The Collected Stories of Rumpole
Page 41
‘Diogenes, Rumpole.’ Uncle Tom translated from the original Greek. ‘Do you know nothing about the turf? It came in at a canter. I said to myself, “That’s old Rumpole for you. He has all the luck!” ’
‘Oh. Got a winner, did I?’ I tried to remain cool when Henry handed me a bundle and told me that it was a hundred of the best and asked if I wanted to count them. I told him I trusted him implicitly and counted off twenty crisp fivers. It was an excellent start to the day.
‘You know what they say!’ Uncle Tom looked on with interest and envy. ‘Lucky on the gee-gees, unlucky in love. You’ve never been tremendously lucky in love, have you, Rumpole?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, Uncle Tom. I’ve had my moments. One hundred smackers!’ I put the loot away in my hip pocket. ‘It’s not every day that a barrister gets folding money out of his clerk.’ Uncle Tom looked at me a little sceptically. Perhaps he wondered what sort of moments I had had; after all he had enjoyed the privilege of meeting Mrs Hilda Rumpole at our Chambers parties.
As I sat in the café I said to myself,
They may talk as they please about what they call ‘pelf’,
They may sneer as they like about eating and drinking,
But I cannot help it, I cannot help thinking …
How pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho!
How pleasant it is to have money …
So pleasant it is to have money …
The lines went through my head as I took my usual walk down Fleet Street to Ludgate Circus and then up to the Old Bailey. As I walked I could feel the comforting and unusual bulge of notes in my hip pocket. As I marched up the back lanes to the Palais de Justice, I passed a newspaper kiosk which, I had previously noticed, seemed to mainly cater to the racing fraternity. There were a number of papers and posters showing jockeys whose memoirs were printed and horses whose exploits were described, and I noticed that morning the advertisement for a publication entitled The Punter’s Guide to the Turf which carried a story headed FOUR-HORSE WINNER FATHER OF THREE TELLS HOW HE HIT QUARTER OF A MILLION JACKPOT.
Naturally, as a successful racing man (a status I had achieved in the last ten minutes), I took a greater interest in the familiar kiosk. I had, clearly, something of a talent for the turf. The Derby one day, perhaps the Grand National the next – was it the Grand National or the Oaks? With a few winners, I thought, a fellow could live pretty high on the hog – I took a final turning and the Old Bailey hoved into view – a fellow might even be able to consider giving up the delights of slogging down the Bailey for the dubious pleasure of doing a cut-throat defence before his unpredictable Honour Judge Roger Bullingham.
And then, walking on towards the old verdict factory, I heard the familiar voices of Phillida Erskine-Brown, QC, and her spouse; fragments of conversation floated back to me on the wind.
‘Rumpole’s got Probert taking a note for him,’ our Portia said. ‘Do try not to dream about taking her to the opera again.’
‘I only took her once. And then she didn’t enjoy it.’ This was Claude’s somewhat half-hearted defence.
‘I bet she didn’t. You would have been better off inviting her to a Folk Festival at the Croydon Community Centre. Much more her style.’
‘Philly! Look, aren’t you ever going to forget it?’
‘Frankly, Claude, I don’t think I ever am.’
They crossed the road in front of me and their voices were lost, but I had heard enough to know that all was not sweetness and light in the Erskine-Brown household. I hoped that our Portia’s natural irritation with her errant husband would not lead her to sharpen her scalpel for the cut-throat defence.
Half an hour later I knew the answer to that question. I was robed up with Liz Probert and Mr Bernard in tow on my way to a pre-trial conference with my client Dennis Timson, when we met Phillida Erskine-Brown and her husband on a similar mission to Den’s cousin, Cyril.
‘Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.’ I thought this was a suitable greeting to the lady silk in the lift.
‘Rumpole! What’s all this about proud Titania?’
‘You’re not going to listen to me?’
‘I’ll certainly listen, Rumpole. What’ve you got to say?’
‘You know it’s always fatal when two accused persons start blaming each other! A cut-throat defence with the prosecutor chortling in his joy and handing out the razors. That’s got to be avoided at all costs.’
‘Why don’t you admit it then?’
‘Admit what?’
‘Admit you had the shooter? Accept the facts.’
‘Plead guilty?’ I must admit I was hurt by the suggestion. ‘And break the habit of a lifetime?’ We were out of the lift now and waiting, at the gateway of the cells in the basement, for a fat and panting screw, who had just put down a jumbo-sized sandwich, to unlock the oubliettes. ‘Who’s prosecuting?’ I asked Phillida.
‘Young fellow who was in our Chambers for about five minutes,’ she told me. ‘Charles Hearthstoke.’
‘My life seems to be dominated by hearthrugs,’ I told her.
‘He’s rather sweet.’
‘If you can possibly think Hearthrug’s sweet’ – I must say I was astonished – ‘no wonder you suspect Dennis Timson of carrying a shooter.’
‘Dennis Timson was tooled up.’ She was positive of the fact.
‘Cyril was!’ I knew my Dennis.
‘Moreover, he shot the bank guard extremely inefficiently – in the foot.’
‘Come on, proud Titania. Plead guilty …’ I tried a winsome smile to a minus effect.
‘Not for thy fairy kingdom, Rumpole!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Isn’t that what Titania tells him. At the end of the scene? I suppose it means “no deal”.’ We parted then, to interview our separate clients, and I was left wondering if, when she was a white-wig, I had not taught young Phillida Trant, as she then was, far too much.
We, that is to say, Liz, Mr Bernard and I, found Dennis in one of the small interview rooms, smoking a little snout and reading The Punter’s Guide to the Turf. I thought I should do best by an appeal to our old friendship and business association. ‘You and I, Dennis,’ I reminded him, ‘have known each other for a large number of years and I’ve never heard of you carrying a shooter before.’
‘You’re a sporting man, Mr Rumpole,’ the client said unexpectedly. I had to admit that I had enjoyed some recent success on the turf.
‘Bloke in here cleared quarter of a million on the horses.’ And Dennis was good enough to show me his Punter’s Guide. ‘Well,’ I told him, ‘I’ve had handsome wins in my time, but nothing to equal …’
‘He’s seen boarding an aeroplane for the Seychelles.’ Dennis showed me the picture in his Punter’s.
‘The Seychelles, eh?’ I was thoughtful. ‘Far from Judge Bullingham and the Old Bailey.’
‘I could make more than that on a four-horse accumulator. If I had a ton,’ our client claimed.
‘A ton of what?’
‘A hundred pound stake.’
‘A hundred pounds?’ That very sum was swelling in my back pocket.
‘I reckon I could top three hundred grand in the next few days.’
I pulled myself together and reluctantly came back to the matter in hand. ‘You know what’s going to happen when you and Cyril blame each other for carrying the shooter? The Mad Bull’s going to tell the jury you agreed to go on an armed robbery together. He’ll say that it doesn’t really matter who was in charge of the equipment. You’re both guilty! Did you say … three hundred thousand pounds?’
‘From a four-horse accumulator.’ Dennis made the point again.
‘Four-horse what?’
‘Accumulator.’ He consulted his paper again. ‘I could get 9 to 1 about Pretty Balloon at Goodwood this afternoon.’
‘Do you want me to take this down?’ Mizz Probert was puzzled at the course the conference was taking. I told her to relax but I pulled out a pencil and made a f
ew notes on the back of my brief. I am ashamed to have to tell you they were not about the case.
‘So there’d be a grand to go on Mother’s Ruin at Redcar. 5 to 1, I reckon. That’d give us six thou.’ Dennis went on as though it were peanuts. ‘And that’d be on Ever So Grateful … which should get you fours at Yarmouth. So that’s thirty grand!’
‘Ever So Grateful, sounds a polite little animal.’ I was taking a careful note.
‘Now we need 10 to 1 for a bit of a gamble.’ Dennis was studying the forecasts.
‘What’s it been up to now?’
‘A doddle,’ he told me calmly.
‘Easy as tunnelling into a bank vault?’ I couldn’t help it.
‘Do me a favour, Mr Rumpole, don’t bring that up again.’ His pained expression didn’t last long. ‘Kissogram at Newbury on Wednesday,’ he read out in triumph. ‘Ante-post price should bring you, let’s say three hundred and thirty grand! Give or take a fiver.’
‘In round figures?’
‘Oh, yes. In round figures.’
I put away my pen and looked at Dennis. ‘Just tell me one thing.’
‘About the shooter?’ His cheerfulness was gone.
‘We’ll come back to the shooter in a minute; I was thinking that you’ve been in custody since that eventful night.’
‘Six months, Mr Rumpole,’ Bernard told me and Liz Probert added, ‘We should get that off the sentence.’
‘I suppose, being in Brixton and now here, it’s difficult to place a small bet or two? Not to mention a four-horse accumulator?’
‘Bless your heart, Mr Rumpole. There’s always screws that’ll do it for you, even down the Old Bailey cells.’
‘Screws that’ll put on bets?’ I was surprised to hear it.
‘You know Gerald, the fat one at the gate, the one that’s always got his face in a bacon sarny?’
‘Gerald.’ I was grateful for the information. And then I stood up; we seemed to have covered all the vital points. ‘Well, I think that’s about all on the legal aspect of the case. Just remember one thing, Dennis. The Timsons don’t carry weapons and they don’t grass on each other.’
‘That’s true, Mr Rumpole. That has always been our point of honour.’
‘So don’t you go jumping into that witness-box and blame it all on your Cousin Cyril. Let the prosecution try and prove which of you had the gun; don’t you two start cutting each other’s throats.’
‘Cyril goes in the first, don’t he?’ Dennis had a certain amount of legal knowledge gained in the hard school of experience.
‘If he goes in at all, yes. You’re second on the indictment.’
‘I’ll have to see what he says, won’t I?’
‘But you wouldn’t grass on him?’
‘Not unless I have to.’ Dennis didn’t sound so sure.
‘What is honour? A word. What is that word, honour? Air!’ Happily the allusion was lost on my client, so I went off to try a few passes at the Mad Bull after a word in confidence with the stout warder at the gate.
‘Gerald.’ I accosted him after I had told Liz and Mr Bernard to go on up and keep my place warm in Court. ‘Yes, Mr Rumpole. Got a busy day in Court ahead, have you?’ The man’s voice came muffled by a large wadge of sandwich.
‘I am a little hard-pressed; in fact I’m too busy to get to my usual bookmakers.’ ‘Want me to put something on for you?’ Gerald seemed to follow my drift at once.
‘A hundred pounds. Four-horse accumulator. Start this afternoon at Goodwood’ – I consulted the notes on my brief – ‘with Pretty Balloon. I reckon you can get 9 to 1 about it.’
‘Will do, Mr Rumpole. I’ll be slipping out soon, for a bit of dinner.’
‘And I’m sure you’ll need it …’ I looked at the man with something akin to awe and gave him the name of my four hopeful horses. Then I put my hand in my back pocket, lugged out the hundred pounds and handed it all to Gerald. As some old gambler put it:
He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
That puts it not unto the touch,
To win or lose it all.
It was after I had placed the great wager with Gerald that I went upstairs. Outside Judge Bullingham’s Court, I found three large figures awaiting me. I recognized Fred Timson, a grey-haired man, his face bronzed by the suns of Marbella, wearing a discreet sports jacket, cavalry-twill trousers and an MCC tie. He was the acknowledged head of the family, always called on for advice in times of trouble, and with him I had also a longstanding business relationship. Fred was flanked by two substantial ladies who had clearly both been for a recent tint and set at the hairdressers; they were brightly dressed as though for a wedding or some celebration other than their husbands’ day in Court. They, as I was reminded, were Den’s Doris and Cyril’s Maureen. Fred hastily told me of the family troubles. ‘We’re being made a laughing stock, Mr Rumpole. There’s Molloys making a joke of this all over South London.’ Of course, I knew the numerous clan Molloy, rival and perhaps more deft and successful villains, who were to the Timsons what the Montagues were to the Capulets, York to Lancaster or the Guelphs to the Ghibellines of old.
‘I’ve been called out to in the street by Molloy women,’ Den’s Doris complained. ‘Maureen’s been called out to in Tesco on several occasions.’
‘They’re laughing at our husbands’ – this, from Cyril’s Maureen – ‘grassing on each other.’
‘Is that what they’re laughing at?’ I wondered.
‘Oh, the Molloys is doing very nicely, that’s what we hear. They pulled off something spectacular.’ Fred had the latest information.
‘They got away with something terrific, they reckon,’ Maureen and Doris added. ‘And they calls out that all the Timsons can do is get nicked and then grass on each other.’
‘These Molloys aren’t ever going to let us hear the last of it.’ Fred was gloomy. ‘Young Peanuts Molloy, he called out that all the Timsons is good for is to use as ferrets.’
‘Ferrets?’ I looked at him with some interest. ‘Why on earth did he say that, I wonder?’
‘You know the way they talk.’ Fred was full of contempt for Molloy boasting. ‘We wants you to go in there, Mr Rumpole. And save our reputation.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ I had to promise. After all, the Timson family had done more for the legal profession than a hundred Lord Chancellors.
A standard opening gambit, when faced with the difficulties of a cut-throat defence, is to apply to the Court, before the jury is let in and sworn, for separate trials for the defendants. If they are tried on different occasions they cannot then give evidence which will be harmful to each other. Such applications are usually doomed, as the Judge is as keen as the prosecution to see a couple of customers convicting each other without the need for outside assistance.
‘A separate trial,’ the Bull growled when I stood on my feet to make the application, ‘for Dennis Timson? Any reason for that, Mr Rumpole, apart from your natural desire to spin out these proceedings as long as possible? I assume your client’s on legal aid?’
I am sorry to say that not only the handsome young Hearthstoke but Phillida laughed at Bullingham’s ‘joke’, and I thought that if I were to win the four-horse accumulator, I could tell his Lordship to shut up and not be so mercenary.
‘The reason, my Lord,’ I told him, ‘is my natural desire to see that justice is done to my client.’
‘Provided it’s paid for by the unfortunate ratepayers of the City of London.’ The Bull glared at me balefully. ‘Go on, Mr Rumpole.’
‘I understand that my co-defendant, Mr Cyril Timson, may give evidence accusing my client of having the gun.’
‘And you, no doubt, intend to return the compliment?’
‘I’m not prepared to say at this stage what my defence will be,’ I said with what remained of my dignity.
‘But it may be a cut-throat?’ the Bull suggested artlessly.
‘That is possible, my Lord.’
Gazing at his Lordship, I knew how the Emperor Nero looked when he settled down in the circus to watch a gladiator locked in hopeless combat with a sabre-toothed tiger. I glanced away and happened to catch sight of a pale, weaselly-faced young man with lank hair and a leather jacket leaning over the rail of the Public Gallery, listening to the proceedings with interest and amusement. I immediately recognized the face, well known in criminal circles, of Peanuts Molloy, who also appeared to enjoy the circus. I averted my eyes and once more addressed the learned Judge, ‘Of course,’ I told him, ‘the statements the defendants made to the police wouldn’t be evidence against each other.’
‘But once they go into the witness-box in the same trial and repeat them on oath, then they become evidence on which the jury could convict!’ Bullingham added with relish.
‘Your Lordship has my point.’
‘Of course I do. You don’t want your client sent down for armed robbery and grievous bodily harm, do you, Mr Rumpole?’
‘I don’t want my client sent down on evidence which may well be quite unreliable!’ At that I sat down in as challenging a manner as possible and his Honour Judge Bullingham directed a sickly smile at Phillida. ‘Mrs Erskine-Brown. Do you support Mr Rumpole’s application?’ he asked her in a voice like Guinness and treacle.
‘My Lord. I do not!’ Phillida rose to put her small stiletto heel into Rumpole. ‘I’m sure that under your Lordship’s wise guidance justice will be done to both the defendants. Your Lordship will no doubt direct the jury with your Lordship’s usual clarity.’ When it came to buttering up the Bull our Portia could lay it on with a trowel. ‘You may well warn them of the danger of convicting Mr Dennis Timson on the evidence of an accomplice. But, of course, they can do so if they think it right.’
‘Oh yes, Mrs Erskine-Brown.’ The Bull was purring like a kitten. ‘I shall certainly tell them that. The Court is grateful for your most valuable contribution.’
So the two Timsons were ordered to be tried together and I thought that if only certain horses managed their races better than I was managing my case I might, in the not too distant future, be boarding an aeroplane for the Seychelles. In fact, that first day in Court was not an unmitigated disaster. As Hearthrug was drawing to the end of a distinctly unsporting address to the jury, in the course of which he told them that the bank guard, Huggins, ‘a family man, a man of impeccable character, who has sat upon his local Church Council, was wounded by these two desperate robbers, albeit in the foot’, my client scribbled a note which was delivered to me by a helpful usher. I opened it and read the glad tidings: THE SCREWS TOLD ME, MR RUMPOLE. PRETTY BALLOON WON BY A SHORT HEAD AT GOODWOOD. One up, I thought as I crumpled the note and looked up at Bullingham like a man who might not be in his clutches for ever – one up and three to go.