The Collected Stories of Rumpole

by John Mortimer

  ‘Peanuts Molloy.’

  ‘About a man called Peter “Peanuts” Molloy. What did you tell your husband about Peanuts?’

  ‘About him as a man, like … ?’

  ‘Did you compare the virility of these two gentlemen?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’ April was able to cope with this part of the evidence without embarrassment.

  ‘And who got the better of the comparison?’

  ‘Peanuts.’ Tony, lowering his head, got his first look of sympathy from the jury.

  ‘Was there a scuffle in your bath then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mrs April Timson, did your husband ever try to drown you?’

  ‘No. He never.’ Her answer caused a buzz in Court. Guthrie stared at her, incredulous.

  ‘Why did you suggest he did?’ I asked. ‘My Lord. I object. What possible relevance?’ Hearthrug tried to interrupt but I and everyone else ignored him. ‘Why did you suggest he tried to murder you?’ I repeated.

  ‘I was angry with him, I reckon,’ April told us calmly, and the prosecutor lost heart and subsided. The Judge, however, pursued the matter with a pained expression. ‘Do I understand,’ he asked, ‘you made an entirely false accusation against your husband?’

  ‘Yes.’ April didn’t seem to think it an unusual thing to do.

  ‘Don’t you realize, madam,’ the Judge said, ‘the suffering that accusation has brought to innocent people?’ ‘Such as you, old cock,’ I muttered to Mizz Liz.

  ‘What was that, Rumpole?’ the Judge asked me. ‘Such as the man in the dock, my Lord,’ I repeated.

  ‘And other innocent, innocent people.’ His Lordship shook his head sadly and made a note.

  ‘After your husband’s trial did you continue to see Mr Peanuts Molloy?’ I went on with my questions to the uncompellable witness.

  ‘We went out together. Yes.’

  ‘Where did you meet?’

  ‘We met round the offey in Morrison Avenue. Then we went out in his car.’

  ‘Did you meet him at the off-licence on the night this robbery took place?’

  ‘I never.’ April was sure of it.

  ‘Your husband says that your neighbour Chrissie came round and told him that you and Peanuts Molloy were going to meet at the off-licence at 9.30 that evening. So he went up there to put a stop to your affair.’

  ‘Well, Chrissie was well in with Peanuts by then, wasn’t she?’ April smiled cynically. ‘I reckon he sent her to tell Tony that.’

  ‘Why do you reckon he sent her?’

  Hearthstoke rose again, determined. ‘My Lord, I must object,’ he said. ‘What this witness “reckons” is entirely inadmissible.’ When he had finished, I asked the Judge if I might have a word with my learned friend in order to save time. I then moved along our row and whispered to him vehemently, ‘One more peep out of you, Hearthrug, and I lay a formal complaint on your conduct!’

  ‘What conduct?’ he whispered back.

  ‘Trying to blackmail a learned Judge on the matter of a pot plant sent to a shorthand writer.’ I looked across at Lorraine. ‘Not in the best traditions of the Bar, that!’ I left him thinking hard and went back to my place. After due consideration he said, ‘My Lord. On second thoughts, I withdraw my objection.’

  Hearthstoke resumed his seat. I smiled at him cheerfully and continued with April’s evidence. ‘So why do you think Peanuts wanted to get your husband up to the off-licence that evening?’

  ‘Pretty obvious, innit?’

  ‘Explain it to us.’

  ‘So he could put him in the frame. Make it look like Tony done Ruby up, like.’

  ‘So he could put him in the frame. An innocent man!’ I looked at the jury. ‘Had Peanuts said anything to make you think he might do such a thing?’

  ‘After the first trial.’

  ‘After Mr Timson was bound over?’

  ‘Yes. Peanuts said he reckoned Tony needed a bit of justice, like. He said he was going to see he got put inside. ’Course, Peanuts didn’t mind making a bit hisself, out of robbing the offey.’

  ‘One more thing, Mrs Timson. Have you ever seen a weapon like that before?’

  I held up the cosh. The usher came and took it to the witness.

  ‘I saw that one. I think I did.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In Peanuts’s car. That’s where he kept it.’

  ‘Did your husband ever own anything like that?’

  ‘What, Tony?’ April weighed the cosh in her hand and clearly found the idea ridiculous. ‘Not him. He wouldn’t have known what to do with it.’

  When the evidence was complete and we had made our speeches, Guthrie had to sum up the case of R. v. Timson to the jury. As he turned his chair towards them, and they prepared to give him their full attention, a distinguished visitor slipped unobtrusively into the back of the Court. He was none other than old Keith from the Lord Chancellor’s office. The Judge must have seen him, but he made no apology for his previous lenient treatment of Tony Timson.

  ‘Members of the jury,’ he began. ‘You have heard of the false accusation of attempted murder that Mrs Timson made against an innocent man. Can you imagine, members of the jury, what misery that poor man has been made to suffer? Devoted to ladies as he may be, he has been called a heartless “male chauvinist”. Gentle and harmless by nature, he has been thought to connive at crimes of violence. Perhaps it was even suggested that he was the sort of fellow who would make his wife carry heavy luggage! He may well have been shunned in the streets, hooted at from the pavements, and the wife he truly loves has perhaps been unwilling to enter a warm, domestic bath with him. And then, consider,’ Guthrie went on, ‘if the unhappy Timson may not have also been falsely accused in relation to the robbery with violence of his local “offey”. Justice must be done, members of the jury. We must do justice even if it means we do nothing else for the rest of our lives but compete in croquet competitions.’ The Judge was looking straight at Keith from the Lord Chancellor’s office as he said this. I relaxed, lay back and closed my eyes. I knew, after all his troubles, how his Lordship would feel about a man falsely accused, and I had no further worries about the fate of Tony Timson.

  When I got home, Hilda was reading the result of the trial in the Evening Sentinel. ‘I suppose you’re cock-a-hoop, Rumpole,’ she said.

  ‘Hearthrug routed!’ I told her. ‘The women of England back on our side and old Keith from the Lord Chancellor’s office looking extremely foolish. And a miraculous change came over Guthrie.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He suddenly found courage. It’s something you can’t do without, not if you concern yourself with justice.’

  ‘That April Timson!’ Hilda looked down at her evening paper. ‘Making it all up about being drowned in the bathwater.’

  ‘When lovely woman stoops to folly’ – I went to the sideboard and poured a celebratory glass of Château Thames Embankment – ‘And finds too late that men betray,/What charm can soothe her melancholy …’

  ‘I’m not going to the Bar to protect people like her, Rumpole.’ Hilda announced her decision. ‘She’s put me to a great deal of trouble. Getting up at a quarter to six every morning for the Open University.’

  ‘What art can wash her guilt away? What did you say, Hilda?’

  ‘I’m not going to all that trouble, learning Real Property and Company Law and eating dinners and buying a wig, not for the likes of April Timson.’

  ‘Oh, Hilda! Everyone in Chambers will be extremely disappointed.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry.’ She had clearly made up her mind. ‘They’ll just have to do without me. I’ve really got better things to do, Rumpole, than come home cock-a-hoop just because April Timson changes her mind and decides to tell the truth.’

  ‘Of course you have, Hilda.’ I drank gratefully. ‘What sort of better things?’

  ‘Keeping you in order for one, Rumpole. Seeing you wash-up properly.’ And then she spoke with considerable feeling. ‘It’s disgus
ting!’

  ‘The washing-up?’

  ‘No. People having baths together.’

  ‘Married people?’ I reminded her.

  ‘I don’t see that makes it any better. Don’t you ever ask me to do that, Rumpole.’

  ‘Never, Hilda. I promise faithfully.’ To hear, of course, was to obey.

  That night’s Sentinel contained a leading article which appeared under the encouraging headline BATHTUB JUDGE PROVED RIGHT. Mrs April Timson, it read, has admitted that her husband never tried to drown her and the jury have acquitted Tony Timson on a second trumped-up charge. It took a Judge of Mr Justice Featherstone’s perception and experience to see through this woman’s inventions and exaggerations and to uphold the law without fear or favour. Now and again the British legal system produces a Judge of exceptional wisdom and integrity who refuses to yield to pressure groups and does justice though the heavens fall. Such a one is Sir Guthrie Featherstone.

  Sir Guthrie told me later that he read these comforting words whilst lying in a warm bath in his flat near Harrods. I have no doubt at all that Lady Featherstone was with him on that occasion, seated at the tap end.

  Rumpole and the Bubble Reputation

  It is now getting on for half a century since I took to crime, and I can honestly say I haven’t regretted a single moment of it.

  Crime is about life, death and the liberty of the subject; civil law is entirely concerned with that most tedious of all topics, money. Criminal law requires an expert knowledge of bloodstains, policemen’s notebooks and the dark flow of human passion, as well as the argot currently in use round the Elephant and Castle. Civil law calls for a close study of such yawn-producing matters as bills of exchange, negotiable instruments and charter parties. It is true, of course, that the most enthralling murder produces only a small and long-delayed legal aid cheque, sufficient to buy a couple of dinners at some Sunday supplement eaterie for the learned friends who practise daily in the commercial Courts. Give me, however, a sympathetic jury, a blurred thumbprint and a dodgy confession, and you can keep Mega-Chemicals Ltd v. The Sunshine Bank of Florida with all its fifty days of mammoth refreshers for the well-heeled barristers involved.

  There is one drawback, however, to being a criminal hack; the judges and the learned friends are apt to regard you as though you were the proud possessor of a long line of convictions. How many times have I stood up to address the tribunal on such matters as the importance of intent or the presumption of innocence only to be stared at by the old darling on the Bench as though I were sporting a black mask or carrying a large sack labelled SWAG? Often, as I walk through the Temple on my way down to the Bailey, my place of work, I have seen bowler-hatted commercial or revenue men pass by on the other side and heard them mutter, ‘There goes old Rumpole. I wonder if he’s doing a murder or a rape this morning?’ The sad truth of the matter is that civil law is regarded as the Harrods and crime the Tesco of the legal profession. And of all the varieties of civil action the most elegant, the smartest, the one which attracts the best barristers like bees to the honeypot, is undoubtedly the libel action. Star in a libel case on the civilized stage of the High Court of Justice and fame and fortune will be yours, if you haven’t got them already.

  It’s odd, isn’t it? Kill a person or beat him over the head and remove his wallet, and all you’ll get is an Old Bailey Judge and an Old Bailey Hack. Cast a well-deserved slur on his moral character, ridicule his nose or belittle his bank balance and you will get a High Court Judge and some of the smoothest silks in the business. I can only remember doing one libel action, and after it I asked my clerk Henry to find me a nice clean assault or an honest break and entering. Exactly why I did so will become clear to you when I have revealed the full and hitherto unpublished details of Amelia Nettleship v. The Daily Beacon and Maurice Machin. If, after reading what went on in that particular defamation case, you don’t agree that crime presents a fellow with a more honourable alternative, I shall have to think seriously about issuing a writ for libel.

  You may be fortunate enough never to have read an allegedly ‘historical’ novel by that much-publicized authoress Miss Amelia Nettleship. Her books contain virginal heroines and gallant and gentlemanly heroes and thus present an extremely misleading account of our rough island story. She is frequently photographed wearing cotton print dresses, with large spectacles on her still pretty nose, dictating to a secretary and a couple of long-suffering cats in a wistaria-clad Tudor cottage somewhere outside Godalming. In the interviews she gives, Miss Nettleship invariably refers to the evils of the permissive society and the consequences of sex before marriage. I have never, speaking for myself, felt the slightest urge to join the permissive society; the only thing which would tempt me to such a course is hearing Amelia Nettleship denounce it.

  Why, you may well ask, should I, whose bedtime reading is usually confined to The Oxford Book of English Verse (the Quiller-Couch edition), Archbold’s Criminal Law and Professor Ackerman’s Causes of Death, become so intimately acquainted with Amelia Nettleship? Alas, she shares my bed, not in person but in book form, propped up on the bosom of She Who Must Be Obeyed, alias my wife Hilda, who insists on reading her far into the night. While engrossed in Lord Stingo’s Fancy, I distinctly heard her sniff, and asked if she had a cold coming on. ‘No, Rumpole,’ she told me. ‘Touching!’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ I moved further down the bed.

  ‘Don’t be silly. The book’s touching. Very touching. We all thought Lord Stingo was a bit of a rake but he’s turned out quite differently.’

  ‘Sounds a sad disappointment.’

  ‘Nonsense! It’s ending happily. He swore he’d never marry, but Lady Sophia has made him swallow his words.’

  ‘And if they were written by Amelia Nettleship I’m sure he found them extremely indigestible. Any chance of turning out the light?’

  ‘Not yet. I’ve got another three chapters to go.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake! Can’t Lord Stingo get on with it?’ As I rolled over, I had no idea that I was soon to become legally involved with the authoress who was robbing me of my sleep.

  My story starts in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar to which I had hurried for medical treatment (my alcohol content had fallen to a dangerous low) at the end of a day’s work. As I sipped my large dose of Château Thames Embankment, I saw my learned friend Erskine-Brown, member of our Chambers at Equity Court, alone and palely loitering. ‘What can ail you, Claude?’ I asked, and he told me it was his practice.

  ‘Still practising?’ I raised an eyebrow. ‘I thought you might have got the hang of it by now.’

  ‘I used to do a decent class of work,’ he told me sadly. ‘I once had a brief in a libel action. You were never in a libel, Rumpole?’

  ‘Who cares about the bubble reputation? Give me a decent murder and a few well-placed bloodstains.’

  ‘Now, guess what I’ve got coming up?’ The man was wan with care.

  ‘Another large claret for me, I sincerely hope.’

  ‘Actual bodily harm and affray in the Kitten-A-Go-Go Club, Soho.’ Claude is married to the Portia of our Chambers, the handsome Phillida Erskine-Brown, QC, and they are blessed with issue rejoicing in the names of Tristan and Isolde. He is, you understand, far more at home in the Royal Opera House than in any Soho Striperama. ‘Two unsavoury characters in leather jackets were duelling with broken Coca-Cola bottles.’

  ‘Sounds like my line of country,’ I told him.

  ‘Exactly! I’m scraping the bottom of your barrel, Rumpole. I mean, you’ve got a reputation for sordid cases. I’ll have to ask you for a few tips.’

  ‘Visit the locus in quo’ was my expert advice. ‘Go to the scene of the crime. Inspect the geography of the place.’

  ‘The geography of the Kitten-A-Go-Go? Do I have to?’

  ‘Of course. Then you can suggest it was too dark to identify anyone, or the witness couldn’t see round a pillar, or …’

  But at that point we were interrupted by an
eager, bespectacled fellow of about Erskine-Brown’s age who introduced himself as Ted Spratling from the Daily Beacon. ‘I was just having an argument with my editor over there, Mr Rumpole,’ he said. ‘You do libel cases, don’t you?’

  ‘Good heavens, yes!’ I lied with instant enthusiasm, sniffing a brief. ‘The law of defamation is mother’s milk to me. I cut my teeth on hatred, ridicule and contempt.’ As I was speaking, I saw Claude Erskine-Brown eyeing the journalist like a long-lost brother. ‘Slimey Spratling!’ he hallooed at last.

  ‘Collywobbles Erskine-Brown!’ The hack seemed equally amazed. There was no need to tell me that they were at school together.

  ‘Look, would you join my editor for a glass of Bolly?’ Spratling invited me.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Bollinger.’

  ‘I’d love to!’ Erskine-Brown was visibly cheered.

  ‘Oh, you too, Colly. Come on, then.’

  ‘Golly, Colly!’ I said as we crossed the bar towards a table in the corner. ‘Bolly!’

  So I was introduced to Mr Maurice – known as ‘Morry’ – Machin, a large silver-haired person with distant traces of a Scots accent, a blue silk suit and a thick gold ring in which a single diamond winked sullenly. He was surrounded with empty Bolly bottles and a masterful-looking woman whom he introduced as Connie Coughlin, the features editor. Morry himself had, I knew, been for many years at the helm of the tabloid Daily Beacon, and had blasted many precious reputations with well-aimed scandal stories and reverberating ‘revelations’. ‘They say you’re a fighter, Mr Rumpole, that you’re a terrier, sir, after a legal rabbit,’ he started, as Ted Spratling performed the deputy editor’s duty of pouring the bubbly.

  ‘I do my best. This is my learned friend, Claude Erskine-Brown, who specializes in affray.’

  ‘I’ll remember you, sir, if I get into a scrap.’ But the editor’s real business was with me. ‘Mr Rumpole, we are thinking of briefing you. We’re in a spot of bother over a libel.’

  ‘Tell him,’ Claude muttered to me, ‘you can’t do libel.’

  ‘I never turn down a brief in a libel action.’ I spoke with confidence, although Claude continued to mutter, ‘You’ve never been offered a brief in a libel action.’