was seeing things.’

  ‘That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

  And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

  Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

  What thou among the leaves hast never known,

  The weariness, the fever and the fret …’

  I must say the words struck me as somewhat comical. At the idea of my good self and She dancing away into the mysterious recesses of some wood, the mind, as they say, boggled.

  Rumpole and the Judge’s Elbow

  Up to now in these accounts of my most famous or infamous cases I have acted as a faithful historian, doing my best to tell the truth, the whole truth, about the events that occurred, and not glossing over the defeats and humiliations which are part of the daily life of an Old Bailey Hack, nor being ridiculously modest about my undoubted triumphs. When it comes to the matter of the Judge’s elbow, however, different considerations arise. Many of the vital incidents in the history of the tennis injury to Mr Justice Featherstone, its strange consequences and near destruction of his peace of mind, necessarily happened when I was absent from the scene, nor did the Judge ever take me into his confidence over the matter. Indeed as most of his almost frenetic efforts during the trial of Dr Maurice Horridge were devoted to concealing the truth from the world in general, and old Horace Rumpole in particular, it is a tru
th which may never be fully known. I have been, however, able to piece together from the scraps of information at my disposal (a word or two from a retired usher, some conversations Marigold Featherstone had with She Who Must Be Obeyed) a pretty clear picture of what went on in the private and, indeed, sheltered life of one of the Judges of the Queen’s Bench. I feel that I now know what led to Guthrie Featherstone’s curious behaviour during the Horridge trial, but in reconstructing some of the scenes that led up to this, I have had, as I say for the first time in these accounts, to use the art of the fiction writer and imagine, to a large extent, what Sir Guthrie or Lady Marigold Featherstone, or the other characters involved, may have said at the time. Such scenes are based, however, on a long experience of how Guthrie Featherstone was accustomed to behave in the face of life’s little difficulties, that is to say, with anxiety bordering on panic.

  I think it is also important that this story should be told to warn others of the dangers involved in sitting in Judgement on the rest of erring humanity. However, to save embarrassment to anyone concerned, I have left strict instructions that this account should not be published until after the death of the main parties, unless Mr Truscott of the Caring Bank should become particularly insistent over the question of my overdraft.

  Guthrie Featherstone, then plain Mr Guthrie Featherstone, QC, MP, became the Head of our Chambers in Equity Court on the retirement of Hilda’s Daddy, old C. H. Wystan, a man who could never bring himself to a proper study of bloodstains. I had expected, as the senior member in practice, to take over Chambers from Daddy, but Guthrie Featherstone, a new arrival, popped in betwixt the election and my hopes.