The Collected Stories of Rumpole

by John Mortimer

  ‘What is it that I am required to do, Mr Rumpole?’ the great detective asked patiently.

  ‘Keep your eye on a lady.’

  ‘I usually am, Mr Rumpole. Keeping my eye on one lady or another.’

  ‘This one’s a novelist. A certain Miss Amelia Nettleship. Do you know her works?’

  ‘Can’t say I do, sir.’ Fig had once confessed to a secret passion for Jane Austen. ‘Are you on to a winner?’

  ‘With a bit of help from you, Fig. Only one drawback here, as in most cases.’

  ‘What’s that, sir?’

  ‘The client.’ Looking across the bar I had seen the little group from the Beacon round the Bollinger. Having business with the editor, I left Fig Newton to his work and crossed the room. Sitting myself beside my client I refused champagne and told him that I wanted him to do something about my learned friend, Claude Erskine-Brown.

  ‘You mean the barrister who goes to funny places in the afternoon? What’re you asking me to do, Mr Rumpole?’

  ‘Apologize, of course. Print the facts. Claude Erskine-Brown was in the Kitten-A-Go-Go purely in pursuit of his legal business.’

  ‘I love it!’ Morry’s smile was wider than ever. ‘There speaks the great defender. You’d put up any story, wouldn’t you, however improbable, to get your client off.’

  ‘It happens to be true.’

  ‘So far as we are concerned’ – Morry smiled at me patiently – ‘we printed a pic of a gentleman in a pinstriped suit examining the goods on display. No reason to apologize for that, is there, Connie? What’s your view, Ted?’

  ‘No reason at all, Morry.’ Connie supported him and Spratling agreed.

  ‘So you’re going to do nothing about it?’ I asked with some anger.

  ‘Nothing we can do.’

  ‘Mr Machin.’ I examined the man with distaste. ‘I told you it was a legal rule that a British barrister is duty-bound to take on any client however repellent.’

  ‘I remember you saying something of the sort.’

  ‘You are stretching my duty to the furthest limits of human endurance.’

  ‘Never mind, Mr Rumpole. I’m sure you’ll uphold the best traditions of the Bar!’

  When Morry said that I left him. However, as I was wandering away from Pommeroy’s towards the Temple station, Gloucester Road, home and beauty, a somewhat breathless Ted Spratling caught up with me and asked me to do my best for Morry. ‘He’s going through a tough time.’ I didn’t think the man was entirely displeased by the news he had to impart. ‘The proprietor’s going to sack him.’

  ‘Because of this case?’

  ‘Because the circulation’s dropping. Tits and bums are going out of fashion. The wives don’t like it.’

  ‘Who’ll be the next editor?’

  ‘Well, I’m the deputy now …’ He did his best to sound modest.

  ‘I see. Look’ – I decided to enlist an ally – ‘would you help me with the case? In strict confidence, I want some sort of a lead to this Stella January. Can you find how her article came in? Get hold of the original. It might have an address. Some sort of clue …’

  ‘I’ll have a try, Mr Rumpole. Anything I can do to help old Morry.’ Never had I heard a man speak with such deep insincerity.

  The weather turned nasty, but, in spite of heavy rain, Fig Newton kept close observation for several nights on Hollyhock Cottage, home of Amelia Nettleship, without any particular result. One morning I entered our Chambers early and on my way to my room I heard a curious buzzing sound, as though an angry bee were trapped in the lavatory. Pulling open the door, I detected Erskine-Brown plying a cordless electric razor.

  ‘Claude,’ I said, ‘you’re shaving!’

  ‘Wonderful to see the workings of a keen legal mind.’ The man sounded somewhat bitter.

  ‘I’m sorry about all this. But I’m doing my best to help you.’

  ‘Oh, please!’ He held up a defensive hand. ‘Don’t try and do anything else to help me. “Visit the scene of the crime,” you said. “Inspect the locus in quo!” So where has your kind assistance landed me? My name’s mud. Ballard’s as good as threatened to kick me out of Chambers. I’ve got to spend my life’s savings on a speculative libel action. And my marriage is on the rocks. Wonderful what you can do, Rumpole, with a few words of advice. Your clients must be everlastingly grateful.’

  ‘Your marriage, on the rocks, did you say?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Philly was frightfully reasonable about it. As far as she was concerned, she said, she didn’t care what I did in the afternoons. But we’d better live apart for a while, for the sake of the children. She didn’t want Tristan and Isolde to associate with a father dedicated to the exploitation of women.’

  ‘Oh, Portia!’ I felt for the fellow. ‘What’s happened to the quality of mercy?’

  ‘So, thank you very much, Rumpole. I’m enormously grateful. The next time you’ve got a few helpful tips to hand out, for God’s sake keep them to yourself!’

  He switched on the razor again. I looked at it and made an instant deduction. ‘You’ve been sleeping in Chambers. You want to watch that, Claude. Bollard nearly got rid of me for a similar offence.’*

  ‘Where do you expect me to go? Phillida’s having the locks changed in Islington.’

  ‘Have you no friends?’

  ‘Philly and I have reached the end of the line. I don’t exactly want to advertise the fact among my immediate circle. I seem to remember, Rumpole, when you fell out with Hilda you planted yourself on us!’ As he said this I scented danger and tried to avoid what I knew was coming.

  ‘Oh. Now. Erskine-Brown. Claude. I was enormously grateful for your hospitality on that occasion.’

  ‘Quite an easy run in on the Underground, is it, from Gloucester Road?’ He spoke in a meaningful way.

  ‘Of course. My door is always open. I’d be delighted to put you up, just until this mess is straightened out. But …’

  ‘The least you could do, I should have thought, Rumpole.’

  ‘It’s not a sacrifice I could ask, old darling, even of my dearest friend. I couldn’t ask you to shoulder the burden of daily life with She Who Must Be Obeyed. Now I’m sure you can find a very comfortable little hotel, somewhere cheap and cosy, around the British Museum. I promise you, life is by no means a picnic, in the Gloucester Road.’

  Well, that was enough, I thought, to dissuade the most determined visitor from seeking hospitality under the Rumpole roof. I went about my daily business and, when my work was done, I thought I should share some of the good fortune brought with my brief in the libel action with She Who Must Be Obeyed. I lashed out on two bottles of Pommeroy’s bubbly, some of the least exhausted flowers to be found outside the tube station and even, such was my reckless mood, lavender water for Hilda.

  ‘All the fruits of the earth,’ I told her. ‘Or, let’s say, the fruits of the first cheque in Nettleship v. The Beacon, paid in advance. The first of many, if we can spin out the proceedings.’

  ‘You’re doing that awful case!’ She didn’t sound approving.

  ‘That awful case will bring us in five hundred smackers a day in refreshers.’

  ‘Helping that squalid newspaper insult Amelia Nettleship.’ She looked at me with contempt.

  ‘A barrister’s duty, Hilda, is to take on all comers. However squalid.’

  ‘Nonsense!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nonsense. You’re only using that as an excuse.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Of course you are. You’re doing it because you’re jealous of Amelia Nettleship!’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ I protested mildly. ‘My life has been full of longings, but I’ve never had the slightest desire to become a lady novelist.’

  ‘You’re jealous of her because she’s got high principles.’ Hilda was sure of it. ‘You haven’t got high principles, have you, Rumpole?’

  ‘I told you. I will accept any client, however repulsive.’

  ‘That’s
not a principle, that’s just a way of making money from the most terrible people. Like the editor of the Daily Beacon. My mind is quite made up, Rumpole. I shall not use a single drop of that corrupt lavender water.’

  It was then that I heard a sound from the hallway which made my heart sink. An all-too-familiar voice was singing ‘La donna e mobile’ in a light tenor. Then the door opened to admit Erskine-Brown wearing my dressing-gown and very little else. ‘Claude telephoned and told me all his troubles.’ Hilda looked at the man with sickening sympathy. ‘Of course I invited him to stay.’

  ‘You’re wearing my dressing-gown!’ I put the charge to him at once.

  ‘I had to pack in a hurry.’ He looked calmly at the sideboard. ‘Thoughtful of you to get in champagne to welcome me, Rumpole.’

  ‘Was the bath all right, Claude?’ Hilda sounded deeply concerned.

  ‘Absolutely delightful, thank you, Hilda.’

  ‘What a relief! That geyser can be quite temperamental.’

  ‘Which is your chair, Horace?’ Claude had the courtesy to ask.

  ‘I usually sit by the gas-fire. Why?’

  ‘Oh, do sit there, Claude,’ Hilda urged him and he gracefully agreed to pinch my seat. ‘We mustn’t let you get cold, must we. After your bath.’

  So they sat together by the gas-fire and I was allowed to open champagne for both of them. As I listened to the rain outside the window my spirits, I had to admit, had sunk to the lowest of ebbs. And around five o’clock the following morning, Fig Newton, the rain falling from the brim of his hat and the drop falling off his nose, stood watching Hollyhock Cottage. He saw someone – he was too far away to make an identification – come out of the front door and get into a parked car. Then he saw the figure of a woman in a nightdress, no doubt Amelia Nettleship, standing in the lit doorway waving goodbye. The headlights of the car were switched on and it drove away.

  When the visitor had gone, and the front door was shut, Fig moved nearer to the cottage. He looked down at the muddy track on which the car had been parked and saw something white. He stooped to pick it up, folded it carefully and put it in his pocket.

  On the day that Nettleship v. The Beacon began its sensational course, I breakfasted with Claude in the kitchen of our so-called ‘mansion’ flat in the Gloucester Road. I say breakfasted, but Hilda told me that bacon and eggs were off as our self-invited guest preferred a substance, apparently made up of sawdust and bird droppings, which he called muesli. I was a little exhausted, having been kept awake by the amplified sound of grand opera from the spare bedroom, but Claude explained that he always found that a little Wagner settled him down for the night. He then asked for some of the goat’s milk that Hilda had got in for him specially. As I coated a bit of toast with Oxford marmalade, the man only had to ask for organic honey to have it instantly supplied by She Who Seemed Anxious to Oblige.

  ‘And what the hell,’ I took the liberty of asking, ‘is organic honey?’

  ‘The bees only sip from flowers grown without chemical fertilizers,’ Claude explained patiently.

  ‘How does the bee know?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I suppose the other bees tell it. “Don’t sip from that, old chap. It’s been grown with chemical fertilizers.” ’

  So, ill-fed and feeling like a cuckoo in my own nest, I set off to the Royal Courts of Justice, in the Strand, that imposing turreted château which is the Ritz Hotel of the legal profession, the place where a gentleman is remunerated to the tune of five hundred smackers a day. It is also the place where gentlemen prefer an amicable settlement to the brutal business of fighting their cases.

  I finally pitched up, wigged and robed, in front of the Court which would provide the battleground for our libel action. I saw the combatants, Morry Machin and the fair Nettleship, standing a considerable distance apart. Peregrine Landseer, QC, Counsel for the plaintiff, and Robin Peppiatt, QC, for the proprietor of the Beacon, were meeting on the central ground for a peace conference, attended by assorted juniors and instructing solicitors.

  ‘After all the publicity, my lady couldn’t take less than fifty thousand.’ Landseer, Chairman of the Bar Council and on the brink of becoming a judge, was nevertheless driving as hard a bargain as any second-hand car dealer.

  ‘Forty and a full and grovelling apology.’ And Peppiatt added the bonus. ‘We could wrap it up and lunch together at the Sheridan.’

  ‘It’s steak-and-kidney pud day at the Sheridan,’ Dick Garsington remembered wistfully.

  ‘Forty-five.’ Landseer was not so easily tempted. ‘And that’s my last word on the subject.’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ Peppiatt conceded. ‘Forty-five and a full apology. You happy with that, Mr Cuxham?’

  ‘Well, sir. If you advise it.’ Cuxham clearly had no stomach for the fight.

  ‘We’ll chat to the editor. I’m sure we’re all going to agree’ – Peppiatt gave me a meaningful look – ‘in the end.’

  While Landseer went off to sell the deal to his client, Peppiatt approached my man with ‘You only have to join in the apology, Mr Machin, and the Beacon will pay the costs and the forty-five grand.’

  ‘Who steals my purse steals trash,’ I quoted thoughtfully. ‘But he that filches from me my good name … You’re asking my client to sign a statement admitting he printed lies.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Rumpole!’ Peppiatt was impatient. ‘They gave up quoting that in libel actions fifty years ago.’

  ‘Mr Rumpole’s right.’ Morry nodded wisely. ‘My good name – I looked up the quotation – it’s the immediate jewel of my soul.’

  ‘Steady on, old darling,’ I murmured. ‘Let’s not go too far.’ At which moment Peregrine Landseer returned from a somewhat heated discussion with his client to say that there was no shifting her and she was determined to fight for every penny she could get.

  ‘But Perry …’ Robin Peppiatt lamented, ‘the case is going to take two weeks!’ At five hundred smackers a day I could only thank God for the stubbornness of Amelia Nettleship.

  So we went into Court to fight the case before a jury and Mr Justice Teasdale, a small, highly opinionated and bumptious little person who is unmarried, lives in Surbiton with a Persian cat and was once an unsuccessful Tory candidate for Weston-super-Mare North. It takes a good deal of talent for a Tory to lose Weston-super-Mare North. Worst of all, he turned out to be a devoted fan of the works of Miss Amelia Nettleship.

  ‘Members of the jury,’ Landseer said in opening the plaintiff’s case, ‘Miss Nettleship is the authoress of a number of historical works.’

  ‘Rattling good yarns, Members of the jury,’ Mr Justice Teasdale chirped up.

  ‘I beg your Lordship’s pardon.’ Landseer looked startled.

  ‘I said “rattling good yarns”, Mr Peregrine Landseer. The sort your wife might pick up without the slightest embarrassment. Unlike so much of the distasteful material one finds between hard covers today.’

  ‘My Lord.’ I rose to protest with what courtesy I could muster.

  ‘Yes, Mr Rumbold?’

  ‘Rumpole, my Lord.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ The Judge didn’t look in the least apologetic. ‘I understand you are something of a stranger to these Courts.’

  ‘Would it not be better to allow the jury to come to their own conclusions about Miss Amelia Nettleship?’ I suggested, ignoring the Teasdale manners.

  ‘Well. Yes. Of course. I quite agree.’ The Judge looked serious and then cheered up. ‘And when they do they’ll find she can put together a rattling good yarn.’

  There was a sycophantic murmur of laughter from the jury, and all I could do was subside and look balefully at the Judge. I felt a pang of nostalgia for the Old Bailey and the wild stampede of the mad Judge Bullingham.

  As Peregrine Landseer bored on, telling the jury what terrible harm the Beacon had done to his client’s hitherto unblemished reputation, Ted Spratling, the deputy editor, leant forward in the seat behind me and whispered in my e
ar. ‘About that Stella January article,’ he said. ‘I bought a drink for the systems manager. The copy’s still in the system. One rather odd thing.’

  ‘Tell me …’

  ‘The logon – that’s the identification of the word processor. It came from the editor’s office.’

  ‘You mean it was written there?’

  ‘No one writes things any more.’

  ‘Of course not. How stupid of me.’

  ‘It looks as if it had been put in from his word processor.’

  ‘That is extremely interesting.’

  ‘If Mr Rumpole has quite finished his conversation!’ Peregrine Landseer was rebuking me for chattering during his opening speech.

  I rose to apologize as humbly as I could. ‘My Lord, I can assure my learned friend I was listening to every word of his speech. It’s such a rattling good yarn.’

  So the morning wore on, being mainly occupied by Landseer’s opening. The luncheon adjournment saw me pacing the marble corridors of the Royal Courts of Justice with that great source of information, Fig Newton. He gave me a lengthy account of his observation on Hollyhock Cottage, and when he finally got to the departure of Miss Nettleship’s nocturnal visitor, I asked impatiently, ‘You got the car number?’

  ‘Alas. No. Visibility was poor and weather conditions appalling.’ The sleuth’s evidence was here interrupted by a fit of sneezing.

  ‘Oh, Fig!’ I was, I confess, disappointed. ‘And you didn’t see the driver?’

  ‘Alas. No, again.’ Fig sneezed apologetically. ‘However, when Miss Nettleship had closed the door and extinguished the lights, presumably in order to return to bed, I proceeded to the track in front of the house where the vehicle had been standing. There I retrieved an article which I thought might just possibly have been dropped by the driver in getting in or out of the vehicle.’

  ‘For God’s sake, show me!’

  The detective gave me his treasure trove, which I stuffed into a pocket just as the usher came out of Court to tell me that the Judge was back from lunch, Miss Nettleship was entering the witness-box and the world of libel awaited my attention.